Marc Lou issues an apology for ShipFast
bugs
Marc Lou has apologized for the bugs with his popular boilerplate ShipFast, and in the process, explained why public bug reporting is problematic.
Two days after dealing with some of the most brutal drama ever to hit him on the X timeline, Marc Lou is back with an apology.
For those just catching up, Marc Lou is an indie hacker and founder of the wildly popular boilerplate ShipFast. Boilerplates like ShipFast speed up the process of building a startup by providing production-ready code out of the box. So, instead of having to code your own Stripe, database, or Google Auth, you can just use ShipFast and save hours or even days of time.
Earlier this week, the indie hacker Simon started publicly reporting bugs in ShipFast. Others then began to report their own bugs, and things quickly spiraled into a broader discussion on the merits of boilerplates themselves. Marc, understandably, was not happy about the whole situation.
But now that he’s had the benefit of time to think things over, he’s back with the aforementioned apology.
Marc begins the apology with an explanation for the poor security of his products. Basically, out of a desire to put food on the table, Marc has always prioritized shipping fast over security. This worked when he had almost no users, but now that he has thousands of paying customers, that method no longer flies. As he says, “Shipping fast does not mean shipping irresponsibly.”
So, he’s fixing the bugs the community reported and will spend the next few weeks testing all of his products.
He then explains why publicly reporting bugs is problematic. Although he is grateful for the bug reports and has unblocked everyone he blocked throughout the drama, the public bug reports have spread beyond the immediate indie hacker community.
The problem is that these people are, as he calls them, “sharks.” So, he’s now receiving lots of hacking attempts, people testing fake credit cards on his sites, and people who immediately issue chargebacks. It’s gotten so bad that he claims without his track record on Stripe, he would’ve been banned by now.
So, in the best interest of newer indie hackers without that same reputation, we should all refrain from public bug reports.
Reaction to the apology was largely positive, with Tibo calling it an awesome reaction, Damon Chen offering his full support, and Levels calling it an exceptional recovery:
However, not everybody was as forgiving:
While others just hope he does better going forward:
Overall, it looks like Marc’s apology was a good step, but his ultimate fate will be determined by how he handles security and bugs in the future.
Levels straight out blocked me on Twitter for the tiniest bit of feedback, so he's not my favourite authority on how to and how not to take feedback.
Same here. I just had a big impression of him, but he destroyed it. People won’t always be the way we think of them, right?
So, Marc promises to fix this but what about the thousands of people he’s already sold to? As I understand, it’s copy/paste boilerplate code and not a managed platform so they’re out of luck and stuck with glaring security holes or he’s going to offer them fixes too?
@marclou will a fix be deployed to existing customers?
In what sense? It's a repository. I think when publishing on top of any boilerplate code (even paid), you are at the end as author, in charge of making sure stuff is safe?
How is he going to provide those fixes he made to the old users?
Thanks for following up on this and there seems to be some kind of resolution. So if I read this right, Marc took responsibility after about a week?
Glad that he did this and I believe he will recover from this, despite the initial not-so-great reaction to the reports.
To me, this sounds quite nice. From my understanding, we're looking at an indie dev and not a large company. If you buy from a single person (or use a single maintainers open source project), you should be grateful to get to this reaction in such a time frame. I know a lot of people who would take a lot longer or wouldn't even bother about it. To be honest, I've seen a lot worse reactions by bigger corporations.
I haven't bought anything from this person, but if he grows from this, I'd take this as a good sign.
Exactly. "From my understanding, we're looking at an indie dev and not a large company. If you buy from a single person ..."
Marc should have given a free month extension
People only hate on him because they are jealous of his success
His success is motivational, but the way he handled people calling him out was objectively bad, bro. Stop trying to skirt that under the rug with the usual "they're just jealous" crud
He did it right. If he would wonder about all the security issues and bugs when he had 0 cusomers, he was never going to make it...
Marc's approach with ShipFast really resonates with me because I’ve dealt with similar challenges while working on StartupStarterKits(SSK). Juggling a full-time role as a lead engineer while building SaaS products on the side is no small feat—it’s a constant struggle to maintain quality and momentum. That’s why I’m committed to not rushing out features but instead focusing on getting things right from the beginning.
It’s refreshing to see Marc prioritize transparency and accountability. It takes courage to address issues publicly, but it builds trust in the long run. As a maker, I can relate to the balancing act between delivering fast and maintaining quality. Stories like Marc’s are a reminder of the importance of setting realistic expectations for ourselves and our products.
AI type beat
After facing intense backlash on social media, Marc Lou has returned with a public apology regarding the bugs and issues users experienced with ShipFast. He addressed the complaints and frustrations voiced by users, acknowledging the unexpected errors that disrupted their experience. Marc assured users that his team is actively working on fixes and improvements, emphasizing his commitment to restoring ShipFast’s reliability and meeting the community's high expectations. His apology aims to rebuild trust and ease the frustration that has recently dominated conversations around the app.
It is not advisable to share bugs publicly.
Thanks for covering this
Everyone seems so fast to judge. He is just one guy. Maybe he is running too many projects at once. But who can expect to afford a QA team for one product that is one time sell?
People have expectations that indiehackers are supposed to be like Google. Let's give grace period before getting all negative nancy is what I think.
Who and where is the QA team for ShipFast? How many in the group? What tests were run? Marc might have been shipping just a "jump start" to help other devs get started.
A nice read, I respect Marc contribution and really glad he owned up to this.
I'm proud of Marc for this video! Not easy to do when you're feeling attacked and tons of internet strangers want to see you squirm.
People are divided. But both camps respect the fact that he showed up. This was a good read though, balancing the positivity with the "i'm still not happy" sentiments online.