# SoloMD

Zero marketing, zero code, 22,000 downloads in three months: a coding beginner's open-source journey

Three months ago I set myself a goal that sounded a little crazy: build the best free Markdown editor out there. The crazy part wasn't 'best.' It was 'free' — and more than that, it was the fact that I can't write code. Three months later, SoloMD has shipped 30 versions, been downloaded more than 22,000 times, and picked up over 400 GitHub stars — with almost no marketing on my end. This piece is about those three months: why I was determined to build free software that doesn't treat users as a revenue source, how someone who can't write a single line of code actually shipped it, the bet I made on day one (the people using software aren't only people anymore), and how I felt the day a stranger sent me ¥10.