A note from a solo indie developer who has 15+ apps, 60K+ downloads — and still gets tired.
There's a version of the indie developer story that gets told a lot.
The grind. The launch. The growth chart going up. The "I built this alone" badge worn like armor.
That's not what this is.
I see the path. I know the goal. I've been walking toward it since 2020 — building apps for Muslim daily life, one at a time, solo. Quran apps. Hadith apps. A VPN. A launcher. A vision of a parallel digital ecosystem built on Islamic principles, not Silicon Valley ones.
The destination is clear.
But between where I stand and where I'm going, there are stairs.
And some stairs — you just sit down on.
Not because you failed. Not because you lost users. Not because the product broke or the dream died.
Just because you're tired.
Tired of writing code in silence. Tired of making decisions that nobody else will ever know you made. Tired of being the designer, the developer, the tester, the support team, the marketer, the strategist — all before lunch.
I'm not asking for empathy. I'm not asking for help.
I'm just saying: this is also what it looks like.
In other fields, this feeling has names. The artist who disappears mid-project. The writer who can't open the doc. The founder who stares at the pitch deck and feels nothing.
We don't talk about it much in tech. Because we're supposed to ship. Because "build in public" means showing the wins, not the Wednesday afternoon when you just... couldn't.
But indie developers — whether you're making apps, games, tools, whatever — we live this.
You're not part of a team that carries you when you're slow. There's no standup where someone notices you've been quiet. There's no colleague who brings you coffee and asks if you're okay.
It's just you, the editor, and the silence.
And sometimes the silence gets heavy.
I've shipped 15+ apps. 60K+ downloads. 7.5K people using what I built. I'm incorporated now. I have a pitch deck. I have a roadmap.
And sometimes I still sit on a stair and just... breathe.
Not giving up. Not done. Not even sad, exactly.
Just tired in that specific way that only comes from carrying something alone for a long time.
If you're an indie dev reading this — app, game, plugin, whatever — maybe you know this stair.
Maybe you're sitting on it right now.
I'm not going to tell you to push through. I'm not going to tell you it gets easier or that the launch will fix it.
I'll just say: I see you. The stair is real. And you built real things to get here.
That counts.
Cahyanudien Aziz — building FlagoDNA, one stair at a time.
flagodna.com
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