Founder of @polar_sh - how modern software is monetized.
Stockholm
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- Following 1,818
- Followers 9,682
- Likes 6,820
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Thrilled to announce our $10M Seed led by @Accel today, with continued support from @AbstractVC & @MischiefVC, and incredible angels.
Join us and let's build the future of billing for developers to empower the next generation of software 🚀
Announcing our $10M Seed Round led by @Accel alongside incredible angels 💫
It's never been easier to build & ship software.
But it's also never been harder to monetize it.
We’re building the open-source monetization platform to empower future one-developer unicorns. How? 🧵
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Q: ”Why is does little Sweden have so many unicorn startups?”
I’m on a remote, isolated, Island right now.
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This open source repo cost $2m to build over the course of 3 years - enjoy.
github.com/polarsource/polar
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At a founders dinner this 22yo looked at me and started flexing about 996 and his entry salary.
I shared that when I was 22, I co-founded a startup, worked 20h/days and slept at the office for months with a $30K/year paycheck.
Respect thy elders
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I'm seriously considering moving to 🇺🇸
NYC? In a heartbeat, but not ideal for work.
SF? Great for work, but *feels* less great for family. Which areas would be?
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Polar has grown 18,000% in 10 months 🤯
Zero ad spend. Just word of mouth.
Time to look into rewarding our amazing community with some referral perks.
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Will be posting 20+ open roles at @polar_sh in the coming week.
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We're growing fast at @polar_sh.
Looking for a Staff Frontend Engineer to build the @shadcn for billing. Remote in Europe.
→ dub.sh/LGkykzl
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Next generation of software will be monetized using Polar.
Mark. My. Words.
huge milestone —
we've beta tested our new billing engine for a few weeks, and today we're switching it on for all new subscriptions.
all "old" active subscriptions will remain on our stripe infrastructure for some time.
also, subscription trials should be out any day
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With all due respect: Why do this?
Nobody is immune to CVEs.
Additionally, @cloudflare response to the CVE brought down our (@polar_sh) dashboard for 6h yesterday – including a lot of others' services. We were the first to report it and worked with your team to address it.
Sure, we got frustrated internally, but we showed nothing but respect, understanding and support in our interaction with your team throughout. Same in our public announcement to our community thereafter.
nitter.app/polar_sh/status/190359…
Because we know from experience that during serious incidents, it's always chaotic, stressful and somewhat panicked – mistakes are easily made in that environment. From technical, communications, support and throughout.
It's a shame you could not afford the same mentality here and worse – leverage it for marketing instead.
Just made me lose a lot of trust to be honest.
Before we move on: We want to be crystal clear that we don't want this thread to be read (or used) as blame toward anyone.
1) CVEs are unavoidable
2) Cloudfare wanted to help mitigate it quickly & over a weekend
It's in these moments we see the best in developers. Rushing to fix stuff. Even on weekends. We salute the efforts & intentions here from all parties involved 🫡
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I have this idea for @polar_sh that can either:
1) Bankrupt us
2) Change the game
I’ll bet on #2 🚀
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Super excited to unveil and open source Polar today (in private alpha)!
Polar gives open source maintainers a better and funded backlog based on what drives the most impact within their community.
polar.sh
Github ⭐ github.com/polarsource/polar
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My stepdad is 60 and still shipping 🤓 Just not on Twitter or social media.
Gray hair and comfortable writing x86 assembly, C all the way up to JS/React. Building low-level systems to modern web apps for clients all of sizes.
Nothing stops you from keeping at it and experience is experience and worth its weight in gold - being able to cut through all abstraction layers of programming vs. skilled in only one.
Do you and as long as it’s fun ☺️ Fortran developers are still around and likely not 20y old, but probably make 20x ☺️
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I'm so proud to announce Polar v1.0 today!
Live on Product Hunt:
dub.sh/polarhunt
Your support would mean the world ♥️
Dear builders,
Today, we're announcing Polar v1.0.
An open source alternative to Lemon Squeezy with 20%+ lower fees.
Designed for builders, indie hackers and open source maintainers.
You push the world forward. It's time you got paid coding on your passion.
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Merchant of Record for taxes is becoming table stake which is great for the industry.
At @polar_sh we’re going to take it to the next level in the coming year. We’re not stopping with taxes alone.
So much more abstraction needed to power one-developer unicorns.
Buckle up.
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Good bye San Francisco 👋🏼
Flying back home to Europe to quickly build out the next evolution of @polar_sh that we showed you. Startups with $200M+ in annual revenue can't be wrong.
Excited for the future and to be back soon 🫡
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With @polar_sh you get 1 reverse invoice for your payout which could represent 10,000 transactions on our end. Accountants love it.
Just sayin' 🙊
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Been loving diving into @EffectTS_ lately.
So much so we might move towards it at @polar_sh for our frontend.
PS. Looking for a frontend lead (Europe - Remote). Good timing to come in and influence things and how the future of software monetization should be built 🤓
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Always wanted to climb mountains as a kid, but turns out I'm afraid of heights.
So digital mountains it is.
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Stripe made payments easy via 7 LOCs for developers in 2010.
15y later: Modern billing, metered pricing, SaaS, common upsales, customer management and taxes. 7 has become 7000 LOCs.
At @polar_sh our vision is to condense it all down to <7 LOCs again & open source.
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GitHub now officially supports @polar_sh as a funding platform & it looks absolutely gorgeous 😍
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Not long ago, I had to pitch hard for people to even talk to me about joining Polar.
Now, I post a job opening and we get hundreds of applicants.
Humbling.
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It's truly crazy what we've achieved as a small team.
But our next chapter is 100x in scale. So only fair we increase the team at least 4x in the short-term.
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I've started a new company.
Mission: Expand the open source economy.
Open source developers are the original creators online. They build the lever of innovation.
Let's accelerate our velocity towards the future by improving tools + funding beyond sponsorship.
Time to build
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I started @polar_sh in January 2023 - 22 months ago - to get developers paid coding on their passions.
Feeling super optimistic for the future of builders & thrilled to see them getting paid.
Keep shipping.
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Honoured to be in TechCrunch today. Would not have been though without @emilwidlund & @fvoron who are absolutely world-class and ship like a team of 20. They're the real heroes – I'm the bobblehead.
After Shopify bought his last startup, Birk Jernström wants to help developers build one-person unicorns | TechCrunch techcrunch.com/2025/06/17/af…
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Startup with a lot of LLM usage & costs?
DM me. We’re cooking something to make your life easier and looking for design partners.
It’s pretty dope.
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Someone asked me: "Why is Polar remote vs. in-person?"
Because LLMs can't be applied to what is said in a room.
Yes, building team morale is harder short-term. But long-term, I'm bullish on forcing context to be stored in .md + .mp4 files.
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PSA: 11+ new openings at @polar_sh
Billing is crucial, but not enough to power the future one-developer unicorns and next-gen startups.
Join our talented and engineering-led team across Europe (and soon SF) to shape how future software businesses will be built.
👇🏼
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One of my proudest (and nowadays stupid) achievements is responding to almost all support questions to @polar_sh
Maintaining a ~12h median response time throughout.
My poor wife. I bring the computer everywhere. Kids sleeping? Pull over the car and crunch tickets.
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I've decided to personally pledge $30,000+ to open source developers via @polar_sh over the next 3 months.
It's a meaningful chunk of savings. But without OSS, I wouldn't have become a self-taught developer which I'm eternally grateful for. I want to give back ♥️
How & Why? 👇🏼
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Be like Pieter, come ship at @polar_sh
DM me if you're:
- Based in Europe
- Have 7y+ of experience
I'd love to share our big vision with you and why you should come help ship towards it.
as of this week i'm building product at @polar_sh
it's an ambitious project with an inspiring founder and clever team, and i'm eager to contribute to the mission of turning software into businesses, six lines of code, no admin overhead
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If you thought we moved fast before, hang tight.
This will enable us to ship at a whole different level 🏎️💨
big milestone ✨
this week, we're beta-testing our very own billing engine in the sandbox environment
it's the biggest refactor we've done since launching last september, which will greatly improve our ability to offer unique features in the billing space.
stripe will no longer be used for subscriptions, prorations, discounts, payment retries, etc — only for pure payments.
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Excited for this week and announcing Polar 1.0 on Thursday (Sep 5) on Product Hunt.
It will be the beginning of a new chapter that I’m very bullish and excited about. Time to stir things up.
Get notified: dub.sh/polarhunt
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For the past 14y, I've worked to help entrepreneurs launch & run their businesses.
- 2011-2018: Tictail (acq Shopify)
- 2018-2021: Shopify
- 2022-: @polar_sh
There is a bug in the v0.1 software of entrepreneurs that we have to patch: Focusing on costs vs. revenue on Day 1
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In 2024, @polar_sh has become an up-and-coming MoR for developers.
But in 2025-2026, we’ll build towards an entirely new standard of ease for monetization & billing. Can’t wait to ship towards it.
We’re only beginning.
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With @polar_sh we'll soon help answer:
- What are my margins? LTV? CAC Recoup time?
- What does feature X cost me to deliver? p50 to p99
- For this product funnel how do costs add up at each step?
Built-in and in real-time. It's usage based billing on steroids.
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Excited to share our goals for @polar_sh v1.0 and announce that we've raised a $1.8M pre-seed to help us fix open source funding!
It's time a platform emerged that empowers open source maintainers to become independent entrepreneurs at scale. Let's build
blog.polar.sh/polar-v1-0-let…
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Just watching a @theo video when all of a sudden...
Best part? We haven't even gotten to shipping the really cool shit yet. Stuff we're working on now is 🔥 and 2025 is going to be 🤘🏼
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Today, I should have been in Norway to celebrate my dad’s 70th birthday.
Unfortunately, he passed away from cancer last November.
He was the first to say “Do it” when I spoke of Polar. We learned he had cancer the same week we launched Polar. Despite that he only focused on our launch and checking in on me 💔 Finally, when I got his belongings after his passing his phone showed our latest blog post in the browser 🥹
Biggest supporter. Unmatched.
More importantly, an incredible human, friend and dad that I sorely miss everyday. Happy birthday dad ❤️
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I’ve been a founder in my 20s pre-kids and now in my 30s with kids. Kids are the best.
Time constraints are a feature and getting home after rough days and putting kids to bed is the best mental reset ever.
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Beyond excited to introduce the next chapter of @polar_sh on our mission to fix open source funding & enable independent open source entrepreneurship.
A creator platform for open source developers - built entirely open source.
polar.sh/polarsource/posts/p…
Highlights below 🧵
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Seeing a lot of @FastAPI in my feed. Want to see a production implementation of it?
Peek inside the hood of @polar_sh proudly built with FastAPI, @pydantic, @nextjs and friends.
github.com/polarsource/polar
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Building towards an open source registry of automated entitlements.
Inspired by nixpkgs & @shadcn
Soon ↓
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Met with 15+ founders over the past 3 days in SF to share the next evolution of @polar_sh
Startups from pre-launch to $100M+ ARR.
All of them loved it and now want to use Polar given where we're going.
Billing will not be the same in 2026.
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Back home, I get shit from my wife for how I dress (she works in fashion).
Now in SF people have said ”yo dude with the cool outfit”, ”you’re very fashionable” and even asked if I work in fashion.
As a Swede, I’m awkward in both situations.
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Let's talk Polar v2.0.
Billing is a critical part of your customer relationship, but only a part of it - it's the outcome vs. input.
Today, developers can build, ship & scale software with PaaS.
Polar is how they'll start, manage & grow their business.
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Polar is now on Hacker News front page re: GitHub now officially supporting @polar_sh as a funding platform 😍⬆️
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I love my job and team.
We met up in Paris for 36h this week to flush out some big efforts for the coming 3-4 months. It's going to be soooo good.
Fun times ahead.
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Introducing @polar_sh x @framer 🚀
Create and embed digital products and subscriptions in minutes directly within Framer.
Customers buy directly from your site.
Let us worry about delivering files, validating license keys and paying sales taxes.
Focus on your passion.
Big news!
Introducing the fastest & simplest way to integrate payments & digital products on your site.
Polar for @framer
⚡ Setup Digital Products & Subscriptions
📦 Sell access to Digital Downloads
🤌 Insert Buy-buttons on your Canvas
🛒 Embedded Checkouts
⛱️ No code needed
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I'm incredibly honoured to announce that @mitchellh has joined @polar_sh as an advisor!
From having built a passion project into a publicly traded company to now building Ghostty sustainably – soon to be open sourced.
I can't imagine a better advisor for our mission.
I've joined @polar_sh as an advisor! I think it benefits everyone for devs to have more options to get paid to work on their passions, to support upstreams, and for users to have more confidence/transparency in the software they're supporting/purchasing. mitchellh.com/writing/polar
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SaaS generation got lazy with high margins.
We can't accept ETL pipelines to reconcile revenue-, product- and LLM analytics.
By bringing it together, we can inform better pricing and build better billing paradigms for the future.
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Started Tictail at 22y.
Started Polar at 34y, wife & 2 kids.
It’s a different game 😅 It’s a Saturday, wife is out and a bug was reported. Just got both kids to nap and now deploying a fix 🤓
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Looking for a motion graphics artist to work with for a few weeks this summer. Who should I chat with?
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Transactions grew a lot in February at @polar_sh. I remember it was the first month I truly felt *wagmi*
Now, we do the same volume within 48h.
Next stop: 48m 🚀
PS. Looking for a Staff Infrastructure Engineer in Europe.
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She arrived on Friday 18th, 06.59 AM CEST 😍 She is absolutely amazing – gets it from her incredible mom.
I'll be afk a bit changing diapers on 2 kids simultaneously. Fortunately, I know vim bindings so I'm prepared.
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What an incredible first day in SF.
We’re building this new suite of features at Polar that I’m super bullish about, and the feedback today made me even more convinced.
I love my job & team.
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The team behind an app I used earlier in my career as a developer reached out to integrate @polar_sh
Wish I could travel back in time and tell 19 year old me.
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Oh, one more thing. We’re going remote & hiring great fullstack engineers within EU.
We’re going to fix open source funding and our tools to do so include @FastAPI @nextjs @pydantic @PostgreSQL & more. Polar is also open source.
Join us and build something epic. DMs open.
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Been recommended 3 times in 7 days to move to SF. Had it only been me, I’d be applying for a visa weeks ago. But 2 small kids changes the equation & costs significantly 🤔
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You can build in public without broadcasting every number or drooling over someone else’s MRR.
Stop tracking other people’s outcomes.
Start improving your inputs.
Ship. Innovate. Serve your customers.
Everything else is noise.
There's so many fake MRR screenshots on here, but you can't really prove it, except that generally it takes people years to even make a successful project and then many more years to build up substantial revenue
It took me years to get to $10K/mo revenue!
Seeing people join X, then post $50K-$100K MRR screenshots within weeks, then disappear a year later, obviously seems like a scheme to extract money from you
Which is when they post, reply "GAMEPLAN" so they can sell your their course
It's a racket and you shouldn't fall for it or believe it
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Wow 🤯
I'm humbled and grateful beyond words that we're getting so much love and support from the community for our @polar_sh v1.0 launch.
dub.sh/polarhunt
Anything can happen still - 20h left. Regardless of outcome, your support means the world and for more than 24h.
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Sell yours instead.
-> polar.sh
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We now support businesses @polar_sh
- Sync your GitHub team
- Set a monthly budget
- Set team member limits
Enable your engineers to easily fund open source efforts. Increase your own velocity & fund open source. Win-win.
Just set our own team allowance: $200/month/engineer
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Wow - @polar_sh is nominated for a Golden Kitty Award as Best Developer Tool 2024 😻
Would greatly appreciate an upvote.
producthunt.com/golden-kitty…
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Thrilled that @polar_sh is a Tailwind Partner and the platform powering their new Insiders program.
I originally started Polar with this exact use case in mind to help drive more capital to open source.
So it’s super special and wholesome working with Tailwind on this.
OSS 🚀
Finally launched a sponsorship program for Tailwind CSS, with a bunch of cool perks ✨
💬 Private Discord community to connect with the team
🤖 Cursor/Claude rules for generating better Tailwind output
🎨 Beautiful custom VS Code themes
🔍 Raycast extension with lots of little productivity features
📚 Early documentation for pre-release builds
🫣 Behind-the-scenes source code + Figma files for all the little demos we build for social media + YouTube
We're calling it Tailwind Insiders 🚀 Link is in the reply!
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Worst trait: Strong opinions about something without any experience in it. Shitpost those opinions against someone with experience for maximum douchebag effect.
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Dear Designers,
You're currently in the passenger seat. Megabytes of slop is being pumped out each millisecond.
This is your time to step into the driver seat. Experiment, iterate and share more on how to make AI produce beautiful outcomes.
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Three things:
1) Quantity of high quality and fast growing startups. Quality is amazing and arguably better, but quantity is much lower.
2) Less isolated. A culture of more isolated vs collaborative startups. We’re bad at integration overall.
3) Legal: Public records and subpar ESOP structure
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I'm beyond bullish on the future of @polar_sh
2028: Billion dollar valuation 🤓
First order of business? Fund @ladybirdbrowser
Because browsing & paying on the Internet should be powered by hot, innovative & open source software 🤓
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Started building the next chapter @polar_sh: Commercialization.
Our goal is an all-in-one funding & monetization platform for developers to get paid coding on their passions.
Supporting them and their upstreams from the first donation to IPO. No ceiling & free to cherry pick.
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If there is ever a movie about @polar_sh, today would probably be a scene.
Hit my head and started bleeding quite a lot. Went to the ER and got patched up (I’m ok). Had to wait for the doctor for ~2h. Spent the time doing support 🫡
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I applaud @browsercompany for having the courage to take bold leaps.
But they need to sunset Arc. For developers, the current situation is painful; getting bug reports that are Arc specific and 🤷♂️
You simply can’t build the new web while simultaneously burning developer trust.
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It's been amazing to follow how the @ladybirdbrowser & Serenity community have funded issues over the past 36h.
A contributor fixed one of them already and a reward is in process 😍
Community built. Community funded. Community rewarded 🚀
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Excited to now hire for the founding team!
Open source funding is broken. Resulting in a binary choice between Free vs. VC backed. We need to pave an organic path from long-tail to scale.
Let's build the platform to empower maintainers to become self-made entrepreneurs.
🧵
I've started a new company.
Mission: Expand the open source economy.
Open source developers are the original creators online. They build the lever of innovation.
Let's accelerate our velocity towards the future by improving tools + funding beyond sponsorship.
Time to build
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Ok, I'll take that action too @jornvandijk...
@Dulajweb sell those templates with @polar_sh and you'll get another 10% bonus – $2k 💸
We offer a Framer plugin to make it easy for you 😎
Allright I’ll bite…
@Dulajweb if you hit that $20k goal, @framer will add a 10% bonus — $2k 💸
Just share:
1️⃣ Weekly updates with #FramerChallenge
2️⃣ Wrap it up with a short video of your results
And obviously, make it look dope. Deal?
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Few weeks ago, I did a full body scan (MRI, blood, urin…). All good except 3x higher lipoprotein than normal. It’s the genetic risk of cardiovascular diseases.
So that’s it.
Going to become fitter than ever before 40. For my kids vs mirror this time.
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Which open source companies or projects has the best public roadmap/backlog? In terms of clarity, structure and community involvement.
Going to improve our public backlog/roadmap at @polar_sh & looking for inspiration.
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Stripe, Lemon Squeezy, Paddle, Gumroad or @polar_sh
I get baited daily to smear our competitors. I vow never to.
They’re all fantastic and we have different pros/cons and customer focuses. I think - together - we should grow the market vs fight over crumbs.
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For the #indiehackers out there.
Checkout git.new/polar
- Sell digital products & subscriptions
- VAT & Sales tax handled
- Official GitHub funding.yaml option
A monetization platform for your GitHub profile/organization.
Built 100% open source (Apache 2.0)
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