Top all-time · #2627
Cory Zue
Personal blog · coryzue.com/writing · on HN as czuestartupswriting
Cory Zue's personal blog at coryzue.com covers startups and writing. Since 2017, 28 different Hacker News readers have linked it 66 times, most often “Show HN: Four years of profitable side-projects”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-15, and you can follow it by feed.
Cory Zue is a software developer, aspiring entrepreneur, and occasional blogger. He's currently working at Dimagi and launching projects on the side. | Cory Zue
Most-linked posts?
- Show HN: Four years of profitable side-projects3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-03-24
- What to do when no one tells you what to do anymore3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-08-10
- Farewell, Building in Public3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-12-08
- A Five-Year Journey to Financial Freedom and Beyond3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-01-25
- Time Wealth: Why having more free time can be better than becoming rich3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-08-02
- Adding Bluesky-powered comments to any website in five minutes2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-11-25
- /2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-07-08
- Headspace Is Perishable2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-01-09
- /writing/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-08-25
- Rescuing the Art of Disagreement2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-04-29
What Hacker News says?
thanks for this! just expanded on a bit and published a write up here so it's easier to find in the future: https://www.coryzue.com/writing/cloudflare-dns/
Comment linking /writing/cloudflare-dns/
on “Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues”Submitted Using coding skills to make passive income as a story · 259 points
HN discussionCory Zue writes about similar topics, and I draw a lot of inspiration from him: https://www.coryzue.com/ Suket Karnawat also left Google to pursue a similar path, and he writes regular updates about his progress: https://suketk.com/
Comment linking /
on “My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder”Submitted How to Train an AI Image Model on Yourself as a story · 207 points
HN discussionThanks for reading! > Just starting to have income near the two year mark is what I assume would happen. Yeah, I'm encouraged by Cory Zue's progress. He's a couple years ahead of me, but I'm sort of matching up with his first few years of income: http://www.coryzue.com/writing/master-plan/#the-master-plan > Assuming you still need to make income at some point, how long would you go before you decided it was time to…
Comment linking /writing/master-plan/
on “My Second Year as a Solo Developer”Submitted Lessons from Running a Sale That Earned 3 Month's Profit in a Week as a story · 186 points
HN discussionHeh. Black Friday sale. https://www.coryzue.com/writing/nov-2021/
Comment linking /writing/nov-2021/
on “Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell”Submitted Show HN: Four years of profitable side-projects as a story · 145 points
HN discussionI have two! An app for making wedding place cards that does about $1000/mo https://www.placecard.me/ A boilerplate for making SaaS apps with Python/Django that does $5k/month (highly variable) https://www.saaspegasus.com/ I also have a third that does around $150/mo. It's an app that adds analytics to GroupMe which is a WhatsApp alternative. https://chatstats.co/ I keep complete revenue and effort data here if you'r…
Comment linking /open/
on “Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell”Submitted The Slow Death of Authenticity in an Attention Economy as a story · 41 points
HN discussionCongrats! I went full time on my own projects back in early 2018, and I only recently started making significant money from it. I like following along with indie developers. Do you blog anywhere or post about your progress? For reference, here are some indie developers whose regular progress updates I enjoy: * Cory Zue, creator of SaaS Pegasus and PlaceCardMe: https://www.coryzue.com/writing/ * Jen, creator of Lunch…
Comment linking /writing/
on “Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue”Submitted Coming Clean as a story · 37 points
HN discussionMy biggest inspiration is https://www.placecard.me/ by Cory Zue ( https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=czue ). He has been documenting the whole process very well both on Twitter ( https://twitter.com/czue/status/958993008543830017 ) and his blog ( http://www.coryzue.com/writing/ ).
Comment linking /writing/
on “Ask HN: What is an example of a super simple SaaS that is profitable?”Submitted Riding the Indie Business Rollercoaster My 2020 year in review as a story · 32 points
HN discussionAnother interesting bluesky integration as blog commenting system from some months ago https://www.coryzue.com/writing/bluesky-comments/
Comment linking /writing/bluesky-comments/
on “Building Bluesky comments for my blog”Submitted Adding Bluesky-powered comments to any website in five minutes as a story · 17 points
HN discussionThis is a fair general critique of a category of advice that I try hard not to fall into. It is true that I make a fair share of my income from a starter kit, but I tried quite hard to generalize my advice and only mentioned it in passing once or twice (and the only slide that really pushed it, I acknowledged it was a shameless plug). If you read my writing[1], it will be clear that I've been documenting my journey…
Comment linking /writing/dec-2024/
on “Using coding skills to make passive income”Submitted Headspace Is Perishable as a story · 11 points
HN discussionDo you have more evidence of this? I'm genuinely curious. I read the whole post, and perhaps I missed it but I didn't see a breakdown of his income streams. I say this because, at first blush, I was glad that a bunch of the products he listed that he built seemed generally like real products that I could imagine people finding useful. I say this because it feels like, in contrast, so often in these solopreneur posts…
Comment linking /open/
on “Using coding skills to make passive income”Submitted A Five-Year Journey to Financial Freedom and Beyond as a story · 9 points
HN discussionI just added an embedding option. It's not documented yet, but you can view the source of my own site to see how it works. In terms of styling, it currently only supports specifying the background color (color or hex code) via url param. https://www.coryzue.com/life/ This is the relevant source code. The only somewhat complicated bit is dynamically setting the height via messages: <section class="section"> <div clas…
Comment linking /life/
on “Show HN: I made a website where you can create your own "Life in Weeks" timeline”Submitted What to do when no one tells you what to do anymore as a story · 9 points
HN discussionI make about $800/month selling place card templates and formatting at https://www.placecard.me/ . I started the project last year and made $3 in my first six months. But have seen pretty decent slow and steady growth since then. I've written extensively about the process on my website ( http://www.coryzue.com/writing/ ) and on indie hackers in case interesting to anyone.
Comment linking /writing/
on “Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2018 – Show and tell”Submitted How to disable Cloudflare proxying when you can't access the dashboard as a story · 8 points
HN discussionAssuming you are a developer with no marketing experience - promote yourself/your project to the point that makes you uncomfortable. Most people will submit something to HN, it won't get traction, and then they give up thinking their project wasn't any good. Getting the word out is usually more important than how good your thing is when it comes to success - so don't underestimate the amount of investment you should…
Comment linking /writing/seo-for-developers/
on “Show HN: Four years of profitable side-projects”Submitted Time Wealth: Why having more free time can be better than becoming rich as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI run three "optionally" passive projects that have combined to about $26k so far in 2020 ("optionally" passive meaning I can put them on autopilot anytime, though continue to work on them to grow them). They are: 1. SaaS Pegasus: a SaaS boilerplate template for Django projects ( https://www.saaspegasus.com/ ) 2. Place Card Me, a printable place card maker for weddings nad other events ( https://www.placecard.me/ )…
Comment linking /open/
on “Ask HN: What is your passive income 2020?”Submitted Rescuing the Art of Disagreement as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI totally agree, and while we are not there yet, you see companies like baremetrics, ghost and nomadlist which started this movement. But if you take a closer look at smaller companies like placecard.me you will see more detailed blog posts covering their progress with almost complete view on how the founder develops his/her startup as well as metrics such as revenue and work hours (check https://www.coryzue.com/ope…
Comment linking /open/
on “Show HN: Open Startup List”Submitted What to do when no one tells you what to do anymore (2021) as a story · 5 points
HN discussion
