# Derek Solis, Staff Engineer at Meridian Analytics (side hustle: indie hacker) — read of CandleKit, June 9 2026

> 11 years building fintech interfaces, currently in a "find the next side project" phase between failed attempts. Day job is 200-person B2B data company, nights I'm on Hacker News.

## How I got here

Someone in the Build in Public Discord posted a link with the caption "this site is doing something interesting with idea packaging." Not a recommendation, just a curiosity share. I had 20 minutes before my 4-year-old's bath time so I clicked. I was half-expecting a new npm library and half-expecting a landing page for a course. It's neither, which I didn't figure out for a solid 90 seconds.

## What I clicked first

"Get Started on npm" -- that button made me think there was a real installable package here. I've used Lightweight Charts before, it's solid, and the gap in drawing tools is a genuine pain. So I was genuinely interested for a moment. Then I kept reading and realized... this isn't the library. This is a page selling me the business plan to go build the library. That reorientation took longer than it should have.

## Where I paused

"financial upside: 1/10" -- they put this in the scoring right on the page. I stopped there for a full minute. That's either the most honest thing I've seen on a product page or the most effective reverse-psychology I've seen. Probably both. A studio telling me this idea scores 1 out of 10 on financial upside and then asking me to pay $99 to adopt it -- that's a weird pitch. But I didn't close the tab, which tells me something.

## What I distrusted

"View GitHub Repository" -- if I click that and there's nothing there, or it's a placeholder repo with two files, the whole framing collapses. The hero implies a real artifact exists. The body copy admits no customers exist. Those two things are doing a lot of work in opposite directions and the page doesn't resolve the tension cleanly.

Also: "1 in 4 meaningful-success odds (Fermi)" -- I respect the attempt at honesty, but a Fermi estimate on success probability is basically a made-up number with extra steps. What does "meaningful success" mean here? Ramen profitable? Acqui-hired? $5k MRR? The number exists but the definition doesn't, which makes it feel like rigor cosplay.

And the share button copy: "Help the right operator find this. We don't get inbound any other way." That line is so candid it almost loops back around to sounding like a tactic.

## What would convince me

If the $99 "working code starter" included a demo I could actually run -- not a screenshot, not a GIF -- an actual deployed preview of the starter at some subdomain, I'd be way more likely to pull the trigger. I want to see the code quality before I buy the code. For a charting library targeting developers, showing is everything.

Also: one concrete example of a person who adopted a different idea from this studio, what they built, and where it is now. Not a testimonial. A URL. Even if it's small.

## What I'd ask in an email reply

1. The hero says "Get Started on npm" -- is there actually a published package, or is that the product the buyer is expected to build and publish? The page doesn't resolve this clearly.
2. What's the delta between the $99 tier and a developer just doing this themselves? How much working code is "working code starter" -- a scaffold with routing, or something actually functional?
3. You scored distribution ease at 3/10. Who do you think the customer for this library actually is, and how do you expect them to find it once built?

## Verdict: on-the-fence

The honesty framing is doing real work here and I haven't seen a studio do it this way before. But the page conflates "real product exists" with "idea for a product you could build" in a way that burned trust in the first 90 seconds, and I'm not sure enough was earned back.

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*Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-06-09. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*