On September 13, 2024, I got my last rejection email.
I had spent 6 months sending CVs to Amazon, Google and a thousand other companies. The feedback never changed: “Too senior. Too junior.”
I was tired. My savings were gone. I had put everything into a path that promised a lot and never delivered.
I had to take control of my future.
That was the best thing that could have happened to me.
In the 12 months after that email:
- AiSelfi made $48,209 in its first year
- I added 4 more apps to the portfolio
- I built an audience of 8k by sharing the process on LinkedIn
- I connected with incredible builders from all over the world
- I got my time with my family back — no boss, no schedule
This is my story.
10 years of mate
My story doesn't start with an app.
It starts with Un Mate, and with Poland.
I moved to Poland 16 years ago for love. No language. No contacts. No idea what I was going to do.
One day I found a Polish buyer of yerba mate. I had no product. I had no company. I knew nothing about mate. In fact, I didn't even drink it back then.
But someone was already buying. That was enough.
I put together the first export of accessories in a matter of days, learning along the way.
That first sale taught me something that took me years to put into words: selling what people already buy is much easier than convincing them of something new.
That's how Un Mate was born.
I ran it for more than a decade.
But the mate trend in Europe started to cool down.
The market shrank. And I got stuck with the worst of both worlds: more work, less income. Repetitive operations. Chaotic logistics. A business I started avoiding every morning.
I was tired. Bored. Stuck.
I didn't want to be an entrepreneur anymore.
I sold my stake. And I had no idea what came next.
The promise that never came
I decided the answer was to study.
I did a master's in data and AI in Spain. I put in all my savings — 2 years of runway between tuition and living costs.
The promise was clear: with the diploma, finding a well-paid job in tech would be easy. I'd earn the investment back in a few months.
It never came.
I started applying. Amazon. Google. Startups. Whatever I could find.
6 months of CVs. Always the same feedback.
Too senior because of my years as a founder. Too junior on the technical side. I didn't fit anywhere.
I started to feel like a failure. To doubt every decision I had made.
At 38, with 2 kids at home and my wife 6 months pregnant, with no income and no savings, I had to invent plan B.
Plan B
Around that time I discovered the indie hacker community.
Pieter Levels. Marc Lou. People building digital products on their own, from anywhere in the world, without asking anyone for permission.
That was the life I wanted.
I had no team. No investment. I couldn't code. But I had the drive, a laptop and access to ChatGPT. For the first time in years, that was enough.
And I had a problem of my own to solve.
I've never liked having my picture taken. Throughout my master's I used a cropped family photo for my presentations. As graduation got closer, I couldn't stop thinking about that pixelated photo up on a giant screen in front of an auditorium of a thousand people.
I tried to fix it with traditional tools. It didn't work.
After graduating I thought: I had a problem, I have AI, I have time. Let's go.
In October 2024 I launched AiSelfi.
An app for professional photos made with AI. Built by copying and pasting from ChatGPT.
Same instinct as with mate: the market already existed in English — the United States was validating it. I brought it to the Spanish-speaking market before others did.
My hunch was to build an already validated product around a personal problem.
I charged from day one. No free version. I wanted to know if people would really pay.
They paid.
From the first month, the income matched a good salary in Poland.
For the first time in years, I saw clearly that I could make a living from this.
What I hadn't done in 10 years
I announced the AiSelfi launch on LinkedIn the same day.
With the usual discomfort — that “who am I to talk about this?” anyone starting out knows.
I did it anyway.
Ten years with Un Mate without sharing anything. Ten years of lessons kept to myself.
This time I decided to show the process. Mistakes included.
And I kept building apps.
Qué IA Es, to have my own channel to distribute my apps.
Don Prompt and Lanza Tu App, with the resources I was using to build.
In one year I gained 5,604 followers by sharing everything.
People from all over Latin America started writing to me.
People with the same drive, the same fears, the same feeling that indie hacking was for others — for people who can code, for people in the United States.
I wasn't the only odd one wanting this from their corner of the world.
What I discovered along the way
Vibe coding didn't give me a tool.
It showed me that I like making things.
I'm not creative in the artistic sense. But I love seeing a problem, imagining a solution and making it real.
That's what I had lost in the last years of mate, when I wasn't creating anymore. Only managing.
Vibe coding puts that same tool in the hands of any non-technical person with an idea.
And it gave me back the desire to be an entrepreneur again — this time by my own rules.
Can you make a living from this? Yes.
Is it easy? No.
Is it possible? Absolutely.
If you're like me — not technical, curious about building, with the feeling that AI is an opportunity but not sure where to start — follow the process with me.
I'll keep building in public. Mistakes included.
If there's one thing I'd take from all this, it's this: the day I stopped looking for a job was the day I started building my own.
I'm rooting for you.
— Jon