How a Solo Dev Hit 10K MRR With a Product That Sells Only on GitHub

In this episode of The Indie Hacker Podcast, Lucas and Luna dive into the story of Sarah Chen, a solo developer who built a developer tool called LintHub — a GitHub Action that automates code review rules — and grew it to over $10,000 MRR without spending a dime on marketing. They break down how she leveraged GitHub's own marketplace, open-source contributor goodwill, and a clever 'freemium for repos under 10 contributors' model to acquire users organically. No ads, no social media, no blog posts — just pure developer word-of-mouth on pull requests and issue threads. Lucas walks through the specific numbers: 1,200 paid teams after 18 months, a 4 percent free-to-paid conversion rate, and a churn rate under 3 percent because users are locked in via CI pipeline dependencies. Luna challenges whether the GitHub-only approach scales beyond developer tools, and they debate the 'build in public on the platform you sell on' strategy. A masterclass in distribution through infrastructure. #IndieHacker #SoloDeveloper #SaaS #GitHub #DeveloperTools #10KMRR #LintHub #SarahChen #Bootstrapping #DistributionStrategy #GitHubMarketplace #Freemium #CICD #PullRequest #OpenSource #Technology #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo