Read Build Ship #1 - Starting at $0, 0 users, 27 followers. Here's the plan.

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Read Build Ship #1 - Starting at $0, 0 users, 27 followers. Here's the plan.<br>Plus: the fence I built so an AI agent never wipes a day of work again.

Jan Piotrzkowski<br>Jul 03, 2026

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Should take around ~6 min of ur time.

What’s inside:<br>→ Read: why soul is the one thing AI can’t mass-produce<br>→ Build: what starting from zero actually looks like ($0, 0 users, 27 followers)<br>→ Ship: how to stop an AI agent from deleting a day of your work

Hey, it’s Jan.<br>I’m writing this from zero. $0 in revenue, 0 users, 27 followers, one small game stuck in App Store review, and two landing pages I’m genuinely proud of. That’s the whole balance sheet, and I’m showing it to you on purpose. Most people wait until the numbers look good before they start talking. I’d rather you watch them climb from the bottom.<br>Here’s the deal. Every week I go learn and build in the indie world (solo founders, vibecoding, iOS, ASO, all of it), and I bring back two things: what’s actually worth your attention out there, and my own receipts from building the studio.<br>Read gives you knowledge. Build gives you experience. Ship is the one almost nobody finishes. That’s the one I’m going to do out loud, week after week, until the numbers move.<br>First, the thing I couldn’t stop chewing on this week.

❯ Read…

…what’s worth your attention this week.<br>AI can generate infinite content and infinite apps, but it can’t generate soul/taste. Whatever you call it, whatever you call it. And taste is the only thing that won’t get commoditized. This week I read about a machine that makes 550 videos a day with Claude, and another that pulled 10 million views posting AI World Cup clips. Both work. Both left me a little cold, and I caught myself not wanting to become either one.<br>When everyone can spin up 550 videos a day, the edge stops being volume and becomes taste. The machine floods the feed. A human still decides what’s worth making. So if your only goal is money, use the firehose. If you want to build something that lasts, put yourself in it. That’s the part nobody can copy (The timing is my bet, not a fact. The feeds will saturate. I could be early, or wrong about when).

What caught my eye:

1. How to become smarter while looking like a fool? by jack friks

My take: This is exactly what I’m doing. Starting at $0 and 0 users, in public, looking like a fool on purpose. That’s the whole bet. Read it if you’re just starting, or six months in with nothing to show yet read on X →

2 . How to reach 550 videos a day with Claude? by @maverickecom

My take: Impressive, but it lacks soul. The method can genuinely work for some people. If your only goal is money, go for it read on X →<br>3 . 32 Principles of a Viral Product by @marklou

My take: Best read I’ve had in months. No fluff, just the experience of a founder who shipped more than 30 projects. “One screen, one idea” is exactly what I was reaching for on my landing pages read on X →<br>4 . I built 10 apps in 10 months and make $800k a year by @ErnestoSOFTWARE

My take: Proof the app game is a volume and validation game, not a genius-idea game. Reassuring for someone shipping a test game like mine read on X →<br>5 . 10 million views a week with Claude during the World Cup by @eliana_jordan

My take: Clever hack, but the feeds are about to drown in this. The edge won’t last read on X →

App Store News:

1 . Apple now indexes the text in your screenshot captions as keyword metadata by @appfigures<br>Those caption keywords reinforce your core keywords instead of competing with your name, subtitle and keyword list, so caption placement and legibility now affect ranking.

My take: This changes how I’ll write my screenshots. I’m doing it after my current review clears, though. No way I’m restarting another five-day review.

Heads-up : my first app has been “Waiting for Review” for about six days now. My guess is it’s a first-app thing, but too early to tell read →

Coming UPP!!!

1. RevenueCat Shipaton 2026 ▶ SIGN UP - 27 DAYS TO GO ◀

Aug 1 to Sep 30. The build window where the apps have to publish. I’m using it as a forcing function: 2 to 4 polished apps aimed at winning a category.

Now going to the build part of the newsletter :D

❯ Build…

…inside the studio<br>This was a prep week, not a shipping week. Most of it went into the studio’s presentation layer: two landing pages, janpiotrzkowski.com and readbuildship.com, both built to a feel I actually like. I also submitted my first game, Sandpiper, a small cozy arcade thing named after a bird I watched on a beach in Costa Rica. It’s in App Store review as I write this.<br>Then the week turned. I run several iOS apps in one monorepo, with Claude agents working different apps at the same time. One of those agents ran a delete command and wiped an entire app another agent was building. No crash, no warning. One minute it was there, the next it was gone. A full day of...