Denis Iurchak

I ve been building apps for 3 years little to no success. Recently, I launched my first successful startup Yadaphone. It lets people and teams make cheap international calls from the browser. In under 3 months, it reached 1500 users, 7 enterprise customers, and brought in $15,000 in revenue.

Before that, I thought I had a clear idea of how indie hacking works: you build something, launch it, get users, and continue doing the same stuff as at the start, but on a larger scale (and get $$$). That couldn t be further from the truth. Here are the top problems I wish someone had warned me about.

For the past 10 years, whenever I needed to call an international number, I used Skype. It had my back when I had to clear things up with the US university admissions from Austria, arrange a hotel pickup in Bali, or call my EU bank to see why my card was blocked while I was trekking through Argentina. I could call anywhere in the world for cents, and it was delightful.

In February 2025, Microsoft announced it was closing Skype down, and on May 5 it officially stopped operations. I was really sad when I heard the news with Skype, a huge chunk of my life disappeared. It felt the same way as if, one day, nobody would be playing on Call of Duty 2 servers anymore (that hasn t happened yet, right?).

Anyway, here I ve compiled a list of the top 6 alternatives to Skype for international calling. I used the following criteria to select them:

1. Effort results
I ve spent hours on posts that got 0 attention. I wrote my most viral post in 10 minutes while having morning coffee. You never know what will take off. Don't overthink it, just start writing and posting.
2. Don't be afraid to help competitors
Some people say building in public I only give my competitors an advantage. That's is partly true. At least 2 people reached out and said they built a similar product after my posts.
But first, this is great - the more the merrier, and the market is big enough for everybody.
Second, your real edge is not the tech you are using. It's the attention to the product you can generate. And social media is the only way to achieve it if you don't have millions for marketing.
3. Reddit hate is brutal
If your post has even a faint smell of promotion - people will hate you on Reddit. And when they do, they hate firecely. Expect a lot of angry DMs and downvotes.
4. Share your REAL struggles
The only way to avoid this and still get views, is being real. Share scary and cringy stuff. If you feel like you re gonna burn from shame after posting - it means you are posting the right thing.
5. Post on the right subs
Not all Reddit subs are equal. Most ban promotion posts. I always post on r/SideProject or r/SaaS. They are friendly to builders and your story will more likely resonate there.
6. Adjacent audiences rock
Some say builder subs are useless, because only your competitors hang out there. This is not true.
After my viral post on r/SaaS, I got a lot of leads for Yadaphone. Turned out many people on r/Saas and r/SideProject are freelancers, business owners and digital nomads. They all needed a cheap overseas call solution and I got a ton of new paying customers.
7. Not posting a link works
Avoid including a link to your product in Reddit posts. First, it s the quickest way to get banned for promotion. Second, if people like your product, they will google it, and it s a huge boost for SEO. Just share the name of the product in the post or wait until somebody asks for the link in the comments (somebody always does).
8. Non-native English is an advantage
This is a bonus for all non-native speakers out there. I used to push all my texts through ChatGPT to fix style and mistakes. And it only got me downvoted because people thought my texts were AI-generated.
Now I just write and post stuff as is. Making mistakes shows you are human, and Reddit values that over your perfect English
P.S. avoid the em dash at all costs, this is a clear sign you used AI (even if you didn t).
If your are curious about my viral post in r/SaaS, you can read it here. By the way, please upvote if you like it!
https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/co...