Ongoing — first results in 2–4 weeks

Part 4 — Get Paid

Convert your skills and portfolio into income.

Ongoing — first results in 2–4 weeks0/2 topics done0/9 tasks done

Topics

What to learn

Companies look for: LLM API integration, prompt engineering, full-stack skills, deployed projects
Your portfolio needs 2-3 live projects with descriptions of technical decisions made
GitHub repos with clean READMEs explaining the architecture
Personal site or LinkedIn that says 'AI Engineer' prominently
Where to look: LinkedIn, Wellfound, YC job board (workatastartup.com), Twitter/X
Cover letter: 'I build full-stack AI products with Next.js and Anthropic/OpenAI APIs. Here are the links.'

Free Resources

What to learn

The model: build small product, charge $9-$29/month, get 50-100 users ($5k-$30k/month ARR)
Finding ideas: Reddit communities, look for 'I wish there was a tool that...'
Validate before building: post 'Would you pay for X?' in the community first
Pricing: $19/month is the indie hacker sweet spot
Marketing: build in public on Twitter, find subreddit/Discord where users hang out, SEO articles, Product Hunt

Free Resources

0%0/9

Shipping without distributing is building in a vacuum. This assignment forces you to go from 'built' to 'used'.

Steps

Pick one product from Assignment 3 (or build a new small one)

Set up real Stripe payments — not test mode. Accept actual money.

Write a landing page: headline, problem statement, 3 features, pricing, FAQ

Post it in at least 2 communities where your target user lives

Send a cold DM to 10 ideal users asking for feedback (not selling)

Document what happened: signups, feedback received, what you'd change

Acceptance Criteria

Stripe is in live mode (or you have a concrete plan with reasoning why not yet)

At least 3 people outside your friends/family have actually used the product

You have a list of 5 things to improve based on real feedback

My Notes

Saved