Who is Marc Lou?
Indie hacker legend who's launched 12 SaaS products completely solo. Most famous for ShipFast, the Next.js boilerplate that's helped thousands of founders ship products faster. That one project alone has generated over $500K as of December 2024.
Marc builds entirely in public. Every launch, every revenue milestone, every failure gets tweeted to 100K+ followers on Twitter. The transparency is refreshing in a space where most founders only share wins and hide the projects that crash and burn.
Started coding around 2020 with basically zero prior experience. Taught himself web development through YouTube tutorials and building projects that failed spectacularly. The early launches made maybe $50 total. Took about 18 months before anything hit four figures monthly.
His workflow is stupidly fast. Idea on Monday, MVP launched by Friday. No project managers, no endless meetings, no design committees. Just Marc, his laptop, and whatever caffeine is nearby. That speed only works because the tech stack stays minimal on purpose.
Everything below is what Marc has shared publicly on Twitter and in interviews about his actual tools. Spoiler: it's way simpler than you'd expect from someone shipping this much.
How Cursor AI Changed Everything
Cursor AI became Marc's primary coding tool in mid-2024. Before that he used VS Code with GitHub Copilot. The switch doubled his shipping speed basically overnight according to tweets from August 2024.
The AI autocomplete is next-level. Cursor understands context across the entire codebase, not just the file you're editing. Ask it to build a payment flow and it generates components, API routes, database schemas, and webhook handlers that actually work together.
Marc estimates Cursor writes maybe 80 percent of the code for every new SaaS launch. He handles the product decisions, the AI handles the implementation. Features that used to take 3 days of Stack Overflow searching now ship in a few hours of prompting and reviewing generated code.
The learning curve was maybe 2 days. Cursor is basically VS Code with superpowers, so muscle memory transferred instantly. The hard part was trusting the AI enough to stop writing everything manually. Once that mental shift clicked, productivity went absolutely stupid.
In a November 2024 tweet thread, Marc said Cursor is the single tool that makes solo SaaS possible at his pace. Without it, he'd need to hire developers or ship way slower. The AI handles the grunt work while he focuses on product decisions and marketing.
Stripe for Everything Money
Stripe handles payments for all 12 SaaS products. Setup takes about 20 minutes per new launch. Create payment links, add webhooks, connect to the Next.js backend, done. The whole integration is basically copy-paste at this point.
Recurring subscriptions, one-time payments, usage-based billing. Stripe handles all of it without Marc touching anything. The webhooks notify his apps instantly when payments succeed or fail, so users get access immediately without manual intervention.
The dashboard is where he lives financially. Real-time revenue across every product. Which ones are growing, which ones are dying, which ones need attention. ShipFast's revenue graph is public on Twitter and it's just a steady climb since launch in early 2023.
Never had a payment dispute in 3 years of running indie products. Stripe's fraud detection catches sketchy transactions before they become problems. The few chargebacks that happened got resolved automatically through Stripe's system without Marc even noticing.
Tax compliance is handled through Stripe Tax. Automatically calculates sales tax and VAT based on customer location. Before Stripe Tax launched, Marc was manually tracking tax obligations across different countries and it was a nightmare. Now it's completely automated.
Why Only Two Tools?
Marc's philosophy is brutally simple: every tool you add creates overhead. More subscriptions to manage. More logins to remember. More time spent configuring integrations instead of shipping features customers actually want.
As a solo founder, you can't afford complexity. Big companies have teams to manage tool sprawl. When it's just you, every minute spent on productivity theater is a minute not building the product or talking to customers.
Obviously there are other tools in the background. Vercel for hosting, GitHub for version control, Twitter for marketing. But the core workflow, the stuff Marc touches daily, is really just Cursor for building and Stripe for monetizing.
In a podcast interview from October 2024, Marc said the best productivity hack is eliminating everything that doesn't directly move revenue forward. Project management tools? Skip it, keep tasks in your head. Analytics dashboards? Stripe shows what matters. Focus tracking apps? Just build stuff and ship it.
The minimalism is intentional. It's not about being a productivity influencer with the perfect stack. It's about removing every possible distraction between idea and launched product. Two tools. Maximum speed. That's the entire strategy.
Frequently Asked Questions About Marc Lou's Stack
What coding tools does Marc Lou use?
Cursor AI is his primary development environment. Switched from VS Code in mid-2024 and shipping speed doubled basically overnight. The AI writes about 80 percent of the code for every new SaaS launch. Features that used to take days of Stack Overflow searching now ship in hours. Without Cursor, solo development at his pace would be impossible.
How does Marc Lou handle payments for his SaaS products?
Stripe handles everything payment-related across all 12 products. Setup takes maybe 20 minutes per new launch. Recurring subscriptions, one-time payments, usage billing, all through Stripe. The webhooks integrate seamlessly with Next.js backends so users get instant access. Never had a serious payment dispute in 3 years thanks to Stripe's fraud detection.
What is Marc Lou's tech stack?
Core stack is stupidly minimal. Cursor AI for development, Stripe for payments. That's basically it for daily workflow. Obviously there's infrastructure stuff like Vercel for hosting and GitHub for version control, but the tools he actively uses every day are really just those two. Every extra tool is overhead a solo founder can't afford.
How does Marc Lou ship SaaS products so fast?
Minimal tech stack plus AI-assisted coding. Cursor AI generates 80 percent of the code so he's not writing everything manually. Stripe handles all payment complexity in 20 minutes of setup. No project management tools slowing things down. Just idea on Monday, MVP by Friday. The speed comes from eliminating everything that doesn't directly move revenue forward.
What productivity apps does Marc Lou recommend?
Honestly? He'd probably tell you to delete most productivity apps and just ship product instead. His workflow is intentionally tool-light. The best productivity hack is removing distractions, not adding apps to manage distractions. Twitter thread from November 2024 basically said most founders waste time optimizing their stack when they should be talking to customers.
Why does Marc Lou only use two tools?
Every tool creates overhead. More subscriptions, more integrations, more time configuring instead of building. Solo founders can't afford complexity. Big companies have teams for tool management. When it's just you, simplicity is survival. Two core tools keep the workflow fast and focused on what actually matters: building features and getting paid.