Top all-time · #8366
Max Rozen
Personal blog · maxrozen.com · on HN as rozenmdprogrammingstartups
Max Rozen's personal blog at maxrozen.com covers programming and startups. Since 2019, 9 different Hacker News readers have linked it 163 times, most often “Replacing My MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480 (2023)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-08-17, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Max Rozen's posts on bootstrapping solo software products, such as the onlineornot uptime checker, cloning existing apps, and a 2023 single-product focus.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Max Rozen's personal blog about React, frontend development, and bootstrapping SaaS products.
Most-linked posts?
- Replacing My MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480 (2023)2 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-02-21
- 2023: Focusing on a single product pays off2 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-12-27
- Four years of running a SaaS in a competitive market2 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-04-04
- Examples of large production-grade, open-source React apps2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-04-17
- OnlineOrNot Diaries 14: Building what people ask for2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-07-28
- /race-conditions-fetching-data-react-with-useeffect2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-03-23
What Hacker News says?
Can confirm writing about what you saw, how you responded, and giving advice to others works even in highly competitive fields. I write about React (same as thousands of other developers) at https://maxrozen.com , get 10k readers a month now I started an uptime monitoring service despite 200 others already existing ( https://OnlineOrNot.com ), getting around 75 users a month. Now about to do the same with feature fl…
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on “Do things, tell people (2012)”Submitted Four years of running a SaaS in a competitive market as a story · 269 points
HN discussionhttps://maxrozen.com/ I used to write weekly articles about React, now I work on my SaaS and write about it.
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on “Ask HN: Share your personal site”Submitted 2023: Focusing on a single product pays off as a story · 232 points
HN discussionOh I have so many that failed, but I don't think I'd be where I am today without them. - BillDivider: a SaaS to help housemates divide bills and other expenses It was my first side-project, I wrote it in Django with Bootstrap. It barely worked, and I gave up due to the cost of running it. - Jobs? Ok!: a job board This was probably the dumbest idea I had business-wise - I would scrape jobs from other sites, and ask p…
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on “Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?”Submitted Lessons from my third year running a SaaS as a story · 89 points
HN discussionIf you're interested in a survivorship bias-less(?) write up on trying to be like Pieter, I've been at this for years: - https://maxrozen.com/2018-review-starting-an-internet-busine... - https://maxrozen.com/2019-further-reflections-trying-to-star... - https://maxrozen.com/indiehacking-3-year-review
Comment linking /indiehacking-3-year-review
on “Remote OK Open Startup”Submitted A review of my third year building indie SaaS products as a story · 13 points
HN discussionIt's a managed uptime monitoring service (with support for basic HTTP checks, cron checks, and playwright-based browser checks running across AWS regions) that wires into highly available status pages. You might want to spend time figuring out how to keep your status page online when your hosting provider goes down, thankfully for the business, others don't. There may be many others like it, but this one is built di…
Comment linking /lessons-from-my-third-year-running-a-saas
on “Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)”Submitted Four years of running a SaaS in a competitive market as a story · 8 points
HN discussionI do a yearly post of my failures, this is the first year I had a success: - https://maxrozen.com/2018-review-starting-an-internet-busine... - https://maxrozen.com/2019-further-reflections-trying-to-star... - https://maxrozen.com/indiehacking-3-year-review - https://maxrozen.com/2021-strangers-paid-my-macbook
Comment linking /2021-strangers-paid-my-macbook
on “Ask HN: Show your failed projects and share a lesson you learned”Submitted Books every developer should read as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI forked the blog example in the Next.js repo (hosting is free on Cloudflare Pages, and Vercel) and just started regularly writing about React. I spend maybe a couple of hours on each article. I learned to be a better writer, and its helped me professionally. My favourite part is googling common problems I wrote about, and finding my own articles still there, like past me helping current me. Site is https://maxrozen…
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on “Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?”Submitted Four years of running a SaaS in a competitive market as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI think what most people miss in replies to your comment is "building trust at scale". Folks will launch courses that net $1m a year, sure. But what you miss is the years beforehand building goodwill with their community by helping out, writing articles, attending conferences and giving talks, etc. I do this myself with React at https://maxrozen.com , and most folks that end up buying my book found my site dozens of…
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on “Becoming a Full-Time Creator as a Software Engineer”Submitted Examples of large production-grade, open-source React apps as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI'm often told my React explainers at https://maxrozen.com/articles are very accessible (particularly for non native English speakers)
Comment linking /articles
on “Ask HN: Examples of good technical writing?”Submitted You can just build things as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI've noticed the effectiveness for bringing in customers taper-off over the years. I still build in public ( https://maxrozen.com/articles?q=diaries ), but spend more of my time on traditional marketing efforts instead.
Comment linking /articles?q=diaries
on “Does “building in public” work?”Submitted Four years of running a SaaS in a competitive market as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThanks (I'm in France, so it's 218 working days, 436 hours). On the education side, my first 3 years as a maker, I didn't grow beyond 1 paid user on any product I sold. I still learned with every failed launch, and every product I shut down. See "Year in review" at https://maxrozen.com/ The learning has been cumulative. I went from "Hey if I just copy Pieter Levels, I'll be rich immediately" to "If I build it, they…
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on “What I learned running a SaaS for a year”Submitted Starting a Cloudflare Worker from Scratch as a story · 4 points
HN discussionMy blogs. I mainly publish my 'permanent notes' from my collection of notes. - https://maxrozen.com - Covers mainly React/web dev topics - https://perfbeacon.com/blog/ - Covers web performance - https://onlineornot.com - Covers webmaster style topics for business owners
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on “Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?”Submitted Examples of large production-grade, open-source React apps as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI ran a newsletter for https://maxrozen.com in the lead up to releasing a book on React's useEffect hook, for about a year. It was no extra work, since I was writing articles anyway, so this gave me another channel to let folks know a new article was out. When I eventually released the book, email subscribers were 5x as likely to buy the book than people coming in via Google search. Effectively, it's about building…
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on “Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?”Submitted How to get started with side projects as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI keep a regular blog of what I learn as I build my lifestyle business, if you're interested: https://maxrozen.com/articles?q=diaries
Comment linking /articles?q=diaries
on “Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?”Submitted Lessons from four years of running a SaaS in a competitive market as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI would expect a bit more in-depth article from Martin Fowler website. The shown implementation is naive and prone to bugs, for example a race condition. If this id is rapidly changed (say from 1->2), and the first request arrives last, you think you are looking at user 2 but you've loaded data for user 1. const [user, setUser] = useState<User | undefined>(); useEffect(() => { const fetchUser = async () => { const r…
Comment linking /race-conditions-fetching-data-react-with-useeffect
on “Data Fetching for Single-Page Apps”Submitted OnlineOrNot Diaries 22 – on successfully leaving AWS Lambda as a story · 3 points
HN discussion