Indie App Recommendation Network

October 16, 2026

In partnership with

The only moat left is the love of the game.

Welcome back. In today’s edition:

An idea to help indie apps grow
Teachers, job seekers and home buyers have all had enough of AI
The most dangerous thing on the internet?
No first world problem is safe…

Let’s get into it.

💡 Indie App Recommendation Network

Friends with benefits

[Click to view the demo]

Source: Paul Hudson, creator of Hacking with Swift, launched Kickstart Exchange in August. It's a free ad swap for indie apps: every two adverts you show earn one for your own app. Over 300 developers had pre-registered by launch day. We loved it so much we had to put our own spin on it.

❌ Problem:

Launch week goes well. The founder's friends, family and a few strangers from Reddit download their app. The graph in App Store Connect looks promising for a few days. Then… it flatlines, because the only marketing strategy they actually had was the launch itself.
In Q1 of 2026, 235,800 new apps hit the App Store, up 84% on last year. That’s one every 33 seconds. Downloads haven’t kept pace, growing just 2% across the whole store in the first half of the year. Meanwhile, those same founders have new users walking through their onboarding daily, and that attention doesn’t earn them a penny. Here’s the idea.

✅ Solution:

A recommendation network for indie apps that pays founders for every user they send to another member's app.
Founders include a "you might also like" card at the end of onboarding and pick the categories they're happy to show. For example, a meditation app might suggest a sleep tracker, a budgeting app a meal planner, and so on. Payouts only count once the new user opens the app, so bots and accidental thumb taps earn nothing.
This is word of mouth with a payout. Newsletters have already proved the model: recommendation widgets earn writers an extra $2-3 for every new subscriber who joins their list, and the network keeps 20%. Let founders buy installs outright, or spend their earnings on their own campaigns, so the cash never leaves the network.

Paul's version has already proved the hardest part: founders will hand over screen space for nothing but reciprocity. But a swap has a ceiling, because you only earn exposure as fast as your own app gets traffic. The founder whose graph flatlined after launch week has nothing to trade. Cash fixes that, so we’d pitch this as the paid lane next to the free one, not a rival to it.

Full idea write up