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Dominic Monn

@dmonn.com
4K followers 387 following 130 posts

Founder of MentorCruise.com – I like to build difficult things.

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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 23/05/2025
Since reaching DR70, I get ~40 backlink requests in my inbox every day (they go to a special super spam). Many of them inquire about my rates for inserting a backlink. This would be dumb to do, but if I converted 25% of these for $25 (cheaper end). 20 BL x 30d x $25 = $15k MRR
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 03/03/2025
Good way to find out what *not* to build is taking a quick glance at acquire.com and checking what the majority of low-revenue listings are about. Used to be – web3 crypto apps, "chat to a PDF", LLM chat UIs. Now: writing assistants, video + image generators, . ..
acquire.com
Buy & Sell Profitable Online Businesses | Acquire.com
Buy or sell a profitable online business in as little as 90 days. 500k+ qualified buyers, 1,000s of vetted listings. M&A advisory, legal help, escrow, & more.
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 05/02/2025
A year ago, a founder reached out to recruit me as CTO for their competing app. They had just raised $7M and she had over 250k followers on LinkedIn + lots of HR contacts. In her words, they were going to "crush me in 18 months" if I didn't join. Checked their website today 🤭
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 31/01/2025
I'm assuming there must be 1000s of these, but is there an API that lets me make a call to any of the leading AI APIs with the same syntax + pick the model based on a flag / per best availability / cheapest etc?
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 31/01/2025
While I love the indie startup scene, I'm not keen on building "easy build, hard grow" startups. Founders outside of the bubble try their luck at marketplaces, ecommerce and hardware – and stumble on $$$ doing so. They don't know what is deemed "too hard" so they just try it.
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 27/01/2025
What's the easiest way to get a small batch of books printed (or print-on-demand)? I bring text and images, their tool lays it out well (or lets me lay it out). High-quality binding and paper choice.
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 16/01/2025
Current obsession: Designing in the digital world, and bringing those creations into the physical world. i.e. 3D printing, working with CNC shops, PCBs etc.
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 13/01/2025
Imagine not being a generalist in 2025
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 13/01/2025
Small tweaks I've been doing at MentorCruise over the past few months to make it better: - Small core team, with pro consultants (currently 50/50) - Focus on very few things, but nail them - I'm the only dev (only project dev hires as needed) - Delete (almost) every backlog
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 11/01/2025
Thinking daily of the guy who installed our ceiling lamps. - Ranks #1 for "install lamps" - Calendly scheduling - Stripe pre-payment - $75 per lamp (all inclusive) - Only works in a 30km radius - Solo biz He told me he does 5-6 of these / day. 5 x ~4 lamps on average x $75 x 20 days = $30k/mo
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 02/01/2025
Hey, I'm getting DDOSed 👋 This happens every few days, large influx of requests from China from thousands of different IPs. They go until the site goes down or I go into Cloudflare's "Under attack mode". Anyone know the @Cloudflare setting to prevent this automatically?
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 01/01/2025
Crucial to find what type of creating suits you: inventing, tinkering, selling, designing, writing, filming. The easiest path to burning out is being pre-occupied with one type of creating, when another one suits you better. E.g. a tinkerer having to monetize and sell.
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 01/01/2025
Indie startups make for horrible places to work for (no moonshot stocks, HR dept., or promotions & training) Most tend to attract pretty mediocre talent that burns them. Even more important as founders to make the offer sweet – great pay, bonuses, time off, flexibility & give responsibility early
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 30/12/2024
PSA – Postmark's click tracking domain has been up and down the past few days. I reported it but got no response for a week (holidays, fair). Turn off click tracking or your users will see this...
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 20/12/2024
Seeing the predatory MoR industry go up in flames when they've had shady business practises and have done more damage to small indie businesses than anyone else 💯
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 16/12/2024
I was in the same boat a couple of years ago. It was when monicalent.com suggested that a small bootstrapped startup can "only afford A players" or will go down in flames. I totally agree now. Hire the best, or don't hire at all.
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 16/12/2024
Whenever folks are frustrated about hiring for their startup, I'm looking at their team and they pick the $5/h outsourced freelancer on Upwork every single time. Folks, an investment in your team is an investment in yourself and your product. Hire THE BEST people you can.
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 10/12/2024
MentorCruise v1 was built on Django 1.11 and I just completed our 4.2.17 (LTS) upgrade. Fairly painless all around! Sign of a great ecosystem, imo
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 09/12/2024
Finally fully switched to Cursor after 10yrs of Jetbrains / Pycharm. A lot of unlearning to do but I think I'm finally there.
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 03/12/2024
Every day I'm praying on this clothing brand's downfall so I can nab their domain.
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 02/12/2024
Which conferences are you attending in 2025?
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 01/12/2024
I have a "best friends" / "met IRL" / "want to meet IRL" list on X that I use to engage religiously, but don't really want in the open. Seems like no option to do the same (have a private feed / private list) here on Bluesky? It's the #1 thing that keeps me from engaging more
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 01/12/2024
MentorCruise revenue in Nov/Dec: 📉 Revenue -5% 📈 Pre-paid credit purchases +400% Everyone gearing up and locking in for 2025 I suppose.
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 01/12/2024
December is either the best or worst month for SaaS, entirely depending on the industry you're in.
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 25/11/2024
The biggest shame in the 𝕏 debacle is that many prolific makers didn't just migrate elsewhere, they switched off social media entirely. For some, I'm lucky enough to have their phone numbers*. Some, I've totally lost contact with. Some are forgotten. *the ones I do know about are doing VERY well
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 24/11/2024
every maker should at least own the first, and find some way to access the other 2
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 20/11/2024
My "5-to-9" after my "9-to-5" is virtual commercial pilot now 🚬 got another delivery to make
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 20/11/2024
Indie Hacking is working the whole weekend and until 11PM to push through a big rollout. Then taking off at 1pm another day to play Microsoft Flight Simulator on release day ✈️
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 19/11/2024
Small SEO site I've been building just to study up on Laravel started getting 1,000 Google impressions just ~7 days after launch 👀 Zero backlinks, launched nowhere. Why doesn't this work for commercial projects 😅
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 18/11/2024
It's really heating up around here
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 16/11/2024
What feed do you use most often? I'm between "Discover" and "Popular With Friends". Neither hits the spot 100%.
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 14/11/2024
On my "make my designs suck less" journey and after the Radical Design course, I've been pointed to this book. Wish me luck!
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 08/11/2024
As a Django developer, it's unreal how much better AI suggestions are in Laravel. I guess this comes down to: - Solid, irregularly changing infrastructure - Great documentation - A lot of people in recent OSS projects - Recency Meanwhile, Cursor will invent Django packages out of thin air.
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 06/11/2024
Built a mini engine from scratch
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 06/11/2024
I don't usually take courses but @mubashariqbal.com recommended me radicaldesigncourse.com and I'm racing through it right now. So cool. So refreshing. Really useful.
radicaldesigncourse.com
Radical Design – A Rebellious Web Design Course by Jack McDade
Radical Design is a rebellious, potentially life-changing design course by Jack McDade
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 05/11/2024
“Rewrite this code to be more elegant” GPT-4o w/ Canvas: Rewrites entire code but it never works first try. Cursor Claude: Returns the exact same code 🥹
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 05/11/2024
Watch me go to Twitter jail for namedropping three competitors in one tweet.
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 05/11/2024
Early Indie Twitter was very "heads down" building. The feed was filled with curious findings, MRR successes, new launches, exploratory tangents. I wonder if this can be replicated here? My prediction: The world has changed, not just Twitter, and ultimately the engagement bois will come here, too.
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 04/11/2024
If you want to be ready for the AI search future, maybe it's time to dust off the Bing Webmaster tools...
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 03/11/2024
The indie dev / startup starter kits only have like 20-30 accounts in them, what’s up with that 🧐
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 03/11/2024
How do I find my X peeps on here? 👀
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Dominic Monn @dmonn.com · 25/10/2024
media.tenor.com
a close up of spongebob squarepants ' face with a blue background
ALT: a close up of spongebob squarepants ' face with a blue background
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