The Flywheel Turns: What 4 Days of Open Beta Taught Me

Flywheel is spinning.

It’s been four days since Indie10k's open beta. At first, I assumed I’d just see my own test clicks. Instead, strangers started showing up. That small shift—seeing traffic from people I don’t know—felt big. Like the project is taking its first real breath.

I added a small feedback form in the corner. Only one submission so far, but it mattered. Enough to remind me this isn’t just theory anymore.

Then the reality checks came.

Issue 1: Login loop.

Users were stuck bouncing between dashboard and login. I never saw it because my account was whitelisted. Fix was simple: remove a leftover env var, redeploy. But it was a reminder—what’s invisible to me can be very real for others.

Issue 2: Duplicate projects.

Turns out rapid clicks could spawn multiple projects. Likely a race condition. I added a front-end loading guard and a backend check. Critical problem, solved in one line plus one guardrail.

Issue 3: Blank first screen.

Someone said: “I see nothing, I don’t know what to do.” That one hit differently. Not a bug—just missing guidance. So now I’m working on a proper first-time user flow.

It’s been a cycle of small highs and lows: relief when a fix works, frustration when I miss something obvious, encouragement when feedback comes in.

But that cycle—that feedback → fix → feedback loop—is exactly what I wanted to reach. The flywheel is moving for Indie10k, even if only a few clicks at a time.