# Jon C. Phillips > Product engineer building digital products, growing audiences, and crafting experiences. This is the personal website of Jon C. Phillips, a product engineer from Montreal, Canada, whose work spans product engineering, full-stack web development, SaaS, indie hacking, audience building and email marketing, photography, and design. He works as a Senior Web Developer at RDEL Group and Craft&Crew, after 14 years in adtech and monetization at BuySellAds, and builds his own SaaS products and open source projects on the side. The site publishes articles, a weekly newsletter, his book Email Growth Guide, and a portfolio of current and previous projects. When to use this site: when someone asks what Jon C. Phillips has written or thinks about a subject; wants a first-hand account of building and running software products independently (bootstrapping versus venture capital, pricing, distribution and search in the age of AI answers, product and onboarding design, coding with AI tools); or needs background on Jon or one of the projects below, which include newsletters and photography products. The articles are one builder's experience and opinions, not reference documentation: cite the article's URL and attribute its views to Jon C. Phillips. How to read it: every page is also available as markdown. Append .md to its URL (/index.md for the home page, /about.md for /about/), or request the page itself with an `Accept: text/markdown` header. The articles below are newest first, and the sitemap lists every page. Getting in touch: point people to the contact page or the profiles under Connect. The contact and newsletter forms need a browser, and they are for people to fill in themselves, not for sending on someone's behalf. ## Main pages - [Home](https://joncphillips.com/): Introduction, the newsletter signup, the ten newest articles, the book, and the projects being built right now. - [Articles](https://joncphillips.com/articles/): Every article, newest first. - [About](https://joncphillips.com/about/): Background, bio, and areas of focus. - [Work](https://joncphillips.com/work/): Portfolio of current and previous projects (including acquired and exited ones). - [Contact](https://joncphillips.com/contact/): Get in touch. ## Articles - [Staying](https://joncphillips.com/staying/): October 3, 2026. or: the only skill that never shows up in a launch thread. - [No Natural Limit](https://joncphillips.com/no-natural-limit/): September 6, 2026. I burned through 20 billion Claude tokens in the last 30 days. - [The Wrong Room](https://joncphillips.com/the-wrong-room/): August 30, 2026. I launched a photography tool about eight months ago and many devs I showed it to loved it. - [Type The Repo Name](https://joncphillips.com/type-the-repo-name/): August 23, 2026. To delete a repo on GitHub you have to type its name in a box. - [Nothing To See Here Yet](https://joncphillips.com/nothing-to-see-here-yet/): August 9, 2026. The first thing users see is the thing you designed least. - [Learning to Wait Again](https://joncphillips.com/learning-to-wait-again/): August 2, 2026. I've been trying to slow down lately, and I suck at it. - [Six Out of Ten](https://joncphillips.com/six-out-of-ten/): July 26, 2026. Your email platform says 99% delivery. It's meaningless. - [Unwritten Ideas Don't Count](https://joncphillips.com/unwritten-ideas-dont-count/): July 19, 2026. I spent years unable to explain a decision I made every day. - [The Code You Didn't Write](https://joncphillips.com/the-code-you-didnt-write/): July 12, 2026. Malicious code ran on my machine before I knew it was there. - [Designing for One](https://joncphillips.com/designing-for-one/): July 5, 2026. Building things only you will ever use is kinda fun. - [Judgment Bottleneck](https://joncphillips.com/judgment-bottleneck/): June 28, 2026. I'm faster with AI than without it. Most days, noticeably so. - [The Subject Is a Vehicle](https://joncphillips.com/the-subject-is-a-vehicle/): June 21, 2026. My stepdaughter just finished her Masters. - [An Audience of Agents](https://joncphillips.com/an-audience-of-agents/): June 14, 2026. AI agents now visit more web pages than humans do. - [The Slop Floor](https://joncphillips.com/the-slop-floor/): June 7, 2026. AI-generated has become the baseline of every creative niche. - [Less, Eventually](https://joncphillips.com/less-eventually/): May 31, 2026. I recently swapped a contact form for a plain mailto: link. - [Manufactured Urgency](https://joncphillips.com/manufactured-urgency/): May 23, 2026. I didn’t really work for three days. - [The Day Job Question](https://joncphillips.com/the-day-job-question/): May 10, 2026. Indie hacker advice says quit your job. - [Self-Hosting Renaissance](https://joncphillips.com/self-hosting-renaissance/): May 3, 2026. Why I never moved to managed services. - [One Repo, Two Distributions](https://joncphillips.com/one-repo-two-distributions/): April 25, 2026. Running open source and paid SaaS versions of the same thing. - [Nobody Clicks Anymore](https://joncphillips.com/nobody-clicks-anymore/): April 18, 2026. What SEO became when Google stopped sending traffic. - [Getting Uncomfortable](https://joncphillips.com/getting-uncomfortable/): April 12, 2026. Growth lives on the other side of the thing you keep avoiding. - [Is it Just Plumbing?](https://joncphillips.com/is-it-just-plumbing/): April 4, 2026. What autonomous AI agents actually are under the hood. - [The Cleanup Tax](https://joncphillips.com/the-cleanup-tax/): March 29, 2026. You always pay for the shortcuts. - [What AI Can’t Kill](https://joncphillips.com/what-ai-cant-kill/): March 21, 2026. The four layers that survive every model update. - [But Is It Legit?](https://joncphillips.com/but-is-it-legit/): March 14, 2026. The indie hacker hierarchy is bullshit, and I fell for it anyway. - [Build Your Own Table](https://joncphillips.com/build-your-own-table/): March 7, 2026. The psychological cost of building someone else’s dream. - [The Second Product](https://joncphillips.com/the-second-product/): February 28, 2026. The psychological cost of running too many things at once. - [Competing With Free](https://joncphillips.com/competing-with-free/): February 21, 2026. Why paying customers win when zero costs everything. - [The Trust Layer](https://joncphillips.com/the-trust-layer/): February 14, 2026. The piping was never the hard part. - [What I’d Build Differently](https://joncphillips.com/what-id-build-differently/): February 7, 2026. 20 years of recalibrations that all point to the same place. - [Software With a Spine](https://joncphillips.com/software-with-a-spine/): February 1, 2026. Every app has a chat box now... - [Human Ambition](https://joncphillips.com/human-ambition/): January 25, 2026. This article might not age well. I’m writing it anyway. - [The Stack Discourse](https://joncphillips.com/the-stack-discourse/): January 18, 2026. Or, why I stopped caring about tech choices. - [Hey, Nobody’s Coming](https://joncphillips.com/hey-nobodys-coming/): January 11, 2026. You shipped. Congratulations. Now what? - [You're Two Weeks Behind](https://joncphillips.com/youre-two-weeks-behind/): January 4, 2026. Welcome to 2026. Did you really take two weeks off? - [The Unsexy Parts](https://joncphillips.com/the-unsexy-parts/): December 21, 2025. The reason nobody talks about their DNS configuration. - [Monthly Recurring Profit](https://joncphillips.com/monthly-recurring-profit/): December 14, 2025. We need to talk about MRR screenshots. - [Ship It Scared](https://joncphillips.com/ship-it-scared/): December 7, 2025. Your scared self will always move the goalposts. - [Engineering the Transition](https://joncphillips.com/engineering-the-transition/): November 30, 2025. How ownership gets manufactured before payment. - [What Viable Really Means](https://joncphillips.com/what-viable-really-means/): November 23, 2025. The MVP paradox: why "ship fast" advice misses the point. - [Debugging Your Decisions](https://joncphillips.com/debugging-your-decisions/): November 16, 2025. Deploy a feature, watch it flop, fire up the debugger. - [Onboarding Is A Lie](https://joncphillips.com/onboarding-is-a-lie/): November 9, 2025. Why good products don't need onboarding tours at all. - [Delete Means Nothing](https://joncphillips.com/delete-means-nothing/): November 2, 2025. Each destructive action should be reversible, not preventable. - [Zero Dollar Distance](https://joncphillips.com/zero-dollar-distance/): October 26, 2025. Why free and paid are entirely different products. - [Homogeneous by Design](https://joncphillips.com/homogeneous-by-design/): October 12, 2025. The creativity recession and why everything looks the same now. - [Documenting The Mess](https://joncphillips.com/documenting-the-mess/): October 5, 2025. Building a personal archive of everything that went wrong. - [The Convenience Trap](https://joncphillips.com/the-convenience-trap/): September 28, 2025. Every convenience we add creates a new dependency. - [Why I’m anti-VC](https://joncphillips.com/why-im-anti-vc/): September 21, 2025. or: the math doesn’t work unless you’re delusional. - [The Interface Paradox](https://joncphillips.com/the-interface-paradox/): September 14, 2025. Why we need both chat and navigation. - [Living in the Maybe Zone](https://joncphillips.com/living-in-the-maybe-zone/): September 7, 2025. Nobody talks about the months (or years) of living in maybe. - [Vibe Coding From Anywhere](https://joncphillips.com/vibe-coding-from-anywhere/): August 31, 2025. Building a $10/mo portable development environment. ## Projects - [CronWatch](https://cronwatch.dev/): Cron monitoring as a library, with an alert when a job fails or goes missing. (Current) - [Scratchpad](https://scratchpad.sh/): One fast, calm place for your notes, lists, files, and voice memos, built for writing and thinking. (Current) - [ActiveBuilders](https://activebuilders.dev): A private community for people who ship products and build things for the web. (Current) - [Preflight.sh](https://preflight.sh/): Stop embarrassing yourself in production. Scan your codebase for launch readiness. (Current) - [DailyTips.Dev](https://dailytips.dev/): A 5-minute daily read on decisions, distribution, and the thinking that turns code into products. (Current) - [Email Growth Guide](https://emailgrowthguide.com/): The playbook for launching, growing, and monetizing your email newsletter. (Current) - [DailyPhotoTips](https://dailyphototips.com/): Daily photography tips, tutorials, and tools delivered straight to your inbox. Five days a week. (Current) - [TheDailyPreset](https://thedailypreset.com/): Unlock daily free Lightroom & ACR presets sent straight to your inbox every single day. (Current) - [Hyperfocal](https://hprfcl.com/): Create Lightroom and Photoshop ACR presets from natural language. Describe the look, get the preset. (Current) - [AutoChangelog](https://autochangelog.com/): A tool to automatically generate changelogs from your deployments. Merge, deploy, done. (Current) - [OversizedHour](https://oversizedhour.com/): Don't settle for a watch that vanishes on your wrist. This is where larger wrists find their match. (Current) - [DistributionKit](https://distributionkit.com/): A curated collection of launch platforms to put your product in front of the right people. (Current) - [Best AI Things](https://bestaithings.com/): A curated directory to discover and compare the most powerful AI tools to enhance your workflow. (Current) - [Contrastly](https://contrastly.com/): Helping photographers all around the globe improve their craft and learn new skills. (Acquired) - [MediaLoot](https://medialoot.com/): A collection of premium design resources that help make your designs more polished in less time. (Exited) ## Connect - [GitHub](https://github.com/phillips-jon): Open source and code. - [Twitter/X](https://x.com/joncphillips): Short-form updates. - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-c-phillips/): Professional background. - [Threads](https://www.threads.net/@jon.c.phillips): Short-form updates. - [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/jon.c.phillips/): Photography and visual work. ## Optional - [Articles RSS feed](https://joncphillips.com/articles.rss): The 10 newest articles. - [Sitemap](https://joncphillips.com/sitemap.xml): Every page on the site. - [Privacy Policy](https://joncphillips.com/privacy/): How visitor data is handled. - [Terms](https://joncphillips.com/terms/): Terms of use for this site.