Indie Maker W32 | A Talk, Reply to Everything, and Rereading Small Giants

Today is day 228 of my one-person company. This Indie Maker column is where I record my own growth and how the business is going. I hope you find something useful in it.

This week:

1. I gave a talk, and it landed
2. Marketing: redundancy instead of filtering
3. Rereading Small Giants
4. Zheng Qinwen's comeback at the US Open
5. ColorWander: this week's theme color was coffee brown
6. Did I run? Easy runs

The first week of a month is never my best state. I did last month's business and marketing review, handled a pile of miscellaneous work, and the week was gone.

A talk that landed

Thursday I gave a talk at a large company and got a lot of kind feedback. Thinking about it afterwards, the part I did best was holding practice and theory in the same room.

I walked through the full loop of the past year — one person plus agents, from research and product design through engineering, marketing, and the business dashboard. Preparing it, I also sat the talk next to practices from frontier labs like Anthropic and OpenAI, and marked where my own loop still has room.

It doubled as a review of myself. I'll try to publish the parts that can be shared as a post. And if your organization would like me to give the talk, you're welcome to get in touch.

Marketing: redundancy instead of filtering

Early this week I reviewed August's marketing work and distilled a scoring rule for which posts to reply to — relevance, quality of the original poster, quality of existing replies — a 1–10 "should I reply" index.

The rule ran for one day and I successfully missed a viral thread. I saw the post, handed it to the AI, it said skip, I trusted it — and the thread blew up, replies did well too. I slapped my thigh and changed the policy: reply to everything worth a shot.

If something is cheap to do, hard to attribute, and huge when it hits, use redundancy. Don't filter it.

Rereading Small Giants

I started rereading Small Giants (the Chinese edition is titled 小而美：持续盈利的经营法则). I'd heard of it early in my career and read a bit. Coming back to it now feels completely different. Years ago I landed on "small and beautiful." Now I land on "operating principles for staying profitable." That might count as growth.

Places that now resonate — the same pages I bounced off years ago and quit. Whether a book fits this version of you is a strange, real thing.

A few examples.

One principle I use now: before I formally start a product, I try a WeChat Moment or a video, recruit a small community of people who care, and run the idea as a community rather than as a product. If I can keep that community going, I probably have the stamina to build the product. If I can't even keep the community, I probably can't ship the product either. Then I hit this line and felt seen:

Like me, what they care about first is connecting with each other — having the space, time, and freedom to explore what they love, and eventually turning that love into a life's work in a way that means something.

And on building in public:

When I got to "work in public, teach everything you know, create every day," I thought: that's exactly what I'm doing.

Still reading. When I finish I might write a proper reading note.

Witnessing a miracle: Zheng Qinwen at the US Open

Early Sunday morning I watched Zheng Qinwen vs. Madison Keys in the US Open women's third round. First set 1–6, a wipeout. Second set she took the tiebreak. Deciding set 0–5, Keys held match point, I thought this was going to be a bagel. Instead I watched the first comeback in the Open Era of women's Grand Slam singles from 0–5 in a deciding set to 7–5 — she saved the match point, won seven games in a row, and went through.

That's sport: you don't know until it's over. And for the player, staying on the next point, one point at a time, is maybe how miracles get made. In the interview afterwards Zheng said that at 0–5 she was thinking she had to take at least one game — getting bagelled would be too embarrassing. (Not the exact words. That's the gist. I didn't go look up the quote.)

ColorWander: this week's theme color was coffee brown

I noticed by accident that the theme colors pulled from the photos I snapped this week were all coffee brown.

A new café

Monday afternoon I worked with a friend at il gatto, in the embassy area. The space is bright; I like the glass skylight. I took the photo below. The tables aren't great for laptops (too small), but they're good for talking.

Light on the water

Tuesday evening after dinner I passed Beixiaohe and caught the sunset sitting on the river. Beautiful.

Grid on Sunday

September at Grid Coffee is Yunnan season. I like the sleeves and the bags.

Did I run? Easy runs

Still four runs this week, mostly easy.

That's the week.