Enjoying my new hobby in Japan. It’s my third time there, my favorite country in the world 😍

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....

The last time I sent a newsletter was in January 12th… 2025…

574 days ago

1 year, 6 months and 28 days

I announced that I needed time to lock in completely in my new project, and take a break from posting weekly issues in this channel.

Holy cow, such a long break, huh?

But damn, a lot of things changed since the last time — even Spain won a new World Cup lol 🏆⚽️

It’s quite difficult to summarize in a single issue all what happened in this time. I’d probably need to write a book one day about my indie journey.

So in here, I’ll update you briefly about my current status.

I want to get back bringing more articles here from time to time, but without a regular schedule this time.

Stress-free yolo mode.

So yeah, I ended up shipping that app

And you know that? I haven’t built any other project since then.

All my time is dedicated now 24/7 to Acorn TCG (also 99% of my revenue comes from it)

In 2025’s fall, I got addicted to Pokémon TCG Pocket (the mobile game) and started to get interested in collecting real Pokémon cards.

So I built Acorn, the app that I’d love to use as a collector.

The lock-in was so brutal. My ass got tattooed on my chair (literally)

But it paid off. This was the ONE project.

And one that I freaking love to build!

My Daruma got a new eye

If you are a bit of an OG here, you probably know that I love the Japanese culture.

So I got a Daruma doll, and painted one eye promising that I’d paint the other one when I reach 10k/mrr out of my apps.

I made a short video in Youtube about it here.

Acorn turned out to be my best bet so far.

I managed to scale it over $50k MRR.

More than 300k downloads.

23k+ ratings on the App Store with a 4.8 average

It just passed $500k in gross, revenue with a 2,6x ROAS in Ads

My goal now is to scale it to 6 monthly figures.

Still just me!

And yeah, it’s still only me with my laptop 👨🏻‍💻

I still want to be a solopreneur/indie_hacker/man_in_a_cave

I have no intention whatsoever of hiring people and becoming a team, and I won’t do it as much as I can.

Hiring people only brings more problems, and you end up being more of a manager than a creator.

It’s better to hire more AI agents.

Even though, I’m feeling the pressure of my endless-growing-backlog day by day.

Probably I’d scale faster by hiring, but I doubt that the net profit and the increase of bureaucracy pay off.

The only approach that I may consider is hiring or partnering with content creators.

I do all by myself so far, but I’d love to delegate completely that part, so I could focus all my time in building more features rapidly.

See you later alligator 🐊

*Lagos de Covadonga* is one of the most beautiful places in Spain

So for now, this is my farewell from Asturian mountains.

See you soon with more posts!

If you want me to write about certain topics, let me know it in the comments below 👇

Cheers!

Juanjo

PS: I got a new Daruma… 😏

Indie Piranha Life

Hey, it's me again!