Everyone talks about the hard parts of indie hacking. Finding the right idea. Building the product. Getting the first customers. Surviving the competition.

Nobody talks about the Thursday afternoon when you just... can't open your IDE.

Not because you're sick. Not because you don't know what to do next. The task is clear, Claude or GPT is ready, the coffee is hot. You just sit there, switching between X and Reddit, telling yourself you'll start in ten minutes.

That's the enemy nobody warns you about.

The procrastination nobody admits to

This week I split my time between two things: finalizing my Google SERP scraper infrastructure and rebuilding the UX of SnappyName from scratch.

One of these tasks I attacked with the energy of someone who hasn't slept in three days and doesn't care. The other one I postponed, negotiated with myself about, and generally treated like a tax return.

Guess which was which.

The scraper is a genuinely hard problem. I've been chasing it for weeks. Stealth browsers, proxy pools, rate limiters. Every day brings a new technical puzzle to crack. There's a moment, usually around midnight, when something finally clicks and you run a test and it works. And that feeling is why we do this.

The SnappyName UX refactor? Necessary, important, directly tied to attracting more visitors. And about as intellectually stimulating as watching paint dry.

Responsive design in particular is my personal hell. Hours of tweaking breakpoints, testing on different screen sizes, fixing the thing that works on mobile but breaks on tablet, fixing the tablet version and watching the desktop layout collapse. It's not hard. It's just relentless and unrewarding and there's no Eureka! moment at the end. You just eventually arrive at: "Okay, this is acceptable. Let’s ship it".

The difference between laziness and selectivity

Here's the thing I realized this week: I'm not lazy.

And if you're reading this, you're probably not lazy either.

What we are is intellectually selective. We have a natural pull toward complex, open-ended problems. The kind where you don't know the answer when you start, where the solution requires creative thinking, where failure is possible and therefore success feels like something.

And we have a natural aversion to closed, repetitive execution tasks. The kind where the answer exists, you just have to grind through it.

This distinction matters because lazy people know they're lazy. Intellectually selective people think they're working.

I spent three days this week making genuine progress on the scraper while the UX refactor sat untouched in my todo list. I felt productive. I was productive, technically. But I was also procrastinating on the thing that was actually blocking SnappyName's growth.

That's the dangerous version of procrastination. Not the "scrolling X for two hours" kind. The "cooking the exciting thing while avoiding the important thing" kind.

The indie hacker's specific trap

In a normal job, this gets managed for you. Your manager assigns priorities. Deadlines are external. Someone is waiting on your output.

When you work alone, nobody is waiting. You set your own priorities. And your brain, being the sneaky, comfort-seeking organ that it is, will constantly reorder that list in favor of whatever feels most stimulating right now.

The market doesn't care about your preference for intellectually challenging work. Users don't care that responsive design is boring. They just open your app on their phone, see a broken layout, and leave.

The tasks you avoid are almost never the tasks that don't matter. They're usually the tasks that matter most and feel worst.

How I'm dealing with it (imperfectly)

I don't have a magic system. Anyone selling you a magic productivity system for this specific problem is lying.

But a few things have helped this week.

Separating the two modes completely. I stopped trying to alternate between scraper work and UX work in the same day. The context switch is brutal and it gives my brain an excuse to drift toward whichever task is more fun. Now I do full days on one thing. Scraper week. UX week. The boring task gets its full dedicated time with no escape hatch.

Shipping something broken on purpose. The SnappyName refactor has been blocking me because I wanted it perfect before pushing it live. That's a trap.

I pushed an imperfect version this week. It's live, it's functional, some breakpoints aren't ideal. And the world didn't end. More importantly: having something live creates urgency that a todo list never does. I want to fix it now because real users are seeing it.

Being honest about what I'm avoiding and why. This sounds trivial but it isn't. The moment I wrote down "I am avoiding the UX refactor because responsive design is boring and I dislike it" (not "I'll get to it later", not "I need to finish the scraper first") the avoidance became harder to maintain. It's much easier to procrastinate on a task when you're lying to yourself about why.

The scraper verdict

Since it's part of the week: the Google SERP scraper works. It runs clean requests, avoids detection, costs almost nothing to operate.

The problem is volume. What I built is powerful enough for SnappyName's current scale. A few hundred queries a day, no issue. But the features I want to build next require more. A lot more.

So the conclusion I'd been resisting for two weeks is now official: I'll combine my homemade scraper with a paid API for high-volume queries. Not the pure hack I wanted. But the right engineering decision.

Sometimes accepting a hybrid solution is its own form of discipline, resisting the urge to keep chasing the perfect answer when a good enough answer exists and the product is waiting.

Nico was right when he said to give myself a deadline and move on. The deadline set itself.

This was week #20 in Bangkok. The scraper found its limits. The UX got shipped, imperfect and live. And the hardest thing I built this week wasn't code — it was being honest about what I was avoiding 💪

A small heads-up before we start: this week I'm trying something different. Instead of the usual travel blog format, with Bangkok anecdotes, expat life, condo stories, I want to write something more useful. More "indie hacker lessons learned in the trenches" than "here's the pad thai I ate for lunch".

If you prefer the other blog format, please tell me. Drop a comment here, reply to my post on X, send me a message. I genuinely want to know what you find valuable here.

Now let’s get into it.

Purple cows?

Seth Godin's purple cow concept is marketing gospel: in a field full of normal cows, be the purple one. Be remarkable. Stand out.

The problem? In 2026, everyone is a purple cow. And when everyone is purple, purple becomes the new black and white.

I had a long conversation this week with Nico, the famous French maker. We ended up dissecting this exact pattern. The conversation started with something he threw at me: statistically, as an indie maker, you have almost zero chance of making it. Not a new idea. But hearing it laid out plainly forces you to sit with it for a minute.

My answer was simple: I know. But that doesn't stop me from trying.

Let me explain everything to you in detail.

The AI wrapper epidemic

There is a thing that a lot of people in this space know but don't say out loud: the current wave of indie makers is largely building the same things. AI wrappers. GPT on top of a niche. "I built a SaaS in 72 hours with Claude Opus 4.6 / GPT 5.4 / Gemini 3.1" content every single day.

Some of these work. Most don't.

The people who struggle are almost always the same profile:

• No real backend, no defensible moat
• Building things that anyone with a free Lovable or Google Studio account can replicate over a weekend
• Posting demos constantly, launching on Product Hunt every other week
• And stagnating

If you recognize yourself here, this post is for you.

The problem isn't effort. The problem is differentiation.

When your product can be copied in two days, and your marketing is "I built this with AI", you're not a purple cow. You're a black and white cow with purple paint.

The "move to Asia" meta

There's a second version of this problem, more specific to the X indie hacker bubble: everyone is living the same life.

Everyone left their job. Everyone moved to Southeast Asia. Everyone posts from a co-working space with their OpenAI Codex setup. Everyone documents their "journey". And then they're surprised when their audience stagnates at 1,000 followers despite grinding daily.

These days, dropping everything to go to Asia is no longer extraordinary. Three years ago, it was a statement. Now it's a template.

What still works on X? Drama. Real moments. MRR that actually moves. Failures. Controversies. The stuff that creates an emotional reaction. Pieter Levels barely talks about his products. He talks about politics, provokes people, shares raw opinions. His engagement is insane.

X is an attention machine, not a sales tool. You sell in the long run, because you post things that make people feel something. Product demos from AI wrappers that everyone has already seen? Nobody cares.

Many makers believe that X's algorithm has changed. It's not the algo itself that has changed. It's that what was once remarkable isn't anymore.

The hard stuff nobody wants to build

Here's where my story gets relevant.

For the past few weeks, I've been deep in something unsexy: building a scraping infrastructure for Google SERPs from scratch. No third-party APIs. No SerpAPI. Just me, a VPS, some proxies, stealth browsers and a growing pile of failed experiments.

Why? Because the SEO tool I'm building needs this data, and the API providers charge a fortune at scale. My goal was to hack the system so my entire infrastructure costs the price of a VPS ($5/mo) instead of hundreds of dollars. That asymmetric cost structure is what makes a SaaS with a healthy margin possible.

Accepting the verdict

After two weeks of this, I need to face the reality: maybe I might not crack it.

So, at this point, the most sensible solution is to set a deadline, give myself one more week, and if that doesn't work, switch to SerpAPI and do something else. I absolutely must avoid spending 3 or 4 months on this.

My honest assessment? I can probably build something that scrapes a few hundred queries a day without getting blocked. Useful for bootstrapping a free tool with low traffic, like SnappyName right now.

Note: You probably don't make the connection between domain name searches and Google's SERPs, but there is one. I can't wait to show you what I've cooked up!

But at large volume? Google has put up too many walls. It would require industrial-grade infrastructure: dedicated servers, clickstream data purchased at scale, the kind of setup that costs millions like Ahrefs. Not my level.

The conclusion is almost certain: large-scale Google scraping isn't viable for a solo indie hacker in 2026. It's not impossible. It's just prohibitively expensive if you do it the right way, and unstable if you try to hack it. I've tried nearly every low-cost option on the table. I'm close to the end of the list.

The deadline is setting itself.

Why it was worth it anyway

No regrets though. Here's what this two-week detour actually gave me:

I now know exactly what's feasible and what isn't. I know the architecture. I know the weak points in Google's bot detection. I built something that partially works. And critically, I built something that nobody can copy in two days with an AI prompt.

That's the actual purple cow. Not the output. The process.

This is pure R&D. It's unglamorous. It makes zero followers on X. Nobody claps for you when you spend 4 days going down a rabbit hole that ends in failure. But this is exactly the kind of work that creates tools with real competitive moats.

Some others indie makers I know here in Bangkok put it well: you have to launch multiple projects, because you never know which one will take off. Some successful products that reached the holy grail of 10k MMR were launched as side projects that no one believed in, and shipped in a weekend.

Key takeaways

The infrastructure I'm building is my bet. Maybe I lose. Maybe the whole thing collapses and I pivot to SerpAPI next week. But I'll have no regrets. I'll have tried everything.

And when it does work, even partially? That's not just a competitive advantage. That's a launch post that actually has something to say.

This was week #19 in Bangkok. The scraping verdict is almost in. The differentiation game is ruthless. And the hard stuff is still the only stuff worth building 💪

How I work with AI: the research-first method

I've been heads-down on infrastructure work for the past two weeks. Cooking the backend systems that will power my tool's next features by retrieving data from the web.

And working on a scraping infrastructure is hard. Every decision matters. One wrong move in configuration and your server gets banned. One bad architecture choice and you're rebuilding everything from scratch.

I realized something: AI doesn't automatically give you the best solution. It gives you the most logical solution.

There's a huge difference.

The problem with trusting AI blindly

When you ask Claude Opus or any AI to solve a complex problem, it will confidently implement a solution. Not necessarily the best solution.

Why? Because AI models are trained on patterns. They recognize what typically works and suggest that. But "typical" doesn't mean "optimal" for your specific use case.

I learned this the hard way while cooking scraping infrastructure. I'd ask Claude to implement something, it would write clean code that looked perfect, and then... it would fail in production. Or work but be incredibly inefficient. Or miss edge cases I didn't even know existed.

The methodology that actually works

After burning through dozens of failed attempts, I developed a process that consistently gives better results:

Step 1: Research phase I don't let Claude code anything yet. Instead, I ask it to research different approaches: "Search the web for techniques to solve X problem. Find blog posts, Stack Overflow threads, GitHub repos, documentation."

Claude goes hunting. It comes back with 5-10 different techniques people have used to solve similar problems.

Step 2: Brainstorm and filter Now we discuss what it found: "Is this approach relevant? Does it fit our constraints? What are the tradeoffs?"

We brainstorm together. Claude explains the pros and cons of each technique. I add context it doesn't have: my specific infrastructure, my cost constraints, my scale requirements.

Step 3: Create a test list We make a list of what needs testing. Techniques that seem promising go into the todo list. Stuff that's clearly irrelevant gets discarded immediately.

This is crucial. You're not committing to build everything. You're just identifying what's worth testing.

Step 4: Test one by one Claude codes each test as a standalone experiment. I run it. We evaluate the results. We brainstorm again based on what worked or failed.

This is slow. But it's way faster than building the wrong thing and having to rebuild.

Step 5: Iterate or restart If we found a solution through testing: great, move to the next challenge.

If nothing worked: back to Step 1. Research again with different keywords. Find new techniques. Test new approaches.

Why this works

This methodology forces AI to think like a researcher first, not a coder.

Instead of jumping to implementation, it explores the solution space. It learns what's actually out there, not just what it thinks should work based on training data.

And it prevents me from wasting time building confidently wrong solutions.

Since I adopted this approach, my success rate on complex problems went way up. I'm solving challenges I couldn't crack before. And I'm doing it without burning servers or wasting days on dead ends.

If you're using AI for serious development work, try this. It's slower upfront. But it saves you days on the backend.

The uncomfortable truth about indie hacking

Let's talk about statistics.

I spend more and more time in indie hacker communities. I follow successful makers on X. I read success stories. And I now befriend with people hitting $10k MRR, selling their projects for six figures, living the dream.

It's inspiring. It's also survivorship bias at its finest.

Here's what the data from the internet actually shows:

90% of indie hackers fail. Not "struggle". Not "take longer than expected". Fail. As in, never reach sustainable income…

Out of 50 projects, only 16 generated revenue. That's a real stat from indie hackers who track their journey over years. A 31% hit rate if you're lucky.

Only 18% of first-time founders succeed. Event if you're a serial entrepreneur with previous wins (which is my case), your odds jump to only 30%. Still not great…

Most first products fail. Even legendary makers like Pieter Levels launched dozens of projects before finding hits. Nomad List and RemoteOK weren't his first rodeo. They were the ones that finally worked after many failures.

It takes 2-5 years to reach ramen profitability. Not 2-5 months. Years. The "I built a SaaS in 3 months and hit $5k MRR" stories are exceptions, not the rule. Or maybe they're fake!

Why I'm sharing this

Because I need to be realistic about what I'm facing.

I'm not shipping things as side projects. I’m full-time focus. I've given myself 4 years in Bangkok to make this work. I'm burning through savings. I'm betting everything on this path.

And statistically? I probably won't make it.

That's the truth. The odds are against me. Against all of us in this space.

But here's the thing: I'm okay with that.

I'd rather try and fail than never try at all. I'd rather spend 4 years cooking, learning, and pushing myself than stay in a safe job wondering "what if?"

The stats are brutal. The mountain is steep. The failure rate is real.

But I'm climbing anyway 💪

Friday night golf in Bangkok

After so much intense work, I needed to disconnect.

My British friends (James, Danielle, Hugh, and Morgan, plus Raz and his Thai wife), suggested we hit up Topgolf Megacity.

I'd heard about it but never been. It's located next to Mega Bangna, a massive shopping mall in the suburbs. The place is huge: 102 climate-controlled hitting bays spread across 4 floors.

The experience

We arrived around 7pm and got assigned a bay on the third floor. Each bay has comfortable seating for up to 8 people, HDTVs, and you can order food and drinks that get delivered directly to your spot.

The concept is simple but genius: you hit microchipped golf balls at targets on a massive range. The system tracks your shots in real-time and displays your accuracy and distance on screens.

But it's not just practice. They've gamified everything. We played Angry Birds Golf (yes, really!), where you hit balls to knock down structures.

The best part? You don't need to be good at golf. I'm terrible. Didn't matter. Everyone had fun!

We ordered food, grabbed beers, talked about projects and life in Bangkok. The vibe was perfect, competitive but casual, active but relaxed.

Why it's great

Topgolf fills a gap I didn't know existed in Bangkok. It's an activity where you can:

• Actually do something physical (not just sit in a bar)
• Talk and socialize (unlike a movie)
• Be competitive without taking it seriously
• Stay comfortable (climate-controlled, unlike outdoor golf)
• Eat and drink while playing

The facility is spotless. Staff are friendly. The technology works flawlessly. And the rooftop bar (The Pink Giraffe) has incredible views of the Bangkok skyline.

We stayed for 2 hours, played multiple games and left feeling energized instead of exhausted.

It was exactly what I needed after days of grinding on code. Sometimes you just need to hit things with sticks and hang out with great people 🏌️

*This was week #18 in Bangkok. My AI methodology is dialed in. The statistics are brutal but I'm climbing anyway. And Topgolf? Highly recommended *🔥

The hunt: cracking Google's SERP scraping

SnappyName launched two weeks ago. Since then, 65 people have visited the site. Not bad for a free tool with zero marketing 😊

I have big plans for SnappyName. The current version is just the foundation. I want to add powerful features that will make it genuinely the best domain name generator on the web.

And to build those features, I need data. Lots of data.

The expensive, slow API problem

When indie makers need to scrape data, most turn to API providers like ScrapingBee, SerpAPI or RapidAPI. These services handle the technical complexity for you.

But they have two massive problems: they're expensive (SerpAPI charges $75/month for just 5,000 searches) and they're really slow (5-10 seconds per request).

I hate paying for expensive, slow services when I know there's a better way. Earlier this year, I built my own Python scraper to bypass Cloudflare's challenge system. Now I can scrape Cloudflare-protected domains without paying anyone. And it's way faster.

So when I realized I needed Google SERP data, I thought: "Why pay SerpAPI $75/month for slow results?”

Why nobody scrapes Google

Here's why most people don't: it's insanely hard.

Google has spent years building anti-bot systems. IP blocking, CAPTCHAs, behavioral detection, fingerprinting, rate limiting. If you try to scrape Google with a basic script, you'll get blocked in milliseconds.

That's why services like SerpAPI exist. They've cracked it, and they charge you a premium for it.

But I wanted to crack it myself.

Three days of obsession

I spent Day 1 researching approaches. Every solution was either extremely expensive (premium residential proxies cost $10+ per GB) or unreliable (proxies, even paid ones, are detected instantly today). All my tests failed.

Day 2 was dedicated to trying new configurations. I tried scraping on my own without going through intermediaries, testing different cloud providers in different countries. Nothing worked. Google's detection was catching everything. Google now blocks IP ranges by provider, and it blocks everyone: Hetzner, DigitalOcean, AWS, OHV… I've tried many of them. Even small, virtually unknown suppliers… 🤯

By midnight on Day 2, I was exhausted. But I kept thinking: "There has to be a way."

Day 3 was brutal. Sixteen hours of: “search, find, try… again” with Claude Opus 4.6 running servers everywhere. My eyes were burning. At 1am, I was still failing. Random blocks, random CAPTCHAs. Nothing stable.

At 2:30am, I was ready to give up. Maybe I should just pay for SerpAPI and move on?

Then Opus 4.6 wrote something completely innocuous about my last failures, and… Eureka! Something I hadn't considered hit me. Something completely outside the box… What we call in SEO a Black Hat technique.

Opus implemented it. I ran a test. Success.

Ran 10 more tests. All successful.

At 3am, I ran hundred consecutive requests. Zero blocks. Zero CAPTCHAs. Clean, really fast results every time.

I'd found the flaw.

The asymmetric advantage

I can't share the technical details, it’s obvious why 😄

But here's what matters: I can now scrape Google SERPs at massive scale for pennies. And it's faster than any API provider.

This is an asymmetric market advantage. While competitors pay $75-200/month for a few requests and slow results, I'm running thousands of queries for pennies with near-instant speed.

This unlocks features for SnappyName that would be economically impossible otherwise. Features requiring real-time analysis of millions of search results.

And it's not just SnappyName. My other SEO tools in development will use this same infrastructure.

Now the real building begins.

Old Bangkok: discovering the vieille ville

After days locked in my condo since the beginning of February, I needed to breathe.

My German friend Jens was back in town and suggested we explore old Bangkok. I'd been living here for months without seeing the historic center properly.

Wat Arun at sunset

We met at Sanam Chai, near Wat Pho. The vibe was immediately different: narrower streets, older buildings, temples everywhere.

We took the ferry across the Chao Phraya River to reach Wat Arun. The ferry costs 16 THB. That's €0.44. Forty cents to cross a major river in a capital city 🙃

Wat Arun at sunset was stunning. The temple's white porcelain spire glowing golden, the river reflecting everything, boats passing by. Tourist-heavy, but beautiful.

From Khao San chaos to Ram Buttri calm

We took the boat-bus back up the river and checked out Khao San Road. Yep, the famous backpacker street I'd somehow never visited.

Khao San Road is intense. Neon lights, street food vendors, bars blasting music, tourists stumbling around drunk. It's complete chaos, in the best way possible.

We walked to the neighboring street, Thanon Ram Buttri, which has a completely different energy. Quieter, more relaxed, still lively but not overwhelming.

We found a terrace, grabbed beers, and just talked about projects and life in Bangkok.

What struck me most wasn't just the temples or Khao San's chaos. It was the overall vibe. Everything felt more smooth, more organic, more human-scaled compared to modern Bangkok.

Don't get me wrong. I love Sukhumvit with its skyscrapers and massive malls. But old Bangkok has a charm the modern city can't replicate. The streets feel walkable. The pace feels slower.

I need to come back here more often.

This is week #17 in Bangkok. I cracked Google's scraping at 3am. I fell in love with old Bangkok. And SnappyName is about to get way more powerful 💪

February 15th, 2026. It's been almost 2 months since my last post. A lot happened. Some boring administrative nightmares, one spontaneous product launch, and an incredible dinner with two French indie hacker legends.

The break: drowning in bureaucracy (again…)

I know, I know. Two months without posting is a long time 😅

It wasn't intentional. I just got completely overwhelmed with everything happening at once.

On one side, I was trying to push forward on my SEO project. Building features, testing systems, refining the core engine. The usual indie maker grind.

But on the other side? A tsunami of administrative work that I couldn't ignore

I had to handle the dissolution of my French SARL with my legal advisors. Multiple meetings, countless documents, endless back-and-forth about the proper procedures to close a company in France.

Then there were the year-end accounts to prepare with my accountants. Because yes, even when you're leaving France, you still have to close your fiscal year properly and submit everything to the French administration.

On top of that, I had to handle my US LLC tax declaration. But here's the thing: it was about 15 times simpler than anything I've dealt with in France.

I found a CPA in the US, a retired IRS agent who charged me $175 for the whole thing. He filled out the two required forms, submitted my declaration to the IRS, and boom. Done in 2 days.

That's it. No endless back-and-forth, no requests for obscure documents, no bureaucratic nightmare. Just clean, efficient administration. If only it could be that simple in France…

And next? Preparing my tax residency change to Thailand with the Tax Revenue Card option.

Here's a fun story about that...

I obtained my TIN (Thai Tax Identification Number) and had to provide it to all my banks worldwide to prove that I am now a Thai tax resident. Most banks? No problem. They accepted it immediately. All smooth.

But my French bank? Oh no…

They refused my Thai TIN. They told me I needed to provide a document translated by a certified translator approved by the Paris Court of Appeals. Yes, you read that right. A simple tax ID number from Thailand had to be officially translated by a court-approved translator.

I couldn't believe it. I asked them: "You're telling me that every other bank in the world accepted this document as-is, but you need an official French translation?"

"Yes, monsieur. French banking regulations."

This is peak French bureaucracy. Instead of just accepting a government-issued tax document with a clear number on it, they want me to pay a translator €100 to translate… a number.

You know what? I'm done.

I'm closing my last French bank account. I don't need this nonsense in my life anymore 🙄

SnappyName: when you need a domain and end up launching a free tool

While I was deep in development on my main SEO project, I hit a practical problem: I needed to find a domain name for the launch.

So I did what any indie hacker would do. I started browsing domain name generators to get inspiration.

And they all sucked

Seriously. Every single one produced either generic garbage names or unpronounceable combinations that made no sense. "Xyzqly.io" vibes. You know what I mean.

So I thought, "You know what? I could probably build something better with AI in like… a few hours."

Challenge accepted.

I fired up Claude Opus 4.6 and basically vibe coded a domain name generator. No planning, no elaborate design system, just pure "let's see what happens" energy.

A few hours later, I had something working. I tested it. And honestly? It was way more powerful than anything else I'd found online.

The tool uses 800+ curated tech words, applies phonetic rules to ensure every name is actually pronounceable, and generates thousands of brandable options instantly. No loading bars. No signup required. Just type a keyword and boom, hundreds of usable names.

I thought: "This is actually good. Maybe I should just… launch it as a free tool?"

So I did. Meet SnappyName

It's 100% free. No limits. No credit card. No bullshit. Just a fast, smart domain name generator designed for SaaS and tech startups.

Now I'm improving it based on initial user feedback. I have big ambitions for this little tool. I want it to become the best domain name generator on the web.

More news coming very soon on that front 👀

Dinner with Pauline Clavelloux and Nico Jeannen

Last week, I had the chance to have dinner with two absolute monsters in the French indie hacker scene: Pauline Claveloux and Nico Jeannen.

For context, these aren't your average indie makers.

Pauline Clavelloux runs a portfolio of SaaS products generating over $200k ARR. She built AICrea (an AI tool for real estate agents) while working as a data science manager at IBM. Now she's building new projects in parallel while sharing her entire journey with 30k+ followers. She's the real deal.

Nico Jeannen is also insane. He taught himself to code in 2022 and built 17 apps in 12 months. He sold some of them for almost $300,000 in less than two years. He's also a Facebook Ads expert who managed over$1M in ad spend and is currently building Adkit, his new ads business venture. Absolute legend.

We met at an italien restaurant in Bangkok, and the conversation was exactly what you'd expect when three French indie hackers get together: projects, revenue, strategies and life in Thailand.

The best part?

Pauline just came back from vacation in the south of Thailand. She spent time in the islands, all the most beautiful spots. She described it as paradise, which honestly made me realize I need to explore more of Thailand beyond Bangkok.

Sitting there with these two, I felt a mix of inspiration and validation. Inspiration because they're both crushing it at levels I'm still working toward. Validation because hearing them talk about their struggles, failures, and challenges reminded me that everyone goes through the grind.

It's one thing to follow people on X and see their wins. It's another thing entirely to sit across from them over dinner and hear the unfiltered reality.

That dinner recharged me. Sometimes you need to be around people who are a few steps ahead to remember why you're doing this in the first place 💪

This is February 2026. The bureaucracy is ending. The free tool is live. And I'm exactly where I need to be. Let's keep building!

December 21st, 2025. The first major milestone is complete. My secret SEO tool has a working engine. But Christmas brought some unexpected family tensions, and I'm working hard on something I came to Thailand for: drastically improving my spoken English.

The engine is ready

This week, I finished the core Python script that powers my entire SEO project. This script is the engine of the system, the actual value proposition. It's what makes someone choose my tool over doing everything manually: it saves time, gives better results and automates processes that would take hours (or days) by hand.

It's also the part where AI-assisted coding really shined. I don't think I could have built something this sophisticated this quickly without Claude and Gemini helping me every step of the way.

But finishing the engine doesn't mean the product is ready. Far from it.

Here's what's coming next:

Step 1: Build an API layer

Currently, the process runs only as a standalone script. That's fine for testing, but useless for customers. I need to wrap it in an API so it can be accessed as a web service. This means setting up endpoints, handling requests, managing rate limits, and making sure everything scales properly.

Step 2: Connect it to a database

Users need to be able to save their data, reload it later, track their progress over time. That means integrating a proper database (probably PostgreSQL) to store user information, query results, historical data, everything. Right now, everything is ephemeral: run the script, get results, done. That's not a product, that's a demo.

Step 3: Build the user interface

Nobody wants to interact with a Python script through a terminal. I need to create an actual interface where users can input their parameters, visualize their results, download reports, all in a clean, intuitive UX. This is probably the part I'm least excited about, but it's absolutely critical. A powerful engine with a terrible interface is still a terrible product.

Step 4: Develop the marketing front-end

Landing page, authentication system, payment integration (Stripe), email flows, onboarding sequences. All the stuff that turns "cool script" into "actual SaaS business". This is where most indie hackers underestimate the work required. The product is maybe 40% of the effort. The go-to-market infrastructure is the other 60%.

So yeah, the engine is done, but I'm maybe 30% of the way to having something I can actually launch.

The work continues. Every day. One step at a time 🏗️

Family tensions over Christmas

This week has been emotionally tough.

We're approaching Christmas, and my family back in France isn't happy that I'm not there. My parents are disappointed, which I understand. It's our first Christmas apart, and they miss having the whole family together.

But the real tension comes from my younger brother.

He doesn't approve of my decision to move to Thailand. At all. And he's been pretty vocal about it, especially recently. According to him, people who come to Thailand do it for bad reasons, like "exploiting poor people" or for "sex tourism".

Yes, really… These are the stereotypes he clings to.

My brother lives in the countryside near Besançon, a small town in eastern France. He's someone who never travels abroad, doesn't leave his region much, and has pretty strong opinions about how the world works despite limited exposure to it. He's closed-minded, proud, and convinced that he knows better than everyone else because he's French. You know, "the people of the Enlightenment" and all that 🙄

It's the typical profile of the French person who complains about everything, thinks they're smarter than the rest of the world just because they're French, and judges situations they've never experienced themselves.

I'm not angry at him. Honestly, I'm just sad.

It hurts when your own family doesn't support your choices. When they reduce your entire life decision to offensive stereotypes. When they refuse to even try to understand why you made this move.

I've tried explaining: the cost of living, the entrepreneurial opportunity, the lifestyle improvements, the fact that I'm literally building a business here, not "exploiting" anyone or engaging in whatever dark fantasies he's projecting onto Thailand.

But he doesn't want to hear it. His mind is made up.

So I've accepted it. I can't change him. I can't force him to be open-minded or supportive. All I can do is continue building my life here, prove through my actions that his assumptions are wrong, and hope that eventually, maybe, he'll see things differently.

In the meantime, it makes this Christmas season a bit lonely. I'm here in Bangkok, working on my project, while my family is back in France judging my choices from afar.

But as we say in French: C'est la vie!

And I have to move forward anyway.

Learning to speak English (finally)

Here's the honest truth: I'm 44 years old, and my spoken English is around A2 level.

I can understand it perfectly. I follow entire conversations without missing a word. I watch movies in English without subtitles. I read technical documentation, blog posts, everything. No problem.

But speaking? That's where I struggle.

I can hold basic conversations, express simple ideas, get my point across in most situations. But I'm far from fluent. I lack vocabulary, I make grammatical mistakes and I often search for words mid-sentence.

I'm the stereotypical French person who never needed English in daily life. I studied it in school, sure, but I never actually used it. My entire career was in France, with French clients, French teams, French everything. So despite decades of passive exposure to English, my speaking ability never developed beyond basic level.

And now that I'm in Bangkok, surrounded by international people, this limitation is hitting me hard.

I see young Europeans around 25-30 years old speaking fluent English like it's nothing. Meanwhile, I'm struggling to form basic sentences in conversations. It's humbling. And honestly, a bit shameful 🤦‍♂️

But that was part of my plan when I came to Thailand. I had to do something about it.

For the past month, I've been taking 1 hour of English lessons every single day. It's intense. My teacher focuses entirely on conversation practice, forcing me to speak, correcting my mistakes, building my confidence.

The good news? I'm already noticing progress. My brain is starting to unlock patterns that were dormant. I'm forming sentences faster. I'm less hesitant to speak up in social situations.

The bad news? I still have a long way to go. But at this pace (7 hours per week of focused practice) I should see real improvement within a few months. I hope so!

I also want to thank all my English-speaking friends here in Bangkok for their incredible patience. Adam, Danielle, James, Raz, Morgan and everyone else who's had to endure my imperfect English during our conversations. You guys are saints 😅

Learning a language at 44 isn't easy. But it's necessary. And I'm committed to making it happen!

This is week seven in Bangkok. The engine is ready. The family drama is real. And I'm finally learning to speak like an adult. Progress on all fronts, even the uncomfortable ones 💪

December 14th, 2025. I'm in full development mode now. The secret project is taking shape faster than I expected, thanks to AI. But Bangkok threw me a curveball this week...

My Python script is almost done

The magic ingredient? AI-assisted coding. I've been working with Claude Opus 4.5 and Gemini 3.0, and honestly, it's insane how much faster you can build when you have these models helping you write code, debug issues, and suggest optimizations.

I've been building API integrations, fine-tuning prompts for data extraction, and developing a pretty powerful content scraper that uses parallelization to speed things up. I also had to implement anti-detection measures to avoid getting blocked by anti-bot systems (because yes, websites don't always like being scraped 😅).

I'm not going to share more details for now. I want to keep the project under wraps until I have something solid to show. But let's just say I'm working on something that I genuinely need myself, which is always the best sign.

The progress has been incredibly motivating! Every day brings new challenges, but they're the fun kind of challenges where you're actually building something real, not just prototyping or experimenting.

How to code for free with Claude Opus 4.5 and Gemini 3.0 (the French way)

Okay, this section is for all my fellow French who hate paying for things when there's a free alternative 😂

Here's the hack: Google just launched Antigravity, their new agentic IDE. It's basically a super-powered code editor where AI agents can write entire features for you, not just autocomplete lines of code. Same as Cursor, but completely free.

The best part? Antigravity gives you access to multiple AI models: Gemini 3.0 Pro (Google's latest model), Claude Sonnet 4.5, and even Claude Opus 4.5. All for free during the preview period, with "generous rate limits" that refresh every 5 hours.

But here's where it gets even better: if you create a Google One trial account (which gives you 1 month free), you can get even more AI tokens. And when your trial expires? Just use another Gmail account and start a new trial. Rinse and repeat.

I know, I know, it's peak French behavior to game the system like this 😅. But hey, when you're bootstrapping a SaaS with limited runway, every euro saved matters!

My advice? Jump on this now. Google won't keep Antigravity free forever, and the generous limits will probably get tightened once more people discover this. So if you want to build your project with top-tier AI models without paying $100-200/month for Cursor or Claude subscriptions, this is your window.

Download Antigravity, create your Google account, and start shipping before they close the loophole.

When MEA cuts your power mid-code

So here's a fun story about how I lost several hours of work this week.

It was Wednesday afternoon. Bangkok was hitting 33°C outside. I was in full coding flow, AC blasting at full power to keep my brain from melting. Claude Opus 4.5 was in the middle of writing multiple files for my scraper system when suddenly…

Everything went dark.

No warning. No flickering lights. Just instant BLACKOUT.

My laptop was on battery, but that didn't help because Claude was running on the cloud and I lost the internet connection. All those files that were being generated? Gone. The progress I'd made in the last 2 hours? Gone. My Python script? Broken 😱

I was confused at first. Did the whole building lose power? Nope. Just my unit.

Turns out I hadn't paid my first electricity bill…

Here's what happened: when I signed my condo lease, my real estate agent told me I'd receive my electricity bill in my mailbox. So I was waiting for it like a good tenant. Except that's not how it works in my condo.

You're supposed to register yourself directly with MEA (Metropolitan Electricity Authority). They don't automatically send you a bill just because you moved in. You have to go through the registration process, link your unit to your account, and then you start receiving bills.

Nobody told me this. I genuinely had no idea 🤦‍♂️

Thankfully, the juristic office in my condo came to the rescue. They helped me register with MEA on the spot, explained the payment process, and I was able to pay my overdue bill within an hour. Power came back. Crisis averted.

But man, those lost hours hurt… When you're in the zone and everything just clicks, losing that momentum is painful. I had to reconstruct from memory what Claude wrote and, thanks to the developers I've worked with in the past, I learned how to use Github to get myself out of this situation.

Lesson learned: in Thailand, don't assume anything works like it does in France (or anywhere else in Europe). Always ask explicitly how administrative processes work, even for things as basic as electricity bills 😅

The silver lining? At least now I know the system. I've set up auto-payment reminders, and I check my MEA account regularly to make sure everything's squared away.

Building from Bangkok is a constant learning experience. Not just in terms of code and business, but also in terms of navigating a completely different administrative system. Every mistake teaches you something. Every curveball makes you more resilient.

This is week six in Bangkok. The project is moving fast. The hacks are real. And the electricity is (hopefully) staying on from now on.

Working across time zones is harder than I thought. French bureaucracy is even worse from abroad. But Bangkok nightlife? That's the unexpected reward 😎

11pm meetings: the hidden cost of remote work

"Can we do a quick call at 6pm Paris time?"

Sure. That's midnight for me in Bangkok.

My French clients don't think about time zones. They schedule meetings at the end of their workday, which means late evenings for me. I've had project updates at 11pm, urgent bug reviews at midnight, "quick syncs" that start when I should be winding down.

The math is brutal: Paris is 6 hours behind Bangkok during winter. Their 5pm is my 11pm. Their 7pm is my 1am.

I tried pushing back. "Can we do mornings instead?" The response is: "We have back-to-back meetings in the morning."

So I adapt. I structure my days differently now. Deep work in the morning (8am-12pm), lighter tasks in the afternoon (shopping at IKEA, again), client availability in the evening. It works, but it's not ideal.

The ironic part? I moved to Bangkok for flexibility and freedom. Yet I'm still constrained by French business hours…

This is one of those things nobody mentions when they romanticize the "work from anywhere" lifestyle. Time zones matter. A lot.

But thankfully all of this is soon over. My contracts are coming to an end.

The French tax exit: incoming complexity

January 2026 is approaching fast. That's when I officially become a non-resident of France for tax purposes.

Sounds simple? It's not.

The French tax authorities are notoriously aggressive with expatriation cases. They'll scrutinize everything. Look for any reason to keep me classified as a French tax resident.

Why? Because losing a taxpayer means losing revenue. They don't make it easy.

I need to prove I've genuinely relocated. Cut all substantial ties with France. Demonstrate that my "center of economic interests" is now in Thailand. One mistake, one oversight, and they can challenge my non-resident status.

I'm not doing this alone. I've hired lawyers and accountants who specialize in expatriation. I cannot risk making an oversight or a mistake that would cost me a tax audit and thousands of Euros in a few months…

Here's what's coming in the next weeks:

• Eliminating my French address - already done, but need to maintain proof of no return (did you know that the French tax authorities can monitor your communications and find out which flights you've taken in the last 3 years? Scary...)
• Severing all family ties with France - easy, I'm divorced and I have no children
• Closing my SARL company - liquidation process, final tax declarations, administrative shutdown
• Disaffiliation from French social security - proving I don’t have health coverage in France anymore, by demonstrating that I no longer have any paid work in France
• Closing all French bank and savings accounts - transferring everything to international proving that I’m not counting on France to make money with my savings
• Canceling French insurance policies - complementary health insurance, home, liability, everything
• Filing French tax declaration as non-resident - specific forms, specific timing, specific documentation
• Proving Thai tax residency - visa documentation, condo lease, utility bills, affiliation with the Thai tax authorities

Each step has documentation requirements. Each document needs to be perfect. Each proof needs to be bulletproof.

The French administration will challenge this. I know they will. They are tracking everyone.

But that's the price of exit. Freedom isn't free. It's just expensive paperwork.

Bangkok nights: the unexpected upside 🍸

On Friday night, my Czech friend Adam took me a to really cool place: Black Cabin

Adam is a maker. He builds tools, ships products, trying to live the indie hacker life, like me. He already spent 4 months in Thailand in 2025 and he's considering moving to Thailand.

Black Cabin is a club in Thonglor. Live music venue with a twist: young Thai bands covering classic rock hits.

We walked in around 10pm. The place was packed. Dark lighting, intimate stage, bar along one wall. The vibe was electric.

A Thai band was playing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Then Oasis. Then U2. Not karaoke-style covers. Actual skilled musicians playing with passion and energy.

The crowd was mixed: locals, expats, couples, groups of friends. Everyone vibing to the music. No pretension. No VIP tables. No velvet ropes. Just people enjoying live rock music.

The atmosphere felt like a secret underground club from another era. Impossible to find in France anymore. Everything there is either sterile bars with background music or expensive clubs with €50 cocktails and strict dress codes.

Here? We stayed until 1am. Listened to two different bands.

Total cost for the entire night: 190 THB. That's €5. One beer.

In Paris, you pay €15 just to enter mediocre venues. Drinks are €20-25 minimum. The vibe is always either too pretentious or too tourist-focused. And don't expect rock live music, it doesn't exist anymore.

Bangkok has this effortless cool that European cities lost somewhere along the way.

Adam already knows a lot of amazing places to enjoy Bangkok's nightlife. "I’ll come back in February" he said. He’s convinced.

I get it. Once you experience this lifestyle, affordable, vibrant, no bullshit, it's hard to go back.

This is the reality of building from Bangkok. Time zone gymnastics. Tax bureaucracy nightmares. And surprisingly perfect nights that cost less than lunch. The complexity and the simplicity, all mixed together.

This week marked my transition from "getting operational" to "being operational". Client work, personal projects, and a weather shift that changes everything.

Client work: when AI gets too creative

I’m currently finishing a project involving an image search system for a French client. I write the specifications, a web agency develops the platform. The concept: type a complex text query like "Find me all photos of Jean Dujardin with George Clooney in tuxedos at their latest film premiere" and get exactly that from a massive database of celebrity photos.

The tech stack? OpenCLIP for visual embeddings, Amazon Rekognition for face detection, Elasticsearch for search. Sounds solid on paper.

Reality? AI models have opinions

The system works beautifully... until it doesn't. False positives everywhere 🤯 Ask for two specific celebrities together, get photos with one but not the other. Ask for "in tuxedos", get formal events that match visually but aren't the right context. The AI sees patterns humans don't, and misses patterns humans do…

The challenge isn't making it work, it's making it work accurately. There's a massive difference between "technically functional" and "actually useful for real users".

With the dev team we’re currently fine-tuning thresholds, adjusting similarity scores, and testing different combinations of face detection + visual similarity + text understanding. It's the unglamorous part of AI development that nobody talks about: endless iterations to get from 60% accuracy to 95%.

But that's the job. Client projects help me build my runway so I can eventually work on my own projects.

My secret SaaS: the plot thickens

I can't tell you what I'm building. Not yet 🤫

What I can tell you: it's an SEO tool. Python-based. Heavily AI-assisted development. I'm using Claude Opus 4.5 to write code, debug issues, and architect solutions faster than I ever could alone.

The project needs data. Lots of it. I'm spending most of my time figuring out how to collect, structure, and process information at scale.

The technical challenges are real, but that's exactly what makes it interesting. Every day brings new problems to solve, new edge cases to handle, new optimizations to implement.

Why the secrecy? Because ideas are worthless until execution. I've learned this the hard way with my previous startups. Talk less, ship more.

The beta version is taking shape. Slowly. Very slowly. But it's happening.

More details coming when I have something to show. For now, just know that I'm coding every day, learning constantly, and building something that I know others need 🤓

Bangkok winter: the game changer

Official start of "winter" in Thailand.

And it's glorious ☀️

Humidity dropped from 80% to 45% overnight. The air feels breathable again. Temperatures hit 18°C at night. Cold by Thai standards, perfect by mine!

Here's what changed practically:

Air conditioning usage dropped by 70%. I'm running it maybe 2 hours a day instead of 12. My electricity bill will thank me. Laundry actually dries now. In the rainy season, clothes would stay damp for days, developing that weird mildew smell. Now? Dry in 4 hours, fresh and clean.

Mornings and evenings are comfortable for walking. The oppressive heat that made every outdoor movement feel like swimming through hot soup? Gone. I can actually explore the neighborhood without melting 😂

The city feels more energetic. People are out. Rooftop bars are packed. Street food vendors stay open later.

The downside? Tourist season has officially started. Sukhumvit is noticeably more crowded. Popular restaurants need reservations. The BTS is packed during peak hours.

But honestly? I'll take the crowds if it means breathing comfortably and sleeping without AC blasting all night.

Bangkok in winter is what everyone talks about. Now I understand why!

One sad note though: my favorite British couple, Danielle and James, are currently in Japan. No more spontaneous beer meetups or restaurant recommendations for the next few months. I'm not crying, you're crying 😢

This is what building a SaaS business from Bangkok actually looks like. Client work that pays the bills. Personal projects that take forever. And weather that finally cooperates.

Day One: finding my base

The next morning at 10 AM, I'm already visiting my first condo.

My real estate agent picks me up and we spend the entire day visiting 6 different condos across the city. He drives me to each location and dedicates an hour at each property to check every detail: the unit itself, the facilities, the pool, the gym, the neighborhood vibe.

The agent is polite, responsive, and professional throughout the day. Communication flows smoothly, and when I have questions, I get clear answers. When I want to see something specific, we go see it.

Passport. Visa. Done.

Unlike Europe, there are no background checks, no guarantors, no insurance requirement before getting the keys. They just need to know who you are.

The Deal

I sign for a 40m² one-bedroom condo. €650/month. City center location, right near the Asoke neighborhood.

Here's what's included: marble bathroom 👀, fully equipped kitchen, air conditioning, furniture. The building has a pool, modern gyms, conference rooms, 24/7 reception, security, and professional gardeners maintaining the common areas.

The owner covers everything for utilities except water and electricity, which I pay directly to the state and condo management. No hidden charges, no surprise fees.

And the best part? I negotiated the price down by committing to a one-year lease. Totally normal here.

Day Two: getting operational

The juristic office: your building's command center

Every condo has a juristic office, which functions as your building's administrative hub. I register my fingerprint for lobby access (futuristic for Europe, standard here) and get my magnetic card for my unit. Everything is digital and tracked.

The juristic office handles mail receiving, water and electricity bill management, access card requests, and answers any questions about building rules.

It's efficient, organized, and it works.

One critical thing I learned fast: air conditioning destroys your electricity bill. Running AC full blast 24/7 can easily triple your monthly costs, from €20/month to €50 or even €70/month!

My solution? I use it primarily in "Dry" mode, which removes humidity without freezing the room. Comfortable enough, fraction of the cost.

IKEA: no culture shock required

Do they have IKEA in Thailand? Of course! 👉 Head to EmSphere.

For a European, it's exactly what you expect: same products, same Swedish names you can't pronounce, same meatballs at the cafeteria. Except the prices are about 30% lower than Europe!

You can get bedding, kitchen accessories, storage solutions, lamps, etc. Everything you need to turn an empty condo into a functional home.

One trip, done.

Food: from survival to strategy

7-Eleven is everywhere. Open 24/7. Great for emergencies and quick snacks. But living off convenience stores? Not really sustainable...

My friend Nico Jeannen showed me the real game: THE malls.

Central World, ICONSIAM, Siam Paragon, EmQuartier. These aren't just shopping centers. They're ecosystem hubs!

Every major mall has a food court with clean, air-conditioned spaces offering diverse options: Thai food, Japanese, Korean, Western. Prices range from budget to mid-range, and quality is consistent.

Then there's Tops and Gourmet Market, which are full supermarkets inside the malls where you'll find everything: fresh produce, meat, seafood, international products.

Want French cheese? They have it. French wine? Multiple shelves. Imported pasta? No problem!

You can live here without compromising on food quality or variety.

The ultimate hack: Pier 21

Inside Terminal 21 mall near Asoke BTS station, at the 5th floor, there is a food court called Pier 21.

Authentic Thai food starting at 30 THB per dish. That's less than €1!

Pad Thai, green curry, fried rice, noodle soups. Real Thai cooking, not tourist prices. The locals eat there. That tells you everything.

From landing with one suitcase to having a fully equipped home and a food strategy: 48 hours!

This is what relocating to Bangkok actually looks like. No Instagram filters. Just straightforward processes and surprisingly good value for money 😎

The fall

A few years ago, I was your typical ambitious French startup founder. I built two SaaS companies in the last 6 years, one in SEO, one in AI. Found partners, convinced VCs, raised €300k, hired a team, pitched to dozens of investors. Yep, I did all that.

On paper, everything looked solid: good products, perfect teams, clear market, working tech.

Except it didn't work. Both times.

Partner conflicts. Slow teams. Overpriced contractors. Not enough customers. Burn rate too high. Cash running out. Tense calls with investors. Then the verdict: liquidation…

I lost everything. The companies, the money, the confidence. And worst of all, my credibility as an entrepreneur.

The wake-up call

After months of going around in circles in my Alpine appartement, something clicked: I'd been playing the wrong game.

The VC-funded model wasn't for me. The pressure to grow at all costs, the burn rate forcing you to scale before you're profitable, the chaotic management of teams and contractors, the compromises on product vision... That wasn't ME.

Then I discovered the indie hacker movement: solo entrepreneurs building small, profitable, bootstrapped SaaS products without raising a dime. People like Pieter Levels, Marc Louvion, Tibo Louis-Lucas, Danny Postma, Tony Dinh, Jon Yongfook, Nico Jeannen and the creators on IndieHackers.

That's when I knew: this is what I want to do.

Why Bangkok?

Cost of living means I can survive 4 years on my savings while I build. It's a radical change, getting out of my European comfort zone. There's a thriving digital ecosystem of nomads, bootstrappers, and remote workers. And honestly? It's my first time in Asia. I know NOTHING. That's the point.

I'm giving myself 4 years. Four years to launch my SaaS projects, generate recurring revenue, and prove I can actually live off what I create online.

What you'll find here

This blog is my public diary. I'm documenting my SaaS projects (ideas, development, launches), my struggles as an expat in Bangkok, what I'm learning about indie hacking and bootstrapping, my mistakes (plenty of those), and my numbers: MRR, users, failures, all of it.

No bullshit. No success porn. Just the reality of a 44-year-old entrepreneur starting from scratch!