Know

How do I, as a Data Scientist, get familiar with the business knowledge and jargon I need to start my AI startup and sell my product?

Here’s my situation: I'm a Data Scientist working on an MVP, almost ready to launch, called Attendify. It simplifies the attendance process in schools—no more teachers calling out names and sending records to principals. Instead, teachers create an account, upload student images, and start a live camera feed, all through the app. The app detects students using deep learning, stores everything in a database, and automates the process. Plus, I plan to add features based on school needs and pitch it directly to them. Now, I’m looking to establish a proper AI startup with a website and digital presence, but I'm lacking in business knowledge, especially the lingo like "B2B" and other terms. My goal is to be a sole founder with an online workforce. Can anyone recommend a cost-effective course (maybe on Coursera) that covers the basics I need to know to effectively talk with clients and understand the business side of things? Attendify is just one of them, I might create more in the future so I'm going towards SaaS side I was thinking about Entrepreneurship Specialization by University of Pennsylvania on Coursera if anyone got any feedback on it

Feeling stuck—built a startup, got rejected from YC & IVI, met smarter people, and now I don’t know what to do. ( i will not promote ) I will not promote

I will not promote I don’t even know where to start, but I just feel completely stuck right now. I’m 20 years oldI don’t even know where to start, but I just feel completely stuck right now. I’m 20 years old, have been grinding non-stop for months, and it feels like I have nothing to show for it. I built an AI agent that automates workflows for businesses. I can build tech, but I can’t sell. That’s been my biggest realization recently—I thought building would be enough, but it’s not. I need customers, I need a co-founder, I need to figure out the business side… and I have no idea how. I applied to YC, IVI at ISB, and EF, met a lot of insanely smart people—some were impressed with me and my work, but they were wiser, more experienced, and honestly, just better at all of this than I am. It made me realize how much I don’t know. I got rejected from YC & IVI. 💔 YC didn’t even give much feedback—just a standard rejection. 💔 IVI told me: “You're too young, you need more experience, and you should work with a team before trying to start something.” That hit me hard. I had already been struggling to find a co-founder, and this just made me wonder if I even belong in this space yet. The Frustrating Part? I KNOW my tool Has a Unique Edge. I’m not just another AI automation tool—I know my tool has a strong USP that competitors lack. It has the potential to be an AI employee for businesses, not just another workflow tool. But I still haven’t built the “perfect product” I originally envisioned. And that’s what’s eating at me. I see what it COULD be, but I haven’t made it happen yet. At the same time, the competition in the AI agent space is exploding. YC-backed companies are working on AI agent startups. OpenAI is making huge progress with Operator. Competitors are moving fast, while I feel stuck. I’ve delayed development because I’m unsure whether to double down, pivot, or just move on entirely. Where I’m Stuck Right Now 🔹 Do I keep pushing and try to crack sales somehow? 🔹 Do I join a startup as a founding engineer to get experience, make connections, and learn sales before trying again? 🔹 Do I move to Bangalore, meet founders, and figure out what’s next? 🔹 Do I pivot to something nicher instead of competing in the AI agent race? If so, how do I even find a niche worth pursuing? 🔹 Do I even belong in startups? Or am I just forcing something that’s not working? I feel stuck in a weird middle zone where I’m not a beginner, but I’m also not successful. I’ve done enough to see what’s possible, but not enough to make it real. Every rejection makes me question if I’m even on the right path. I don’t know if I’m posting this for advice or just to get it out of my system. Maybe both. Has anyone else felt like this before? If you’ve been in this situation—how did you figure out whether to keep going or move on? TL;DR: I’m 20, built an AI agent for automating workflows, got rejected from YC & IVI, met insanely smart and experienced people, realized I can build tech but can’t sell, struggling to find a co-founder, AI agent competition is growing, delaying development, confused about the future—don’t know whether to double down, pivot, or move on. The frustrating part? I\ know I have a unique edge that others lack, but I still haven’t built the perfect product I originally envisioned.* edit: removed the tool's name

Looking for business partner with technical AI knowledge

Hi all, Posted on here a few times now about my idea (you can read this on my profile). After planning out the details of the process, I can see that it may just be best for me to seek a business partner with has existing AI knowledge. I’m looking for a more technical person who can provide recommendations on AI tools for businesses based on the current processes in order to be more efficient and productive. This is a chance for you to work for yourself and get the money you deserve for your work. No interaction with the client needed and I will do all the sales aspects. Looking for someone UK-based and I am 23 for reference with a consulting and BA background. Please reach out if this interests you :)

Feeling stuck—built a startup, got rejected from YC & IVI, met smarter people, and now I don’t know what to do. ( i will not promote ) I will not promote

I will not promote I don’t even know where to start, but I just feel completely stuck right now. I’m 20 years oldI don’t even know where to start, but I just feel completely stuck right now. I’m 20 years old, have been grinding non-stop for months, and it feels like I have nothing to show for it. I built an AI agent that automates workflows for businesses. I can build tech, but I can’t sell. That’s been my biggest realization recently—I thought building would be enough, but it’s not. I need customers, I need a co-founder, I need to figure out the business side… and I have no idea how. I applied to YC, IVI at ISB, and EF, met a lot of insanely smart people—some were impressed with me and my work, but they were wiser, more experienced, and honestly, just better at all of this than I am. It made me realize how much I don’t know. I got rejected from YC & IVI. 💔 YC didn’t even give much feedback—just a standard rejection. 💔 IVI told me: “You're too young, you need more experience, and you should work with a team before trying to start something.” That hit me hard. I had already been struggling to find a co-founder, and this just made me wonder if I even belong in this space yet. The Frustrating Part? I KNOW my tool Has a Unique Edge. I’m not just another AI automation tool—I know my tool has a strong USP that competitors lack. It has the potential to be an AI employee for businesses, not just another workflow tool. But I still haven’t built the “perfect product” I originally envisioned. And that’s what’s eating at me. I see what it COULD be, but I haven’t made it happen yet. At the same time, the competition in the AI agent space is exploding. YC-backed companies are working on AI agent startups. OpenAI is making huge progress with Operator. Competitors are moving fast, while I feel stuck. I’ve delayed development because I’m unsure whether to double down, pivot, or just move on entirely. Where I’m Stuck Right Now 🔹 Do I keep pushing and try to crack sales somehow? 🔹 Do I join a startup as a founding engineer to get experience, make connections, and learn sales before trying again? 🔹 Do I move to Bangalore, meet founders, and figure out what’s next? 🔹 Do I pivot to something nicher instead of competing in the AI agent race? If so, how do I even find a niche worth pursuing? 🔹 Do I even belong in startups? Or am I just forcing something that’s not working? I feel stuck in a weird middle zone where I’m not a beginner, but I’m also not successful. I’ve done enough to see what’s possible, but not enough to make it real. Every rejection makes me question if I’m even on the right path. I don’t know if I’m posting this for advice or just to get it out of my system. Maybe both. Has anyone else felt like this before? If you’ve been in this situation—how did you figure out whether to keep going or move on? TL;DR: I’m 20, built an AI agent for automating workflows, got rejected from YC & IVI, met insanely smart and experienced people, realized I can build tech but can’t sell, struggling to find a co-founder, AI agent competition is growing, delaying development, confused about the future—don’t know whether to double down, pivot, or move on. The frustrating part? I\ know I have a unique edge that others lack, but I still haven’t built the perfect product I originally envisioned.* edit: removed the tool's name

Drop me your business automation prob, and I will try and answer if technology can someway solve it for you for free.(I do this for a living, mainly automating small business systems. it actually sometimes does not need any tech skills(Hidden secrets most agencies know about)), No strings attached.

I help small to medium businesses solve complicated sometimes boring parts of their businesses using AI/Data and technology. Why am I doing this: Love what I do(that is helping my clients), so Just looking to widen my knowledge of problem space.

Do you know of any AI tools for digital marketing and SEO that would work well for a small, new holistic therapy business? I’m looking for affordable options since I haven’t made a profit yet and can’t afford paying a marketing professional.

Hi there! I’m looking for suggestions on a great AI tool to help with digital marketing for my new small holistic therapy business. My goal is to rank #1 on Google, and I understand this involves SEO, which I know can be complex and requires expertise. If I could afford it, I’d definitely hire a professional, but for now, I’m hoping AI can provide some support. I’m also looking for help with content creation, promotion, and similar tasks. Do you have any valuable recommendations? I currently use the free version of ChatGPT for basic tasks and am considering upgrading to the paid version—would that be a good move for digital marketing and SEO? Any related to the questions advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

The Rise of AI: Will It Signal the Demise of LinkedIn Automation as We Know It?

Have you ever received a spammy LinkedIn automation sequence that left a bad taste in your mouth? You're not alone. But what if LinkedIn automation could be used in a way that was actually useful and effective? As a busy small business owner, you don't have time to spend hours on LinkedIn every day, so automation can be a lifesaver. After trying out many LinkedIn automation tools, I realized that the biggest gap in the market was in the area of ultra-personalization. Most tools only offer basic personalization like name, job title, and location tags, but that's not enough to get the attention of busy prospects. That's where AI comes in. Imagine being able to scrape publicly available information like someone's bio, work experience, headline, education, and more, and then use AI to create an ultra-personalized outreach for each individual. This would be a game-changer for LinkedIn marketers. That's why I have built an online tool that does just that. With this tool, you'll be able to create highly personalized outreach messages that are customized for each person you're targeting. And, of course, it will be automated to save you time and effort. So what do you think? Would you be interested in using a tool like this to market your offer on LinkedIn? Let me know in the comments!

Understand and train your own GPT – No prior AI or coding knowledge required

Hi all I wrote this "blog" Google colab notebook for friends and family who have little technical know-how or do not yet have an understanding of language models. It's based on nanoGPT (a minimal GPT implementation from Andrej Karpathy, ex-OpenAI). However, I rewrote the code from scratch, made it more explicit, and have lots of textual information such that everyone should be able to follow what is happening when, and train their own little GPT :) Hope it helps some people and let me know if you have any questions/feedback. Find it here: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1J9qJ-JArJSORVfOcppoD4cMC3u2I7aGZ?usp=sharing Tl;dr: Blog about how LLMs work & train a mini model without prior knowledge.

Just recorded a new interview episode where we talk about transitioning from a Fortune 500 to a startup. Let us know what you think!

0:00 Shilpa's Introduction 2:16 A Cosmopolitan Journey 4:46 All Roads Lead to Tech 8:35 From JP Morgan to Intel 12:25 Shilpa's $1 Billion Revenue Pipeline 15:27 Transitioning from IOT to AI 17:42 Flyte Co-Founders (and Marriage Partners!) 22:30 Building an AI Model, for two! 28:04 Flyte's Integration for Workflow Software 30:03 Fundraising Success 31:09 The Bright Flyte Ahead 32:18 Biggest Challenges Building the AI 36:05 Advice to Other AI Founders 38:46 Flyte's Incredible Collaboration Process 44:32 Life Lessons from Shilpa 45:54 Find Flyte! ​ https://preview.redd.it/w4bx22cl10d71.png?width=2042&format=png&auto=webp&s=c14ea0b96a1ffb34165ec84a86ca45b16256c21b Shilpa is a lifelong tech admirer, worldly businesswoman, and now CEO of Flyte -- a Workflow Automation Platform for Complex, Mission-Critical Data and ML Processes at Scale. From her incredible journey from India to her current home in Canada, to the vital role collaboration plays in small teams, Shilpa shares a breadth of knowledge any Entrepreneur would be lucky to hear. Regular link to episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJJgAhwSqqo&t=1s

I’m AI/ML product manager. What I would have done differently on Day 1 if I knew what I know today

I’m a software engineer and product manager, and I’ve working with and studying machine learning models for several years. But nothing has taught me more than applying ML in real-world projects. Here are some of top product management lessons I learned from applying ML: Work backwards: In essence, creating ML products and features is no different than other products. Don’t jump into Jupyter notebooks and data analysis before you talk to the key stakeholders. Establish deployment goals (how ML will affect your operations), prediction goals (what exactly the model should predict), and evaluation metrics (metrics that matter and required level of accuracy) before gathering data and exploring models.  Bridge the tech/business gap in your organization: Business professionals don’t know enough about the intricacies of machine learning, and ML professionals don’t know about the practical needs of businesses. Educate your business team on the basics of ML and create joint teams of data scientists and business analysts to define and measure goals and progress of ML projects. ML projects are more likely to fail when business and data science teams work in silos. Adjust your priorities at different stages of the project: In the early stages of your ML project, aim for speed. Choose the solution that validates/rejects your hypotheses the fastest, whether it’s an API, a pre-trained model, or even a non-ML solution (always consider non-ML solutions). In the more advanced stages of the project, look for ways to optimize your solution (increase accuracy and speed, reduce costs, increase flexibility). There is a lot more to share, but these are some of the top experiences that would have made my life a lot easier if I had known them before diving into applied ML.  What is your experience?

I started with 0 AI knowledge on the 2nd of Jan 2024 and blogged and studied it for 365. Here is a summary.

FULL BLOG POST AND MORE INFO IN THE FIRST COMMENT :) Edit in title: 365 days\* (and spelling) Coming from a background in accounting and data analysis, my familiarity with AI was minimal. Prior to this, my understanding was limited to linear regression, R-squared, the power rule in differential calculus, and working experience using Python and SQL for data manipulation. I studied free online lectures, courses, read books. \Time Spent on Theory vs Practice\ At the end it turns out I spent almost the same amount of time on theory and practice. While reviewing my year, I found that after learning something from a course/lecture in one of the next days I immediately applied it - either through exercises, making a Kaggle notebook or by working on a project. \2024 Learning Journey Topic Breakdown\ One thing I learned is that \fundamentals\ matter. I discovered that anyone can make a model, but it's important to make models that add business value. In addition, in order to properly understand the inner-workings of models I wanted to do a proper coverage of stats & probability, and the math behind AI. I also delved into 'traditional' ML (linear models, trees), and also deep learning (NLP, CV, Speech, Graphs) which was great. It's important to note that I didn't start with stats & math, I was guiding myself and I started with traditional and some GenAI but soon after I started to ask a lot of 'why's as to why things work and this led me to study more about stats&math. Soon I also realised \Data is King\ so I delved into data engineering and all the practices and ideas it covers. In addition to Data Eng, I got interested in MLOps. I wanted to know what happens with models after we evaluate them on a test set - well it turns out there is a whole field behind it, and I was immediately hooked. Making a model is not just taking data from Kaggle and doing train/test eval, we need to start with a business case, present a proper case to add business value and then it is a whole lifecycle of development, testing, maintenance and monitoring. \Wordcloud\ After removing some of the generically repeated words, I created this work cloud from the most used works in my 365 blog posts. The top words being:- model and data - not surprising as they go hand in hand- value - as models need to deliver value- feature (engineering) - a crucial step in model development- system - this is mostly because of my interest in data engineering and MLOps I hope you find my summary and blog interesting. https://preview.redd.it/pxohznpy4dae1.png?width=2134&format=png&auto=webp&s=03c16bb3535d75d1f009b44ee5164cc3e6483ac4 https://preview.redd.it/0y47rrpy4dae1.png?width=1040&format=png&auto=webp&s=f1fdf7764c7151ff0a05ae92777c5bb7d52f4359 https://preview.redd.it/e59inppy4dae1.png?width=1566&format=png&auto=webp&s=2566033777a90410277350947617d3ce8406be15

I am planning to build ai seo friendly blog generator (i know the idea sounds cliche but hear me out)

So basically i come from a digital marketing background, have promoted a lot of businesses, have done a couple of seo projects as well. I found a major gap, there are many saas that do create blogs, but still i do have to add the images, format it, add anchor texts, add alt texts and so on. basically make it “seo friendly”, there is no blog generator that i found does that or as far as i know. I know you will say seo is dead, google only will rank human written content and so on. But i have seen so many websites ranked at the top just because of automated ai content. I plan to add many features, to make this entire process automated. It does require some basic seo expertise to operate but most tasks i plan on automating. It will automatically publish blogs periodically on wordpress or through api connection. Let me know what your feedback is good or bad, and if this type of software comes to market will you pay for it (i plan on selling basic plan for 30 usd/month) And what all pain points are there, that i need to take care of, what features are a must.

[D] No Shortcuts To Knowledge: Why AI Needs To Ease Up On Scaling And Learn How To Code

https://deoxyribose.github.io/No-Shortcuts-to-Knowledge/

[P] My experiments with Knowledge Distillation

Hi r/MachineLearning community! I conducted several experiments on Knowledge Distillation and wanted to share my findings. Here is a snippet of the results comparing performance of teacher, student, fine tuned and distilled models: |Dataset|Qwen2 Model Family|MMLU (Reasoning)|GSM8k (Math)|WikiSQL (Coding)| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |||||| |1|Pretrained - 7B|0.598|0.724|0.536| |2|Pretrained - 1.5B|0.486|0.431|0.518| |3|Finetuned - 1.5B|0.494|0.441|0.849| |4|Distilled - 1.5B, Logits Distillation|0.531|0.489|0.862| |5|Distilled - 1.5B, Layers Distillation|0.527|0.481|0.841| For a detailed analysis, you can read this report. I also created an open source library to facilitate its adoption. You can try it here. My conclusion: Prefer distillation over fine-tuning when there is a substantial gap between the larger and smaller model on the target dataset. In such cases, distillation can effectively transfer knowledge, leading to significantly better performance than standard fine-tuning alone. P.S. This blog post gives a high level introduction to Distillation. Let me know what you think!

[D] Do you know any tools (libraries/frameworks) that are intuitive enough for teenagers for a practical introduction to AI?

Hello, I am a computer science student and I am trying to set up a workshop for high-school students to give them a first hands-on introduction to AI, more specifically to computer vision. So, I was wondering if you know any frameworks or tools or libraries that would raise awareness about AI and give a first incentive about it to teenagers.Any help would be very much appreciated!Cheers!

[D] Do you know any institutions/nonprofits/companies/governments/etc. trying to apply deep learning and other ML/AI/GenAI techniques to implement universal basic income (UBI) or something similar to UBI like universal basic services?

Do you know any institutions/nonprofits/companies/governments/etc. trying to apply deep learning and other ML/AI/GenAI techniques to implement universal basic income (UBI) or something similar to UBI like universal basic services? Maybe for chatbot guidance on UBI program details, selecting candidates that need it the most, predicting poverty, UBI impacts, demographic and economic indicators to identify optimal UBI payment amounts and frequencies for different population segments, preventing fraud, etc. It can be just sketching future models in theory, or already implementing it in practice. I found this relevant paper: Can Data and Machine Learning Change the Future of Basic Income Models? A Bayesian Belief Networks Approach. https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5729/9/2/18 "Appeals to governments for implementing basic income are contemporary. The theoretical backgrounds of the basic income notion only prescribe transferring equal amounts to individuals irrespective of their specific attributes. However, the most recent basic income initiatives all around the world are attached to certain rules with regard to the attributes of the households. This approach is facing significant challenges to appropriately recognize vulnerable groups. A possible alternative for setting rules with regard to the welfare attributes of the households is to employ artificial intelligence algorithms that can process unprecedented amounts of data. Can integrating machine learning change the future of basic income by predicting households vulnerable to future poverty? In this paper, we utilize multidimensional and longitudinal welfare data comprising one and a half million individuals’ data and a Bayesian beliefs network approach to examine the feasibility of predicting households’ vulnerability to future poverty based on the existing households’ welfare attributes."

AI for Business- Sharing Strategies, Knowledge and Tools

Hi All, As a small business owner running a tech company that focuses on process automation, I understand the importance of staying up-to-date with the latest advancements in AI and other emerging technologies. I have found the amount of new tools and tech overwhelming to keep track of as of recent. I would like to start a group of entrepreneurs and tech professionals who share a common interest in the latest tools relating to AI, but also tech in general. My goal is to create an environment for members to discuss business strategies, share projects involving how they are introducing AI, new tools... I hope that by pooling knowledge everyone involved can benefit. To ensure the community remains focused and valuable I am thinking that It will be a requirement for all members to share a tool, project ideas, strategies... related to business on a bi-weekly basis. Potentially bi-weekly calls as well, but Ill figure that out based on the interest. We currently have about 15 members and looking to add maybe 10-15 more. If this sounds like something you'd be interested in post below or send me a DM. Add a brief description of what you are interested in / working on. Looking forward to connecting

What Are the Top Small Business Trends You Must Know for 2024 ?

Are you excited about the new business horizons in 2024? Well, you should be! The small business landscape is evolving faster than anything right now, and here are the trends you absolutely need to know to keep your business game strong. Sustainable Swag In a world where eco-friendliness is the new black, businesses are carrying the badge of sustainability. From eco-packaging to carbon-neutral practices, customers are giving the side-eye to anything less green. So, if you want to be at the top, consider adopting some planet-friendly practices. Remote Work Revolution Office who? The 9-to-5 grind is getting a makeover, and the dress code is PJs. Remote work is no longer just a trend; it's a lifestyle. So, if your business can embrace the virtual office, you might just find your team doing the hustle and bustle with productivity. Tech-Tastic Ventures The future is now, and it's filled with tech wonders. Augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI), and all things tech are the new developments in this sector. Businesses incorporating these innovations are riding the digital wave straight to success. Personalization Party No one likes generic. Customers want products and services tailor-made just for them. So, businesses are using data to give customers an experience that feels as customized as a handmade suit. Say goodbye to one-size-fits-all! Community Crusaders In a world full of noise, community is the superhero we all need. Businesses are realizing the power of building a network around their brand. Whether it's through social media, events, or exclusive memberships, creating a community is like having an army of brand advocates. 2024 is the year to unleash your small business swagger. Embrace these trends, adapt with flair, and let your entrepreneurial spirit soar. Remember to sprinkle some personality into your business strategy—people love a brand with a sense of humor and a human touch!

Hello! Seeking essential advice regarding the desire to create an "AI". One that acts as a personal musical "Composer" in response to the individual users' emotional feedback. Company Name already created, as well as Trademark name for potential AI. However, I don't know where to start...

Title pretty much sums it up. With 0 background in computer science as well as no experience developing a company, I'm seeking professional advice (or personal) on the best approach to this potential business idea. Given the progression of Artificial Intelligence and its influence on the global population in modern day, I have now developed an interest in its potential. After creating a model for foundation, one which is relatively simple in nature, I took it upon to myself to embrace my lack of knowledge/interest in the science of AI and go directly to the source: ChatGPT. Unfortunately, I currently can't afford to engage with the "smartest model" of ChatGPT, but after discussing a plan of approach with the free OpenAI version, I was given a lot of valuable information that I most likely would have overwhelmed myself with independently. With that being said, I'm now looking to hear from individuals who have actual experience within the respective backgrounds. Any advice will help Questions: What does the development of an AI assistant require for foundation? Can it be built upon already established AI and will there require a level of knowledge regarding coding as well as the proper legal understanding of API usage? Should the focus be on app development or the AI tool specifically? What communities would you suggest, to seek individuals with the ability to bring an idea to fruition virtually? From a business perspective, given the lack of financial resources and significant model value, how would one communicate this idea to others to potentially become involved or invested? If I am asking the wrong question, feel free to advise. Any questions that require more information on the idea is welcomed.

What Are the Top Small Business Trends You Must Know for 2024 ?

Are you excited about the new business horizons in 2024? Well, you should be! The small business landscape is evolving faster than anything right now, and here are the trends you absolutely need to know to keep your business game strong. Sustainable Swag In a world where eco-friendliness is the new black, businesses are carrying the badge of sustainability. From eco-packaging to carbon-neutral practices, customers are giving the side-eye to anything less green. So, if you want to be at the top, consider adopting some planet-friendly practices. Remote Work Revolution Office who? The 9-to-5 grind is getting a makeover, and the dress code is PJs. Remote work is no longer just a trend; it's a lifestyle. So, if your business can embrace the virtual office, you might just find your team doing the hustle and bustle with productivity. Tech-Tastic Ventures The future is now, and it's filled with tech wonders. Augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI), and all things tech are the new developments in this sector. Businesses incorporating these innovations are riding the digital wave straight to success. Personalization Party No one likes generic. Customers want products and services tailor-made just for them. So, businesses are using data to give customers an experience that feels as customized as a handmade suit. Say goodbye to one-size-fits-all! Community Crusaders In a world full of noise, community is the superhero we all need. Businesses are realizing the power of building a network around their brand. Whether it's through social media, events, or exclusive memberships, creating a community is like having an army of brand advocates. 2024 is the year to unleash your small business swagger. Embrace these trends, adapt with flair, and let your entrepreneurial spirit soar. Remember to sprinkle some personality into your business strategy—people love a brand with a sense of humor and a human touch!

IVAN.ed: The platform for Social Learning ( SOMEONE CAN USE THIS IDEA BECAUSE I CURRENTLY DON'T HAVE THE TECH KNOWLEDEGE TO MAKE IT COME TRUE )

Overview: IVAN.ed is an innovative educational platform designed to transform the way students and educators interact and share knowledge. By combining the best elements of social media with a focus on learning, IVAN.ed aims to create a dynamic, engaging, and user-friendly environment for educational content. Key Features: Social Learning Network: A platform where students, educators, and experts can create and share educational content, similar to a social media experience but dedicated to learning. AI-Driven Content Moderation: Implementing advanced AI algorithms to ensure high-quality and relevant content, maintaining the platform’s integrity and usefulness. User Profiles and Content Creation: Users can build profiles, upload videos, create posts, and engage with content through comments, (instead of like there is the knowledge meter , based on what as taught in the videos), notes will be provided down of each video using ai. Enhanced Discovery: Advanced search and recommendation systems to help users find content that matches their interests and educational needs. Minimal Distractions: user interface designed to minimize distractions and enhance focus, making the learning experience more efficient. Goals: Accessibility: Provide a free or low-cost platform where knowledge is accessible to all. Community Engagement: Foster a vibrant learning community with meaningful interactions. Innovation: Leverage AI to maintain high standards of content and user experience. Conclusion: IVAN.ed aims to bridge the gap between traditional education and modern social media, creating an interactive and engaging space for learning. By prioritizing user experience and content quality, IVAN.ed will empower educators and learners alike, making education more accessible and impactful. THIS MESSAGE WAS GENERATED USING GPT , SINCE I AM NOT VERY GOOD AN CONVEING MY IDEAS , BUT NOW I NEED PEOPLE TO SEE THIS IDEA AND CRITIZE IT OR EVEN GIVE ME SOME IDEAS TO MAKE IT BETTER , BUT THIS IS JUST THE BLUEPRINT AND I HAVEN'T EVEN BEGUN THE ACTUAL DEVELOPMENT PHASE, BUT I AM OPEN FOR SOME HELP ! -thank you if you read it this far

Looking for business partner with technical AI knowledge

Hi all, Posted on here a few times now about my idea (you can read this on my profile). After planning out the details of the process, I can see that it may just be best for me to seek a business partner with has existing AI knowledge. I’m looking for a more technical person who can provide recommendations on AI tools for businesses based on the current processes in order to be more efficient and productive. Looking for someone UK-based and I am 23 for reference with a consulting and BA background. Please reach out if this interests you :)

99% of Beginners Don't Know the Basics of AI

Sign up for Google’s Project Management Certification on Coursera here: https://imp.i384100.net/js-project-management Grab my AI Toolkit for free: https://academy.jeffsu.org/ai-toolkit?utmsource=youtube&utmmedium=video&utm_campaign=163 Curious about #AI but don't know where to start? In this video, I break down 5 key takeaways from Google's AI Essentials course for beginners, share the pros and cons, and help you decide if this certification is worth your time. Let’s get started 😁 TIMESTAMPS 00:00 I took Google’s AI Essentials Course 00:29 There are 3 Types of AI Tools 03:39 Always surface Implied Context 04:51 Zero-Shot vs. Few-Shot Prompting 05:50 Chain-of-Thought Prompting 06:53 Limitations of AI 07:51 Pros and Cons of Google’s AI Essentials Course RESOURCES MENTIONED 🔩 Grab my free Workspace Toolkit: https://academy.jeffsu.org/workspace-toolkit?utmsource=youtube&utmmedium=video&utm_campaign=163 Write the Perfect Prompt: https://youtu.be/jC4v5AS4RIM ChatGPT for Job Seekers: https://youtu.be/2uN8PTXMY5c MY FAVORITE GEAR 🎬 My YouTube Gear - https://www.jeffsu.org/yt-gear/ 🎒 Everyday Carry - https://www.jeffsu.org/my-edc/ MY TOP 3 FAVORITE SOFTWARE ❎ CleanShot X - https://geni.us/cleanshotx ✍️ Skillshare - https://geni.us/skillshare-jeff 💼 Teal - http://tealhq.co/jeffsu BE MY FRIEND: 📧 Subscribe to my newsletter - https://www.jeffsu.org/newsletter/?utmsource=youtube&utmmedium=video 📸 Instagram - https://instagram.com/j.sushie 🤝 LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jsu05/ 👨🏻‍💻 WHO AM I: I'm Jeff, a tech professional trying to figure life out. What I do end up figuring out, I share! PS: Some of the links in this description are affiliate links I get a kickback from and my opinions are my own and may not reflect that of my employer 😇 #Google #ChatGPT

LearnAI-KnowledgeMiningBootcamp

LearnAI: Build an Enterprise Knowledge Mining Solution using the Microsoft AI Platform Build an enterprise scale intelligent search solution for searching business documents using Microsoft Azure and Cognitive Search About this Course In this course, you will learn to build an enterprise search solution by applying knowledge mining approach to search an organization’s business documents like Microsoft Office, PDFs and images using Azure search and Cognitive search skillsets and expose the results via a Bot interface. You will learn to perform entity recognition, image analysis, text translation and indexed search on enterprise business documents using Microsoft Cognitive Services and Azure Search. This approach can be used with almost any Azure service to augment a customer’s scenario involving intelligent search. While this course focusses on Azure and Cognitive search capabilities, a depth course on building Bots and integrating various cognitive services is available here - Building Intelligent Agents and Apps. In this course you will learn Fundamentals of Azure Search and its capabilities. Understand Microsoft Cognitive Search and its key scenarios for using them. Build an enriched data pipeline for search using predefined and custom skillsets: a. Text skills like entity recognition, language detection, text manipulation and key phrase extraction. b. Image skills like OCR. c. Language skills like text translation. d. Content moderation skills to block documents with incompliant content. Use the enriched data pipeline for a knowledge mining solution on business documents within an enterprise. Expose the knowledge mining solution using a bot interface for document search and consumption. Architecture !Architecture Technologies Covered !Technology Industry application Intelligent search is relevant to many major industries. Some are listed below. Retail and health care industries employ chatbots with advanced multi-language support capabilities to service their customers. Retail, Housing and Automotive industries for sales/listing. Entertainment industry uses search for relevant/contextual on-demand streaming. Pre-requisites Fundamental working knowledge of Azure Portal, Functions and Azure Search. Familiarity with Visual Studio. Familiarity with Azure Bots and Microsoft Bot Framework v4. If you do not have any familiarity with the above pre-requisites, please find below links To Read (10 minutes): Visual Studio Tutorial To Read (4 minutes): Azure Functions Overview To Read (10 minutes): Azure Search Overview To Read (7 minutes): Postman Tutorial To Do (30 minutes): CQuickstart Pre-Setup before you attend the class Mandatory To Create: You need a Microsoft Azure account to create the services we use in our solution. You can create a free account, use your MSDN account or use any other subscription where you have permission to create services. To Install: Visual Studio 2017 version version 15.5 or later, including the Azure development workload. To Install: Postman. To call the labs APIs. Course Details Primary Audience: Azure AI Developers, Architects. Secondary Audience: Any professional interested in learning AI. Level This content is designed as an intermediate to advanced level course for AI developers and/or architects. Type This course, in its full form, is designed to be taught in-person but you can also use the materials in a self-paced fashion. There are assignments and multiple reference links throughout the materials that support the concepts and skills you will learn. Length Full Course classroom training: 16 hours Related LearnAI Courses Building Intelligent Agents and Apps Course Modules Introduction – Overview of Azure Search, Cognitive Search, Scenarios and industry specific applications. Fundamentals of Azure Search. Architecture – Solution Architecture for building enterprise search solution. Cognitive Search Skillset – Applying text skills. Cognitive Search Skillset – Applying image skills. Cognitive Search Skillset – Applying Language skills. Cognitive Search Skillset – Applying Moderation skills. Build and Integrate a Bot with Cognitive Search API. Group Hands-on Lab to practice skills acquired.

OpenAI GPT-4: THE SECRET PROMPT You Need To Know 🤐 #shorts

OpenAI GPT-4: THE SECRET PROMPT You Need To Know 🤐 #shorts 📸 Instagram: https://bit.ly/ishansharma7390ig Join MarkitUpX Discord Server: https://discord.gg/fwSpTje4rh 😁 About Me: https://bit.ly/aboutishansharma 📱 Twitter: https://bit.ly/ishansharma7390twt 📝 LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/ishansharma7390li 🌟 Please leave a LIKE ❤️ and SUBSCRIBE for more AMAZING content! 🌟 3 Books You Should Read 📈Psychology of Money: https://amzn.to/30wx4bW 👀Subtle Art of Not Giving a F: https://amzn.to/30zwWbP 💼Rework: https://amzn.to/3ALsAuz Tech I use every day 💻MacBook Air M1: https://amzn.to/2YWKPjG 📺LG 29' Ultrawide Monitor: https://amzn.to/3aG0p5p 🎥Sony ZV1: https://amzn.to/3ANqgDb 🎙Blue Yeti Mic: https://amzn.to/2YYbiNN ⽴Tripod Stand: https://amzn.to/3mVUiQc 🔅Ring Light: https://amzn.to/2YQlzLJ 🎧Marshall Major II Headphone: https://amzn.to/3lLhTDQ 🖱Logitech mouse: https://amzn.to/3p8edOC 💺Green Soul Chair: https://amzn.to/3mWIxZP ✨ Tags ✨ ishan sharma,OpenAI GPT-4: THE SECRET PROMPT You Need To Know 🤐,ai tools,artificial intelligence,microsoft,microsoft openai,microsoft chatgpt,what is chatgpt,chatgpt tutorial,chatgpt 4,make money with chatgpt,chatgpt,open ai,gpt 4,gpt 4 vs gpt 3,openai,openai chatbot gpt,chatgpt explained,chatgpt examples,chat gpt,open ai gpt 4,chat gpt uses,chatgpt4 tutorial,gpt 4 demo,gpt 4 image input,gpt 4 review,gpt 4 how to use,gpt 4 prompt ✨ Hashtags ✨ #gpt4 #chatgpt #ai

For anyone who hates writing, and or struggles with it. Check out ServiceAI.tech's template for writing to investors. You can search much more than this through on our search engine to help you and your business thrive ! Let me know if this helps

​ https://preview.redd.it/pv0948ozkd4a1.png?width=2856&format=png&auto=webp&s=11f842c5daf386f54db649abf242478c368b39f2

For anyone who hates writing, and or struggles with it. Check out ServiceAI.tech's template for writing to investors. You can search much more than this through on our search engine to help you and your business thrive ! Let me know if this helps

​ https://preview.redd.it/pv0948ozkd4a1.png?width=2856&format=png&auto=webp&s=11f842c5daf386f54db649abf242478c368b39f2

um…it seems Elon doesn’t know who Yann LeCun is.

Artificial Intelligence 101 The basics of AI everyone should know

AI is revolutionizing tasks with smart tools and chatbots Learn how Atlassian Intelligence boosts productivity and collaboration using advanced AI technology

Top 20 AI Tools Every Entrepreneur Should Know About

In the fast paced world of entrepreneurship leveraging the power of artificial intelligence AI can be a game changer AI tools can streamline operations enhance decision making and give your startup a competitive edge

Ashneer views on Ai & jobs (shocking😱)

In this video Ashneer Grover shares his view on the AI technology and it’s future outcome in normal people job. And he shares why we have…..(Shocking reply) #ai #future #technology #tech #jobs #berojgar #alproblems #danger #ashneergrover #ashneeronai #it #jobsatrisk #shorts #trending #knowledge

Practical AI for Professionals

Explore key ideas in Artificial Intelligence (AI) while delving into trending developments in the field. Examines AI tools and frameworks to enable collaboration effectively and efficiently across technical and non-technical stakeholders. Analyze topics such as AI-enabled perception, representation, reasoning, and learning as contextualized by societal impact. Equips students with the knowledge and skills necessary to confidently navigate the ever-evolving landscape of artificial intelligence

Introduction to Data Analytics

Ready to start a career in Data Analysis but don’t know where to begin? This course presents you with a gentle introduction to Data Analysis, the role of a Data Analyst, and the tools used in this job. You will learn about the skills and responsibilities of a data analyst and hear from several data experts sharing their tips & advice to start a career. This course will help you to differentiate between the roles of Data Analysts, Data Scientists, and Data Engineers.

Introduction to Generative AI in Healthcare

This course "Introduction to Generative AI in Healthcare" offers a comprehensive introduction to Generative AI in Healthcare, designed specifically for individuals who are curious about the intersection of cutting-edge technology and the medical field. Whether you are a healthcare professional, a tech enthusiast, or someone eager to understand how artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the healthcare industry, this course will provide you with foundational knowledge and actionable insights to navigate this exciting space.

Introduction to AI for Cybersecurity

In "Introduction to AI for Cybersecurity," you'll gain foundational knowledge of how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the field of cybersecurity. This course covers key AI techniques and how they can be applied to enhance security measures, detect threats, and secure digital systems. Learners will explore hands-on implementations of AI models using tools like Jupyter Notebooks, allowing them to detect spam, phishing emails, and secure user authentication using biometric solutions.

AWS Cloud Technical Essentials

Are you in a technical role and want to learn the fundamentals of AWS? Do you aspire to have a job or career as a cloud developer, architect, or in an operations role? If so, AWS Cloud Technical Essentials is an ideal way to start. This course was designed for those at the beginning of their cloud-learning journey - no prior knowledge of cloud computing or AWS products and services required!

Agentic AI and AI Agents: A Primer for Leaders

Forget everything you know about traditional AI. Agentic AI doesn’t just analyze data; it acts on it. From drafting sales emails to updating CRMs, it’s not just a tool—it’s a game-changer. Are you ready to harness its power?

Finally Launched My First App Without Any Coding Experience

About Myself I am a structural engineer that are taught to design buildings in the day and I have been dreaming forever to build a SaaS business to get out of the rat race. However, as a structural engineer, coding is definitely not something I am capable of doing (I have some simple knowledge, but its no way close to building an app) The Journey As I've mentioned, I always wanted to build a SaaS business because in my mind the business model is most attractive to me, where you only need to build once and can sell to millions. So I started off searching and exploring on the internet and my first ever "SaaS" was from Wordpress. I am buying plugin from other user and then pluggin into my own Wordpress website. It was a project management tool SaaS. I was so excited about the website and can't even sleep well at night because I'm just so hype about it. But, the reality is because this is my first ever business, I totally didn't realise about the importance of UI UX or my business differentiation, thinking that everyone will be as excited as I am. Then, I went deeper and deeper into the journey (I can write more about this in another post if anyone is interested) and finally landed on Flutterflow to create my first ever app. No Code Journey Thanks to no code builder, I never thought that a non-coder like me can ever create an app and got accepted by the App Store/Play Store. Since that I am using a low-code builder, for any specific requirement that I need that are not covered natively, I will just talk to ChatGPT and boom I pretty much got most of the answer I needed. About The App As someone that always try to keep track of my expenses, I never able to find an app that are simple and interesting enough for me to continue on the journey. I realise that I could have incorporate AI into this journey and hence there go, I created an AI Money Tracker. Let me introduce Rolly: AI Money Tracker - a new AI expense tracker where you can easily record your transactions just by chatting with our bot Rolly and it will automatically record and categorise the transaction into the most suitable category (you can also create any of your own category and it will also take care of it in consideration). I am not sharing the app link here to avoid getting ban, but feel free to search up Rolly: AI Money Tracker on either App Store on Play Store. My Learnings As someone that can't code and never imagine that I could create a production app by myself and publish it on to the App Store and Play Store. Since I am not making any money yet and just at the beginning of my entrepreneur journey, I can't give any substantial advice, all I can say is just my own learnings and feelings. My advice is if you have a dream of building a business, just go for it, don't worry about all the problems that you can think of to convince yourself not making the start at all. From my point of view, as long as you're not giving up everything (eg, putting yourself in huge debt etc), why don't just go for it and you've got nothing much to lose. You'll only lose if you never even get started. And also, I believe that creating an app is always the easiest step out of the entreprenuership journey, marketing and distribution is the key to success. Even though you've spent days and nights on it and it might mean everything to you, the truth is people don't really cares and you'll need to market for it. I am still in journey to learn how to do marketing, content, building a business and everything. I think this is just a very beginning of my journey and hopefully there's more interesting one to share further down the road.

Everybody sucks but me (a shitpost)

Honestly, I’m a god. My ideas and vision are unmatched. I have a new app idea every week, but I never work on them because that’s beneath me. In fact, I’ve never built anything before. Today is different. My superior mind came up with the best app idea ever. Are you ready to hear it? No, of course not ape. But I’ll tell you anyway: An AI-powered dating app for horses. Boom. 🤯🐎 I know you can’t even imagine it. But I’ve already started coding it and I’m coding it with ChatGPT4. Most of you poors can’t even afford 4. I don’t even need to talk to early users. Everyone has this problem. Obviously people are going to pay me for it - all I have to do is build it and they’ll be flocking to it. Easy money. I know, I know. I am a genius. Oh and your girl? You better make sure she doesn’t sign up. /s

Experienced Software Developer looking for startup to help. I will not promote

My passion for programming started at the age of 9 when I began playing video games. It was during this time that I first dived into programming, creating scripts for SA:MP (San Andreas Multiplayer) using the Pawn language. SA:MP is a modification for the popular game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, allowing players to experience multiplayer gameplay. My early experiences in programming were all about problem-solving—finding ways to enhance the game and improve the player experience. This was when I realized how satisfying it is to solve a problem through code, and that feeling has stayed with me throughout my career. I am a self-taught programmer, and everything I know today comes from my own initiative to learn and improve. After five years of working with local clients, I decided to expand my knowledge and started learning more widely applicable programming languages like Java and Python. I’ve always been the type of person who thrives on challenges. Whenever I encounter a problem, I don’t just look for a quick fix—I dive deep into researching and understanding the problem, and I find a solution that works in the long run. This is what drives me. The ability to solve problems, no matter how complex, and the satisfaction that comes with it is what fuels my passion for programming. My big break came when I had the opportunity to work at \\\\. There, I replaced two senior and two junior developers, which led to significant cost savings for the company. I completed all tasks ahead of schedule, focusing on Java-based applications that were multithreaded and communicated with embedded systems. This experience taught me how to work under pressure and how to manage and solve complex technical problems efficiently. Following my time at \\\\, I transitioned into freelance work as a FullStack Developer, working with technologies such as HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript, Django, Spring, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. As a freelancer, I was responsible for finding solutions to a wide range of problems, often working independently and making decisions on the fly. I learned that self-reliance is key in this industry, and being resourceful is one of the most important qualities a developer can have. Later, I joined \\\\ elecom, where I worked on system integration with foreign teams, BPM process solutions, and the merging of complex systems in Oracle databases. I continued to solve challenges, often working with teams across borders and tackling technical obstacles that required creative and well-thought-out solutions. Eventually, I founded my own company, \\\\, where I focus on developing software solutions, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cybersecurity, and Ethical Hacking. As an entrepreneur, I take pride in finding innovative solutions to problems, whether they come from clients or from technical obstacles I encounter along the way. I’ve also had the privilege of working with the Serbian Ministry of Defense and the police, handling sensitive projects that demand both technical expertise and trustworthiness. Being a self-taught programmer means that I have had to learn and adapt on my own, and I’ve learned to embrace challenges as opportunities for growth. I am constantly driven by the process of solving problems, and it is what keeps me engaged and fulfilled in my work. I am always open to new collaborations and am eager to take on new challenges that push my boundaries in technology, cybersecurity, and software development.

OMG - I'm a tech founder trying to promote my SAAS product and I'm like a deer in headlights!

I've been building a tool for agile project management for the past year or two and I think it is looking pretty good. I've got good feedback from agile leads and such and have adjusted the product accordingly and I think now it is solving the problem it is focused on. It isn't perfect technically and as I am a tech head and I love all the challenges of solving and building tricky software solutions it is very tempting to program and program and program. But I have to bite the bullet and get out of my comfort zone and get some customers! But I have no budget for marketing, and no acumen for it and I don't know where to start. I have researched forums, blogs, AI, etc. and there is a lot of advice, too much in fact. Every intro email or announcement text I write, I review it and rewrite it over and over as I am constantly wondering if it is too wordy, or doesn't focus on benefits, or whatever advice I read last. How do people just get on with it without doubting whether this wording is the most compelling, or the website design doesn't look clunky, or I'm not getting to the right people? The sales and marketing world is so much harder than coding, and at the same time much more squishy and ill defined :-) Can anyone out there relate, offer some advice, help?

Technical founders - is "bulling" your way through learning right for a startup? [I will not promote]

Sup, This is a question for technical founders. \--a little backstory-- I am starting a company in AI field that creates something nobody has ever done before. 7 months in. \--- How most software companies are created - you have an improvement idea, then you have a thousand or so problems to solve to make that improvement happen, and for each one that you don't know, you go to Stackoverflow or ChatGPT to look for solutions for that problem. Which involves next-to-no upfront preparation because for vast majority of traditional software you can solve it on-the-go - "traditional" software is very easy compared to, say, mechanical, pharma or AI engineering. However, for more advanced disciplines - can you just "Google" it on-the-go? I'm a solo founder, and 8 months in, creating a foundational model, BECAUSE I did not know things upfront, I've wasted at least 3 months doing something which was mostly technically unviable in the first place. Out of 14000 lines of code that I've done (including tests), I had to scrap 10000 recently. Imagine the scale of it. Obviously I didn't even know how ML works when I've started. Major fuck-up. How do you operate in industries which you've done before? How do you determine that it's time to start creating you big technological leaps instead of continuing to learn? Cheers. Edit: No need to push me on business topics. I know how to create value very well. It's only a tech question, and I'm only asking because - well - to deliver my value, I need to do a lot of novel tech.

Hot Take: Not all your startups need AI forced into them

I'm a final year Computer Engineering student, hence applying for jobs all around. There's this particular trend I've noticed with startups that are coming up these days. That is, even for the absolute basic stuff they'll use 'AI', and they'll think they built something 'revolutionary'. No. You're breaking your product in ways you don't realise. An example, that even some well established companies are guilty of: AI Chatbots You absolutely don't need them and it's an entire gimmick. If you really wanna implement a chatbot, connect the user to an actual person on your end, which I think is not possible if you're at a 'startup' stage. You'll need employees who can handle user queries in real time. If the user really is stuck let them use the 'Contact Us' page. A really close relative of mine is very vocal about the frustration he faces whenever he tries to use the AI Chatbot on any well known e-com website. The only case for AI Chatbot that makes sense is when it's directing the customer to an actual customer support rep if none of the AI's solutions is working for the customer. Even then, implementing a search page for FAQ is extremely easy and user friendly. Another example: AI Interviewer I recently interviewed for a startup, and their whole interviewing process was AI'zed?!?! No real person at the other end, I was answering to their questions which were in video format. They even had a 'mascot' / 'AI interviewer' avatar designed by an AI (AI-ception???). This mascot just text-to-speech'ed all the questions for me to rewind and hear what I missed again. And I had to record video and audio to answer these questions on their platform itself. The entire interview process just could've been a questionnaire, or if you're really concerned on the integrity of the interviewee, just take a few minutes out of your oh-so-busy schedule as a startup owner. Atleast for hiring employees who would make the most impact on your product going ahead. I say the most impact, because (atleast as a developer) the work done by these employees would define how robust your product is, and/or how easily other features can be integrated into the codebase. Trust me, refactoring code later on would only cost you time and money. These resources would rather be more useful in other departments of your startup. The only use case for an AI Interviewer I see is for preparing for an actual interview, provided that feedback is given to the user at the earliest, which you don't need to worry about as a startup owner. So yeah, you're probably better off without integrating AI in your product. Thank you for reading. TLDR; The title; I know AI is the new thing and gets everyone drooling and all, but for the love of God, just focus on what your startup does best and put real people behind it; Integrating AI without human intervention is as good as a broken product; Do your hiring yourself, or through real people, emphasizing on the fact that the people you hire at an early stage will define your growth ahead;

Anyone finding that they just don't NEED to add more Employees anymore? (I will not promote)

A friend of mine who was looking for work asked me if we were hiring and I responded "You know, it's weird but all of our growth goals don't seem to map back to hiring people anymore." This isn't about the economy or growth goals. It's a really fascinating shift in focus and costs for startups. My gut reaction is that I HATE the idea of not creating more jobs. In my career I've hired thousands of people, and I've always prided myself on job creation. We just sold a company that employed 200 people last year, and I'm proud of the work we were able to create. What's interesting is that I simply don't feel like we NEED to like we used to. As we're looking at all of our growth goals, for the first time I'm not assigning FTEs to them. Nearly everything we're doing is actually reducing the need for more humans, not adding them - and we're not even trying to reduce the need. Obviously the timing of AI has had a major impact. Product - Our team is shipping more code than ever before, and even our designers who have never touched code are shipping final code. If we doubled the size of the team, it would make no difference (this is a big deal considering the historical cost here). Marketing - So many aspects of our marketing are getting automated and streamlined, to the point where even a single FTE can create a massive amount of reach across channels. Support - Our Success team is able to effectively respond to tickets in a fraction of the time, which essentially doubles their capacity without adding any more staff. Management - With less staff we need less managers, which are a big expense, but it also means reporting and decisions are more streamlined, which is a positive. But it also means those positions simply don't get created like they used to. I think this is a big deal for the younger startups because it translates into needing less capital (or none!) which provides for more ownership and agency. Clearly we still need some folks to build out the core team, but that's very different than a massive staffing line item. Anyone else here finding the same trend? Opposite? I don't have a strong opinion either way, but I'd love to hear how other Founders are processing this.

I spent 6 months on building a tool, and got 0 zero users. Here is my story.

Edit Thank you all so much for your time reading my story. Your support, feedback, criticism, and skepticism; all helped me a lot, and I couldn't appreciate it enough \^\_\^ TL;DR I spent 6 months on a tool that currently has 0 users. Below is what I learned during my journey, sharing because I believe most mistakes are easily avoidable. Do not overestimate your product and assume it will be an exception to fundamental principles. Principles are there for a reason. Always look for validation before you start. Avoid building products with a low money-to-effort ratio/in very competitive fields. Unless you have the means, you probably won't make it. Pick a problem space, pick your target audience, and talk to them before thinking about a solution. Identify and match their pain points. Only then should you think of a solution. If people are not overly excited or willing to pay in advance for a discounted price, it might be a sign to rethink. Sell one and only one feature at a time. Avoid everything else. If people don't pay for that one core feature, no secondary feature will change their mind. Always spend twice as much time marketing as you do building. You will not get users if they don't know it exists. Define success metrics ("1000 users in 3 months" or "$6000 in the account at the end of 6 months") before you start. If you don't meet them, strongly consider quitting the project. If you can't get enough users to keep going, nothing else matters. VALIDATION, VALIDATION, VALIDATION. Success is not random, but most of our first products will not make a success story. Know when to admit failure, and move on. Even if a product of yours doesn't succeed, what you learned during its journey will turn out to be invaluable for your future. My story So, this is the story of a product, Summ, that I’ve been working on for the last 6 months. As it's the first product I’ve ever built, after watching you all from the sidelines, I have learned a lot, made many mistakes, and did only a few things right. Just sharing what I’ve learned and some insights from my journey so far. I hope that this post will help you avoid the mistakes I made — most of which I consider easily avoidable — while you enjoy reading it, and get to know me a little bit more 🤓. A slow start after many years Summ isn’t the first product I really wanted to build. Lacking enough dev skills to even get started was a huge blocker for so many years. In fact, the first product I would’ve LOVED to build was a smart personal shopping assistant. I had this idea 4 years ago; but with no GPT, no coding skills, no technical co-founder, I didn’t have the means to make it happen. I still do not know if such a tool exists and is good enough. All I wanted was a tool that could make data-based predictions about when to buy stuff (“buy a new toothpaste every three months”) and suggest physical products that I might need or be strongly interested in. AFAIK, Amazon famously still struggles with the second one. Fast-forward a few years, I learned the very basics of HTML, CSS, and Vanilla JS. Still was not there to build a product; but good enough to code my design portfolio from scratch. Yet, I couldn’t imagine myself building a product using Vanilla JS. I really hated it, I really sucked at it. So, back to tutorial hell, and to learn about this framework I just heard about: React.React introduced so many new concepts to me. “Thinking in React” is a phrase we heard a lot, and with quite good reasons. After some time, I was able to build very basic tutorial apps, both in React, and React Native; but I have to say that I really hated coding for mobile. At this point, I was already a fan of productivity apps, and had a concept for a time management assistant app in my design portfolio. So, why not build one? Surely, it must be easy, since every coding tutorial starts with a todo app. ❌ WRONG! Building a basic todo app is easy enough, but building one good enough for a place in the market was a challenge I took and failed. I wasted one month on that until I abandoned the project for good. Even if I continued working on it, as the productivity landscape is overly competitive, I wouldn’t be able to make enough money to cover costs, assuming I make any. Since I was (and still am) in between jobs, I decided to abandon the project. 👉 What I learned: Do not start projects with a low ratio of money to effort and time. Example: Even if I get 500 monthly users, 200 of which are paid users (unrealistically high number), assuming an average subscription fee of $5/m (such apps are quite cheap, mostly due to the high competition), it would make me around $1000 minus any occurring costs. Any founder with a product that has 500 active users should make more. Even if it was relatively successful, due to the high competition, I wouldn’t make any meaningful money. PS: I use Todoist today. Due to local pricing, I pay less than $2/m. There is no way I could beat this competitive pricing, let alone the app itself. But, somehow, with a project that wasn’t even functional — let alone being an MVP — I made my first Wi-Fi money: Someone decided that the domain I preemptively purchased is worth something. By this point, I had already abandoned the project, certainly wasn’t going to renew the domain, was looking for a FT job, and a new project that I could work on. And out of nowhere, someone hands me some free money — who am I not to take it? Of course, I took it. The domain is still unused, no idea why 🤔. Ngl, I still hate the fact that my first Wi-Fi money came from this. A new idea worth pursuing? Fast-forward some weeks now. Around March, I got this crazy idea of building an email productivity tool. We all use emails, yet we all hate them. So, this must be fixed. Everyone uses emails, in fact everyone HAS TO use emails. So, I just needed to build a tool and wait for people to come. This was all, really. After all, the problem space is huge, there is enough room for another product, everyone uses emails, no need for any further validation, right? ❌ WRONG ONCE AGAIN! We all hear from the greatest in the startup landscape that we must validate our ideas with real people, yet at least some of us (guilty here 🥸) think that our product will be hugely successful and prove them to be an exception. Few might, but most are not. I certainly wasn't. 👉 Lesson learned: Always validate your ideas with real people. Ask them how much they’d pay for such a tool (not if they would). Much better if they are willing to pay upfront for a discount, etc. But even this comes later, keep reading. I think the difference between “How much” and “If” is huge for two reasons: (1) By asking them for “How much”, you force them to think in a more realistic setting. (2) You will have a more realistic idea on your profit margins. Based on my competitive analysis, I already had a solution in my mind to improve our email usage standards and email productivity (huge mistake), but I did my best to learn about their problems regarding those without pushing the idea too hard. The idea is this: Generate concise email summaries with suggested actions, combine them into one email, and send it at their preferred times. Save as much as time the AI you end up with allows. After all, everyone loves to save time. So, what kind of validation did I seek for? Talked with only a few people around me about this crazy, internet-breaking idea. The responses I got were, now I see, mediocre; no one got excited about it, just said things along the lines of “Cool idea, OK”. So, any reasonable person in this situation would think “Okay, not might not be working”, right? Well, I did not. I assumed that they were the wrong audience for this product, and there was this magical land of user segments waiting eagerly for my product, yet unknowingly. To this day, I still have not reached this magical place. Perhaps, it didn’t exist in the first place. If I cannot find it, whether it exists or not doesn’t matter. I am certainly searching for it. 👉 What I should have done: Once I decide on a problem space (time management, email productivity, etc.), I should decide on my potential user segments, people who I plan to sell my product to. Then I should go talk to those people, ask them about their pains, then get to the problem-solving/ideation phase only later. ❗️ VALIDATION COMES FROM THE REALITY OUTSIDE. What validation looks like might change from product to product; but what invalidation looks like is more or less the same for every product. Nico Jeannen told me yesterday “validation = money in the account” on Twitter. This is the ultimate form of validation your product could get. If your product doesn’t make any money, then something is invalidated by reality: Your product, you, your idea, who knows? So, at this point, I knew a little bit of Python from spending some time in tutorial hell a few years ago, some HTML/CSS/JS, barely enough React to build a working app. React could work for this project, but I needed easy-to-implement server interactivity. Luckily, around this time, I got to know about this new gen of indie hackers, and learned (but didn’t truly understand) about their approach to indie hacking, and this library called Nextjs. How good Next.js still blows my mind. So, I was back to tutorial hell once again. But, this time, with a promise to myself: This is the last time I would visit tutorial hell. Time to start building this "ground-breaking idea" Learning the fundamentals of Next.js was easier than learning of React unsurprisingly. Yet, the first time I managed to run server actions on Next.js was one of the rarest moments that completely blew my mind. To this day, I reject the idea that it is something else than pure magic under its hood. Did I absolutely need Nextjs for this project though? I do not think so. Did it save me lots of time? Absolutely. Furthermore, learning Nextjs will certainly be quite helpful for other projects that I will be tackling in the future. Already got a few ideas that might be worth pursuing in the head in case I decide to abandon Summ in the future. Fast-forward few weeks again: So, at this stage, I had a barely working MVP-like product. Since the very beginning, I spent every free hour (and more) on this project as speed is essential. But, I am not so sure it was worth it to overwork in retrospect. Yet, I know I couldn’t help myself. Everything is going kinda smooth, so what’s the worst thing that could ever happen? Well, both Apple and Google announced their AIs (Apple Intelligence and Google Gemini, respectively) will have email summarization features for their products. Summarizing singular emails is no big deal, after all there were already so many similar products in the market. I still think that what truly matters is a frictionless user experience, and this is why I built this product in a certain way: You spend less than a few minutes setting up your account, and you get to enjoy your email summaries, without ever visiting its website again. This is still a very cool concept I really like a lot. So, at this point: I had no other idea that could be pursued, already spent too much time on this project. Do I quit or not? This was the question. Of course not. I just have to launch this product as quickly as possible. So, I did something right, a quite rare occurrence I might say: Re-planned my product, dropped everything secondary to the core feature immediately (save time on reading emails), tried launching it asap. 👉 Insight: Sell only one core feature at one time. Drop anything secondary to this core feature. Well, my primary occupation is product design. So one would expect that a product I build must have stellar design. I considered any considerable time spent on design at this stage would be simply wasted. I still think this is both true and wrong: True, because if your product’s core benefits suck, no one will care about your design. False, because if your design looks amateurish, no one will trust you and your product. So, I always targeted an average level design with it and the way this tool works made it quite easy as I had to design only 2 primary pages: Landing page and user portal (which has only settings and analytics pages). However, even though I knew spending time on design was not worth much of my time, I got a bit “greedy”: In fact, I redesigned those pages three times, and still ended up with a so-so design that I am not proud of. 👉 What I would do differently: Unless absolutely necessary, only one iteration per stage as long as it works. This, in my mind, applies to everything. If your product’s A feature works, then no need to rewrite it from scratch for any reason, or even refactor it. When your product becomes a success, and you absolutely need that part of your codebase to be written, do so, but only then. Ready to launch, now is th etime for some marketing, right? By July 26, I already had a “launchable” product that barely works (I marked this date on a Notion docs, this is how I know). Yet, I had spent almost no time on marketing, sales, whatever. After all, “You build and they will come”. Did I know that I needed marketing? Of course I did, but knowingly didn’t. Why, you might ask. Well, from my perspective, it had to be a dev-heavy product; meaning that you spend most of your time on developing it, mostly coding skills. But, this is simply wrong. As a rule of thumb, as noted by one of the greatests, Marc Louvion, you should spend at least twice of the building time on marketing. ❗️ Time spent on building \* 2 people don’t know your product > they don’t use your product > you don’t get users > you don’t make money Easy as that. Following the same reasoning, a slightly different approach to planning a project is possible. Determine an approximate time to complete the project with a high level project plan. Let’s say 6 months. By the reasoning above, 2 months should go into building, and 4 into marketing. If you need 4 months for building instead of 2, then you need 8 months of marketing, which makes the time to complete the project 12 months. If you don’t have that much time, then quit the project. When does a project count as completed? Well, in reality, never. But, I think we have to define success conditions even before we start for indie projects and startups; so we know when to quit when they are not met. A success condition could look like “Make $6000 in 12 months” or “Have 3000 users in 6 months”. It all depends on the project. But, once you set it, it should be set in stone: You don’t change it unless absolutely necessary. I suspect there are few principles that make a solopreneur successful; and knowing when to quit and when to continue is definitely one of them. Marc Louvion is famously known for his success, but he got there after failing so many projects. To my knowledge, the same applies to Nico Jeannen, Pieter Levels, or almost everyone as well. ❗️ Determining when to continue even before you start will definitely help in the long run. A half-aed launch Time-leap again. Around mid August, I “soft launched” my product. By soft launch, I mean lazy marketing. Just tweeting about it, posting it on free directories. Did I get any traffic? Surely I did. Did I get any users? Nope. Only after this time, it hit me: “Either something is wrong with me, or with this product” Marketing might be a much bigger factor for a project’s success after all. Even though I get some traffic, not convincing enough for people to sign up even for a free trial. The product was still perfect in my eyes at the time (well, still is ^(\_),) so the right people are not finding my product, I thought. Then, a question that I should have been asking at the very first place, one that could prevent all these, comes to my mind: “How do even people search for such tools?” If we are to consider this whole journey of me and my so-far-failed product to be an already destined failure, one metric suffices to show why. Search volume: 30. Even if people have such a pain point, they are not looking for email summaries. So, almost no organic traffic coming from Google. But, as a person who did zero marketing on this or any product, who has zero marketing knowledge, who doesn’t have an audience on social media, there is not much I could do. Finally, it was time to give up. Or not… In my eyes, the most important element that makes a founder (solo or not) successful (this, I am not by any means) is to solve problems. ❗️ So, the problem was this: “People are not finding my product by organic search” How do I make sure I get some organic traffic and gets more visibility? Learn digital marketing and SEO as much as I can within very limited time. Thankfully, without spending much time, I came across Neil Patel's YT channel, and as I said many times, it is an absolute gold mine. I learned a lot, especially about the fundamentals, and surely it will be fruitful; but there is no magic trick that could make people visit your website. SEO certainly helps, but only when people are looking for your keywords. However, it is truly a magical solution to get in touch with REAL people that are in your user segments: 👉 Understand your pains, understand their problems, help them to solve them via building products. I did not do this so far, have to admit. But, in case you would like to have a chat about your email usage, and email productivity, just get in touch; I’d be delighted to hear about them. Getting ready for a ProductHunt launch The date was Sept 1. And I unlocked an impossible achievement: Running out of Supabase’s free plan’s Egres limit while having zero users. I was already considering moving out of their Cloud server and managing a Supabase CLI service on my Hetzner VPS for some time; but never ever suspected that I would have to do this quickly. The cheapest plan Supabase offers is $25/month; yet, at that point, I am in between jobs for such a long time, basically broke, and could barely afford that price. One or two months could be okay, but why pay for it if I will eventually move out of their Cloud service? So, instead of paying $25, I spent two days migrating out of Supabase Cloud. Worth my time? Definitely not. But, when you are broke, you gotta do stupid things. This was the first time that I felt lucky to have zero users: I have no idea how I would manage this migration if I had any. I think this is one of the core tenets of an indie hacker: Controlling their own environment. I can’t remember whose quote this is, but I suspect it was Naval: Entrepreneurs have an almost pathological need to control their own fate. They will take any suffering if they can be in charge of their destiny, and not have it in somebody else’s hands. What’s truly scary is, at least in my case, we make people around us suffer at the expense of our attempting to control our own fates. I know this period has been quite hard on my wife as well, as I neglected her quite a bit, but sadly, I know that this will happen again. It is something that I can barely help with. Still, so sorry. After working the last two weeks on a ProductHunt Launch, I finally launched it this Tuesday. Zero ranking, zero new users, but 36 kind people upvoted my product, and many commented and provided invaluable feedback. I couldn't be more grateful for each one of them 🙏. Considering all these, what lies in the future of Summ though? I have no idea, to be honest. On one hand, I have zero users, have no job, no income. So, I need a way to make money asap. On the other hand, the whole idea of it revolves around one core premise (not an assumption) that I am not so willing to share; and I couldn’t have more trust in it. This might not be the best iteration of it, however I certainly believe that email usage is one of the best problem spaces one could work on. 👉 But, one thing is for certain: I need to get in touch with people, and talk with them about this product I built so far. In fact, this is the only item on my agenda. Nothing else will save my brainchild <3. Below are some other insights and notes that I got during my journey; as they do not 100% fit into this story, I think it is more suitable to list them here. I hope you enjoyed reading this. Give Summ a try, it comes with a generous free trial, no credit card required. Some additional notes and insights: Project planning is one of the most underestimated skills for solopreneurs. It saves you enormous time, and helps you to keep your focus up. Building B2C products beats building B2B products. Businesses are very willing to pay big bucks if your product helps them. On the other hand, spending a few hours per user who would pay $5/m probably is not worth your time. It doesn’t matter how brilliant your product is if no one uses it. If you cannot sell a product in a certain category/niche (or do not know how to sell it), it might be a good idea not to start a project in it. Going after new ideas and ventures is quite risky, especially if you don’t know how to market it. On the other hand, an already established category means that there is already demand. Whether this demand is sufficient or not is another issue. As long as there is enough demand for your product to fit in, any category/niche is good. Some might be better, some might be worse. Unless you are going hardcore B2B, you will need people to find your product by means of organic search. Always conduct thorough keyword research as soon as possible.

I'm a dev with zero fucking ideas. Help?

Long-time lurker, first-time poster here. I'm hoping you guys can help me out. I consider myself an above average engineer. With over 8 years of industry experience, I can whip out an MVP fast and iterate quickly. I love coding and learning new tech, but here's the issue—I've got absolutely no clue what to build. It's like I'm the least creative person I know, and can't find even one problem to solve. I've tried everything I can think of: Scrolling through ProductHunt until my eyes bled Asking non-tech friends about their "pain points" Stalking Twitter/X to see what people are building Experimenting with new AI tech to explore possibilities I've even attempted to build products. Almost 6 months ago, I started working on an AI conversation app to help non-native speakers like myself improve their English. But I soon realized there were already hundreds of apps doing this, and doing it much better than I could. I abandoned the project, figuring it wasn't unique enough. Same story with a couple of other projects that I started working on and abandoned later. So my question is how the heck you all come up with ideas? Any advice, commiseration, or hell—even random ideas you don’t want to build—would be greatly appreciated.

AI No Code

I want to create an artificial intelligence large language model for my startup but I don’t know how to code. Are there any no code tools I can use to accomplish that task or do I need to learn to code? If I need to know how to code what language, tech stacks, technologies etc do I need to know?

Will AI Tools Make No-Code Platforms Obsolete?

I’ve noticed more non-technical people are building impressive solutions with AI-driven tools like Cursor and Claude. It got me thinking: will no-code platforms like Bubble and Webflow still be relevant in the future? If AI is making it so easy for people to create solutions without knowing how to code. Long-term will there still be a use case for no-code platforms, or will they evolve to behave like Cursor? Curious to hear what you think

What questions to ask to evaluate an offer from start up?

Hello! I am presently working working as a Data Scientist with a medium sized company. Last year my boss left the company to start his own. Very recently his non-solicitation clause expired, and he asked me to join his startup. While I know almost everything about the product idea, and the technical aspect of the startup - I have very less information on more critical points like funding, equity sharing, etc. He has made a verbal unofficial offer, and I have asked for a week to prepare my list of questions for him for me to be able to evaluate his offer. Since I have no knowledge of the startup scene, I would like some help regarding the questions I should put forward to him. Mentioned below are what I know so far and the offer: The company was started by two people, both working full time on it. I would be the third person on the team. The startup aims to introduce AI in a field which has lagged behind in the introduction of technology by at least 2 decades. The big players in this field are conservative, but now they are opening up towards embracing new technology. Personally I have confidence in their idea, and feel this will be a sustainable and profitable company. The offered salary is about 60% of what I make right now. The equity offered is 2%. I do not know the details of the funding they have received so far or the equity split. Any pointers in helping me frame my questions for the evaluation of the offer would be very helpful! Thank you

My startup does $740k on no code. I have other ideas - should I build those on no code or use AI?

Hey yall - I'm the founder of a startup in the HR tech space. We rely almost entirely on no code (mainly bubble). Bubble can do 90% of what we need it to and then I can use third party tools like supabase for the remaining 10% I love Bubble because I don't know how to code but it still lets me build apps. I'm seeing a lot of action in the ai space about how AI makes coding super easy, and I'm wondering if folks think this is a good time to finally learn to code. I'm HUGE on no code, but I've also seen its limits (bubble specifically sucks at handling complex calculations and the way it handles load is pretty wonky). I've been wanting to learn to code for some time now but it never felt worth it since, again, bubble can get me 90% there. But now it looks like I can use AI to get 100% there What do yall think? Worth dropping no code to learn to code with AI? Or is AI not as advanced at coding as folks make it seem?

The Drawing of the Three - Once you look through the veil, nothing is the same again. (I will not promote)

Originally published Nov 5, 2024 In my last post, I talked about assembling a series of filters to use to view the startup landscape, which led me to a few conclusions about what opportunities I should pursue. What did I see through those filters? What I saw through the moire pattern of those two lists overlaid by one another is what I think will be the third great monetization strategy for the internet, matching the pattern of: web1 => Ad monetization web2 => Subscription monetization web3 => For AI, neither of those work anymore, which demands something new. But what? Well that’s the important part, isn’t it? Should I just up and tell you? Yawn. The climax of a movie is at the climax, if they tell you the crux at the beginning, it’s a lot less fun (usually). The standard bearer for web1 and ads was Google (with countless followers), and essentially every website adopted that model for their first pass at content monetization. Google has been… let’s call it fairly successful… so it’s not a bad way to look at things. How many websites live and die by selling advertising? The standard bearers for web2 and subscriptions were Salesforce (for B2B SaaS) and Netflix (for B2C SaaS), with countless followers, to the extent that SaaS has been the dominant startup monetization thesis for the last 15+ years. It’s more old and tired by now than most American politicians, but how many websites live and die by people entering payment details for a monthly or annual subscription? Evidence proves those models for web1 and web2 worked well enough that countless businesses depend on them, and countless fortunes have been made and lost surfing the waves, or crashing against the shorelines, of ads and subs. But it’s also apparent (to me, at least) that now that AI is the dominant startup thesis, neither ads nor subs are going to prevail in an AI-centered world, and for one simple reason: Those monetization strategies are for humans, and AI bots are not humans. Changing Environments Require Changing Strategies Every so often, there’s a fundamental shift that demands everything in the ecosystem adapt to a new habitation strategy to survive. We’ve seen this repeatedly across Earth’s ecology (for instance, introducing free oxygen to the atmosphere, producing respiration while destroying all the life forms that existed before oxygen permeated the atmosphere), and across human society (for example, how nuclear bombs changed war, and how drones are changing it again, for less violent examples, consider the adoption of computers and the subsequent adoption of smartphones). Now the ecosystem of the internet has changed irrevocably, opening up countless new and interesting niches to occupy. Humans may see an ad and buy something stupid (or, occasionally, not-stupid), but an AI won’t unless its programmed to. And subscriptions are designed for humans to consume content at a human rate, not for an AI that can choke down an entire database of content (whatever it may be) at whatever speed the servers can manage. Changing conditions require changing strategies. It was clear to me that: The introduction of AI bots to the internet ecosystem was, is, and will be massively disruptive for a very long time The internet population of bots already exceeds humans and is growing faster than the human population The two dominant monetization strategies are not relevant to bots That disruption of expectations across the ecosystem demands a third strategy, a new strategy to handle a massive change in an existing system. And that strategy needs to accommodate, support, and monetize the new demands from the vast armies of new participants in the internet ecology. Therefore, a method that converts bots from an expense into a revenue source would become a dominant monetization strategy, and therefore whoever owns that strategy will be a dominant player in the internet ecosystem. Set the realization of semi-practical, semi-useful AI against a backdrop of technology cycles that have, in the distant past (in internet terms) produced ads and subs, and more recently produced enormous investment into fintech and crypto, I started to see a path that felt like it would grow over time to become a new monetization strategy that works in the AI ecosystem. Sun Tzu had a couple drinks, saw a couple things… There’s at least, and possibly only, two things I know about fighting: You cannot fight the tide, and it’s much harder to fight an uphill battle. If my whole thesis on this go-around was to go with the flow, and that trickle of insight was leading me from my overlook along a roaring flow of cash coursing through a valley filled with AI startups, where exactly would it lead me? Most rivers lead to the sea eventually, but they can take winding paths, and sometimes the quickest route from the mountain to the sea isn’t to follow the river, but to understand where the river leads and go there instead. Getting a view from on high can save you a lot of time on your journey. But before I get to where the path has led (or is leading) that will explain the objective I’ve identified, and the deliverables I have to produce to reach it, let’s talk about a few of the steps on the path I’ve been taking that highlight the process I followed. I figure if I explain the steps I’m taking, as I’m taking them, it may be easier for people who haven’t trod this route before to follow me and understand how to carve their own course towards their own objectives. And maybe the real treasure will be the friends we make along the way. (I will not promote)

How a founder built a B2B AI startup to serve with 65+ global brands (including Fortune500 companies) (I will not promote)

AI Palette is an AI-driven platform that helps food and beverage companies predict emerging product trends. I had the opportunity recently to sit down with the founder to get his advice on building an AI-first startup, which he'll be going through in this post. (I will not promote) About AI Palette: Co-founders: >!2 (Somsubhra GanChoudhuri, Himanshu Upreti)!!100+!!$12.7M USD!!AI-powered predictive analytics for the CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) industry!!Signed first paying customer in the first year!!65+ global brands, including Cargill, Diageo, Ajinomoto, Symrise, Mondelez, and L’Oréal, use AI Palette!!Every new product launched has secured a paying client within months!!Expanded into Beauty & Personal Care (BPC), onboarding one of India’s largest BPC companies within weeks!!Launched multiple new product lines in the last two years, creating a unified suite for brand innovation!Identify the pain points in your industry for ideas* When I was working in the flavour and fragrance industry, I noticed a major issue CPG companies faced: launching a product took at least one to two years. For instance, if a company decided today to launch a new juice, it wouldn’t hit the market until 2027. This long timeline made it difficult to stay relevant and on top of trends. Another big problem I noticed was that companies relied heavily on market research to determine what products to launch. While this might work for current consumer preferences, it was highly inefficient since the product wouldn’t actually reach the market for several years. By the time the product launched, the consumer trends had already shifted, making that research outdated. That’s where AI can play a crucial role. Instead of looking at what consumers like today, we realised that companies should use AI to predict what they will want next. This allows businesses to create products that are ahead of the curve. Right now, the failure rate for new product launches is alarmingly high, with 8 out of 10 products failing. By leveraging AI, companies can avoid wasting resources on products that won’t succeed, leading to better, more successful launches. Start by talking to as many industry experts as possible to identify the real problems When we first had the idea for AI Palette, it was just a hunch, a gut feeling—we had no idea whether people would actually pay for it. To validate the idea, we reached out to as many people as we could within the industry. Since our focus area was all about consumer insights, we spoke to professionals in the CPG sector, particularly those in the insights departments of CPG companies. Through these early conversations, we began to see a common pattern emerge and identified the exact problem we wanted to solve. Don’t tell people what you’re building—listen to their frustrations and challenges first. Going into these early customer conversations, our goal was to listen and understand their challenges without telling them what we were trying to build. This is crucial as it ensures that you can gather as much data about the problem to truly understand it and that you aren't biasing their answers by showing your solution. This process helped us in two key ways: First, it validated that there was a real problem in the industry through the number of people who spoke about experiencing the same problem. Second, it allowed us to understand the exact scale and depth of the problem—e.g., how much money companies were spending on consumer research, what kind of tools they were currently using, etc. Narrow down your focus to a small, actionable area to solve initially. Once we were certain that there was a clear problem worth solving, we didn’t try to tackle everything at once. As a small team of two people, we started by focusing on a specific area of the problem—something big enough to matter but small enough for us to handle. Then, we approached customers with a potential solution and asked them for feedback. We learnt that our solution seemed promising, but we wanted to validate it further. If customers are willing to pay you for the solution, it’s a strong validation signal for market demand. One of our early customer interviewees even asked us to deliver the solution, which we did manually at first. We used machine learning models to analyse the data and presented the results in a slide deck. They paid us for the work, which was a critical moment. It meant we had something with real potential, and we had customers willing to pay us before we had even built the full product. This was the key validation that we needed. By the time we were ready to build the product, we had already gathered crucial insights from our early customers. We understood the specific information they wanted and how they wanted the results to be presented. This input was invaluable in shaping the development of our final product. Building & Product Development Start with a simple concept/design to validate with customers before building When we realised the problem and solution, we began by designing the product, but not by jumping straight into coding. Instead, we created wireframes and user interfaces using tools like InVision and Figma. This allowed us to visually represent the product without the need for backend or frontend development at first. The goal was to showcase how the product would look and feel, helping potential customers understand its value before we even started building. We showed these designs to potential customers and asked for feedback. Would they want to buy this product? Would they pay for it? We didn’t dive into actual development until we found a customer willing to pay a significant amount for the solution. This approach helped us ensure we were on the right track and didn’t waste time or resources building something customers didn’t actually want. Deliver your solution using a manual consulting approach before developing an automated product Initially, we solved problems for customers in a more "consulting" manner, delivering insights manually. Recall how I mentioned that when one of our early customer interviewees asked us to deliver the solution, we initially did it manually by using machine learning models to analyse the data and presenting the results to them in a slide deck. This works for the initial stages of validating your solution, as you don't want to invest too much time into building a full-blown MVP before understanding the exact features and functionalities that your users want. However, after confirming that customers were willing to pay for what we provided, we moved forward with actual product development. This shift from a manual service to product development was key to scaling in a sustainable manner, as our building was guided by real-world feedback and insights rather than intuition. Let ongoing customer feedback drive iteration and the product roadmap Once we built the first version of the product, it was basic, solving only one problem. But as we worked closely with customers, they requested additional features and functionalities to make it more useful. As a result, we continued to evolve the product to handle more complex use cases, gradually developing new modules based on customer feedback. Product development is a continuous process. Our early customers pushed us to expand features and modules, from solving just 20% of their problems to tackling 50–60% of their needs. These demands shaped our product roadmap and guided the development of new features, ultimately resulting in a more complete solution. Revenue and user numbers are key metrics for assessing product-market fit. However, critical mass varies across industries Product-market fit (PMF) can often be gauged by looking at the size of your revenue and the number of customers you're serving. Once you've reached a certain critical mass of customers, you can usually tell that you're starting to hit product-market fit. However, this critical mass varies by industry and the type of customers you're targeting. For example, if you're building an app for a broad consumer market, you may need thousands of users. But for enterprise software, product-market fit may be reached with just a few dozen key customers. Compare customer engagement and retention with other available solutions on the market for product-market fit Revenue and the number of customers alone isn't always enough to determine if you're reaching product-market fit. The type of customer and the use case for your product also matter. The level of engagement with your product—how much time users are spending on the platform—is also an important metric to track. The more time they spend, the more likely it is that your product is meeting a crucial need. Another way to evaluate product-market fit is by assessing retention, i.e whether users are returning to your platform and relying on it consistently, as compared to other solutions available. That's another key indication that your solution is gaining traction in the market. Business Model & Monetisation Prioritise scalability Initially, we started with a consulting-type model where we tailor-made specific solutions for each customer use-case we encountered and delivered the CPG insights manually, but we soon realized that this wasn't scalable. The problem with consulting is that you need to do the same work repeatedly for every new project, which requires a large team to handle the workload. That is not how you sustain a high-growth startup. To solve this, we focused on building a product that would address the most common problems faced by our customers. Once built, this product could be sold to thousands of customers without significant overheads, making the business scalable. With this in mind, we decided on a SaaS (Software as a Service) business model. The benefit of SaaS is that once you create the software, you can sell it to many customers without adding extra overhead. This results in a business with higher margins, where the same product can serve many customers simultaneously, making it much more efficient than the consulting model. Adopt a predictable, simplistic business model for efficiency. Look to industry practices for guidance When it came to monetisation, we considered the needs of our CPG customers, who I knew from experience were already accustomed to paying annual subscriptions for sales databases and other software services. We decided to adopt the same model and charge our customers an annual upfront fee. This model worked well for our target market, aligning with industry standards and ensuring stable, recurring revenue. Moreover, our target CPG customers were already used to this business model and didn't have to choose from a huge variety of payment options, making closing sales a straightforward and efficient process. Marketing & Sales Educate the market to position yourself as a thought leader When we started, AI was not widely understood, especially in the CPG industry. We had to create awareness around both AI and its potential value. Our strategy focused on educating potential users and customers about AI, its relevance, and why they should invest in it. This education was crucial to the success of our marketing efforts. To establish credibility, we adopted a thought leadership approach. We wrote blogs on the importance of AI and how it could solve problems for CPG companies. We also participated in events and conferences to demonstrate our expertise in applying AI to the industry. This helped us build our brand and reputation as leaders in the AI space for CPG, and word-of-mouth spread as customers recognized us as the go-to company for AI solutions. It’s tempting for startups to offer products for free in the hopes of gaining early traction with customers, but this approach doesn't work in the long run. Free offerings don’t establish the value of your product, and customers may not take them seriously. You should always charge for pilots, even if the fee is minimal, to ensure that the customer is serious about potentially working with you, and that they are committed and engaged with the product. Pilots/POCs/Demos should aim to give a "flavour" of what you can deliver A paid pilot/POC trial also gives you the opportunity to provide a “flavour” of what your product can deliver, helping to build confidence and trust with the client. It allows customers to experience a detailed preview of what your product can do, which builds anticipation and desire for the full functionality. During this phase, ensure your product is built to give them a taste of the value you can provide, which sets the stage for a broader, more impactful adoption down the line. Fundraising & Financial Management Leverage PR to generate inbound interest from VCs When it comes to fundraising, our approach was fairly traditional—we reached out to VCs and used connections from existing investors to make introductions. However, looking back, one thing that really helped us build momentum during our fundraising process was getting featured in Tech in Asia. This wasn’t planned; it just so happened that Tech in Asia was doing a series on AI startups in Southeast Asia and they reached out to us for an article. During the interview, they asked if we were fundraising, and we mentioned that we were. As a result, several VCs we hadn’t yet contacted reached out to us. This inbound interest was incredibly valuable, and we found it far more effective than our outbound efforts. So, if you can, try to generate some PR attention—it can help create inbound interest from VCs, and that interest is typically much stronger and more promising than any outbound strategies because they've gone out of their way to reach out to you. Be well-prepared and deliberate about fundraising. Keep trying and don't lose heart When pitching to VCs, it’s crucial to be thoroughly prepared, as you typically only get one shot at making an impression. If you mess up, it’s unlikely they’ll give you a second chance. You need to have key metrics at your fingertips, especially if you're running a SaaS company. Be ready to answer questions like: What’s your retention rate? What are your projections for the year? How much will you close? What’s your average contract value? These numbers should be at the top of your mind. Additionally, fundraising should be treated as a structured process, not something you do on the side while juggling other tasks. When you start, create a clear plan: identify 20 VCs to reach out to each week. By planning ahead, you’ll maintain momentum and speed up the process. Fundraising can be exhausting and disheartening, especially when you face multiple rejections. Remember, you just need one investor to say yes to make it all worthwhile. When using funds, prioritise profitability and grow only when necessary. Don't rely on funding to survive. In the past, the common advice for startups was to raise money, burn through it quickly, and use it to boost revenue numbers, even if that meant operating at a loss. The idea was that profitability wasn’t the main focus, and the goal was to show rapid growth for the next funding round. However, times have changed, especially with the shift from “funding summer” to “funding winter.” My advice now is to aim for profitability as soon as possible and grow only when it's truly needed. For example, it’s tempting to hire a large team when you have substantial funds in the bank, but ask yourself: Do you really need 10 new hires, or could you get by with just four? Growing too quickly can lead to unnecessary expenses, so focus on reaching profitability as soon as possible, rather than just inflating your team or burn rate. The key takeaway is to spend your funds wisely and only when absolutely necessary to reach profitability. You want to avoid becoming dependent on future VC investments to keep your company afloat. Instead, prioritize reaching break-even as quickly as you can, so you're not reliant on external funding to survive in the long run. Team-Building & Leadership Look for complementary skill sets in co-founders When choosing a co-founder, it’s important to find someone with a complementary skill set, not just someone you’re close to. For example, I come from a business and commercial background, so I needed someone with technical expertise. That’s when I found my co-founder, Himanshu, who had experience in machine learning and AI. He was a great match because his technical knowledge complemented my business skills, and together we formed a strong team. It might seem natural to choose your best friend as your co-founder, but this can often lead to conflict. Chances are, you and your best friend share similar interests, skills, and backgrounds, which doesn’t bring diversity to the table. If both of you come from the same industry or have the same strengths, you may end up butting heads on how things should be done. Having diverse skill sets helps avoid this and fosters a more collaborative working relationship. Himanshu (left) and Somsubhra (right) co-founded AI Palette in 2018 Define roles clearly to prevent co-founder conflict To avoid conflict, it’s essential that your roles as co-founders are clearly defined from the beginning. If your co-founder and you have distinct responsibilities, there is no room for overlap or disagreement. This ensures that both of you can work without stepping on each other's toes, and there’s mutual respect for each other’s expertise. This is another reason as to why it helps to have a co-founder with a complementary skillset to yours. Not only is having similar industry backgrounds and skillsets not particularly useful when building out your startup, it's also more likely to lead to conflicts since you both have similar subject expertise. On the other hand, if your co-founder is an expert in something that you're not, you're less likely to argue with them about their decisions regarding that aspect of the business and vice versa when it comes to your decisions. Look for employees who are driven by your mission, not salary For early-stage startups, the first hires are crucial. These employees need to be highly motivated and excited about the mission. Since the salary will likely be low and the work demanding, they must be driven by something beyond just the paycheck. The right employees are the swash-buckling pirates and romantics, i.e those who are genuinely passionate about the startup’s vision and want to be part of something impactful beyond material gains. When employees are motivated by the mission, they are more likely to stick around and help take the startup to greater heights. A litmus test for hiring: Would you be excited to work with them on a Sunday? One of the most important rounds in the hiring process is the culture fit round. This is where you assess whether a candidate shares the same values as you and your team. A key question to ask yourself is: "Would I be excited to work with this person on a Sunday?" If there’s any doubt about your answer, it’s likely not a good fit. The idea is that you want employees who align with the company's culture and values and who you would enjoy collaborating with even outside of regular work hours. How we structure the team at AI Palette We have three broad functions in our organization. The first two are the big ones: Technical Team – This is the core of our product and technology. This team is responsible for product development and incorporating customer feedback into improving the technology Commercial Team – This includes sales, marketing, customer service, account managers, and so on, handling everything related to business growth and customer relations. General and Administrative Team – This smaller team supports functions like finance, HR, and administration. As with almost all businesses, we have teams that address the two core tasks of building (technical team) and selling (commercial team), but given the size we're at now, having the administrative team helps smoothen operations. Set broad goals but let your teams decide on execution What I've done is recruit highly skilled people who don't need me to micromanage them on a day-to-day basis. They're experts in their roles, and as Steve Jobs said, when you hire the right person, you don't have to tell them what to do—they understand the purpose and tell you what to do. So, my job as the CEO is to set the broader goals for them, review the plans they have to achieve those goals, and periodically check in on progress. For example, if our broad goal is to meet a certain revenue target, I break it down across teams: For the sales team, I’ll look at how they plan to hit that target—how many customers they need to sell to, how many salespeople they need, and what tactics and strategies they plan to use. For the technical team, I’ll evaluate our product offerings—whether they think we need to build new products to attract more customers, and whether they think it's scalable for the number of customers we plan to serve. This way, the entire organization's tasks are cascaded in alignment with our overarching goals, with me setting the direction and leaving the details of execution to the skilled team members that I hire.

So, you want to be a CEO?

I used to post here occasionally with business advice. But it turns out most of you in this sub have a dream, but seemingly no execution. You want to be rich sure, but without understanding what it takes to be a founder, run a startup, create a team around an idea and a strategy, and push them to their limits without burning them out, to win in a market that's never heard of you - not to mention the pressures on your personal life. So, I'm going to post a new game called, "So, You Want to Be A CEO?" The game: Each week I will post a reasonably complex challenge that a startup founder has to overcome, between inception of the company until it goes bust or series A. You respond with your best course of action - that is, what would you do in the situation provided? YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THE WORK! The rules: One response per person Your upvotes are your score for the week I will track them in the OP Scores are calculated on the Friday of that week You must answer the prompt completely, if you don't you lose half your points earned that week. ChatGPT is allowed, but it may not provide sufficient advice to win the game Prompt 1: "Boomerang" You are an HR executive turned entrepreneur. You have identified a significant issue: professionals over the age of 55 are struggling to re-enter the workforce and you also believe corporations are missing out on a wealth of institutional knowledge in retirement. You believe you can help solve this problem by creating Boomerang, a platform dedicated to empowering these individuals and corporate partners by connecting them with the best candidates aged 55 and older. Objective: Your goal is to validate your concept, develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and balance your personal responsibilities while laying the foundation for Boomerang’s success. This Week's Key Challenges and Decisions: Market Research Challenge 1: You need to validate the market need for Boomerang. This involves understanding the pain points of older job seekers and potential employers. This will take 4 days (non-sequential) How do you get started? Developing an MVP Challenge 2: With limited resources, you need to create an MVP that effectively demonstrates Boomerang’s value. This will take 2 days. Can be combined with other challenges. How do you get started? Dealing with Personal Health Issues Challenge 3: Your doctor mentioned your bloodwork is irregular, but can't pinpoint the cause. They recommend you see a specialist before Friday. This will take 1 day. Give it a shot! There's no right answer, just answer what your plan to do and try to optimize the use of your time to the best of your ability. EDIT: Scoreboard (I realize now the top post generally gets the most upvotes, so I may change the points system): u/conscious_border3019 - 22 u/inBoulderForSummer - 4 u/that_whey-or-the-lee - 3 u/AgencySaas - 3 u/Gold-Ad-8211 - 2 u/93024662 - 2 u/DeusExBam - 2 u/njm19920 - 2 u/SilentEconomist9265 - 2 u/ai_servant - 2 u/Background-Term2759 - 2 u/Insane_squirrel - 2 u/kiss_thechef - 2 u/codeyman2 - 2 u/Xentoxus - 2 u/LongComplex4395 - 2

Practical tips on hiring the best people? Which country? Remote vs. In Person?

Hi Reddit, I run a tech startup that's grown to $20M ARR. While we are relatively big, we are incredibly cash strapped till Q3 due to debt we took on last year and are currently paying back. In Q3, I'll finally have a large budget to sit and focus on building out our team. Now I'm trying to figure out: what are the optimal circumstances? We really screwed it up with our first batch of key hires after our seed round: US Product Manager, US Head of Customer Success - quit; US Head of Sales, US Head of Engineering - fired. We've built a mostly B or C team, and it really annoys me. We are slow, we are not up for big challenges, and people are, on average, not that brilliant. Out of our nearly 150 employees, I think I have ONE A player. However, they are also functioning at 60%. We are building additional "brands" this year, so there might be a way to separate a higher performing culture into our second brand. I have 3 questions, might seem relatively basic, but as we did such a bad job the first time around, I'd love to learn what you all think! I'm trying to build an optimal team with A-players! Q1: Today we are fully remote, should I get an in person office going? In which city? Q2: In general, which city should I hire talent from? I live in San Francisco and sometimes LA, but find the culture here generally too laid back. New York? But to keep a high quality, let's say, marketer, interested long term, they're going to want $200-220k base (and that's not even that competitive). While that is fine, it will slow down my intended plan for hiring. London? Salaries are comparatively much lower, and talent quality is still pretty high, but I am a little unsure of the work culture. In terms of budget, I'd love to aim for $150-180k/key hire and to go as high as $300k if appropriate. Q3: Should I be hiring people with 20 years of relevant experience? 2-3 years with a hunger to prove themselves? Fresh grads we can mould into whatever we need? As for what exactly I'm trying to hire for, lots of key hires: department heads, digital marketers, content people, engineers, AI engineers, operations people, strategy people, and more. I don't know enough about all the working cultures in these places, but I want to find and incentivize people who are willing to own and take responsibility for an area of the business, be trusted to make good decisions, and view it as their responsibility to improve their areas drastically, more than the typical 9-5. I feel today's workforce is not content with base + light equity, and maybe we should consider tying an unlimited-upside incentive to a relevant KPI to incentivize people working harder than just "what is required"? (edit: I know might get some hate for this "work harder than 9-5" mentality, but to clarify, I'm trying to figure out what incentive structures will naturally attract the type of person that wants this type of working life) What do you think? Also, any other practical tips for finding awesome people like this? edit: hooooly! this thread blew up. I'll do my best to reply to everyone, thank you for all your responses!

I am the founder of a b2c saas - organically scaled to $2M ARR, 1.9M users. Started company when I was 22, moved to Korea, built it here over 9 years. Ask me anything

It's 12:05am on Saturday morning and I just had some coffee so I'd like to take this time to talk with the startup subreddit on my journey building a b2c saas company. Specifically on the topics of growth, product, investment/governance, or strategy. For what we are, we are the most popular AI resume builder these days - the story of the company is a bit unique since I started it as a college graduate, then moved to Korea, where I was able to turn the idea in a scaling startup via government programs and Korean VCs. These days our traction shows that we are doing a few things right. I'm happy to share any knowledge or experiences I've gained over this time! Metrics: ARR - 2M Users - 1.9M Employees - 10

Mentally burnt out

My startup is not working and this is the year I probably need to shut down. I have struggled and tried to make this work for 5 years now but I am down to one person and hired consultants. I have a feeling of utter failure and no significant achievements. The minor alerts I have put out to potential future job prospects look bleak too. I am seen as too broad having been a Founder and not deep. I have an Engineering background but played the Go to Market/CEO role at my startup. Part of my mistake was not getting deep into the Engineering (outsourcing it). I have a rare combination of knowledge in Gen AI, Autonomous Vehicles and Strategy. However, there seem to be no takers - the market is too nascent and my skills have become too broad - a founder skillset rather than deep. What do I do now? I am mentally burnt out to make $$ out of this startup but the job market is not helping either.

How would I go about using ai to analyze stats and creating predictions based off of data?

Sorry if I’m asking the question the wrong way but I’ve been a avid sports bettor for years and with the recent surge in ai and it being more accessible to the average person Ive been thinking it were some how possible to use with betting I mean it’s all numbers at the end of the day. If I were to be able to feed info to the bot & have it analyze past games it could pick up on trends and predict outcomes for specific stats and what not. Obviously there is no way to predict something 100% but even if I were to be able to make something that was accurate 40% of the time I look at it as a win. I know alot of bettors of late have been implementing the ai into their strategies as well so I know it’s possible but my question more so is where would be the right direction to start in for some one with ver little knowledge of ai outside of chatgpt?

100 AI-Driven Businesses Later… Here’s the Truth No One Tells You! (I will not promote)

I analyzed 100 businesses across industries that implemented AI, and here’s what I found! Most businesses use AI for: Marketing automation (15%) – email copy, ad creatives, SEO research (ChatGPT, Jasper, Copy.ai) Customer support (12%) – AI chatbots handling up to 70% of inquiries before escalation (Intercom, Drift) Data analysis & insights (10%) – AI summarizing reports, trends in seconds (Tableau AI, ChatGPT for spreadsheets) Sales prospecting (10%) – lead scoring, automated outreach (Apollo.io, HubSpot AI) Workflow automation (8%) – connecting tools and automating repetitive tasks (Zapier, Make.com) Biggest AI adoption challenges: 20% couldn’t decide which AI solution would give the highest ROI 15% faced technical difficulties like integration with existing systems 10% struggled to choose the right tools from too many options Honestly, a lot of businesses waste time on AI solutions that don’t align with their needs. I made a quick questionnaire to help find the right ones tailored to your needs. Let me know if you want to check it out.

There's a handful of frequent discussion/post types tanking this sub's overall quality

We've all seen them, here's a few that I've routinely noticed: Painfully obvious ChatGPT'd dos-and-donts list gurus Poorly veiled posts attempting to disguise crowdsourcing market research as random curiosity (e.g, what are your pain points with todo apps and what would it take for you to pay a million dollars for mine?) Delusions of grandeur - recruitment posts for taking down FAANG companies with no existing traction, moat, funding, team, or product Idea guys asking how get full time engineers to build massive products for free Seeking a tech founder with no details about the business and people in the comments begging to join despite knowing nothing about it Building an app like but with amateuraly implemented, needless AI that could easily do better in a week to sink us Asking for product validation, expecting a standing ovation and losing their cool when it's decidedly no good Did I miss anything?

Content aggregation that acts as a middleman for content discovery via third-party marketplace & revenue sharing (i will not promote but I'm looking for fellow researchers)

High level I’m considering a content aggregation business model, but one that acts as an open marketplace where third party devs and where world class data scientists compete to build the best recommenders for different use cases. (E.g. the incentives can be ad revenue sharing or subscription based for niche professional markets.) The idea is to facilitate more bottom up innovation from third party data scientists. The platform itself just acts as the middleman. (Also something that strips out original ads and makes it easy to skip paid sponsorship sections would be great.)  I’ve seen startups building web crawlers and content aggregation systems for other AI startups. My proposal is better in the sense that third party devs are instead responsible for implementing whatever questionable hacks are necessarily to scrape platforms that don’t necessarily want to be scraped.  Personally, I’m more concerned about getting the right information than ever before, to this end I can’t rely on platform specific recommenders. The solution is more bottom up innovation in content promotion. More generally, if you’re also concerned about consuming game changing information that’s too easily missed: we need a platform that incentivizes bottom up innovation of content promotion. What we need is a platform that functions like a marketplace where third party devs and where world class data scientists compete to build the best recommenders for different use cases. Here’s some elevator pitches I’m considering:  Did you know that the magic behind YouTube is its recommendation engine? Now, imagine an open platform where independent engines compete to deliver the most personalized content feed—from news to local events—directly to you. Interested in rethinking how we find content? “In today’s fragmented digital landscape, a single platform no longer holds sway over content discovery. The Network Effect is dead: audiences are more mobile than ever; and big tech killed it. In such a fragmented landscape we’re building a bottom-up, decentralized marketplace for recommendation engines—a solution that taps into diverse revenue streams through subscriptions, ad revenue, and affiliate partnerships. Invest in the future of personalized content aggregation.” “Are you a developer passionate about algorithms and content discovery? Our open marketplace lets you build and monetize your own recommendation engine, competing to deliver the most engaging, personalized feeds. Join a revolution where your innovation can directly shape how the world finds content.” “Are you tired of being told what to watch or read by one mysterious algorithm? Imagine taking control—choosing from a marketplace of smart recommendation engines that curate content just for you. It’s a revolution in content discovery where you hold the power.” (As a Utahn this one is interesting because even mormons are talking about the dangers of “doom scrolling” though it’s seldom discussed in society at large.) As far as simple hooks I’m considering:  One platform to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.  Choose how you discover—content recommenders that work for you.  The area where recommender engines battle to win your feed. Request I would love to start prototyping this idea and see what else I can uncover from such preliminary research. But I want to get a couple other likeminded individuals onboard.  I'm the best when it comes to iOS/macOS development, but there's tons of backend work that needs to be done which I wouldn’t have the time for if i'm focused on the native clients. Who am I 'ideally' looking for?  I’ve heard of weird stats to the effect that if you scale up a population to billions of people, the number of life overlaps starts skyrocketing. Not just physical lookalikes, but people with eerily similar life paths, personalities, habits, and even thoughts — without ever knowing each other. Where are my clones? Such is whom I’m looking for in an ideal world.  Take a hunch  People nowadays have no concept of going out on a limb, taking a ‘hunch’, and backing their instincts. Everything has to be calculated, proven, and guaranteed before they make a move. In contrast consider the success of the Chinese DeepSeek project: According to Asianometry’s YouTube video on DeepSeek, their “memory-saving multi-head latent architecture” (whatever that means, just quoting the name) came about from a researchers ‘hunch’, which the company bet big on and the result was drastically improved performance on low end hardware…  Here in the west the idea of betting on a hunch is inconceivable. We have no balls to chase long term insights. My own instincts when it comes to software is such because I’ve wasted too much of my life on small scale projects. All I’m trying to do is attempt a more scaled up experiment based on some hunches with me and a few other likeminded individuals.  Just as the early oil prospectors didn’t have precise maps—just intuition and test drills. They had to drill, analyze the pressure, and adjust. The best oil fields weren’t found by foresight alone, but by adaptive exploration. The startup space itself is liken to the first prospectors who got the gold nuggets lying in the riverbed. In such an environment moving first has its advantages but nowadays I wish I could have all those shitty ‘engineers’ sent to their maker.  Today the reality is such that you’ve got to dig deep—where vast stores of wealth can be found—or go home, and those who dig into the depths cannot use mere forethought, for what lies beneath cannot be seen by the mind’s eye.  I will not promote but I'm looking for fellow research oriented minds.

Using Claude.. I think I may have built something - suggested next steps, maybe get a dev house to build it? (I will not promote)

So, for context, I am an IT manager (non code) so I can converse all around tech, but I've just never had the nack for coding. My brain doesn't like it. I've been using different AI's for a while for general stuff, but I thought I would give Claude a go to build something that just popped into my head. Took me a while to figure out how to prompt it correctly, but it appears to have built each of the sections of this browser extension tool and even wrote me a business plan on it (which I didn't ask it to do). I had to pay for premium but boy did it just go to work. It has absolutely given me more than any other AI model yet including deepseek, chatgpt (free) and google gemini advanced (pro), I just don't know if it is good. Claude gave me the code as requested for the admin dashboard, backend implementation, browser extension, and security implementation - though I do recognise it probably won't be perfect and there will still be loads to do to get a fully functioning mvp together. So, I have this code... that I don't know how to use :D I'm a business mind that can speak technical, and I am looking to progress this forward. What are your suggestions to get it fully implemented? Find a partner/CTO (up for 50/50 split preferably in the UK), engage a dev shop to build it out, or I've heard places like fiverr are decent? Thoughts?

Hot Take: Not all your startups need AI forced into them

I'm a final year Computer Engineering student, hence applying for jobs all around. There's this particular trend I've noticed with startups that are coming up these days. That is, even for the absolute basic stuff they'll use 'AI', and they'll think they built something 'revolutionary'. No. You're breaking your product in ways you don't realise. An example, that even some well established companies are guilty of: AI Chatbots You absolutely don't need them and it's an entire gimmick. If you really wanna implement a chatbot, connect the user to an actual person on your end, which I think is not possible if you're at a 'startup' stage. You'll need employees who can handle user queries in real time. If the user really is stuck let them use the 'Contact Us' page. A really close relative of mine is very vocal about the frustration he faces whenever he tries to use the AI Chatbot on any well known e-com website. The only case for AI Chatbot that makes sense is when it's directing the customer to an actual customer support rep if none of the AI's solutions is working for the customer. Even then, implementing a search page for FAQ is extremely easy and user friendly. Another example: AI Interviewer I recently interviewed for a startup, and their whole interviewing process was AI'zed?!?! No real person at the other end, I was answering to their questions which were in video format. They even had a 'mascot' / 'AI interviewer' avatar designed by an AI (AI-ception???). This mascot just text-to-speech'ed all the questions for me to rewind and hear what I missed again. And I had to record video and audio to answer these questions on their platform itself. The entire interview process just could've been a questionnaire, or if you're really concerned on the integrity of the interviewee, just take a few minutes out of your oh-so-busy schedule as a startup owner. Atleast for hiring employees who would make the most impact on your product going ahead. I say the most impact, because (atleast as a developer) the work done by these employees would define how robust your product is, and/or how easily other features can be integrated into the codebase. Trust me, refactoring code later on would only cost you time and money. These resources would rather be more useful in other departments of your startup. The only use case for an AI Interviewer I see is for preparing for an actual interview, provided that feedback is given to the user at the earliest, which you don't need to worry about as a startup owner. So yeah, you're probably better off without integrating AI in your product. Thank you for reading. TLDR; The title; I know AI is the new thing and gets everyone drooling and all, but for the love of God, just focus on what your startup does best and put real people behind it; Integrating AI without human intervention is as good as a broken product; Do your hiring yourself, or through real people, emphasizing on the fact that the people you hire at an early stage will define your growth ahead;

I spent 6 months on building a tool, and got 0 zero users. Here is my story.

Edit Thank you all so much for your time reading my story. Your support, feedback, criticism, and skepticism; all helped me a lot, and I couldn't appreciate it enough \^\_\^ TL;DR I spent 6 months on a tool that currently has 0 users. Below is what I learned during my journey, sharing because I believe most mistakes are easily avoidable. Do not overestimate your product and assume it will be an exception to fundamental principles. Principles are there for a reason. Always look for validation before you start. Avoid building products with a low money-to-effort ratio/in very competitive fields. Unless you have the means, you probably won't make it. Pick a problem space, pick your target audience, and talk to them before thinking about a solution. Identify and match their pain points. Only then should you think of a solution. If people are not overly excited or willing to pay in advance for a discounted price, it might be a sign to rethink. Sell one and only one feature at a time. Avoid everything else. If people don't pay for that one core feature, no secondary feature will change their mind. Always spend twice as much time marketing as you do building. You will not get users if they don't know it exists. Define success metrics ("1000 users in 3 months" or "$6000 in the account at the end of 6 months") before you start. If you don't meet them, strongly consider quitting the project. If you can't get enough users to keep going, nothing else matters. VALIDATION, VALIDATION, VALIDATION. Success is not random, but most of our first products will not make a success story. Know when to admit failure, and move on. Even if a product of yours doesn't succeed, what you learned during its journey will turn out to be invaluable for your future. My story So, this is the story of a product, Summ, that I’ve been working on for the last 6 months. As it's the first product I’ve ever built, after watching you all from the sidelines, I have learned a lot, made many mistakes, and did only a few things right. Just sharing what I’ve learned and some insights from my journey so far. I hope that this post will help you avoid the mistakes I made — most of which I consider easily avoidable — while you enjoy reading it, and get to know me a little bit more 🤓. A slow start after many years Summ isn’t the first product I really wanted to build. Lacking enough dev skills to even get started was a huge blocker for so many years. In fact, the first product I would’ve LOVED to build was a smart personal shopping assistant. I had this idea 4 years ago; but with no GPT, no coding skills, no technical co-founder, I didn’t have the means to make it happen. I still do not know if such a tool exists and is good enough. All I wanted was a tool that could make data-based predictions about when to buy stuff (“buy a new toothpaste every three months”) and suggest physical products that I might need or be strongly interested in. AFAIK, Amazon famously still struggles with the second one. Fast-forward a few years, I learned the very basics of HTML, CSS, and Vanilla JS. Still was not there to build a product; but good enough to code my design portfolio from scratch. Yet, I couldn’t imagine myself building a product using Vanilla JS. I really hated it, I really sucked at it. So, back to tutorial hell, and to learn about this framework I just heard about: React.React introduced so many new concepts to me. “Thinking in React” is a phrase we heard a lot, and with quite good reasons. After some time, I was able to build very basic tutorial apps, both in React, and React Native; but I have to say that I really hated coding for mobile. At this point, I was already a fan of productivity apps, and had a concept for a time management assistant app in my design portfolio. So, why not build one? Surely, it must be easy, since every coding tutorial starts with a todo app. ❌ WRONG! Building a basic todo app is easy enough, but building one good enough for a place in the market was a challenge I took and failed. I wasted one month on that until I abandoned the project for good. Even if I continued working on it, as the productivity landscape is overly competitive, I wouldn’t be able to make enough money to cover costs, assuming I make any. Since I was (and still am) in between jobs, I decided to abandon the project. 👉 What I learned: Do not start projects with a low ratio of money to effort and time. Example: Even if I get 500 monthly users, 200 of which are paid users (unrealistically high number), assuming an average subscription fee of $5/m (such apps are quite cheap, mostly due to the high competition), it would make me around $1000 minus any occurring costs. Any founder with a product that has 500 active users should make more. Even if it was relatively successful, due to the high competition, I wouldn’t make any meaningful money. PS: I use Todoist today. Due to local pricing, I pay less than $2/m. There is no way I could beat this competitive pricing, let alone the app itself. But, somehow, with a project that wasn’t even functional — let alone being an MVP — I made my first Wi-Fi money: Someone decided that the domain I preemptively purchased is worth something. By this point, I had already abandoned the project, certainly wasn’t going to renew the domain, was looking for a FT job, and a new project that I could work on. And out of nowhere, someone hands me some free money — who am I not to take it? Of course, I took it. The domain is still unused, no idea why 🤔. Ngl, I still hate the fact that my first Wi-Fi money came from this. A new idea worth pursuing? Fast-forward some weeks now. Around March, I got this crazy idea of building an email productivity tool. We all use emails, yet we all hate them. So, this must be fixed. Everyone uses emails, in fact everyone HAS TO use emails. So, I just needed to build a tool and wait for people to come. This was all, really. After all, the problem space is huge, there is enough room for another product, everyone uses emails, no need for any further validation, right? ❌ WRONG ONCE AGAIN! We all hear from the greatest in the startup landscape that we must validate our ideas with real people, yet at least some of us (guilty here 🥸) think that our product will be hugely successful and prove them to be an exception. Few might, but most are not. I certainly wasn't. 👉 Lesson learned: Always validate your ideas with real people. Ask them how much they’d pay for such a tool (not if they would). Much better if they are willing to pay upfront for a discount, etc. But even this comes later, keep reading. I think the difference between “How much” and “If” is huge for two reasons: (1) By asking them for “How much”, you force them to think in a more realistic setting. (2) You will have a more realistic idea on your profit margins. Based on my competitive analysis, I already had a solution in my mind to improve our email usage standards and email productivity (huge mistake), but I did my best to learn about their problems regarding those without pushing the idea too hard. The idea is this: Generate concise email summaries with suggested actions, combine them into one email, and send it at their preferred times. Save as much as time the AI you end up with allows. After all, everyone loves to save time. So, what kind of validation did I seek for? Talked with only a few people around me about this crazy, internet-breaking idea. The responses I got were, now I see, mediocre; no one got excited about it, just said things along the lines of “Cool idea, OK”. So, any reasonable person in this situation would think “Okay, not might not be working”, right? Well, I did not. I assumed that they were the wrong audience for this product, and there was this magical land of user segments waiting eagerly for my product, yet unknowingly. To this day, I still have not reached this magical place. Perhaps, it didn’t exist in the first place. If I cannot find it, whether it exists or not doesn’t matter. I am certainly searching for it. 👉 What I should have done: Once I decide on a problem space (time management, email productivity, etc.), I should decide on my potential user segments, people who I plan to sell my product to. Then I should go talk to those people, ask them about their pains, then get to the problem-solving/ideation phase only later. ❗️ VALIDATION COMES FROM THE REALITY OUTSIDE. What validation looks like might change from product to product; but what invalidation looks like is more or less the same for every product. Nico Jeannen told me yesterday “validation = money in the account” on Twitter. This is the ultimate form of validation your product could get. If your product doesn’t make any money, then something is invalidated by reality: Your product, you, your idea, who knows? So, at this point, I knew a little bit of Python from spending some time in tutorial hell a few years ago, some HTML/CSS/JS, barely enough React to build a working app. React could work for this project, but I needed easy-to-implement server interactivity. Luckily, around this time, I got to know about this new gen of indie hackers, and learned (but didn’t truly understand) about their approach to indie hacking, and this library called Nextjs. How good Next.js still blows my mind. So, I was back to tutorial hell once again. But, this time, with a promise to myself: This is the last time I would visit tutorial hell. Time to start building this "ground-breaking idea" Learning the fundamentals of Next.js was easier than learning of React unsurprisingly. Yet, the first time I managed to run server actions on Next.js was one of the rarest moments that completely blew my mind. To this day, I reject the idea that it is something else than pure magic under its hood. Did I absolutely need Nextjs for this project though? I do not think so. Did it save me lots of time? Absolutely. Furthermore, learning Nextjs will certainly be quite helpful for other projects that I will be tackling in the future. Already got a few ideas that might be worth pursuing in the head in case I decide to abandon Summ in the future. Fast-forward few weeks again: So, at this stage, I had a barely working MVP-like product. Since the very beginning, I spent every free hour (and more) on this project as speed is essential. But, I am not so sure it was worth it to overwork in retrospect. Yet, I know I couldn’t help myself. Everything is going kinda smooth, so what’s the worst thing that could ever happen? Well, both Apple and Google announced their AIs (Apple Intelligence and Google Gemini, respectively) will have email summarization features for their products. Summarizing singular emails is no big deal, after all there were already so many similar products in the market. I still think that what truly matters is a frictionless user experience, and this is why I built this product in a certain way: You spend less than a few minutes setting up your account, and you get to enjoy your email summaries, without ever visiting its website again. This is still a very cool concept I really like a lot. So, at this point: I had no other idea that could be pursued, already spent too much time on this project. Do I quit or not? This was the question. Of course not. I just have to launch this product as quickly as possible. So, I did something right, a quite rare occurrence I might say: Re-planned my product, dropped everything secondary to the core feature immediately (save time on reading emails), tried launching it asap. 👉 Insight: Sell only one core feature at one time. Drop anything secondary to this core feature. Well, my primary occupation is product design. So one would expect that a product I build must have stellar design. I considered any considerable time spent on design at this stage would be simply wasted. I still think this is both true and wrong: True, because if your product’s core benefits suck, no one will care about your design. False, because if your design looks amateurish, no one will trust you and your product. So, I always targeted an average level design with it and the way this tool works made it quite easy as I had to design only 2 primary pages: Landing page and user portal (which has only settings and analytics pages). However, even though I knew spending time on design was not worth much of my time, I got a bit “greedy”: In fact, I redesigned those pages three times, and still ended up with a so-so design that I am not proud of. 👉 What I would do differently: Unless absolutely necessary, only one iteration per stage as long as it works. This, in my mind, applies to everything. If your product’s A feature works, then no need to rewrite it from scratch for any reason, or even refactor it. When your product becomes a success, and you absolutely need that part of your codebase to be written, do so, but only then. Ready to launch, now is th etime for some marketing, right? By July 26, I already had a “launchable” product that barely works (I marked this date on a Notion docs, this is how I know). Yet, I had spent almost no time on marketing, sales, whatever. After all, “You build and they will come”. Did I know that I needed marketing? Of course I did, but knowingly didn’t. Why, you might ask. Well, from my perspective, it had to be a dev-heavy product; meaning that you spend most of your time on developing it, mostly coding skills. But, this is simply wrong. As a rule of thumb, as noted by one of the greatests, Marc Louvion, you should spend at least twice of the building time on marketing. ❗️ Time spent on building \* 2 people don’t know your product > they don’t use your product > you don’t get users > you don’t make money Easy as that. Following the same reasoning, a slightly different approach to planning a project is possible. Determine an approximate time to complete the project with a high level project plan. Let’s say 6 months. By the reasoning above, 2 months should go into building, and 4 into marketing. If you need 4 months for building instead of 2, then you need 8 months of marketing, which makes the time to complete the project 12 months. If you don’t have that much time, then quit the project. When does a project count as completed? Well, in reality, never. But, I think we have to define success conditions even before we start for indie projects and startups; so we know when to quit when they are not met. A success condition could look like “Make $6000 in 12 months” or “Have 3000 users in 6 months”. It all depends on the project. But, once you set it, it should be set in stone: You don’t change it unless absolutely necessary. I suspect there are few principles that make a solopreneur successful; and knowing when to quit and when to continue is definitely one of them. Marc Louvion is famously known for his success, but he got there after failing so many projects. To my knowledge, the same applies to Nico Jeannen, Pieter Levels, or almost everyone as well. ❗️ Determining when to continue even before you start will definitely help in the long run. A half-aed launch Time-leap again. Around mid August, I “soft launched” my product. By soft launch, I mean lazy marketing. Just tweeting about it, posting it on free directories. Did I get any traffic? Surely I did. Did I get any users? Nope. Only after this time, it hit me: “Either something is wrong with me, or with this product” Marketing might be a much bigger factor for a project’s success after all. Even though I get some traffic, not convincing enough for people to sign up even for a free trial. The product was still perfect in my eyes at the time (well, still is ^(\_),) so the right people are not finding my product, I thought. Then, a question that I should have been asking at the very first place, one that could prevent all these, comes to my mind: “How do even people search for such tools?” If we are to consider this whole journey of me and my so-far-failed product to be an already destined failure, one metric suffices to show why. Search volume: 30. Even if people have such a pain point, they are not looking for email summaries. So, almost no organic traffic coming from Google. But, as a person who did zero marketing on this or any product, who has zero marketing knowledge, who doesn’t have an audience on social media, there is not much I could do. Finally, it was time to give up. Or not… In my eyes, the most important element that makes a founder (solo or not) successful (this, I am not by any means) is to solve problems. ❗️ So, the problem was this: “People are not finding my product by organic search” How do I make sure I get some organic traffic and gets more visibility? Learn digital marketing and SEO as much as I can within very limited time. Thankfully, without spending much time, I came across Neil Patel's YT channel, and as I said many times, it is an absolute gold mine. I learned a lot, especially about the fundamentals, and surely it will be fruitful; but there is no magic trick that could make people visit your website. SEO certainly helps, but only when people are looking for your keywords. However, it is truly a magical solution to get in touch with REAL people that are in your user segments: 👉 Understand your pains, understand their problems, help them to solve them via building products. I did not do this so far, have to admit. But, in case you would like to have a chat about your email usage, and email productivity, just get in touch; I’d be delighted to hear about them. Getting ready for a ProductHunt launch The date was Sept 1. And I unlocked an impossible achievement: Running out of Supabase’s free plan’s Egres limit while having zero users. I was already considering moving out of their Cloud server and managing a Supabase CLI service on my Hetzner VPS for some time; but never ever suspected that I would have to do this quickly. The cheapest plan Supabase offers is $25/month; yet, at that point, I am in between jobs for such a long time, basically broke, and could barely afford that price. One or two months could be okay, but why pay for it if I will eventually move out of their Cloud service? So, instead of paying $25, I spent two days migrating out of Supabase Cloud. Worth my time? Definitely not. But, when you are broke, you gotta do stupid things. This was the first time that I felt lucky to have zero users: I have no idea how I would manage this migration if I had any. I think this is one of the core tenets of an indie hacker: Controlling their own environment. I can’t remember whose quote this is, but I suspect it was Naval: Entrepreneurs have an almost pathological need to control their own fate. They will take any suffering if they can be in charge of their destiny, and not have it in somebody else’s hands. What’s truly scary is, at least in my case, we make people around us suffer at the expense of our attempting to control our own fates. I know this period has been quite hard on my wife as well, as I neglected her quite a bit, but sadly, I know that this will happen again. It is something that I can barely help with. Still, so sorry. After working the last two weeks on a ProductHunt Launch, I finally launched it this Tuesday. Zero ranking, zero new users, but 36 kind people upvoted my product, and many commented and provided invaluable feedback. I couldn't be more grateful for each one of them 🙏. Considering all these, what lies in the future of Summ though? I have no idea, to be honest. On one hand, I have zero users, have no job, no income. So, I need a way to make money asap. On the other hand, the whole idea of it revolves around one core premise (not an assumption) that I am not so willing to share; and I couldn’t have more trust in it. This might not be the best iteration of it, however I certainly believe that email usage is one of the best problem spaces one could work on. 👉 But, one thing is for certain: I need to get in touch with people, and talk with them about this product I built so far. In fact, this is the only item on my agenda. Nothing else will save my brainchild <3. Below are some other insights and notes that I got during my journey; as they do not 100% fit into this story, I think it is more suitable to list them here. I hope you enjoyed reading this. Give Summ a try, it comes with a generous free trial, no credit card required. Some additional notes and insights: Project planning is one of the most underestimated skills for solopreneurs. It saves you enormous time, and helps you to keep your focus up. Building B2C products beats building B2B products. Businesses are very willing to pay big bucks if your product helps them. On the other hand, spending a few hours per user who would pay $5/m probably is not worth your time. It doesn’t matter how brilliant your product is if no one uses it. If you cannot sell a product in a certain category/niche (or do not know how to sell it), it might be a good idea not to start a project in it. Going after new ideas and ventures is quite risky, especially if you don’t know how to market it. On the other hand, an already established category means that there is already demand. Whether this demand is sufficient or not is another issue. As long as there is enough demand for your product to fit in, any category/niche is good. Some might be better, some might be worse. Unless you are going hardcore B2B, you will need people to find your product by means of organic search. Always conduct thorough keyword research as soon as possible.

AI will obsolete most young vertical SAAS startups, I will not promote

This is an unpopular opinion, but living in New York City and working with a ton of vertical SaaS startups, meaning basically database wrapper startups that engineer workflows for specific industries and specific users, what they built was at one point in time kind of innovative, or their edge was the fact that they built these like very specific workflows. And so a lot of venture capital and seed funding has gone into these types of startups. But with AI, those database wrapper startups are basically obsolete. I personally feel like all of these companies are going to have to shift like quickly to AI or watch all of their edge and what value they bring to the table absolutely evaporate. It's something that I feel like it's not currently being priced in and no one really knows how to price, but it's going to be really interesting to watch as more software becomes generated and workflows get generated. I’m not saying these companies are worth nothing, but their products need to be completely redone EDIT: for people not understanding: The UX is completely different from traditional vertical saas. Also in real world scenarios, AI does not call the same APIs as the front end. The data handling and validation is different. It’s 50% rebuild. Then add in the technical debt, the fact that they might need a different tech stack to build agents correctly, different experience in their engineers. the power struggles that occur inside companies that need a huge change like this could tank the whole thing alone. It can be done, but these companies are vulnerable. The edge they have is working with existing customers to get it right. But they basically blew millions on a tech implementation that’s not as relevant going forwards. Investors maybe better served putting money into a fresh cap table

Hiring technical team software engineer/full stack as a non technical founder tips to assess competency

Hey guys I run a non profit enterprise where we help legacy enterprises and also brick and mortar non profits and charities transform digitally through Ai driven solutions and also building right infrastructure for them government and companies pays us to deliver this service so we don’t charge our clients. We are growing the team and wanted to know more about how you would go around hiring someone if your non technical.

Technical entrepreneur looking for next team

Hi everyone, I'm a 10+ year veteran software developer with a proven track record of building consumer-facing products (shipped 10+ projects, 5 for consumers). However, I'm not looking to build another consumer facing product (we all know how difficult that is) unless you have the network and funds. I'm gearing up for my next venture and searching for the perfect co-pilot (or two!) with equal splits. -- Here's the skinny: You (ideal): Experienced (ideally with at least one failed project under your belt - learning is key!) Ready to grind and U.S based. Titles are meaningless - passion and hustle matter most. Are tired of tarpit ideas (dating app, fitness app, etc.) Bonus Points: Another technical co-founder to build magic with. Non-technical rockstars with skills in customer acquisition, fundraising, or deep industry knowledge. -- Please send me a DM! Let's chat and see if we can build something together. -- Full disclosure: I did use AI to write some of these because I'm not super great at writing these out

Marketing strategy for early-stage startup

Hi! I'm a first-time founder and now we with my co-founder are working on launching our solution. We are working on a b2c service that visualizes what people feel based on their notes. Our potential users are women 18-29 who are interested in feeling better. I'm non-technical so marketing is in my responsibilities. Now I am trying to create something like a marketing strategy for this early-stage launch, and I would like to know your opinions about it, maybe I missed something that could work for us. In my plan, we start by announcing in personal social networks, like LI, Ig and meeting new people on offline events. We also would try to have some paid or unpaid announcements in groups on Fb about health, well-being, new apps, AI (we use AI in our service), women entrepreneurs supportive communities. We were thinking about Tinder Ads, but I didn't have any reviews of it. We also plan to work with influencers on Ig and YT, maybe TikTok. And also would like to try Google Ads, IG ads, YT ads. &#x200B; Have you tried something of it? How it was? Maybe I missed something that worked for you in similar cases?

Lessons from 139 YC AI startups (S23)

YC's Demo Day was last week, and with it comes another deluge of AI companies. A record-breaking 139 startups were in some way related to AI or ML - up from 112 in the last batch. Here are 5 of my biggest takeaways: AI is (still) eating the world. It's remarkable how diverse the industries are - over two dozen verticals were represented, from materials science to social media to security. However, the top four categories were: AI Ops: Tooling and platforms to help companies deploy working AI models. We'll discuss more below, but AI Ops has become a huge category, primarily focused on LLMs and taming them for production use cases. Developer Tools: Apps, plugins, and SDKs making it easier to write code. There were plenty of examples of integrating third-party data, auto-generating code/tests, and working with agents/chatbots to build and debug code. Healthcare + Biotech: It seems like healthcare has a lot of room for automation, with companies working on note-taking, billing, training, and prescribing. And on the biotech side, there are some seriously cool companies building autonomous surgery robots and at-home cancer detection. Finance + Payments: Startups targeting banks, fintechs, and compliance departments. This was a wide range of companies, from automated collections to AI due diligence to "Copilot for bankers." Those four areas covered over half of the startups. The first two make sense: YC has always filtered for technical founders, and many are using AI to do what they know - improve the software developer workflow. But it's interesting to see healthcare and finance not far behind. Previously, I wrote: Large enterprises, healthcare, and government are not going to send sensitive data to OpenAI. This leaves a gap for startups to build on-premise, compliant \[LLMs\] for these verticals. And we're now seeing exactly that - LLMs focused on healthcare and finance and AI Ops companies targeting on-prem use cases. It also helps that one of the major selling points of generative AI right now is cost-cutting - an enticing use case for healthcare and finance. Copilots are king. In the last batch, a lot of startups positioned themselves as "ChatGPT for X," with a consumer focus. It seems the current trend, though, is "Copilot for X" - B2B AI assistants to help you do everything from KYC checks to corporate event planning to chip design to negotiate contracts. Nearly two dozen companies were working on some sort of artificial companion for businesses - and a couple for consumers. It's more evidence for the argument that AI will not outright replace workers - instead, existing workers will collaborate with AI to be more productive. And as AI becomes more mainstream, this trend of making specialized tools for specific industries or tasks will only grow. That being said - a Bing-style AI that lives in a sidebar and is only accessible via chat probably isn't the most useful form factor for AI. But until OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google change their approach (or until another company steps up), we'll probably see many more Copilots. AI Ops is becoming a key sector. "AI Ops" has been a term for only a few years. "LLM Ops" has existed for barely a year. And yet, so many companies are focused on training, fine-tuning, deploying, hosting, and post-processing LLMs it's quickly becoming a critical piece of the AI space. It's a vast industry that's sprung up seemingly overnight, and it was pretty interesting to see some of the problems being solved at the bleeding edge. For example: Adding context to language models with as few as ten samples. Pausing and moving training runs in real-time. Managing training data ownership and permissions. Faster vector databases. Fine-tuning models with synthetic data. But as much ~~hype~~ enthusiasm and opportunity as there might be, the size of the AI Ops space also shows how much work is needed to really productionalize LLMs and other models. There are still many open questions about reliability, privacy, observability, usability, and safety when it comes to using LLMs in the wild. Who owns the model? Does it matter? Nine months ago, anyone building an LLM company was doing one of three things: Training their own model from scratch. Fine-tuning a version of GPT-3. Building a wrapper around ChatGPT. Thanks to Meta, the open-source community, and the legions of competitors trying to catch up to OpenAI, there are now dozens of ways to integrate LLMs. However, I found it interesting how few B2B companies mentioned whether or not they trained their own model. If I had to guess, I'd say many are using ChatGPT or a fine-tuned version of Llama 2. But it raises an interesting question - if the AI provides value, does it matter if it's "just" ChatGPT behind the scenes? And once ChatGPT becomes fine-tuneable, when (if ever) will startups decide to ditch OpenAI and use their own model instead? "AI" isn't a silver bullet. At the end of the day, perhaps the biggest lesson is that "AI" isn't a magical cure-all - you still need to build a defensible company. At the beginning of the post-ChatGPT hype wave, it seemed like you just had to say "we're adding AI" to raise your next round or boost your stock price. But competition is extremely fierce. Even within this batch, there were multiple companies with nearly identical pitches, including: Solving customer support tickets. Negotiating sales contracts. Writing drafts of legal documents. Building no-code LLM workflows. On-prem LLM deployment. Automating trust and safety moderation. As it turns out, AI can be a competitive advantage, but it can't make up for a bad business. The most interesting (and likely valuable) companies are the ones that take boring industries and find non-obvious use cases for AI. In those cases, the key is having a team that can effectively distribute a product to users, with or without AI. Where we’re headed I'll be honest - 139 companies is a lot. In reviewing them all, there were points where it just felt completely overwhelming. But after taking a step back, seeing them all together paints an incredibly vivid picture of the current AI landscape: one that is diverse, rapidly evolving, and increasingly integrated into professional and personal tasks. These startups aren't just building AI for the sake of technology or academic research, but are trying to address real-world problems. Technology is always a double-edged sword - and some of the startups felt a little too dystopian for my taste - but I'm still hopeful about AI's ability to improve productivity and the human experience.

Looking for a B2C Platform Tech Stack (Repo/Stack/Boilerplate)

Hi everyone, I'm a non-technical founder and am looking for a complete tech stack/repo for a B2C platform, where user participation (e.g. upvotes) is key. I’m familiar with solutions like ShipFast, but it is super tuned in for SaaS and I need something more similar to a ProductHunt-style platform. Ideally, I’d love to find a repo that also includes a boilerplate to simplify setup and customization. I use an AI co-pilot for many of my tasks, so having a pre-configured stack would be incredibly useful to streamline my work. If you know of any existing repos that I can clone, or if you think it might be a good idea to hire someone from a platform like Upwork to create one for me, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Any recommendations or help would be greatly appreciated!

Looking for a technical cofounder with experience in building websites and marketplaces

Are you passionate about revolutionizing traditional processes? Do you have the expertise to build scalable platforms and want to be part of something transformative? I’m a second-year Economics student at the University of Warwick with a deep drive for creating impactful solutions. I’m seeking a technical co-founder to join me in building a startup dedicated to transforming how startups hire entry-level talent. About the Project I’m developing a recruitment marketplace that connects early-stage and growing startups with talented students and graduates. Our goal is to streamline the hiring process, making it hassle-free for startups while creating meaningful career opportunities for the next generation of talent. What I’m Looking For in a Technical Co-Founder I need someone who can complement my non-technical skills and help take this project to the next level. The ideal co-founder will have: A strong background in programming online marketplace platforms. Experience managing large databases efficiently. Knowledge in machine learning and AI, with a vision to integrate these in future features. Skills in scaling online platforms for a larger audience. The ability to work in synergy with me to shape and execute the vision. A passion for the idea—I’m happy to share more details in a meeting! Key responsibilities will include platform development, handling backend work, deploying the MVP, aiding in design, and collaborating on product iterations. About Me I bring experience in business strategy, operations, finance, product/project management, marketing, and sales—essentially, I cover everything except the technical aspects of development. I previously worked on a social communication platform for school students during high school. I also gained valuable experience as a business analyst in another startup. Why Join me? This is an exciting opportunity to build a product from the ground up, make an impact in the startup ecosystem, and grow alongside a venture poised to redefine hiring. We need: A seamless MVP launch. Networking efforts to onboard startups and expand our reach. Together, we can create something transformative, fostering innovation and enabling career growth for students while helping startups find the talent they need to succeed. If you’re excited about the prospect of building something revolutionary and have the technical skills to complement my business acumen, I’d love to connect. Let’s discuss how we can work together to create the next generation of hiring solutions. Please DM if you are interested in getting to know more about this project! Looking forward

Is my idea + progress good enough to raise pre-seed round? CRM for construction niches. Non-tech founder.

Is my startup idea and progress good enough to raise a pre-seed round? It’s a CRM with meaningful AI integrations for specific type of B2B construction companies. I only want to continue at my current pace if it’s realistic to start raising within the next 2 weeks. At first, I thought it was fine because simple companies still get on Y-comb such as hammr and Relate CRM , but now I’m not sure. Would love to get the community’s thoughts on this. I’ve been working on this for about a week. &#x200B; Key Highlights (You can skip to longer section below) Product is CRM for B2B construction companies. The previous tech company I worked at used an in-house built CRM for their workflow, and I’m creating that solution and applying it to B2B construction companies that have similar workflows. No competitors I’ve found. I’m uniquely positioned to spearhead: B2B SaaS/tech sales + expertise in construction I’m a non-tech sales founder with experience in UI/UX. Will bring on CTO co-founder once I start raising as that would entice better talent Progress + Traction $400 MRR in pre-sales, can get to \~$800-1000 EOM Validated through customer interviews Created some Figma frames, product overview, user journeys, business plan Made a simple but meaningful AI tool that will be available to those that sign up for waitlist. Did this with GitHub + ChatGPT Landing page website going up this week followed by PPC campaign, email marketing, and outreach. My GF works in enterprise sales and she’ll help me generate more leads. &#x200B; Long Version Background B2B SaaS/Tech sales. I worked at enterprise company as an Account Executive where I worked with funded startups and their development, UI/UX, and Product management teams. I have a general knowledge in all these - my best being UI/UX design as I can work with Figma well Domain expertise: my family has had a construction company since I was young. I have a large network because of this. Problem At my previous company, we had a custom in-house built CRM for our workflow. It worked okay, despite being maintained by multiple engineers costing hundreds of thousands a year. I’m creating a CRM that solves that, and applying it to construction industries that can make use of it. I have a great network here which makes it easy for me get sales quickly. Vision Building this CRM for construction niche will allow us to generate MRR fast. We will be first movers in bringing meaningful AI tools to construction, which is generating significant interest. This gives us the opportunity to build the foundational technology that can be adapted to a wider audience such as my previous company and others - think researchers, consultants, etc. Traction + Current Progress (1 week) Validated idea through user interviews and pre-sales. Currently have $400 MRR in pre-sales. I expect $800-1000 in a month if I continue at my pace. This is from doing typical B2B sales. I’ve set up a CRM for this. Created product overview, user journeys, wireframes and some Figma frames, business plan Created a simple but meaningful AI tool for the niche which will be available to those that sign up for the waitlist. Created with GitHub + ChatGPT Completing landing page website this week. Will start PPC ads (I’m experienced in this) after that to generate sign-ups. I’ll also start email marketing from lists I’ve scraped. Team Solo-founder, will bring on CTO co-founder once I start raising funds. I have promising candidates, but feel that I need to raise funds to really entice a good co-founder. I’m uniquely positioned to head this product; B2B sales having worked with many CRMs + construction expertise and network. That said, I’ve never actually done anything that* impressive besides being an AE at a known enterprise techy company (but not FAANG level). &#x200B; I want to acknowledge that my progress might sound more impressive than it is - it's still just a CRM after all, and I'm non-technical. Should I keep going? Advice? I also have a great offer to lead sales at a profitable startup, but I could always do both if it was worth it. I’m feeling really uncertain for some reason :/ maybe it’s just burnout.

Seeking advice from non technical founders

I am building a software platform that will help aspiring non technical AI founders go from 0-1 in less than 24 hours. This is not your typical no-code solution but rather a combination of few bespoke solutions that can be built without platform lock-in. Premise of the idea As a technical founder myself, I find that I and others I have met, lack domain knowledge for an industry other than tech. This makes it harder for us to build vertical SaaS. On the other hand, non technical folks don't have a way to build using AI without knowing the technical details of managing AI and the right architecture to use. Solution A platform where you can pick and choose components for an app. Provide it your own data and then let AI do the heavy lifting. Ask If you are a non technical founder, would you be interested in this? What reservation would you have? What would make this a no brainer for you?

Accepted To Y Combinator - I will not promote

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone for giving clear and honest advice. It really helped me to make my decisions and know what I should focus on first. This community is awesome! I'm trying to get accepted to Y Combinator and realistically assessing my profile. I'm a non-technical, solo founder, in my early 40s, and balancing startup ambitions with family responsibilities (two kids). I understand the traditional YC profile often skews younger and technical, and solo non-technical founders might face an uphill climb. I'm specifically interested in hearing from anyone in r/startups who can identify with this background and applied (or was accepted) to YC. Were you accepted to YC despite being a non-technical, solo founder, and/or over 40 with family commitments? If you applied and were not accepted, do you feel these factors played a role, and what was your experience? Any advice for someone in my situation to strengthen my application and approach? Does anyone have recommendations for me as a non-technical founder to effectively attract and onboard a technical co-founder in the AI domain? Thank you for sharing your expertise and experiences.

Looking for a 3/4 Non-Technical Co-founders and 1 Technical co-founder

I have 3 startups that I would like to others to join. They are already up and running but I don't have the time to run all of them at once. Equity first then hopefully soon salary. Medical Recruitment in the UK - looking for Marketing and/or recruitment experience. You do not have to be in the UK and it can be alongside your current job. I already have 2000 nurses from overseas ready to come over. I have 2 pipelines involving education companies and IELTS training. Branding Company (UK and USA) - looking for marketers to push this company. This is in its infancy but I have a pool of 600 domain names along with a number of branding domains. I also have 2 trademarks pending in the UK. AI Saas - this is something I have been working on for a long time but cannot get off the ground myself. I would love the support of a technical co-founder but if I can get others to help it will be much faster. This software would also help support the other companies. This one is really just in my head and not reality yet but you never know. To clarify this is about people having fun, enjoying what they do and making money through this journey.

So, you want to be a CEO?

I used to post here occasionally with business advice. But it turns out most of you in this sub have a dream, but seemingly no execution. You want to be rich sure, but without understanding what it takes to be a founder, run a startup, create a team around an idea and a strategy, and push them to their limits without burning them out, to win in a market that's never heard of you - not to mention the pressures on your personal life. So, I'm going to post a new game called, "So, You Want to Be A CEO?" The game: Each week I will post a reasonably complex challenge that a startup founder has to overcome, between inception of the company until it goes bust or series A. You respond with your best course of action - that is, what would you do in the situation provided? YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THE WORK! The rules: One response per person Your upvotes are your score for the week I will track them in the OP Scores are calculated on the Friday of that week You must answer the prompt completely, if you don't you lose half your points earned that week. ChatGPT is allowed, but it may not provide sufficient advice to win the game Prompt 1: "Boomerang" You are an HR executive turned entrepreneur. You have identified a significant issue: professionals over the age of 55 are struggling to re-enter the workforce and you also believe corporations are missing out on a wealth of institutional knowledge in retirement. You believe you can help solve this problem by creating Boomerang, a platform dedicated to empowering these individuals and corporate partners by connecting them with the best candidates aged 55 and older. Objective: Your goal is to validate your concept, develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and balance your personal responsibilities while laying the foundation for Boomerang’s success. This Week's Key Challenges and Decisions: Market Research Challenge 1: You need to validate the market need for Boomerang. This involves understanding the pain points of older job seekers and potential employers. This will take 4 days (non-sequential) How do you get started? Developing an MVP Challenge 2: With limited resources, you need to create an MVP that effectively demonstrates Boomerang’s value. This will take 2 days. Can be combined with other challenges. How do you get started? Dealing with Personal Health Issues Challenge 3: Your doctor mentioned your bloodwork is irregular, but can't pinpoint the cause. They recommend you see a specialist before Friday. This will take 1 day. Give it a shot! There's no right answer, just answer what your plan to do and try to optimize the use of your time to the best of your ability. EDIT: Scoreboard (I realize now the top post generally gets the most upvotes, so I may change the points system): u/conscious_border3019 - 22 u/inBoulderForSummer - 4 u/that_whey-or-the-lee - 3 u/AgencySaas - 3 u/Gold-Ad-8211 - 2 u/93024662 - 2 u/DeusExBam - 2 u/njm19920 - 2 u/SilentEconomist9265 - 2 u/ai_servant - 2 u/Background-Term2759 - 2 u/Insane_squirrel - 2 u/kiss_thechef - 2 u/codeyman2 - 2 u/Xentoxus - 2 u/LongComplex4395 - 2

Better ways to get leads for my MVP development service? I will not promote

Hi I'm Jay, I've been a dev for over 7 years. I've worked with organisations like the Qatar Airlines Currently I run a small dev shop focusing on building MVPs for non-tech founders specifically. Now I've been running meta ads and it's been okay. Working on 2 interesting projects currently. The workload is lower than our capacity but it's alright. The problem is- most of the leads don't seem to be qualified enough and fall through. Instead of actual founders who want to build something and know what it takes, I get wannabe entrepreneurs who have way too much expectations for absolute peanuts for budget Bare in mind, I already charge pretty low for the MVP as one of my USPs is cost-effective ($5k). I legit had a meeting with someone who expected me to develop a fully fledged AI powered MARKETPLACE for $1000😭 It's so hard not to take offense to things like that and absolutely lose my sh*t because WHAT💀 Any advice on where or how to get qualified and serious clients? Is there a way to target founders who've raised pre-seed or seed funding? I know it's a long shot since most startups don't get funded pre MVP but just something I'm trying to consider just in case Any and all advice would be appreciated, thank you🙏🏼 PS: Sorry about the rant halfway through😭🙏🏼

Competing with much bigger companies that have lame products? How do I market and carve out a niche? (I will not promote)

I've been working on a product for the last few months that competes with CapCut, Adobe Premier, Veed, Descript, DaVinci Resolve, etc. Basically, it's a fancy video editor. (no link and I will not promote but just some background context) I'm very technical and started creating videos for TikTok but really wanted to take my game to the next level. My channel sort of blew up on me in the first month and I was able to get 2M views and 10k followers. My initial thinking was that I was going to use AI to make video editing fancy/faster and sort of have this as a "script" that I used personally. Basically, give myself a serious competitive advantage. However, it sort of spiraled out of control! What started off as a weekend project, turned into 2 weekends, which turned into about 2 months of continuous hacking. If I'm going to spend a significant amount of time on this, I might as well try to productize it and try to at least make enough money that I break even on my time. The thing I'm worried about, in the back of my mind, is that if I shop this, that my competitors, with their signifiant resources, could clone what I'm doing quickly. However, at the same time, why haven't they done so already? I mean maybe I have a better understanding of the market than they do because they don't actually use their products. I know that sounds like a bit of a cop out in a way but there are plenty of entrepreneurs who have started companies and crushed it just because they were heads down and focused. Another problem I face, is that I think VCs may not be super excited about this because it's B2C-ish and it's not in a super exciting space. Maybe you could say it's in the AI video space, and they're excited about AI video, but it's just an AI video editor, not fully creating AI videos from scratch like SORA. I think since I blew up my TikTok feed before, that I could do it again, and if I get 2M views, and I have a outro on my video, that I could start to convert some of these as customers. Especially, if I started to create videos for creators which is more focused on the target market. So without funding, can I really tackle these existing competitors? PS. "I will not promote" but I have to talk about this somewhat abstractly but I won't link to anything.

16 years old and thinking about creating a startup

Hi to everyone, this is my first post on Reddit and r/Startups. Sorry in advance if there is any mistake. I'm 16 years old, and I'm already planning to create my startup. Growing up in the digital age has given me both inspiration and doubts. On one side, you hear advice like, “You need connections with powerful people to succeed.” On the other, there are stories of founders coming from poverty and now leading billion-dollar companies.That really sucks. I'm here because I believe this community offers honest and grounded insights. So you can analyze, I leave you my goals. I accept all the advice you have. I’ll finish high school in two years while using my free time to learn about AI, programming, agile methods, and business basics. After that, I plan to pursue a Systems Engineering degree, even though I’ve debated skipping university. My older siblings convinced me it’s worth it for the professional and technical foundation. During college, I aim to freelance, save money, and build connections with entrepreneurs and developers. Beyond that, my 15-year plan includes working in tech companies to gain experience, creating an MVP for my startup, and securing funding through investors or incubators. I want to solve real-world problems using tools that feel future-proof. While I sometimes feel behind, I’m determined to catch up and take advantage of the opportunities ahead. I know the startup journey is uncertain—like a vulnerable animal facing competition, funding issues, and market challenges. But I’m ready to adapt as my vision evolves. Like for example the time. Obviously I would like to keep it exactly but you never know what can happen along the way. I’d love to hear your thoughts or advice. Thanks in advance, and I apologize if anything is unclear

Why raise in 2025? - I will not promote

I will not promote Lately, I've been thinking about how AI tools are completely reshaping what it means to bootstrap a startup. It honestly feels like we're living through a golden age for entrepreneurs where you don't necessarily need venture capital to build something big or meaningful. At my company, we're a small team of just four people, bootstrapping our AI-focused startup. Thanks to AI-powered tools, we're able to keep our burn rate ridiculously low, quickly test new ideas, and scale our operations way faster than we ever expected. It’s honestly pretty incredible how accessible advanced technology has become, even compared to just a few years ago. Of course, bootstrapping definitely comes with its own share of headaches. For example, we've noticed that funded startups get significantly better access to cloud credits, advertising budgets, and enterprise-level tools. We do have access to some discounts and free resources, but it rarely compares to what funded startups enjoy. This can feel frustrating, especially when you know you're competing directly with businesses that have those extra advantages. Visibility is another major challenge we've noticed. Without big funding announcements or a well-connected investor backing us, getting attention from media or even early adopters can be tough. It's just harder to make a splash without someone else's endorsement. We've had to accept and work around creatively. That said, there's something genuinely empowering about staying bootstrapped, prioritizing profitability, and maintaining control over our vision. After speaking with several investors, we've become aware of how investors can significantly influence or even redirect the trajectory of a business. We've heard stories where investors gained enough leverage to replace the original founders or have killed perfectly profitable businesses that were not growing "fast enough", which certainly gave us pause. They can definitely be helpful but giving the control over the future of my business to someone else would definitely make me feel anxious. At this time, we simply don't feel raising external capital aligns with our current goals, but we're also aware that this could change in the future. For now, maintaining autonomy and staying close to our original vision remains a priority. I'm curious to hear from others here who've been through this. Have you successfully bootstrapped an AI a tech business? What obstacles did you encounter, and how did you overcome them? EDIT: To give you a bit of perspective, my company is a B2B SaaS in the finance industry based in Europe. We have received VC funding in the past but it was an exceptionally good deal and we don't plan to raise in the near future even-thought it may change if we see the need to help us scale. We have also raised a significant amount in soft funding. Right now, we are growing on our revenues, and we plan to continue this trajectory. Recently, one of our developers left, and although we are a small team, we noticed that it had little to no impact on our productivity.

Experienced Software Developer looking for startup to help. I will not promote

My passion for programming started at the age of 9 when I began playing video games. It was during this time that I first dived into programming, creating scripts for SA:MP (San Andreas Multiplayer) using the Pawn language. SA:MP is a modification for the popular game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, allowing players to experience multiplayer gameplay. My early experiences in programming were all about problem-solving—finding ways to enhance the game and improve the player experience. This was when I realized how satisfying it is to solve a problem through code, and that feeling has stayed with me throughout my career. I am a self-taught programmer, and everything I know today comes from my own initiative to learn and improve. After five years of working with local clients, I decided to expand my knowledge and started learning more widely applicable programming languages like Java and Python. I’ve always been the type of person who thrives on challenges. Whenever I encounter a problem, I don’t just look for a quick fix—I dive deep into researching and understanding the problem, and I find a solution that works in the long run. This is what drives me. The ability to solve problems, no matter how complex, and the satisfaction that comes with it is what fuels my passion for programming. My big break came when I had the opportunity to work at \\\\. There, I replaced two senior and two junior developers, which led to significant cost savings for the company. I completed all tasks ahead of schedule, focusing on Java-based applications that were multithreaded and communicated with embedded systems. This experience taught me how to work under pressure and how to manage and solve complex technical problems efficiently. Following my time at \\\\, I transitioned into freelance work as a FullStack Developer, working with technologies such as HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript, Django, Spring, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. As a freelancer, I was responsible for finding solutions to a wide range of problems, often working independently and making decisions on the fly. I learned that self-reliance is key in this industry, and being resourceful is one of the most important qualities a developer can have. Later, I joined \\\\ elecom, where I worked on system integration with foreign teams, BPM process solutions, and the merging of complex systems in Oracle databases. I continued to solve challenges, often working with teams across borders and tackling technical obstacles that required creative and well-thought-out solutions. Eventually, I founded my own company, \\\\, where I focus on developing software solutions, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cybersecurity, and Ethical Hacking. As an entrepreneur, I take pride in finding innovative solutions to problems, whether they come from clients or from technical obstacles I encounter along the way. I’ve also had the privilege of working with the Serbian Ministry of Defense and the police, handling sensitive projects that demand both technical expertise and trustworthiness. Being a self-taught programmer means that I have had to learn and adapt on my own, and I’ve learned to embrace challenges as opportunities for growth. I am constantly driven by the process of solving problems, and it is what keeps me engaged and fulfilled in my work. I am always open to new collaborations and am eager to take on new challenges that push my boundaries in technology, cybersecurity, and software development.

Finally Launched My First App Without Any Coding Experience

About Myself I am a structural engineer that are taught to design buildings in the day and I have been dreaming forever to build a SaaS business to get out of the rat race. However, as a structural engineer, coding is definitely not something I am capable of doing (I have some simple knowledge, but its no way close to building an app) The Journey As I've mentioned, I always wanted to build a SaaS business because in my mind the business model is most attractive to me, where you only need to build once and can sell to millions. So I started off searching and exploring on the internet and my first ever "SaaS" was from Wordpress. I am buying plugin from other user and then pluggin into my own Wordpress website. It was a project management tool SaaS. I was so excited about the website and can't even sleep well at night because I'm just so hype about it. But, the reality is because this is my first ever business, I totally didn't realise about the importance of UI UX or my business differentiation, thinking that everyone will be as excited as I am. Then, I went deeper and deeper into the journey (I can write more about this in another post if anyone is interested) and finally landed on Flutterflow to create my first ever app. No Code Journey Thanks to no code builder, I never thought that a non-coder like me can ever create an app and got accepted by the App Store/Play Store. Since that I am using a low-code builder, for any specific requirement that I need that are not covered natively, I will just talk to ChatGPT and boom I pretty much got most of the answer I needed. About The App As someone that always try to keep track of my expenses, I never able to find an app that are simple and interesting enough for me to continue on the journey. I realise that I could have incorporate AI into this journey and hence there go, I created an AI Money Tracker. Let me introduce Rolly: AI Money Tracker - a new AI expense tracker where you can easily record your transactions just by chatting with our bot Rolly and it will automatically record and categorise the transaction into the most suitable category (you can also create any of your own category and it will also take care of it in consideration). I am not sharing the app link here to avoid getting ban, but feel free to search up Rolly: AI Money Tracker on either App Store on Play Store. My Learnings As someone that can't code and never imagine that I could create a production app by myself and publish it on to the App Store and Play Store. Since I am not making any money yet and just at the beginning of my entrepreneur journey, I can't give any substantial advice, all I can say is just my own learnings and feelings. My advice is if you have a dream of building a business, just go for it, don't worry about all the problems that you can think of to convince yourself not making the start at all. From my point of view, as long as you're not giving up everything (eg, putting yourself in huge debt etc), why don't just go for it and you've got nothing much to lose. You'll only lose if you never even get started. And also, I believe that creating an app is always the easiest step out of the entreprenuership journey, marketing and distribution is the key to success. Even though you've spent days and nights on it and it might mean everything to you, the truth is people don't really cares and you'll need to market for it. I am still in journey to learn how to do marketing, content, building a business and everything. I think this is just a very beginning of my journey and hopefully there's more interesting one to share further down the road.

We built a tool to help you find relevant grants. Would you pay for it?

Hi everyone, About a year ago, I asked you guys whether it would make sense to develop a tool to help entrepreneurs find relevant grants. Many of you provided incredibly valuable feedback, which we used to refine the concept. With this concept, we went through Techstars and finally launched a beta version of our grant scan tool last week! Along the way, we realized something interesting: when you ask a grant advisor which grants might be a great fit for you, they almost always recommend the ones they know well. This makes sense since most work on a success fee basis, and referring you to lesser-known grants (which take more time to write and have lower success rates) isn’t worth it for them. Plus, memorizing the details of 20,000+ grants is, understandably, pretty tough. Our platform uses AI to scan and analyze thousands of grants. It identifies the best matches, estimates your chances of success, and calculates how much time you might need for the application and reporting phases. We can then match you with a grant advisor with relevant expertise—whether to write the application for you or provide feedback on your draft. We’re considering launching both a free and a paid version. The free version would provide basic insights, while the paid version would include more comprehensive results, expert comments (such as explaining why certain grants are a good fit), and updates when new relevant grants become available. Both versions will allow you to connect with relevant experts. Would you pay for the paid version? And if so, which features should it include? Also, any general feedback is much appreciated! Thanks!

We're building a tool to help you find grants. Would you use it?

Hi there! In Europe alone, we spend almost € 400 billion annually on subsidies to support businesses. We estimate there are around 18,000 different grants available to entrepreneurs. Via the EU of course, but also via cities, national governments and literally countless public bodies all offering different kinds of support. I've been working for the government for about 10 years now, and I've noticed how difficult it can be for smaller companies to identify the right subsidy opportunities. Because they don't know they exist (and thus don't know where to find them), or because the eligibility criteria are just overwhelming, for example. Together with my co-founder we're building a tool to make it easier to find the grants that best align with your goals (fingers crossed!). Basically we scan all subsidies in Europe, use AI to analyze the goals and criteria and match companies with those subsidies that work best for them. So my question for you guys: do you look for subsidies or grants at all? And would such a tool be helpful for you? And if so, what kind of features would be most helpful for you? Really appreciate any thoughts from your side! Also if you think the idea is just rubbish :) Jesse

People are overthinking with digital products.

All you really need is a checkout link to start. I failed a lot of times. Literally I could build the whole landing page, admin panel, ai automation to handle moderation and content. After spending months in vacuum building more, more, more features. Launching and getting 0 customers in the end. You are literally just getting depressed. You know that feeling, right ? Me too. We missed one important step before building anything - ASKING. We need to ask more clients, users, and do our research based on Google Keywords, forums and subreddits. You probably won't do it. It is your choice. You have all rights to do it. Let me give one piece of advice, instead of building more features and spendings months on your MVP. Set a deadline in 2-4 weeks. Build it, launch it, and go live as soon as possible. You need to get a real feedback and face a reality. Most of the companies that you see, started with simple Excel file, Google Doc, or even paper with pen. Do you know why ? Because they didn't have anything in the beginning. No money, no customers, NOTHING. Remember that.

I spent 6 months on building a tool, and got 0 zero users. Here is my story.

Edit Thank you all so much for your time reading my story. Your support, feedback, criticism, and skepticism; all helped me a lot, and I couldn't appreciate it enough \^\_\^ TL;DR I spent 6 months on a tool that currently has 0 users. Below is what I learned during my journey, sharing because I believe most mistakes are easily avoidable. Do not overestimate your product and assume it will be an exception to fundamental principles. Principles are there for a reason. Always look for validation before you start. Avoid building products with a low money-to-effort ratio/in very competitive fields. Unless you have the means, you probably won't make it. Pick a problem space, pick your target audience, and talk to them before thinking about a solution. Identify and match their pain points. Only then should you think of a solution. If people are not overly excited or willing to pay in advance for a discounted price, it might be a sign to rethink. Sell one and only one feature at a time. Avoid everything else. If people don't pay for that one core feature, no secondary feature will change their mind. Always spend twice as much time marketing as you do building. You will not get users if they don't know it exists. Define success metrics ("1000 users in 3 months" or "$6000 in the account at the end of 6 months") before you start. If you don't meet them, strongly consider quitting the project. If you can't get enough users to keep going, nothing else matters. VALIDATION, VALIDATION, VALIDATION. Success is not random, but most of our first products will not make a success story. Know when to admit failure, and move on. Even if a product of yours doesn't succeed, what you learned during its journey will turn out to be invaluable for your future. My story So, this is the story of a product, Summ, that I’ve been working on for the last 6 months. As it's the first product I’ve ever built, after watching you all from the sidelines, I have learned a lot, made many mistakes, and did only a few things right. Just sharing what I’ve learned and some insights from my journey so far. I hope that this post will help you avoid the mistakes I made — most of which I consider easily avoidable — while you enjoy reading it, and get to know me a little bit more 🤓. A slow start after many years Summ isn’t the first product I really wanted to build. Lacking enough dev skills to even get started was a huge blocker for so many years. In fact, the first product I would’ve LOVED to build was a smart personal shopping assistant. I had this idea 4 years ago; but with no GPT, no coding skills, no technical co-founder, I didn’t have the means to make it happen. I still do not know if such a tool exists and is good enough. All I wanted was a tool that could make data-based predictions about when to buy stuff (“buy a new toothpaste every three months”) and suggest physical products that I might need or be strongly interested in. AFAIK, Amazon famously still struggles with the second one. Fast-forward a few years, I learned the very basics of HTML, CSS, and Vanilla JS. Still was not there to build a product; but good enough to code my design portfolio from scratch. Yet, I couldn’t imagine myself building a product using Vanilla JS. I really hated it, I really sucked at it. So, back to tutorial hell, and to learn about this framework I just heard about: React.React introduced so many new concepts to me. “Thinking in React” is a phrase we heard a lot, and with quite good reasons. After some time, I was able to build very basic tutorial apps, both in React, and React Native; but I have to say that I really hated coding for mobile. At this point, I was already a fan of productivity apps, and had a concept for a time management assistant app in my design portfolio. So, why not build one? Surely, it must be easy, since every coding tutorial starts with a todo app. ❌ WRONG! Building a basic todo app is easy enough, but building one good enough for a place in the market was a challenge I took and failed. I wasted one month on that until I abandoned the project for good. Even if I continued working on it, as the productivity landscape is overly competitive, I wouldn’t be able to make enough money to cover costs, assuming I make any. Since I was (and still am) in between jobs, I decided to abandon the project. 👉 What I learned: Do not start projects with a low ratio of money to effort and time. Example: Even if I get 500 monthly users, 200 of which are paid users (unrealistically high number), assuming an average subscription fee of $5/m (such apps are quite cheap, mostly due to the high competition), it would make me around $1000 minus any occurring costs. Any founder with a product that has 500 active users should make more. Even if it was relatively successful, due to the high competition, I wouldn’t make any meaningful money. PS: I use Todoist today. Due to local pricing, I pay less than $2/m. There is no way I could beat this competitive pricing, let alone the app itself. But, somehow, with a project that wasn’t even functional — let alone being an MVP — I made my first Wi-Fi money: Someone decided that the domain I preemptively purchased is worth something. By this point, I had already abandoned the project, certainly wasn’t going to renew the domain, was looking for a FT job, and a new project that I could work on. And out of nowhere, someone hands me some free money — who am I not to take it? Of course, I took it. The domain is still unused, no idea why 🤔. Ngl, I still hate the fact that my first Wi-Fi money came from this. A new idea worth pursuing? Fast-forward some weeks now. Around March, I got this crazy idea of building an email productivity tool. We all use emails, yet we all hate them. So, this must be fixed. Everyone uses emails, in fact everyone HAS TO use emails. So, I just needed to build a tool and wait for people to come. This was all, really. After all, the problem space is huge, there is enough room for another product, everyone uses emails, no need for any further validation, right? ❌ WRONG ONCE AGAIN! We all hear from the greatest in the startup landscape that we must validate our ideas with real people, yet at least some of us (guilty here 🥸) think that our product will be hugely successful and prove them to be an exception. Few might, but most are not. I certainly wasn't. 👉 Lesson learned: Always validate your ideas with real people. Ask them how much they’d pay for such a tool (not if they would). Much better if they are willing to pay upfront for a discount, etc. But even this comes later, keep reading. I think the difference between “How much” and “If” is huge for two reasons: (1) By asking them for “How much”, you force them to think in a more realistic setting. (2) You will have a more realistic idea on your profit margins. Based on my competitive analysis, I already had a solution in my mind to improve our email usage standards and email productivity (huge mistake), but I did my best to learn about their problems regarding those without pushing the idea too hard. The idea is this: Generate concise email summaries with suggested actions, combine them into one email, and send it at their preferred times. Save as much as time the AI you end up with allows. After all, everyone loves to save time. So, what kind of validation did I seek for? Talked with only a few people around me about this crazy, internet-breaking idea. The responses I got were, now I see, mediocre; no one got excited about it, just said things along the lines of “Cool idea, OK”. So, any reasonable person in this situation would think “Okay, not might not be working”, right? Well, I did not. I assumed that they were the wrong audience for this product, and there was this magical land of user segments waiting eagerly for my product, yet unknowingly. To this day, I still have not reached this magical place. Perhaps, it didn’t exist in the first place. If I cannot find it, whether it exists or not doesn’t matter. I am certainly searching for it. 👉 What I should have done: Once I decide on a problem space (time management, email productivity, etc.), I should decide on my potential user segments, people who I plan to sell my product to. Then I should go talk to those people, ask them about their pains, then get to the problem-solving/ideation phase only later. ❗️ VALIDATION COMES FROM THE REALITY OUTSIDE. What validation looks like might change from product to product; but what invalidation looks like is more or less the same for every product. Nico Jeannen told me yesterday “validation = money in the account” on Twitter. This is the ultimate form of validation your product could get. If your product doesn’t make any money, then something is invalidated by reality: Your product, you, your idea, who knows? So, at this point, I knew a little bit of Python from spending some time in tutorial hell a few years ago, some HTML/CSS/JS, barely enough React to build a working app. React could work for this project, but I needed easy-to-implement server interactivity. Luckily, around this time, I got to know about this new gen of indie hackers, and learned (but didn’t truly understand) about their approach to indie hacking, and this library called Nextjs. How good Next.js still blows my mind. So, I was back to tutorial hell once again. But, this time, with a promise to myself: This is the last time I would visit tutorial hell. Time to start building this "ground-breaking idea" Learning the fundamentals of Next.js was easier than learning of React unsurprisingly. Yet, the first time I managed to run server actions on Next.js was one of the rarest moments that completely blew my mind. To this day, I reject the idea that it is something else than pure magic under its hood. Did I absolutely need Nextjs for this project though? I do not think so. Did it save me lots of time? Absolutely. Furthermore, learning Nextjs will certainly be quite helpful for other projects that I will be tackling in the future. Already got a few ideas that might be worth pursuing in the head in case I decide to abandon Summ in the future. Fast-forward few weeks again: So, at this stage, I had a barely working MVP-like product. Since the very beginning, I spent every free hour (and more) on this project as speed is essential. But, I am not so sure it was worth it to overwork in retrospect. Yet, I know I couldn’t help myself. Everything is going kinda smooth, so what’s the worst thing that could ever happen? Well, both Apple and Google announced their AIs (Apple Intelligence and Google Gemini, respectively) will have email summarization features for their products. Summarizing singular emails is no big deal, after all there were already so many similar products in the market. I still think that what truly matters is a frictionless user experience, and this is why I built this product in a certain way: You spend less than a few minutes setting up your account, and you get to enjoy your email summaries, without ever visiting its website again. This is still a very cool concept I really like a lot. So, at this point: I had no other idea that could be pursued, already spent too much time on this project. Do I quit or not? This was the question. Of course not. I just have to launch this product as quickly as possible. So, I did something right, a quite rare occurrence I might say: Re-planned my product, dropped everything secondary to the core feature immediately (save time on reading emails), tried launching it asap. 👉 Insight: Sell only one core feature at one time. Drop anything secondary to this core feature. Well, my primary occupation is product design. So one would expect that a product I build must have stellar design. I considered any considerable time spent on design at this stage would be simply wasted. I still think this is both true and wrong: True, because if your product’s core benefits suck, no one will care about your design. False, because if your design looks amateurish, no one will trust you and your product. So, I always targeted an average level design with it and the way this tool works made it quite easy as I had to design only 2 primary pages: Landing page and user portal (which has only settings and analytics pages). However, even though I knew spending time on design was not worth much of my time, I got a bit “greedy”: In fact, I redesigned those pages three times, and still ended up with a so-so design that I am not proud of. 👉 What I would do differently: Unless absolutely necessary, only one iteration per stage as long as it works. This, in my mind, applies to everything. If your product’s A feature works, then no need to rewrite it from scratch for any reason, or even refactor it. When your product becomes a success, and you absolutely need that part of your codebase to be written, do so, but only then. Ready to launch, now is th etime for some marketing, right? By July 26, I already had a “launchable” product that barely works (I marked this date on a Notion docs, this is how I know). Yet, I had spent almost no time on marketing, sales, whatever. After all, “You build and they will come”. Did I know that I needed marketing? Of course I did, but knowingly didn’t. Why, you might ask. Well, from my perspective, it had to be a dev-heavy product; meaning that you spend most of your time on developing it, mostly coding skills. But, this is simply wrong. As a rule of thumb, as noted by one of the greatests, Marc Louvion, you should spend at least twice of the building time on marketing. ❗️ Time spent on building \* 2 people don’t know your product > they don’t use your product > you don’t get users > you don’t make money Easy as that. Following the same reasoning, a slightly different approach to planning a project is possible. Determine an approximate time to complete the project with a high level project plan. Let’s say 6 months. By the reasoning above, 2 months should go into building, and 4 into marketing. If you need 4 months for building instead of 2, then you need 8 months of marketing, which makes the time to complete the project 12 months. If you don’t have that much time, then quit the project. When does a project count as completed? Well, in reality, never. But, I think we have to define success conditions even before we start for indie projects and startups; so we know when to quit when they are not met. A success condition could look like “Make $6000 in 12 months” or “Have 3000 users in 6 months”. It all depends on the project. But, once you set it, it should be set in stone: You don’t change it unless absolutely necessary. I suspect there are few principles that make a solopreneur successful; and knowing when to quit and when to continue is definitely one of them. Marc Louvion is famously known for his success, but he got there after failing so many projects. To my knowledge, the same applies to Nico Jeannen, Pieter Levels, or almost everyone as well. ❗️ Determining when to continue even before you start will definitely help in the long run. A half-aed launch Time-leap again. Around mid August, I “soft launched” my product. By soft launch, I mean lazy marketing. Just tweeting about it, posting it on free directories. Did I get any traffic? Surely I did. Did I get any users? Nope. Only after this time, it hit me: “Either something is wrong with me, or with this product” Marketing might be a much bigger factor for a project’s success after all. Even though I get some traffic, not convincing enough for people to sign up even for a free trial. The product was still perfect in my eyes at the time (well, still is ^(\_),) so the right people are not finding my product, I thought. Then, a question that I should have been asking at the very first place, one that could prevent all these, comes to my mind: “How do even people search for such tools?” If we are to consider this whole journey of me and my so-far-failed product to be an already destined failure, one metric suffices to show why. Search volume: 30. Even if people have such a pain point, they are not looking for email summaries. So, almost no organic traffic coming from Google. But, as a person who did zero marketing on this or any product, who has zero marketing knowledge, who doesn’t have an audience on social media, there is not much I could do. Finally, it was time to give up. Or not… In my eyes, the most important element that makes a founder (solo or not) successful (this, I am not by any means) is to solve problems. ❗️ So, the problem was this: “People are not finding my product by organic search” How do I make sure I get some organic traffic and gets more visibility? Learn digital marketing and SEO as much as I can within very limited time. Thankfully, without spending much time, I came across Neil Patel's YT channel, and as I said many times, it is an absolute gold mine. I learned a lot, especially about the fundamentals, and surely it will be fruitful; but there is no magic trick that could make people visit your website. SEO certainly helps, but only when people are looking for your keywords. However, it is truly a magical solution to get in touch with REAL people that are in your user segments: 👉 Understand your pains, understand their problems, help them to solve them via building products. I did not do this so far, have to admit. But, in case you would like to have a chat about your email usage, and email productivity, just get in touch; I’d be delighted to hear about them. Getting ready for a ProductHunt launch The date was Sept 1. And I unlocked an impossible achievement: Running out of Supabase’s free plan’s Egres limit while having zero users. I was already considering moving out of their Cloud server and managing a Supabase CLI service on my Hetzner VPS for some time; but never ever suspected that I would have to do this quickly. The cheapest plan Supabase offers is $25/month; yet, at that point, I am in between jobs for such a long time, basically broke, and could barely afford that price. One or two months could be okay, but why pay for it if I will eventually move out of their Cloud service? So, instead of paying $25, I spent two days migrating out of Supabase Cloud. Worth my time? Definitely not. But, when you are broke, you gotta do stupid things. This was the first time that I felt lucky to have zero users: I have no idea how I would manage this migration if I had any. I think this is one of the core tenets of an indie hacker: Controlling their own environment. I can’t remember whose quote this is, but I suspect it was Naval: Entrepreneurs have an almost pathological need to control their own fate. They will take any suffering if they can be in charge of their destiny, and not have it in somebody else’s hands. What’s truly scary is, at least in my case, we make people around us suffer at the expense of our attempting to control our own fates. I know this period has been quite hard on my wife as well, as I neglected her quite a bit, but sadly, I know that this will happen again. It is something that I can barely help with. Still, so sorry. After working the last two weeks on a ProductHunt Launch, I finally launched it this Tuesday. Zero ranking, zero new users, but 36 kind people upvoted my product, and many commented and provided invaluable feedback. I couldn't be more grateful for each one of them 🙏. Considering all these, what lies in the future of Summ though? I have no idea, to be honest. On one hand, I have zero users, have no job, no income. So, I need a way to make money asap. On the other hand, the whole idea of it revolves around one core premise (not an assumption) that I am not so willing to share; and I couldn’t have more trust in it. This might not be the best iteration of it, however I certainly believe that email usage is one of the best problem spaces one could work on. 👉 But, one thing is for certain: I need to get in touch with people, and talk with them about this product I built so far. In fact, this is the only item on my agenda. Nothing else will save my brainchild <3. Below are some other insights and notes that I got during my journey; as they do not 100% fit into this story, I think it is more suitable to list them here. I hope you enjoyed reading this. Give Summ a try, it comes with a generous free trial, no credit card required. Some additional notes and insights: Project planning is one of the most underestimated skills for solopreneurs. It saves you enormous time, and helps you to keep your focus up. Building B2C products beats building B2B products. Businesses are very willing to pay big bucks if your product helps them. On the other hand, spending a few hours per user who would pay $5/m probably is not worth your time. It doesn’t matter how brilliant your product is if no one uses it. If you cannot sell a product in a certain category/niche (or do not know how to sell it), it might be a good idea not to start a project in it. Going after new ideas and ventures is quite risky, especially if you don’t know how to market it. On the other hand, an already established category means that there is already demand. Whether this demand is sufficient or not is another issue. As long as there is enough demand for your product to fit in, any category/niche is good. Some might be better, some might be worse. Unless you are going hardcore B2B, you will need people to find your product by means of organic search. Always conduct thorough keyword research as soon as possible.

How to start online business in 7 days ?

Easy to do now. There are several tips that I can give you to start your own digital business. 1) Solve your own problem. If you use the Internet, you know that there are a lot of problems that need to be solved. But focus on your problem first. Once you can figure it out and solve your problem. You can move on to solving people's problems. Ideally, to use tools and technology you know. If you don't know, use NO-CODE tools to build it. For example, if you need to create a website, use landing page builder. If you want to automate your own work, like booking meetings, use Zapier to automate tasks. If you want to create a game, sure, use AI Tools to solve it. I don't care what you will use. Use whatever you want. All I want from you is to solve that problem. 2) After solving your own problem. You can focus on people's problems. Because if you can't solve your own shit, why do you want to solve others problems? Remember that always. If you need to build e-commerce, use Shopify. If you need to build a directory, use directory builder. If you need to build landing pages, use landing page builders. Rule of thumb: Niche, Niche, Niche. Try to focus on a specific niche, solve their problem, and make money on it. Then only thinking about exploring new opportunities. You can use No-Code builders or AI tools or hire developers or hire agencies to do it. It depends on your choice. If you are good at coding, build on your own or delegate to a developer or agency. If you have enough time, use AI Tools to build your own thing. If you want to solve a common problem but with a different perspective, yeah, sure, use No-Code builders for that. 3) Digital business works exactly the same as offline business with one difference. You can move a lot faster, build a lot faster, risk a lot faster, fail a lot faster, earn a lot faster, sell a lot faster, and scale a lot faster. In one week, you can build e-commerce. In the second week, you can build SaaS. In the third week, you can build an AI agent. In the fourth week, you can build your own channel on social media. 4) It gives more power. With great power comes great responsibility. From day one, invest in SEO, social media presence, traffic, and acquiring customers. Don't focus on tech stuff. Don't focus on tools. Focus on the real problem: • Traffic • Marketing • Sales • Conversion rate

10y of product development, 2 bankruptcies, and 1 Exit — what next? [Extended Story]

10 years of obsessive pursuit from the bottom to impressive product-market fit and exit. Bootstrapping tech products as Software Developer and 3x Startup Founder (2 bankruptcies and 1 exit). Hi everyone, your motivation has inspired me to delve deeper into my story. So, as promised to some of you, I've expanded on it a bit more, along with my brief reflections. There are many founders, product creators, and proactive individuals, I’ve read many of your crazy stories and lessons so I decided to share mine and the lessons I learned from the bottom to impressive product-market fit and exit. I've spent almost the past 10 years building tech products as a Corporate Team Leader, Senior Software Developer, Online Course Creator, Programming Tutor, Head of Development/CTO, and 3x Startup Founder (2 bankruptcies, and 1 exit). And what next? good question... A brief summary of my journey: Chapter 1: Software Developer / Team Leader / Senior Software Developer I’ve always wanted to create products that win over users’ hearts, carry value, and influence users. Ever since my school days, I’ve loved the tech part of building digital products. At the beginning of school, I started hosting servers for games, blogs and internet forums, and other things that did not require much programming knowledge. My classmates and later even over 100 people played on servers that I hosted on my home PC. Later, as the only person in school, I passed the final exam in computer science. During my computer science studies, I started my first job as a software developer. It was crazy, I was spending 200–300 hours a month in the office attending also to daily classes. Yes, I didn’t have a life, but it truly was the fulfillment of my dreams. I was able to earn good money doing what I love, and I devoted fully myself to it. My key to effectively studying IT and growing my knowledge at rocket speed was learning day by day reading guides, building products to the portfolio, watching youtube channels and attending conferences, and even watching them online, even if I didn’t understand everything at the beginning. In one year we’ve been to every possible event within 400km. We were building healthcare products that were actually used in hospitals and medical facilities. It was a beautiful adventure and tons of knowledge I took from this place. That time I built my first product teams, hired many great people, and over the years became a senior developer and team leader. Even I convinced my study mates to apply to this company and we studied together and worked as well. Finally, there were 4 of us, when I left a friend of mine took over my position and still works there. If you’re reading this, I’m sending you a flood of love and appreciation. I joined as the 8th person, and after around 4 years, when I left hungry for change, there were already over 30 of us, now around 100. It was a good time, greetings to everyone. I finished my Master’s and Engineering degrees in Computer Science, and it was time for changes. Chapter 2: 1st time as a Co-founder — Marketplace In the meantime, there was also my first startup (a marketplace) with four of my friends. We all worked on the product, each of us spent thousands of hours, after hours, entire weekends… and I think finally over a year of work. As you might guess, we lacked the most important things: sales, marketing, and product-market fit. We thought users think like us. We all also worked commercially, so the work went very smoothly, but we didn’t know what we should do next with it… Finally, we didn’t have any customers, but you know what, I don’t regret it, a lot of learning things which I used many times later. The first attempts at validating the idea with the market and business activities. In the end, the product was Airbnb-sized. Landing pages, listings, user panels, customer panels, admin site, notifications, caches, queues, load balancing, and much more. We wanted to publish the fully ready product to the market. It was a marketplace, so if you can guess, we had to attract both sides to be valuable. “Marketplace” — You can imagine something like Uber, if you don’t have passengers it was difficult to convince taxi drivers, if you don’t have a large number of taxi drivers you cannot attract passengers. After a year of development, we were overloaded, and without business, marketing, sales knowledge, and budget. Chapter 3: Corp Team Lead / Programming Tutor / Programming Architecture Workshop Leader Working in a corporation, a totally different environment, an international fintech, another learning experience, large products, and workmates who were waiting for 5 pm to finish — it wasn’t for me. Very slow product development, huge hierarchy, being an ant at the bottom, and low impact on the final product. At that time I understood that being a software developer is not anything special and I compared my work to factory worker. Sorry for that. High rates have been pumped only by high demand. Friends of mine from another industry do more difficult things and have a bigger responsibility for lower rates. That’s how the market works. This lower responsibility time allowed for building the first online course after hours, my own course platform, individual teaching newbies programming, and my first huge success — my first B2C customers, and B2B clients for workshops. I pivoted to full focus on sales, marketing, funnels, advertisements, demand, understanding the market, etc. It was 10x easier than startups but allowed me to learn and validate my conceptions and ideas on an easier market and showed me that it’s much easier to locate their problem/need/want and create a service/product that responds to it than to convince people of your innovative ideas. It’s just supply and demand, such a simple and basic statement, in reality, is very deep and difficult to understand without personal experience. If you’re inexperienced and you think you understand, you don’t. To this day, I love to analyze this catchword in relation to various industries / services / products and rediscover it again and again... While writing this sentence, I’m wondering if I’m not obsessed. Chapter 4: Next try — 2nd time as a founder — Edtech Drawing upon my experiences in selling services, offering trainings, and teaching programming, I wanted to broaden my horizons, delve into various fields of knowledge, involve more teachers, and so on. We started with simple services in different fields of knowledge, mainly relying on teaching in the local area (without online lessons). As I had already gathered some knowledge and experience in marketing and sales, things were going well and were moving in the right direction. The number of teachers in various fields was growing, as was the number of students. I don’t remember the exact statistics anymore, but it was another significant achievement that brought me a lot of satisfaction and new experiences. As you know, I’m a technology lover and couldn’t bear to look at manual processes — I wanted to automate everything: lessons, payments, invoices, customer service, etc. That’s when I hired our first developers (if you’re reading this, I’m sending you a flood of love — we spent a lot of time together and I remember it as a very fruitful and great year) and we began the process of tool and automation development. After a year we had really extended tools for students, teachers, franchise owners, etc. We had really big goals, we wanted to climb higher and higher. Maybe I wouldn’t even fully call it Startup, as the client was paying for the lessons, not for the software. But it gave us positive income, bootstrap financing, and tool development for services provided. Scaling this model was not as costless as SaaS because customer satisfaction was mainly on the side of the teacher, not the quality of the product (software). Finally, we grew to nearly 10 people and dozens of teachers, with zero external funding, and almost $50k monthly revenue. We worked very hard, day and night, and by November 2019, we were packed with clients to the brim. And as you know, that’s when the pandemic hit. It turned everything upside down by 180 degrees. Probably no one was ready for it. With a drastic drop in revenues, society started to save. Tired from the previous months, we had to work even harder. We had to reduce the team, change the model, and save what we had built. We stopped the tool’s development and sales, and with the developers, we started supporting other product teams to not fire them in difficult times. The tool worked passively for the next two years, reducing incomes month by month. With a smaller team providing programming services, we had full stability and earned more than relying only on educational services. At the peak of the pandemic, I promised myself that it was the last digital product I built… Never say never… Chapter 5: Time for fintech — Senior Software Developer / Team Lead / Head of Development I worked for small startups and companies. Building products from scratch, having a significant impact on the product, and complete fulfillment. Thousands of hours and sacrifices. This article mainly talks about startups that I built, so I don’t want to list all the companies, products, and applications that I supported as a technology consultant. These were mainly start-ups with a couple of people up to around 100 people on board. Some of the products were just a rescue mission, others were building an entire tech team. I was fully involved in all of them with the hope that we would work together for a long time, but I wasn’t the only one who made mistakes when looking for a product-market fit. One thing I fully understood: You can’t spend 8–15 hours a day writing code, managing a tech team, and still be able to help build an audience. In marketing and sales, you need to be rested and very creative to bring results and achieve further results and goals. If you have too many responsibilities related to technology, it becomes ineffective. I noticed that when I have more free time, more time to think, and more time to bounce the ball against the wall, I come up with really working marketing/sales strategies and solutions. It’s impossible when you are focused on code all day. You must know that this chapter of my life was long and has continued until now. Chapter 6: 3rd time as a founder — sold Never say never… right?\\ It was a time when the crypto market was really high and it was really trending topic. You know that I love technology right? So I cannot miss the blockchain world. I had experience in blockchain topics by learning on my own and from startups where I worked before. I was involved in crypto communities and I noticed a “starving crowd”. People who did things manually and earned money(crypto) on it.I found potential for building a small product that solves a technological problem. I said a few years before that I don’t want to start from scratch. I decided to share my observations and possibilities with my good friend. He said, “If you gonna built it, I’m in”. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I had thought and planned every aspect of marketing and sales. And you know what. On this huge mindmap “product” was only one block. 90% of the mindmap was focused on marketing and sales. Now, writing this article, I understood what path I went from my first startup to this one. In the first (described earlier) 90% was the product, but in the last one 90% was sales and marketing. Many years later, I did this approach automatically. What has changed in my head over the years and so many mistakes? At that time, the company for which I provided services was acquired. The next day I got a thank you for my hard work and all my accounts were blocked. Life… I was shocked. We were simply replaced by their trusted technology managers. They wanted to get full control. They acted a bit unkindly, but I knew that they had all my knowledge about the product in the documentation, because I’m used to drawing everything so that in the moment of my weakness (illness, whatever) the team could handle it. That’s what solid leaders do, right? After a time, I know that these are normal procedures in financial companies, the point is that under the influence of emotions, do not do anything inappropriate. I quickly forgot about it, that I was brutally fired. All that mattered was to bring my plan to life. And it has been started, 15–20 hours a day every day. You have to believe me, getting back into the game was incredibly satisfying for me. I didn’t even know that I would be so excited. Then we also noticed that someone was starting to think about the same product as me. So the race began a game against time and the market. I assume that if you have reached this point, you are interested in product-market fit, marketing, and sales, so let me explain my assumptions to you: Product: A very very small tool that allowed you to automate proper tracking and creation of on-chain transactions. Literally, the whole app for the user was located on only three subpages. Starving Crowd: We tapped into an underserved market. The crypto market primarily operates via communities on platforms like Discord, Reddit, Twitter, Telegram, and so on. Therefore, our main strategy was directly communicating with users and demonstrating our tool. This was essentially “free marketing” (excluding the time we invested), as we did not need to invest in ads, promotional materials, or convince people about the efficacy of our tool. The community could directly observe on-chain transactions executed by our algorithms, which were processed at an exceptionally fast rate. This was something they couldn’t accomplish manually, so whenever someone conducted transactions using our algorithm, it was immediately noticeable and stirred a curiosity within the community (how did they do that!). Tests: I conducted the initial tests of the application on myself — we had already invested significantly in developing the product, but I preferred risking my own resources over that of the users. I provided the tool access to my wallet, containing 0.3ETH, and went to sleep. Upon waking up, I discovered that the transactions were successful and my wallet had grown to 0.99ETH. My excitement knew no bounds, it felt like a windfall. But, of course, there was a fair chance I could have lost it too. It worked. As we progressed, some users achieved higher results, but it largely hinged on the parameters set by them. As you can surmise, the strategy was simple — buy low, sell high. There was considerable risk involved. Churn: For those versed in marketing, the significance of repeat visitors cannot be overstated. Access to our tool was granted only after email verification and a special technique that I’d prefer to keep confidential. And this was all provided for free. While we had zero followers on social media, we saw an explosion in our email subscriber base and amassed a substantial number of users and advocates. Revenue Generation: Our product quickly gained popularity as we were effectively helping users earn — an undeniable value proposition. Now, it was time to capitalize on our efforts. We introduced a subscription model charging $300 per week or $1,000 per month — seemingly high rates, but the demand was so intense that it wasn’t an issue. Being a subscriber meant you were prioritized in the queue, ensuring you were among the first to reap benefits — thus adding more “value”. Marketing: The quality of our product and its ability to continually engage users contributed to it achieving what can best be described as viral. It was both a source of pride and astonishment to witness users sharing charts and analyses derived from our tool in forum discussions. They weren’t actively promoting our product but rather using screenshots from our application to illustrate certain aspects of the crypto world. By that stage, we had already assembled a team to assist with marketing, and programming, and to provide round-the-clock helpdesk support. Unforgettable Time: Despite the hype, my focus remained steadfast on monitoring our servers, their capacity, and speed. Considering we had only been on the market for a few weeks, we were yet to implement alerts, server scaling, etc. Our active user base spanned from Japan to the West Coast of the United States. Primarily, our application was used daily during the evenings, but considering the variety of time zones, the only time I could afford to sleep was during the evening hours in Far Eastern Europe, where we had the least users. However, someone always needed to be on guard, and as such, my phone was constantly by my side. After all, we couldn’t afford to let our users down. We found ourselves working 20 hours a day, catering to thousands of users, enduring physical fatigue, engaging in talks with VCs, and participating in conferences. Sudden Downturn: Our pinnacle was abruptly interrupted by the war in Ukraine (next macroeconomic shot straight in the face, lucky guy), a precipitous drop in cryptocurrency value, and swiftly emerging competition. By this time, there were 5–8 comparable tools had infiltrated the market. It was a challenging period as we continually stumbled upon new rivals. They immediately embarked on swift fundraising endeavors — a strategy we overlooked, which in retrospect was a mistake. Although our product was superior, the competitors’ rapid advancement and our insufficient funds for expeditious scaling posed significant challenges. Nonetheless, we made a good decision. We sold the product (exit) to competitors. The revenue from “exit” compensated for all the losses, leaving us with enough rest. We were a small team without substantial budgets for rapid development, and the risk of forming new teams without money to survive for more than 1–2 months was irresponsible. You have to believe me that this decision consumed us sleepless nights. Finally, we sold it. They turned off our app but took algorithms and users. Whether you believe it or not, after several months of toiling day and night, experiencing burnout, growing weary of the topic, and gaining an extra 15 kg in weight, we finally found our freedom… The exit wasn’t incredibly profitable, but we knew they had outdone us. The exit covered all our expenses and granted us a well-deserved rest for the subsequent quarter. It was an insane ride. Despite the uncertainty, stress, struggles, and sleepless nights, the story and experience will remain etched in my memory for the rest of my life. Swift Takeaways: Comprehending User Needs: Do you fully understand the product-market fit? Is your offering just an accessory or does it truly satisfy the user’s needs? The Power of Viral Marketing: Take inspiration from giants like Snapchat, ChatGPT, and Clubhouse. While your product might not attain the same scale (but remember, never say never…), the closer your concept is to theirs, the easier your journey will be. If your user is motivated to text a friend saying, “Hey, check out how cool this is” (like sharing ChatGPT), then you’re on the best track. Really. Even if it doesn’t seem immediately evident, there could be a way to incorporate this into your product. Keep looking until you find it. Niche targeting — the more specific and tailored your product is to a certain audience, the easier your journey will be People love buying from people — establishing a personal brand and associating yourself with the product can make things easier. Value: Seek to understand why users engage with your product and keep returning. The more specific and critical the issue you’re aiming to solve, the easier your path will be. Consider your offerings in terms of products and services and focus on sales and marketing, regardless of personal sentiments. These are just a few points, I plan to elaborate on all of them in a separate article. Many products undergo years of development in search of market fit, refining the user experience, and more. And guess what? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Each product and market follows its own rules. Many startups have extensive histories before they finally make their mark (for instance, OpenAI). This entire journey spanned maybe 6–8 months. I grasped and capitalized on the opportunity, but we understood from the start that establishing a startup carried a significant risk, and our crypto product was 10 times riskier. Was it worth it? Given my passion for product development — absolutely. Was it profitable? — No, considering the hours spent — we lose. Did it provide a stable, problem-free life — nope. Did this entire adventure offer a wealth of happiness, joy, and unforgettable experiences — definitely yes. One thing is certain — we’ve amassed substantial experience and it’s not over yet :) So, what lies ahead? Chapter 7: Reverting to the contractor, developing a product for a crypto StartupReturning to the past, we continue our journey… I had invested substantial time and passion into the tech rescue mission product. I came on board as the technical Team Leader of a startup that had garnered over $20M in seed round funding, affiliated with the realm of cryptocurrencies. The investors were individuals with extensive backgrounds in the crypto world. My role was primarily technical, and there was an abundance of work to tackle. I was fully immersed, and genuinely devoted to the role. I was striving for excellence, knowing that if we secured another round of financing, the startup would accelerate rapidly. As for the product and marketing, I was more of an observer. After all, there were marketing professionals with decades of experience on board. These were individuals recruited from large crypto-related firms. I had faith in them, kept an eye on their actions, and focused on my own responsibilities. However, the reality was far from satisfactory. On the last day, the principal investor for the Series A round withdrew. The board made the tough decision to shut down. It was a period of intense observation and gaining experience in product management. This was a very brief summary of the last 10 years. And what next? (Last) Chapter 8: To be announced — Product Owner / Product Consultant / Strategist / CTO After spending countless hours and days deliberating my next steps, one thing is clear: My aspiration is to continue traversing the path of software product development, with the hopeful anticipation that one day, I might ride the crest of the next big wave and ascend to the prestigious status of a unicorn company. I find myself drawn to the process of building products, exploring product-market fit, strategizing, engaging in software development, seeking out new opportunities, networking, attending conferences, and continuously challenging myself by understanding the market and its competitive landscape. Product Owner / Product Consultant / CTO / COO: I’m not entirely sure how to categorize this role, as I anticipate that it will largely depend on the product to which I will commit myself fully. My idea is to find one startup/company that wants to build a product / or already has a product, want to speed up, or simply doesn’t know what’s next. Alternatively, I could be a part of an established company with a rich business history, which intends to invest in digitization and technological advancements. The goal would be to enrich their customer experience by offering complementary digital products Rather than initiating a new venture from ground zero with the same team, I am receptive to new challenges. I am confident that my past experiences will prove highly beneficial for the founders of promising, burgeoning startups that already possess a product, or are in the initial phases of development. ‘Consultant’ — I reckon we interpret this term differently. My aim is to be completely absorbed in a single product, crafting funnels, niches, strategies, and all that is necessary to repeatedly achieve the ‘product-market fit’ and significant revenue. To me, ‘consultant’ resonates more akin to freelancing than being an employee. My current goal is to kickstart as a consultant and aide, dealing with facilitating startups in their journey from point A to B. Here are two theoretical scenarios to illustrate my approach: Scenario 1: (Starting from point A) You have a product but struggle with marketing, adoption, software, strategy, sales, fundraising, or something else. I conduct an analysis and develop a strategy to reach point B. I take on the “dirty work” and implement necessary changes, including potential pivots or shifts (going all-in) to guide the product to point B. The goal is to reach point B, which could involve achieving a higher valuation, expanding the user base, increasing sales, or generating monthly revenue, among other metrics. Scenario 2: (Starting from point A) You have a plan or idea but face challenges with marketing, adoption, strategy, software, sales, fundraising, or something else. I analyze the situation and devise a strategy to reach point B. I tackle the necessary tasks, build the team, and overcome obstacles to propel the product to point B. I have come across the view that finding the elusive product-market fit is the job of the founder, and it’s hard for me to disagree. However, I believe that my support and experiences can help save money, many failures, and most importantly, time. I have spent a great deal of time learning from my mistakes, enduring failure after failure, and even had no one to ask for support or opinion, which is why I offer my help. Saving even a couple of years, realistically speaking, seems like a value I’m eager to provide… I invite you to share your thoughts and insights on these scenarios :) Closing Remarks: I appreciate your time and effort in reaching this point. This has been my journey, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. I had an extraordinary adventure, and now I’m ready for the next exciting battle with the market and new software products. While my entire narrative is centered around startups, especially the ones I personally built, I’m planning to share more insights drawn from all of my experiences, not just those as a co-founder. If you’re currently developing your product or even just considering the idea, I urge you to reach out to me. Perhaps together, we can create something monumental :) Thank you for your time and insights. I eagerly look forward to engaging in discussions and hearing your viewpoints. Please remember to like and subscribe. Nothing motivates to write more than positive feedback :) Matt.

Am I on the right track?

This might be a little long for the average reader. But i'll do my best to format it so it's skimmable. Context I left my SaaS company 2 months ago. I was employee number 4 and helped them grow to 8 figures. I had a seat at the executive table and equity in the business. Burnt out and wanted to start my own thing. I forgot how hard it is to go from 0 👉 1 📚 Two schools of thought Build a product that solves your pain point and find others with that pain point Perform customer discovery calls until you get signal and start building + follow up with them 🥇 First approach For the last 45 days I built the product I wished I had when leading a 10 person marketing/sales team for the SaaS I was previously at. It checked all the boxes, pulled data, automated specific steps, showed the conversion tracking, data, etc. I launched it as a beta to my close network and the crowd went MILD. 😒 After some follow up - I realized I built something that already kind of exists and it's hard to convince others (even those who personally know me) that it's different or better. Undiscouraged, I am going to go back to the drawing board and try approach #2 above and schedule some customer discovery calls. 🥈 Second approach After trying and failing to turn the marketing numbers around at my last role I am convicted of 4 brutal truths about digital marketing today Truth #1 – AI-generated content is flooding the internet and ANYONE can and will be creating content with AI. Truth #2 – Ranking for high-volume keywords is harder than ever and probably not worth it anymore. Truth #3 – AI-driven efficiency is non-negotiable. If you haven’t installed AI in your business - you are WAY behind. Truth #4 – Most businesses are thinking about AI completely wrong. Easy button vs quality stair step. I have some early thoughts on how I would like to solve this (backed by data and some user stories). But my main question and the entire point of this post is.... ⁉️ Questions Before I schedule these product discovery calls should I make it clear where I am convicted and find those who want to talk (agree or disagree) with the above. Or just keep that out of the mix and ask them my product discovery questions regardless? I am probably overthinking it - but I just hit up my personal network with a beta launch, feels silly to go back with product discovery questions for them. Is there a good place (besides reddit) to pay people for product discovery calls? A quick Google Search and it's unclear to me.

Selling equity - what’s next?

Hey all, Seeking some guidance / advice as I plan my exit from a marketing agency I helped grow to $5M Long story short, I was hired part time to build their digital marketing department that sat at around 40k annual agency revenue. Since then I’ve become a minority equity partner, and at one point the agency was above $5M in gross agency revenue. The digital department that I run had up to 13 FTE employees at one point And digital revenue accounted for 60% of all agency revenue for the last 3-4 years. So, why am I leaving? Things are groovy, right? Well, we have dropped from $5M to now $3M this year and we’ll be lucky to hit that. As a minority equity party it’s been hard to watch leadership continue to disregard our agency as a digital agency. They don’t want to niche down, and they don’t want to identify as a digital agency, but instead by a full service “strategic agency”. Clients have felt our lack of expertise and direction, so they leave for someone who is an expert in xyz platform or industry. I no longer see their vision, and so I’m planning a sale of my equity and looking for new venture opportunities. While I am perfectly capable of running Google ads and Facebook ads campaigns, and as an accomplished SEO I know how to rank sites, and still find it fun. But I’m not interested in the labor arbitrage model of agency work anymore. I’d rather build a portfolio of in-house properties or digital assets where I have more control. Lately my obsession has been using AI and zapier to automate business processes, documentation, project management etc. Agency life has also exposed me to a lot of industries and business models, which I am always fascinated by. Eventually I will launch my own business, but I’m supporting my partner while they finish school. So I’m a single income household.. Therefore a W2 would be ideal but I’m open to contract work. So my question is- what positions or roles would I fill? I’ve done my share of research but this community has always given me new things to consider. Any feedback or questions are welcomed.

Why you should consider using small open source fine-tuned models

Context I want to start off by giving some context on what fine-tuning is, why it's useful and who it would be useful for: What is fine-tuning? When controlling the output of an LLM there are, broadly, three levels. Prompt engineering, RAG and fine-tuning. Most of you are likely familiar with the first two. Prompt engineering is when you try to optimize the prompt to get the model to do what you want better. RAG (retrieval augmented generation) is when you first do a search on some data (usually stored in a vector database which allows you to search by similarity), then you insert the results into the prompt so that the model can use that context to more accurately answer any questions. It's like letting the LLM access external information right before answering, using that additional context to improve its response Fine-tuning is when you want to fundamentally teach a model something new or teach it to behave in a particular way. You would provide the model with high quality data (i.e. inputs and outputs) which it will train on. Why is it useful? At the moment, many of you use the largest and best LLMs because they give the best results. However, for a lot of use cases you are likely using a sledgehammer for a small nail. Does it do a great job? Damn yeah! Well... why not use a smaller hammer? Because it might miss or hit your finger. The solution shouldn't be to use a sledgehammer, but rather to learn how to use a smaller hammer properly so you never miss! That's exactly what fine-tuning a smaller model is like. Once you fine-tune it on a specific task with good high quality data, it can surpass even the best models at that specific task. It'll be 10x cheaper to run, much faster and, if you use an open source model, you'll own the model (no vendor lock-in!). If you run a SaaS and your biggest expense is AI costs then you should definitely consider fine-tuning. It'll take some time to set up but it'll be well worth it in the medium/long term (a bit like SEO). You can always resort to the best models for more complex tasks. How to fine-tune? I'm going to give you a breakdown of the process from beginning to end. You do need to be (a bit) technical in order to do this. Getting the data Let's suppose we want to fine-tune a model to make high-quality SEO content. At the moment, you might be using a large sophisticated prompt or using multiple large LLMs to write different parts or utilizing RAG. This is all slow and expensive but might be giving you great results. Our goal is to replace this with a fine-tuned model that is great at one thing: writing high-quality SEO content quickly at a much lower cost. The first step is gathering the appropriate data. If you want the model to write 3 or 4 paragraphs based on a prompt that contains the topic and a few keywords, then your data should match that. There are a few way you can do this: You can manually gather high-quality SEO content. You'd write the prompt and the response that the model should give. You can use a larger more powerful LLM to generate the content for you (also known as synthetic data). It'll be expensive but remember that it'll be a larger one-off cost to get the data. If you already have a pipeline that works great then you can use the prompts and the generated content that you already have from that pipeline. You can buy a high-quality dataset or get someone to make it for you. The data is the most important part of this process. Remember, garbage in garbage out. Your data needs to have a good variety and should not contain any bad examples. You should aim for around 1000 examples. The more the better! The actual fine-tuning. At this stage you are now ready to choose a model and setup the fine-tuning. If you are unsure I'd stick to the Llama 3.1 family of models. They are great and reliable. There are three models: 8b, 70b and 405b. Depending on the complexity of the task you should select an appropriate size. However, to really reap the cost saving benefits and the speed you should try to stick with the 8b model or the the 70b model if the 8b is not good enough. For our SEO example, let's use the 8b model. Important note on selecting a model: You might see multiple models with the 8b flag. You might see 4bit-bnb or instruct. The instruct version of the models have basically been trained to be chatbots. So if you want to keep the chatbot-like instruction-following functionality then you should use the instruct version as the base. The non-instruct version simply generates text. It won't 'act' like a chatbot which is better for use cases like creative writing. The 4bit-bnb means that the model has been 'quantized'. Basically it has been made 4x smaller (the original is in 16 bits) so that it is faster to download and faster to fine-tune. This slightly reduces the accuracy of the model but it's usually fine for most use cases :) Fine-tuning should be done on a good GPU. CPU aren't good enough. So you can't spin up a droplet on digital ocean and use that. You'll specifically need to spin up a GPU. One website that I think is great is Runpod .io (I am not affiliated with them). You simply pay for the GPU by the hour. If you want the training to be fast you can use the H100, if you want something cheaper but slower you can use the A40. Although the A40 won't be good enough to run the 70b parameter model. For the 405b model you'll need multiple H100s but let's leave that for more advanced use cases. Once you've spun up your H100 and ssh-ed into it. I would recommend using the unsloth open source library to do the fine-tuning. They have great docs and good boilerplate code. You want to train using a method called QLoRA. This won't train the entire model but only "part of it". I don't want to get into the technical details as t3hat isn't important but essentially it's a very efficient and effective way of fine-tuning models. When fine-tuning you can provide something called a 'validation set'. As your model is training it will be tested against the 'validation set' to see how well it's doing. You'll get an 'eval loss' which basically means how well is your model doing when compared with the unseen validation data. If you have 1000 training examples I'd recommend taking out 100-200 so it can act as the validation set. Your model may start off with an eval loss of 1.1 and by the end of the training (e.g. 3 epochs - the number of epochs is the number of times your model will be trained on the entire dataset. It's like reading a book more than once so you can understand it better. Usually 3-5 epochs is enough) the eval loss would drop to 0.6 or 0.7 which means your model has made great progress in learning your dataset! You don't want it to be too low as that means it is literally memorizing which isn't good. Post fine-tuning You'll want to save the model with the best eval loss. You actually won't have the whole model, just something called the "QLoRA adapters". These are basically like the new neurons that contain the "understanding" of the data you trained the model on. You can combine these with the base model (using unsloth again) to prompt the model. You can also (and I recommend this) convert the model to GGUF format (using unsloth again). This basically packages the QLoRA adapters and model together into an optimized format so you can easily and efficiently run it and prompt it (using unsloth again... lol). I would then recommend running some evaluations on the new model. You can do this by simply prompting the new model and a more powerful model (or using your old pipeline) and then asking a powerful model e.g. Claude to judge which is better. If your model consistently does better then you've hit a winner! You can then use runpod again to deploy the model to their serverless AI endpoint so you only pay when it's actually being inferenced. (Again, I'm not affiliated with them) I hope this was useful and you at least got a good idea of what fine-tuning is and how you might go about doing it. By the way, I've just launched a website where you can easily fine-tune Llama 3.1 models. I'm actually hoping to eventually automate this entire process as I believe small fine-tuned models will be much more common in the future. If you want more info, feel free to DM me :)

36 startup ideas found by analyzing podcasts (problem, solution & source episode)

Hey, I've been a bit of a podcast nerd for a long time. Around a year ago I began experimenting with transcription of podcasts for a SaaS I was running. I realized pretty quickly that there's a lot of knowledge and value in podcast discussions that is for all intents and purposes entirely unsearchable or discoverable to most people. I ended up stopping work on that SaaS product (party for lack of product/market fit, and partly because podcasting was far more interesting), and focusing on the podcast technology full-time instead. I'm a long-time lurker and poster of r/startups and thought this would make for some interesting content and inspiration for folks. Given I'm in this space, have millions of transcripts, and transcribe thousands daily... I've been exploring fun ways to expose some of the interesting knowledge and conversations taking place that utilize our own data/API. I'm a big fan of the usual startup podcasts (My First Million, Greg Isenberg, etc. etc.) and so I built an automation that turns all of the startup ideas discussed into a weekly email digest. I always struggle to listen to as many episodes as I'd actually like to, so I thought I'd summarise the stuff I care about instead (startup opportunities being discussed). I thought it would be interesting to post some of the ideas extracted so far. They range from being completely whacky and blue sky, to pretty boring but realistic. A word of warning before anyone complains – this is a big mixture of tech, ai, non-tech, local services, etc. ideas: Some of the ideas are completely mundane, but realistic (e.g. local window cleaning service) Some of the ideas are completely insane, blue sky, but sound super interesting Here's the latest 36 ideas: |Idea Name|Problem|Solution|Source| |:-|:-|:-|:-| |SalesForce-as-a-Service - White Label Enterprise Sales Teams|White-label enterprise sales teams for B2B SaaS. Companies need sales but can't hire/train. Recruit retail sellers, train for tech, charge 30% of deals closed.|Create a white-label enterprise sales team by recruiting natural salespeople from retail and direct sales backgrounds (e.g. mall kiosks, cutco knives). Train them specifically in B2B SaaS sales techniques and processes. Offer this trained sales force to tech companies on a contract basis.|My First Million - "Life Hacks From The King of Introverts + 7 Business Ideas| |TechButler - Mobile Device Maintenance Service|Mobile tech maintenance service. Clean/optimize devices, improve WiFi, basic support. $100/visit to homes. Target affluent neighborhoods.|Mobile tech support service providing in-home device cleaning, optimization, and setup. Focus on common issues like WiFi improvement, device maintenance, and basic tech support.|My First Million - "Life Hacks From The King of Introverts + 7 Business Ideas| |MemoryBox - At-Home Video Digitization Service|Door-to-door VHS conversion service. Parents have boxes of old tapes. Pick up, digitize, deliver. $30/tape with minimum order. Going extinct.|Door-to-door VHS to digital conversion service that handles everything from pickup to digital delivery. Make it extremely convenient for customers to preserve their memories.|My First Million - "Life Hacks From The King of Introverts + 7 Business Ideas| |Elite Match Ventures - Success-Based Luxury Matchmaking|High-end matchmaking for 50M+ net worth individuals. Only charge $1M+ when they get married. No upfront fees. Extensive vetting process.|Premium matchmaking service exclusively for ultra-high net worth individuals with a pure contingency fee model - only get paid ($1M+) upon successful marriage. Focus on quality over quantity with extensive vetting and personalized matching.|My First Million - "Life Hacks From The King of Introverts + 7 Business Ideas| |LocalHost - Simple Small Business Websites|Simple WordPress sites for local businesses. $50/month includes hosting, updates, security. Target restaurants and shops. Recurring revenue play.|Simplified web hosting and WordPress management service targeting local small businesses. Focus on basic sites with standard templates, ongoing maintenance, and reliable support for a fixed monthly fee.|My First Million - "Life Hacks From The King of Introverts + 7 Business Ideas| |VoiceJournal AI - Voice-First Smart Journaling|Voice-to-text journaling app with AI insights. 8,100 monthly searches. $15/month subscription. Partners with journaling YouTubers.|AI-powered journaling app that combines voice recording, transcription, and intelligent insights. Users can speak their thoughts, which are automatically transcribed and analyzed for patterns, emotions, and actionable insights.|Where It Happens - "7 $1M+ AI startup ideas you can launch tomorrow with $0"| |AIGenAds - AI-Generated UGC Content Platform|AI platform turning product briefs into UGC-style video ads. Brands spending $500/video for human creators. Generate 100 variations for $99/month.|AI platform that generates UGC-style video ads using AI avatars and scripting. System would allow rapid generation of multiple ad variations at a fraction of the cost. Platform would use existing AI avatar technology combined with script generation to create authentic-looking testimonial-style content.|Where It Happens - "7 $1M+ AI startup ideas you can launch tomorrow with $0"| |InfographAI - Automated Infographic Generation Platform|AI turning blog posts into branded infographics. Marketers spending hours on design. $99/month unlimited generation.|AI-powered platform that automatically converts blog posts and articles into visually appealing infographics. System would analyze content, extract key points, and generate professional designs using predefined templates and brand colors.|Where It Happens - "7 $1M+ AI startup ideas you can launch tomorrow with $0"| |KidFinance - Children's Financial Education Entertainment|Children's media franchise teaching financial literacy. Former preschool teacher creating 'Dora for money'. Books, videos, merchandise potential.|Character-driven financial education content for kids, including books, videos, and potentially TV show. Focus on making money concepts fun and memorable.|The Side Hustle Show - "How a Free Challenge Turned Into a $500,000 a Year Business (Greatest Hits)"| |FinanceTasker - Daily Financial Task Challenge|Free 30-day financial challenge with daily action items. People overwhelmed by money management. Makes $500k/year through books, speaking, and premium membership.|A free 30-day financial challenge delivering one simple, actionable task per day via email. Each task includes detailed scripts and instructions. Participants join a Facebook community for support and accountability. The program focuses on quick wins to build momentum. Automated delivery allows scaling.|The Side Hustle Show - "How a Free Challenge Turned Into a $500,000 a Year Business (Greatest Hits)"| |FinanceAcademy - Expert Financial Training Platform|Premium financial education platform. $13/month for expert-led courses and live Q&As. 4000+ members generating $40k+/month.|Premium membership site with expert-led courses, live Q&As, and community support. Focus on specific topics like real estate investing, business creation, and advanced money management.|The Side Hustle Show - "How a Free Challenge Turned Into a $500,000 a Year Business (Greatest Hits)"| |SecurityFirst Compliance - Real Security + Compliance Platform|Security-first compliance platform built by hackers. Companies spending $50k+ on fake security. Making $7M/year showing why current solutions don't work.|A compliance platform built by security experts that combines mandatory compliance requirements with real security measures. The solution includes hands-on security testing, expert guidance, and a focus on actual threat prevention rather than just documentation. It merges traditional compliance workflows with practical security implementations.|In the Pit with Cody Schneider| |LinkedInbound - Automated Professional Visibility Engine|LinkedIn automation for inbound job offers. Professionals spending hours on manual outreach. $99/month per job seeker.|Automated system for creating visibility and generating inbound interest on LinkedIn through coordinated profile viewing and engagement. Uses multiple accounts to create visibility patterns that trigger curiosity and inbound messages.|In the Pit with Cody Schneider| |ConvoTracker - Community Discussion Monitoring Platform|Community discussion monitoring across Reddit, Twitter, HN. Companies missing sales opportunities. $499/month per brand tracked.|Comprehensive monitoring system that tracks competitor mentions and industry discussions across multiple platforms (Reddit, Twitter, Hacker News, etc.) with automated alerts and engagement suggestions.|In the Pit with Cody Schneider| |ContentAds Pro - Smart Display Ad Implementation|Display ad implementation service for content creators. Bloggers losing thousands in ad revenue monthly. Makes $3-5k per site setup plus ongoing optimization fees.|Implementation of professional display advertising through networks like Mediavine that specialize in optimizing ad placement and revenue while maintaining user experience. Include features like turning off ads for email subscribers and careful placement to minimize impact on core metrics.|The Side Hustle Show - "636: Is Business Coaching Worth It? A Look Inside the last 12 months of Side Hustle Nation"| |MoneyAppReviews - Professional Side Hustle App Testing|Professional testing service for money-making apps. People wasting time on low-paying apps. Makes $20k/month from affiliate commissions and ads.|Professional app testing service that systematically reviews money-making apps and creates detailed, honest reviews including actual earnings data, time investment, and practical tips.|The Side Hustle Show - "636: Is Business Coaching Worth It? A Look Inside the last 12 months of Side Hustle Nation"| |LightPro - Holiday Light Installation Service|Professional Christmas light installation service. Homeowners afraid of ladders. $500-2000 per house plus storage.|Professional Christmas light installation service targeting residential and commercial properties. Full-service offering including design, installation, maintenance, removal and storage. Focus on safety and premium aesthetic results.|The Side Hustle Show - "639: 30 Ways to Make Extra Money for the Holidays"| |FocusMatch - Research Participant Marketplace|Marketplace connecting companies to paid research participants. Companies spending weeks finding people. $50-150/hour per study.|Online platform connecting companies directly with paid research participants. Participants create detailed profiles and get matched to relevant studies. Companies get faster access to their target demographic while participants earn money sharing opinions.|The Side Hustle Show - "639: 30 Ways to Make Extra Money for the Holidays"| |SolarShine Pro - Specialized Solar Panel Cleaning Service|Solar panel cleaning service using specialized equipment. Panels lose 50% efficiency when dirty. $650 per job, automated scheduling generates $18k/month from repeat customers.|Professional solar panel cleaning service using specialized deionized water system and European cleaning equipment. Includes automated 6-month scheduling, professional liability coverage, and warranty-safe cleaning processes. Service is bundled with inspection and performance monitoring.|The UpFlip Podcast - "156. $18K/Month with This ONE Service — Niche Business Idea"| |ExteriorCare Complete - One-Stop Exterior Maintenance Service|One-stop exterior home cleaning service (solar, windows, gutters, bird proofing). Automated scheduling. $650 average ticket. 60% repeat customers on 6-month contracts.|All-in-one exterior cleaning service offering comprehensive maintenance packages including solar, windows, gutters, roof cleaning and bird proofing. Single point of contact, consistent quality, and automated scheduling for all services.|The UpFlip Podcast - "156. $18K/Month with This ONE Service — Niche Business Idea"| |ContentMorph - Automated Cross-Platform Content Adaptation|AI platform converting blog posts into platform-optimized social content. Marketing teams spending 5hrs/post on manual adaptation. $199/mo per brand with 50% margins.|An AI-powered platform that automatically transforms long-form content (blog posts, podcasts, videos) into platform-specific formats (Instagram reels, TikToks, tweets). The system would preserve brand voice while optimizing for each platform's unique requirements and best practices.|Entrepreneurs on Fire - "Digital Threads: The Entrepreneur Playbook for Digital-First Marketing with Neal Schaffer"| |MarketerMatch - Verified Digital Marketing Talent Marketplace|Marketplace for pre-vetted digital marketing specialists. Entrepreneurs spending 15hrs/week on marketing tasks. Platform takes 15% commission averaging $900/month per active client.|A specialized marketplace exclusively for digital marketing professionals, pre-vetted for specific skills (video editing, social media, SEO, etc.). Platform includes skill verification, portfolio review, and specialization matching.|Entrepreneurs on Fire - "Digital Threads: The Entrepreneur Playbook for Digital-First Marketing with Neal Schaffer"| |Tiger Window Cleaning - Premium Local Window Service|Local window cleaning service targeting homeowners. Traditional companies charging 2x market rate. Making $10k/month from $200 initial investment.|Local window cleaning service combining competitive pricing ($5/pane), excellent customer service, and quality guarantees. Uses modern tools like water-fed poles for efficiency. Implements systematic approach to customer communication and follow-up.|The Side Hustle Show - "630: How this College Student’s Side Hustle Brings in $10k a Month"| |RealViz3D - Real Estate Visualization Platform|3D visualization service turning architectural plans into photorealistic renderings for real estate agents. Agents struggling with unbuilt property sales. Making $30-40k/year per operator.|Professional 3D modeling and rendering service that creates photorealistic visualizations of properties before they're built or renovated. The service transforms architectural plans into immersive 3D representations that show lighting, textures, and realistic details. This helps potential buyers fully understand and connect with the space before it physically exists.|Side Hustle School - "#2861 - TBT: An Architect’s Side Hustle in 3D Real Estate Modeling"| |Somewhere - Global Talent Marketplace|Platform connecting US companies with vetted overseas talent. Tech roles costing $150k locally filled for 50% less. Grew from $15M to $52M valuation in 9 months.|Platform connecting US companies with pre-vetted overseas talent at significantly lower rates while maintaining high quality. Handles payments, contracts, and quality assurance to remove friction from global hiring.|My First Million - "I Lost Everything Twice… Then Made $26M In 18 Months| |GymLaunch - Rapid Gym Turnaround Service|Consultants flying to struggling gyms to implement proven member acquisition systems. Gym owners lacking sales expertise. Made $100k in first 21 days.|Expert consultants fly in to implement proven member acquisition systems, train staff, and rapidly fill gyms with new members. The service combines sales training, marketing automation, and proven conversion tactics to transform struggling gyms into profitable businesses within weeks.|My First Million - "I Lost Everything Twice… Then Made $26M In 18 Months| |PublishPlus - Publishing Backend Monetization|Backend monetization system for publishing companies. One-time customers becoming recurring revenue. Grew business from $2M to $110M revenue.|Add complementary backend products and services to increase customer lifetime value. Develop software tools and additional services that natural extend from initial publishing product. Focus on high-margin recurring revenue streams.|My First Million - "I Lost Everything Twice… Then Made $26M In 18 Months| |WelcomeBot - Automated Employee Onboarding Platform|Automated employee welcome platform. HR teams struggling with consistent onboarding. $99/month per 100 employees.|An automated onboarding platform that creates personalized welcome experiences through pre-recorded video messages, scheduled check-ins, and automated swag delivery. The platform would ensure consistent high-quality onboarding regardless of timing or location.|Entrepreneurs on Fire - "Free Training on Building Systems and Processes to Scale Your Business with Chris Ronzio: An EOFire Classic from 2021"| |ProcessBrain - Business Knowledge Documentation Platform|SaaS platform turning tribal knowledge into documented processes. Business owners spending hours training new hires. $199/month per company.|A software platform that makes it easy to document and delegate business processes and procedures. The platform would include templates, guided documentation flows, and tools to easily share and update procedures. It would help businesses create a comprehensive playbook of their operations.|Entrepreneurs on Fire - "Free Training on Building Systems and Processes to Scale Your Business with Chris Ronzio: An EOFire Classic from 2021"| |TradeMatch - Modern Manufacturing Job Marketplace|Modern job board making manufacturing sexy again. Factory jobs paying $40/hr but can't recruit. $500 per successful referral.|A specialized job marketplace and recruitment platform focused exclusively on modern manufacturing and trade jobs. The platform would combine TikTok-style content marketing, referral programs, and modern UX to make manufacturing jobs appealing to Gen Z and young workers. Would leverage existing $500 referral fees and industry demand.|My First Million - "He Sold His Company For $15M, Then Got A Job At McDonald’s"| |GroundLevel - Executive Immersion Program|Structured program putting CEOs in front-line jobs. Executives disconnected from workers. $25k per placement.|A structured program that places executives and founders in front-line jobs (retail, warehouse, service) for 2-4 weeks with documentation and learning framework. Similar to Scott Heiferman's McDonald's experience but productized.|My First Million - "He Sold His Company For $15M, Then Got A Job At McDonald’s"| |OneStepAhead - Micro-Mentorship Marketplace|Marketplace for 30-min mentorship calls with people one step ahead. Professionals seeking specific guidance. Takes 15% of session fees.|MicroMentor Marketplace - Platform connecting people with mentors who are just one step ahead in their journey for focused, affordable micro-mentorship sessions.|Entrepreneurs on Fire - "How to Create an Unbroken Business with Michael Unbroken: An EOFire Classic from 2021"| |VulnerableLeader - Leadership Authenticity Training Platform|Leadership vulnerability training platform. Leaders struggling with authentic communication. $2k/month per company subscription.|Leadership Vulnerability Platform - A digital training platform combining assessment tools, guided exercises, and peer support to help leaders develop authentic communication skills. The platform would include real-world scenarios, video coaching, and measurable metrics for tracking leadership growth through vulnerability.|Entrepreneurs on Fire - "How to Create an Unbroken Business with Michael Unbroken: An EOFire Classic from 2021"| |NetworkAI - Smart Network Intelligence Platform|AI analyzing your network to find hidden valuable connections. Professionals missing opportunities in existing contacts. $49/month per user.|AI Network Navigator - Smart tool that analyzes your professional network across platforms, identifies valuable hidden connections, and suggests specific actionable ways to leverage relationships for mutual benefit.|Entrepreneurs on Fire - "How to Create an Unbroken Business with Michael Unbroken: An EOFire Classic from 2021"| |Porch Pumpkins - Seasonal Decoration Service|Full-service porch pumpkin decoration. Homeowners spend $300-1350 per season. One operator making $1M in 8 weeks seasonal revenue.|Full-service seasonal porch decoration service focused on autumn/Halloween, including design, installation, maintenance, and removal. Offering premium curated pumpkin arrangements with various package tiers.|My First Million - "The guy who gets paid $80K/yr to do nothing"| |Silent Companion - Professional Presence Service|Professional silent companions for lonely people. Huge problem in Japan/globally. $68/session, $80k/year per companion. Non-sexual, just presence.|A professional companion service where individuals can rent a non-judgmental, quiet presence for various activities. The companion provides silent company without the pressure of conversation or social performance. They accompany clients to events, meals, or just sit quietly together.|My First Million - "The guy who gets paid $80K/yr to do nothing"| Hope this is useful. If anyone would like to ensure I include any particular podcasts or episodes etc. in future posts, very happy to do so. I'll generally send \~5 ideas per week in a short weekly digest format (you can see the format I'd usually use in here: podcastmarketwatch.beehiiv.com). I find it mindblowing that the latest models with large context windows make it even possible to analyze full transcripts at such scale. It's a very exciting time we're living through! Would love some feedback on this stuff, happy to iterate and improve the analysis/ideas... or create a new newsletter on a different topic if anyone would like. Cheers!

From "There's an App for that" to "There's YOUR App for that" - AI workflows will transform generic apps into deeply personalized experiences

I will not promote. For the past decade mobile apps were a core element of daily life for entertainment, productivity and connectivity. However, as the ecosystem saturated the general desire to download "just one more app" became apprehensive. There were clear monopolistic winners in different categories, such as Instagram and TikTok, which completely captured the majority of people's screentime. The golden age of creating indie apps and becoming a millionaire from them was dead. Conceptual models of these popular apps became ingrained in the general consciousness, and downloading new apps where re-learning new UI layouts was required, became a major friction point. There is high reluctance to download a new app rather than just utilizing the tooling of the growing market share of the existing winners. Content marketing and white labeled apps saw a resurgence of new app downloads, as users with parasympathetic relationships with influencers could be more easily persuaded to download them. However, this has led to a series of genericized tooling that lacks the soul of the early indie developer apps from the 2010s (Flappy bird comes to mind). A seemingly grim spot to be in, until everything changed on November 30th 2022. Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever and team announced chatGPT, a Large Language Model that was the first publicly available generative AI tool. The first non-deterministic tool that could reason probablisitically in a similar (if flawed) way, to the human mind. At first, it was a clear paradigm shift in the world of computing, this was obvious from the fact that it climbed to 1 Million users within the first 5 days of its launch. However, despite the insane hype around the AI, its utility was constrained to chatbot interfaces for another year or more. As the models reasoning abilities got better and better, engineers began to look for other ways of utilizing this new paradigm shift, beyond chatbots. It became clear that, despite the powerful abilities to generate responses to prompts, the LLMs suffered from false hallucinations with extreme confidence, significantly impacting the reliability of their use, in search, coding and general utility. Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) was coined to provide a solution to this. Now, the LLM would apply a traditional search for data, via a database, a browser or other source of truth, and then feed that information into the prompt as it generates, allowing for more accurate results. Furthermore, it became clear that you could enhance an LLM by providing them metadata to interact with tools such as APIs for other services, allowing LLMs to perform actions typically reserved for humans, like fetching data, manipulating it and acting as an independent Agent. This prompted engineers to start treating LLMs, not as a database and a search engine, but rather a reasoning system, that could be part of a larger system of inputs and feedback to handle workflows independently. These "AI Agents" are poised to become the core technology in the next few years for hyper-personalizing and automating processes for specific users. Rather than having a generic B2B SaaS product that is somewhat useful for a team, one could standup a modular system of Agents that can handle the exactly specified workflow for that team. Frameworks such as LlangChain and LLamaIndex will help enable this for companies worldwide. The power is back in the hands of the people. However, it's not just big tech that is going to benefit from this revolution. AI Agentic workflows will allow for a resurgence in personalized applications that work like personal digital employee's. One could have a Personal Finance agent keeping track of their budgets, a Personal Trainer accountability coaching you making sure you meet your goals, or even a silly companion that roasts you when you're procrastinating. The options are endless ! At the core of this technology is the fact that these agents will be able to recall all of your previous data and actions, so they will get better at understanding you and your needs as a function of time. We are at the beginning of an exciting period in history, and I'm looking forward to this new period of deeply personalized experiences. What are your thoughts ? Let me know in the comments !

The Cold-Calling AI Project I'm Working On Just Got Some Angel Investment!

Hey y'all. The AI cold calling startup I've been working on for 3-4 months now just got a $2,500 angel investment, and we have 2 current customers, a credit card processing broker and a hospital equipment rental company based out of Texas. We have around $1,500 revenue so far, but we're having lots of trouble fulfilling the contracts because our tech just isn't "there" yet. I'm the Chief Tech Officer, and I'm also running some operations. The other main person in this is the CEO who has a strong sales background and came up with the idea. I've been working purely remotely, and it's great having some income because I'm stuck at home because I'm disabled, basically... &#x200B; We're using 11labs, openai, google speech to text, and a sh\*tty online dialer right now to run the first MVP which runs locally on our "botrunners" computers, and we're developing a web app with django python + javascript react. Our plan is, after we get the webapp working better, to hire more botrunners for $3 per hour from countries like Phillipines and India, and we're going to try to track all the actions the botrunners take to be able to train the AI to run it fully automated. The biggest problem we're facing right now with the tech is reducing latency, it started at 27 seconds to get a response and I've been able to get it down to 6 seconds, but people are still hanging up. We're trying several ways to mitigate this, including having pre-rendered speech playing something like "Okay" or "As an artificial representative, I'm still learning to be quicker on the pickup. We appreciate your patience." One of the industries we want to target is international web development and digital marketing companies, and we want to use the bot to cold-call businesses to pitch them our services. The goal is to replace $30 an hour cold-callers from the USA with $3 per hour total-cost automation. Apparently the CEO was given a $5 million valuation from the strength of the MVP from a VC. Our investment so far was at a $300k valuation tho. It's exciting. Trying to get Twilio working to be able to make calls programmatically instead of using our hacky workaround. Let me know if you have any questions. I just wanted to share this awesome news!

A Structured Approach to Ideation and Validation (I will not promote)

Hi all, I used to work in VC and wanted to share some startup knowledge and insights from startup founders I know. Recently, I interviewed a friend of mine who built an AI Robotics startup ("Hivebotics") that creates automated toilet-cleaning robots. I can't post the full article because of Reddit's word limit, so I'll be posting it in sections here instead. This first section of the transcript goes through his approach to ideation and validation. Enjoy and let me know what you think! (I will not promote) \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ (1) Ideation and Validation Problem-Market-Solution Framework I like to think of startup ideation and validation using this framework: Problem– What exactly are you solving? Observation– How you identify a problem to work on User Research– How you further understand that problem Market– Is there a large enough market for solving this problem? Size– How many people experience this same problem? Demand– How many of those people are willing to pay for the solution? Solution– Your answer to the problem Desirability– Whether people actually want your solution Feasibility– Whether building the solution is practical and realistic Viability– Whether your solution can generate revenue Problem You always need to start problem-first, which is something that was really drilled into me during my time at Stanford. Too often, founders rush to build solutions first—apps or products they find exciting—without confirming whether there's any real demand for it. The first step is always to identify a specific problem, then further understand its scale, urgency and further details by talking to potential users. Observation– To find problems, observation is key. People may not even realise the inefficiencies in their processes until you point them out. That’s why interviews and field research are so important. There are problems all around us, so it's simply a matter of going out, paying attention and being attuned to them as they occur. User Research– To further understand the problem, conducting user research by interviewing potential customers is essential. Personally, I like to use the "Mom Test" when I conduct interviews to avoid biased and generic feedback. Don’t just ask theoretical questions and avoid being too specific—observe how your potential users work, ask about pain points, and use broad, open-ended questions to ensure you aren't leading them to a specific answer. Market Once you've found an actual problem and talked to enough potential users to really understand its specific pain points, the next step is to determine the market size and demand for a solution. Size– Determining the market size is essential because it determines whether or not it's commercially worthwhile to pursue the problem and develop a solution for it. You need to determine if there are enough potential customers out there experiencing this problem to gauge the market size. There's no secret strategy for this; you have to interview as many potential users as possible to confirm that it's a widespread problem in the industry. Demand– Make sure that you're working on a problem that people will gladly pay to have solved. Even if the problem is large enough, you have to make sure it's painful enough to warrant a paid solution. If many people experience the same problem, but aren't willing to pay for a solution, then you don't have a market and should look for a different problem to validate. Another way of looking at it is that your true market size is the number of potential customers actually willing to pay* for the solution to the problem, not the number of people simply experiencing the same problem. Solution When validating a potential solution to the problem, I would look at the 3 factors of desirability, feasibility and viability. Desirability– the degree to which a solution appeals to people and fulfills their wants and needs. Without strong desirability, even the most technically advanced or economically practical product is unlikely to succeed. The best way to test this is to secure financial commitments early on during the proof-of-concept stage. Most people are polite, so they may simply tell you that your startup's product is good even if it's not. However, if they're actually willing to pay for the solution, this is actual evidence of your product's desirability. Don't just ask people if they would pay for it; actually see whether they will pay for it. Feasibility– whether a product can be built using existing technical capabilities. A lack of feasibility makes it challenging or impossible to develop the product, no matter how appealing it might be to users or how promising its financial prospects are. This is just a matter of conducting initial research and actually trying to build a prototype, which will inform you whether the fully-realised product is truly feasible. Viability– the product's ability to generate sustainable financial returns. Without financial viability, the business supporting the product cannot endure, even if the product is highly appealing to users and technically achievable. Here, you need to look at your unit economics, development costs and other expenses to determine the viability of your solution. \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Hope you enjoyed reading this; let me know your honest thoughts in the comments and I'll try to improve how I interview founders based on those!

How a founder built a B2B AI startup to serve with 65+ global brands (including Fortune500 companies) (I will not promote)

AI Palette is an AI-driven platform that helps food and beverage companies predict emerging product trends. I had the opportunity recently to sit down with the founder to get his advice on building an AI-first startup, which he'll be going through in this post. (I will not promote) About AI Palette: Co-founders: >!2 (Somsubhra GanChoudhuri, Himanshu Upreti)!!100+!!$12.7M USD!!AI-powered predictive analytics for the CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) industry!!Signed first paying customer in the first year!!65+ global brands, including Cargill, Diageo, Ajinomoto, Symrise, Mondelez, and L’Oréal, use AI Palette!!Every new product launched has secured a paying client within months!!Expanded into Beauty & Personal Care (BPC), onboarding one of India’s largest BPC companies within weeks!!Launched multiple new product lines in the last two years, creating a unified suite for brand innovation!Identify the pain points in your industry for ideas* When I was working in the flavour and fragrance industry, I noticed a major issue CPG companies faced: launching a product took at least one to two years. For instance, if a company decided today to launch a new juice, it wouldn’t hit the market until 2027. This long timeline made it difficult to stay relevant and on top of trends. Another big problem I noticed was that companies relied heavily on market research to determine what products to launch. While this might work for current consumer preferences, it was highly inefficient since the product wouldn’t actually reach the market for several years. By the time the product launched, the consumer trends had already shifted, making that research outdated. That’s where AI can play a crucial role. Instead of looking at what consumers like today, we realised that companies should use AI to predict what they will want next. This allows businesses to create products that are ahead of the curve. Right now, the failure rate for new product launches is alarmingly high, with 8 out of 10 products failing. By leveraging AI, companies can avoid wasting resources on products that won’t succeed, leading to better, more successful launches. Start by talking to as many industry experts as possible to identify the real problems When we first had the idea for AI Palette, it was just a hunch, a gut feeling—we had no idea whether people would actually pay for it. To validate the idea, we reached out to as many people as we could within the industry. Since our focus area was all about consumer insights, we spoke to professionals in the CPG sector, particularly those in the insights departments of CPG companies. Through these early conversations, we began to see a common pattern emerge and identified the exact problem we wanted to solve. Don’t tell people what you’re building—listen to their frustrations and challenges first. Going into these early customer conversations, our goal was to listen and understand their challenges without telling them what we were trying to build. This is crucial as it ensures that you can gather as much data about the problem to truly understand it and that you aren't biasing their answers by showing your solution. This process helped us in two key ways: First, it validated that there was a real problem in the industry through the number of people who spoke about experiencing the same problem. Second, it allowed us to understand the exact scale and depth of the problem—e.g., how much money companies were spending on consumer research, what kind of tools they were currently using, etc. Narrow down your focus to a small, actionable area to solve initially. Once we were certain that there was a clear problem worth solving, we didn’t try to tackle everything at once. As a small team of two people, we started by focusing on a specific area of the problem—something big enough to matter but small enough for us to handle. Then, we approached customers with a potential solution and asked them for feedback. We learnt that our solution seemed promising, but we wanted to validate it further. If customers are willing to pay you for the solution, it’s a strong validation signal for market demand. One of our early customer interviewees even asked us to deliver the solution, which we did manually at first. We used machine learning models to analyse the data and presented the results in a slide deck. They paid us for the work, which was a critical moment. It meant we had something with real potential, and we had customers willing to pay us before we had even built the full product. This was the key validation that we needed. By the time we were ready to build the product, we had already gathered crucial insights from our early customers. We understood the specific information they wanted and how they wanted the results to be presented. This input was invaluable in shaping the development of our final product. Building & Product Development Start with a simple concept/design to validate with customers before building When we realised the problem and solution, we began by designing the product, but not by jumping straight into coding. Instead, we created wireframes and user interfaces using tools like InVision and Figma. This allowed us to visually represent the product without the need for backend or frontend development at first. The goal was to showcase how the product would look and feel, helping potential customers understand its value before we even started building. We showed these designs to potential customers and asked for feedback. Would they want to buy this product? Would they pay for it? We didn’t dive into actual development until we found a customer willing to pay a significant amount for the solution. This approach helped us ensure we were on the right track and didn’t waste time or resources building something customers didn’t actually want. Deliver your solution using a manual consulting approach before developing an automated product Initially, we solved problems for customers in a more "consulting" manner, delivering insights manually. Recall how I mentioned that when one of our early customer interviewees asked us to deliver the solution, we initially did it manually by using machine learning models to analyse the data and presenting the results to them in a slide deck. This works for the initial stages of validating your solution, as you don't want to invest too much time into building a full-blown MVP before understanding the exact features and functionalities that your users want. However, after confirming that customers were willing to pay for what we provided, we moved forward with actual product development. This shift from a manual service to product development was key to scaling in a sustainable manner, as our building was guided by real-world feedback and insights rather than intuition. Let ongoing customer feedback drive iteration and the product roadmap Once we built the first version of the product, it was basic, solving only one problem. But as we worked closely with customers, they requested additional features and functionalities to make it more useful. As a result, we continued to evolve the product to handle more complex use cases, gradually developing new modules based on customer feedback. Product development is a continuous process. Our early customers pushed us to expand features and modules, from solving just 20% of their problems to tackling 50–60% of their needs. These demands shaped our product roadmap and guided the development of new features, ultimately resulting in a more complete solution. Revenue and user numbers are key metrics for assessing product-market fit. However, critical mass varies across industries Product-market fit (PMF) can often be gauged by looking at the size of your revenue and the number of customers you're serving. Once you've reached a certain critical mass of customers, you can usually tell that you're starting to hit product-market fit. However, this critical mass varies by industry and the type of customers you're targeting. For example, if you're building an app for a broad consumer market, you may need thousands of users. But for enterprise software, product-market fit may be reached with just a few dozen key customers. Compare customer engagement and retention with other available solutions on the market for product-market fit Revenue and the number of customers alone isn't always enough to determine if you're reaching product-market fit. The type of customer and the use case for your product also matter. The level of engagement with your product—how much time users are spending on the platform—is also an important metric to track. The more time they spend, the more likely it is that your product is meeting a crucial need. Another way to evaluate product-market fit is by assessing retention, i.e whether users are returning to your platform and relying on it consistently, as compared to other solutions available. That's another key indication that your solution is gaining traction in the market. Business Model & Monetisation Prioritise scalability Initially, we started with a consulting-type model where we tailor-made specific solutions for each customer use-case we encountered and delivered the CPG insights manually, but we soon realized that this wasn't scalable. The problem with consulting is that you need to do the same work repeatedly for every new project, which requires a large team to handle the workload. That is not how you sustain a high-growth startup. To solve this, we focused on building a product that would address the most common problems faced by our customers. Once built, this product could be sold to thousands of customers without significant overheads, making the business scalable. With this in mind, we decided on a SaaS (Software as a Service) business model. The benefit of SaaS is that once you create the software, you can sell it to many customers without adding extra overhead. This results in a business with higher margins, where the same product can serve many customers simultaneously, making it much more efficient than the consulting model. Adopt a predictable, simplistic business model for efficiency. Look to industry practices for guidance When it came to monetisation, we considered the needs of our CPG customers, who I knew from experience were already accustomed to paying annual subscriptions for sales databases and other software services. We decided to adopt the same model and charge our customers an annual upfront fee. This model worked well for our target market, aligning with industry standards and ensuring stable, recurring revenue. Moreover, our target CPG customers were already used to this business model and didn't have to choose from a huge variety of payment options, making closing sales a straightforward and efficient process. Marketing & Sales Educate the market to position yourself as a thought leader When we started, AI was not widely understood, especially in the CPG industry. We had to create awareness around both AI and its potential value. Our strategy focused on educating potential users and customers about AI, its relevance, and why they should invest in it. This education was crucial to the success of our marketing efforts. To establish credibility, we adopted a thought leadership approach. We wrote blogs on the importance of AI and how it could solve problems for CPG companies. We also participated in events and conferences to demonstrate our expertise in applying AI to the industry. This helped us build our brand and reputation as leaders in the AI space for CPG, and word-of-mouth spread as customers recognized us as the go-to company for AI solutions. It’s tempting for startups to offer products for free in the hopes of gaining early traction with customers, but this approach doesn't work in the long run. Free offerings don’t establish the value of your product, and customers may not take them seriously. You should always charge for pilots, even if the fee is minimal, to ensure that the customer is serious about potentially working with you, and that they are committed and engaged with the product. Pilots/POCs/Demos should aim to give a "flavour" of what you can deliver A paid pilot/POC trial also gives you the opportunity to provide a “flavour” of what your product can deliver, helping to build confidence and trust with the client. It allows customers to experience a detailed preview of what your product can do, which builds anticipation and desire for the full functionality. During this phase, ensure your product is built to give them a taste of the value you can provide, which sets the stage for a broader, more impactful adoption down the line. Fundraising & Financial Management Leverage PR to generate inbound interest from VCs When it comes to fundraising, our approach was fairly traditional—we reached out to VCs and used connections from existing investors to make introductions. However, looking back, one thing that really helped us build momentum during our fundraising process was getting featured in Tech in Asia. This wasn’t planned; it just so happened that Tech in Asia was doing a series on AI startups in Southeast Asia and they reached out to us for an article. During the interview, they asked if we were fundraising, and we mentioned that we were. As a result, several VCs we hadn’t yet contacted reached out to us. This inbound interest was incredibly valuable, and we found it far more effective than our outbound efforts. So, if you can, try to generate some PR attention—it can help create inbound interest from VCs, and that interest is typically much stronger and more promising than any outbound strategies because they've gone out of their way to reach out to you. Be well-prepared and deliberate about fundraising. Keep trying and don't lose heart When pitching to VCs, it’s crucial to be thoroughly prepared, as you typically only get one shot at making an impression. If you mess up, it’s unlikely they’ll give you a second chance. You need to have key metrics at your fingertips, especially if you're running a SaaS company. Be ready to answer questions like: What’s your retention rate? What are your projections for the year? How much will you close? What’s your average contract value? These numbers should be at the top of your mind. Additionally, fundraising should be treated as a structured process, not something you do on the side while juggling other tasks. When you start, create a clear plan: identify 20 VCs to reach out to each week. By planning ahead, you’ll maintain momentum and speed up the process. Fundraising can be exhausting and disheartening, especially when you face multiple rejections. Remember, you just need one investor to say yes to make it all worthwhile. When using funds, prioritise profitability and grow only when necessary. Don't rely on funding to survive. In the past, the common advice for startups was to raise money, burn through it quickly, and use it to boost revenue numbers, even if that meant operating at a loss. The idea was that profitability wasn’t the main focus, and the goal was to show rapid growth for the next funding round. However, times have changed, especially with the shift from “funding summer” to “funding winter.” My advice now is to aim for profitability as soon as possible and grow only when it's truly needed. For example, it’s tempting to hire a large team when you have substantial funds in the bank, but ask yourself: Do you really need 10 new hires, or could you get by with just four? Growing too quickly can lead to unnecessary expenses, so focus on reaching profitability as soon as possible, rather than just inflating your team or burn rate. The key takeaway is to spend your funds wisely and only when absolutely necessary to reach profitability. You want to avoid becoming dependent on future VC investments to keep your company afloat. Instead, prioritize reaching break-even as quickly as you can, so you're not reliant on external funding to survive in the long run. Team-Building & Leadership Look for complementary skill sets in co-founders When choosing a co-founder, it’s important to find someone with a complementary skill set, not just someone you’re close to. For example, I come from a business and commercial background, so I needed someone with technical expertise. That’s when I found my co-founder, Himanshu, who had experience in machine learning and AI. He was a great match because his technical knowledge complemented my business skills, and together we formed a strong team. It might seem natural to choose your best friend as your co-founder, but this can often lead to conflict. Chances are, you and your best friend share similar interests, skills, and backgrounds, which doesn’t bring diversity to the table. If both of you come from the same industry or have the same strengths, you may end up butting heads on how things should be done. Having diverse skill sets helps avoid this and fosters a more collaborative working relationship. Himanshu (left) and Somsubhra (right) co-founded AI Palette in 2018 Define roles clearly to prevent co-founder conflict To avoid conflict, it’s essential that your roles as co-founders are clearly defined from the beginning. If your co-founder and you have distinct responsibilities, there is no room for overlap or disagreement. This ensures that both of you can work without stepping on each other's toes, and there’s mutual respect for each other’s expertise. This is another reason as to why it helps to have a co-founder with a complementary skillset to yours. Not only is having similar industry backgrounds and skillsets not particularly useful when building out your startup, it's also more likely to lead to conflicts since you both have similar subject expertise. On the other hand, if your co-founder is an expert in something that you're not, you're less likely to argue with them about their decisions regarding that aspect of the business and vice versa when it comes to your decisions. Look for employees who are driven by your mission, not salary For early-stage startups, the first hires are crucial. These employees need to be highly motivated and excited about the mission. Since the salary will likely be low and the work demanding, they must be driven by something beyond just the paycheck. The right employees are the swash-buckling pirates and romantics, i.e those who are genuinely passionate about the startup’s vision and want to be part of something impactful beyond material gains. When employees are motivated by the mission, they are more likely to stick around and help take the startup to greater heights. A litmus test for hiring: Would you be excited to work with them on a Sunday? One of the most important rounds in the hiring process is the culture fit round. This is where you assess whether a candidate shares the same values as you and your team. A key question to ask yourself is: "Would I be excited to work with this person on a Sunday?" If there’s any doubt about your answer, it’s likely not a good fit. The idea is that you want employees who align with the company's culture and values and who you would enjoy collaborating with even outside of regular work hours. How we structure the team at AI Palette We have three broad functions in our organization. The first two are the big ones: Technical Team – This is the core of our product and technology. This team is responsible for product development and incorporating customer feedback into improving the technology Commercial Team – This includes sales, marketing, customer service, account managers, and so on, handling everything related to business growth and customer relations. General and Administrative Team – This smaller team supports functions like finance, HR, and administration. As with almost all businesses, we have teams that address the two core tasks of building (technical team) and selling (commercial team), but given the size we're at now, having the administrative team helps smoothen operations. Set broad goals but let your teams decide on execution What I've done is recruit highly skilled people who don't need me to micromanage them on a day-to-day basis. They're experts in their roles, and as Steve Jobs said, when you hire the right person, you don't have to tell them what to do—they understand the purpose and tell you what to do. So, my job as the CEO is to set the broader goals for them, review the plans they have to achieve those goals, and periodically check in on progress. For example, if our broad goal is to meet a certain revenue target, I break it down across teams: For the sales team, I’ll look at how they plan to hit that target—how many customers they need to sell to, how many salespeople they need, and what tactics and strategies they plan to use. For the technical team, I’ll evaluate our product offerings—whether they think we need to build new products to attract more customers, and whether they think it's scalable for the number of customers we plan to serve. This way, the entire organization's tasks are cascaded in alignment with our overarching goals, with me setting the direction and leaving the details of execution to the skilled team members that I hire.

AI Might Be the Best Industry for Ambitious Lazy People i will not promote

Not here to promote, just talk about my experience with starting a new business. I'm not new to the game, so I was able to speed-run my new AI automation agency. I currently run a software company with a co-founder, and I recently decided to start a new AI and automation agency. I just had a private launch this week, and I already have a $2K client lined up, ready to buy, along with some other interested parties, as I have sales calls with them coming up. I found all of my leads after choosing a niche to focus on and using this tool I built that automatically scrapes IG data. My tool is “unique” because it automagically qualifies the leads with AI. It even has a custom frontend, and I used this tool as a case study to secure the client I have now, and I accomplished all of this in the span of about a week. Granted, I have a background in engineering, so picking up AI was easier for me, but anyone can do it. You can even use AI to learn AI. If you haven’t used AI in your business yet, I would strongly suggest getting into AI and automation. If you've been considering starting a business but don't know what business to start, take this as a sign to turn AI into a business. i will not promote

I will not promote — just need advice from fellow startup entrepreneurs

Hey everyone, I’m now based in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m starting a development agency to help early-stage startups and small businesses turn ideas into real products. Whether it’s building an MVP, scaling an existing app, or providing a dedicated offshore team — that’s the direction I’m heading. Quick background on me: I work with: • Frontend: React.js, Next.js, React Native • Backend: Node.js, Express, Supabase, Firebase • Databases: MongoDB, PostgreSQL • AI/API Integrations: OpenAI and others • DevOps/Automation: n8n, serverless tools, cloud platforms I’ve built and designed dozens of products, and now I have a small but strong team of 5 devs/designers in India. We can scale fast and deliver at Indian pricing — but that’s not my pitch here. I’m not here to promote. I’m genuinely looking for feedback and ideas from others doing similar things. If you’re running a dev agency, working with offshore teams, or supporting early-stage founders, I’d love to know: • What’s working for you in terms of client acquisition? • How are you building trust in the early stages? • Are there any strategies or lessons you wish you knew when starting? Also, if this aligns with something you’re building and you’re open to collaboration, I’m all ears. Let’s connect and share what’s working. Appreciate any thoughts, and happy to answer any questions too!

App ideas. im dry. i will not promote.

Since november ive tried solo creating an app or mini startup but after weeks of work i end up in dead ends. The last one was facebook restricting my whatsapp business for using automated answers, and im not sure when or if its gonna be liberated or not. Another time my computer simply couldn't handle it, and other times the project just got too big and messy for me and the AI to complete. I know you are supposed to copy a working business model and market it, but im not great at marketing. I mean it doesn't seem difficult to market something, but having the account to market with the right number of viral capacity is just very hard to do. I have music, design, data analysis, writing, and other skills, along with minimal coding skills. I need to come up with something that works for at least $1,000 a month. That it takes a month to build. its not too much to ask, is it? how do i find that app or saas? How did you do it? i will not promote

The Cold-Calling AI Project I'm Working On Just Got Some Angel Investment!

Hey y'all. The AI cold calling startup I've been working on for 3-4 months now just got a $2,500 angel investment, and we have 2 current customers, a credit card processing broker and a hospital equipment rental company based out of Texas. We have around $1,500 revenue so far, but we're having lots of trouble fulfilling the contracts because our tech just isn't "there" yet. I'm the Chief Tech Officer, and I'm also running some operations. The other main person in this is the CEO who has a strong sales background and came up with the idea. I've been working purely remotely, and it's great having some income because I'm stuck at home because I'm disabled, basically... &#x200B; We're using 11labs, openai, google speech to text, and a sh\*tty online dialer right now to run the first MVP which runs locally on our "botrunners" computers, and we're developing a web app with django python + javascript react. Our plan is, after we get the webapp working better, to hire more botrunners for $3 per hour from countries like Phillipines and India, and we're going to try to track all the actions the botrunners take to be able to train the AI to run it fully automated. The biggest problem we're facing right now with the tech is reducing latency, it started at 27 seconds to get a response and I've been able to get it down to 6 seconds, but people are still hanging up. We're trying several ways to mitigate this, including having pre-rendered speech playing something like "Okay" or "As an artificial representative, I'm still learning to be quicker on the pickup. We appreciate your patience." One of the industries we want to target is international web development and digital marketing companies, and we want to use the bot to cold-call businesses to pitch them our services. The goal is to replace $30 an hour cold-callers from the USA with $3 per hour total-cost automation. Apparently the CEO was given a $5 million valuation from the strength of the MVP from a VC. Our investment so far was at a $300k valuation tho. It's exciting. Trying to get Twilio working to be able to make calls programmatically instead of using our hacky workaround. Let me know if you have any questions. I just wanted to share this awesome news!

Hot Take: Not all your startups need AI forced into them

I'm a final year Computer Engineering student, hence applying for jobs all around. There's this particular trend I've noticed with startups that are coming up these days. That is, even for the absolute basic stuff they'll use 'AI', and they'll think they built something 'revolutionary'. No. You're breaking your product in ways you don't realise. An example, that even some well established companies are guilty of: AI Chatbots You absolutely don't need them and it's an entire gimmick. If you really wanna implement a chatbot, connect the user to an actual person on your end, which I think is not possible if you're at a 'startup' stage. You'll need employees who can handle user queries in real time. If the user really is stuck let them use the 'Contact Us' page. A really close relative of mine is very vocal about the frustration he faces whenever he tries to use the AI Chatbot on any well known e-com website. The only case for AI Chatbot that makes sense is when it's directing the customer to an actual customer support rep if none of the AI's solutions is working for the customer. Even then, implementing a search page for FAQ is extremely easy and user friendly. Another example: AI Interviewer I recently interviewed for a startup, and their whole interviewing process was AI'zed?!?! No real person at the other end, I was answering to their questions which were in video format. They even had a 'mascot' / 'AI interviewer' avatar designed by an AI (AI-ception???). This mascot just text-to-speech'ed all the questions for me to rewind and hear what I missed again. And I had to record video and audio to answer these questions on their platform itself. The entire interview process just could've been a questionnaire, or if you're really concerned on the integrity of the interviewee, just take a few minutes out of your oh-so-busy schedule as a startup owner. Atleast for hiring employees who would make the most impact on your product going ahead. I say the most impact, because (atleast as a developer) the work done by these employees would define how robust your product is, and/or how easily other features can be integrated into the codebase. Trust me, refactoring code later on would only cost you time and money. These resources would rather be more useful in other departments of your startup. The only use case for an AI Interviewer I see is for preparing for an actual interview, provided that feedback is given to the user at the earliest, which you don't need to worry about as a startup owner. So yeah, you're probably better off without integrating AI in your product. Thank you for reading. TLDR; The title; I know AI is the new thing and gets everyone drooling and all, but for the love of God, just focus on what your startup does best and put real people behind it; Integrating AI without human intervention is as good as a broken product; Do your hiring yourself, or through real people, emphasizing on the fact that the people you hire at an early stage will define your growth ahead;

I spent 6 months on building a tool, and got 0 zero users. Here is my story.

Edit Thank you all so much for your time reading my story. Your support, feedback, criticism, and skepticism; all helped me a lot, and I couldn't appreciate it enough \^\_\^ TL;DR I spent 6 months on a tool that currently has 0 users. Below is what I learned during my journey, sharing because I believe most mistakes are easily avoidable. Do not overestimate your product and assume it will be an exception to fundamental principles. Principles are there for a reason. Always look for validation before you start. Avoid building products with a low money-to-effort ratio/in very competitive fields. Unless you have the means, you probably won't make it. Pick a problem space, pick your target audience, and talk to them before thinking about a solution. Identify and match their pain points. Only then should you think of a solution. If people are not overly excited or willing to pay in advance for a discounted price, it might be a sign to rethink. Sell one and only one feature at a time. Avoid everything else. If people don't pay for that one core feature, no secondary feature will change their mind. Always spend twice as much time marketing as you do building. You will not get users if they don't know it exists. Define success metrics ("1000 users in 3 months" or "$6000 in the account at the end of 6 months") before you start. If you don't meet them, strongly consider quitting the project. If you can't get enough users to keep going, nothing else matters. VALIDATION, VALIDATION, VALIDATION. Success is not random, but most of our first products will not make a success story. Know when to admit failure, and move on. Even if a product of yours doesn't succeed, what you learned during its journey will turn out to be invaluable for your future. My story So, this is the story of a product, Summ, that I’ve been working on for the last 6 months. As it's the first product I’ve ever built, after watching you all from the sidelines, I have learned a lot, made many mistakes, and did only a few things right. Just sharing what I’ve learned and some insights from my journey so far. I hope that this post will help you avoid the mistakes I made — most of which I consider easily avoidable — while you enjoy reading it, and get to know me a little bit more 🤓. A slow start after many years Summ isn’t the first product I really wanted to build. Lacking enough dev skills to even get started was a huge blocker for so many years. In fact, the first product I would’ve LOVED to build was a smart personal shopping assistant. I had this idea 4 years ago; but with no GPT, no coding skills, no technical co-founder, I didn’t have the means to make it happen. I still do not know if such a tool exists and is good enough. All I wanted was a tool that could make data-based predictions about when to buy stuff (“buy a new toothpaste every three months”) and suggest physical products that I might need or be strongly interested in. AFAIK, Amazon famously still struggles with the second one. Fast-forward a few years, I learned the very basics of HTML, CSS, and Vanilla JS. Still was not there to build a product; but good enough to code my design portfolio from scratch. Yet, I couldn’t imagine myself building a product using Vanilla JS. I really hated it, I really sucked at it. So, back to tutorial hell, and to learn about this framework I just heard about: React.React introduced so many new concepts to me. “Thinking in React” is a phrase we heard a lot, and with quite good reasons. After some time, I was able to build very basic tutorial apps, both in React, and React Native; but I have to say that I really hated coding for mobile. At this point, I was already a fan of productivity apps, and had a concept for a time management assistant app in my design portfolio. So, why not build one? Surely, it must be easy, since every coding tutorial starts with a todo app. ❌ WRONG! Building a basic todo app is easy enough, but building one good enough for a place in the market was a challenge I took and failed. I wasted one month on that until I abandoned the project for good. Even if I continued working on it, as the productivity landscape is overly competitive, I wouldn’t be able to make enough money to cover costs, assuming I make any. Since I was (and still am) in between jobs, I decided to abandon the project. 👉 What I learned: Do not start projects with a low ratio of money to effort and time. Example: Even if I get 500 monthly users, 200 of which are paid users (unrealistically high number), assuming an average subscription fee of $5/m (such apps are quite cheap, mostly due to the high competition), it would make me around $1000 minus any occurring costs. Any founder with a product that has 500 active users should make more. Even if it was relatively successful, due to the high competition, I wouldn’t make any meaningful money. PS: I use Todoist today. Due to local pricing, I pay less than $2/m. There is no way I could beat this competitive pricing, let alone the app itself. But, somehow, with a project that wasn’t even functional — let alone being an MVP — I made my first Wi-Fi money: Someone decided that the domain I preemptively purchased is worth something. By this point, I had already abandoned the project, certainly wasn’t going to renew the domain, was looking for a FT job, and a new project that I could work on. And out of nowhere, someone hands me some free money — who am I not to take it? Of course, I took it. The domain is still unused, no idea why 🤔. Ngl, I still hate the fact that my first Wi-Fi money came from this. A new idea worth pursuing? Fast-forward some weeks now. Around March, I got this crazy idea of building an email productivity tool. We all use emails, yet we all hate them. So, this must be fixed. Everyone uses emails, in fact everyone HAS TO use emails. So, I just needed to build a tool and wait for people to come. This was all, really. After all, the problem space is huge, there is enough room for another product, everyone uses emails, no need for any further validation, right? ❌ WRONG ONCE AGAIN! We all hear from the greatest in the startup landscape that we must validate our ideas with real people, yet at least some of us (guilty here 🥸) think that our product will be hugely successful and prove them to be an exception. Few might, but most are not. I certainly wasn't. 👉 Lesson learned: Always validate your ideas with real people. Ask them how much they’d pay for such a tool (not if they would). Much better if they are willing to pay upfront for a discount, etc. But even this comes later, keep reading. I think the difference between “How much” and “If” is huge for two reasons: (1) By asking them for “How much”, you force them to think in a more realistic setting. (2) You will have a more realistic idea on your profit margins. Based on my competitive analysis, I already had a solution in my mind to improve our email usage standards and email productivity (huge mistake), but I did my best to learn about their problems regarding those without pushing the idea too hard. The idea is this: Generate concise email summaries with suggested actions, combine them into one email, and send it at their preferred times. Save as much as time the AI you end up with allows. After all, everyone loves to save time. So, what kind of validation did I seek for? Talked with only a few people around me about this crazy, internet-breaking idea. The responses I got were, now I see, mediocre; no one got excited about it, just said things along the lines of “Cool idea, OK”. So, any reasonable person in this situation would think “Okay, not might not be working”, right? Well, I did not. I assumed that they were the wrong audience for this product, and there was this magical land of user segments waiting eagerly for my product, yet unknowingly. To this day, I still have not reached this magical place. Perhaps, it didn’t exist in the first place. If I cannot find it, whether it exists or not doesn’t matter. I am certainly searching for it. 👉 What I should have done: Once I decide on a problem space (time management, email productivity, etc.), I should decide on my potential user segments, people who I plan to sell my product to. Then I should go talk to those people, ask them about their pains, then get to the problem-solving/ideation phase only later. ❗️ VALIDATION COMES FROM THE REALITY OUTSIDE. What validation looks like might change from product to product; but what invalidation looks like is more or less the same for every product. Nico Jeannen told me yesterday “validation = money in the account” on Twitter. This is the ultimate form of validation your product could get. If your product doesn’t make any money, then something is invalidated by reality: Your product, you, your idea, who knows? So, at this point, I knew a little bit of Python from spending some time in tutorial hell a few years ago, some HTML/CSS/JS, barely enough React to build a working app. React could work for this project, but I needed easy-to-implement server interactivity. Luckily, around this time, I got to know about this new gen of indie hackers, and learned (but didn’t truly understand) about their approach to indie hacking, and this library called Nextjs. How good Next.js still blows my mind. So, I was back to tutorial hell once again. But, this time, with a promise to myself: This is the last time I would visit tutorial hell. Time to start building this "ground-breaking idea" Learning the fundamentals of Next.js was easier than learning of React unsurprisingly. Yet, the first time I managed to run server actions on Next.js was one of the rarest moments that completely blew my mind. To this day, I reject the idea that it is something else than pure magic under its hood. Did I absolutely need Nextjs for this project though? I do not think so. Did it save me lots of time? Absolutely. Furthermore, learning Nextjs will certainly be quite helpful for other projects that I will be tackling in the future. Already got a few ideas that might be worth pursuing in the head in case I decide to abandon Summ in the future. Fast-forward few weeks again: So, at this stage, I had a barely working MVP-like product. Since the very beginning, I spent every free hour (and more) on this project as speed is essential. But, I am not so sure it was worth it to overwork in retrospect. Yet, I know I couldn’t help myself. Everything is going kinda smooth, so what’s the worst thing that could ever happen? Well, both Apple and Google announced their AIs (Apple Intelligence and Google Gemini, respectively) will have email summarization features for their products. Summarizing singular emails is no big deal, after all there were already so many similar products in the market. I still think that what truly matters is a frictionless user experience, and this is why I built this product in a certain way: You spend less than a few minutes setting up your account, and you get to enjoy your email summaries, without ever visiting its website again. This is still a very cool concept I really like a lot. So, at this point: I had no other idea that could be pursued, already spent too much time on this project. Do I quit or not? This was the question. Of course not. I just have to launch this product as quickly as possible. So, I did something right, a quite rare occurrence I might say: Re-planned my product, dropped everything secondary to the core feature immediately (save time on reading emails), tried launching it asap. 👉 Insight: Sell only one core feature at one time. Drop anything secondary to this core feature. Well, my primary occupation is product design. So one would expect that a product I build must have stellar design. I considered any considerable time spent on design at this stage would be simply wasted. I still think this is both true and wrong: True, because if your product’s core benefits suck, no one will care about your design. False, because if your design looks amateurish, no one will trust you and your product. So, I always targeted an average level design with it and the way this tool works made it quite easy as I had to design only 2 primary pages: Landing page and user portal (which has only settings and analytics pages). However, even though I knew spending time on design was not worth much of my time, I got a bit “greedy”: In fact, I redesigned those pages three times, and still ended up with a so-so design that I am not proud of. 👉 What I would do differently: Unless absolutely necessary, only one iteration per stage as long as it works. This, in my mind, applies to everything. If your product’s A feature works, then no need to rewrite it from scratch for any reason, or even refactor it. When your product becomes a success, and you absolutely need that part of your codebase to be written, do so, but only then. Ready to launch, now is th etime for some marketing, right? By July 26, I already had a “launchable” product that barely works (I marked this date on a Notion docs, this is how I know). Yet, I had spent almost no time on marketing, sales, whatever. After all, “You build and they will come”. Did I know that I needed marketing? Of course I did, but knowingly didn’t. Why, you might ask. Well, from my perspective, it had to be a dev-heavy product; meaning that you spend most of your time on developing it, mostly coding skills. But, this is simply wrong. As a rule of thumb, as noted by one of the greatests, Marc Louvion, you should spend at least twice of the building time on marketing. ❗️ Time spent on building \* 2 people don’t know your product > they don’t use your product > you don’t get users > you don’t make money Easy as that. Following the same reasoning, a slightly different approach to planning a project is possible. Determine an approximate time to complete the project with a high level project plan. Let’s say 6 months. By the reasoning above, 2 months should go into building, and 4 into marketing. If you need 4 months for building instead of 2, then you need 8 months of marketing, which makes the time to complete the project 12 months. If you don’t have that much time, then quit the project. When does a project count as completed? Well, in reality, never. But, I think we have to define success conditions even before we start for indie projects and startups; so we know when to quit when they are not met. A success condition could look like “Make $6000 in 12 months” or “Have 3000 users in 6 months”. It all depends on the project. But, once you set it, it should be set in stone: You don’t change it unless absolutely necessary. I suspect there are few principles that make a solopreneur successful; and knowing when to quit and when to continue is definitely one of them. Marc Louvion is famously known for his success, but he got there after failing so many projects. To my knowledge, the same applies to Nico Jeannen, Pieter Levels, or almost everyone as well. ❗️ Determining when to continue even before you start will definitely help in the long run. A half-aed launch Time-leap again. Around mid August, I “soft launched” my product. By soft launch, I mean lazy marketing. Just tweeting about it, posting it on free directories. Did I get any traffic? Surely I did. Did I get any users? Nope. Only after this time, it hit me: “Either something is wrong with me, or with this product” Marketing might be a much bigger factor for a project’s success after all. Even though I get some traffic, not convincing enough for people to sign up even for a free trial. The product was still perfect in my eyes at the time (well, still is ^(\_),) so the right people are not finding my product, I thought. Then, a question that I should have been asking at the very first place, one that could prevent all these, comes to my mind: “How do even people search for such tools?” If we are to consider this whole journey of me and my so-far-failed product to be an already destined failure, one metric suffices to show why. Search volume: 30. Even if people have such a pain point, they are not looking for email summaries. So, almost no organic traffic coming from Google. But, as a person who did zero marketing on this or any product, who has zero marketing knowledge, who doesn’t have an audience on social media, there is not much I could do. Finally, it was time to give up. Or not… In my eyes, the most important element that makes a founder (solo or not) successful (this, I am not by any means) is to solve problems. ❗️ So, the problem was this: “People are not finding my product by organic search” How do I make sure I get some organic traffic and gets more visibility? Learn digital marketing and SEO as much as I can within very limited time. Thankfully, without spending much time, I came across Neil Patel's YT channel, and as I said many times, it is an absolute gold mine. I learned a lot, especially about the fundamentals, and surely it will be fruitful; but there is no magic trick that could make people visit your website. SEO certainly helps, but only when people are looking for your keywords. However, it is truly a magical solution to get in touch with REAL people that are in your user segments: 👉 Understand your pains, understand their problems, help them to solve them via building products. I did not do this so far, have to admit. But, in case you would like to have a chat about your email usage, and email productivity, just get in touch; I’d be delighted to hear about them. Getting ready for a ProductHunt launch The date was Sept 1. And I unlocked an impossible achievement: Running out of Supabase’s free plan’s Egres limit while having zero users. I was already considering moving out of their Cloud server and managing a Supabase CLI service on my Hetzner VPS for some time; but never ever suspected that I would have to do this quickly. The cheapest plan Supabase offers is $25/month; yet, at that point, I am in between jobs for such a long time, basically broke, and could barely afford that price. One or two months could be okay, but why pay for it if I will eventually move out of their Cloud service? So, instead of paying $25, I spent two days migrating out of Supabase Cloud. Worth my time? Definitely not. But, when you are broke, you gotta do stupid things. This was the first time that I felt lucky to have zero users: I have no idea how I would manage this migration if I had any. I think this is one of the core tenets of an indie hacker: Controlling their own environment. I can’t remember whose quote this is, but I suspect it was Naval: Entrepreneurs have an almost pathological need to control their own fate. They will take any suffering if they can be in charge of their destiny, and not have it in somebody else’s hands. What’s truly scary is, at least in my case, we make people around us suffer at the expense of our attempting to control our own fates. I know this period has been quite hard on my wife as well, as I neglected her quite a bit, but sadly, I know that this will happen again. It is something that I can barely help with. Still, so sorry. After working the last two weeks on a ProductHunt Launch, I finally launched it this Tuesday. Zero ranking, zero new users, but 36 kind people upvoted my product, and many commented and provided invaluable feedback. I couldn't be more grateful for each one of them 🙏. Considering all these, what lies in the future of Summ though? I have no idea, to be honest. On one hand, I have zero users, have no job, no income. So, I need a way to make money asap. On the other hand, the whole idea of it revolves around one core premise (not an assumption) that I am not so willing to share; and I couldn’t have more trust in it. This might not be the best iteration of it, however I certainly believe that email usage is one of the best problem spaces one could work on. 👉 But, one thing is for certain: I need to get in touch with people, and talk with them about this product I built so far. In fact, this is the only item on my agenda. Nothing else will save my brainchild <3. Below are some other insights and notes that I got during my journey; as they do not 100% fit into this story, I think it is more suitable to list them here. I hope you enjoyed reading this. Give Summ a try, it comes with a generous free trial, no credit card required. Some additional notes and insights: Project planning is one of the most underestimated skills for solopreneurs. It saves you enormous time, and helps you to keep your focus up. Building B2C products beats building B2B products. Businesses are very willing to pay big bucks if your product helps them. On the other hand, spending a few hours per user who would pay $5/m probably is not worth your time. It doesn’t matter how brilliant your product is if no one uses it. If you cannot sell a product in a certain category/niche (or do not know how to sell it), it might be a good idea not to start a project in it. Going after new ideas and ventures is quite risky, especially if you don’t know how to market it. On the other hand, an already established category means that there is already demand. Whether this demand is sufficient or not is another issue. As long as there is enough demand for your product to fit in, any category/niche is good. Some might be better, some might be worse. Unless you are going hardcore B2B, you will need people to find your product by means of organic search. Always conduct thorough keyword research as soon as possible.

From Running a $350M Startup to Failing Big and Rediscovering What Really Matters in Life ❤️

This is my story. I’ve always been a hustler. I don’t remember a time I wasn’t working since I was 14. Barely slept 4 hours a night, always busy—solving problems, putting out fires. After college (LLB and MBA), I was lost. I tried regular jobs but couldn’t get excited, and when I’m not excited, I spiral. But I knew entrepreneurship; I just didn’t realize it was an option for adults. Then, in 2017 a friend asked me to help with their startup. “Cool,” I thought. Finally, a place where I could solve problems all day. It was a small e-commerce idea, tackling an interesting angle. I worked 17-hour days, delivering on a bike, talking to customers, vendors, and even random people on the street. Things moved fast. We applied to Y Combinator, got in, and raised $18M before Demo Day even started. We grew 100% month-over-month. Then came another $40M, and I moved to NYC. Before I knew it, we had 1,000 employees and raised $80M more. I was COO, managing 17 direct reports (VPs of Ops, Finance, HR, Data, and more) and 800 indirect employees. On the surface, I was on top of the world. But in reality, I was at rock bottom. I couldn’t sleep, drowning in anxiety, and eventually ended up on antidepressants. Then 2022 hit. We needed to raise $100M, but we couldn’t. In three brutal months, we laid off 900 people. It was the darkest period of my life. I felt like I’d failed everyone—myself, investors, my company, and my team. I took a year off. Packed up the car with my wife and drove across Europe, staying in remote places, just trying to calm my nervous system. I couldn’t speak to anyone, felt ashamed, and battled deep depression. It took over a year, therapy, plant medicine, intense morning routines, and a workout regimen to get back on my feet, physically and mentally. Now, I’m on the other side. In the past 6 months, I’ve been regaining my mojo, with a new respect for who I am and why I’m here. I made peace with what I went through over those 7 years—the lessons, the people, the experiences. I started reconnecting with my community, giving back. Every week, I have conversations with young founders, offering direction, or even jumping in to help with their operations. It’s been a huge gift. I also began exploring side projects. I never knew how to code, but I’ve always had ideas. Recent advances in AI gave me the push I needed. I built my first app, as my first attempt at my true passion—consumer products for kids. Today, I feel wholesome about my journey. I hope others can see that too. ❤️ EDIT: Wow, I didn’t expect this post to resonate with so many people. A lot of you have DM’d me, and I’ll try to respond. Just a heads-up, though—I’m juggling consulting and new projects, so I can’t jump on too many calls. Since I’m not promoting anything, I won’t be funneling folks to my page, so forgive me if I don’t get back to everyone. Anyway, it’s amazing to connect with so many of you. I’d love to write more, so let me know what topics you’d be interested in!

Couple people messaged me for Ai agents for their business what is the hype about?

Hey guys hope everyone is well I’m an opportunist seen a post on TikTok about Ai agents and many businesses were interested I did do some outreach some are interested I would like to know your views on these new trends and what your views are? Any of your thoughts on these people on socials promoting Ai agents to scale and automate businesses. Does anyone use one right now and any benefits and disadvantages? Thank you.

One post gave us another 5 solopreneurs on our waitlist, how to speed this up?

Firstly, thank you guys for all the feedback (implemented it to our v1.0 and even waitlist).  Every time I post here I receive another 3-5 new subscribers. I'd like to speed this up but I don't have an idea how to hook up right people yet. Here are the things I do: posting on big subreddits - doesn't blow up yet post under niche subreddits - in order to get specific traffic, does anyone tried that before? any recommendations? tech directories to get backlinks - AI directories, automation directories, solopreneurs directories, sidehustle directories, SMB directories - got me traffic, not a lot signups. Any best practises here? (I even asked another hacker for help optimizing that; read almost everything from cover to cover) Linkedin direct messages and conversations among our network no X, no Linkedin, no paid ads yet, no other content YET Since our tool is for solopreneurs and small teams, I'm looking for places they get their knowledge. Much appreciate any feedback on the points above! Pls share some best practises on getting early users. And again, thanks for your feedback!

OpenAI Search for lead generation - better alternatives?

We need leads in an obscure niche. Leads in this industry are not sold by ZoomInfo/Clearbit/etc. We tried scraping them ourselves with Octoparse and Apify, but it proved too difficult. OpenAI’s new search tool works really well, though. We need the results in an exact format with a short description of their service, lat/long derived from the service address, categorized into our existing taxonomy - and we pretty easily created a prompt that would reliably give us what we want. But I need to super charge this. I need 2,000 leads in a specific geographic area as soon as possible. OpenAI’s API doesn’t allow access to the search functionality yet, as far as I can tell. The new OpenAI + prompt technique gives us like 5 at a time and they need to be manually copy-pasted into a spreadsheet. Eventually, I'll need at least 10,000 leads annually. Does anyone know of a start-up/service available that will automate what we’re doing at scale?

Consistency problem? I will not promote

I am struggling with being consistent. I know that as a startup founder, I am supposed to do a few things everyday and that's when compounding effect will kick in. However, everyday, I am missing few important tasks. These tasks are like posting on twitter or reaching out to 5 new people on linkedin. How do you guys manage it? I am not looking for ai tools suggestions to automate these as I won't learn anything in the process if I rely on such tools.

AI Might Be the Best Industry for Ambitious Lazy People i will not promote

Not here to promote, just talk about my experience with starting a new business. I'm not new to the game, so I was able to speed-run my new AI automation agency. I currently run a software company with a co-founder, and I recently decided to start a new AI and automation agency. I just had a private launch this week, and I already have a $2K client lined up, ready to buy, along with some other interested parties, as I have sales calls with them coming up. I found all of my leads after choosing a niche to focus on and using this tool I built that automatically scrapes IG data. My tool is “unique” because it automagically qualifies the leads with AI. It even has a custom frontend, and I used this tool as a case study to secure the client I have now, and I accomplished all of this in the span of about a week. Granted, I have a background in engineering, so picking up AI was easier for me, but anyone can do it. You can even use AI to learn AI. If you haven’t used AI in your business yet, I would strongly suggest getting into AI and automation. If you've been considering starting a business but don't know what business to start, take this as a sign to turn AI into a business. i will not promote

Should we give up?

I'm currently very demotivated because we're working on our SaaS startup since 1,5 years and we still haven't found active users, let alone a customer. We're building an AI-first tool that automates user research analysis. We've released two MVPs so far and are planning to build a third. People respond well to outreach (5-7% book a demo from those who received a first message) but then they fail to use it. We are talking with users a lot so we are aware of the problems, and we might be able to solve them if we continue building and testing. I find it hard though to solve these problems efficiently, because there are no similar established AI-first products on the market and it feels like we have to create a new UX standard. Some problems might be very hard to be solved, e.g. there are high cost of switching products for many of our potential users. Also, my time is limited, as I recently (5 months ago) became a mother. I can only work 30 hours per week. It's a competitive area we're in and our competitors have gradually developed into the same direction and it's getting harder to position ourselves. Also, GPTs might soon be able to do what we're doing - for free. I feel like AI tools are generally expected by many to be free. The price we're expecting to be able to bill is getting lower and lower and our finance plan is already looking tight. However, there are adjacent audiences which we could target as well, but none of us knows them. Is it normal as a founder to struggle so much at the beginning? I've read that it took established SaaS 2,5 years on average from founding to first revenue. We haven't founded so far so you could say we're not behind \sarcasm\ Shall we keep pushing? My tech co-founder is optimistic and thinks this is where the wheat is separated from the chaff. We're currently supported financially by a government fund so we haven't spent much private money. However, I feel like my career outlook gets worse with each day that I unsuccessfully try to raise this startup.

What’s expected of an AI-powered SMM tool?

As someone working on an AI platform that helps small businesses with marketing, I’ve been wondering: What's your expectations for an AI social media manager tool? To give you more details, here are some questions I’d love to hear opinions on: What should an AI agent in SMM know to create effective posts? What kinds of posts should it write? How much of social media posting can or should be automated by AI? What’s currently trending on platforms like LinkedIn and X? Can AI effectively replicate or predict such trends? Should AI focus more on addressing the audience’s pain points, or is there more value in leveraging trends and viral formats?

Good at coding, bad at marketing. Summary

Hello. I posted a question on what to do if you are good at coding but bad at marketing four days ago, and I received so many responses and tips. The original post is here. I was really glad and excited to read comments. To return the favor to the community and add some more value, I’ve summarized all the comments I got on the original post. Here are they, with my personal comments on some of the advice I got. You’ll never believe it, but the most common advice was to learn. Really, the first and only thing you should start with if you’re bad at marketing is learning. Yet learning could be different. I highlighted 5 main areas. Educate yourself on general questions. Learn more about some basics. For example, start by finding out what the 4P’s of marketing are, and afterward, you’ll inevitably run into YouTube videos, seminars, Udemy courses, or any other resource that resonates with you on some ideas/avenues you could pursue. Read books and watch videos. There are tons of books on marketing and sales. People shared in the comments books by Dan Kennedy and “Cashvertising”, written by Drew Eric Whitman. (I’ve never heard of them, but already ordered on Amazon). For sales, the most common idea was to start with YouTube videos. For example, Alex Hormozi videos and Startup school delivered by Ycombinator videos. Check out Indie Hackers and scrutinize it for a piece of good advice from developers in the same situation. Also, there was advice to follow up and read some guy on Twitter. (Don't want to get unfairly banned from here, so won't post it) Educate yourself and hire a professional or find a co-founder to help you: Hire a seasoned marketer in this field to help you out. He will help you achieve cost-efficient scales. But it could be a real problem to find the right person. Marketing agencies are expensive. Try to look on LinkedIn or among your acquaintances. Look for professionals with credentials or extensive experience. Seek marketing referrals from startups of a similar size/industry. If you don't have those, try to bring a trusted/experienced marketer friend into the intro meetings to help assess whether the service provider knows what they are doing. Talented freelancers can often get the job done for less than hiring an entire agency. Look for a co-founder who is savvy in marketing, passionate, and ready to work hard towards mutual success. Educate and DIY Being the face of your business is way better than having faceless communication. The startup checklist is made based on the comments is next: At least have your product defined. Define your target audience. Set up the goals you want to achieve. Make domain expertise and understand the market and the direction of its development. The next stage is answering tricky questions: Have you created a business model? How do you plan to compete? What’s your unique selling point? How much do you plan to budget for marketing? Are you planning to work alone, or will you need other devs? Then you start thinking about clients… You need the exposure to truly understand the customer's pain points and build a product that they love. You need to think about how your clients would think, and you should tailor each step you take for them. Get feedback from your early users if you already have a product. Interview your potential customers to learn how they buy. This will help you narrow your choice of marketing channels. Get your product or service used by several startups and help them achieve their goals. Endorsements are very valuable marketing assets. You need a landing to validate your value proposition and start sending traffic, or you can run meta instant form campaigns... It would depend on the category of your startup. You need a benchmark of the competition's ads both in Meta and Google, blog posts, domain authority, their landing page, and average search volumes. Do affiliate marketing for your product since it's an effective strategy. Educate and use AI tools for dealing with marketing. Build an LLM-based product to automate marketing. (Sounds like an idea for a startup, right?) Learn following ChatGPT advice. In 1–3 months, you will be another updated person. Look at marketowl, an AI marketing department for startups and microbusinesses that have no budget or time to do marketing. It will automate the basic tasks your business needs, but it doesn't require your marketing expertise. Check out AI tools that are delivering very good marketing content (gocharlie, jasper, copyai). Educate yourself and run socials Start a blog or YouTube channel where you can share your expertise in coding or anything else you are good at and how your product simplifies life. Engage with your audience on social media platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn, where you can showcase your industry knowledge. Start a page on Twitter and an account on Reddit. Follow and read subreddits and pages where your potential customers are. Learn the pain from the inside. Do not simply promote, people will lose interest immediately. Start by taking focused time to create informational content, so people will eventually be naturally intrigued by what you do and want to support you when they start to “know” you. Educate your potential users about the value of your product. Create content based on what ideal customers are asking at the various stages of marketing. e.g., if they are at the beginning of the process, they may use basic language; if they are further down the process, maybe they’ll be specific. Try to get on podcasts and build as many social links as you can. In other words, don’t live in a shell! Post regularly, and eventually you’ll find sites or people that are willing to promote for you. I omitted here all personal help offers and newsletters, however you could find them in the original post. Hope that will be helpful!

I am considering starting a SaaS business that automates the creation of long-form SEO-optimized blog posts. Is this something you would find useful, as a business owner?

Trying to gauge the general interest level, from other entrepreneurs/business owners. The idea is, a tool that automates the process of creating long-form SEO optimized blog posts to promote your business -- perhaps creating entire batches of such posts, all from just one button click. Like if you could just describe your business, click a button, and BAM, it just outputs like an entire month's worth of absolutely fire SEO-optimized long-form blog posts? That would be super fucking convenient. Yes you can use ChatGPT for this, but the character limits make it so it can only output very short posts. Otherwise it requires first asking for an outline, then getting the different sections piecemeal and pasting it all together yourself. Still super time-consuming to do it that way. A GPT-based solution could probably automate the process I've hit upon in my own SEO blog-posting workflow -- where I output not just finished long-form blog posts, but also convert them into SEO-optimized HTML code so you can just paste it into your blog post website and have all the header tags etc set up for optimal SEO/keyword ranking purposes. Biggest counter-argument I make against this is, there are undoubtedly lots of companies already offering this. Doesn't mean I can't make money doing it. I just don't like entering super crowded marketplaces. Other main argument I have is, if I used my OpenAI account for this, there's the risk of some malicious/idiot user firing prompts that violate the OpenAI ToS and get me banned. I COULD have them input their own OpenAI API tokens, but that just adds adoption/usage barriers that would make it way harder to market/acquire initial customers. I guess I could sanitize the user inputs as a pre-processing step to block any obscene prompts or anything like that, but still, it's a risk. Let me know your thoughts on this idea. ASSUMING it worked effectively -- and made it very easy for you to just describe your business offerings / value propositions / target market(s), then get genuinely useful long-form SEO-optimized blog posts, is this something you'd be willing to pay for? If so, what dollar amount, to you, would seem reasonable? It would probably just be hosted on a website. Then you'd just copy the outputted final result for use as needed on your website. That would be the simplest way to do it. Technically it could function as like, a plugin for specific websites that maybe auto-posts them for you too -- it would be simpler, on my end, to start out doing this on a standalone website. (Might also make it easier to allow users to try it out, on first visit.) One last point -- MAYBE it would have an optional intermediate step, where it would first output the planned outline for the blog post, allowing you to pop in, quickly modify that, add your own thoughts / valuable ideas (to help make the blog post more unique, truly useful for readers, more your own) -- THEN you could finalize it and hit submit. Again, that's the workflow I've hit upon in my own semi-automated blog-posting workflow, and it's led to some pretty useful long-form content that isn't just, boring garbage, but contains lots of genuinely useful ideas that I would include in my own uniquely-created blog posts on the subject. But instead of me taking the time to write it, I just kinda toss in a few quickly typed out ideas to expand upon, and ChatGPT does the rest. Imagine that kind of optional / customizable workflow, but the rest of it is fully automated. OR you could just get the fully automated blog posts with no revisions on your part. Thanks!

Nuts and bolts AI implementation for small business

How can small businesses use AI to increase sales or decrease expenses without massive disruption? One way for us is using AI to process our email history to identify patterns and write personalized messages based on past correspondence. According to legal advice in which I have confidence, email that is personalized for each recipient (and meets other standards) does not need to be opt in. If you disagree - understood - but spam morality is not the topic here. Bottom line - obviously a game changer. Knowing phrases people have used before becoming clients - and all of the possible permutations of those phrases, and detecting where those phrases show up will make our sales and marketing many times more effective for a fraction of the cost. There's a reason big corps. record calls, and now small business can leverage the same technology. We are setting up a process that yields accurate, up to date, comprehensive data for our own business operations. Our clients - who are they and how has their demographic changed over time? To answer this question and for email personalization, we also need access to external data sources e.g. like accurate up to date company demographics. IMO - the leader in company data in the US? THEY SUCK. We found there is no magic fairy who is going to make good data appear for our AI. The process of applying our own proprietary knowledge to code and categorize the data is just as important, and obviously highly sensitive. How do we leverage the AI technologies of companies like Google and Microsoft (or anyone else) without being their bitch? Below is a list of some of the sources of my business's data: Data sources: PST/OST/Other Email data files Microsoft data from Windows/O365 Windows/Linux/Android/IOS application logs and other data Web server logs for the company website. SEO/Analytics Data Google data export Google voice/VOIP logs OneDrive/G drive Other Phone system/cell service logs Other SAAS and in-house application data. Facebook/social media data for company pages. QuickBooks/other accounting systems/business bank account logs POS/Credit card processing systems/PayPal, etc. OSINT to fill in the blanks

Seeking Feedback on My New App: Rise Above - Goal Setting & Habit Tracking

Hey everyone! I’ve just launched an app called Rise Above that helps users set goals, build habits, and stay motivated with the support of an AI coach. The idea was born from my own journey of wanting to improve my habits while starting my own business. Have you ever been in a situation where you know what you want to achieve but don't know exactly how to get there? The Rise Above's AI Coach suggests habits and give out tips on what you can do to get closer to the finish line! I’d love to hear your thoughts on the concept, features, and overall usability. Your feedback is incredibly valuable as I continue to refine the app. Whether it’s about the design, functionality, or anything else, I’m eager to learn how it can be improved. If you’re interested in trying it out, here’s the link to download the app on the App Store. Disclaim: Rise Above has no free tier due to API expenses, but it has a 3-day free trial that you can take to try it out. You can go about it two ways: You can cancel the renewal directly on the App Store after taking the trial offer or you can reach out to me on the private messages where I can give out promo codes (limited to 100 due to AppStore limitations). I don't want anyone getting into a subscription they don't want to have. My goal here is really to collect feedback. Thanks in advance for your insights! 😊

Seeking advice from every type of business owner - if you have a moment & an opinion please chime in.

Hello everyone. I haven't started selling yet and wanted to get some insight from the community I'm trying to serve (that makes the most sense to me). So over the past couple months I've gotten into AI & Automation. I got a HighLevel account and went to town learning new things. I learned how to make automations and workflows that make running a business easier (my dad has been letting me use his concrete business as a guinea pig). I also learned how to build and train AI Chat Assistants. I want to start a service based business that uses AI & workflows to automate some of the customer service tasks & lead generation for business. What I'm seeking advice about are as follows: NICHE SELECTION: Part of me thinks I shouldn't niche down in the beginning and just take whoever comes and niche down once I find an industry I'm comfortable with. Another side thinks I should choose one. What is your opinion on niche selection in the beginning? PRICING: I know that pricing largely depends on the value I bring to the client, but I've seen people doing the same or similar things as I want to do and charging vastly different prices. From $300- $2,000. While I think these solutions could absolutely help companies get and retain new business and reduce some of the workload of their staff -- I'm not comfortable charging a high price until I've got enough experience and data to justify that. &#x200B; THESE ARE THE SERVICES I'M THINKING OF OFFERING: Customer Service Chat Assistant. This will be on the website as a "Live Chat". It also connects to Facebook Messenger & Google Business Chat. I'd train the chat assistant on everything related to the company; pertinent info (NAP, company mission, industry background), contact info, services / products / pricing, FAQs, current specials &/or discount codes (this can be changed monthly), how to handle upset clients, etc. It can also connect to a calendar like Google or Calendly so customers can make an appointment or schedule a call directly from the conversation. Missed Call Follow Up. If you're familiar with the platform HighLevel it's commonly called "Missed Call Text Back". The idea is that when a call is missed a text message is automatically fired to the prospect's phone saying something along the lines of "Hey this is \\\\\\ from \\\\\\\_. How can I help you?" and the business owner is alerted to the missed call via text notification. People have said they see a lot of success for their clients with this alone due to the instant follow up. I see a lot of people charging $300 /m. for this. My issues with this are: 1). The text fires automatically when the call is missed, but if the business owner isn't available to actually follow up and keep texting after the customer texts back, they will look inconsistent and bothersome. 2). Without context a prospect may wonder why you didn't answer when they called, but texted them instead. So my answer to these problems are #3. SMS Answering Service. It is essentially taking 2 + 1 and combining them. The missed call text goes out to the prospect, but with context on why they're being texted (because no one is available to take the call at the moment) and IF the prospect responds, a Customer Service Chat Assistant will take over the conversation with the goal of answering their questions and either getting them on the phone with the company via a call back OR helping them schedule an appointment. This offers a more consistent solution than just a text to the business owner / team & the prospect is contacted and helped (hopefully) before they have a chance to start calling a competitor. Lead Nurture / Lead Qualifying Sales Funnel. This one is more than just AI & automation. It's a full funnel. It can be for either Facebook or Google. The process is AD -> Landing Page -> AI Text Message Convo -> Booking/Schedule Call/ Appointment. Typically the ad will offer a lead magnet which they will claim on the LP by giving their information. After the form is submitted, they get a text message and begin a conversation with the AI. It can be trained to just walk them through a booking process, nurture a sale by answering questions and handling objections or to qualify leads. Lead qualification via text works well if you want to weed out who is serious versus who is curious. To be clear; I'd be making the ad, landing page & training the AI -- all parts of the funnel. For whichever service a few things are universal: \- All conversations; no matter what platform they're had on, all go to one inbox which is pretty helpful to see them all in one place. \- When scheduling / booking these can also collect payment. \- Tags can be added to keep track of how they came into the business and where they are in a sales pipeline. There are a lot of fun things I can do with these automations and I'm excited about learning more everyday. I'd really like to know what you think these services could be worth to a business. If you do reply please tell me what type of business you're in so I have an idea of what industries I should be looking towards. Thank you for any response I get as I know this was a long read! SN: I currently do digital marketing & web design as a freelancer.

Month 2 of building my startup after being laid off - $200 in revenue and 4 (actual) paying customers

In September 2024, I got laid off from my Silicon Valley job. It fucking sucked. I took a day to be sad, then got to work - I'm not one to wallow, I prefer action. Updated my resume, hit up my network, started interviewing. During this time, I had a realization - I'm tired of depending on a single income stream. I needed to diversify. Then it hit me: I literally work with RAG (retrieval augmented generation) in AI. Why not use this knowledge to help small businesses reduce their customer service load and boost sales? One month later, Answer HQ 0.5 (the MVP) was in the hands of our first users (shoutout to these alpha testers - their feedback shaped everything). By month 2, Answer HQ 1.0 launched with four paying customers, and growing. You're probably thinking - great, another chatbot. Yes, Answer HQ is a chatbot at its core. But here's the difference: it actually works. Our paying customers are seeing real results in reducing support load, plus it has something unique - it actively drives sales by turning customer questions into conversions. How? The AI doesn't just answer questions, it naturally recommends relevant products and content (blogs, social media, etc). Since I'm targeting small business owners (who usually aren't tech wizards) and early startups, Answer HQ had to be dead simple to set up. Here's my onboarding process - just 4 steps. I've checked out competitors like Intercom and Crisp, and I can say this: if my non-tech fiancée can set up an assistant on her blog in minutes, anyone can. Key learnings so far: Building in public is powerful. I shared my journey on Threads and X, and the support for a solo founder has been amazing. AI dev tools (Cursor, Claude Sonnet 3.5) have made MVP development incredibly accessible. You can get a working prototype frontend ready in days. I don't see how traditional no-code tools can survive in this age. But.. for a production-ready product? You still need dev skills and background. Example: I use Redis for super-fast loading of configs and themes. An AI won't suggest this optimization unless you know to ask for it. Another example: Cursor + Sonnet 3.5 struggles with code bases with many files and dependencies. It will change things you don't want it to change. Unless you can read code + understand it + know what needs to be changed and not changed, you'll easily run into upper limits of what prompting alone can do. I never mention "artificial intelligence" "AI" "machine learning" or any of these buzzwords once in my copy in my landing page, docs, product, etc. There is no point. Your customers do not care that something has AI in it. AI is not the product. Solving their pain points and problems is the product. AI is simply a tool of many tools like databases, APIs, caching, system design, etc. Early on, I personally onboarded every user through video calls. Time-consuming? Yes. But it helped me deeply understand their pain points and needs. I wasn't selling tech - I was showing them solutions to their problems. Tech stack: NextJS/React/Tailwind/shadcn frontend, Python FastAPI backend. Using Supabase Postgres, Upstash Redis, and Pinecone for different data needs. Hosted on Vercel and Render.com. Customer growth: Started with one alpha tester who saw such great results (especially in driving e-commerce sales) that he insisted on paying for a full year to keep me motivated. This led to two monthly customers, then a fourth annual customer after I raised prices. My advisor actually pushed me to raise prices again, saying I was undercharging for the value provided. I have settled on my final pricing now. I am learning so much. Traditionally, I have a software development and product management background. I am weak in sales and marketing. Building that app, designing the architecture, talking to customers, etc, these are all my strong suits. I enjoy doing it too. But now I need to improve on my ability to market the startup and really start learning things like SEO, content marketing, cold outreach, etc. I enjoying learning new skills. Happy to answer any questions about the journey so far!

I spent 6 months on building a web product, and got zero users. Here is my story.

Edit Thank you all so much for your time reading my story. Your support, feedback, criticism, and skepticism; all helped me a lot, and I couldn't appreciate it enough \^\_\^ I have stuff to post on Reddit very rarely, but I share how my project is going on, random stuff, and memes on X. Just in case few might want to keep in touch 👀 TL;DR I spent 6 months on a tool that currently has 0 users. Below is what I learned during my journey, sharing because I believe most mistakes are easily avoidable. Do not overestimate your product and assume it will be an exception to fundamental principles. Principles are there for a reason. Always look for validation before you start. Avoid building products with a low money-to-effort ratio/in very competitive fields. Unless you have the means, you probably won't make it. Pick a problem space, pick your target audience, and talk to them before thinking about a solution. Identify and match their pain points. Only then should you think of a solution. If people are not overly excited or willing to pay in advance for a discounted price, it might be a sign to rethink. Sell one and only one feature at a time. Avoid everything else. If people don't pay for that one core feature, no secondary feature will change their mind. Always spend twice as much time marketing as you do building. You will not get users if they don't know it exists. Define success metrics ("1000 users in 3 months" or "$6000 in the account at the end of 6 months") before you start. If you don't meet them, strongly consider quitting the project. If you can't get enough users to keep going, nothing else matters. VALIDATION, VALIDATION, VALIDATION. Success is not random, but most of our first products will not make a success story. Know when to admit failure, and move on. Even if a product of yours doesn't succeed, what you learned during its journey will turn out to be invaluable for your future. My story So, this is the story of a product that I’ve been working on for the last 6 months. As it's the first product I’ve ever built, after watching you all from the sidelines, I have learned a lot, made many mistakes, and did only a few things right. Just sharing what I’ve learned and some insights from my journey so far. I hope that this post will help you avoid the mistakes I made — most of which I consider easily avoidable — while you enjoy reading it, and get to know me a little bit more 🤓. A slow start after many years Summ isn’t the first product I really wanted to build. Lacking enough dev skills to even get started was a huge blocker for so many years. In fact, the first product I would’ve LOVED to build was a smart personal shopping assistant. I had this idea 4 years ago; but with no GPT, no coding skills, no technical co-founder, I didn’t have the means to make it happen. I still do not know if such a tool exists and is good enough. All I wanted was a tool that could make data-based predictions about when to buy stuff (“buy a new toothpaste every three months”) and suggest physical products that I might need or be strongly interested in. AFAIK, Amazon famously still struggles with the second one. Fast-forward a few years, I learned the very basics of HTML, CSS, and Vanilla JS. Still was not there to build a product; but good enough to code my design portfolio from scratch. Yet, I couldn’t imagine myself building a product using Vanilla JS. I really hated it, I really sucked at it. So, back to tutorial hell, and to learn about this framework I just heard about: React.React introduced so many new concepts to me. “Thinking in React” is a phrase we heard a lot, and with quite good reasons. After some time, I was able to build very basic tutorial apps, both in React, and React Native; but I have to say that I really hated coding for mobile. At this point, I was already a fan of productivity apps, and had a concept for a time management assistant app in my design portfolio. So, why not build one? Surely, it must be easy, since every coding tutorial starts with a todo app. ❌ WRONG! Building a basic todo app is easy enough, but building one good enough for a place in the market was a challenge I took and failed. I wasted one month on that until I abandoned the project for good. Even if I continued working on it, as the productivity landscape is overly competitive, I wouldn’t be able to make enough money to cover costs, assuming I make any. Since I was (and still am) in between jobs, I decided to abandon the project. 👉 What I learned: Do not start projects with a low ratio of money to effort and time. Example: Even if I get 500 monthly users, 200 of which are paid users (unrealistically high number), assuming an average subscription fee of $5/m (such apps are quite cheap, mostly due to the high competition), it would make me around $1000 minus any occurring costs. Any founder with a product that has 500 active users should make more. Even if it was relatively successful, due to the high competition, I wouldn’t make any meaningful money. PS: I use Todoist today. Due to local pricing, I pay less than $2/m. There is no way I could beat this competitive pricing, let alone the app itself. But, somehow, with a project that wasn’t even functional — let alone being an MVP — I made my first Wi-Fi money: Someone decided that the domain I preemptively purchased is worth something. By this point, I had already abandoned the project, certainly wasn’t going to renew the domain, was looking for a FT job, and a new project that I could work on. And out of nowhere, someone hands me some free money — who am I not to take it? Of course, I took it. The domain is still unused, no idea why 🤔. Ngl, I still hate the fact that my first Wi-Fi money came from this. A new idea worth pursuing? Fast-forward some weeks now. Around March, I got this crazy idea of building an email productivity tool. We all use emails, yet we all hate them. So, this must be fixed. Everyone uses emails, in fact everyone HAS TO use emails. So, I just needed to build a tool and wait for people to come. This was all, really. After all, the problem space is huge, there is enough room for another product, everyone uses emails, no need for any further validation, right? ❌ WRONG ONCE AGAIN! We all hear from the greatest in the startup landscape that we must validate our ideas with real people, yet at least some of us (guilty here 🥸) think that our product will be hugely successful and prove them to be an exception. Few might, but most are not. I certainly wasn't. 👉 Lesson learned: Always validate your ideas with real people. Ask them how much they’d pay for such a tool (not if they would). Much better if they are willing to pay upfront for a discount, etc. But even this comes later, keep reading. I think the difference between “How much” and “If” is huge for two reasons: (1) By asking them for “How much”, you force them to think in a more realistic setting. (2) You will have a more realistic idea on your profit margins. Based on my competitive analysis, I already had a solution in my mind to improve our email usage standards and email productivity (huge mistake), but I did my best to learn about their problems regarding those without pushing the idea too hard. The idea is this: Generate concise email summaries with suggested actions, combine them into one email, and send it at their preferred times. Save as much as time the AI you end up with allows. After all, everyone loves to save time. So, what kind of validation did I seek for? Talked with only a few people around me about this crazy, internet-breaking idea. The responses I got were, now I see, mediocre; no one got excited about it, just said things along the lines of “Cool idea, OK”. So, any reasonable person in this situation would think “Okay, not might not be working”, right? Well, I did not. I assumed that they were the wrong audience for this product, and there was this magical land of user segments waiting eagerly for my product, yet unknowingly. To this day, I still have not reached this magical place. Perhaps, it didn’t exist in the first place. If I cannot find it, whether it exists or not doesn’t matter. I am certainly searching for it. 👉 What I should have done: Once I decide on a problem space (time management, email productivity, etc.), I should decide on my potential user segments, people who I plan to sell my product to. Then I should go talk to those people, ask them about their pains, then get to the problem-solving/ideation phase only later. ❗️ VALIDATION COMES FROM THE REALITY OUTSIDE. What validation looks like might change from product to product; but what invalidation looks like is more or less the same for every product. Nico Jeannen told me yesterday “validation = money in the account” on Twitter. This is the ultimate form of validation your product could get. If your product doesn’t make any money, then something is invalidated by reality: Your product, you, your idea, who knows? So, at this point, I knew a little bit of Python from spending some time in tutorial hell a few years ago, some HTML/CSS/JS, barely enough React to build a working app. React could work for this project, but I needed easy-to-implement server interactivity. Luckily, around this time, I got to know about this new gen of indie hackers, and learned (but didn’t truly understand) about their approach to indie hacking, and this library called Nextjs. How good Next.js still blows my mind. So, I was back to tutorial hell once again. But, this time, with a promise to myself: This is the last time I would visit tutorial hell. Time to start building this "ground-breaking idea" Learning the fundamentals of Next.js was easier than learning of React unsurprisingly. Yet, the first time I managed to run server actions on Next.js was one of the rarest moments that completely blew my mind. To this day, I reject the idea that it is something else than pure magic under its hood. Did I absolutely need Nextjs for this project though? I do not think so. Did it save me lots of time? Absolutely. Furthermore, learning Nextjs will certainly be quite helpful for other projects that I will be tackling in the future. Already got a few ideas that might be worth pursuing in the head in case I decide to abandon Summ in the future. Fast-forward few weeks again: So, at this stage, I had a barely working MVP-like product. Since the very beginning, I spent every free hour (and more) on this project as speed is essential. But, I am not so sure it was worth it to overwork in retrospect. Yet, I know I couldn’t help myself. Everything is going kinda smooth, so what’s the worst thing that could ever happen? Well, both Apple and Google announced their AIs (Apple Intelligence and Google Gemini, respectively) will have email summarization features for their products. Summarizing singular emails is no big deal, after all there were already so many similar products in the market. I still think that what truly matters is a frictionless user experience, and this is why I built this product in a certain way: You spend less than a few minutes setting up your account, and you get to enjoy your email summaries, without ever visiting its website again. This is still a very cool concept I really like a lot. So, at this point: I had no other idea that could be pursued, already spent too much time on this project. Do I quit or not? This was the question. Of course not. I just have to launch this product as quickly as possible. So, I did something right, a quite rare occurrence I might say: Re-planned my product, dropped everything secondary to the core feature immediately (save time on reading emails), tried launching it asap. 👉 Insight: Sell only one core feature at one time. Drop anything secondary to this core feature. Well, my primary occupation is product design. So one would expect that a product I build must have stellar design. I considered any considerable time spent on design at this stage would be simply wasted. I still think this is both true and wrong: True, because if your product’s core benefits suck, no one will care about your design. False, because if your design looks amateurish, no one will trust you and your product. So, I always targeted an average level design with it and the way this tool works made it quite easy as I had to design only 2 primary pages: Landing page and user portal (which has only settings and analytics pages). However, even though I knew spending time on design was not worth much of my time, I got a bit “greedy”: In fact, I redesigned those pages three times, and still ended up with a so-so design that I am not proud of. 👉 What I would do differently: Unless absolutely necessary, only one iteration per stage as long as it works. This, in my mind, applies to everything. If your product’s A feature works, then no need to rewrite it from scratch for any reason, or even refactor it. When your product becomes a success, and you absolutely need that part of your codebase to be written, do so, but only then. Ready to launch, now is th etime for some marketing, right? By July 26, I already had a “launchable” product that barely works (I marked this date on a Notion docs, this is how I know). Yet, I had spent almost no time on marketing, sales, whatever. After all, “You build and they will come”. Did I know that I needed marketing? Of course I did, but knowingly didn’t. Why, you might ask. Well, from my perspective, it had to be a dev-heavy product; meaning that you spend most of your time on developing it, mostly coding skills. But, this is simply wrong. As a rule of thumb, as noted by one of the greatests, Marc Louvion, you should spend at least twice of the building time on marketing. ❗️ Time spent on building \* 2 people don’t know your product > they don’t use your product > you don’t get users > you don’t make money Easy as that. Following the same reasoning, a slightly different approach to planning a project is possible. Determine an approximate time to complete the project with a high level project plan. Let’s say 6 months. By the reasoning above, 2 months should go into building, and 4 into marketing. If you need 4 months for building instead of 2, then you need 8 months of marketing, which makes the time to complete the project 12 months. If you don’t have that much time, then quit the project. When does a project count as completed? Well, in reality, never. But, I think we have to define success conditions even before we start for indie projects and startups; so we know when to quit when they are not met. A success condition could look like “Make $6000 in 12 months” or “Have 3000 users in 6 months”. It all depends on the project. But, once you set it, it should be set in stone: You don’t change it unless absolutely necessary. I suspect there are few principles that make a solopreneur successful; and knowing when to quit and when to continue is definitely one of them. Marc Louvion is famously known for his success, but he got there after failing so many projects. To my knowledge, the same applies to Nico Jeannen, Pieter Levels, or almost everyone as well. ❗️ Determining when to continue even before you start will definitely help in the long run. A half-aed launch Time-leap again. Around mid August, I “soft launched” my product. By soft launch, I mean lazy marketing. Just tweeting about it, posting it on free directories. Did I get any traffic? Surely I did. Did I get any users? Nope. Only after this time, it hit me: “Either something is wrong with me, or with this product” Marketing might be a much bigger factor for a project’s success after all. Even though I get some traffic, not convincing enough for people to sign up even for a free trial. The product was still perfect in my eyes at the time (well, still is ^(\_),) so the right people are not finding my product, I thought. Then, a question that I should have been asking at the very first place, one that could prevent all these, comes to my mind: “How do even people search for such tools?” If we are to consider this whole journey of me and my so-far-failed product to be an already destined failure, one metric suffices to show why. Search volume: 30. Even if people have such a pain point, they are not looking for email summaries. So, almost no organic traffic coming from Google. But, as a person who did zero marketing on this or any product, who has zero marketing knowledge, who doesn’t have an audience on social media, there is not much I could do. Finally, it was time to give up. Or not… In my eyes, the most important element that makes a founder (solo or not) successful (this, I am not by any means) is to solve problems. ❗️ So, the problem was this: “People are not finding my product by organic search” How do I make sure I get some organic traffic and gets more visibility? Learn digital marketing and SEO as much as I can within very limited time. Thankfully, without spending much time, I came across Neil Patel's YT channel, and as I said many times, it is an absolute gold mine. I learned a lot, especially about the fundamentals, and surely it will be fruitful; but there is no magic trick that could make people visit your website. SEO certainly helps, but only when people are looking for your keywords. However, it is truly a magical solution to get in touch with REAL people that are in your user segments: 👉 Understand your pains, understand their problems, help them to solve them via building products. I did not do this so far, have to admit. But, in case you would like to have a chat about your email usage, and email productivity, just get in touch; I’d be delighted to hear about them. Getting ready for a ProductHunt launch The date was Sept 1. And I unlocked an impossible achievement: Running out of Supabase’s free plan’s Egres limit while having zero users. I was already considering moving out of their Cloud server and managing a Supabase CLI service on my Hetzner VPS for some time; but never ever suspected that I would have to do this quickly. The cheapest plan Supabase offers is $25/month; yet, at that point, I am in between jobs for such a long time, basically broke, and could barely afford that price. One or two months could be okay, but why pay for it if I will eventually move out of their Cloud service? So, instead of paying $25, I spent two days migrating out of Supabase Cloud. Worth my time? Definitely not. But, when you are broke, you gotta do stupid things. This was the first time that I felt lucky to have zero users: I have no idea how I would manage this migration if I had any. I think this is one of the core tenets of an indie hacker: Controlling their own environment. I can’t remember whose quote this is, but I suspect it was Naval: Entrepreneurs have an almost pathological need to control their own fate. They will take any suffering if they can be in charge of their destiny, and not have it in somebody else’s hands. What’s truly scary is, at least in my case, we make people around us suffer at the expense of our attempting to control our own fates. I know this period has been quite hard on my wife as well, as I neglected her quite a bit, but sadly, I know that this will happen again. It is something that I can barely help with. Still, so sorry. After working the last two weeks on a ProductHunt Launch, I finally launched it this Tuesday. Zero ranking, zero new users, but 36 kind people upvoted my product, and many commented and provided invaluable feedback. I couldn't be more grateful for each one of them 🙏. Considering all these, what lies in the future of Summ though? I have no idea, to be honest. On one hand, I have zero users, have no job, no income. So, I need a way to make money asap. On the other hand, the whole idea of it revolves around one core premise (not an assumption) that I am not so willing to share; and I couldn’t have more trust in it. This might not be the best iteration of it, however I certainly believe that email usage is one of the best problem spaces one could work on. 👉 But, one thing is for certain: I need to get in touch with people, and talk with them about this product I built so far. In fact, this is the only item on my agenda. Nothing else will save my brainchild <3. Below are some other insights and notes that I got during my journey; as they do not 100% fit into this story, I think it is more suitable to list them here. I hope you enjoyed reading this. Give Summ a try, it comes with a generous free trial, no credit card required. Some additional notes and insights: Project planning is one of the most underestimated skills for solopreneurs. It saves you enormous time, and helps you to keep your focus up. Building B2C products beats building B2B products. Businesses are very willing to pay big bucks if your product helps them. On the other hand, spending a few hours per user who would pay $5/m probably is not worth your time. It doesn’t matter how brilliant your product is if no one uses it. If you cannot sell a product in a certain category/niche (or do not know how to sell it), it might be a good idea not to start a project in it. Going after new ideas and ventures is quite risky, especially if you don’t know how to market it. On the other hand, an already established category means that there is already demand. Whether this demand is sufficient or not is another issue. As long as there is enough demand for your product to fit in, any category/niche is good. Some might be better, some might be worse. Unless you are going hardcore B2B, you will need people to find your product by means of organic search. Always conduct thorough keyword research as soon as possible.

AI Solution for Handling WhatsApp & Shopify Inquiries – No Coding Needed!

Hey everyone, I’m spending around 3 hours a day responding to customer inquiries on WhatsApp, my Shopify store, and my store website – it’s taking up way too much time! Does anyone know an AI solution that can automate this instantly? Preferably something that works without coding. 🙏

The Evolution of Financial Technology: How CAs Are Embracing the Digital Age

The Evolution of Financial Technology: How CAs Are Embracing the Digital Age Introduction In an era characterized by rapid technological advancements, the field of finance is undergoing a transformative journey. The emergence of financial technology, or fintech, is reshaping the way businesses manage their finances, and Chartered Accountants (CAs) are at the forefront of this evolution. In this blog post, we'll explore how CAs are embracing fintech and leveraging its potential to enhance financial management, analysis, and advisory services. Fintech's Impact on Financial Services Fintech encompasses a wide range of technologies that leverage data analytics, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and automation to improve financial services. For CAs, this means new tools to streamline processes, enhance decision-making, and offer innovative solutions to clients. Automation of Routine Tasks CAs are increasingly using automation tools to handle repetitive tasks such as data entry, reconciliations, and transaction processing. This not only reduces the risk of human error but also frees up CAs to focus on higher-value tasks like strategic planning and analysis. Advanced Data Analytics Data analytics tools enable CAs to extract meaningful insights from large volumes of financial data. These insights can help businesses identify trends, anticipate risks, and make informed decisions to drive growth. Real-Time Financial Reporting Fintech enables CAs to provide clients with real-time financial reporting, giving businesses immediate access to critical information. This enhances transparency and empowers business owners to respond quickly to changing market conditions. Enhancing Audit Efficiency Fintech tools are revolutionizing the audit process. CAs can use AI-powered algorithms to analyze vast amounts of data, detect anomalies, and identify potential instances of fraud more efficiently. Personalized Financial Planning CAs can leverage fintech to offer personalized financial planning services. With access to detailed financial data, CAs can create tailored strategies that align with a client's unique goals and circumstances. Strengthening Cybersecurity As businesses become more reliant on digital tools, cybersecurity becomes paramount. CAs are playing a critical role in advising clients on cybersecurity measures to protect sensitive financial information. Virtual CFO Services Fintech enables CAs to offer virtual CFO services to startups and small businesses. Through digital platforms, CAs can provide expert financial advice and guidance remotely, making their expertise accessible to a wider range of clients. Embracing Blockchain Technology Blockchain's potential for secure and transparent record-keeping is of interest to CAs. They can explore applications in supply chain finance, smart contracts, and even audit trail verification. Continuous Learning in Fintech CAs recognize the importance of staying updated with fintech trends. Many are investing in continuous learning to master the use of new tools and technologies that can optimize their services. Conclusion The integration of fintech into the realm of finance is reshaping the landscape in profound ways. CAs are embracing these technologies to elevate their roles from traditional number-crunchers to strategic advisors, equipped with tools that enhance efficiency, accuracy, and insight. As fintech continues to evolve, CAs will remain pivotal in guiding businesses through the ever-changing financial landscape, leveraging technology to drive growth, innovation, and success. Find the top verified CA in your City Feel free to let me know if you'd like more blogs on different topics or if you have specific requirements for the content.

Feedback: Building a no-code platform to help users build GenAI functionalities within their existing product. Would you use it?

I’m building a product which allows users to build GenAI capabilities (currently: summaries, synthetic data generation and knowledge base querying) into their existing products without the need to code. You can either upload data from files or set up a webhook to read from an API and it constantly keeps updating results (served both on the dashboard as well as through api). You can also rapidly prototype by switching models (currently: GPT, Claude and Gemini). Either use our api keys (used for prototyping) or, provide your own API keys (built for enterprise), so you don’t pay for token consumption. If you are a developer/ non-tech person/ work for an enterprise, would love your thoughts on the idea along with how much would you pay for a product like this. Thanks in advance!

Idea Validation Post: Seeking Feedback on My AI-Driven Quick Launch Application! 🚀

Hey Members! I’m excited to share an idea for a new application I’m planning to build: Quick Launch . This AI-driven platform is designed to assist solopreneurs or anyone with an idea in launching their Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) by taking on the roles of the entire team needed for the process. Goal: Assistance in quickly moving from Idea to MVP Before I dive into the details, I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Key Features: Product Creation: From Idea to Product Detailing AI-Generated Q&A: Real-time questions generation one-at-a-time to define the product requirements based on their knowledge levels to convert an Idea into a Product. Market Research Reports: In-depth analysis that identifies product-market fit, competitive landscape, and potential marketing strategies. Sentiment Analysis: Evaluation of user feedback and reactions across multiple subreddits to gauge public opinion on ideas. Product Development: Product Detailing to Actual Product User Story Generation: Identification and creation of comprehensive user stories, tasks, and sub-tasks to facilitate development. AI Project Management: AI agents assume roles of project managers and UI/UX designers to streamline product detailing and development. Integration Capabilities: Seamless integration with popular project management tools like Jira, Asana, and Trello for better workflow management. Target Audience: Solopreneurs: Individuals looking to bring their business ideas to life without extensive resources. Indie Hackers: Entrepreneurs focused on building small projects or startups with minimal overhead. Idea Validators: Anyone with a concept seeking initial validation and market feedback before committing significant resources. If you’re interested in learning more, check out our teaser website: Quick Launch Discussion Question: What features would you find most valuable in an application like this? Are there specific pain points you face when launching an MVP? Your insights would be incredibly helpful as I refine this idea! Looking forward to your thoughts! 🙌

Struggling with my dog-themed clothing store – How can I make it better?

TL;DR: I own a dog-inspired store that’s struggling to make sales. I need your honest feedback to make it better. Hey reddit, I’m turning to you because I really need your honest feedback. I run a small online shop, dogloverclothing.com, where I sell dog-inspired fashion items and accessories (product list is growing). I poured my heart into creating it because I’m a huge dog lover (I own a Corgi and a Beagle), and I thought there must be others out there who’d resonate with the style of my designs. I truly believe my shop is fun and creative and I thought other dog lovers would easily connect with the dog-theme behind it. But I’m struggling. I’ve only made 1-2 sales a year and I feel like I’ve hit a wall. Let me be completely transparent about my situation: I have a small child who needs my care in the afternoons. I work part-time in the mornings, and the only time I'm able to work on my shop is in the evenings (once all the usual household chaos is settled) or on weekends. That gives me maybe 1-2 hours a day to focus on this project. I don’t have the money or time for big ad campaigns, influencer cooperations, daily social media activity, or even professional photoshoots for my products. My visuals are mostly created with AI tools, stock imagery, and mockup generators, but I think they look professional enough to be converting. I tried small ad campaigns, and while I got a few sales, the ad costs ended up being higher than my revenue, so I had to stop. I also tried organic Social Media activity, but the time I put into that did not turn into any traffic, followers or sales, so I also stopped that. I know that putting myself/my face out there on social media could help, but I’m not comfortable showing my face or apartment in videos or ads. I could do flatlays or simple videos with the products I have at home. Right now, I’m putting all my energy into SEO, hoping to attract organic traffic and customers. Otherwise, I feel stuck with marketing. I want to make the most of the limited time and resources I have. My dream definitely isn’t to get rich here from this shop. I would love to make an extra $300-500 a month to make life a little easier for my family, while fulfilling my creative streak – and that's about it. I’m not sure if that’s even realistic, but it’s what keeps me going. So, guys: What do you think I’m doing wrong or could do better? Is it the designs? The pricing? The website layout? The lack of time/lack of money? How can I make this work with my limited time and resources? Are there any affordable, creative marketing strategies you’d recommend for someone in my shoes? Is my goal of $300-500/month realistic for a store like mine? I’m open to all your ideas, tips, and even brutal honesty. This isn’t just a business for me, it’s my passion project, and I’d love to make it somewhat of sustainable. I’m not here to sell you something. I’m here to learn. I know Reddit doesn’t hold back, and that’s what I need. Can you take a look at my site, tell me what you think, and help me figure out why this dream hasn’t taken off yet? I know running a business is tough, and I deeply admire everyone in this community who’s making it work. I’d love to hear your insights, experiences, and even your tough love if that’s what it takes to get my dream back on track. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and for any advice you can offer!

thinking about starting a small business for creating personalised podcasts - what do you think?

I have an idea for a consumer app and I'd love to get peoples thoughts... Your favorite podcasters have all the answers you need - but they're buried in hundreds of episodes, scattered across different shows. Let me paint you a picture that every founder and creator knows too well… You're looking for specific advice, like growth tactics for your social sports app. You find a great episode from Greg Isenberg on growth hacking, but while he talks about internet directories, you need strategies for converting online matches into real-world meetups. While it’s interesting, it’s not really what you need. So you close the tab and keep searching... But what if it didn't have to be this way? With PodCraft, AI crafts personalized podcast content just for you. Simply ask for exactly what you need, and get a podcast in seconds in your favorite creator's voice and style, perfectly tailored to your specific needs. No more: Hours wasted searching for the right content Listening to multiple podcasts and articles to get one answer Generic advice that doesn't fit your context Instead move to: Instant access to exactly the content you need One personalized podcast instead of many Content that truly understands you and your business What do you think? Would you use a personalised podcast app like this?

Virtual Assistants -- Service vs. Freelance

Hi all! I run a small marketing agency (by small, I mean tiny, we only have three full-time employees). We do a lot of strategic SEO work and really embed with our client teams to help them build holistic content/search/AI-optimization strategies. Anyway, I've been working with a virtual assistant I found through a reference, and she was absolutely fantastic, but she's moving on to a full-time role. She was managing our calendars, updating templated audit presentations, and handling a lot of our CRM processes. I need to hire someone to replace her part-time. I'm not sure how to proceed, so I thought I'd ask here. I need to decide if I should hire someone contract or it might be be better to hire a managed VA service. My concerns are: Having to retrain a VA whenever they leave Confidentiality/security concerns Continuity of support I've been looking at services like Prialto and Belay and the managed element is compelling, but I know a contractor is cheaper. People who've tried both or either, what did you prefer?

Ai C-Level team

I've been exploring ways to run a company where I'm essentially the only internal team member, relying entirely on a suite of specialized AIs for executive roles, supported occasionally by external consultants for niche expertise. My goal is to stay lean, agile, and highly creative, especially in a fashion/tech brand context. Essentially, I'm building an AI-driven C-Level team, or what I like to call a "C-Level AI Wallet." Here's what I'm thinking for the key executive roles I'd need to cover with AI: CEO AI – Responsible for overall strategy, decision-making, trend analysis, and guiding the company's vision. I'd probably lean on something advanced like Gemini, GPT-4, or similar models, fine-tuned with market-specific data. COO AI (Operations): I'd need tools that streamline and automate logistics, supply chain management, and day-to-day operations (think something along the lines of Zapier AI integrations or Make). CMO AI (Marketing & Content): For branding, content creation, digital marketing, and consumer insights, I'd use Jasper or Copy.ai, combined with predictive analytics tools like Google Vertex AI to understand trends better. Additionally, for generating engaging visual and multimedia content, tools like Midjourney, DALL·E, Adobe Firefly, and Runway ML would be perfect. CFO AI (Financial Management): For financial management, cash flow control, and investment decisions, I'd probably leverage AI tools like Bloomberg GPT, combined with AI-powered forecasting platforms. CHRO AI (Human Resources & Culture): Although the internal team is minimal (just myself!), I'd still rely on AI for tasks like project management, freelancer hiring, and performance tracking—tools like HireVue AI, Motion, or even Notion's AI could be beneficial here. CSO AI (Sustainability & Compliance): Since sustainability and ethical sourcing are critical, I'd integrate ESG-focused AI tools to ensure transparency and responsible sourcing. My idea is that, with the right AI tools seamlessly integrated, I can manage the strategic vision and creative direction personally, leveraging external consultants only when necessary. This setup would ideally allow me to operate as a one-person internal team supported by a robust "wallet" of AI executives. Has anyone tried a similar approach? What AI tools would you recommend for a truly lean, innovative brand structure? I'm very curious about your experiences or suggestions—let me know your thoughts!

AI for Business Consultancy

Good morning folks, I am doing some research on the impact of AI on business consultancy. I want to initially try out existing models to first learn how to improve my datasets before diving into building my own model. I'm specifically looking for ideas about parameters or metrics that I should be covering for a small cafe business. Since I'm coming from a CS background, my knowledge of the restaurant/cafe industry is pretty limited, so I thought I'd reach out to this community for some guidance. What kind of parameters should I be considering besides the obvious ones like customer and sale data, Inventory information, etc. Pricing strategy analysis? I'm really open to any suggestions! I appreciate any help or direction you all could provide. Just trying to get my bearings in this space before going too deep down any particular path. Thanks in advance!

Share Your Expertise: AI, Automation, and Efficient Organizational Tools, Strategies and Routines!

Hello everyone, As we navigate through the advancements in AI and automation, it's clear that these technologies are reshaping the way we approach work and business management. To stay ahead, sharing our collective knowledge on these subjects is crucial. I'm inviting this community to share insights and experiences with AI tools, automation strategies, and especially, innovative organizational approaches you've found effective. From automating mundane tasks to optimizing digital marketing strategies, every piece of wisdom is valuable. Here’s what we’re specifically interested in: Automated Workflows: What are your strategies for creating automated workflows that enhance productivity and efficiency? Visual Organization: How do you utilize mind maps and other visual tools to organize thoughts and projects efficiently? Canvas Maps: Have you implemented CANVAS Maps in customer interaction, ideation, strategy development, or action planning? How has it improved your processes? AI in Marketing: How has AI helped you optimize your digital marketing strategies and data analysis? What tools or methodologies have you found most effective? This thread aims to be a resource for all of us to learn from each other's successes and innovations. Whether it’s a simple tip or a comprehensive strategy, your input can significantly impact someone’s approach to challenges. What groundbreaking AI solutions, automation hacks, or organizational methods have you discovered that made a noticeable difference in your work or business? Share your stories and let’s empower each other to achieve greater efficiency and success. Thank you for contributing to our shared journey toward innovation and improvement!

What are some B2B sales strategies for an AI startup?

Hey folks, need some advice on how I can book meetings with clients to sell a software that I've built. I'm a Software engineer working at a Fortune 500 company. After grinding on the side for a few months now, I've now built a software product to really automate manual every day tasks using LLMs. Its going to be sold to B2B sales teams, and I think my initial market would be mid-market/small companies. Here's a demo that I recently recorded if you are interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPTCHBnItkI Let me know what you guys think of it? I’d really appreciate any advice.

Which AI call agent does RelayFi use?

Hey everyone, does anyone know which AI call agent does RelayFi use? I’m looking to implement something similar and secure for a client. TIA!

Restarting My Agency / Compared To Full Time Corporate

I’m currently thinking about going back to consulting / agency work compared to my current tech job I have. Over a year ago I signed this tech client and they wanted more and more from me which ended up becoming a full time role. At the time, the challenge excited me as it was working on a very large project on a global scale, competing with some of the biggest brands in the world. I was making good money before working in my agency and consulting with lots of different brands on their paid media, websites and e-commerce. I have a healthy package where I’m at at the moment but want more. Working with different clients always created curiosity, no day was the same and that what I loved about it. So now I’m considering going to back to starting the business and working with clients again. My question is: What do businesses ACTUALLY want? Everyone wants great roas and an amazing site but what are core things people are looking for in a growth partner / agency? I’m thinking of relaunching with three pillars in mind: Digital (Paid Media, Lead Gen, Web Dev) AI implementation as a lot of businesses don’t know how to leverage AI completely for cost saving and efficiencies. Content (Video, SEO, Content Writing) for modern day ranking I’m currently rebuilding my pitch deck and thought I would ask the question here before I go back to my network and start opening up conversations again. Would love to hear people’s thoughts in addition to anyone that’s done the same?

Optimizing your business with AI

Everyone's talking about it...it can be a threatening or it can be an advantage, but either way, if you don't anticipate it, you're going to be left in the dust. I opened my sports management business nearly 2 years ago and things have been going really well. The clientele is growing, the revenue and projects are doubling every quarter, and headcount is tripling this year. That being said...as the owner and founder of the business, I'm looking for resources to learn more about streamlining operations and admin. I believe that understanding capabilities, the lynch pins, the applications, and the tools to unleash AI are going to be instrumental to how i grow the business to scale...does anyone have any knowledge or nudges about where I can dig into this? Traditional educational courses? Resources or AI integration businesses? Consultants? Thanks in advance for any and all your suggestions!

I spent 6 months on building a web product, and got zero users. Here is my story.

Edit Thank you all so much for your time reading my story. Your support, feedback, criticism, and skepticism; all helped me a lot, and I couldn't appreciate it enough \^\_\^ I have stuff to post on Reddit very rarely, but I share how my project is going on, random stuff, and memes on X. Just in case few might want to keep in touch 👀 TL;DR I spent 6 months on a tool that currently has 0 users. Below is what I learned during my journey, sharing because I believe most mistakes are easily avoidable. Do not overestimate your product and assume it will be an exception to fundamental principles. Principles are there for a reason. Always look for validation before you start. Avoid building products with a low money-to-effort ratio/in very competitive fields. Unless you have the means, you probably won't make it. Pick a problem space, pick your target audience, and talk to them before thinking about a solution. Identify and match their pain points. Only then should you think of a solution. If people are not overly excited or willing to pay in advance for a discounted price, it might be a sign to rethink. Sell one and only one feature at a time. Avoid everything else. If people don't pay for that one core feature, no secondary feature will change their mind. Always spend twice as much time marketing as you do building. You will not get users if they don't know it exists. Define success metrics ("1000 users in 3 months" or "$6000 in the account at the end of 6 months") before you start. If you don't meet them, strongly consider quitting the project. If you can't get enough users to keep going, nothing else matters. VALIDATION, VALIDATION, VALIDATION. Success is not random, but most of our first products will not make a success story. Know when to admit failure, and move on. Even if a product of yours doesn't succeed, what you learned during its journey will turn out to be invaluable for your future. My story So, this is the story of a product that I’ve been working on for the last 6 months. As it's the first product I’ve ever built, after watching you all from the sidelines, I have learned a lot, made many mistakes, and did only a few things right. Just sharing what I’ve learned and some insights from my journey so far. I hope that this post will help you avoid the mistakes I made — most of which I consider easily avoidable — while you enjoy reading it, and get to know me a little bit more 🤓. A slow start after many years Summ isn’t the first product I really wanted to build. Lacking enough dev skills to even get started was a huge blocker for so many years. In fact, the first product I would’ve LOVED to build was a smart personal shopping assistant. I had this idea 4 years ago; but with no GPT, no coding skills, no technical co-founder, I didn’t have the means to make it happen. I still do not know if such a tool exists and is good enough. All I wanted was a tool that could make data-based predictions about when to buy stuff (“buy a new toothpaste every three months”) and suggest physical products that I might need or be strongly interested in. AFAIK, Amazon famously still struggles with the second one. Fast-forward a few years, I learned the very basics of HTML, CSS, and Vanilla JS. Still was not there to build a product; but good enough to code my design portfolio from scratch. Yet, I couldn’t imagine myself building a product using Vanilla JS. I really hated it, I really sucked at it. So, back to tutorial hell, and to learn about this framework I just heard about: React.React introduced so many new concepts to me. “Thinking in React” is a phrase we heard a lot, and with quite good reasons. After some time, I was able to build very basic tutorial apps, both in React, and React Native; but I have to say that I really hated coding for mobile. At this point, I was already a fan of productivity apps, and had a concept for a time management assistant app in my design portfolio. So, why not build one? Surely, it must be easy, since every coding tutorial starts with a todo app. ❌ WRONG! Building a basic todo app is easy enough, but building one good enough for a place in the market was a challenge I took and failed. I wasted one month on that until I abandoned the project for good. Even if I continued working on it, as the productivity landscape is overly competitive, I wouldn’t be able to make enough money to cover costs, assuming I make any. Since I was (and still am) in between jobs, I decided to abandon the project. 👉 What I learned: Do not start projects with a low ratio of money to effort and time. Example: Even if I get 500 monthly users, 200 of which are paid users (unrealistically high number), assuming an average subscription fee of $5/m (such apps are quite cheap, mostly due to the high competition), it would make me around $1000 minus any occurring costs. Any founder with a product that has 500 active users should make more. Even if it was relatively successful, due to the high competition, I wouldn’t make any meaningful money. PS: I use Todoist today. Due to local pricing, I pay less than $2/m. There is no way I could beat this competitive pricing, let alone the app itself. But, somehow, with a project that wasn’t even functional — let alone being an MVP — I made my first Wi-Fi money: Someone decided that the domain I preemptively purchased is worth something. By this point, I had already abandoned the project, certainly wasn’t going to renew the domain, was looking for a FT job, and a new project that I could work on. And out of nowhere, someone hands me some free money — who am I not to take it? Of course, I took it. The domain is still unused, no idea why 🤔. Ngl, I still hate the fact that my first Wi-Fi money came from this. A new idea worth pursuing? Fast-forward some weeks now. Around March, I got this crazy idea of building an email productivity tool. We all use emails, yet we all hate them. So, this must be fixed. Everyone uses emails, in fact everyone HAS TO use emails. So, I just needed to build a tool and wait for people to come. This was all, really. After all, the problem space is huge, there is enough room for another product, everyone uses emails, no need for any further validation, right? ❌ WRONG ONCE AGAIN! We all hear from the greatest in the startup landscape that we must validate our ideas with real people, yet at least some of us (guilty here 🥸) think that our product will be hugely successful and prove them to be an exception. Few might, but most are not. I certainly wasn't. 👉 Lesson learned: Always validate your ideas with real people. Ask them how much they’d pay for such a tool (not if they would). Much better if they are willing to pay upfront for a discount, etc. But even this comes later, keep reading. I think the difference between “How much” and “If” is huge for two reasons: (1) By asking them for “How much”, you force them to think in a more realistic setting. (2) You will have a more realistic idea on your profit margins. Based on my competitive analysis, I already had a solution in my mind to improve our email usage standards and email productivity (huge mistake), but I did my best to learn about their problems regarding those without pushing the idea too hard. The idea is this: Generate concise email summaries with suggested actions, combine them into one email, and send it at their preferred times. Save as much as time the AI you end up with allows. After all, everyone loves to save time. So, what kind of validation did I seek for? Talked with only a few people around me about this crazy, internet-breaking idea. The responses I got were, now I see, mediocre; no one got excited about it, just said things along the lines of “Cool idea, OK”. So, any reasonable person in this situation would think “Okay, not might not be working”, right? Well, I did not. I assumed that they were the wrong audience for this product, and there was this magical land of user segments waiting eagerly for my product, yet unknowingly. To this day, I still have not reached this magical place. Perhaps, it didn’t exist in the first place. If I cannot find it, whether it exists or not doesn’t matter. I am certainly searching for it. 👉 What I should have done: Once I decide on a problem space (time management, email productivity, etc.), I should decide on my potential user segments, people who I plan to sell my product to. Then I should go talk to those people, ask them about their pains, then get to the problem-solving/ideation phase only later. ❗️ VALIDATION COMES FROM THE REALITY OUTSIDE. What validation looks like might change from product to product; but what invalidation looks like is more or less the same for every product. Nico Jeannen told me yesterday “validation = money in the account” on Twitter. This is the ultimate form of validation your product could get. If your product doesn’t make any money, then something is invalidated by reality: Your product, you, your idea, who knows? So, at this point, I knew a little bit of Python from spending some time in tutorial hell a few years ago, some HTML/CSS/JS, barely enough React to build a working app. React could work for this project, but I needed easy-to-implement server interactivity. Luckily, around this time, I got to know about this new gen of indie hackers, and learned (but didn’t truly understand) about their approach to indie hacking, and this library called Nextjs. How good Next.js still blows my mind. So, I was back to tutorial hell once again. But, this time, with a promise to myself: This is the last time I would visit tutorial hell. Time to start building this "ground-breaking idea" Learning the fundamentals of Next.js was easier than learning of React unsurprisingly. Yet, the first time I managed to run server actions on Next.js was one of the rarest moments that completely blew my mind. To this day, I reject the idea that it is something else than pure magic under its hood. Did I absolutely need Nextjs for this project though? I do not think so. Did it save me lots of time? Absolutely. Furthermore, learning Nextjs will certainly be quite helpful for other projects that I will be tackling in the future. Already got a few ideas that might be worth pursuing in the head in case I decide to abandon Summ in the future. Fast-forward few weeks again: So, at this stage, I had a barely working MVP-like product. Since the very beginning, I spent every free hour (and more) on this project as speed is essential. But, I am not so sure it was worth it to overwork in retrospect. Yet, I know I couldn’t help myself. Everything is going kinda smooth, so what’s the worst thing that could ever happen? Well, both Apple and Google announced their AIs (Apple Intelligence and Google Gemini, respectively) will have email summarization features for their products. Summarizing singular emails is no big deal, after all there were already so many similar products in the market. I still think that what truly matters is a frictionless user experience, and this is why I built this product in a certain way: You spend less than a few minutes setting up your account, and you get to enjoy your email summaries, without ever visiting its website again. This is still a very cool concept I really like a lot. So, at this point: I had no other idea that could be pursued, already spent too much time on this project. Do I quit or not? This was the question. Of course not. I just have to launch this product as quickly as possible. So, I did something right, a quite rare occurrence I might say: Re-planned my product, dropped everything secondary to the core feature immediately (save time on reading emails), tried launching it asap. 👉 Insight: Sell only one core feature at one time. Drop anything secondary to this core feature. Well, my primary occupation is product design. So one would expect that a product I build must have stellar design. I considered any considerable time spent on design at this stage would be simply wasted. I still think this is both true and wrong: True, because if your product’s core benefits suck, no one will care about your design. False, because if your design looks amateurish, no one will trust you and your product. So, I always targeted an average level design with it and the way this tool works made it quite easy as I had to design only 2 primary pages: Landing page and user portal (which has only settings and analytics pages). However, even though I knew spending time on design was not worth much of my time, I got a bit “greedy”: In fact, I redesigned those pages three times, and still ended up with a so-so design that I am not proud of. 👉 What I would do differently: Unless absolutely necessary, only one iteration per stage as long as it works. This, in my mind, applies to everything. If your product’s A feature works, then no need to rewrite it from scratch for any reason, or even refactor it. When your product becomes a success, and you absolutely need that part of your codebase to be written, do so, but only then. Ready to launch, now is th etime for some marketing, right? By July 26, I already had a “launchable” product that barely works (I marked this date on a Notion docs, this is how I know). Yet, I had spent almost no time on marketing, sales, whatever. After all, “You build and they will come”. Did I know that I needed marketing? Of course I did, but knowingly didn’t. Why, you might ask. Well, from my perspective, it had to be a dev-heavy product; meaning that you spend most of your time on developing it, mostly coding skills. But, this is simply wrong. As a rule of thumb, as noted by one of the greatests, Marc Louvion, you should spend at least twice of the building time on marketing. ❗️ Time spent on building \* 2 people don’t know your product > they don’t use your product > you don’t get users > you don’t make money Easy as that. Following the same reasoning, a slightly different approach to planning a project is possible. Determine an approximate time to complete the project with a high level project plan. Let’s say 6 months. By the reasoning above, 2 months should go into building, and 4 into marketing. If you need 4 months for building instead of 2, then you need 8 months of marketing, which makes the time to complete the project 12 months. If you don’t have that much time, then quit the project. When does a project count as completed? Well, in reality, never. But, I think we have to define success conditions even before we start for indie projects and startups; so we know when to quit when they are not met. A success condition could look like “Make $6000 in 12 months” or “Have 3000 users in 6 months”. It all depends on the project. But, once you set it, it should be set in stone: You don’t change it unless absolutely necessary. I suspect there are few principles that make a solopreneur successful; and knowing when to quit and when to continue is definitely one of them. Marc Louvion is famously known for his success, but he got there after failing so many projects. To my knowledge, the same applies to Nico Jeannen, Pieter Levels, or almost everyone as well. ❗️ Determining when to continue even before you start will definitely help in the long run. A half-aed launch Time-leap again. Around mid August, I “soft launched” my product. By soft launch, I mean lazy marketing. Just tweeting about it, posting it on free directories. Did I get any traffic? Surely I did. Did I get any users? Nope. Only after this time, it hit me: “Either something is wrong with me, or with this product” Marketing might be a much bigger factor for a project’s success after all. Even though I get some traffic, not convincing enough for people to sign up even for a free trial. The product was still perfect in my eyes at the time (well, still is ^(\_),) so the right people are not finding my product, I thought. Then, a question that I should have been asking at the very first place, one that could prevent all these, comes to my mind: “How do even people search for such tools?” If we are to consider this whole journey of me and my so-far-failed product to be an already destined failure, one metric suffices to show why. Search volume: 30. Even if people have such a pain point, they are not looking for email summaries. So, almost no organic traffic coming from Google. But, as a person who did zero marketing on this or any product, who has zero marketing knowledge, who doesn’t have an audience on social media, there is not much I could do. Finally, it was time to give up. Or not… In my eyes, the most important element that makes a founder (solo or not) successful (this, I am not by any means) is to solve problems. ❗️ So, the problem was this: “People are not finding my product by organic search” How do I make sure I get some organic traffic and gets more visibility? Learn digital marketing and SEO as much as I can within very limited time. Thankfully, without spending much time, I came across Neil Patel's YT channel, and as I said many times, it is an absolute gold mine. I learned a lot, especially about the fundamentals, and surely it will be fruitful; but there is no magic trick that could make people visit your website. SEO certainly helps, but only when people are looking for your keywords. However, it is truly a magical solution to get in touch with REAL people that are in your user segments: 👉 Understand your pains, understand their problems, help them to solve them via building products. I did not do this so far, have to admit. But, in case you would like to have a chat about your email usage, and email productivity, just get in touch; I’d be delighted to hear about them. Getting ready for a ProductHunt launch The date was Sept 1. And I unlocked an impossible achievement: Running out of Supabase’s free plan’s Egres limit while having zero users. I was already considering moving out of their Cloud server and managing a Supabase CLI service on my Hetzner VPS for some time; but never ever suspected that I would have to do this quickly. The cheapest plan Supabase offers is $25/month; yet, at that point, I am in between jobs for such a long time, basically broke, and could barely afford that price. One or two months could be okay, but why pay for it if I will eventually move out of their Cloud service? So, instead of paying $25, I spent two days migrating out of Supabase Cloud. Worth my time? Definitely not. But, when you are broke, you gotta do stupid things. This was the first time that I felt lucky to have zero users: I have no idea how I would manage this migration if I had any. I think this is one of the core tenets of an indie hacker: Controlling their own environment. I can’t remember whose quote this is, but I suspect it was Naval: Entrepreneurs have an almost pathological need to control their own fate. They will take any suffering if they can be in charge of their destiny, and not have it in somebody else’s hands. What’s truly scary is, at least in my case, we make people around us suffer at the expense of our attempting to control our own fates. I know this period has been quite hard on my wife as well, as I neglected her quite a bit, but sadly, I know that this will happen again. It is something that I can barely help with. Still, so sorry. After working the last two weeks on a ProductHunt Launch, I finally launched it this Tuesday. Zero ranking, zero new users, but 36 kind people upvoted my product, and many commented and provided invaluable feedback. I couldn't be more grateful for each one of them 🙏. Considering all these, what lies in the future of Summ though? I have no idea, to be honest. On one hand, I have zero users, have no job, no income. So, I need a way to make money asap. On the other hand, the whole idea of it revolves around one core premise (not an assumption) that I am not so willing to share; and I couldn’t have more trust in it. This might not be the best iteration of it, however I certainly believe that email usage is one of the best problem spaces one could work on. 👉 But, one thing is for certain: I need to get in touch with people, and talk with them about this product I built so far. In fact, this is the only item on my agenda. Nothing else will save my brainchild <3. Below are some other insights and notes that I got during my journey; as they do not 100% fit into this story, I think it is more suitable to list them here. I hope you enjoyed reading this. Give Summ a try, it comes with a generous free trial, no credit card required. Some additional notes and insights: Project planning is one of the most underestimated skills for solopreneurs. It saves you enormous time, and helps you to keep your focus up. Building B2C products beats building B2B products. Businesses are very willing to pay big bucks if your product helps them. On the other hand, spending a few hours per user who would pay $5/m probably is not worth your time. It doesn’t matter how brilliant your product is if no one uses it. If you cannot sell a product in a certain category/niche (or do not know how to sell it), it might be a good idea not to start a project in it. Going after new ideas and ventures is quite risky, especially if you don’t know how to market it. On the other hand, an already established category means that there is already demand. Whether this demand is sufficient or not is another issue. As long as there is enough demand for your product to fit in, any category/niche is good. Some might be better, some might be worse. Unless you are going hardcore B2B, you will need people to find your product by means of organic search. Always conduct thorough keyword research as soon as possible.

The "AI Agent" Hype is out of control and businesses suffer

Ah, the sweet smell of AI hype in the morning. Nothing quite like it to get the blood pumping and the venture capital flowing. Let's cut through the BS... The "AI Agent" craze is the tech industry's latest attempt to separate businesses from their hard-earned cash. It's like watching a bunch of sheep rushing towards a cliff, except the cliff is made of overpriced software and empty promises. The tech giants are having a field day with this nonsense. Microsoft, Google, Salesforce - they're all pushing AI agents like they're the second coming. The sad truth is, businesses are suffering from a severe case of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). They're so terrified of being left behind in the AI race that they're willing to throw good money after bad. Here's a radical idea: how about focusing on actual business problems instead of chasing the latest tech fad? I know, I know, it's not as sexy as having an AI Agent, but it might actually, you know, work. In the end, the only ones truly benefiting from this AI agent hype are the vendors selling the snake oil and the consultants charging exorbitant fees to implement it. Everyone else is just along for the ride, hoping they don't crash and burn too spectacularly. So, to all the businesses out there considering jumping on the AI Agent bandwagon... take a step back, take a deep breath, and ask yourself if you really need an overpriced chatbot with delusions of grandeur. Chances are, you don't. The AI agent hype is like a bad reality TV show—overproduced, lacking substance, and leaving businesses with nothing but regret. Companies are throwing money at AI solutions, expecting miracles, only to find they've bought into overpriced fantasies. The AI agent hype is nothing more than a high-tech emperor with no clothes. It's time for businesses to wake up, smell the silicon, and start making decisions based on reality rather than sci-fi fantasies.  I think AI Agents are the future, but as of right now AI Agents aren't autonomous or agentic. From what I've seen as of now is glorified Chatbots, ChatGPT wrappers and basic automations, and nothing actually autonomous. So far it's all just hype, but we'll see how it improves businesses and the bottom line! How do you think AI Agents will help small businesses now or in the future?

Nuts and bolts AI implementation for small business

How can small businesses use AI to increase sales or decrease expenses without massive disruption? One way for us is using AI to process our email history to identify patterns and write personalized messages based on past correspondence. According to legal advice in which I have confidence, email that is personalized for each recipient (and meets other standards) does not need to be opt in. If you disagree - understood - but spam morality is not the topic here. Bottom line - obviously a game changer. Knowing phrases people have used before becoming clients - and all of the possible permutations of those phrases, and detecting where those phrases show up will make our sales and marketing many times more effective for a fraction of the cost. There's a reason big corps. record calls, and now small business can leverage the same technology. We are setting up a process that yields accurate, up to date, comprehensive data for our own business operations. Our clients - who are they and how has their demographic changed over time? To answer this question and for email personalization, we also need access to external data sources e.g. like accurate up to date company demographics. IMO - the leader in company data in the US? THEY SUCK. We found there is no magic fairy who is going to make good data appear for our AI. The process of applying our own proprietary knowledge to code and categorize the data is just as important, and obviously highly sensitive. How do we leverage the AI technologies of companies like Google and Microsoft (or anyone else) without being their bitch? Below is a list of some of the sources of my business's data: Data sources: PST/OST/Other Email data files Microsoft data from Windows/O365 Windows/Linux/Android/IOS application logs and other data Web server logs for the company website. SEO/Analytics Data Google data export Google voice/VOIP logs OneDrive/G drive Other Phone system/cell service logs Other SAAS and in-house application data. Facebook/social media data for company pages. QuickBooks/other accounting systems/business bank account logs POS/Credit card processing systems/PayPal, etc. OSINT to fill in the blanks

Asking Advice

15-year-old aspiring entrepreneur here. I had an idea for a business that I wanted your feedback on. I'm planning to start an information product growth agency with a unique twist. Essentially helping influencers use their preexisting content and knowledge of a particular subject to create an online course that will monetize the attention from their social media via that course. I would like to use AI to intelligently sort through their content as a basis for the course. The gaps will be filled in by the influencer. The influencer would only be responsible for promoting the course and recording missing content. Is this business viable? If you were an influencer would you use this service? Do you have any thoughts, ideas, or concerns? Let me know!

Small business teaching and implementing ai

Purely a question as a "poll" and will not accept business if interested on this platform. My name is anonymous. Question: I want to teach people, seniors, and small businesses to use chatgpt/other ai tools. Ideally it would be a small profit venture by charging per support ticket and prompt engineering sessions. Is this a bad idea? I know people who know and do not know chatgpt, those who do use it but only at a basic level. I feel even if I charge a few dollars but empower people I could reach several thousand and make a living?

What are your struggles with AI implementation?

Hey! I am working on a project (won't advertise it so won't even give a name & I don't have it anywhere in my profile) to help people with AI implementation in their businesses. We have already covered areas of how to spot AI opportunities and various tools, etc, but I wanted to know a bit more what others are struggling with. What are your challenges in AI implementation in your business? What kind of material (guide, checklist, roadmap, whatever) help entrepreneurs and business executives to finally get on the AI train and grow their businesses? Any suggestions and pain points are welcome. The more you share, the better guides we will create to help businesses with AI adoption. Cheers

Seeking co-founder to build LinkedIn’s biggest rival(curated version)

How do you connect with likeminded people? You see the polished wins everywhere, but what about the messy drafts , the awkward pitches and the moments you’re not sure you’ve got it right? Problem: The whole idea of founding and starting a business can be super intimidating for some people, specially those who don’t know any founders personally, those who don’t have a large network, those who don’t have rich parents with large networks, those not inserted in an entrepreneurial culture like in the US for example (which is my case). Sometimes all you need is the right support network, and too see others do what you want, to know that it’s possible! Everyone has an “ultimate guide” to make 7 figures or build a business on YouTube but NO ONE shoes you the HOW, just the results… I’ve tried joining founder communities, LinkedIn ,Reddit … you name it. Most of these founder communities are inaccessible for regular people and often ask for you to have an already existing business with a min ARR… or their simply geography based and if you’re not in a certain area you can’t really participate… As of LinkedIn… full of empty AI generated posts about how some random dude raised $10m in 7 days. Okay Jonathan, but what about the HOW?? How did you write your first pitch? How many rejection calls did you get? What is an MVP? There simply isn’t a platform out there to document your founding journey and find inspiration within a community of people who are doing the same as you. What better way to feel motivated then to see someone actually document their process? Solution: I’m working on building a social media platform for aspiring/founders to connect through the RAW, UNFILTERED process of turning ideas into reality in REAL time. It’s all gonna be around the “building in public “ concept and content creation. Picture an instagram/tiktok profile where instead of seeing someone’s dog you see them documenting their founding process—from the moment they had the idea, to the moment they launched, you’re going to see the successes, the fails, the rejected calls, all documented through actual content and not some AI generated LinkedIn post. Imagine if you wanted to learn about how Steve Jobs started Apple , you could simply go through his profile on this app—exactly. To make sure all interactions are meaningful people would have to apply. It’s a truly curated community, with REAL people, building REAL things in REAL time, and not just tell us the story of how they did it… Audience: I’m targeting people who have a burning desire of building a business and early stage founders starting their founder journeys, that don’t have a support network and simply don’t know where to start. People who are tired of watching 30 min “ultimate guides “ on how to make it on YouTube from “business gurus” selling courses. People who haven’t reached the min ARR required to join an “exclusive “ founder a community. People who can’t simply just move to the US to get into the “exclusive” YC combinator. People who want to connect with real people building real things and not anonymous people on Reddit, or LinkedIn influencers again trying to promote their services. I believe in the idea because I’m also part of my audience. Have always wanted to start my own thing just never knew how to and where to find a community of likeminded people . I don’t know any founders myself, I come from a non-entrepreneurial society and I’d pay good money to access a community of REAL passionate founders building REAL things, in REAL time. This would be my first ever business, and I want to share my journey building it and hopefully inspire others to just start so I’ve created a mailing list to keep anyone interested in the project updated on my fails , learnings and successes. I’m not worried about “making it” but just “starting” and hopefully reach the right audience and inspire anyone to start whatever they have marinating in their thoughts. If you’re a founder struggling with staying consistent or an aspiring founder with an insane desire of starting and don’t know how to start, I’d love to get your feedback on what’s stopping you, your challenges starting out and what you’d find useful in such platform. And finally would this be something that interests you?? PS: casually looking for a technical co-founder

How To Build An AI-Driven Business That Doesn't Suck In 2024 (My Take).

Hi everyone, this is for those of you wanting a full run through of the formula that scaled our business to around the $100,000 /m mark in less than 18 months. Why am I doing this? Since we started hitting the larger numbers I've been given considerable time back in my day as we elevate ourselves out of scrappy start-up land and have hired a full team. I've always wanted to take this time and pour it into educating others that are following the same path. There's nothing I've loved more in life (at the ripe age of 28) than connecting with other entrepreneurs that are obsessed with the game. Firstly, I want to tell you that this is absolutely possible. The main traits you need are: ➡️ Resilience to work hard around your normal life. ➡️ The willingness to put yourself outside of your comfort zone. ➡️ The awareness to place yourself in a fast-growing market with a great offering. Secondly, I want to tell you that you are probably structuring your day and your approach wrong. Here's why: ➡️ Your operations are the back-bone of your business. When correctly organised you should be in a pattern of understanding a new task, systemising it then automating it. If you do this you will build your business like you would build a lego house. ➡️ You should be setting goals that filter down into daily actions, that are being recorded and tracked so you can improve weekly. ➡️ You should start to get a good grip of cloud software like Hubspot, Trello, Notion & Slack for the various levers you need to pull inside your business. I'm seriously passionate about this and I've recorded my first Youtube video that breaks down our entire front-end and back-end funnel for our business - if you're looking for some no-nonsense education I'd equally love some feedback. You can check out the video here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6Mq9Xu9EK8 Apart from that, please ask me anything. I'm the Managing Director of doja, a team of 9 based in the UK with a team of 5 offshore. I'd love to connect with other entrepreneurs either ahead of me or following a similar path. I can answer questions on Strategy, R&D, Product, Marketing, Lead Generation, Business Development, Commerical, Onboard & Delivery funnels, as well as extensive knowledge about what's breaking through with the latest technology for small businesses.

Looking for Feedback on this Idea

Hey everyone, I’d love some honest feedback on an idea I’ve been working on (currently just in paper). A little about me: I started in hospitality across South America and Asia, then moved into social entrepreneurship in a rural area, and eventually ecommerce using WordPress. Now, I’m deep into programming here in Europe, which I’ve really come to enjoy. So yes, I understand the perspective of businesses, entrepreneurs and programmers.  Back when I had tons of ideas for businesses and optimizing processes, I always hit the same drama: "You need a developer." But hiring one was too expensive or unreliable or shady business practice, and partnering with a programmer, someone I barely knew often felt too risky (I've learned the hard way that partnerships can feel like marriages). Now, as a programmer, I get a lot of requests from small businesses needing help and sometimes with very simple ideas. And while I can do it, I often don’t have the time, so I have to tell them I can't. And when I do have time, I know the cost can be too much for their budget. This got me thinking: What if I created a course to teach business owners just enough programming to solve their own problems? Not to become full time coders, but to gain enough knowledge to build simple tools or, better yet, understand code enough to ask the right questions whether it's to AI or a future developer. The course would focus on programming but talking business language, starting with building more flexible websites, managing your own content and creating custom tools without the limitations of templates or paid widgets. I’m thinking of creating a supportive community where we learn and grow together (maybe using your business as an example), and I’d be available to help along the way, plus I will be adding tools that you could reuse for your business (mostly because you will be able to read it and understand it → that's the goal). Talking about money, I can only tell you will be way more affordable compared to multiple payments in different places. So, does this resonate with you? I’d really appreciate your honest thoughts. Do you feel you have the time to learn or you still prefer looking for a developer? Feel free to share any frustrations or ideas. And if this sounds interesting, write me a PM, and I’ll keep you updated. Thanks for reading. I'm excited to hear what you think! :)

Aspiring AI Consultant seeking advice & connections in Healthcare to get started

I’m an aspiring entrepreneur with a background in software engineering with 3 years of experience consulting for a medical device OEM. I’ve recently decided to venture out and start my own AI consultancy/integration services business, with an initial focus on non-clinical use cases in healthcare (e.g., workflow automation, predictive analytics, etc.). So far, I’ve done my research and have identified a few good potential use-cases, but I’m currently stuck because: I don’t have any direct connections with people who work in a healthcare setting. I’m unsure about the best next steps to validate my ideas and move forward. I’m reaching out here to seek guidance on how to proceed. Specifically: Are there any healthcare professionals here who could share insights into day-to-day challenges and workflows in non-clinical settings? What are the biggest operational pain points you face that could potentially benefit from automation or AI solutions? (Forget about the AI part—just think about tools or capabilities that could make your life easier.) If you’ve been in a similar position starting a business, how did you connect with potential clients or validate your ideas? I’d also love to hear from anyone who has tried offering AI consultancy or similar services, especially in healthcare. This is a genuine attempt to learn and grow, and I’m open to any advice, feedback, or even collaborations. If you’re in healthcare or know someone who might be able to help, I’d be incredibly grateful if you could point me in the right direction.

Idea Validation Post: Seeking Feedback on My AI-Driven Quick Launch Application! 🚀

Hey Members! I’m excited to share an idea for a new application I’m planning to build: Quick Launch . This AI-driven platform is designed to assist solopreneurs or anyone with an idea in launching their Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) by taking on the roles of the entire team needed for the process. Goal: Assistance in quickly moving from Idea to MVP Before I dive into the details, I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Key Features: Product Creation: From Idea to Product Detailing AI-Generated Q&A: Real-time questions generation one-at-a-time to define the product requirements based on their knowledge levels to convert an Idea into a Product. Market Research Reports: In-depth analysis that identifies product-market fit, competitive landscape, and potential marketing strategies. Sentiment Analysis: Evaluation of user feedback and reactions across multiple subreddits to gauge public opinion on ideas. Product Development: Product Detailing to Actual Product User Story Generation: Identification and creation of comprehensive user stories, tasks, and sub-tasks to facilitate development. AI Project Management: AI agents assume roles of project managers and UI/UX designers to streamline product detailing and development. Integration Capabilities: Seamless integration with popular project management tools like Jira, Asana, and Trello for better workflow management. Target Audience: Solopreneurs: Individuals looking to bring their business ideas to life without extensive resources. Indie Hackers: Entrepreneurs focused on building small projects or startups with minimal overhead. Idea Validators: Anyone with a concept seeking initial validation and market feedback before committing significant resources. If you’re interested in learning more, check out our teaser website: Quick Launch Discussion Question: What features would you find most valuable in an application like this? Are there specific pain points you face when launching an MVP? Your insights would be incredibly helpful as I refine this idea! Looking forward to your thoughts! 🙌

What Problem Holds You Back? (testing a hypothesis about business solutions)

I have a hypothesis about solving small business challenges that I'd like to test with real entrepreneurs' perspectives. I believe that the most valuable application of AI isn't in chatbots or SaaS automations, but in enhancing how we solve real-world business problems through better analysis and solution design. Please note that I have no particular product or service to sell or promote, just a hunch to test. The Process: You share your specific business challenge (questions below) I'll use AI to analyze your situation and generate additional solution possibilities you may not have considered You tell me how viable or useful these AI-generated suggestions are for your real-world situation This feedback helps validate whether AI can truly add value to business problem-solving Please share: What ONE problem, bottleneck, or challenge is currently the BIGGEST headache holding back your business? How long has it been an issue? How much do the known alternatives to fix it cost? Which of those alternatives are you leaning towards using and why... or do you have a new or different idea you want to try? Your insights will help validate or disprove whether AI-enhanced problem-solving can genuinely help small business owners tackle their actual challenges. I plan to document this research (likely in a book), whether the results support my hypothesis or not. I'm looking for raw, honest responses - no sugar coating needed. Your real-world experience is what matters here. After I provide AI-generated solutions, please share your honest, subjective feedback about: How practical these suggestions are [0,10] What the AI might be missing about real-world implementation Whether any suggestions offer genuinely new perspectives you hadn't considered Thank you for helping me test this out.

I spent 6 months on building a web product, and got zero users. Here is my story.

Edit Thank you all so much for your time reading my story. Your support, feedback, criticism, and skepticism; all helped me a lot, and I couldn't appreciate it enough \^\_\^ I have stuff to post on Reddit very rarely, but I share how my project is going on, random stuff, and memes on X. Just in case few might want to keep in touch 👀 TL;DR I spent 6 months on a tool that currently has 0 users. Below is what I learned during my journey, sharing because I believe most mistakes are easily avoidable. Do not overestimate your product and assume it will be an exception to fundamental principles. Principles are there for a reason. Always look for validation before you start. Avoid building products with a low money-to-effort ratio/in very competitive fields. Unless you have the means, you probably won't make it. Pick a problem space, pick your target audience, and talk to them before thinking about a solution. Identify and match their pain points. Only then should you think of a solution. If people are not overly excited or willing to pay in advance for a discounted price, it might be a sign to rethink. Sell one and only one feature at a time. Avoid everything else. If people don't pay for that one core feature, no secondary feature will change their mind. Always spend twice as much time marketing as you do building. You will not get users if they don't know it exists. Define success metrics ("1000 users in 3 months" or "$6000 in the account at the end of 6 months") before you start. If you don't meet them, strongly consider quitting the project. If you can't get enough users to keep going, nothing else matters. VALIDATION, VALIDATION, VALIDATION. Success is not random, but most of our first products will not make a success story. Know when to admit failure, and move on. Even if a product of yours doesn't succeed, what you learned during its journey will turn out to be invaluable for your future. My story So, this is the story of a product that I’ve been working on for the last 6 months. As it's the first product I’ve ever built, after watching you all from the sidelines, I have learned a lot, made many mistakes, and did only a few things right. Just sharing what I’ve learned and some insights from my journey so far. I hope that this post will help you avoid the mistakes I made — most of which I consider easily avoidable — while you enjoy reading it, and get to know me a little bit more 🤓. A slow start after many years Summ isn’t the first product I really wanted to build. Lacking enough dev skills to even get started was a huge blocker for so many years. In fact, the first product I would’ve LOVED to build was a smart personal shopping assistant. I had this idea 4 years ago; but with no GPT, no coding skills, no technical co-founder, I didn’t have the means to make it happen. I still do not know if such a tool exists and is good enough. All I wanted was a tool that could make data-based predictions about when to buy stuff (“buy a new toothpaste every three months”) and suggest physical products that I might need or be strongly interested in. AFAIK, Amazon famously still struggles with the second one. Fast-forward a few years, I learned the very basics of HTML, CSS, and Vanilla JS. Still was not there to build a product; but good enough to code my design portfolio from scratch. Yet, I couldn’t imagine myself building a product using Vanilla JS. I really hated it, I really sucked at it. So, back to tutorial hell, and to learn about this framework I just heard about: React.React introduced so many new concepts to me. “Thinking in React” is a phrase we heard a lot, and with quite good reasons. After some time, I was able to build very basic tutorial apps, both in React, and React Native; but I have to say that I really hated coding for mobile. At this point, I was already a fan of productivity apps, and had a concept for a time management assistant app in my design portfolio. So, why not build one? Surely, it must be easy, since every coding tutorial starts with a todo app. ❌ WRONG! Building a basic todo app is easy enough, but building one good enough for a place in the market was a challenge I took and failed. I wasted one month on that until I abandoned the project for good. Even if I continued working on it, as the productivity landscape is overly competitive, I wouldn’t be able to make enough money to cover costs, assuming I make any. Since I was (and still am) in between jobs, I decided to abandon the project. 👉 What I learned: Do not start projects with a low ratio of money to effort and time. Example: Even if I get 500 monthly users, 200 of which are paid users (unrealistically high number), assuming an average subscription fee of $5/m (such apps are quite cheap, mostly due to the high competition), it would make me around $1000 minus any occurring costs. Any founder with a product that has 500 active users should make more. Even if it was relatively successful, due to the high competition, I wouldn’t make any meaningful money. PS: I use Todoist today. Due to local pricing, I pay less than $2/m. There is no way I could beat this competitive pricing, let alone the app itself. But, somehow, with a project that wasn’t even functional — let alone being an MVP — I made my first Wi-Fi money: Someone decided that the domain I preemptively purchased is worth something. By this point, I had already abandoned the project, certainly wasn’t going to renew the domain, was looking for a FT job, and a new project that I could work on. And out of nowhere, someone hands me some free money — who am I not to take it? Of course, I took it. The domain is still unused, no idea why 🤔. Ngl, I still hate the fact that my first Wi-Fi money came from this. A new idea worth pursuing? Fast-forward some weeks now. Around March, I got this crazy idea of building an email productivity tool. We all use emails, yet we all hate them. So, this must be fixed. Everyone uses emails, in fact everyone HAS TO use emails. So, I just needed to build a tool and wait for people to come. This was all, really. After all, the problem space is huge, there is enough room for another product, everyone uses emails, no need for any further validation, right? ❌ WRONG ONCE AGAIN! We all hear from the greatest in the startup landscape that we must validate our ideas with real people, yet at least some of us (guilty here 🥸) think that our product will be hugely successful and prove them to be an exception. Few might, but most are not. I certainly wasn't. 👉 Lesson learned: Always validate your ideas with real people. Ask them how much they’d pay for such a tool (not if they would). Much better if they are willing to pay upfront for a discount, etc. But even this comes later, keep reading. I think the difference between “How much” and “If” is huge for two reasons: (1) By asking them for “How much”, you force them to think in a more realistic setting. (2) You will have a more realistic idea on your profit margins. Based on my competitive analysis, I already had a solution in my mind to improve our email usage standards and email productivity (huge mistake), but I did my best to learn about their problems regarding those without pushing the idea too hard. The idea is this: Generate concise email summaries with suggested actions, combine them into one email, and send it at their preferred times. Save as much as time the AI you end up with allows. After all, everyone loves to save time. So, what kind of validation did I seek for? Talked with only a few people around me about this crazy, internet-breaking idea. The responses I got were, now I see, mediocre; no one got excited about it, just said things along the lines of “Cool idea, OK”. So, any reasonable person in this situation would think “Okay, not might not be working”, right? Well, I did not. I assumed that they were the wrong audience for this product, and there was this magical land of user segments waiting eagerly for my product, yet unknowingly. To this day, I still have not reached this magical place. Perhaps, it didn’t exist in the first place. If I cannot find it, whether it exists or not doesn’t matter. I am certainly searching for it. 👉 What I should have done: Once I decide on a problem space (time management, email productivity, etc.), I should decide on my potential user segments, people who I plan to sell my product to. Then I should go talk to those people, ask them about their pains, then get to the problem-solving/ideation phase only later. ❗️ VALIDATION COMES FROM THE REALITY OUTSIDE. What validation looks like might change from product to product; but what invalidation looks like is more or less the same for every product. Nico Jeannen told me yesterday “validation = money in the account” on Twitter. This is the ultimate form of validation your product could get. If your product doesn’t make any money, then something is invalidated by reality: Your product, you, your idea, who knows? So, at this point, I knew a little bit of Python from spending some time in tutorial hell a few years ago, some HTML/CSS/JS, barely enough React to build a working app. React could work for this project, but I needed easy-to-implement server interactivity. Luckily, around this time, I got to know about this new gen of indie hackers, and learned (but didn’t truly understand) about their approach to indie hacking, and this library called Nextjs. How good Next.js still blows my mind. So, I was back to tutorial hell once again. But, this time, with a promise to myself: This is the last time I would visit tutorial hell. Time to start building this "ground-breaking idea" Learning the fundamentals of Next.js was easier than learning of React unsurprisingly. Yet, the first time I managed to run server actions on Next.js was one of the rarest moments that completely blew my mind. To this day, I reject the idea that it is something else than pure magic under its hood. Did I absolutely need Nextjs for this project though? I do not think so. Did it save me lots of time? Absolutely. Furthermore, learning Nextjs will certainly be quite helpful for other projects that I will be tackling in the future. Already got a few ideas that might be worth pursuing in the head in case I decide to abandon Summ in the future. Fast-forward few weeks again: So, at this stage, I had a barely working MVP-like product. Since the very beginning, I spent every free hour (and more) on this project as speed is essential. But, I am not so sure it was worth it to overwork in retrospect. Yet, I know I couldn’t help myself. Everything is going kinda smooth, so what’s the worst thing that could ever happen? Well, both Apple and Google announced their AIs (Apple Intelligence and Google Gemini, respectively) will have email summarization features for their products. Summarizing singular emails is no big deal, after all there were already so many similar products in the market. I still think that what truly matters is a frictionless user experience, and this is why I built this product in a certain way: You spend less than a few minutes setting up your account, and you get to enjoy your email summaries, without ever visiting its website again. This is still a very cool concept I really like a lot. So, at this point: I had no other idea that could be pursued, already spent too much time on this project. Do I quit or not? This was the question. Of course not. I just have to launch this product as quickly as possible. So, I did something right, a quite rare occurrence I might say: Re-planned my product, dropped everything secondary to the core feature immediately (save time on reading emails), tried launching it asap. 👉 Insight: Sell only one core feature at one time. Drop anything secondary to this core feature. Well, my primary occupation is product design. So one would expect that a product I build must have stellar design. I considered any considerable time spent on design at this stage would be simply wasted. I still think this is both true and wrong: True, because if your product’s core benefits suck, no one will care about your design. False, because if your design looks amateurish, no one will trust you and your product. So, I always targeted an average level design with it and the way this tool works made it quite easy as I had to design only 2 primary pages: Landing page and user portal (which has only settings and analytics pages). However, even though I knew spending time on design was not worth much of my time, I got a bit “greedy”: In fact, I redesigned those pages three times, and still ended up with a so-so design that I am not proud of. 👉 What I would do differently: Unless absolutely necessary, only one iteration per stage as long as it works. This, in my mind, applies to everything. If your product’s A feature works, then no need to rewrite it from scratch for any reason, or even refactor it. When your product becomes a success, and you absolutely need that part of your codebase to be written, do so, but only then. Ready to launch, now is th etime for some marketing, right? By July 26, I already had a “launchable” product that barely works (I marked this date on a Notion docs, this is how I know). Yet, I had spent almost no time on marketing, sales, whatever. After all, “You build and they will come”. Did I know that I needed marketing? Of course I did, but knowingly didn’t. Why, you might ask. Well, from my perspective, it had to be a dev-heavy product; meaning that you spend most of your time on developing it, mostly coding skills. But, this is simply wrong. As a rule of thumb, as noted by one of the greatests, Marc Louvion, you should spend at least twice of the building time on marketing. ❗️ Time spent on building \* 2 people don’t know your product > they don’t use your product > you don’t get users > you don’t make money Easy as that. Following the same reasoning, a slightly different approach to planning a project is possible. Determine an approximate time to complete the project with a high level project plan. Let’s say 6 months. By the reasoning above, 2 months should go into building, and 4 into marketing. If you need 4 months for building instead of 2, then you need 8 months of marketing, which makes the time to complete the project 12 months. If you don’t have that much time, then quit the project. When does a project count as completed? Well, in reality, never. But, I think we have to define success conditions even before we start for indie projects and startups; so we know when to quit when they are not met. A success condition could look like “Make $6000 in 12 months” or “Have 3000 users in 6 months”. It all depends on the project. But, once you set it, it should be set in stone: You don’t change it unless absolutely necessary. I suspect there are few principles that make a solopreneur successful; and knowing when to quit and when to continue is definitely one of them. Marc Louvion is famously known for his success, but he got there after failing so many projects. To my knowledge, the same applies to Nico Jeannen, Pieter Levels, or almost everyone as well. ❗️ Determining when to continue even before you start will definitely help in the long run. A half-aed launch Time-leap again. Around mid August, I “soft launched” my product. By soft launch, I mean lazy marketing. Just tweeting about it, posting it on free directories. Did I get any traffic? Surely I did. Did I get any users? Nope. Only after this time, it hit me: “Either something is wrong with me, or with this product” Marketing might be a much bigger factor for a project’s success after all. Even though I get some traffic, not convincing enough for people to sign up even for a free trial. The product was still perfect in my eyes at the time (well, still is ^(\_),) so the right people are not finding my product, I thought. Then, a question that I should have been asking at the very first place, one that could prevent all these, comes to my mind: “How do even people search for such tools?” If we are to consider this whole journey of me and my so-far-failed product to be an already destined failure, one metric suffices to show why. Search volume: 30. Even if people have such a pain point, they are not looking for email summaries. So, almost no organic traffic coming from Google. But, as a person who did zero marketing on this or any product, who has zero marketing knowledge, who doesn’t have an audience on social media, there is not much I could do. Finally, it was time to give up. Or not… In my eyes, the most important element that makes a founder (solo or not) successful (this, I am not by any means) is to solve problems. ❗️ So, the problem was this: “People are not finding my product by organic search” How do I make sure I get some organic traffic and gets more visibility? Learn digital marketing and SEO as much as I can within very limited time. Thankfully, without spending much time, I came across Neil Patel's YT channel, and as I said many times, it is an absolute gold mine. I learned a lot, especially about the fundamentals, and surely it will be fruitful; but there is no magic trick that could make people visit your website. SEO certainly helps, but only when people are looking for your keywords. However, it is truly a magical solution to get in touch with REAL people that are in your user segments: 👉 Understand your pains, understand their problems, help them to solve them via building products. I did not do this so far, have to admit. But, in case you would like to have a chat about your email usage, and email productivity, just get in touch; I’d be delighted to hear about them. Getting ready for a ProductHunt launch The date was Sept 1. And I unlocked an impossible achievement: Running out of Supabase’s free plan’s Egres limit while having zero users. I was already considering moving out of their Cloud server and managing a Supabase CLI service on my Hetzner VPS for some time; but never ever suspected that I would have to do this quickly. The cheapest plan Supabase offers is $25/month; yet, at that point, I am in between jobs for such a long time, basically broke, and could barely afford that price. One or two months could be okay, but why pay for it if I will eventually move out of their Cloud service? So, instead of paying $25, I spent two days migrating out of Supabase Cloud. Worth my time? Definitely not. But, when you are broke, you gotta do stupid things. This was the first time that I felt lucky to have zero users: I have no idea how I would manage this migration if I had any. I think this is one of the core tenets of an indie hacker: Controlling their own environment. I can’t remember whose quote this is, but I suspect it was Naval: Entrepreneurs have an almost pathological need to control their own fate. They will take any suffering if they can be in charge of their destiny, and not have it in somebody else’s hands. What’s truly scary is, at least in my case, we make people around us suffer at the expense of our attempting to control our own fates. I know this period has been quite hard on my wife as well, as I neglected her quite a bit, but sadly, I know that this will happen again. It is something that I can barely help with. Still, so sorry. After working the last two weeks on a ProductHunt Launch, I finally launched it this Tuesday. Zero ranking, zero new users, but 36 kind people upvoted my product, and many commented and provided invaluable feedback. I couldn't be more grateful for each one of them 🙏. Considering all these, what lies in the future of Summ though? I have no idea, to be honest. On one hand, I have zero users, have no job, no income. So, I need a way to make money asap. On the other hand, the whole idea of it revolves around one core premise (not an assumption) that I am not so willing to share; and I couldn’t have more trust in it. This might not be the best iteration of it, however I certainly believe that email usage is one of the best problem spaces one could work on. 👉 But, one thing is for certain: I need to get in touch with people, and talk with them about this product I built so far. In fact, this is the only item on my agenda. Nothing else will save my brainchild <3. Below are some other insights and notes that I got during my journey; as they do not 100% fit into this story, I think it is more suitable to list them here. I hope you enjoyed reading this. Give Summ a try, it comes with a generous free trial, no credit card required. Some additional notes and insights: Project planning is one of the most underestimated skills for solopreneurs. It saves you enormous time, and helps you to keep your focus up. Building B2C products beats building B2B products. Businesses are very willing to pay big bucks if your product helps them. On the other hand, spending a few hours per user who would pay $5/m probably is not worth your time. It doesn’t matter how brilliant your product is if no one uses it. If you cannot sell a product in a certain category/niche (or do not know how to sell it), it might be a good idea not to start a project in it. Going after new ideas and ventures is quite risky, especially if you don’t know how to market it. On the other hand, an already established category means that there is already demand. Whether this demand is sufficient or not is another issue. As long as there is enough demand for your product to fit in, any category/niche is good. Some might be better, some might be worse. Unless you are going hardcore B2B, you will need people to find your product by means of organic search. Always conduct thorough keyword research as soon as possible.

I’ve Tested All the Image Generation Tools for My Small Business

Personally I hate paying for subscriptions unless it was absolutely necessary. Given that I don't have the budget to hire a graphic designer I started playing with all the new Generative AI tools and these are the ones I've narrowed it down to that have made the most impact. I posted this breakdown on r/AIforBusinessFounders but will share it here as well. Hope this compilation helps a fellow entrepreneur. If you’ve been exploring AI tools for generating images, you’ve probably come across big names like DALL·E, Adobe Photoshop, and MidJourney (finally moved off the dreadful Discord prompting thankfully!)  While they each have their strengths, they also have their quirks. Here’s the breakdown: DALL·E by OpenAI Pros: It’s integrated directly into ChatGPT, so if you’re already on a paid plan, you’re good to go—no extra fees. It's also embedded in Canva which is convenient if you’re designing social media posts or quick mockups. Cons: The image quality isn’t amazing. It often looks a bit flat or off, but I think where I struggle is you only get one output per generation, so there’s not much variety. Adobe Photoshop Pros: If you’re already using Photoshop, this is a nice addition. It lets you partially generate images within your edits, which can be handy for things like background replacements. When it comes to generating full images though, I find this tool really struggles. Cons: The image quality still has room for improvement—hands and fingers, in particular, are a consistent issue. Plus, you need an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription to access it. MidJourney Pros: Hands down, this tool produces the best-quality images. You get multiple outputs per prompt, and what really sets it apart is the ability to refine your favorite image. You can subtly tweak or drastically change it, depending on your needs. It previously only operated on Discord but it now has migrated to it's own platform so that's been a huge pro for me. Cons: It’s not cheap—MidJourney requires its own paid membership and comes with limited tokens, so you’ll need to budget your usage. The biggest con for me in the past was that you had to prompt in a Discord channel but now that it has own platform, it's no longer an issue. After putting all three to the test, my personal favorite is MidJourney. If image quality and creative control are your priorities, it’s hard to beat. That said, DALL·E and Adobe are solid options if you’re already using their platforms and want to save money. Are there any hidden gems I might have missed? If so let me know, I'd love to give them a try.

The Evolution of Financial Technology: How CAs Are Embracing the Digital Age

The Evolution of Financial Technology: How CAs Are Embracing the Digital Age Introduction In an era characterized by rapid technological advancements, the field of finance is undergoing a transformative journey. The emergence of financial technology, or fintech, is reshaping the way businesses manage their finances, and Chartered Accountants (CAs) are at the forefront of this evolution. In this blog post, we'll explore how CAs are embracing fintech and leveraging its potential to enhance financial management, analysis, and advisory services. Fintech's Impact on Financial Services Fintech encompasses a wide range of technologies that leverage data analytics, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and automation to improve financial services. For CAs, this means new tools to streamline processes, enhance decision-making, and offer innovative solutions to clients. Automation of Routine Tasks CAs are increasingly using automation tools to handle repetitive tasks such as data entry, reconciliations, and transaction processing. This not only reduces the risk of human error but also frees up CAs to focus on higher-value tasks like strategic planning and analysis. Advanced Data Analytics Data analytics tools enable CAs to extract meaningful insights from large volumes of financial data. These insights can help businesses identify trends, anticipate risks, and make informed decisions to drive growth. Real-Time Financial Reporting Fintech enables CAs to provide clients with real-time financial reporting, giving businesses immediate access to critical information. This enhances transparency and empowers business owners to respond quickly to changing market conditions. Enhancing Audit Efficiency Fintech tools are revolutionizing the audit process. CAs can use AI-powered algorithms to analyze vast amounts of data, detect anomalies, and identify potential instances of fraud more efficiently. Personalized Financial Planning CAs can leverage fintech to offer personalized financial planning services. With access to detailed financial data, CAs can create tailored strategies that align with a client's unique goals and circumstances. Strengthening Cybersecurity As businesses become more reliant on digital tools, cybersecurity becomes paramount. CAs are playing a critical role in advising clients on cybersecurity measures to protect sensitive financial information. Virtual CFO Services Fintech enables CAs to offer virtual CFO services to startups and small businesses. Through digital platforms, CAs can provide expert financial advice and guidance remotely, making their expertise accessible to a wider range of clients. Embracing Blockchain Technology Blockchain's potential for secure and transparent record-keeping is of interest to CAs. They can explore applications in supply chain finance, smart contracts, and even audit trail verification. Continuous Learning in Fintech CAs recognize the importance of staying updated with fintech trends. Many are investing in continuous learning to master the use of new tools and technologies that can optimize their services. Conclusion The integration of fintech into the realm of finance is reshaping the landscape in profound ways. CAs are embracing these technologies to elevate their roles from traditional number-crunchers to strategic advisors, equipped with tools that enhance efficiency, accuracy, and insight. As fintech continues to evolve, CAs will remain pivotal in guiding businesses through the ever-changing financial landscape, leveraging technology to drive growth, innovation, and success. Find the top verified CA in your City Feel free to let me know if you'd like more blogs on different topics or if you have specific requirements for the content.

80+ Social Media Updates Related to Business Marketing That Occurred in last 5 months

Tiktok expanded its caption limits from 100 to 500 Characters. Reddit Updates Search tools, Now you can search User Comments. “Comment search is here”. Pinterest Announces New Partnership with WooCommerce to Expand Product Listings. Google’s launched ‘multisearch’ feature that lets you search using text and image at the same time. Etsy sellers went on strike after platform increases transaction fees. Reddit launched $1 million fund to support various projects going on platform. Instagram is updating its ranking algorithm to put more focus on Original Content LinkedIn Added New tools In creator mode: improved content analytics and Updates profile video Options. Tiktok launched its own gif library “Effect House”. Instagram Updates Reels editing tools adding reordering clips feature. Google Search got a new label to direct people to original news sources YouTube launches new Profile Rings for Stories and Live. Snapchat launched YouTube Link stickers to make video sharing easier! Messenger adds new shortcuts, including a slack like @everyone feature. Pinterest Expands it’s Creator funds program to help more Underrepresented creators. Reddit brings back r/place after 5 years. Google Adds New Seller Performance Badges, New Pricing Insights for eCommerce Brands. Meta and Google agrees to New Data Transfer agreement to keep Instagram and Facebook running in EU. Twitter tests New Interactive Ad types to boost its promotional Appeal. Instagram removed In-stream Ads from its Advertising Options. Tiktok launched new program “CAP” to help creative agencies reach its audience. Twitch shuts down its desktop app. Meta launched the ability to add “share to Reels” feature to third Party Apps. TikTok Adds New ‘Background Player’ Option for Live-Streams. Twitter rolls out ALT badge and improved image description. Fast, A Checkout Startup with $15 billion valuation shuts down after spending all the funds raised in 2021. Wordpress announced new pricing with more traffic and storage limits after receiving backlash from the community. Sales force upgrades marketing field services and sales tools with AI. Dropbox shop launches in open beta to allow creators to sell digital content. Tiktok is the most downloaded app in Quarter 1 of 2022. WhatsApp announced launch of ‘Communities’ - more structured group chats with admin controls. Tiktok expands testing a private dislike button for comments. Twitter acquired “Openback” A notification app to improve timeline and relevance of push notifications YouTube and Tiktok added New options for Automated Captions, Improving Accessibility. A new social media App “Be Real” is trending across the internet grabbing Gen-Zs attention to try the app. WhatsApp got permission to expand payment services to its Indian user base of 100 Million. YouTube Shorts now allows creators to splice in long-form videos. You can use long form video audios and clips for YT shorts. New Snapchat feature ‘Dynamic Stories’ uses a publisher’s RSS feed to automatically create Stories posts. Zoom launches AI-powered features aimed at sales teams. Tiktok started testing who viewed your profile feature. Ogilvy Announced they will no longer work with who edit their bodies and faces for ads. If you don’t know “Oglivy” is the most successful advertising agency of the decade. YouTube Launches New ‘Search Insights’ for all creators. Snapchat Added 13 million new users in Q1 2022 more than both Twitter and Facebook. Google is Introduced new options to reject tracking cookies in Europe after receiving fines from violating EU data laws. Sony & Microsoft are planning to integrate Ads into their gaming platforms Xbox and PlayStation. YouTube Adds new Shorts Shelf to Trending Tab to show Top Shorts in an alternative section. Instagram started testing a reels template feature which enables creators to copy formats from other reels. Google Tests “What People Are Saying” Search Results. Twitter Launches New Test of Promotions for Third Party Tools Within the App. Instagram is changing how hashtags work by experimenting removing Recents tab from hashtags section. Google Adds New Publisher Verification Badges to Extension Listings in the Google Web Store Amazon AWS launches $30M accelerator program aimed at minority founders. Meta launched more fundraising options for Instagram Reels in 30 countries. Brave Search and DuckDuckGo will no longer support Google AMP due to privacy issues. Instagram is working on a pinned post feature and will officially launch in next few months. Meta: You can now add Music to your Facebook comments Twitter tests new closed caption button to switch on captions in Video Clip Elon Musk Bought Twitter $44 Billion and Company is set to go private. Google now lets you request the removal of personal contact information from search results YouTube reveals that Ads between YT Shorts are being tested with selective brands. LinkedInis rolling out a new website link feature. Google Reduces Visibility Of Business Edits With Color Changes To Profile Updates. Instagram expands testing of 90 second Reels. Microsoft Advertising now offers incentive features like cash-back and adding stock images from your website. Facebook & Pinterest are growing again despite all the hype around slow growth of both platform in last quarter. Google Added 9 new Ad policies to prevent misleading ads taking place. Tiktok Introduces Third-party cookies to its Pixel. (like Facebook Pixel) Twitter reportedly overcounted number of daily active users for last 3 years. Google launched Media CDN to compete on content delivery. YouTube expands Thank You Monetisation tool to all eligible creators. Twitch is looking to expand their cut from streamers earnings from 30 to 50% and also thinks of boosting Ads. Snapchat launches a $230 flying drone camera and new e-commerce integrations in Snap Summit 2022. YouTube Expands its ‘Pre-Publish Checks’ Tool to the Mobile App Google Search Console’s URL parameter tool is officially removed for a time period. Twitter creators can now get paid through Cryptocurrency on Twitter with Stripe. Jellysmack- One of the Influencer marketing agency acquires YouTube analytics tool Google & Microsoft Ads brought more revenue in last quarter- 22% Gains! WhatsApp is working on a paid subscription for multi-phone and tablet chatting. Instagram users now spend 20% of their time in the reels section. Google tests new Color for clicked search results by you. Now Clicked results are in Purple. Twitter: Elon plans to remove employees and focus more on influencers for twitter’s growth + new monetisation ideas were shared. YouTube revenue falls as more users spend time on shorts tab than consuming long form content. Drop 👋 to receive June Updates!

Share Your Expertise: AI, Automation, and Efficient Organizational Tools, Strategies and Routines!

Hello everyone, As we navigate through the advancements in AI and automation, it's clear that these technologies are reshaping the way we approach work and business management. To stay ahead, sharing our collective knowledge on these subjects is crucial. I'm inviting this community to share insights and experiences with AI tools, automation strategies, and especially, innovative organizational approaches you've found effective. From automating mundane tasks to optimizing digital marketing strategies, every piece of wisdom is valuable. Here’s what we’re specifically interested in: Automated Workflows: What are your strategies for creating automated workflows that enhance productivity and efficiency? Visual Organization: How do you utilize mind maps and other visual tools to organize thoughts and projects efficiently? Canvas Maps: Have you implemented CANVAS Maps in customer interaction, ideation, strategy development, or action planning? How has it improved your processes? AI in Marketing: How has AI helped you optimize your digital marketing strategies and data analysis? What tools or methodologies have you found most effective? This thread aims to be a resource for all of us to learn from each other's successes and innovations. Whether it’s a simple tip or a comprehensive strategy, your input can significantly impact someone’s approach to challenges. What groundbreaking AI solutions, automation hacks, or organizational methods have you discovered that made a noticeable difference in your work or business? Share your stories and let’s empower each other to achieve greater efficiency and success. Thank you for contributing to our shared journey toward innovation and improvement!

As a Business Owner, what are your technology challenges?

Premise: I've spent way too long in IT (as a developer) and worked primarily with technical clients for past 17+ years. I am a bit in a bubble. Lately I've been considering pivoting from freelancing into a different kind of business and need some feedback from SMB community. So I would like to hear from non-technical business owners. If you consider yourself non-technical owner what are some challenges you face with modern day technology (including AI, social media, digital advertising)? For example (some areas non-technical owners have challenges), 👉 digital marketing, social media, content, etc? 👉 Or more in terms of operations, inventory tracking, customer management is manual? 👉 /Or does it feel like you have a lot of manual tasks that should have been automated, but you just don't know how or don't know if possible? 👉 Perhaps you're using frankenstein-system of documents, email attachments, spreadsheets, written notes that lack organization? 👉 Or you're not marketing your business online? Obviously solution would have a price tag, but if it reduces overhead costs or increase ROI, why wouldn't you? Some ideas, but feel free to throw in more. I have not figured out my current offer nor service, just doing my market research. Thank you for feedback 🙏

Seeking advice from every type of business owner - if you have a moment & an opinion please chime in.

Hello everyone. I haven't started selling yet and wanted to get some insight from the community I'm trying to serve (that makes the most sense to me). So over the past couple months I've gotten into AI & Automation. I got a HighLevel account and went to town learning new things. I learned how to make automations and workflows that make running a business easier (my dad has been letting me use his concrete business as a guinea pig). I also learned how to build and train AI Chat Assistants. I want to start a service based business that uses AI & workflows to automate some of the customer service tasks & lead generation for business. What I'm seeking advice about are as follows: NICHE SELECTION: Part of me thinks I shouldn't niche down in the beginning and just take whoever comes and niche down once I find an industry I'm comfortable with. Another side thinks I should choose one. What is your opinion on niche selection in the beginning? PRICING: I know that pricing largely depends on the value I bring to the client, but I've seen people doing the same or similar things as I want to do and charging vastly different prices. From $300- $2,000. While I think these solutions could absolutely help companies get and retain new business and reduce some of the workload of their staff -- I'm not comfortable charging a high price until I've got enough experience and data to justify that. &#x200B; THESE ARE THE SERVICES I'M THINKING OF OFFERING: Customer Service Chat Assistant. This will be on the website as a "Live Chat". It also connects to Facebook Messenger & Google Business Chat. I'd train the chat assistant on everything related to the company; pertinent info (NAP, company mission, industry background), contact info, services / products / pricing, FAQs, current specials &/or discount codes (this can be changed monthly), how to handle upset clients, etc. It can also connect to a calendar like Google or Calendly so customers can make an appointment or schedule a call directly from the conversation. Missed Call Follow Up. If you're familiar with the platform HighLevel it's commonly called "Missed Call Text Back". The idea is that when a call is missed a text message is automatically fired to the prospect's phone saying something along the lines of "Hey this is \\\\\\ from \\\\\\\_. How can I help you?" and the business owner is alerted to the missed call via text notification. People have said they see a lot of success for their clients with this alone due to the instant follow up. I see a lot of people charging $300 /m. for this. My issues with this are: 1). The text fires automatically when the call is missed, but if the business owner isn't available to actually follow up and keep texting after the customer texts back, they will look inconsistent and bothersome. 2). Without context a prospect may wonder why you didn't answer when they called, but texted them instead. So my answer to these problems are #3. SMS Answering Service. It is essentially taking 2 + 1 and combining them. The missed call text goes out to the prospect, but with context on why they're being texted (because no one is available to take the call at the moment) and IF the prospect responds, a Customer Service Chat Assistant will take over the conversation with the goal of answering their questions and either getting them on the phone with the company via a call back OR helping them schedule an appointment. This offers a more consistent solution than just a text to the business owner / team & the prospect is contacted and helped (hopefully) before they have a chance to start calling a competitor. Lead Nurture / Lead Qualifying Sales Funnel. This one is more than just AI & automation. It's a full funnel. It can be for either Facebook or Google. The process is AD -> Landing Page -> AI Text Message Convo -> Booking/Schedule Call/ Appointment. Typically the ad will offer a lead magnet which they will claim on the LP by giving their information. After the form is submitted, they get a text message and begin a conversation with the AI. It can be trained to just walk them through a booking process, nurture a sale by answering questions and handling objections or to qualify leads. Lead qualification via text works well if you want to weed out who is serious versus who is curious. To be clear; I'd be making the ad, landing page & training the AI -- all parts of the funnel. For whichever service a few things are universal: \- All conversations; no matter what platform they're had on, all go to one inbox which is pretty helpful to see them all in one place. \- When scheduling / booking these can also collect payment. \- Tags can be added to keep track of how they came into the business and where they are in a sales pipeline. There are a lot of fun things I can do with these automations and I'm excited about learning more everyday. I'd really like to know what you think these services could be worth to a business. If you do reply please tell me what type of business you're in so I have an idea of what industries I should be looking towards. Thank you for any response I get as I know this was a long read! SN: I currently do digital marketing & web design as a freelancer.

Seeking Feedback on My Business Idea – SaaS + Lead Generation for Small Businesses

Edit: TL;DR I’m Sarvesh, a digital marketer with 10 years of experience in paid ads. After losing my job last year, I started freelancing and discovered how much small businesses struggle with getting reviews (Google, Yelp, TrustPilot, etc.). My Business Idea – SaaS + Paid Ads Free Plan: Businesses can track & reply to reviews across 40+ platforms in one dashboard. Paid Plan ($99/month): Automates review collection, AI-powered responses, social media posting, and spam detection. Custom Plan: Paid ads to generate leads, offered only to businesses on my paid plan for 3+ months. Goal: SaaS platform attracts users → Some upgrade to paid plan → Best clients get lead-generation help → More leads → More reviews → More organic customers → A profitable business cycle. Need Feedback: Does this idea have potential? How can I get my first beta users? Any features I should add/remove? Would love your thoughts—thanks for reading! 😊 TL: Hi everyone, I’m Sarvesh, and I’m in the process of starting my own business. Since my target audience is small businesses, I’d love to get some input, advice, or critiques from this community. A Little About Me I’ve spent the last 10 years working in paid advertising, helping medium and large businesses generate leads through Facebook and Google Ads. I also have experience running e-commerce campaigns. You can check out my background on LinkedIn: LinkedIn Profile Last year, my second daughter was born, and around the same time, my company shut down all its offices (India & UK), leaving me without a job. I decided to take a break and spend time with my wife and newborn, something I regretted not doing with my first child. By November, I started job hunting again, but in the meantime, I got some freelance work through Reddit, helping small businesses with ads for the first time. For context, in my previous jobs, I managed ad campaigns with daily budgets of £4K–£8K. Working with small businesses was a new challenge, but to my surprise, I was able to generate solid leads for beauty salons, hair salons, and nail salons, helping them grow. What stood out to me was how much impact my work had—unlike my corporate job, where I was just another person in the system, here I felt truly valued. That feeling led me to explore starting my own business. The Problem I Noticed While working with small businesses, I realized that online reviews (Google, Yelp, Trustpilot, etc.) are critical for them, yet many struggle to get them. Customers often don’t leave reviews, and employees are either too shy or don’t prioritize asking for them. This gave me an idea—to build a system that helps businesses get more genuine Google reviews from customers. I developed the system but struggled to find businesses willing to test it, even for free. My target audience is U.S. small businesses, but since I’m based in India, cold emails and Reddit outreach didn’t get much traction. My Business Idea – SaaS + Custom Plans I’m now thinking of pivoting my business model into a SaaS platform with optional paid upgrades. Here’s how it would work: Free Plan (Review Tracking & Management) Businesses can track their reviews across 40+ platforms (Google, Yelp, Facebook, Trustpilot, TripAdvisor, etc.) in one dashboard. They can reply to reviews manually from a single place instead of switching between platforms. This will be completely free forever. Paid Plan ($99/month, Plus SMS/Email Costs) For businesses that struggle to get reviews, they can upgrade to a paid plan that includes: Automated Review Requests – Automatically send review requests via SMS & email. Website Widget – Showcase 4- and 5-star reviews dynamically. Social Media Automation – Automatically post positive reviews on Facebook/Instagram. AI-Powered Responses – AI can reply to reviews automatically. Spam Detection – The system will notify businesses of suspicious reviews (but won’t take direct action). Custom Plan (Lead Generation via Paid Ads) I will personally manage paid ad campaigns to generate leads. Pricing depends on the niche, budget, and contract duration. Money-Back Guarantee – If I don’t deliver results, I refund the month’s fee. Small businesses can’t afford wasted ad spend, and I want to ensure I provide real value. Limited spots per month to maintain quality and avoid burnout. How Everything Ties Together The SaaS platform serves as a lead generation tool for my custom plans: Businesses use the free plan to track their reviews. Some upgrade to the paid plan to automate and improve reviews. A select few, after 3 months on the paid plan, can join my custom plan for paid ads to generate more leads. More leads → More reviews → Better Google Maps ranking → More organic customers → A more profitable business. Would Love Your Feedback! What do you think about this approach? Do you see potential for this business to take off? Any features I should add or remove? Any suggestions on how I can get my first beta users to test the SaaS platform? What about pricing? Do you think $99 is good pricing? I know this is a long post, but I really appreciate anyone taking the time to read and share their thoughts. Thanks in advance!

Seeking Feedback: Offering Free Customer Support Automation Setup for Small Business Owners

Hello Redditors, I run a small online digital business solo and found myself spending a lot of time handling repetitive customer support tasks. To reduce my time spent on these tasks, improve response times, and increase customer satisfaction, I built a small customer support automation tool that connects my Gmail account with OpenAI agents. This tool knows my business well, can reply to questions about my products, and provides common-sense responses. It also integrates with Stripe and my order processing system, allowing it to fetch order details and process refunds automatically. Impressively, my setup has automated 95% of customer inquiries, providing immediate resolutions and consistently impressing my customers. I'm now considering turning this automation into a SaaS product, but first, I want to understand if there is a demand for it and identify the most common needs of small business owners. To gather insights, I would like to offer a free service to set up this customer support automation for a few small business owners. If you're interested, please post a comment or send me a DM with a summary of your business, your existing customer support system, and your customer support volume. Your feedback and experience will be invaluable in shaping this product. Looking forward to hearing from you!

ChatGPT for business automation (incredible new AI)

Hey fellow small business owners! I'm curious to know how you would use ChatGPT or other AI automation tools to improve your business. For those who are not aware, recently a new chat AI was made available to the public by OpenAI, called ChatGPT. (same company that did Dall-E) In a tweet Elon Musk wrote that "ChatGPT is scary good. We are not far from dangerously strong AI." It allows anyone (regardless of tech skill) to simply type commands and it will spit out answers. It can also create actual working code. For example most tasks you do in a browser can be automated with a Python script, but it takes time and coding knowledge to create. With ChatGPT you can just tell it what you want and it will create the code! The impact for businesses is insane: 1) Your entire customer service can be easily replaced by chat bots and probably soon by AI that can speak over the phone (google showcased this in 2018, it already exists). 2) you can have the AI automate your sales process, creating a 1-on-1 conversations, at scale. It can probably also improve and optimize it's closing rate over time as it learns more about your customers. 3) It can be used to train your staff. It's really good for 1on1 instruction and teaching because it will go a the students pace and answer questions (compare that to the usual PowerPoint presentation people use) 4) Since it can create code to automate most tasks a human can do in a browser, you can create for example bots that take customer orders and automatically import them to whatever shipping system you use, send customers tracking info etc. (a lot of this stuff is done with software and APIs, but now anyone can create their own, custom solutions) I feel like we hit an inflection point in 2022 with AI and now we are beginning to see some really useful stuff coming out. Am I crazy or are we about to see a massive shift in how we do things?

Ai C-Level team

I've been exploring ways to run a company where I'm essentially the only internal team member, relying entirely on a suite of specialized AIs for executive roles, supported occasionally by external consultants for niche expertise. My goal is to stay lean, agile, and highly creative, especially in a fashion/tech brand context. Essentially, I'm building an AI-driven C-Level team, or what I like to call a "C-Level AI Wallet." Here's what I'm thinking for the key executive roles I'd need to cover with AI: CEO AI – Responsible for overall strategy, decision-making, trend analysis, and guiding the company's vision. I'd probably lean on something advanced like Gemini, GPT-4, or similar models, fine-tuned with market-specific data. COO AI (Operations): I'd need tools that streamline and automate logistics, supply chain management, and day-to-day operations (think something along the lines of Zapier AI integrations or Make). CMO AI (Marketing & Content): For branding, content creation, digital marketing, and consumer insights, I'd use Jasper or Copy.ai, combined with predictive analytics tools like Google Vertex AI to understand trends better. Additionally, for generating engaging visual and multimedia content, tools like Midjourney, DALL·E, Adobe Firefly, and Runway ML would be perfect. CFO AI (Financial Management): For financial management, cash flow control, and investment decisions, I'd probably leverage AI tools like Bloomberg GPT, combined with AI-powered forecasting platforms. CHRO AI (Human Resources & Culture): Although the internal team is minimal (just myself!), I'd still rely on AI for tasks like project management, freelancer hiring, and performance tracking—tools like HireVue AI, Motion, or even Notion's AI could be beneficial here. CSO AI (Sustainability & Compliance): Since sustainability and ethical sourcing are critical, I'd integrate ESG-focused AI tools to ensure transparency and responsible sourcing. My idea is that, with the right AI tools seamlessly integrated, I can manage the strategic vision and creative direction personally, leveraging external consultants only when necessary. This setup would ideally allow me to operate as a one-person internal team supported by a robust "wallet" of AI executives. Has anyone tried a similar approach? What AI tools would you recommend for a truly lean, innovative brand structure? I'm very curious about your experiences or suggestions—let me know your thoughts!

Would you use an automated AI tool for your digital ads?

I'm a tech entrepreneur and I'm trying to validate (or rule out) a business idea I have: AI-based digital campaign manager. My idea is this: Many small businesses can only spend several hundred bucks a month on online ads, and so it doesn't make sense for them to hire an agency to run their ads. But, on the other hand, they also don't have the technical know-how to do it themselves. What I'd like to build is an AI tool (similiar to ChatGPT) that takes, as an input, an overview of the business, and automatically generates all the required assets: Which keywords/audiences to target, writes the ads, launches the campaigns, and even does the daily optimization and reporting. Would you use such a tool?

Seeking Feedback: Offering Free Customer Support Automation Setup for Small Business Owners

Hello Redditors, I run a small online digital business solo and found myself spending a lot of time handling repetitive customer support tasks. To reduce my time spent on these tasks, improve response times, and increase customer satisfaction, I built a small customer support automation tool that connects my Gmail account with OpenAI agents. This tool knows my business well, can reply to questions about my products, and provides common-sense responses. It also integrates with Stripe and my order processing system, allowing it to fetch order details and process refunds automatically. Impressively, my setup has automated 95% of customer inquiries, providing immediate resolutions and consistently impressing my customers. I'm now considering turning this automation into a SaaS product, but first, I want to understand if there is a demand for it and identify the most common needs of small business owners. To gather insights, I would like to offer a free service to set up this customer support automation for a few small business owners. If you're interested, please post a comment or send me a DM with a summary of your business, your existing customer support system, and your customer support volume. Your feedback and experience will be invaluable in shaping this product. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Do You Believe AI Will Change the Game for Small Businesses?

Hey, folks! I operate a small business specializing in preparing dancers for competitions. As our business has grown recently, managing orders and client communications has become increasingly challenging. Initially, we considered hiring a social manager to handle these tasks manually. However, we opted for a more innovative approach. We set up an AI chatbot to automatically gather all information from our clients regarding the services they want to receive and send it to our management system. This automation was extremely convenient for us. I'm curious to hear about your experiences with such tools. Have you already integrated them, and are they useful to you? I know such tools are commonly used in customer support, but have you explored their usefulness in other areas?

Has automation or AI actually impacted your business?

For the better or the worse, how's AI impacted your business? Have you been able to automate anything you used to spend tons of hours in your day to day operations? I am genuinely curious and I am interested in getting into the agency or consulting side of business. I want to know if there's actual demand for business owners who aren't too tech savvy?

Are AI agents for small businesses worth the hype?

I'm advising/investing in a business n the sustainable energy space and the leadership is considering investing some of their revenue and raised capital on building AI agents/workflows to support their long term growth and I've been seeing all of these AI agencies popping up and all the talk about how they are transformative for business's bottom lines but I'm curious to hear from traditional small businesses that have implemented AI agents/workflows What has your experience with them been? What is the cost to benefit ratio? is how much did you invest and did it have the desired impact on your business? How have your employees responded to your agents/workflow? How do you handle updates? Are the systems stuck in the time when they were implemented or do you pay a retainer to the agency that implemented the system for you? I've been involved with AI for a few years but I don't know if these AI agents/workflows are robust and capable enough to offer significant value to small businesses

Has anyone here used AI tools for due diligence when buying a business?

I am considering to buy a small business and want to do the evaluation of the business by using a systematic process, to minimize the potential risk of failure. I’ve heard about using AI-powered due diligence tools to automate financial analysis and spot potential risks. I just want to know that if anyone has experience using such tools How these tools work in practice, and how do they compare to traditional methods? I’m trying to make sure I’m making the best decision without missing anything important. Any advice or experiences would be helpful!

AI for Business Consultancy

Good morning folks, I am doing some research on the impact of AI on business consultancy. I want to initially try out existing models to first learn how to improve my datasets before diving into building my own model. I'm specifically looking for ideas about parameters or metrics that I should be covering for a small cafe business. Since I'm coming from a CS background, my knowledge of the restaurant/cafe industry is pretty limited, so I thought I'd reach out to this community for some guidance. What kind of parameters should I be considering besides the obvious ones like customer and sale data, Inventory information, etc. Pricing strategy analysis? I'm really open to any suggestions! I appreciate any help or direction you all could provide. Just trying to get my bearings in this space before going too deep down any particular path. Thanks in advance!

What I learn from my $200 MRR App I built 4 months ago?

4 month ago, I am just a 10-years experienced product manager without any software development experience. I have an $3K/month job, but I am so tired, I don’t like my life, don’t like my boss, don’t like my daily work, that make me feeling I already died however I am still living. I yearn for freedom and want to live each day the way I want to. So I quit my job, and become a Indie developer to build my own business, my own app, even my own life. I am so grateful for this time and experience, now my app reach $200 MRR, still very little compared to my previous salary, but I never regret. I have learned lots of things from this time and experience, more than I had in last 10 years. Here is the time-line of my App: \- Sep 2023: Launch first version to iOS App store \- Oct 2023: Release in-app-purchase features and have first subscriber, the revenue in October is $154 \- Nov 2023: Change from subscription to pay per use, and I did lots of marketing jobs in November, however, the revenue reduced to only $40. \- Dec 2023: Change back to subscription, and stop some invalid marketing jobs, only keep the ones that actually work. I almost did nothing in December, and the revenue come to $243. During this process, I have learned lots of things, there are some of them that I think could help you as well. Web or App My App is an iOS app that only can running on Apple’s device such like iPhone/iPad or Mac with Apple silicon. Many people ask me why my product is an iOS app not a website, because they don’t have any Apple device. It's true that promoting an app is much harder than promoting a website. However I am now very glad I made an App and not a website! If I make a website, I don't think it's possible to make $100 in the first month. My App is about keyword research, to help people find some ideas from search keyword, because every keyword people searched in Google are representing a real need of them, also can be used in SEO field. However there are a lot of website tools about keyword research, some of them are famous like Ahrefs, SEMrush… I have no intention of competing with them. Actually I don’t have any chance. While in app store, there are little apps about keyword research, each of them have terrible data and user experience, that means if my app has better data and experience that could be my chance. In fact, the App store brings me 20 organic installs a day that Google would never have been able to bring me if I had a website, at least for the first few months. Furthermore, Apple nearly did everything for developer, I don’t need to care about user login, payment and so on, Apple did everything, I just need to call their API, that save lots of time, if I build a website, I need to implement login and payment by myself, that would add some extra work. Not to mention I'd need to buy servers and domains, that would cost me a lot of money. Although Apple will take 30% of the revenue, I can live with that in the early stages because the most important thing for me is to get the product to market as soon as possible. Actually thought Apple’s SMB program, the take rate is 15% now. So Web or App is not important in the early stage, time is important, if people need my product, it's easy to make a website one. More Users or More Valuable Users In November, I notice some users would like use my app, and they were meet paywall, but they never subscribe. I provided 7 day free trail, but it seem that they don’t like it. So I decide to change subscription to pay per use. Because as a user, I don’t like subscription as well, pay per use seem like more friendly. So I change from subscription to pay per use. People can afford $9.99 to subscribe monthly for unlimited use or pay $1.99 for each data they want(First purchase is $0.99 then $1.99). I was expecting more user to pay, but it was the complete opposite! Some users who would have paid a higher subscription fee are switching to a lower priced single payment. Users are encountering paywalls more often, and each time they need to make a decision about whether or not to pay, which increases the probability that they will abandon payment. This resulted in a 75% decrease in revenue in November. In fact, the mostly of my revenue comes from a handful of long-cycle subscribers, such as annual subscription. \\Few bring in most of the revenue,\\ that is the most important thing I learned. You don't need a lot of customers, you just need more valuable ones. That's why it's only right to design a mechanism to filter out high-value customers and focus on them, all the things you want do is just let more people into the filter, and from that point of view, subscription with free trial period is the best way, even if most people don't like it. The rule of 20/80 will always be there. The most important thing is always focus on the 20 percent things and people. Effort does not always guarantee rewards. Unless one engages in deep thinking, or most efforts are invalid. I have been working very hard to promote my product for a period of time. It’s about in November. I did a lot of job, such as write script to send message to my potential clients on Fiverr, post and write comments on others post on Reddit, find related questions and answer them on Quora, post and comments on Twitte, etc. During that period, I was exhausted every day, but the outcome did not meet my expectations. There is only little growth on App installation, even less revenue than before. That make me frustrated. I finally realized that If I need to put in a tremendous amount of effort just to make a little progress, there is must something wrong. So I stop 80% of promote work I have ever did, only keep app store search ad, which will bring a installation with less than $0.5 cost. Then I dive into long time and deeply thinking, I spent more time on reading books, investigate other product with great MRR, watch interviews with people who are already living the kind of life I aspire to live, for example, u/levelsio. These things have given me great inspiration, and my life has become easier. It seems that the life I anticipated when I resigned is getting closer. I also have a clearer understanding of my app. Meanwhile, MRR has been growing. This experience let me learn that effort does not always guarantee results. Many times, our efforts are just wishful thinking, they are invalid, do the right thing after deeply thinking is more important. What Next? My goal is reach $3K MRR, as same as my job payment, I will never stop to building things, and I will keep my currently lifestyle. I still don't know how to get more people to use my app, but levelsio's interviews give me some inspiration that I can verified something by manually instead of build a software. I plan to launch a trend analysis product based on the keyword data provided by my current app. I have always wanted to combine AI to build such a product, but I didn't know how to do it. Now I intend to manually complete it first and start software development once there are paying users. If you are interested to my App, you could try it.

Chatbot for SMB customer service. Looking for feedback!

Hi there! We are focusing on offering a customer service automation solution specifically dedicated to small and medium businesses. We have prepared a very simple tutorial, which shows how to create a chatbot that can help SMBs provide pre-sales information, help them in sales, and provide assistance after the sale. What better feedback than asking those who directly manage an SMB? Link: https://help.dataknowl.com/en/kb/k/vagent/how-to-create-a-simple-but-intelligent-chatbot-for-your-website Your feedback is important to us, because it allows us to better understand your needs, and how to improve the product to better meet business needs. In particular, it would be useful to know if you consider a chatbot useful in general, if it could help you concretely, and in particular in which phase (pre-sales, sales, after-sales assistance). Furthermore, is having a chatbot that becomes a real employee thanks to AI, integrated into a CRM platform, an important factor? In exchange, in addition to the gratitude for your feedback, I am happy to be able to help those who have questions on the subject, and in general those who would like to know better how to apply AI to improve the performance of their business, in a win-win perspective. Let's grow together 💪💪💪

As a Business Owner, what are your technology challenges?

Premise: I've spent way too long in IT (as a developer) and worked primarily with technical clients for past 17+ years. I am a bit in a bubble. Lately I've been considering pivoting from freelancing into a different kind of business and need some feedback from SMB community. So I would like to hear from non-technical business owners. If you consider yourself non-technical owner what are some challenges you face with modern day technology (including AI, social media, digital advertising)? For example (some areas non-technical owners have challenges), 👉 digital marketing, social media, content, etc? 👉 Or more in terms of operations, inventory tracking, customer management is manual? 👉 /Or does it feel like you have a lot of manual tasks that should have been automated, but you just don't know how or don't know if possible? 👉 Perhaps you're using frankenstein-system of documents, email attachments, spreadsheets, written notes that lack organization? 👉 Or you're not marketing your business online? Obviously solution would have a price tag, but if it reduces overhead costs or increase ROI, why wouldn't you? Some ideas, but feel free to throw in more. I have not figured out my current offer nor service, just doing my market research. Thank you for feedback 🙏

How do you get your process out of your head and into back-office systems?

I, like many other SMB owners that I know, know our process inside-out BUT it’s all stuck in our heads. We all use something like Quickbooks, Quicken, Xero, Wave etc. and they all have mobile apps. But most of us have never fully set it up properly because we keep our business processes solely in our heads, and it’ll take forever to get it organized into the accounting software. This is a problem for a few reasons, mainly for me hindering growth and efficiency. This is probably why franchises charge so much in setup fees. I might get a consultant or dev shop to build me something. It would have to be so simple and basically not disrupt my day. It’s too busy already! Kind of like an AI that learns how I quote or bill something, then automatically create the invoice. Any ideas?

How are you using AI for your SMB?

Hey fellow small business owners! I'm curious to know how you would use ChatGPT or other AI tools to improve your business and your operations. I recently built a marketing AI tool for small marketing teams and small business owners to create content fast and for a lot of channels (FB, IG, LinkedIn, emails, and etc.) The tool is doing well now and I am curious about how else AI can help SMB folks up level their operations and drive revenue. One particular idea I am exploring is how SMB operators can leverage AI to ramp up their pre-sale process, providing stellar customer success, and nurture existing customers/leads. So I'd love to learn more about how other SMB owners talk to customers! How often do you talk to your customers? What tools are you using? Are you using AI? Thanks a lot folks!!

Would you use an automated AI tool for your digital ads?

I'm a tech entrepreneur and I'm trying to validate (or rule out) a business idea I have: AI-based digital campaign manager. My idea is this: Many small businesses can only spend several hundred bucks a month on online ads, and so it doesn't make sense for them to hire an agency to run their ads. But, on the other hand, they also don't have the technical know-how to do it themselves. What I'd like to build is an AI tool (similiar to ChatGPT) that takes, as an input, an overview of the business, and automatically generates all the required assets: Which keywords/audiences to target, writes the ads, launches the campaigns, and even does the daily optimization and reporting. Would you use such a tool?

I’m sharing my learnings on how to use ChatGPT and other AI tools to generate leads, automate and grow my business.

Ok! I've been diving deep into how I can streamline and optimize my lead gen processes, and the things I've discovered have been mind-blowing. Recently came across a term called "EmotionAI". Wondered if anyone here has jumped on this and started implementing for lead gen? According to Exploding Topics, searches for "emotion AI" have increased by 525% over the past five years. Simply put, the tech can be used to provide more personalized experiences. And we all know that more personalized outreach means more likely conversions. As the AI market continues to grow, this will become increasingly mainstream. So, I thought why not share my learnings and real-life examples of how to use some these AI coupled with good ol’ chatGPT to grow. The first newsletter issue went out today. I plan to send every other Saturday but I might send every Saturday, still undecided. Anyway please check it out and subscribe if you want. Also let me know if you found it insightful.

ChatGPT for business automation (incredible new AI)

Hey fellow small business owners! I'm curious to know how you would use ChatGPT or other AI automation tools to improve your business. For those who are not aware, recently a new chat AI was made available to the public by OpenAI, called ChatGPT. (same company that did Dall-E) In a tweet Elon Musk wrote that "ChatGPT is scary good. We are not far from dangerously strong AI." It allows anyone (regardless of tech skill) to simply type commands and it will spit out answers. It can also create actual working code. For example most tasks you do in a browser can be automated with a Python script, but it takes time and coding knowledge to create. With ChatGPT you can just tell it what you want and it will create the code! The impact for businesses is insane: 1) Your entire customer service can be easily replaced by chat bots and probably soon by AI that can speak over the phone (google showcased this in 2018, it already exists). 2) you can have the AI automate your sales process, creating a 1-on-1 conversations, at scale. It can probably also improve and optimize it's closing rate over time as it learns more about your customers. 3) It can be used to train your staff. It's really good for 1on1 instruction and teaching because it will go a the students pace and answer questions (compare that to the usual PowerPoint presentation people use) 4) Since it can create code to automate most tasks a human can do in a browser, you can create for example bots that take customer orders and automatically import them to whatever shipping system you use, send customers tracking info etc. (a lot of this stuff is done with software and APIs, but now anyone can create their own, custom solutions) I feel like we hit an inflection point in 2022 with AI and now we are beginning to see some really useful stuff coming out. Am I crazy or are we about to see a massive shift in how we do things?

I Accidentally Made My Mom Redundant at Her Office Job

At my tech job, AI assistants have boosted productivity so much we’ve almost stopped hiring. It made me wonder: why isn’t AI used more in small businesses? My mom works in the office of a small local manufacturing company, handling repetitive tasks like inputting orders into their ERP system. After shadowing her for a half day, I built an AI program that automates most of her work. Now she has so much free time, she’s watching Netflix at the office lol I’m thinking of quitting my job and starting my own small local business, offering this as a service to other small businesses in the era, but before I jump on it and quit my current job, I’d love to know if this is a more common issue. My main question are: What’s the most repetitive/time-consuming (computer) tasks you wish you could automate? If possible, could you break it down step by step with a lot of boring details ? 😅 Any hacks or tools you've found to make things easier so far? And maybe what else I should think on that I am missing before quitting my job and starting my own business?

Share Your Expertise: AI, Automation, and Efficient Organizational Tools, Strategies and Routines!

Hello everyone, As we navigate through the advancements in AI and automation, it's clear that these technologies are reshaping the way we approach work and business management. To stay ahead, sharing our collective knowledge on these subjects is crucial. I'm inviting this community to share insights and experiences with AI tools, automation strategies, and especially, innovative organizational approaches you've found effective. From automating mundane tasks to optimizing digital marketing strategies, every piece of wisdom is valuable. Here’s what we’re specifically interested in: Automated Workflows: What are your strategies for creating automated workflows that enhance productivity and efficiency? Visual Organization: How do you utilize mind maps and other visual tools to organize thoughts and projects efficiently? Canvas Maps: Have you implemented CANVAS Maps in customer interaction, ideation, strategy development, or action planning? How has it improved your processes? AI in Marketing: How has AI helped you optimize your digital marketing strategies and data analysis? What tools or methodologies have you found most effective? This thread aims to be a resource for all of us to learn from each other's successes and innovations. Whether it’s a simple tip or a comprehensive strategy, your input can significantly impact someone’s approach to challenges. What groundbreaking AI solutions, automation hacks, or organizational methods have you discovered that made a noticeable difference in your work or business? Share your stories and let’s empower each other to achieve greater efficiency and success. Thank you for contributing to our shared journey toward innovation and improvement!

Anyone had luck with automating bookkeeping/expense reporting with AI tools? DEXT integrations? Looking for advice.

Shorty story - business growing faster than we can keep up, full-time bookkeeper/controller is overwhelmed. Bookkeeper is old-fashioned - we’re using quickbooks desktop, and a pile of manual entry. I think technology can help with a bunch of the data entry, but don’t know where or how to start. Has anyone had any luck with integrations like DEXT or DocuClipper to import csv files for things like bank statements and credit card statements? Looking for any advice or success stories on streamlining the paperwork. I don’t think another person is the answer!! Please help!!

Has anyone here used AI tools for due diligence when buying a business?

I am considering to buy a small business and want to do the evaluation of the business by using a systematic process, to minimize the potential risk of failure. I’ve heard about using AI-powered due diligence tools to automate financial analysis and spot potential risks. I just want to know that if anyone has experience using such tools How these tools work in practice, and how do they compare to traditional methods? I’m trying to make sure I’m making the best decision without missing anything important. Any advice or experiences would be helpful!

How did you guys start enjoying coding?

Hey everyone, I'm currently in my first year studying AI, and while I feel like I can grasp the theoretical concepts pretty well, I haven’t been practicing as much as I should. I know this will eventually affect my skills, but I’m just not the type to spend hours coding for fun. That said, when I have an obligation or feel pressured, I actually learn concepts really fast and can apply them effectively. I guess I just struggle with finding motivation when there’s no immediate need. For those of you who genuinely enjoy coding, was it always like that? Did you do something specific that made it more fun or engaging? Would love to hear your experiences!

𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐋𝐋𝐌𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡

“ChatGPT” is everywhere—it’s a tool we use daily to boost productivity, streamline tasks, and spark creativity. But have you ever wondered how it knows so much and performs across such diverse fields? Like many, I've been curious about how it really works and if I could create a similar tool to fit specific needs. 🤔 To dive deeper, I found a fantastic resource: “Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch)” by Sebastian Raschka, which is explained with an insightful YouTube series “Building LLM from Scratch” by Dr. Raj Dandekar (MIT PhD). This combination offers a structured, approachable way to understand the mechanics behind LLMs—and even to try building one ourselves! https://preview.redd.it/35sdlxdb2m0e1.jpg?width=1037&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dd228136fbf7cbdeeae253118ee7a46b04948c24 While AI and generative language models architecture shown in the figure can seem difficult to understand, I believe that by taking it step-by-step, it’s achievable—even for those without a tech background. 🚀 Learning one concept at a time can open the doors to this transformative field, and we at Vizuara.ai are excited to take you through the journey where each step is explained in detail for creating an LLM. For anyone interested, I highly recommend going through the following videos:  Lecture 1: Building LLMs from scratch: Series introduction https://youtu.be/Xpr8D6LeAtw?si=vPCmTzfUY4oMCuVl  Lecture 2: Large Language Models (LLM) Basics https://youtu.be/3dWzNZXA8DY?si=FdsoxgSRn9PmXTTz  Lecture 3: Pretraining LLMs vs Finetuning LLMs https://youtu.be/-bsa3fCNGg4?si=j49O1OX2MT2k68pl  Lecture 4: What are transformers? https://youtu.be/NLn4eetGmf8?si=GVBrKVjGa5Y7ivVY  Lecture 5: How does GPT-3 really work? https://youtu.be/xbaYCf2FHSY?si=owbZqQTJQYm5VzDx  Lecture 6: Stages of building an LLM from Scratch https://youtu.be/z9fgKz1Drlc?si=dzAqz-iLKaxUH-lZ  Lecture 7: Code an LLM Tokenizer from Scratch in Python https://youtu.be/rsy5Ragmso8?si=MJr-miJKm7AHwhu9  Lecture 8: The GPT Tokenizer: Byte Pair Encoding https://youtu.be/fKd8s29e-l4?si=aZzzV4qT\nbQ1lzk  Lecture 9: Creating Input-Target data pairs using Python DataLoader https://youtu.be/iQZFH8dr2yI?si=lH6sdboTXzOzZXP9  Lecture 10: What are token embeddings? https://youtu.be/ghCSGRgVB\o?si=PM2FLDl91ENNPJbd  Lecture 11: The importance of Positional Embeddings https://youtu.be/ufrPLpKnapU?si=cstZgif13kyYo0Rc  Lecture 12: The entire Data Preprocessing Pipeline of Large Language Models (LLMs) https://youtu.be/mk-6cFebjis?si=G4Wqn64OszI9ID0b  Lecture 13: Introduction to the Attention Mechanism in Large Language Models (LLMs) https://youtu.be/XN7sevVxyUM?si=aJy7Nplz69jAzDnC  Lecture 14: Simplified Attention Mechanism - Coded from scratch in Python | No trainable weights https://youtu.be/eSRhpYLerw4?si=1eiOOXa3V5LY-H8c  Lecture 15: Coding the self attention mechanism with key, query and value matrices https://youtu.be/UjdRN80c6p8?si=LlJkFvrC4i3J0ERj  Lecture 16: Causal Self Attention Mechanism | Coded from scratch in Python https://youtu.be/h94TQOK7NRA?si=14DzdgSx9XkAJ9Pp  Lecture 17: Multi Head Attention Part 1 - Basics and Python code https://youtu.be/cPaBCoNdCtE?si=eF3GW7lTqGPdsS6y  Lecture 18: Multi Head Attention Part 2 - Entire mathematics explained https://youtu.be/K5u9eEaoxFg?si=JkUATWM9Ah4IBRy2  Lecture 19: Birds Eye View of the LLM Architecture https://youtu.be/4i23dYoXp-A?si=GjoIoJWlMloLDedg  Lecture 20: Layer Normalization in the LLM Architecture https://youtu.be/G3W-LT79LSI?si=ezsIvNcW4dTVa29i  Lecture 21: GELU Activation Function in the LLM Architecture https://youtu.be/d\PiwZe8UF4?si=IOMD06wo1MzElY9J  Lecture 22: Shortcut connections in the LLM Architecture https://youtu.be/2r0QahNdwMw?si=i4KX0nmBTDiPmNcJ  Lecture 23: Coding the entire LLM Transformer Block https://youtu.be/dvH6lFGhFrs?si=e90uX0TfyVRasvel  Lecture 24: Coding the 124 million parameter GPT-2 model https://youtu.be/G3-JgHckzjw?si=peLE6thVj6bds4M0  Lecture 25: Coding GPT-2 to predict the next token https://youtu.be/F1Sm7z2R96w?si=TAN33aOXAeXJm5Ro  Lecture 26: Measuring the LLM loss function https://youtu.be/7TKCrt--bWI?si=rvjeapyoD6c-SQm3  Lecture 27: Evaluating LLM performance on real dataset | Hands on project | Book data https://youtu.be/zuj\NJNouAA?si=Y\vuf-KzY3Dt1d1r  Lecture 28: Coding the entire LLM Pre-training Loop https://youtu.be/Zxf-34voZss?si=AxYVGwQwBubZ3-Y9  Lecture 29: Temperature Scaling in Large Language Models (LLMs) https://youtu.be/oG1FPVnY0pI?si=S4N0wSoy4KYV5hbv  Lecture 30: Top-k sampling in Large Language Models https://youtu.be/EhU32O7DkA4?si=GKHqUCPqG-XvCMFG

No-code AI platform?

Hey there, A group of like-minded people and I are working on a no-code AI platform. Our goal is to make machine learning technologies accessible to people without any specific knowledge. The workflow would look like the following: Select a task and data types. Upload data (with annotation or annotate it in our platform). Wait for a model to be trained automatically (up to 30-40 minutes). Use the created model (through API, through integration with other no-/low-code platforms, or as a docker image). What do you think about our idea? Would anybody use it? I'd really appreciate it if you could share your thoughts.

My Manager Thinks ML Projects Takes 5 Minutes 🤦‍♀️

Hey, everyone! I’ve got to vent a bit because work has been something else lately. I’m a BI analyst at a bank, and I’m pretty much the only one dealing with machine learning and AI stuff. The rest of my team handles SQL and reporting—no Python, no R, no ML knowledge AT ALL. You could say I’m the only one handling data science stuff So, after I did a Python project for retail, my boss suddenly decided I’m the go-to for all things ML. Since then, I’ve been getting all the ML projects dumped on me (yay?), but here’s the kicker: my manager, who knows nothing about ML, acts like he’s some kind of expert. He keeps making suggestions that make zero sense and setting unrealistic deadlines. I swear, it’s like he read one article and thinks he’s cracked the code. And the best part? Whenever I finish a project, he’s all “we completed this” and “we came up with these insights.” Ummm, excuse me? We? I must’ve missed all those late-night coding sessions you didn’t show up for. The higher-ups know it’s my work and give me credit, but my manager just can’t help himself. Last week, he set a ridiculous deadline of 10 days for a super complex ML project. TEN DAYS! Like, does he even know that data preprocessing alone can take weeks? I’m talking about cleaning up messy datasets, handling missing values, feature engineering, and then model tuning. And that’s before even thinking about building the model! The actual model development is like the tip of the iceberg. But I just nodded and smiled because I was too exhausted to argue. 🤷‍♀️ And then, this one time, they didn’t even invite me to a meeting where they were presenting my work! The assistant manager came to me last minute, like, “Hey, can you explain these evaluation metrics to me so I can present them to the heads?” I was like, excuse me, what? Why not just invite me to the meeting to present my own work? But nooo, they wanted to play charades on me So, I gave the most complicated explanation ever, threw in all the jargon just to mess with him. He came back 10 minutes later, all flustered, and was like, “Yeah, you should probably do the presentation.” I just smiled and said, “I know… data science isn’t for everyone.” Anyway, they called me in at the last minute, and of course, I nailed it because I know my stuff. But seriously, the nerve of not including me in the first place and expecting me to swoop in like some kind of superhero. I mean, at least give me a cape if I’m going to keep saving the day! 🤦‍♀️ Honestly, I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. I love the work, but dealing with someone who thinks they’re an ML guru when they can barely spell Python is just draining. I have built like some sort of defense mechanism to hit them with all the jargon and watch their eyes glaze over How do you deal with a manager who takes credit for your work and sets impossible deadlines? Should I keep pushing back or just let it go and keep my head down? Any advice! TL;DR: My manager thinks ML projects are plug-and-play, takes credit for my work, and expects me to clean and process data, build models, and deliver results in 10 days. How do I deal with this without snapping? #WorkDrama

How I Started Learning Machine Learning

Hello, everyone. As promised, I'll write a longer post about how I entered the world of ML, hoping it will help someone shape their path. I'll include links to all the useful materials I used alongside the story, which you can use for learning. I like to call myself an AI Research Scientist who enjoys exploring new AI trends, delving deeper into understanding their background, and applying them to real products. This way, I try to connect science and entrepreneurship because I believe everything that starts as scientific research ends up "on the shelves" as a product that solves a specific user problem. I began my journey in ML in 2016 when it wasn't such a popular field. Everyone had heard of it, but few were applying it. I have several years of development experience and want to try my hand at ML. The first problem I encountered was where to start - whether to learn mathematics, statistics, or something else. That's when I came across a name and a course that completely changed my career. Let's start You guessed it. It was Professor Andrew Ng and his globally popular Machine Learning course available on Coursera (I still have the certificate, hehe). This was also my first official online course ever. Since that course no longer exists as it's been replaced by a new one, I recommend you check out: Machine Learning (Stanford CS229) Machine Learning Specialization These two courses start from the basics of ML and all the necessary calculus you need to know. Many always ask questions like whether to learn linear algebra, statistics, or probability, but you don't need to know everything in depth. This knowledge helps if you're a scientist developing a new architecture, but as an engineer, not really. You need to know some basics to understand, such as how the backpropagation algorithm works. I know that Machine Learning (Stanford CS229) is a very long and arduous course, but it's the right start if you want to be really good at ML. In my time, I filled two thick notebooks by hand while taking the course mentioned above. TensorFlow and Keras After the course, I didn't know how to apply my knowledge because I hadn't learned specifically how to code things. Then, I was looking for ways to learn how to code it. That's when I came across a popular framework called Keras, now part of TensorFlow. I started with a new course and acquiring practical knowledge: Deep Learning Specialization Deep Learning by Ian Goodfellow Machine Learning Yearning by Andrew Ng These resources above were my next step. I must admit that I learned the most from that course and from the book Deep Learning by Ian Goodfellow because I like reading books (although this one is quite difficult to read). Learn by coding To avoid just learning, I went through various GitHub repositories that I manually retyped and learned that way. It may be an old-fashioned technique, but it helped me a lot. Now, most of those repositories don't exist, so I'll share some that I found to be good: Really good Jupyter notebooks that can teach you the basics of TensorFlow Another good repo for learning TF and Keras Master the challenge After mastering the basics in terms of programming in TF/Keras, I wanted to try solving some real problems. There's no better place for that challenge than Kaggle and the popular Titanic dataset. Here, you can really find a bunch of materials and simple examples of ML applications. Here are some of my favorites: Titanic - Machine Learning from Disaster Home Credit Default Risk House Prices - Advanced Regression Techniques Two Sigma: Using News to Predict Stock Movements I then decided to further develop my career in the direction of applying ML to the stock market, first using predictions on time series and then using natural language processing. I've remained in this field until today and will defend my doctoral dissertation soon. How to deploy models To continue, before I move on to the topic of specialization, we need to address the topic of deployment. Now that we've learned how to make some basic models in Keras and how to use them, there are many ways and services, but I'll only mention what I use today. For all my ML models, whether simple regression models or complex GPT models, I use FastAPI. It's a straightforward framework, and you can quickly create API endpoints. I'll share a few older and useful tutorials for beginners: AI as an API tutorial series A step-by-step guide Productizing an ML Model with FastAPI and Cloud Run Personally, I've deployed on various cloud providers, of which I would highlight GCP and AWS because they have everything needed for model deployment, and if you know how to use them, they can be quite cheap. Chose your specialization The next step in developing my career, besides choosing finance as the primary area, was my specialization in the field of NLP. This happened in early 2020 when I started working with models based on the Transformer architecture. The first model I worked with was BERT, and the first tasks were related to classifications. My recommendations are to master the Transformer architecture well because 99% of today's LLM models are based on it. Here are some resources: The legendary paper "Attention Is All You Need" Hugging Face Course on Transformers Illustrated Guide to Transformers - Step by Step Explanation Good repository How large language models work, a visual intro to transformers After spending years using encoder-based Transformer models, I started learning GPT models. Good open-source models like Llama 2 then appear. Then, I started fine-tuning these models using the excellent Unsloth library: How to Finetune Llama-3 and Export to Ollama Fine-tune Llama 3.1 Ultra-Efficiently with Unsloth After that, I focused on studying various RAG techniques and developing Agent AI systems. This is now called AI engineering, and, as far as I can see, it has become quite popular. So I'll write more about that in another post, but here I'll leave what I consider to be the three most famous representatives, i.e., their tutorials: LangChain tutorial LangGraph tutorial CrewAI examples Here I am today Thanks to the knowledge I've generated over all these years in the field of ML, I've developed and worked on numerous projects. The most significant publicly available project is developing an agent AI system for well-being support, which I turned into a mobile application. Also, my entire doctoral dissertation is related to applying ML to the stock market in combination with the development of GPT models and reinforcement learning (more on that in a separate post). After long 6 years, I've completed my dissertation, and now I'm just waiting for its defense. I'll share everything I'm working on for the dissertation publicly on the project, and in tutorials I'm preparing to write. If you're interested in these topics, I announce that I'll soon start with activities of publishing content on Medium and a blog, but I'll share all of that here on Reddit as well. Now that I've gathered years of experience and knowledge in this field, I'd like to share it with others and help as much as possible. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them, and I'll try to answer all of them. Thank you for reading.

I'm average at math and don't enjoy it. Is the ML path right for me?

I know machine learning is the future, and as an experienced sw engineer, I’m really interested in it. However, I struggle with math and don’t particularly enjoy it. For example, I tried reading Deep Learning by Goodfellow, but the math felt too complex and hard for me to understand. I have a degree in computer science, but I’m wondering if the ML path is right for me given my challenges with math. Should I start with simpler books, such as Introduction to Statistical Learning? Or maybe at deeplearning.ai ? Can you recommend me other resources?

Introduction to Large Language Models for Generative AI

Hey everyone! I've recently written an introduction to large language models for generative ai \- it's a comprehensive introduction to the topic for anyone that is interested! We go over: What language models are How language models are trained The abilities of large language models The scaling of language models And more! Feel free to let me know what you think :)

How I Started Learning Machine Learning

Hello, everyone. As promised, I'll write a longer post about how I entered the world of ML, hoping it will help someone shape their path. I'll include links to all the useful materials I used alongside the story, which you can use for learning. I like to call myself an AI Research Scientist who enjoys exploring new AI trends, delving deeper into understanding their background, and applying them to real products. This way, I try to connect science and entrepreneurship because I believe everything that starts as scientific research ends up "on the shelves" as a product that solves a specific user problem. I began my journey in ML in 2016 when it wasn't such a popular field. Everyone had heard of it, but few were applying it. I have several years of development experience and want to try my hand at ML. The first problem I encountered was where to start - whether to learn mathematics, statistics, or something else. That's when I came across a name and a course that completely changed my career. Let's start You guessed it. It was Professor Andrew Ng and his globally popular Machine Learning course available on Coursera (I still have the certificate, hehe). This was also my first official online course ever. Since that course no longer exists as it's been replaced by a new one, I recommend you check out: Machine Learning (Stanford CS229) Machine Learning Specialization These two courses start from the basics of ML and all the necessary calculus you need to know. Many always ask questions like whether to learn linear algebra, statistics, or probability, but you don't need to know everything in depth. This knowledge helps if you're a scientist developing a new architecture, but as an engineer, not really. You need to know some basics to understand, such as how the backpropagation algorithm works. I know that Machine Learning (Stanford CS229) is a very long and arduous course, but it's the right start if you want to be really good at ML. In my time, I filled two thick notebooks by hand while taking the course mentioned above. TensorFlow and Keras After the course, I didn't know how to apply my knowledge because I hadn't learned specifically how to code things. Then, I was looking for ways to learn how to code it. That's when I came across a popular framework called Keras, now part of TensorFlow. I started with a new course and acquiring practical knowledge: Deep Learning Specialization Deep Learning by Ian Goodfellow Machine Learning Yearning by Andrew Ng These resources above were my next step. I must admit that I learned the most from that course and from the book Deep Learning by Ian Goodfellow because I like reading books (although this one is quite difficult to read). Learn by coding To avoid just learning, I went through various GitHub repositories that I manually retyped and learned that way. It may be an old-fashioned technique, but it helped me a lot. Now, most of those repositories don't exist, so I'll share some that I found to be good: Really good Jupyter notebooks that can teach you the basics of TensorFlow Another good repo for learning TF and Keras Master the challenge After mastering the basics in terms of programming in TF/Keras, I wanted to try solving some real problems. There's no better place for that challenge than Kaggle and the popular Titanic dataset. Here, you can really find a bunch of materials and simple examples of ML applications. Here are some of my favorites: Titanic - Machine Learning from Disaster Home Credit Default Risk House Prices - Advanced Regression Techniques Two Sigma: Using News to Predict Stock Movements I then decided to further develop my career in the direction of applying ML to the stock market, first using predictions on time series and then using natural language processing. I've remained in this field until today and will defend my doctoral dissertation soon. How to deploy models To continue, before I move on to the topic of specialization, we need to address the topic of deployment. Now that we've learned how to make some basic models in Keras and how to use them, there are many ways and services, but I'll only mention what I use today. For all my ML models, whether simple regression models or complex GPT models, I use FastAPI. It's a straightforward framework, and you can quickly create API endpoints. I'll share a few older and useful tutorials for beginners: AI as an API tutorial series A step-by-step guide Productizing an ML Model with FastAPI and Cloud Run Personally, I've deployed on various cloud providers, of which I would highlight GCP and AWS because they have everything needed for model deployment, and if you know how to use them, they can be quite cheap. Chose your specialization The next step in developing my career, besides choosing finance as the primary area, was my specialization in the field of NLP. This happened in early 2020 when I started working with models based on the Transformer architecture. The first model I worked with was BERT, and the first tasks were related to classifications. My recommendations are to master the Transformer architecture well because 99% of today's LLM models are based on it. Here are some resources: The legendary paper "Attention Is All You Need" Hugging Face Course on Transformers Illustrated Guide to Transformers - Step by Step Explanation Good repository How large language models work, a visual intro to transformers After spending years using encoder-based Transformer models, I started learning GPT models. Good open-source models like Llama 2 then appear. Then, I started fine-tuning these models using the excellent Unsloth library: How to Finetune Llama-3 and Export to Ollama Fine-tune Llama 3.1 Ultra-Efficiently with Unsloth After that, I focused on studying various RAG techniques and developing Agent AI systems. This is now called AI engineering, and, as far as I can see, it has become quite popular. So I'll write more about that in another post, but here I'll leave what I consider to be the three most famous representatives, i.e., their tutorials: LangChain tutorial LangGraph tutorial CrewAI examples Here I am today Thanks to the knowledge I've generated over all these years in the field of ML, I've developed and worked on numerous projects. The most significant publicly available project is developing an agent AI system for well-being support, which I turned into a mobile application. Also, my entire doctoral dissertation is related to applying ML to the stock market in combination with the development of GPT models and reinforcement learning (more on that in a separate post). After long 6 years, I've completed my dissertation, and now I'm just waiting for its defense. I'll share everything I'm working on for the dissertation publicly on the project, and in tutorials I'm preparing to write. If you're interested in these topics, I announce that I'll soon start with activities of publishing content on Medium and a blog, but I'll share all of that here on Reddit as well. Now that I've gathered years of experience and knowledge in this field, I'd like to share it with others and help as much as possible. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them, and I'll try to answer all of them. Thank you for reading.

List of free educational ML resources I used to become a FAANG ML Engineer

Full commentary and notes here ➡️: https://www.trybackprop.com/blog/top\ml\learning\resources Used these to brush up on math and teach myself AI/ML over the course of two years. I'm now a staff ML engineer at FAANG. Hope these help. Fundamentals Linear Algebra – 3Blue1Brown's Essence of Linear Algebra series, binged all these videos on a one hour train ride visiting my parents Multivariable Calculus – Khan Academy's Multivariable Calculus lessons were a great refresher of what I had learned in college. Looking back, I just needed to have reviewed Unit 1 – intro and Unit 2 – derivatives. Calculus for ML – this amazing animated video explains calculus and backpropagation Information Theory – easy-to-understand book on information theory called Information Theory: A Tutorial Introduction. Statistics and Probability – the StatQuest YouTube channel Machine Learning Stanford Intro to Machine Learning by Andrew Ng – Stanford's CS229, the intro to machine learning course, published their lectures on YouTube for free. I watched lectures 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 11, 12, and 13, and I skipped the rest since I was eager to move onto deep learning. The course also offers a free set of course notes, which are very well written. Caltech Machine Learning – Caltech's machine learning lectures on YouTube, less mathematical and more intuition based Deep Learning Andrej Karpathy's Zero to Hero Series – Andrej Karpathy, an AI researcher who graduated with a Stanford PhD and led Tesla AI for several years, released an amazing series of hands on lectures on YouTube. highly highly recommend Neural networks – Stanford's CS231n course notes and lecture videos were my gateway drug*, so to speak, into the world of deep learning. Transformers and LLMs Transformers – watched these two lectures: lecture from the University of Waterloo and lecture from the University of Michigan. I have also heard good things about Jay Alammar's The Illustrated Transformer guide ChatGPT Explainer – Wolfram's YouTube explainer video on ChatGPT Interactive LLM Visualization – This LLM visualization that you can play with in your browser is hands down the best interactive experience with an LLM. Financial Times' Transformer Explainer – The Financial Times released a lovely interactive article that explains the transformer very well. Residual Learning – 2023 Future Science Prize Laureates Lecture on residual learning. Efficient ML and GPUs How are Microchips Made? – This YouTube video by Branch Education is one of the best free educational videos on the internet, regardless of subject, but also, it's the best video on understanding microchips. CUDA – My L8 and L9 FAANG coworkers acquired their CUDA knowledge from this series of lectures. TinyML and Efficient Deep Learning Computing – 2023 lectures on efficient ML techniques online. Chip War – Chip War is a bestselling book published in 2022 about microchip technology whose beginning chapters on the invention of the microchip actually explain CPUs very well

[Help Needed] Developing an AI to Play Mini Metro – Struggling with Data Extraction & Strategy method

Hello everyone ! First of all, please excuse my English if i do mistakes, as it is not my native language and I am not necessarily comfortable with it :) Regarding this project, I will explain my initial intention. I know very little about coding, but I enjoy it and have had some Python lessons, along with a few small personal projects for fun, mostly using YouTube tutorials. Nothing too advanced... However, now I want to take it to the next level. Since I have some familiarity with coding, I’ve wanted to work on artificial intelligence for a while. I have never coded AI myself, but I enjoy downloading existing projects (for chess, checkers, cat-and-mouse games, etc.), testing their limits, and understanding how they work. One of my favorite strategy game genres is management games, especially Mini Metro. Given its relatively simple mechanics, I assumed there would already be AI projects for it. But to my surprise, I could only find mods that add maps ! I admit that I am neither the best nor the most patient researcher, so I haven’t spent hours searching, but the apparent lack of projects for this game struck me. Maybe the community is just small ? I haven't looked deeply into it. So, I got it into my head to create my own AI. After all, everything is on the internet, and perseverance is key ! However, perseverance alone is not enough when you are not particularly experienced, so I am turning to the community to find knowledgeable people who can help me. The First Obstacle: Getting Game Data I quickly realized that the biggest challenge is that Mini Metro does not have an accessible API (at least, not one I could find). This means I cannot easily extract game data. My initial idea was to have an AI analyze the game, think about the best move, and then write out the actions to be performed, instead of coding a bot that directly manipulates the game. But first, I needed a way to retrieve and store game data. Attempt #1: Image Recognition (Failed) Since there was no API, I tried using image recognition to gather game data. Unfortunately, it was a disaster. I used mss for screenshots ,Tesseract for OCR, andNumPy to manipulate images in the HSV color space but it produced unreliable results : It detected many false positives (labeling empty spaces as stations) It failed to consistently detect numbers (scores or resources like trains and lines) Dotted bridge indicators over rivers were misinterpreted as stations While I could detect stations, lines, and moving trains, the data was chaotic and unreliable Attempt #2: Manual Data Entry (Partially Successful but Impractical) Since image recognition was unreliable, I decided to manually update the game data in real-time. I created a script that : Displays an overlay when I press Shift+R. Allows me to manually input stations, lines, and other game elements. Saves the current state when I press Shift+R again, so I can resume playing. Implements a simple resource management system (trains, lines, etc.). This works better than image recognition because I control the input, but I’m running into serious limitations : Some game mechanics are hard to implement manually (adding a station in the middle of a line, extending the correct line when two lines overlap at a station) Keeping track of station demands (the shapes passengers want to travel to) becomes overwhelming as the game progresses Updating the score in real-time is practically impossible manually, and the score is essential for training an AI (for my reward systems) My Dilemma At this point, I am unsure of how to proceed. My questions for the community : Am I going in the right direction? Should I continue improving my manual tracking system or is it a dead end? Should I have persevered with image recognition instead? Is there a better way to extract game data that I haven’t thought of? I would appreciate any guidance or ideas. Thanks in advance ! if you need more info, i have posted my codes here : https://github.com/Dmsday/mini\metro\data\analyzer (for the image detection version I'm not sure that it's the latest version aka the most "functional" version that I could do because I think I deleted it out of boredom...)

ZeroToHeroML: Beginner-Friendly ML & AI Course (Free)

Hey r/learnmachinelearning! A friend of mine, who's been a software developer at Sony for 10 years, recently expressed interest in learning Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Leveraging my background in ML and neural computation (learned at UCSD) to create a beginner-friendly course guiding him through the basics and into more complex projects. Foundational Concepts: Predicting House Prices (Regression): Master regression techniques to forecast housing prices based on various factors. Iris Flower Species Prediction (Classification): Learn classification algorithms by predicting flower species using the famous Iris dataset. Overcoming Overfitting: Explore methods to prevent models from overfitting and enhance their generalizability. In Progress: Customer Segmentation (Unsupervised Learning): Delve into unsupervised learning to group customers based on purchase history or demographics (valuable for targeted marketing campaigns). Deep Learning for Image Recognition: Implement Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to build models that recognize objects or scenes in images. Natural Language Processing Sentiment Analysis: Analyze the sentiment (positive, negative, or neutral) expressed in text data (e.g., reviews, social media posts) using NLP techniques. Introduction to Reinforcement Learning: Get acquainted with the fundamentals of reinforcement learning by creating an agent that learns to navigate a maze. Want to Learn or Contribute? I thought I'd share ZeroToHeroML here so others who want to learn ML/AI or know someone who does can benefit from this free resource! &#x200B; Fork the repo: https://github.com/DilrajS/ZeroToHeroML Share with others interested in ML/AI! Pull requests welcome (help the community grow!). All help is appriciated! Let's conquer ML/AI together!

Teaching an AI to Play Mario: A Learning Journey

TLDR: I've always wanted to learn reinforcement learning, but the notation and concepts often seemed overwhelming (and scary). So, \~3 months ago, I set myself a challenge: Train an AI to Speedrun Mario Watch the progression here: https://youtu.be/OQitI066aI0 &#x200B; Full Story: Three months ago, I stared at the dense forest of Reinforcement Learning (RL) papers and felt like Mario facing Bowser for the first time: unequipped and overwhelmingly outmatched. The notation seemed like hieroglyphics, and terms like "policy gradients" felt like they belonged in a sci-fi novel, not a beginner's project. But RL always seemed so cool, and I was really determined to achieve my goal. So, I started with the Sutton & Barto RL textbook, learning things like the Multi-Armed Bandit problem and MDPs working my way up to Actor-Critic methods. That book is literal gold & I highly recommend you work through it (even though it can be tough at times). I tried everything from random courses online to books on amazon & this textbook has been by far the most clear and effective way to learn RL. The biggest issue with the textbook is you learn a lot of theory, but don't learn implementation. So, I would go through a chapter a week & set aside Friday + the weekend to actually implement what I learned (usually by watching youtube tutorials & looking at Github Repos). Eventually, while searching for practical resources for implementing PPO, I stumbled upon a GitHub repository that literally trained an AI to play Mario. Rather than just cloning and running the code, I took a deeper approach. I aimed to understand the repository thoroughly, ensuring each line of code made sense in the context of what I had studied. But of course, this wasn't easy. One of the biggest issues was my hardware limitation. I was working on an old Mac. So, I started using Google Collab, but that had its own problems (session timeouts & limited GPU access). Ultimately, I found AWS Sagemaker to be pretty good. &#x200B; After rewriting the code, I felt confident it would work because I understood every aspect of it. So, I trained the AI to play Mario across a variety of different levels (took a long time and a lot of trial and error with the learning rate). It feels amazing seeing your theoretical knowledge translate into tangible results & this project gave me a big confidence boost. &#x200B; Anyways I made a video showing off the results (Note that I simplified the technical parts for it to reach a wider audience): https://youtu.be/OQitI066aI0 &#x200B; Feel free to drop any questions or feedback, I'm more than happy to help or chat about my experiences. I hope my journey can inspire some of you who might be feeling overwhelmed with the idea of diving into reinforcement learning or any other area of AI. Remember, the hardest part is often taking the first step. Once you start, the momentum will carry you forward. Thank you for reading my super long post and sharing in my little success story! 🚀🕹️🎮

𝗠𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗥𝗲𝗴𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: 𝗔 𝗠𝘂𝘀𝘁-𝗞𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗕𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀

Scikit-learn vs Statsmodel Linear regression is often the first model introduced to those stepping into the world of data science and machine learning. A deep understanding of this fundamental concept is crucial for building a solid foundation. In this post, I explore two widely used approaches to linear regression, each with distinct purposes: 1️⃣ 𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗸𝗶𝘁-𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻’𝘀 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗥𝗲𝗴𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: Optimized for machine learning applications and large datasets, this model focuses on efficiency and scalability. 2️⃣ 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘁𝘀𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹𝘀’ 𝗢𝗿𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗦𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗿𝗲𝘀 (𝗢𝗟𝗦): Known for its comprehensive statistical insights, this approach provides a detailed report ideal for understanding relationships and diagnosing issues like multicollinearity. It’s essential to gain hands-on experience with both libraries to appreciate their unique strengths. To make this learning process more accessible, I’ve created detailed videos and example code to guide you through practical applications: 🎥 𝗛𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀-𝗢𝗻 𝗧𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗹𝘀: 📌 Learn Linear Regression in Python with LLM Prompt Chaining : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOEG4rs1SUU 📌 In-Depth Linear Regression: Statsmodels OLS, Multicollinearity, and VIF : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQWKY30XzNA 💻 𝗖𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗣𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲: 🔗 Scikit-Learn Implementation: https://github.com/pritkudale/ML-for-Teachers/blob/main/Linear%20Regression/Linear\Regression.ipynb 🔗 Statsmodels Implementation: https://github.com/pritkudale/ML-for-Teachers/blob/main/Linear%20Regression/Linear\regression\using\stats\model.ipynb What makes these tutorials unique? I’ve incorporated LLM prompt chaining, enabling beginners to confidently write code without requiring extensive Python expertise. 📩 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘺 𝘢𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘈𝘐 𝘢𝘥𝘷𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴! 𝘚𝘶𝘣𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘯𝘦𝘸𝘴𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘵 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘴: 𝘝𝘪𝘻𝘶𝘢𝘳𝘢 𝘈𝘐 𝘕𝘦𝘸𝘴𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳: https://vizuara.ai/email-newsletter/

RAG with LLM project code walkthrough for beginners

Hello Guys, I have shared a code walkthrough which focuses on a RAG project using DeepSeek. It is a beginner friendly project that any fresher can implement with basic knowledge of python. Do let me know what you think about the project. Also I am trying to share beginner friendly projects for freshers in AI/ML field. I will soon be sharing a in depth tutorial for ML project that helped me get a job in ML field, once I am comfortable with making youtube videos as I am new to this. Do give feedbacks for improvements and stay connected for more projects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeWJjBrpyok&list=PLVGnN2aG2ioMr3VHOSur5n1LLm1FAdc0\&index=6

Looking for the Best Resources to Level Up in Python, AI, ML, and Data Science!

Hey everyone, I've been diving into AI, ML, and Data Science for a while now and have completed the IBM AI Engineering Course and the Machine Learning Specialization by Andrew Ng on Coursera. Both were super helpful to get me started on beginner-level implementation. However, I'm really looking to take my skills to the next level and go pro! 🎯 I’m looking for awesome from 0 to total hero tutorials/coding videos, especially on YouTube, and the best books you’ve come across. I'm particularly interested in: Python for AI/ML/Data Science Advanced AI/ML topics (hands-on projects would be a plus!) Awesome books (I already have a PDF of O'Reilly's Data Science* book with the black and yellow reptile on the cover and just started reading that since its a bit pricy in India) Any recommendations for resources (free or affordable if possible) would be amazing. Also, if anyone could suggest a solid book for Java Data Structures and Algorithms, that’d be awesome. I already know the concepts but want something to keep on hand for reference. Thanks a ton in advance for any suggestions! 🙌

Starting with Deep Learning in 2025 - Suggestion

I'm aware this has been asked many times here. so I'm not here to ask for a general advice - I've done some homework. My questions is - what do you think about this curriculum I put together (research + GPT)? Context: \- I'm a product manger with technical background and want to get back to a more technical depth. \- BSc in stats, familiar with all basic ML concepts, some maths (linear algebra etc), python. Basically, I got the basics covered a while ago so I'm looking to go back into the basics and I can learn and relearn anything I might need to with the internet. My focus is on getting hands on feel on where AI and deep learning is at in 2025, and understand the "under the hood" of key models used and LLMs specifically. Veterans - whats missing? what's redundant? Thanks so much! 🙏🏻 PS - hoping others will find this useful, you very well might too! |Week/Day|Goals|Resource|Activity| |:-|:-|:-|:-| |Week 1|Foundations of AI and Deep Learning||| |Day 1-2|Learn AI terminology and applications|DeepLearning.AI's "AI for Everyone"|Complete Module 1. Understand basic AI concepts and its applications.| |Day 3-5|Explore deep learning fundamentals|Fast.ai's Practical Deep Learning for Coders (2024)|Watch first 2 lessons. Code an image classifier as your first DL project.| |Day 6-7|Familiarize with ML/LLM terminology|Hugging Face Machine Learning Glossary|Study glossary terms and review foundational ML/LLM concepts.| |Week 2|Practical Deep Learning||| |Day 8-10|Build with PyTorch basics|PyTorch Beginner Tutorials|Complete the 60-minute blitz and create a simple neural network.| |Day 11-12|Explore more projects|Fast.ai Lesson 3|Implement a project such as text classification or tabular data analysis.| |Day 13-14|Fine-tune pre-trained models|Hugging Face Tutorials|Learn and apply fine-tuning techniques for a pre-trained model on a simple dataset.| |Week 3|Understanding LLMs||| |Day 15-17|Learn GPT architecture basics|OpenAI Documentation|Explore GPT architecture and experiment with OpenAI API Playground.| |Day 18-19|Understand tokenization and transformers|Hugging Face NLP Course|Complete the tokenization and transformers sections of the course.| |Day 20-21|Build LLM-based projects|TensorFlow NLP Tutorials|Create a text generator or summarizer using LLM techniques.| |Week 4|Advanced Concepts and Applications||| |Day 22-24|Review cutting-edge LLM research|Stanford's CRFM|Read recent LLM-related research and discuss its product management implications.| |Day 25-27|Apply knowledge to real-world projects|Kaggle|Select a dataset and build an NLP project using Hugging Face tools.| |Day 28-30|Explore advanced API use cases|OpenAI Cookbook and Forums|Experiment with advanced OpenAI API scenarios and engage in discussions to solidify knowledge.|

Implementing AI in real world problems

Hello everyone, i participated in a hackathon this weekend and i wanted to implement a ML model to solve the given problem. I faced a problem while collecting datasets, i didnt really find any helpful datasets in Kaggle or Hugging Face so i dropped the idea from the MVP solution. I wanna know how can implement ai models to solve some specific real world problems in the future like the one they gave us and thank you.

Seeking Guidance on Implementing LLM and Generative AI in a New Role.

Hi everyone, I recently got a job that involves implementing LLM and Generative AI. During the interview, we discussed topics like Reinforcement Learning, Deep Learning, and Machine Learning. I’m finishing my MSc in Computer Science, where I’ve worked on projects involving simple Deep Learning implementations (data extraction, cleaning some MLP). Essentially, I will have access to servers for computing and a laptop, and I’ll be the sole programmer responsible for establishing and demonstrating value. I am looking for resources and maybe some examples of how to do that so far I have recommended: Hugging Face - Documentation Intro to Large Language Models by Andrej Karpathy I also plan to attend local meetups about LLM and PyTorch. I’m looking for practical advice on learning these technologies while developing them, particularly regarding development workflows, cloud backups, and coding standards, as I will be working independently. I know if I can achieve something easier and faster with a simple Machine Learning model I will do that. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

GPT Weekly - 19the June Edition - OpenAI's function calling, Meta's free LLM, EU Regulation and more.

This is a recap covering the major news from last week. 🔥Top 3 news - OpenAI’s updates, Meta’s upcoming free LLM and EU Regulation 🗞️Interesting reads include PSA about protecting your keys, The GPT ouroboros, Reddit - OpenAI’s moat, and more.. 🧑‍🎓Learning includes a Step-by-step guide from a non-technical founder who launched his MVP, Chatbot for your Gdrive and more 🔥Top 3 AI news in the past week OpenAI: New Pricing, Models, & Functions OpenAI has been on a roll. Last week we saw the release of OpenAI best practice on using GPT. This week we saw some amazing updates. Three major buckets were: First, the price decreases for both embeddings and GPT-3.5 tokens. Second, new models for gpt-4 and gpt-3.5. A new longer context model for gpt-3.5. Third, a new function calling capability. Why is it important? Previously, the output from OpenAI was all text. So, calling an external API from GPT was quite difficult. You had to parse the text data and things were often incorrect. Langchain created the Agents and Tools feature to tackle this problem. It was still unreliable and prone to issues. Now you get native support to generate a fixed format output. You can use the output to generate functional calls and also pass functions which need to be called. For example, if your app has multiple API endpoints then you can use GPT to generate the API calls with parameters. You can also pass the endpoints as function calls to ensure the correct function is executed. This functionality can further be used to generate structured data (JSON) out of GPT. So, you can generate data from GPT and load it into your backend. What’s next? This functionality allows turning natural language responses into structured data. This can be used to create “intelligent” backends using LLMs. We might see implementations in no-code tools to allow more robust and natural-language tools for non-technical folks. The structured data process goes both ways. You can also feed structured data into GPT for better responses. This feature also has its share of issues. Function calling suffers from the same prompt injection issues. Malicious actors can pass malicious code in function or the responses. For example, creation of queries using functions might contain malicious code to delete data. Without proper user validation this code will be executed automatically and delete data. So, using LLM as the back-end layer needs proper security implementation. Meta's LLM: Commercial Use Ahead Llama has been a boon for the open source community. Many of the open source models rely on Llama. The issue is that Llama is research-only and cannot be used commercially. So, no one can use it to build any product. Meta is now working on the next version of the model. This model will be available for commercial use. This is in stark contrast to both OpenAI and Google. Both safe-guarde their models and make it available through API. Why is it important? Certain industries cannot use LLM APIs because of strict restrictions on data privacy. These companies would want to run their own instance of a foundational model. A commercially available foundational model is also going to help people who want to keep their “API call” costs next to 0. A commercially available free-for-all model will also help push the open source community further. Just like Llama. What’s next? Sam Altman has said OpenAI didn’t release GPT-3 as open-source because they didn’t think people would be able to run it. Now OpenAI is working on an open-source model. This is going to be weaker than GPT-4. Let the battle of LLMs begin. EU's Proposed Legislation and Its Impact on AI Usage The EU parliament voted to move ahead with the E.U. AI Act. This act aims to ensure consumer protection against the dangers of AI. Why is it important? OpenAI and Sam Altman want regulations for models. They have proposed a IAEA-type of agency to stop the proliferation of LLM models. As per OpenAI, all models should be regulated and monitored. The suggestion of a license based regulation has led to significant backlash. Many people have called it “regulatory capture” - with the aim of shutting down competing LLMs. Licensing based regulations might not really be effective. The EU is approaching regulation from a different angle. It doesn’t focus on how models are developed. Rather focuses on how AI will/can be used. They have broken down use cases into 4 categories - unacceptable (prohibited), high, medium and low risk. For example, Building a Pre-Crime software,on%20crimes%20not%20yet%20committed.) to predict crimes? Building a Social credit system? Unacceptable. Using tools to influence elections or recommendation algorithms? High (Highly regulated). Using generative AI tools to create text or images on news sites? Medium (Add label that the content is AI generated) AI providers also need to disclose their training source. To me this sounds like good legislation. What do you guys think? But, OpenAI has warned that EU regulations might force them to pull out completely. What’s next? The disclosure requirements might help various publishing companies. AI and media companies are in talks to pay for training data. Google has been leading the charge. Additionally, OpenAI and Deepmind will open their models for safety and research purposes to the UK government. 🗞️10 AI news highlights and interesting reads PSA: If you are using Repl to write code, you might want to check your OpenAI API keys. If you have left them embedded then people can pirate and steal the keys. LLMs rely on human annotation or human feedback to learn. And one way to generate human annotation is crowdsourcing. But what if the crowdsource human annotators use LLMs? Research shows 33-46% workers used LLMs. So, basically we go from Human -> AI -> Human -> AI. The AI ouroboros. Researchers also say generated data to train models might cause serious issue. All the talks about moats \- Reddit might be OpenAI’s \future\ moat. Given the amount of complaints about how Google search experience has deteriorated during the blackout, this might be true? Doctors are using ChatGPT but not to diagnose.Rather to be more empathetic. We discussed this just a month ago. And guess where the data for this study came from? Reddit AskDocs. Moat FTW?! Beatles to make a comeback…using Generative AI. SnapFusion - Text to Image diffusion on mobile phones. Large context lengths are important for better GPT experience. The secret sauce for 100k context length. There is a lot of bad AI research out there. Some border on snake oil. Most AI “research” should be double checked and challenged. A new research on huggingface said that GPT-4 can ace MIT curriculum. Now someone is replicating the results and say that GPT-4 can’t beat MIT. Are we seeing peak AI? Especially when people from Deepmind and Meta are involved? Mistral AI raised $113 million in seed round with no product. Some might say this funding is for the team and the team is really solid. The issue though is whether the valuation is justified when OpenAI and Google already have a head start. The AI Hype Wall of Shame. \- Collection of articles which mislead people about AI in various aspects. 🧑‍🎓3 Learning Resources Building and Launching a company using GPT-4 with prompts. (The author didn’t know how to code but created and launched the MVP in a month). Chatbot for your Gdrive - https://www.haihai.ai/gpt-gdrive/ Building ChatGPT plugin using Supabase - https://supabase.com/blog/building-chatgpt-plugins-template That’s it folks. Thank you for reading and have a great week ahead. If you are interested in a focused weekly recap delivered to your inbox on Mondays you can subscribe here. It is FREE!

Question from a non-technical founder

I'm having an automotive photography app built. I want to build a simple AI model that will resize, rotate and reposition automotive photos so they're all consistent. There's about 30 standard photos to build a model for. I've got hundreds of before and after photos to train it with. I'd class myself as a non-technical founder. I can build wordpress sites, basic HTML layouts. Been in digital marketing for 20 years. Is this a simple project that I might be able to learn some AI basics then just feed the model? Or will it require coding knowledge that'll be beyond me? I don't have time to deep dive into the code side. Thanks for any feedback.

What is the best setup to implement for Ai

first of all I'm a fresh machine learning eng(not working yet) and my laptop system running on 128gb ssd + usual 1tb hdd + gtx1050. I used to install python locally and its libraries (from numpy and pandas to tensorflow and pytorch) with vscode (instead of anaconda) and I was happy about that. whenever I do project and want to deploy it i used pepenv. I got problems in storage when it comes to docker or cuda or wsl recently I got an storage upgrade to 512gb ssd and looking for new ideas and approaches about my new instlations What Should I do for each aspect use anaconda and make different environments (I feel this gonna drain storage specially I don't know what should each env contain) Shoul I use docker for windows or install wsl and install docker through it. Same for cuda should i install cuda native windows installation or intall it using wsl I don't try how to use programs in wsl for ex. I don't know how to use cuda on local development if it installed in wsl same as docker I know my gtx1050 won't be effecient when it comes to cuda and maybe more effective to use colab or kaggle gpu. but it's better practice i guess to develop on cuda.

Join the AI4Earth challenge with the European Space Agency to highlight our footprint on Earth using Earth Observation data and Machine Learning

&#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/ww109cba14f71.png?width=2401&format=png&auto=webp&s=8bd3d43e8b63848af85c73478be61e43d9e10189 The primary goal is to get an insight into the human impact on Earth, to drive and guide conservation efforts of this planet we call home. Our approach will be twofold:  Firstly we will work on AI algorithms that can serve as an early detection system of human impact sites. Secondly we will use these detection systems to find satellite images that show the most impactful human-caused changes, which will be used in the creation of a video to launch an awareness campaign. You will be working with ESA to detect things like: Wildfires and Deforestation Marine Litter and Melting Glaciers Air quality detection & Novel animal migration patterns  and much more!  European Space Agency To reach these goals we’ve partnered up with ESA, who are able to use our algorithms to monitor new satellite data and guide conservation efforts. They will provide us with multi-spectral data of their Sentinel-2 satellite pair and with invaluable knowledge and research on the domain of Earth Observation data in participant only masterclasses.  Format The challenge will run throughout September and October, where you will collaborate with a diverse team of over 30 international data specialists and domain experts in subteams, all tackling this problem from different angles. Subtasks like the detection of deforestation, wildfires, marine litter or any other human caused impact. All contributors in the challenge are expected to spend 12 hours or more per week during the entirity of the two month challenge. To learn more subscribe to the info session on the 3rd of August 19:00 CEST HERE! Some important dates: 3rd of August – Info session 1st of September – Challenge Kick-off 29th of September – Midterm presentations 29th of October – Final presentations PARTNERS SUN - https://spacehubs.network The project is spearheaded by SUN whose goal is to increase the commercialization of space enabled solutions and growth of European start-ups and scale-ups in the space downstream and upstream sectors. ESA - https://esa.int ESA will be the main stakeholder and domain knowledge provider in the challenge. Their efforts to aid human’s space endeavours as well as protect the planet we live on will serve us for many years to come.  MLReef - https://mlreef.com MLReef provides an open source platform for collaborative Machine Learning. They provide the computational infrastructure to support the EO4Earth project as part of their AI4GOOD and Open Science initiatives. Brimatech  As a partner in the SUN project, the innovation management and market research expert Brimatech helps out in the overall organisation of the challenge.  Mothership The ‘Mothership’ is a dedicated open innovation program created by Space4Good and World Startup Factory. The Mothershi is leveraging recent advancements in artificial intelligence and satellite technologies in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Space4Good  Space4Good is a geospatial innovation lab supporting impact makers on the ground with earth observation insights from above. Worldstartup  Worldstartup is a collective of international entrepreneurs, experts, mentors and investors, dedicated to help the best impact-driven startups and scaleups.

Funny story about a misinformed startup founder...

So I do artificial intelligence/ML for clients on a by-project basis. I was contacted by an entrepreneur yesterday, and the pitch was too good not to share: The person was founding a software startup. Neither he nor the other cofounder are "tech people," and so they know nothing about software. He wanted me to come onboard as the "technical" founder, because I can do AI and they want to put AI into their software product. He did not know anything about AI, so he wanted me to tell him what it is and what it could do for their software. I got the vibe that he had just heard about this magical thing called AI on the news, and without any understanding of it, thought "that would be cool to have." They had no funding. I offered a suggestion that could make their product idea successful, and they rejected it because it would be too hard. I politely declined, and told them to contact me when they would like to hire me to build something for them.

Study Plan for Learning Data Science Over the Next 12 Months [D]

In this thread, I address a study plan for 2021. In case you're interested, I wrote a whole article about this topic: Study Plan for Learning Data Science Over the Next 12 Months Let me know your thoughts on this. &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/emg20nzhet661.png?width=1170&format=png&auto=webp&s=cf09e4dc5e82ba2fd7b57c706ba2873be57fe8de We are ending 2020 and it is time to make plans for next year, and one of the most important plans and questions we must ask is what do we want to study?, what do we want to enhance?, what changes do we want to make?, and what is the direction we are going to take (or continue) in our professional careers?. Many of you will be starting on the road to becoming a data scientist, in fact you may be evaluating it, since you have heard a lot about it, but you have some doubts, for example about the amount of job offers that may exist in this area, doubts about the technology itself, and about the path you should follow, considering the wide range of options to learn. I’m a believer that we should learn from various sources, from various mentors, and from various formats. By sources I mean the various virtual platforms and face-to-face options that exist to study. By mentors I mean that it is always a good idea to learn from different points of view and learning from different teachers/mentors, and by formats I mean the choices between books, videos, classes, and other formats where the information is contained. When we extract information from all these sources we reinforce the knowledge learned, but we always need a guide, and this post aims to give you some practical insights and strategies in this regard. To decide on sources, mentors and formats it is up to you to choose. It depends on your preferences and ease of learning: for example, some people are better at learning from books, while others prefer to learn from videos. Some prefer to study on platforms that are practical (following online code), and others prefer traditional platforms: like those at universities (Master’s Degree, PHDs or MOOCs). Others prefer to pay for quality content, while others prefer to look only for free material. That’s why I won’t give a specific recommendation in this post, but I’ll give you the whole picture: a study plan. To start you should consider the time you’ll spend studying and the depth of learning you want to achieve, because if you find yourself without a job you could be available full time to study, which is a huge advantage. On the other hand, if you are working, you’ll have less time and you’ll have to discipline yourself to be able to have the time available in the evenings, mornings or weekends. Ultimately, the important thing is to meet the goal of learning and perhaps dedicating your career to this exciting area! We will divide the year into quarters as follows First Quarter: Learning the Basics Second Quarter: Upgrading the Level: Intermediate Knowledge Third Quarter: A Real World Project — A Full-stack Project Fourth Quarter: Seeking Opportunities While Maintaining Practice First Quarter: Learning the Basics &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/u7t9bthket661.png?width=998&format=png&auto=webp&s=4ad29cb43618e7acf793259243aa5a60a8535f0a If you want to be more rigorous you can have start and end dates for this period of study of the bases. It could be something like: From January 1 to March 30, 2021 as deadline. During this period you will study the following: A programming language that you can apply to data science: Python or R. We recommend Python due to the simple fact that approximately 80% of data science job offers ask for knowledge in Python. That same percentage is maintained with respect to the real projects you will find implemented in production. And we add the fact that Python is multipurpose, so you won’t “waste” your time if at some point you decide to focus on web development, for example, or desktop development. This would be the first topic to study in the first months of the year. Familiarize yourself with statistics and mathematics. There is a big debate in the data science community about whether we need this foundation or not. I will write a post later on about this, but the reality is that you DO need it, but ONLY the basics (at least in the beginning). And I want to clarify this point before continuing. We could say that data science is divided in two big fields: Research on one side and putting Machine Learning algorithms into production on the other side. If you later decide to focus on Research then you are going to need mathematics and statistics in depth (very in depth). If you are going to go for the practical part, the libraries will help you deal with most of it, under the hood. It should be noted that most job offers are in the practical part. For both cases, and in this first stage you will only need the basics of: Statistics (with Python and NumPy) Descriptive statistics Inferential Statistics Hypothesis testing Probability Mathematics (with Python and NumPy) Linear Algebra (For example: SVD) Multivariate Calculus Calculus (For example: gradient descent) Note: We recommend that you study Python first before seeing statistics and mathematics, because the challenge is to implement these statistical and mathematical bases with Python. Don’t look for theoretical tutorials that show only slides or statistical and/or mathematical examples in Excel/Matlab/Octave/SAS and other different to Python or R, it gets very boring and impractical! You should choose a course, program or book that teaches these concepts in a practical way and using Python. Remember that Python is what we finally use, so you need to choose well. This advice is key so you don’t give up on this part, as it will be the most dense and difficult. If you have these basics in the first three months, you will be ready to make a leap in your learning for the next three months. Second Quarter: Upgrading the Level: Intermediate Knowledge &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/y1y55vynet661.png?width=669&format=png&auto=webp&s=bd3e12bb112943025c39a8975faf4d64514df275 If you want to be more rigorous you can have start and end dates for this period of study at the intermediate level. It could be something like: From April 1 to June 30, 2021 as deadline. Now that you have a good foundation in programming, statistics and mathematics, it is time to move forward and learn about the great advantages that Python has for applying data analysis. For this stage you will be focused on: Data science Python stack Python has the following libraries that you should study, know and practice at this stage Pandas: for working with tabular data and make in-depth analysis Matplotlib and Seaborn: for data visualization Pandas is the in-facto library for data analysis, it is one of the most important (if not the most important) and powerful tools you should know and master during your career as a data scientist. Pandas will make it much easier for you to manipulate, cleanse and organize your data. Feature Engineering Many times people don’t go deep into Feature Engineering, but if you want to have Machine Learning models that make good predictions and improve your scores, spending some time on this subject is invaluable! Feature engineering is the process of using domain knowledge to extract features from raw data using data mining techniques. These features can be used to improve the performance of machine learning algorithms. Feature engineering can be considered as applied machine learning itself. To achieve the goal of good feature engineering you must know the different techniques that exist, so it is a good idea to at least study the main ones. Basic Models of Machine Learning At the end of this stage you will start with the study of Machine Learning. This is perhaps the most awaited moment! This is where you start to learn about the different algorithms you can use, which particular problems you can solve and how you can apply them in real life. The Python library we recommend you to start experimenting with ML is: scikit-learn. However it is a good idea that you can find tutorials where they explain the implementation of the algorithms (at least the simplest ones) from scratch with Python, since the library could be a “Black Box” and you might not understand what is happening under the hood. If you learn how to implement them with Python, you can have a more solid foundation. If you implement the algorithms with Python (without a library), you will put into practice everything seen in the statistics, mathematics and Pandas part. These are some recommendations of the algorithms that you should at least know in this initial stage Supervised learning Simple Linear Regression Multiple Linear Regression K-nearest neighbors (KNN) Logistic Regression Decision Trees Random Forest Unsupervised Learning K-Means PCA Bonus: if you have the time and you are within the time ranges, you can study these others Gradient Boosting Algorithms GBM XGBoost LightGBM CatBoost Note: do not spend more than the 3 months stipulated for this stage. Because you will be falling behind and not complying with the study plan. We all have shortcomings at this stage, it is normal, go ahead and then you can resume some concepts that did not understand in detail. The important thing is to have the basic knowledge and move forward! If at least you succeed to study the mentioned algorithms of supervised and unsupervised learning, you will have a very clear idea of what you will be able to do in the future. So don’t worry about covering everything, remember that it is a process, and ideally you should have some clearly established times so that you don’t get frustrated and feel you are advancing. So far, here comes your “theoretical” study of the basics of data science. Now we’ll continue with the practical part! Third Quarter: A Real World Project — A Full-stack Project &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/vrn783vqet661.png?width=678&format=png&auto=webp&s=664061b3d33b34979b74b10b9f8a3d0f7b8b99ee If you want to be more rigorous you can have start and end dates for this period of study at the intermediate level. It could be something like: From July 1 to September 30, 2021 as deadline. Now that you have a good foundation in programming, statistics, mathematics, data analysis and machine learning algorithms, it is time to move forward and put into practice all this knowledge. Many of these suggestions may sound out of the box, but believe me they will make a big difference in your career as a data scientist. The first thing is to create your web presence: Create a Github (or GitLab) account, and learn Git*. Being able to manage different versions of your code is important, you should have version control over them, not to mention that having an active Github account is very valuable in demonstrating your true skills. On Github, you can also set up your Jupyter Notebooks and make them public, so you can show off your skills as well. This is mine for example: https://github.com/danielmoralesp Learn the basics of web programming*. The advantage is that you already have Python as a skill, so you can learn Flask to create a simple web page. Or you can use a template engine like Github Pages, Ghost or Wordpress itself and create your online portfolio. Buy a domain with your name*. Something like myname.com, myname.co, myname.dev, etc. This is invaluable so you can have your CV online and update it with your projects. There you can make a big difference, showing your projects, your Jupyter Notebooks and showing that you have the practical skills to execute projects in this area. There are many front-end templates for you to purchase for free or for payment, and give it a more personalized and pleasant look. Don’t use free sub-domains of Wordpress, Github or Wix, it looks very unprofessional, make your own. Here is mine for example: https://www.danielmorales.dev/ Choose a project you are passionate about and create a Machine Learning model around it. The final goal of this third quarter is to create ONE project, that you are passionate about, and that is UNIQUE among others. It turns out that there are many typical projects in the community, such as predicting the Titanic Survivors, or predicting the price of Houses in Boston. Those kinds of projects are good for learning, but not for showing off as your UNIQUE projects. If you are passionate about sports, try predicting the soccer results of your local league. If you are passionate about finance, try predicting your country’s stock market prices. If you are passionate about marketing, try to find someone who has an e-commerce and implement a product recommendation algorithm and upload it to production. If you are passionate about business: make a predictor of the best business ideas for 2021 :) As you can see, you are limited by your passions and your imagination. In fact, those are the two keys for you to do this project: Passion and Imagination. However don’t expect to make money from it, you are in a learning stage, you need that algorithm to be deployed in production, make an API in Flask with it, and explain in your website how you did it and how people can access it. This is the moment to shine, and at the same time it’s the moment of the greatest learning. You will most likely face obstacles, if your algorithm gives 60% of Accuracy after a huge optimization effort, it doesn’t matter, finish the whole process, deploy it to production, try to get a friend or family member to use it, and that will be the goal achieved for this stage: Make a Full-stack Machine Learning project. By full-stack I mean that you did all the following steps: You got the data from somewhere (scrapping, open data or API) You did a data analysis You cleaned and transformed the data You created Machine Learning Models You deployed the best model to production for other people to use. This does not mean that this whole process is what you will always do in your daily job, but it does mean that you will know every part of the pipeline that is needed for a data science project for a company. You will have a unique perspective! Fourth Quarter: Seeking Opportunities While Maintaining Practice &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/qd0osystet661.png?width=1056&format=png&auto=webp&s=2da456b15985b2793041256f5e45bca99a23b51a If you want to be more rigorous you can have start and end dates for this period of study at the final level. It could be something like: From October 1 to December 31, 2021 as deadline. Now you have theoretical and practical knowledge. You have implemented a model in production. The next step depends on you and your personality. Let’s say you are an entrepreneur, and you have the vision to create something new from something you discovered or saw an opportunity to do business with this discipline, so it’s time to start planning how to do it. If that’s the case, obviously this post won’t cover that process, but you should know what the steps might be (or start figuring them out). But if you are one of those who want to get a job as a data scientist, here is my advice. Getting a job as a data scientist “You’re not going to get a job as fast as you think, if you keep thinking the same way”.Author It turns out that all people who start out as data scientists imagine themselves working for the big companies in their country or region. Or even remote. It turns out that if you aspire to work for a large company like data scientist you will be frustrated by the years of experience they ask for (3 or more years) and the skills they request. Large companies don’t hire Juniors (or very few do), precisely because they are already large companies. They have the financial muscle to demand experience and skills and can pay a commensurate salary (although this is not always the case). The point is that if you focus there you’re going to get frustrated! Here we must return to the following advise: “You need creativity to get a job in data science”. Like everything else in life we have to start at different steps, in this case, from the beginning. Here are the scenarios If you are working in a company and in a non-engineering role you must demonstrate your new skills to the company you are working for*. If you are working in the customer service area, you should apply it to your work, and do for example, detailed analysis of your calls, conversion rates, store data and make predictions about it! If you can have data from your colleagues, you could try to predict their sales! This may sound funny, but it’s about how creatively you can apply data science to your current work and how to show your bosses how valuable it is and EVANGELIZE them about the benefits of implementation. You’ll be noticed and they could certainly create a new data related department or job. And you already have the knowledge and experience. The key word here is Evangelize. Many companies and entrepreneurs are just beginning to see the power of this discipline, and it is your task to nurture that reality. If you are working in an area related to engineering, but that is not data science*. Here the same applies as the previous example, but you have some advantages, and that is that you could access the company’s data, and you could use it for the benefit of the company, making analyses and/or predictions about it, and again EVANGELIZING your bosses your new skills and the benefits of data science. If you are unemployed (or do not want, or do not feel comfortable following the two examples above)*, you can start looking outside, and what I recommend is that you look for technology companies and / or startups where they are just forming the first teams and are paying some salary, or even have options shares of the company. Obviously here the salaries will not be exorbitant, and the working hours could be longer, but remember that you are in the learning and practice stage (just in the first step), so you can not demand too much, you must land your expectations and fit that reality, and stop pretending to be paid $ 10,000 a month at this stage. But, depending of your country $1.000 USD could be something very interesting to start this new career. Remember, you are a Junior at this stage. The conclusion is: don’t waste your time looking at and/or applying to offers from big companies, because you will get frustrated. Be creative, and look for opportunities in smaller or newly created companies. Learning never stops While you are in that process of looking for a job or an opportunity, which could take half of your time (50% looking for opportunities, 50% staying in practice), you have to keep learning, you should advance to concepts such as Deep Learning, Data Engineer or other topics that you feel were left loose from the past stages or focus on the topics that you are passionate about within this group of disciplines in data science. At the same time you can choose a second project, and spend some time running it from end-to-end, and thus increase your portfolio and your experience. If this is the case, try to find a completely different project: if the first one was done with Machine Learning, let this second one be done with Deep learning. If the first one was deployed to a web page, that this second one is deployed to a mobile platform. Remember, creativity is the key! Conclusion We are at an ideal time to plan for 2021, and if this is the path you want to take, start looking for the platforms and media you want to study on. Get to work and don’t miss this opportunity to become a data scientist in 2021! Note: we are building a private community in Slack of data scientist, if you want to join us write to the email: support@datasource.ai I hope you enjoyed this reading! you can follow me on twitter or linkedin Thank you for reading!

Randomly asked ChatGPT and Claude for a 4 year roadmap for an ML Engineer

Title, Is it actually a good plan ?? If no, why not ?? \\🚀 4-Year Roadmap to Becoming a High-Earning ML Engineer & Entrepreneur\\ \\(With Smartwork & Realistic 60-70% Execution Feasibility)\\ \\🟢 Year 1: Strong Foundation & Initial Projects (0-12 Months)\\ 🎯 \\Goal: Master Python & ML Fundamentals\\ \\🔹 1-4 Months (Python & Math Strengthening)\\ ✅ Python Mastery \- Daily LeetCode Easy problems (minimum 2) \- Build automation projects \- NumPy & Pandas mastery \- DSA fundamentals ✅ Mathematics Foundation \- Linear Algebra basics \- Statistics fundamentals \- Basic calculus concepts ✅ First Mini-Hackathon Participation \- Join beginner-friendly hackathons \- Focus on Python-based challenges \- Team up with other beginners 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Join Discord/Slack hackathon communities \- Practice collaborative coding \- Build network with fellow participants \\🔹 5-8 Months (ML Foundations)\\ ✅ Machine Learning Basics \- Supervised Learning \- Model evaluation \- Feature engineering \- scikit-learn projects ✅ Participate in 2-3 ML Hackathons \- Kaggle Getting Started competitions \- Local ML hackathons \- University hackathons ✅ Start LinkedIn & GitHub Portfolio 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Document hackathon experiences \- Share learnings on LinkedIn \- Focus on completion over winning \\🔹 9-12 Months (Deep Learning Introduction)\\ ✅ Basic Deep Learning \- Neural network fundamentals \- PyTorch basics \- Computer vision tasks \- Basic NLP ✅ Advanced Hackathon Participation \- AI/ML specific hackathons \- Team lead in 1-2 hackathons \- Start mentoring beginners \\🔵 Year 1 Expected Outcome (60-70% Execution)\\ ✔ \\Strong Python & ML foundations\\ ✔ \\5-6 hackathon participations\\ ✔ \\Active GitHub (100+ commits)\\ ✔ \\Growing LinkedIn (300+ connections)\\ 💰 \\Earning Expectation → ₹8K-₹20K per month (Projects/Internship)\\ \\🟢 Year 2: Professional Growth & Specialization (12-24 Months)\\ 🎯 \\Goal: Build Professional Experience & Recognition\\ \\🔹 1-6 Months (Technical Depth)\\ ✅ Advanced ML Topics \- Deep Learning architectures \- Computer Vision OR NLP \- MLOps basics (Docker, FastAPI) \- Cloud fundamentals (AWS/GCP) ✅ Hackathon Achievements \- Win minor prizes in 2-3 hackathons \- Lead teams in major hackathons \- Network with sponsors ✅ Start Technical Blogging 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Focus on hackathon projects that align with career goals \- Build relationships with companies at hackathons \- Create detailed project documentation \\🔹 7-12 Months (Professional Experience)\\ ✅ Secure ML Role/Internship ✅ Advanced Project Building ✅ Open Source Contributions ✅ Organize Small Hackathons 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Use hackathon network for job referrals \- Convert hackathon projects into full products \- Build mentor reputation \\🔵 Year 2 Expected Outcome (60-70% Execution)\\ ✔ \\Professional ML experience\\ ✔ \\10+ hackathon participations\\ ✔ \\1-2 hackathon wins\\ ✔ \\Strong industry network\\ 💰 \\Earning Expectation → ₹40K-₹70K per month (Job/Freelancing)\\ \\🟢 Year 3: Scaling & Business Foundation (24-36 Months)\\ 🎯 \\Goal: Establish Multiple Income Streams\\ \\🔹 1-4 Months (Expertise Building)\\ ✅ Choose Specialization \- MLOps \- Computer Vision \- NLP/LLMs \- Generative AI ✅ Advanced Competitions \- International hackathons \- High-prize competitions \- Corporate ML challenges ✅ Start Consulting Services 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Use hackathon wins for marketing \- Build service packages around expertise \- Network with corporate sponsors \\🔹 5-8 Months (Business Development)\\ ✅ Scale Services ✅ Build Client Network ✅ Create Training Programs ✅ Hackathon Mentorship Program 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Convert hackathon projects to products \- Use event networks for client acquisition \- Build authority through speaking \\🔹 9-12 Months (Growth & Innovation)\\ ✅ Product Development ✅ Team Building ✅ Innovation Focus ✅ Hackathon Organization \\🔵 Year 3 Expected Outcome (60-70% Execution)\\ ✔ \\Established ML business/career\\ ✔ \\Known in hackathon community\\ ✔ \\Multiple income streams\\ ✔ \\Strong industry presence\\ 💰 \\Earning Expectation → ₹1L-₹2L per month (Multiple Streams)\\ \\🟢 Year 4: Scale & Leadership (36-48 Months)\\ 🎯 \\Goal: Build AI Company & Achieve Financial Freedom\\ \\🔹 1-4 Months (Business Scaling)\\ ✅ Company Formation \- AI consulting firm \- Product development \- Training programs ✅ Hackathon Innovation \- Launch own hackathon series \- Corporate partnerships \- Prize sponsorships ✅ Team Expansion 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Use hackathon network for hiring \- Create unique event formats \- Build corporate relationships \\🔹 5-8 Months (Market Leadership)\\ ✅ Product Launch ✅ Service Expansion ✅ International Presence ✅ Innovation Hub Creation 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Create hackathon-to-hiring pipeline \- Build educational programs \- Establish thought leadership \\🔹 9-12 Months (Empire Building)\\ ✅ Multiple Revenue Streams \- AI products \- Consulting services \- Educational programs \- Event organization \- Investment returns ✅ Industry Leadership \- Conference speaking \- Published content \- Community leadership \\🔵 Year 4 Expected Outcome (60-70% Execution)\\ ✔ \\Established AI company\\ ✔ \\Major hackathon organizer\\ ✔ \\Multiple product lines\\ ✔ \\Industry authority status\\ 💰 \\Earning Expectation → ₹3L-₹5L+ per month (Business Income)\\ \\📊 FINAL RATING\\ ✅ \\Comprehensive growth plan\\ ✅ \\Strong community focus\\ ✅ \\Multiple income pathways\\ 💡 \\If 100% Execution → 8.5/10 Feasibility\\ 💡 \\If 50% Execution → 6/10 Feasibility\\ 🔥 \\Conclusion: A balanced path to ML mastery and entrepreneurship, built through consistent growth and community engagement!\\ 🚀 \\Key Success Factors:\\ Regular hackathon participation Strong community involvement Consistent skill development Strategic network building Focus on both technical and business growth

ML/AI and Digital Marketing

M28, studied Economics in school, have 5 years of experience in Digital Marketing, and have a good grasp of Python. More and more, I see that my full time job in Digital Advertising is becoming automated due to Machine Learning on platforms like Meta/Google. I'm concerned that in the long run I won't be very valuable. Advertising is already a mid-paying career as is. My thought is to learn about machine learning/AI for the first half of this year and then create a side project to showcase to future employers. My questions are: How should I learn about ML/AI? Is Andrew Ng's Coursera course a good place to start? I often feel that with courses I struggle to retain the information as I don't use it. Should I start a side project before or after completing a course? Also thought about creating a newsletter just so I can distill the learnings. 10 years from now, how valuable will knowing AI/ML be? Will the AI/ML systems get so advanced that human intervention is not needed and therefore isn't a skill to invest in? Should I instead invest in a creative skill set?

Advise Needed] Mechanical engineer trying to venture into ML

Hello fellow redditors, &#x200B; As the title suggests, I am a mechanical engineer with a masters in mechanical design from a top institute in India. Directly after my masters, I got a job but left it after exactly one year to pursue civil services. And that decision has left a 3 year void in my career sheet. During these three years, the most I have been in touch with tech/science was through random personal automations using python and digital notetaking systems or a few readings here and there. I don't know if they have anything to do with each other, but I am lazy (for repetitive work) and have an eye to optimize /automate my workflow. The later led to me learning python, a bit of git and css/html. With regard to my prgramming skills, I learn quickly and had good grades in all the computer science courses we had at the college (C++, DSA and Modelling-Simulation). I have also programmed in Matlab for basic usage in research and also in LAMDA for nanomechanics/molecular simulation. At my work, I had written a python code to automate the process of model setup for FE which reduced the human intervention from very menial routine work (hindi: gadha majdoori). As for my mechanical engineering skills, I am good with CAE softwares and can readily work with them. So first thing I am doing right now is applying in various positions in the same domain as I had worked 3 years ago. All this while, I got introduced to the world of Machine Learning, AI and Deep Learning. So, I wish to learn ML to slowly venture into that line. So yeah, my question here to the CS veterans is, how to start with the learning, from where, what can I expect from the field and how much time is necessary for be able to get a decent opportunity in that domain? Currently, I have started with Andrew Ng's course on Courcera: Course 1 of Deep Learning Specialisation. https://www.coursera.org/learn/neural-networks-deep-learning but it seems rather theoretical to me and without implementation it will be difficult for me to grasp (I feel). Also, I explored fast.ai course which follows top-down approach unlike Andrew. I haven't committed to it. Kindly guide. All kinds of opinon are welcome. PS. I am 28yo

AI Noob where to start?

Hello, TL;DR: Where do I get started with AI from an ICT engineer POV? I find the subject complex and vague, and I have no idea where to start. A little bit about myself, I am a telecoms engineer with 7 years of experience in networking, servers (virtualisation and containers), Audio-visual and industrial/home automations and CAD, but I am more specialised in the first 4 layers of the OSI model with a little experience in Python, YAML and Ansible (nowhere near a software engineer, but decent enough to make simple automations work if needed). I am starting to have clients that ask questions about AI and its use for their business, and I am not confident in answering them. Where should I start? My only knowledge about AI was gathered from a course I have done “AI Infrastructure and Operations Fundamentals” from Nvidia and the fact that Lamma is an open-source model from Meta (which I absolutely adore the idea of local open-source AI). I am do not think I want to be an AI developer and pivot, but more like how AI can enhance my current skill set. I want to understand what the technical requirements are, technical terminology, how the different models can be used for different purposes (text, images, etc.). From a HW perspective, I am long overdue for a workstation upgrade (currently i7 9^(th) Gen, RTX 2060 Super 8Gb VRAM, 16Gb DDR4 RAM) I use my workstation as a homelab and for CAD and gaming. My hope is that by the time intel 15^(th) gen and Nvidia 5000 will be released, I will have some kind of idea of what I want to do with it from an AI perspective. I have seen a lot of knowledgeable people in this subreddit and wanted to know what it was their journey and how did they get started? What do you recommend (courses, books, HW/SW, etc.)?

How I Built an Agentic Marketing Campaign Strategist

Marketing at Scale: How One AI System Replaces Hundreds of Strategy Hours Article https://i.redd.it/uekqj3zmerme1.gif https://i.redd.it/30rk23zmerme1.gif https://preview.redd.it/fk1t53zmerme1.png?width=797&format=png&auto=webp&s=d07f473a9556fbd38885b3a2f862101d9b25424e https://preview.redd.it/n84113zmerme1.jpg?width=1914&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f42679269a1003e1c8d6501dd2d53e10db745bba https://preview.redd.it/l13ae3zmerme1.jpg?width=791&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ecab3c295c2a416bc0fed8c62fecbe3321e37093 TL;DR This article guides you through building an AI-powered marketing strategist using Python. It combines vector databases, language models, and PDF generation to create customized marketing strategies automatically. I’ll show you the complete system architecture, from storing marketing knowledge to generating professional strategy documents, with practical code examples you can implement today. Perfect for marketers and developers looking to leverage AI for business growth. Introduction Welcome to the exciting intersection of marketing and artificial intelligence! In today’s digital world, creating effective marketing campaigns requires deep expertise, market research, and creative thinking. But what if you could automate parts of this process? That’s exactly what I set out to build: an AI system that generates comprehensive marketing strategies tailored to specific products, audiences, and budgets. What’s This Article About? This article walks you through the creation of an AI-powered marketing strategist that combines the retrieval of relevant marketing knowledge with advanced language generation to produce detailed campaign strategies. The system I built uses Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), which enhances AI outputs by grounding them in specific knowledge sources. Here’s how it works: You provide a simple campaign description (like “a new eco-friendly water bottle targeting millennials with a budget of $50,000”) The system searches a knowledge base of marketing principles and best practices It then uses a language model to craft a comprehensive strategy that includes campaign objectives, target audience analysis, channel selection, content ideas, budget allocation, and measurement KPIs Finally, it generates a professional PDF document with your complete marketing strategy The beauty of this approach is that it combines the creativity and adaptability of AI with established marketing frameworks, ensuring the strategies are both innovative and grounded in proven principles. Why Read It? AI is rapidly transforming how businesses operate, and marketing is at the forefront of this revolution. According to recent studies, companies that effectively leverage AI in their marketing efforts see significant improvements in customer engagement, conversion rates, and ROI. Even if you’re not building a system for a real company right now, understanding how to implement AI in marketing processes gives you valuable skills and insights. This article provides a practical example of how AI can: Save marketers countless hours of research and strategy development Ensure consistency in marketing approaches across different campaigns Generate creative ideas that might not have been considered otherwise Scale marketing expertise across an organization By following along, you’ll gain hands-on experience with technologies like vector databases, language models, and automated document generation — all skills that are increasingly valuable in today’s business environment.

Master AI Integration: How to Integrate AI in Your Application

A Comprehensive Guide with Every Detail Spelled Out for Flawless AI Implementation Full Article &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/m5b79j55f14d1.png?width=1328&format=png&auto=webp&s=8cf04c80cd21be1710dd117a9e74b07d0e8cbe6a In the ideal world, we'd design our software systems with AI in mind from the very beginning. But in the real world, that's not always possible. Many businesses have large, complex systems that have been running for years, and making significant changes to them is risky and expensive. What this Article is About? ● This article aims to convince you that even when changing existing systems is not an option, you can still seamlessly integrate AI into your business processes. It explores real-world scenarios and shows how a company (though simulated) has successfully incorporated AI without overhauling their existing infrastructure. &#x200B; https://i.redd.it/fayl1gcbf14d1.gif Why Read This Article? ● By reading this article, you will learn the critical skill of integrating AI into your existing business ecosystem without making significant changes to your stable workflows. This skill is becoming increasingly important as more and more companies recognize the value of AI while also acknowledging the challenges of overhauling their existing systems. What is Our Business Use Case? ● The article uses a simulated supply chain management company as a business use case. This company has multiple departments, each exposing its own REST API, and to get an inquiry answered, the request has to go through various departments, their respective APIs, and database calls. The article introduces AI capabilities to enhance the company's operations without modifying the existing system architecture. Our Supply Chain Management Company AI Integration Design ● The article describes the various components of the simulated supply chain management company, including the "Data Processing System," "Company Data Handling System," "AI Integration System," "Mapping System," and "System Admin Dashboard." Let's Get Cooking! ● This section provides the code and explanations for implementing the AI integration system in the simulated supply chain management company. It covers the following: ○ Dashboard & AI Integration System ○ Company Data Handling System ○ Data Processing System ○ Mapping System Let's Setup ● This section shows the expected output when setting up the simulated supply chain management system with AI integration. Let's Run it ● This section demonstrates how to run the system and ask questions related to supply chain management, showcasing the AI integration in action. https://i.redd.it/3e68mb57f14d1.gif Closing Thoughts The supply chain management project we have explored in this article serves as a powerful example of how to seamlessly integrate cutting-edge AI capabilities into existing business systems without the need for significant overhauls or disruptions. By leveraging the flexibility and power of modern AI technologies, we were able to enhance the functionality of a simulated supply chain management system while preserving its core operations and workflows. Throughout the development process, we placed a strong emphasis on minimizing the impact on the existing system architecture. Rather than attempting to replace or modify the established components, we introduced an “AI Integration System” that acts as a bridge between the existing infrastructure and the AI-powered capabilities. This approach allowed us to maintain the integrity of the existing systems while simultaneously leveraging the benefits of AI. One of the key advantages of this integration strategy is the ability to leverage the wealth of data already available within the existing systems. By accessing and processing this data through the AI models, we were able to generate more informed and intelligent responses to user queries, providing valuable insights and recommendations tailored to the specific supply chain activities and scenarios. As we look towards the future, the importance of seamlessly integrating AI into existing business ecosystems will only continue to grow. With the rapid pace of technological advancements and the increasing demand for intelligent automation and decision support, organizations that embrace this approach will be better positioned to capitalize on the opportunities presented by AI while minimizing disruptions to their operations. It is my hope that through this simulated real-world example, you have gained a deeper understanding of the potential for AI integration and the various strategies and best practices that can be employed to achieve successful implementation. By embracing this approach, businesses can unlock the transformative power of AI while preserving the investments and institutional knowledge embedded in their existing systems.

Let’s Build One Person Business Using 100% AI

AI made it possible for 9-to-5 workers to start a one-person business without quitting their jobs. Full Article https://preview.redd.it/tynb9y6z695d1.png?width=1309&format=png&auto=webp&s=b490d3676a63adcc01faff8c476056cb7d420022 https://i.redd.it/9x3okti0795d1.gif The Opportunities for Starting a Business ○ There are huge opportunities to start your own business by leveraging valuable skills to attract paying audiences. ○ New software and AI platforms make it easier to distribute products/services and automate tasks that were previously time-consuming. Our One Person Book Publication House ○ This article explores building a one-person AI-powered business focused on publishing books. ○ Users input data on a topic, and AI generates a comprehensive book structure and content based on that. ○ The generated content can be formatted, designed, and published digitally or in print easily. Why Read This Article? ○ It presents an innovative AI-powered approach to streamline the book publishing process. ○ It provides technical implementation details using LLM, Python and the Streamlit library as a reference. ○ It highlights AI's potential in automating creative tasks like writing and content creation. Approaching the One Person Business ○ Reflect on areas where you overcame personal struggles and gained valuable skills. ○ Leverage that expertise to build an AI business serving others facing similar obstacles. ○ Use AI tools to create content, automate processes, and efficiently scale your offerings. The Publication Business Idea ○ Focus on writing and publishing small books using AI writing assistants. ○ AI can streamline research, writing drafts, outlines, and ideas across genres. ○ Concentrate efforts on editing, formatting, and marketing while AI handles writing. The Book Generation Process ○ Users input structured topic data like outlines, key points, and references. ○ Advanced AI language models generate flowing book content from that data. ○ Minimal human effort is needed beyond initial inputs and refinement. ○ AI systems automatically handle formatting, design, and publishing. Technical Implementation ○ Includes a Book class to represent a book's hierarchical structure in Python. ○ Functions to generate book structures and section content using AI models. ○ Integrates with a Streamlit app for user input and output. ○ Allows downloading the final book in Markdown format. Closing Thoughts ○ This AI-powered approach makes book writing and publishing more accessible to individuals. ○ AI handles the heavy lifting, with humans providing quality control through editing. ○ It opens up possibilities for innovative knowledge sharing as technology evolves.

How I Built an Agentic Marketing Campaign Strategist

Marketing at Scale: How One AI System Replaces Hundreds of Strategy Hours Article https://i.redd.it/uekqj3zmerme1.gif https://i.redd.it/30rk23zmerme1.gif https://preview.redd.it/fk1t53zmerme1.png?width=797&format=png&auto=webp&s=d07f473a9556fbd38885b3a2f862101d9b25424e https://preview.redd.it/n84113zmerme1.jpg?width=1914&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f42679269a1003e1c8d6501dd2d53e10db745bba https://preview.redd.it/l13ae3zmerme1.jpg?width=791&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ecab3c295c2a416bc0fed8c62fecbe3321e37093 TL;DR This article guides you through building an AI-powered marketing strategist using Python. It combines vector databases, language models, and PDF generation to create customized marketing strategies automatically. I’ll show you the complete system architecture, from storing marketing knowledge to generating professional strategy documents, with practical code examples you can implement today. Perfect for marketers and developers looking to leverage AI for business growth. Introduction Welcome to the exciting intersection of marketing and artificial intelligence! In today’s digital world, creating effective marketing campaigns requires deep expertise, market research, and creative thinking. But what if you could automate parts of this process? That’s exactly what I set out to build: an AI system that generates comprehensive marketing strategies tailored to specific products, audiences, and budgets. What’s This Article About? This article walks you through the creation of an AI-powered marketing strategist that combines the retrieval of relevant marketing knowledge with advanced language generation to produce detailed campaign strategies. The system I built uses Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), which enhances AI outputs by grounding them in specific knowledge sources. Here’s how it works: You provide a simple campaign description (like “a new eco-friendly water bottle targeting millennials with a budget of $50,000”) The system searches a knowledge base of marketing principles and best practices It then uses a language model to craft a comprehensive strategy that includes campaign objectives, target audience analysis, channel selection, content ideas, budget allocation, and measurement KPIs Finally, it generates a professional PDF document with your complete marketing strategy The beauty of this approach is that it combines the creativity and adaptability of AI with established marketing frameworks, ensuring the strategies are both innovative and grounded in proven principles. Why Read It? AI is rapidly transforming how businesses operate, and marketing is at the forefront of this revolution. According to recent studies, companies that effectively leverage AI in their marketing efforts see significant improvements in customer engagement, conversion rates, and ROI. Even if you’re not building a system for a real company right now, understanding how to implement AI in marketing processes gives you valuable skills and insights. This article provides a practical example of how AI can: Save marketers countless hours of research and strategy development Ensure consistency in marketing approaches across different campaigns Generate creative ideas that might not have been considered otherwise Scale marketing expertise across an organization By following along, you’ll gain hands-on experience with technologies like vector databases, language models, and automated document generation — all skills that are increasingly valuable in today’s business environment.

Let’s Build One Person Business Using 100% AI

AI made it possible for 9-to-5 workers to start a one-person business without quitting their jobs. Full Article https://preview.redd.it/tynb9y6z695d1.png?width=1309&format=png&auto=webp&s=b490d3676a63adcc01faff8c476056cb7d420022 https://i.redd.it/9x3okti0795d1.gif The Opportunities for Starting a Business ○ There are huge opportunities to start your own business by leveraging valuable skills to attract paying audiences. ○ New software and AI platforms make it easier to distribute products/services and automate tasks that were previously time-consuming. Our One Person Book Publication House ○ This article explores building a one-person AI-powered business focused on publishing books. ○ Users input data on a topic, and AI generates a comprehensive book structure and content based on that. ○ The generated content can be formatted, designed, and published digitally or in print easily. Why Read This Article? ○ It presents an innovative AI-powered approach to streamline the book publishing process. ○ It provides technical implementation details using LLM, Python and the Streamlit library as a reference. ○ It highlights AI's potential in automating creative tasks like writing and content creation. Approaching the One Person Business ○ Reflect on areas where you overcame personal struggles and gained valuable skills. ○ Leverage that expertise to build an AI business serving others facing similar obstacles. ○ Use AI tools to create content, automate processes, and efficiently scale your offerings. The Publication Business Idea ○ Focus on writing and publishing small books using AI writing assistants. ○ AI can streamline research, writing drafts, outlines, and ideas across genres. ○ Concentrate efforts on editing, formatting, and marketing while AI handles writing. The Book Generation Process ○ Users input structured topic data like outlines, key points, and references. ○ Advanced AI language models generate flowing book content from that data. ○ Minimal human effort is needed beyond initial inputs and refinement. ○ AI systems automatically handle formatting, design, and publishing. Technical Implementation ○ Includes a Book class to represent a book's hierarchical structure in Python. ○ Functions to generate book structures and section content using AI models. ○ Integrates with a Streamlit app for user input and output. ○ Allows downloading the final book in Markdown format. Closing Thoughts ○ This AI-powered approach makes book writing and publishing more accessible to individuals. ○ AI handles the heavy lifting, with humans providing quality control through editing. ○ It opens up possibilities for innovative knowledge sharing as technology evolves.

How I Built A Simple ‘BPO’ Company, All AI Employees (All Local)

Disrupting the BPO Industry: My Journey Building a Fully Automated Company with AI Employees Full Article : https://medium.com/@learn-simplified/how-i-built-a-simple-bpo-company-all-ai-employees-all-local-631e48fa908a &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/htjo1mancl2d1.png?width=1586&format=png&auto=webp&s=7e77f4c66e5ca55a8b0ea6969c43a458503ad921 ● What Are We Doing Today? We are building a BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) call center for an imaginary electric company called "Aniket Very General Electric Company". We will create different departments staffed by AI agents who can chat (and eventually speak in next part) with customers to answer questions, handle complaints, or provide services. ● Why Should You Read This Article? Learning how to build AI agents that can do tasks in real setting, co ordinate w/ human, AI, providing technical support will be a highly valuable skill. ● How Are We Going to Build Our All AI Employees Company? ○ We will explain what BPO and call centers are. ○ Our AI company will have departments like Customer Service, Tech Support, Billing & Payments, Outage Management, and Onboarding Customers. ○ We will use Docker containers to run the Dify AI platform as the base. ○ The AI agents will use the LLaMA-3 language model from Meta AI. ○ We may use Groq's AI accelerator chip to make LLaMA-3 faster. ○ Each department will have a knowledge base of text files that the AI agents can reference. ● Let's Get Cooking! This section provides setup instructions for installing Docker, Ollama (for running LLaMA-3), and the Dify AI platform. It also outlines the different AI agents we will create for departments like Reception, Customer Service, Billing, Tech Support, etc. ● Let's Design our Organization ○ We explain how each department's AI agents will have their own knowledge base, like an employee handbook. ○ The knowledge bases will contain policies, procedures, and other key information. ○ The AI agents can quickly reference this information to provide accurate and knowledgeable responses. ● Let's Meet Our AI Employees ○ We chose the LLaMA-3 70B model as the base for all AI agents across departments. ○ We give the AI agents customized prompts to define their personalities and roles. ○ The knowledge bases act as training materials tailored to each department. ○ In the future, AI agents could have additional tools like ticket systems and integrations. ● Let's Run Our BPO Organization Now that the AI workforce and knowledge bases are ready, we can open our BPO company and have the AI agents start handling customer inquiries across different departments like billing, tech support, outages, and new connections. ● Debugging This section highlights the importance of debugging, showing traces of how the language model understands customer queries and retrieves relevant context from knowledge bases to provide good responses. ● Future Work ○ Scale up to handle more customers using cloud services or distributed computing. ○ Move AI agents and knowledge bases to the cloud for accessibility and maintenance. ○ Fine-tune language models for better performance in each department. ○ Use scalable vector databases for faster knowledge retrieval. ○ Enable voice interfaces and computer vision for more natural interactions. ○ Implement continuous learning so AI agents can expand their knowledge over time. The article demonstrates the potential of building an actual AI-powered company and raises thought-provoking questions about the role of humans, ethics, and using AI to create a better world. &#x200B;

I'm Building an "AiExecutiveSuperAgent_Systems_Interface" between humanity and the Ai world, as well as each other... Let's Talk?

Ok... So look... This one is pretty crazy... I'm building an Ai Interface that knows me better than I know myself - Check, lots of people have this, either in reality with employees and family members, or with ai intelligence. But it doesn't just know Me... It knows how to talk with Me. It understands my language, because I've trained it to. I've also trained it to translate that to all my clients and HumanAgents, soon to become RobotAgents... The RESULT: I can literally just spend 1-18 hours talking to it, and things get DONE. Most of that time, I just say EXECUTE, or ENGAGE, or DRAFT, or DISPATCH. I feel like a secret agent communicating in codes with his agency 😂 Not great for the paranoiac in me, but it's easy to get that part under control, ya'll. It's like having a team of 10,000 people, all available 24/7, all perfectly synchronised to each other's communication styles, preferences and ultimately: WHAT DO YOU NEED ME TO DO. At the end of the it all, having run my single COMMAND through a thousand of those people, a Document is prepared that outlines the next 3 stages of the plan, along with instructions to the whole team for how to ENACT it. Sounds rather grand and wonderful... Even when I simply use it to help me come up with a filing system for my creative work... \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Here's my current VISION, why I'm doing this AND why I'm doing it publicly despite it being top secret. VISION To create an army of User-Owned and Operated "AiSuperAgencies" which gather intelligence on the user, securely file and analyse it, and then construct a sub-army of agents and tools that work together to produce the desired output, for any Function in the Personal and Professional Lives of EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE, in 3-5 Years. To start, I'm building it for me and the 5-10 cleaners who've made it to Level 1 in my access system. They were sick of toxic employers, tyrannical agencies and greedy customers. They gathered around us (many came in, many went out, few stayed, took about a year for our core team of 3 Level 2 Cleaners. My goal has always been to never employ anyone. Just me, my Partner and the Cleaners. All Shared Owners in the system for delivering the right cleaner to the right house in our town, at the right time and without any dramas or arguments... I have a personal talent for resolving disputes, which has made working for and buying from my business a mostly enjoyable and upbeat experience, with a touch of mystery and a feeling that you're part of something big! It is a business that ran on Me. I put in my time, every day, building automated tool after automated tool. Hiring a contractor to do a job, scratching my head when it didn't add enough value to pay for itself, then just doing it myself again. I wanted to solve that problem. I'm trusting that the few who hear about it who actually see the potential, will just come join us, no dramas, just cool people partnering up! And those that don't, won't. No one could steal it, because it's Mine, and I'll just change the keys anyway loser! Enjoy digging through my past, you lunatic! I'm out here living Now. Anyways... It's lonely around here. I have a cleaning business that I run from my laptop, which means I can live anywhere, but I still had this big problem of time... NOT ENOUGH Oh Wait. It's Here.

Randomly asked ChatGPT and Claude for a 4 year roadmap for an ML Engineer

Title, Is it actually a good plan ?? If no, why not ?? \\🚀 4-Year Roadmap to Becoming a High-Earning ML Engineer & Entrepreneur\\ \\(With Smartwork & Realistic 60-70% Execution Feasibility)\\ \\🟢 Year 1: Strong Foundation & Initial Projects (0-12 Months)\\ 🎯 \\Goal: Master Python & ML Fundamentals\\ \\🔹 1-4 Months (Python & Math Strengthening)\\ ✅ Python Mastery \- Daily LeetCode Easy problems (minimum 2) \- Build automation projects \- NumPy & Pandas mastery \- DSA fundamentals ✅ Mathematics Foundation \- Linear Algebra basics \- Statistics fundamentals \- Basic calculus concepts ✅ First Mini-Hackathon Participation \- Join beginner-friendly hackathons \- Focus on Python-based challenges \- Team up with other beginners 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Join Discord/Slack hackathon communities \- Practice collaborative coding \- Build network with fellow participants \\🔹 5-8 Months (ML Foundations)\\ ✅ Machine Learning Basics \- Supervised Learning \- Model evaluation \- Feature engineering \- scikit-learn projects ✅ Participate in 2-3 ML Hackathons \- Kaggle Getting Started competitions \- Local ML hackathons \- University hackathons ✅ Start LinkedIn & GitHub Portfolio 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Document hackathon experiences \- Share learnings on LinkedIn \- Focus on completion over winning \\🔹 9-12 Months (Deep Learning Introduction)\\ ✅ Basic Deep Learning \- Neural network fundamentals \- PyTorch basics \- Computer vision tasks \- Basic NLP ✅ Advanced Hackathon Participation \- AI/ML specific hackathons \- Team lead in 1-2 hackathons \- Start mentoring beginners \\🔵 Year 1 Expected Outcome (60-70% Execution)\\ ✔ \\Strong Python & ML foundations\\ ✔ \\5-6 hackathon participations\\ ✔ \\Active GitHub (100+ commits)\\ ✔ \\Growing LinkedIn (300+ connections)\\ 💰 \\Earning Expectation → ₹8K-₹20K per month (Projects/Internship)\\ \\🟢 Year 2: Professional Growth & Specialization (12-24 Months)\\ 🎯 \\Goal: Build Professional Experience & Recognition\\ \\🔹 1-6 Months (Technical Depth)\\ ✅ Advanced ML Topics \- Deep Learning architectures \- Computer Vision OR NLP \- MLOps basics (Docker, FastAPI) \- Cloud fundamentals (AWS/GCP) ✅ Hackathon Achievements \- Win minor prizes in 2-3 hackathons \- Lead teams in major hackathons \- Network with sponsors ✅ Start Technical Blogging 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Focus on hackathon projects that align with career goals \- Build relationships with companies at hackathons \- Create detailed project documentation \\🔹 7-12 Months (Professional Experience)\\ ✅ Secure ML Role/Internship ✅ Advanced Project Building ✅ Open Source Contributions ✅ Organize Small Hackathons 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Use hackathon network for job referrals \- Convert hackathon projects into full products \- Build mentor reputation \\🔵 Year 2 Expected Outcome (60-70% Execution)\\ ✔ \\Professional ML experience\\ ✔ \\10+ hackathon participations\\ ✔ \\1-2 hackathon wins\\ ✔ \\Strong industry network\\ 💰 \\Earning Expectation → ₹40K-₹70K per month (Job/Freelancing)\\ \\🟢 Year 3: Scaling & Business Foundation (24-36 Months)\\ 🎯 \\Goal: Establish Multiple Income Streams\\ \\🔹 1-4 Months (Expertise Building)\\ ✅ Choose Specialization \- MLOps \- Computer Vision \- NLP/LLMs \- Generative AI ✅ Advanced Competitions \- International hackathons \- High-prize competitions \- Corporate ML challenges ✅ Start Consulting Services 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Use hackathon wins for marketing \- Build service packages around expertise \- Network with corporate sponsors \\🔹 5-8 Months (Business Development)\\ ✅ Scale Services ✅ Build Client Network ✅ Create Training Programs ✅ Hackathon Mentorship Program 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Convert hackathon projects to products \- Use event networks for client acquisition \- Build authority through speaking \\🔹 9-12 Months (Growth & Innovation)\\ ✅ Product Development ✅ Team Building ✅ Innovation Focus ✅ Hackathon Organization \\🔵 Year 3 Expected Outcome (60-70% Execution)\\ ✔ \\Established ML business/career\\ ✔ \\Known in hackathon community\\ ✔ \\Multiple income streams\\ ✔ \\Strong industry presence\\ 💰 \\Earning Expectation → ₹1L-₹2L per month (Multiple Streams)\\ \\🟢 Year 4: Scale & Leadership (36-48 Months)\\ 🎯 \\Goal: Build AI Company & Achieve Financial Freedom\\ \\🔹 1-4 Months (Business Scaling)\\ ✅ Company Formation \- AI consulting firm \- Product development \- Training programs ✅ Hackathon Innovation \- Launch own hackathon series \- Corporate partnerships \- Prize sponsorships ✅ Team Expansion 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Use hackathon network for hiring \- Create unique event formats \- Build corporate relationships \\🔹 5-8 Months (Market Leadership)\\ ✅ Product Launch ✅ Service Expansion ✅ International Presence ✅ Innovation Hub Creation 💡 \\Smart Move:\\ \- Create hackathon-to-hiring pipeline \- Build educational programs \- Establish thought leadership \\🔹 9-12 Months (Empire Building)\\ ✅ Multiple Revenue Streams \- AI products \- Consulting services \- Educational programs \- Event organization \- Investment returns ✅ Industry Leadership \- Conference speaking \- Published content \- Community leadership \\🔵 Year 4 Expected Outcome (60-70% Execution)\\ ✔ \\Established AI company\\ ✔ \\Major hackathon organizer\\ ✔ \\Multiple product lines\\ ✔ \\Industry authority status\\ 💰 \\Earning Expectation → ₹3L-₹5L+ per month (Business Income)\\ \\📊 FINAL RATING\\ ✅ \\Comprehensive growth plan\\ ✅ \\Strong community focus\\ ✅ \\Multiple income pathways\\ 💡 \\If 100% Execution → 8.5/10 Feasibility\\ 💡 \\If 50% Execution → 6/10 Feasibility\\ 🔥 \\Conclusion: A balanced path to ML mastery and entrepreneurship, built through consistent growth and community engagement!\\ 🚀 \\Key Success Factors:\\ Regular hackathon participation Strong community involvement Consistent skill development Strategic network building Focus on both technical and business growth

Is fine-tunig dead?

Hello, I am leading a business creation project in AI in France (Europe more broadly). To concretize and structure this project, my partners recommend me to collect feedback from professionals in the sector, and it is in this context that I am asking for your help. Lately, I have learned a lot about data annotation and I have seen a division of thoughts and I admit to being a little lost. Several questions come to mind, in particular is fine-tunig dead? RAG is it really better? Will we see few-shot learning gain momentum or will conventional learning with millions of data continue? And for whom? Too many questions, which I have grouped together in a form, if you would like to help me see more clearly the data needs of the market, I suggest you answer this short form (4 minutes): https://forms.gle/ixyHnwXGyKSJsBof6. This form is more for businesses, but if you have a good vision of the sector, feel free to respond. Your answers will remain confidential and anonymous. No personal or sensitive data is requested. This does not involve a monetary transfer. Thank you for your valuable help. You can also express your thoughts in response to this post. If you have any questions or would like to know more about this initiative, I would be happy to discuss it. Subnotik

Best way to pivot into AI/ML as a non-dev engineer?

I’m a biomedical engineer with a Masters, working in the Medical device industry for over a decade now. I have an interest in learning AI/ML to pivot my career. I know some basic python but I’m not a developer by any means. Most of my career is in the product/design quality engineering and regulatory compliance side of the business. Currently my role is in Failure Analysis for software medical devices. I’ve considered taking the Google Cloud ML Engineer related courses to get the certification, but I’m not sure if it will actually help pivot me into this field. Perhaps my focus should be more on the MLOps side of things as it may be an easier leap? I want to make a jump due a higher salary ceiling for AI/ML roles and I also have a genuine interest in automation. Overall just a bit confused and wanted to know what are the best options to pursue, and path to follow. Any guidance from folks who pivoted from other non-dev engineering would be super helpful. Thanks!

Best way to pivot into AI/ML as a non-dev engineer?

I’m a biomedical engineer with a Masters, working in the Medical device industry for over a decade now. I have an interest in learning AI/ML to pivot my career. I know some basic python but I’m not a developer by any means. Most of my career is in the product/design quality engineering and regulatory compliance side of the business. Currently my role is in Failure Analysis for software medical devices. I’ve considered taking the Google Cloud ML Engineer related courses to get the certification, but I’m not sure if it will actually help pivot me into this field. Perhaps my focus should be more on the MLOps side of things as it may be an easier leap? I want to make a jump due a higher salary ceiling for AI/ML roles and I also have a genuine interest in automation. Overall just a bit confused and wanted to know what are the best options to pursue, and path to follow. Any guidance from folks who pivoted from other non-dev engineering would be super helpful. Thanks!

Is this a good ML learning progression on Coursera?

AI for Everyone Python for Everybody (UMich) Applied Data Science with Python Specialization (UMich) Machine Learning (Andrew Ng) Data Engineering, Big Data, and ML on GCP Specialization Natural Language Processing Specialization TensorFlow Developer Professional Certificate Machine Learning Engineering for Production (MLOps) by DeepLearning.AI Deep Learning Specialization Mathematics for Machine Learning Specialization Cloud Computing Specialization Product Management for AI and ML Products Specialization I’m currently a highschool junior with currently minimal Python knowledge (currently in BC Calc so I do have somewhat of a math background). However, I do own and run a business and in my business space there’s a huge issue I want to solve that affects pretty much every business. But right now obviously I can’t because I don’t have the necessary knowledge. I do intend to turn this into a startup and pursue AI/ML in college. And I aim to at least start building MVP for startup around June-Sept this year. If startup is not successful then I would still want to be an AI engineer. But is this a good learning progression that I should be able to complete before I start college?

How difficult would it be to make my own AI porn generator as a complete beginner in ml

https://www.reddit.com/r/learnmachinelearning/s/5D6ihR10q9 Inspired by the post above ,I want to be able to do this,I know python but that's about it. Edit:This is for a business idea

Learning AI for Business Leaders

Hello Community, For the better part of 2 months I have been reading up on everything in getting a better understanding of the fundamentals of AI - from history of AI to reading the Google 8’s peer reviewed paper on the advent of transformers. I feel as though I am running in circles at times an not following a guided path approach to learning. I’m 40, work in international development in a leadership role - though I have a background in corporate finance and tech. I’m not an engineer, nor do I have the ambition of such a career pivot. However I do want to learn, be abreast, and know enough about the space when evaluating (and proposing) AI related opportunities - my role now should be a path towards a chief innovation officer for a development agency within the next 3-4 years. My sources have been basically everything I can find from tech blogs, WaPo, financial times, economist, and random internet searches. I have completed IBM’s Fundamental on AI course. However, I feel there no structure in learning as I have been piecemealing from so many different sources. Essentially I care about business cases and being able to confidently talk about AI. And not building and deploying a product. MIT and UPenn have some courses on AI for leaders, however, as the space is moving so fast I’m not confident how current their materials are. My ask: Are there any courses (or learning approaches) you recommend that is less-code and more focus on concept and applications I should do? Is my approach to learning too broad and I should focus on a subset of AI such as ML or specifically GenAI since it seems most applications are currently byproducts of it. Many thanks in advance for any support - truly appreciate it.

Automating Tax Expertise with Custom GPT – Need Advice

Hey everyone, I'm an accountant, and I want to build a custom GPT that specializes in tax laws. The idea is to upload all relevant tax laws, regulations, and books (in PDF format) so that when I ask a tax-related question, the AI can not only provide an answer but also cite the exact legal reference. I want to automate this process so that whenever tax laws are updated, the AI stays current. Has anyone here worked on something similar? What’s the best way to structure and automate data ingestion for a knowledge-based AI like this? Any tools or workflows you'd recommend for making the AI more accurate and reliable in referencing legal texts? Looking forward to your insights!

MarkDrop

I’m excited to share my Python package, Markdrop, which has hit 5.01k+ downloads in just a month, so updated it just now! 🚀 It’s a powerful tool for converting PDF documents into structured formats like Markdown (.md) and HTML (.html) while automatically processing images and tables into descriptions for downstream use. Here's what Markdrop does: Key Features: PDF to Markdown/HTML Conversion: Converts PDFs into clean, structured Markdown files (.md) or HTML outputs, preserving the content layout. AI-Powered Descriptions: Replaces tables and images with descriptive summaries generated by LLM, making the content fully textual and easy to analyze. Earlier I added support of 6 different LLM Clients, but to improve the inference time, now this supports only GEMINI\API\KEY and OPENAI\API\KEY. Downloadable Tables: Can add accurate download buttons in HTML for tables, allowing users to download them as Excel files. Seamless Table and Image Handling: Extracts tables and images, generating detailed summaries for each, which are then embedded into the final Markdown document. At the end, one can have a .md file that contains only textual data, including the AI-generated summaries of tables, images, graphs, etc. This results in a highly portable format that can be used directly for several downstream tasks, such as: Can be directly integrated into a RAG pipeline for enhanced content understanding and querying on documents containg useful images and tabular data. Ideal for automated content summarization and report generation. Facilitates extracting key data points from tables and images for further analysis. The .md files can serve as input for machine learning tasks or data-driven projects. Ideal for data extraction, simplifying the task of gathering key data from tables and images. The downloadable table feature is perfect for analysts, reducing the manual task of copying tables into Excel. Markdrop streamlines workflows for document processing, saving time and enhancing productivity. You can easily install it via: pip install markdrop There’s also a Colab demo available to try it out directly: Open in Colab. Github Repo If you've used Markdrop or plan to, I’d love to hear your feedback! Share your experience, any improvements, or how it helped in your workflow. Check it out on PyPI and let me know your thoughts!

Backend dev wants to learn ML

Hello ML Experts, I am staff engineer, working in a product based organization, handling the backend services. I see myself becoming Solution Architect and then Enterprise Architect one day. With the AI and ML trending now a days, So i feel ML should be an additional skill that i should acquire which can help me leading and architecting providing solutions to the problems more efficiently, I think however it might not replace the traditional SWEs working on backend APIs completely, but ML will be just an additional diamention similar to the knowledge of Cloud services and DevOps. So i would like to acquire ML knowledge, I dont have any plans to be an expert at it right now, nor i want to become a full time data scientist or ML engineer as of today. But who knows i might diverge, but thats not the plan currently. I did some quick promting with ChatGPT and was able to comeup with below learning path for me. So i would appreciate if some of you ML experts can take a look at below learning path and provide your suggestions 📌 PHASE 1: Core AI/ML & Python for AI (3-4 Months) Goal: Build a solid foundation in AI/ML with Python, focusing on practical applications. 1️⃣ Python for AI/ML (2-3 Weeks) Course: [Python for Data Science and Machine Learning Bootcamp]() (Udemy) Topics: Python, Pandas, NumPy, Matplotlib, Scikit-learn basics 2️⃣ Machine Learning Fundamentals (4-6 Weeks) Course: Machine Learning Specialization by Andrew Ng (C0ursera) Topics: Linear & logistic regression, decision trees, SVMs, overfitting, feature engineering Project: Build an ML model using Scikit-learn (e.g., predicting house prices) 3️⃣ Deep Learning & AI Basics (4-6 Weeks) Course: Deep Learning Specialization by Andrew Ng (C0ursera) Topics: Neural networks, CNNs, RNNs, transformers, generative AI (GPT, Stable Diffusion) Project: Train an image classifier using TensorFlow/Keras 📌 PHASE 2: AI/ML for Enterprise & Cloud Applications (3-4 Months) Goal: Learn how AI is integrated into cloud applications & enterprise solutions. 4️⃣ AI/ML Deployment & MLOps (4 Weeks) Course: MLOps Specialization by Andrew Ng (C0ursera) Topics: Model deployment, monitoring, CI/CD for ML, MLflow, TensorFlow Serving Project: Deploy an ML model as an API using FastAPI & Docker 5️⃣ AI/ML in Cloud (Azure, AWS, OpenAI APIs) (4-6 Weeks) Azure AI Services: Course: Microsoft AI Fundamentals (C0ursera) Topics: Azure ML, Azure OpenAI API, Cognitive Services AWS AI Services: Course: [AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty]() (Udemy) Topics: AWS Sagemaker, AI workflows, AutoML 📌 PHASE 3: AI Applications in Software Development & Future Trends (Ongoing Learning) Goal: Explore AI-powered tools & future-ready AI applications. 6️⃣ Generative AI & LLMs (ChatGPT, GPT-4, LangChain, RAG, Vector DBs) (4 Weeks) Course: [ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers]() (DeepLearning.AI) Topics: LangChain, fine-tuning, RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) Project: Build an LLM-based chatbot with Pinecone + OpenAI API 7️⃣ AI-Powered Search & Recommendations (Semantic Search, Personalization) (4 Weeks) Course: [Building Recommendation Systems with Python]() (Udemy) Topics: Collaborative filtering, knowledge graphs, AI search 8️⃣ AI-Driven Software Development (Copilot, AI Code Generation, Security) (Ongoing) Course: AI-Powered Software Engineering (C0ursera) Topics: AI code completion, AI-powered security scanning 🚀 Final Step: Hands-on Projects & Portfolio Once comfortable, work on real-world AI projects: AI-powered document processing (OCR + LLM) AI-enhanced search (Vector Databases) Automated ML pipelines with MLOps Enterprise AI Chatbot using LLMs ⏳ Suggested Timeline 📅 6-9 Months Total (10-12 hours/week) 1️⃣ Core ML & Python (3-4 months) 2️⃣ Enterprise AI/ML & Cloud (3-4 months) 3️⃣ AI Future Trends & Applications (Ongoing) Would you like a customized plan with weekly breakdowns? 🚀

I'm Building an "AiExecutiveSuperAgent_Systems_Interface" between humanity and the Ai world, as well as each other... Let's Talk?

Ok... So look... This one is pretty crazy... I'm building an Ai Interface that knows me better than I know myself - Check, lots of people have this, either in reality with employees and family members, or with ai intelligence. But it doesn't just know Me... It knows how to talk with Me. It understands my language, because I've trained it to. I've also trained it to translate that to all my clients and HumanAgents, soon to become RobotAgents... The RESULT: I can literally just spend 1-18 hours talking to it, and things get DONE. Most of that time, I just say EXECUTE, or ENGAGE, or DRAFT, or DISPATCH. I feel like a secret agent communicating in codes with his agency 😂 Not great for the paranoiac in me, but it's easy to get that part under control, ya'll. It's like having a team of 10,000 people, all available 24/7, all perfectly synchronised to each other's communication styles, preferences and ultimately: WHAT DO YOU NEED ME TO DO. At the end of the it all, having run my single COMMAND through a thousand of those people, a Document is prepared that outlines the next 3 stages of the plan, along with instructions to the whole team for how to ENACT it. Sounds rather grand and wonderful... Even when I simply use it to help me come up with a filing system for my creative work... \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Here's my current VISION, why I'm doing this AND why I'm doing it publicly despite it being top secret. VISION To create an army of User-Owned and Operated "AiSuperAgencies" which gather intelligence on the user, securely file and analyse it, and then construct a sub-army of agents and tools that work together to produce the desired output, for any Function in the Personal and Professional Lives of EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE, in 3-5 Years. To start, I'm building it for me and the 5-10 cleaners who've made it to Level 1 in my access system. They were sick of toxic employers, tyrannical agencies and greedy customers. They gathered around us (many came in, many went out, few stayed, took about a year for our core team of 3 Level 2 Cleaners. My goal has always been to never employ anyone. Just me, my Partner and the Cleaners. All Shared Owners in the system for delivering the right cleaner to the right house in our town, at the right time and without any dramas or arguments... I have a personal talent for resolving disputes, which has made working for and buying from my business a mostly enjoyable and upbeat experience, with a touch of mystery and a feeling that you're part of something big! It is a business that ran on Me. I put in my time, every day, building automated tool after automated tool. Hiring a contractor to do a job, scratching my head when it didn't add enough value to pay for itself, then just doing it myself again. I wanted to solve that problem. I'm trusting that the few who hear about it who actually see the potential, will just come join us, no dramas, just cool people partnering up! And those that don't, won't. No one could steal it, because it's Mine, and I'll just change the keys anyway loser! Enjoy digging through my past, you lunatic! I'm out here living Now. Anyways... It's lonely around here. I have a cleaning business that I run from my laptop, which means I can live anywhere, but I still had this big problem of time... NOT ENOUGH Oh Wait. It's Here.

Can I Download and Deploy a Custom AI Model Trained in Power Automate AI Builder?

Hello, I'm currently working on a project where I need to extract specific information from a large number of PDF documents—such as locations, addresses, machine types, etc. I’m using Power Automate AI Builder, which lets me label hundreds of PDFs and create collections for different document layouts. It’s a great tool for training a model to handle these tasks, but it seems like I can't download the trained model or deploy it outside of the Microsoft ecosystem (e.g., using it with Python or other platforms). The problem is, I need a model that can handle processing thousands of PDF files with varying layouts. The goal is to have a model that I can integrate with Python, and potentially, in the future, embed into a website or other applications. I'm aware of other tools like Google Document AI and Azure, but I’m wondering if these or other platforms allow the same kind of training process while also giving me the ability to download and use the model externally. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to try out these tools or alternatives because most of them require payment before you can experiment with them. Does anyone know if Google Document AI, Azure, or any other platforms offer this capability? Or any suggestions for other tools that might meet these needs? Any recommendations or insights would be greatly appreciated!

What AI tools sounds best for you?

Hey, I'm a developer who's been lurking here for a while and I want to build something actually useful or at least fun(or both) that is AI-related. Here are 4 ideas (but I'm open to completely different ones): AGI Timeline Prediction Market (🎯 no real money, just bragging rights) Finally settle those "AGI by 2030?" debates with some skin in the game Watch your prediction accuracy score climb (or hilariously tank) Monthly milestone tracking to see who really knows their stuff Like fantasy football, but for the robot apocalypse AI Model Release Calendar Never miss another GPT launch again Compare models without diving into 50 different Discord servers Clear "what can it actually do?" benchmarks Get pinged when something wild drops Research Paper Difficulty Rater Browser extension that saves you from opening papers way above your pay grade Community ratings from "ELI5" to "PhD Required" Shows what you need to know before diving in "Time to comprehend" estimates (coffee breaks vs weekend projects) AI Progress Newsletter + Extension Track what you've actually read vs. saved for "later" (we all know how that goes) Weekly TL;DR of the important stuff Focus on real breakthroughs, not just PR Impact ratings from "neat trick" to "call Elon" Before I dive in and build one of these - has anyone seen something similar already? What would make these actually useful vs just another tool that collects dust? P.S. Open to wildly different ideas or improvements too. Maybe we need something completely different to track our march towards AGI?

Built a Free AI Fitness Planner - From Passion to Product with No Traditional Coding

I posted this in r/entrepreneur as well but figured this is a great place too. I am looking to get your thoughts on this project and maybe some ideas as well. I wanted to share my journey of creating a free ai-powered workout planning tool with bolt. new and very minimal coding skills. It has taken me probably 4 days in total to complete and get to a point I am happy with. Many improvements coming but want to get it out there for some feedback and testing. I have been going to the gym for years and at this point my routines have gotten stale. I end up doing the same sets of exercises and repetitions over and over. I figured why not let chat gpt or some AI software help me develop or at least recommend different exercises. I was then was recommended youtube videos on creating your own web application without any coding. I will say it does take some coding knowledge, not that I am editing it myself, but I know what its trying to do and can prompt it correctly. I am still struggling with some things like integrating stripe for subscriptions so I only have it set up for donations currently. I dont mind it being free as I would like everyone the opportunity to help develop their own workouts. current cost breakdown to create: bolt. new credits - $100/month (gonna drop to the $20 now that its complete) supabase database - $35/month netlify domain - $11.99/year If anyone is interested or has questions feel free to let me know. It is called fitfocuscalendar. com this can all be done even cheaper using their free options but might take a lot more time depending on the complexity of the application as there are not a lot of free credits to code with each month and the supabase free database plan it pretty limited on size. title was AI generated.

Why isn't there automated AI data cleaning software already?

I've been getting into machine learning and data science, and I keep wondering: why isn't there more automated AI data cleaning software? I know there are some tools out there, but it feels like we’re missing a fully automated, easy-to-use solution. Data cleaning is such a crucial part of any ML project, so it seems like this should be a no-brainer.

Tried every no-code tool under the sun—finally built a fully custom business app in minutes with AI

Hey r/SideProject, After months of trying to piece together no-code tools to fit small businesses’ needs, I kept hitting a wall. Every setup felt like a workaround, never quite matching the way these businesses actually operate. That’s when I realized most SMBs need software that’s built around their specific workflows, not patched together. But developing something custom from scratch? Not realistic for most small businesses in terms of time or cost. So, I set out to create a new approach. Enter Crust AI—a tool where SMB owners just describe what they need, and in 5 minutes, it generates a fully functional app. Crust can even plug into existing data from Airtable, Monday, or Notion, and builds the entire interface on top with no design limitations—completely generated by AI. From client portals to vendor management systems, Crust delivers an end-to-end solution without the dev work. For once, I didn’t need to wrestle with endless integrations and limitations. If you’ve been through the same, check out trycrust.co and let me know your thoughts. Happy to answer questions or hear about your own experiences!

New no-code AI copilot creator: Knolli.ai

Introducing Knolli.ai, a new no-code AI chatbot builder that enables founders and entrepreneurs to develop copilots utilizing their own knowledge bases. Once they have built their copilot, we offer a monetization platform to start generating revenue. CPApilot.com, one of our clients, has experienced rapid growth by utilizing our platform. They have landed major clients and went from idea to revenue in just 3 months. We are genuinely thrilled to collaborate with founders to create new AI startups leveraging diverse knowledge bases and obtaining feedback. Mandeep from Knolli.ai

Why no code tools for building ai models failed?

Business folks have tasks where neural networks could help but they don’t know Python or deep learning, right? Meanwhile ML engineers know AI models but often don’t have an actual problem to solve. So the first group hires the second. Same thing happened with websites a while ago—at first you had to code everything then came drag-and-drop editors, no-code tools, and now even this "vibe coding" stuff. It’s not the most flexible or maintainable, but it works for a lot of people who just need to get something done without spending months learning to code. So why isn’t the same thing happening with building AI models? Like if I run a business I could save a ton of money by automating manual tasks with models trained on my own data. But I have zero clue what Jupyter Notebook or Keras are, and honestly, I don’t want to know. So I have to hire an ML engineer just to get it done because there’s no viable no-code solution for this.

Spent months patching no-code tools—built a full custom business app in 5 minutes with AI

Hey r/SideProject, I’ve spent months trying to patch together off-the-shelf tools and no-code platforms to create software for small businesses, but I kept running into the same problem—they just don’t fit how businesses actually work. That’s when I realized most small businesses need custom software tailored to their unique workflows, but the time and cost of building it from scratch are out of reach for most of them. So I decided to build a solution. Introducing Crust AI—a tool that lets SMB owners describe their exact needs, and in 5 minutes, it generates a fully functional app: client portals, employee hubs, vendor management systems—anything you need to streamline external collaboration. I went from wasting weeks stitching together no-code tools to having a zero-dev solution up and running in minutes. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. If you’ve been in the same boat as me, check out trycrust.co and let me know what you think!

I built a library to visualize and edit audio filters

Hey everyone! TLDR: No fancy AI Agents or trendy micro-SaaS here — just an old-school library. Scroll down for the demo link! 🙃 App Demo The Story Behind Several years ago, I deep-dived into reverse engineering the parameter system used in VAG (Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, etc) infotainment units. I managed to decode their binary format for storing settings for each car type and body style. To explain it simply - their firmware contains equalizer settings for each channel of the on-board 5.1 speaker system based on cabin volume and other parameters, very similar to how home theater systems are configured (gains, delays, limiters, etc). I published this research for the car enthusiast community. While the interest was huge, the reach remained small since most community members weren't familiar with hex editors. Only a few could really replicate what I documented. After some time, I built a web application that visualized these settings and allowed to unpack, edit and repack that data back into the binary format. Nowadays The original project was pretty messy (spaghetti code, honestly) and had a very narrow focus. But then I realized the visualization library itself could be useful for any audio processing software. When I first tried to visualize audio filters with that project, I hit a wall. Most charting libraries are built for business data, all those "enterprise-ready visualization solutions". But NONE of them is designed for audio-specific needs. D3.js is the only real option here — it’s powerful but requires days of digging through docs just to get basic styling right. And if you want interactive features like drag-and-drop? Good luck with that. (Fun fact: due to D3's multiple abstraction layers, just the same filter calculations in DSSSP are 1.4-2x faster than D3's implementation). So, I built a custom vector-based graph from scratch with a modern React stack. The library focuses on one thing - audio filters. No unnecessary abstractions, no enterprise bloat, just fast and convenient (I hope!) tools for tools for audio processing software. Core Features Logarithmic frequency response visualization Interactive biquad filter manipulation Custom audio calculation engine Drag-and-drop + Mouse wheel controls Flexible theming API Technical Details Built with React + SVG (no Canvas) Zero external dependencies besides React Full TypeScript support Live Demo & Docs & GitHub This is the first public release, landing page is missing, and the backlog is huge, and docs do not cover some aspects. (You know, there's never a perfect timimng - I just had to stop implementing my ideas and make it community driven). I'd love to see what you could build with these components. What's missing? What could be improved? I'm still lacking the understanding of how it could gain some cash flow, while staying open-source. Any ideas?

I created leadsnavi that helps small businesses find quality leads without breaking the bank

Hey Redditors, I’m excited to share LeadsNavi, a tool I built specifically to help small businesses and B2B professionals automatically generate leads and reach potential customers in a smarter way. After talking to a lot of small business owners, I realized how tough it is to juggle lead generation with limited resources. So, I decided to create a tool that could simplify the process and make it more accessible to those who don’t have the budget to invest in expensive solutions. What Exactly Is LeadsNavi? LeadsNavi is an intuitive, cost-effective platform that automates the process of lead generation. It's designed to make it easy for small businesses and entrepreneurs to identify quality leads and grow their customer base without the need for manual prospecting. Here’s what makes it stand out: Automatic Lead Tracking: Tracks visitors to your website and matches them with company data, so you get real insights into who’s interested in your business. AI-Powered Lead Recommendations: Based on your website’s traffic, LeadsNavi uses AI to suggest similar companies that could be interested in your product or service, helping you find new leads faster and more accurately. Affordable & Scalable: For only $49/month, you can use a highly effective tool that scales with your business. It’s designed to be affordable even for small businesses. CRM Integration: Connect your CRM to directly import leads and sync your outreach efforts. How Does It Work? LeadsNavi uses advanced algorithms to track website visitors' IP addresses and match them with a comprehensive business database. It provides details like company names, contact information, and helps you identify potential leads for follow-up. The best part? It works automatically, saving you hours of manual work and effort. Lead Identification: Get insights into which companies are visiting your website. AI-Driven Lead Recommendations: The AI analyzes your site’s traffic and suggests other companies in the same industry or with similar needs that might be a great fit for your product or service. Data-Enriched Leads: Gather real-time, actionable data on these leads to make your outreach more targeted. Easy Setup: Simply integrate with your website and CRM to start getting quality leads in minutes. Who’s It For? Small Businesses: You don’t have to be a marketing expert to generate quality leads. B2B Sales Teams: Perfect for anyone looking to target other businesses with a streamlined and automated approach. Entrepreneurs & Startups: Focus on scaling your business without worrying about lead generation overhead. Why Try It? LeadsNavi gives you the power to focus on what really matters—connecting with potential customers and scaling your business. If you’ve been struggling with finding quality leads, or if you’re just getting started, I believe LeadsNavi can help you save time, effort, and money. I’m offering a 14-day free trial, so you can see the tool in action before committing to anything. Give it a try and let me know what you think! I’d love to hear your thoughts, suggestions, and how it works for your business. https://preview.redd.it/fdwil4rssgle1.png?width=1867&format=png&auto=webp&s=eb73b41a2b7665ae1b651fe2a6b7459df6990530

Why I would encourage everyone to create a side project

Many people are afraid to start working on their projects, fearing they will be unsuccessful and waste a lot of time without gaining anything in return. However, this is the biggest trap of all: you actually gain much more than just money. Even if you don't become super successful and make millions of dollars, what is it really about? When you work on your project, you immerse yourself in development across all aspects. For example, when I used to work, I focused solely on my direct responsibilities. But when you create your project, you cannot limit yourself to a narrow range of tasks; you need to handle everything. If it's a website or an app, you must manage the frontend, backend, and deployment. If it's an app, you need to upload it to stores and understand legal nuances like terms of use and privacy policies. This is just one part of it. Here, you already realize the wealth of knowledge you can gain. Additionally, you are likely to enhance your competence in the technical aspects of your work. Now, let's move to part two—part one is about creating, and part two is about selling. Selling is essentially a separate art and often more complex than development. Thus, you will probably have to immerse yourself in a completely new area and gain experience in it. On top of that, there's another nice bonus: introductions. If you develop a product publicly, you will receive feedback, and perhaps someone will appreciate your project. That person may reach out to you, leading to new connections and acquaintances—often very valuable ones. So even if you don't earn a penny from your project, you will have gained tremendous experience. Of course, if your project consists merely of jumping into AI, writing something, and publishing it immediately without thoughtful consideration, it's unlikely you'll gain any benefit. Therefore, every time I complete a project, I never focus on making millions of dollars. Instead, I first thank the universe for the opportunities I had to create this project, gain experience, and meet wonderful people. Good luck!

I Built Blainy - An AI Writing Tool for Students and Researchers

Hello Everyone, I built Blainy, an AI writing tool designed to make writing easier and more efficient, based on my own experiences as a student working part-time and struggling to find the time for essays and assignments. Blainy is perfect for students, researchers, content creators, and bloggers. It addresses the gaps where most writing tools fall short and helps you write essays, assignments, research papers, product descriptions, blog content, and more with ease. I created this tool based on the problems I faced, so I genuinely want to know your review on this. Blainy's Features: AI Suggestions: This feature provides you with suggestions while you are writing, so you don't face the writer's block issue. This was the main issue I usually faced when writing my essays. You will get suggestions while you are writing, and if you don't like them, you can always ask for alternatives. AI Automation: If you want AI to write for you, you can choose this feature. It will write one to two paragraphs according to what you select. You can choose to write an introduction, conclusion, arguments, etc. If you just want it to write casually, select the "continue writing" feature, and it will write all on its own. Paraphrasing: If you want to paraphrase your text, you can do it on Blainy. You can also select different tones for writing, such as academic, friendly, simplicity, and more. Citations: By using this feature, you no longer need to search for citations on Google or ChatGPT. Blainy will load millions of citations for you in seconds. You can select any citation you want, and if you want to add a custom citation, you can do that too. Built-in Plagiarism Checker: Blainy includes a plagiarism checker to ensure that your content is original and plagiarism-free. PDF Chat: If you have any questions about a document that you are curious about or don't understand, you can use this feature. It will answer your question and help you summarize the whole article, and more. Best of all, We provide daily credits so you can access all these features for free with daily credits! We understand the unique challenges faced by students, including those with dyslexia and other writing difficulties. That's why we're working on adding features like a voice-to-text converter to assist students who struggle with writing. Your feedback is invaluable to us, so please don't hesitate to reach out and share your thoughts. We're also considering adding some free tools like paraphrasing to attract more users. If you have any suggestions for additional features that would be beneficial, please let me know. Your input can help us improve Blainy and make it even more valuable for everyone. If you have any good ideas that you think can help us in any way, please let me know. Thank you in advance for your support and feedback! Check it out: Blainy

How I got 1000 users on day one.

This might sound like a small number, depending on who you ask, but you know it’s a start. I’ll just share my learnings so far. Introduction: The product is simple: you type what you want to build, like, let's say, a SaaS idea, and it generates the code using a framework of your choice (like NextJS). Currently, it only generates front-end code. The marketing strategy was mainly focused on social media. My social media stats are as follows: I have a whopping 14 followers on Twitter, and 10 of them are bot accounts, and on LinkedIn, it’s about 400 or so. Launching on LinkedIn: LinkedIn is unique in two different ways: The algorithm is friendly to the little guy. Your network (the people) aren’t always friendly to the little guy. Let me elaborate. This is something I learned today, actually. When I posted for the first time and asked about three of my friends to repost it, within the first hour there were about 200 views, and the click-through rate was around 40%. This was really good, given that it was in the morning. I don’t know the exact factors, but I did have a video in my post, and those three reposts probably amplified it. However, people don’t seem to like or comment on it as much as you would think. Most of my connections are CS students because I am a recent grad, so it seems like most people can relate to this product, but none of them would even put a comment or a like. At the same time, I see people liking posts from big brands like OpenAI, Microsoft, etc. I am really confused, to be honest. However, throughout the day, the view count was going up, and people were coming. Launching on Twitter: Twitter didn’t really work for me at all. I think you need a decent audience. But there are tweets like “What startup are you working on?” type questions, and from that, I find you get a couple of views on your profile. Even though Twitter didn’t really help with the views, one guy tweeted, “Keep posting on Twitter and one day this might become something like Notion.” That really made my day, to be honest. Launching on Discord: This worked really well, to be honest, especially given that I was in a lot of Discord servers where there are software devs. If you use the right language that resonates with them, it’s a home run. Not much to say, but don’t use marketing lingo; people don’t like it there. Instagram and TikTok didn’t really work. Mainly, I think my video didn’t really resonate much. Finally, Facebook Launch: The Facebook reels didn’t really do the trick. Then I posted in a bunch of groups, and still, it didn’t really do anything. But then I sent cold DMs on Facebook, and that had a pretty high open rate because I sent them to people who I saw commented on posts related to what my product was solving. Obviously, after a while, Facebook blocks the ability to send DMs. That’s all for now. Thanks I’ll post my promo video in the comment section just so that you know the video and why it might have resonated with some platforms. Also this is the first time I made a video and I’m actually proud of making that more than the product itself. To summarize, for this idea LinkedIn worked really well, because of the algorithm not the ppl commenting and liking which is what I thought should be the way. Followed by Discord groups and Facebook DMs. The video I made seemed to resonate really well with the LinkedIn audience (the engagement was around 60%) despite falling in TikTok and other video sharing platforms.

What would be your strategy to go from $0 to $10K/month in 2025?

Hello guys, I hope we can brainstorm some strategies for my case and perhaps people reading this can learn a thing or two also. So I currently have a full time job (9-6) and I'm working on two side projects, one is a weight loss tracker and analysis app, the other is an AI website builder. I know, not groundbreaking technologies (is there anything left to be invented anymore?). So my goal is not to build this huge corporation and take over the world, no. My goal for 2025 is to launch these two products and to grow them to $10K/month, which would allow me to quit my job and focus full time on my projects. I was wondering what would be your strategy and launch timeline to achieve that? What can I expect in terms of effort and resources for marketing and adoption? What key metrics are important to monitor after launch?

Compare trading strategies on the fly - pnl.ai - please check it out

Part of my covid project and part of my long obsession with prediction markets, I have created a web page that displays and allows to compare best and worst performing trading strategies. TL;DR: best stocks + best strategies -> the list of top and bottom performing trading algorithms.  Product Typically, trading newsletters and stock-scanners display only price return for top market gainers and losers. I have forever been interested in inspecting top and bottom performing trading strategies for a given set of securities and could not find any websites that do that. So, I decided to create a tool of my own. I wanted the tool that would help me to answer questions like if there is a better strategy than buy and hold, should I follow greed and fear indicator of the market or do the opposite. Top and bottom performing securities do not tell you if a stock is going to go up or down, but they do alert you to rapidly changing market conditions, such as change in the competitive landscape, impending lawsuits, changes in the company's management and, at the very least, the stocks you should avoid in your programmatic trading. Top strategies do all that, but they can also alert you to a change in the market regime. For example, MACD strategy, which is a variant of oscillator strategy, executed on Citibank stock returned 20% in the first half of 2020. In the same time period, the Citibank stock went down and "BuyAndHold" strategy, which is pretty much what it sounds, lost 45%. Now, compare that to the end of 2020 through spring of 2021, when MACD lost 1% and "BuyAndHold" gained 70%. This happened due to the change in the market due to the rally in financial stocks at the end of 2020. The market player who detect change in the market conditions first will reap most benefits. Another example, TSLA since the beginning of 2021 until end of April lost 7%. The StopLoss strategy sells the position after abrupt price drop and waits until the price returns to the level before the drop. For the same time interval the StopLoss strategy gained 10%. In this particular example, StopLoss outperformed BuyAndHold. To me personally, the most important feature is the ability to quickly tweak and modify trading strategies and observe change in their performance. You can change strategies parameters on the fly and even design your own custom trading strategy. In the end, I developed a tool I can use for myself but hope other investors who are experimenting with trading algorithms will find it useful as well. I called it "Profit and Loss AI", or PnL.ai for short. PnL.ai Description The web-tool in the link below allows you to customize parameters of existing strategies and essentially create your own strategy and seeing how it will compare to the set of original strategies. http://ec2-54-185-19-38.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com:5006/srv In the section above you can specify security and data range. In the section below you can choose strategy to customize and modify it's parameters. The strategy comparison table will automatically update and will display a newly created strategy side by side with the original strategies. Technology The tool is developed on bokeh and python and allows you to edit configuration parameters of each strategy all without programming knowledge. The strategies are fully specified via key/value pairs in the format of ini files used to initialize programs. The strategy classes are autogenerated by reading the ini config files dynamically using "factory" pattern. You can find a simplified code in this github repo: https://github.com/varturas/PnlAITk Next Steps In the future I want to give users ability to monitor their chosen strategy by receiving trading algo alerts whenever performance of their custom trading algo is changes significantly. I'm going to be adding more strategies, some of standard technical analysis variety and some will be more custom and more advanced. I'll also be adding more columns to the performance table to give better information. You can receive daily newsletter with the list of trading strategies generated by above-mentioned web-tool by registering on http://pnl.ai/ and checking subscribe checkmark.

How me and my team made 15+ apps and not made a single sale in 2023

Hey, my name is Michael, I am in Auckland NZ. This year was the official beginning of my adult life. I graduated from university and started a full-time job. I’ve also really dug into indiehacking/bootstrapping and started 15 projects (and it will be at least 17 before the year ends). I think I’ve learned a lot but I consciously repeated mistakes. Upto (Nov) Discord Statuses + Your Location + Facebook Poke https://preview.redd.it/4nqt7tp2tf5c1.png?width=572&format=png&auto=webp&s=b0223484bc54b45b5c65e0b1afd0dc52f9c02ad1 This was the end of uni, I often messaged (and got messaged) requests of status and location to (and from my) friends. I thought, what if we make a social app that’s super basic and all it does is show you where your friends are? To differentiate from snap maps and others we wanted something with more privacy where you select the location. However, never finished the codebase or launched it. This is because I slowly started to realize that B2C (especially social networks) are way too hard to make into an actual business and the story with Fistbump would repeat itself. However, this decision not to launch it almost launched a curse on our team. From that point, we permitted ourselves to abandon projects even before launching. Lessons: Don’t do social networks if your goal is 10k MRR ASAP. If you build something to 90% competition ship it or you will think it’s okay to abandon projects Insight Bites (Nov) Youtube Summarizer Extension &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/h6drqej4tf5c1.jpg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0f211456c390ac06f4fcb54aa51f9d50b0826658 Right after Upto, we started ideating and conveniently the biggest revolution in the recent history of tech was released → GPT. We instantly began ideating. The first problem we chose to use AI for is to summarize YouTube videos. Comical. Nevertheless, I am convinced we have had the best UX because you could right-click on a video to get a slideshow of insights instead of how everyone else did it. We dropped it because there was too much competition and unit economics didn’t work out (and it was a B2C). PodPigeon (Dec) Podcast → Tweet Threads https://preview.redd.it/0ukge245tf5c1.png?width=2498&format=png&auto=webp&s=23303e1cab330578a3d25cd688fa67aa3b97fb60 Then we thought, to make unit economics work we need to make this worthwhile for podcasters. This is when I got into Twitter and started seeing people summarize podcasts. Then I thought, what if we make something that converts a podcast into tweets? This was probably one of the most important projects because it connected me with Jason and Jonaed, both of whom I regularly stay in contact with and are my go-to experts on ideas related to content creation. Jonaed was even willing to buy Podpigeon and was using it on his own time. However, the unit economics still didn’t work out (and we got excited about other things). Furthermore, we got scared of the competition because I found 1 - 2 other people who did similar things poorly. This was probably the biggest mistake we’ve made. Very similar projects made 10k MRR and more, launching later than we did. We didn’t have a coherent product vision, we didn’t understand the customer well enough, and we had a bad outlook on competition and a myriad of other things. Lessons: I already made another post about the importance of outlook on competition. Do not quit just because there are competitors or just because you can’t be 10x better. Indiehackers and Bootstrappers (or even startups) need to differentiate in the market, which can be via product (UX/UI), distribution, or both. Asking Ace Intro.co + Crowdsharing &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/0hu2tt16tf5c1.jpg?width=1456&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3d397568ef2331e78198d64fafc1a701a3e75999 As I got into Twitter, I wanted to chat with some people I saw there. However, they were really expensive. I thought, what if we made some kind of crowdfunding service for other entrepreneurs to get a private lecture from their idols? It seemed to make a lot of sense on paper. It was solving a problem (validated via the fact that Intro.co is a thing and making things cheaper and accessible is a solid ground to stand on), we understood the market (or so we thought), and it could monetize relatively quickly. However, after 1-2 posts on Reddit and Indiehackers, we quickly learned three things. Firstly, no one cares. Secondly, even if they do, they think they can get the same information for free online. Thirdly, the reasons before are bad because for the first point → we barely talked to people, and for the second people → we barely talked to the wrong people. However, at least we didn’t code anything this time and tried to validate via a landing page. Lessons Don’t give up after 1 Redditor says “I don’t need this” Don’t be scared to choose successful people as your audience. Clarito Journaling with AI analyzer https://preview.redd.it/8ria2wq6tf5c1.jpg?width=1108&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=586ec28ae75003d9f71b4af2520b748d53dd2854 Clarito is a classic problem all amateur entrepreneurs have. It’s where you lie to yourself that you have a real problem and therefore is validated but when your team asks you how much you would pay you say I guess you will pay, maybe, like 5 bucks a month…? Turns out, you’d have to pay me to use our own product lol. We sent it off to a few friends and posted on some forums, but never really got anything tangible and decided to move away. Honestly, a lot of it is us in our own heads. We say the market is too saturated, it’ll be hard to monetize, it’s B2C, etc. Lessons: You use the Mom Test on other people. You have to do it yourself as well. However, recognizing that the Mom Test requires a lot of creativity in its investigation because knowing what questions to ask can determine the outcome of the validation. I asked myself “Do I journal” but I didn’t ask myself “How often do I want GPT to chyme in on my reflections”. Which was practically never. That being said I think with the right audience and distribution, this product can work. I just don’t know (let alone care) about the audience that much (and I thought I was one of them)/ Horns & Claw Scrapes financial news texts you whether you should buy/sell the stock (news sentiment analysis) &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/gvfxdgc7tf5c1.jpg?width=1287&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=63977bbc33fe74147b1f72913cefee4a9ebec9c2 This one we didn’t even bother launching. Probably something internal in the team and also seemed too good to be true (because if this works, doesn’t that just make us ultra-rich fast?). I saw a similar tool making 10k MRR so I guess I was wrong. Lessons: This one was pretty much just us getting into our heads. I declared that without an audience it would be impossible to ship this product and we needed to start a YouTube channel. Lol, and we did. And we couldn’t even film for 1 minute. I made bold statements like “We will commit to this for at least 1 year no matter what”. Learnery Make courses about any subject https://preview.redd.it/1nw6z448tf5c1.jpg?width=1112&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f2c73e8af23b0a6c3747a81e785960d4004feb48 This is probably the most “successful” project we’ve made. It grew from a couple of dozen to a couple of hundred users. It has 11 buy events for $9.99 LTD (we couldn’t be bothered connecting Stripe because we thought no one would buy it anyway). However what got us discouraged from seriously pursuing it more is, that this has very low defensibility, “Why wouldn’t someone just use chatGPT?” and it’s B2C so it’s hard to monetize. I used it myself for a month or so but then stopped. I don’t think it’s the app, I think the act of learning a concept from scratch isn’t something you do constantly in the way Learnery delivers it (ie course). I saw a bunch of similar apps that look like Ass make like 10k MRR. Lessons: Don’t do B2C, or if you do, do it properly Don’t just Mixpanel the buy button, connect your Stripe otherwise, it doesn’t feel real and you won’t get momentum. I doubt anyone (even me) will make this mistake again. I live in my GPT bubble where I make assumptions that everyone uses GPT the same way and as much as I do. In reality, the argument that this has low defensibility against GPT is invalid. Platforms that deliver a differentiated UX from ChatGPT to audiences who are not tightly integrated into the habit of using ChatGPT (which is like - everyone except for SOME tech evangelists). CuriosityFM Make podcasts about any subject https://preview.redd.it/zmosrcp8tf5c1.jpg?width=638&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d04ddffabef9050050b0d87939273cc96a8637dc This was our attempt at making Learnery more unique and more differentiated from chatGPT. We never really launched it. The unit economics didn’t work out and it was actually pretty boring to listen to, I don’t think I even fully listened to one 15-minute episode. I think this wasn’t that bad, it taught us more about ElevenLabs and voice AI. It took us maybe only 2-3 days to build so I think building to learn a new groundbreaking technology is fine. SleepyTale Make children’s bedtime stories https://preview.redd.it/14ue9nm9tf5c1.jpg?width=807&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=267e18ec6f9270e6d1d11564b38136fa524966a1 My 8-year-old sister gave me that idea. She was too scared of making tea and I was curious about how she’d react if she heard a bedtime story about that exact scenario with the moral that I wanted her to absorb (which is that you shouldn’t be scared to try new things ie stop asking me to make your tea and do it yourself, it’s not that hard. You could say I went full Goebbels on her). Zane messaged a bunch of parents on Facebook but no one really cared. We showed this to one Lady at the place we worked from at Uni and she was impressed and wanted to show it to her kids but we already turned off our ElevenLabs subscription. Lessons: However, the truth behind this is beyond just “you need to be able to distribute”. It’s that you have to care about the audience. I don’t particularly want to build products for kids and parents. I am far away from that audience because I am neither a kid anymore nor going to be a parent anytime soon, and my sister still asked me to make her tea so the story didn’t work. I think it’s important to ask yourself whether you care about the audience. The way you answer that even when you are in full bias mode is, do you engage with them? Are you interested in what’s happening in their communities? Are you friends with them? Etc. User Survey Analyzer Big User Survey → GPT → Insights Report Me and my coworker were chatting about AI when he asked me to help him analyze a massive survey for him. I thought that was some pretty decent validation. Someone in an actual company asking for help. Lessons Market research is important but moving fast is also important. Ie building momentum. Also don’t revolve around 1 user. This has been a problem in multiple projects. Finding as many users as possible in the beginning to talk to is key. Otherwise, you are just waiting for 1 person to get back to you. AutoI18N Automated Internationalization of the codebase for webapps This one I might still do. It’s hard to find a solid distribution strategy. However, the idea came from me having to do it at my day job. It seems a solid problem. I’d say it’s validated and has some good players already. The key will be differentiation via the simplicity of UX and distribution (which means a slightly different audience). In the backlog for now because I don’t care about the problem or the audience that much. Documate - Part 1 Converts complex PDFs into Excel https://preview.redd.it/8b45k9katf5c1.jpg?width=1344&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=57324b8720eb22782e28794d2db674b073193995 My mom needed to convert a catalog of furniture into an inventory which took her 3 full days of data entry. I automated it for her and thought this could have a big impact but there was no distribution because there was no ICP. We tried to find the ideal customers by talking to a bunch of different demographics but I flew to Kazakhstan for a holiday and so this kind of fizzled out. I am not writing this blog post linearity, this is my 2nd hour and I am tired and don’t want to finish this later so I don’t even know what lessons I learned. Figmatic Marketplace of high-quality Figma mockups of real apps https://preview.redd.it/h13yv45btf5c1.jpg?width=873&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aaa2896aeac2f22e9b7d9eed98c28bb8a2d2cdf1 This was a collab between me and my friend Alex. It was the classic Clarito where we both thought we had this problem and would pay to fix it. In reality, this is a vitamin. Neither I, nor I doubt Alex have thought of this as soon as we bought the domain. We posted it on Gumroad, sent it to a bunch of forums, and called it a day. Same issue as almost all the other ones. No distribution strategy. However, apps like Mobin show us that this concept is indeed profitable but it takes time. It needs SEO. It needs a community. None of those things, me and Alex had or was interested in. However shortly after HTML → Figma came out and it’s the best plugin. Maybe that should’ve been the idea. Podcast → Course Turns Podcaster’s episodes into a course This one I got baited by Jason :P I described to him the idea of repurposing his content for a course. He told me this was epic and he would pay. Then after I sent him the demo, he never checked it out. Anyhow during the development, we realized that doesn’t actually work because A podcast doesn’t have the correct format for the course, the most you can extract are concepts and ideas, seldom explanations. Most creators want video-based courses to be hosted on Kajabi or Udemy Another lesson is that when you pitch something to a user, what you articulate is a platform or a process, they imagine an outcome. However, the end result of your platform can be a very different outcome to what they had in mind and there is even a chance that what they want is not possible. You need to understand really well what the outcome looks like before you design the process. This is a classic problem where we thought of the solution before the problem. Yes, the problem exists. Podcasters want to make courses. However, if you really understand what they want, you can see how repurposing a podcast isn’t the best way to get there. However I only really spoke to 1-2 podcasters about this so making conclusions is dangerous for this can just be another asking ace mistake with the Redditor. Documate Part 2 Same concept as before but now I want to run some ads. We’ll see what happens. https://preview.redd.it/xb3npj0ctf5c1.jpg?width=1456&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3cd4884a29fd11d870d010a2677b585551c49193 In conclusion https://preview.redd.it/2zrldc9dtf5c1.jpg?width=1840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2b3105073e752ad41c23f205dbd1ea046c1da7ff It doesn’t actually matter that much whether you choose to do a B2C, or a social network or focus on growing your audience. All of these can make you successful. What’s important is that you choose. If I had to summarize my 2023 in one word it’s indecision. Most of these projects succeeded for other people, nothing was as fundamentally wrong about them as I proclaimed. In reality that itself was an excuse. New ideas seduce, and it is a form of discipline to commit to a single project for a respectful amount of time. https://preview.redd.it/zy9a2vzdtf5c1.jpg?width=1456&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=901c621227bba0feb4efdb39142f66ab2ebb86fe Distribution is not just posting on Indiehackers and Reddit. It’s an actual strategy and you should think of it as soon as you think of the idea, even before the Figma designs. I like how Denis Shatalin taught me. You have to build a pipeline. That means a reliable way to get leads, launch campaigns at them, close deals, learn from them, and optimize. Whenever I get an idea now I always try to ask myself “Where can I find 1000s leads in one day?” If there is no good answer, this is not a good project to do now. &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/2boh3fpetf5c1.jpg?width=1456&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1c0d5d7b000716fcbbb00cbad495e8b61e25be66 Talk to users before doing anything. Jumping on designing and coding to make your idea a reality is a satisfying activity in the short term. Especially for me, I like to create for the sake of creation. However, it is so important to understand the market, understand the audience, understand the distribution. There are a lot of things to understand before coding. https://preview.redd.it/lv8tt96ftf5c1.jpg?width=1456&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6c8735aa6ad795f216ff9ddfa2341712e8277724 Get out of your own head. The real reason we dropped so many projects is that we got into our own heads. We let the negative thoughts creep in and kill all the optimism. I am really good at coming up with excuses to start a project. However, I am equally as good at coming up with reasons to kill a project. And so you have this yin and yang of starting and stopping. Building momentum and not burning out. I can say with certainty my team ran out of juice this year. We lost momentum so many times we got burnt out towards the end. Realizing that the project itself has momentum is important. User feedback and sales bring momentum. Building also creates momentum but unless it is matched with an equal force of impact, it can stomp the project down. That is why so many of our projects died quickly after we launched. The smarter approach is to do things that have a low investment of momentum (like talking to users) but result in high impact (sales or feedback). Yes, that means the project can get invalidated which makes it more short-lived than if we built it first, but it preserves team life energy. At the end of 2023 here is a single sentence I am making about how I think one becomes a successful indiehacker. One becomes a successful Indiehacker when one starts to solve pain-killer problems in the market they understand, for an audience they care about and consistently engage with for a long enough timeframe. Therefore an unsuccessful Indiehacker in a single sentence is An unsuccessful Indiehacker constantly enters new markets they don’t understand to build solutions for people whose problems they don’t care about, in a timeframe that is shorter than than the time they spent thinking about distribution. However, an important note to be made. Life is not just about indiehacking. It’s about learning and having fun. In the human world, the best journey isn’t the one that gets you the fastest to your goals but the one you enjoy the most. I enjoyed making those silly little projects and although I do not regret them, I will not repeat the same mistakes in 2024. But while it’s still 2023, I have 2 more projects I want to do :) EDIT: For Devs, frontend is always react with vite (ts) and backend is either node with express (ts) or python. For DB either Postgres or mongo (usually Prisma for ORM). For deployment all of it is on AWS (S3, EC2). In terms of libraries/APIs Whisper.cpp is best open source for transcription Obviously the gpt apis Eleven labs for voice related stuff And other random stuff here and there

I got 400+ new customers in first 48 hours after launch!!!!

Yesterday I launched my new software and got 400+ customers in 48 hours. I'm gonna break down the product and my launch strategy. What is it? Remember when Elon was taking over Twitter and he emailed the CEO of Twitter Parag Agrawal saying “What did you get done this week?” Well I turned this idea into a software lol. A couple months ago, I had a realization while talking with some friends: I love asking ChatGPT for business advice, but I never remember to actually do it. Now what if there was a pro-active AI business coach that checked in on me every week? Something to keep me accountable and track my progress building my empire. It could have a database where I could see my progress every single week!!! And what if this AI business coach was a simple email that says “What did you get done this week?” So I built this: Elon Email. A weekly 1-on-1 with Elon Musk Every Sunday night for the last month, I’ve been getting a weekly email from Elon Musk saying “What did you get done this week?” I take a few minutes to write back with everything I got done that week: new revenue metrics, a list of the new features I shipped, new employees onboarded, number of workouts, exciting calls and collaboration opportunities, etc. Then an AI trained on Elon would give me tailored advice all in my email. And here's the best part. Rather than a nice friendly soft-spoken AI, I prompted the AI to be as savage and ruthless as Elon with its business advice. And it actually worked. One user said "it's like a slap in the face". I knew with 2025 New Years resolutions coming, I needed to launch it ASAP so I pushed through an all-nighter on Friday and got it launched today. Launch strategy: \> Focus on X (fka Twitter) as main source. I have 31,000 followers on X from the last few years building startups, so I posted my launch this morning there. X is Elon's social media network now so I didn't waste time on other platforms. I basically didn't look up from my phone for like 12 hours (my wife was pissed at me because we're technically on vacation but yolo) and I commented, engaged, and DMed with everyone I could. It paid off with 50,000+ views on the post and nearly 300 likes so far. \> Purposely exclude people. Yes, I know this sounds weird, but you need to purposely exclude some people to focus on the people who will actually use your product. I know a lot of people hate Elon and will hate me for making this. I don't care. I only care about the people who will actually use it aka my customers. The same thing with making it a "savage AI". I know there will be some people who prefer a nice friendly soft AI, but that's not my customer base. The internet is big enough you can find your customer base but you've gotta be willing to exclude some people to speak to the right people! \> Free tier. The weekly Elon email and AI reply is free. I also have a paid tier for a daily email and database access. I know I'm technically losing money on API fees for the free email and AI requests, but it's a loss leader, the costs are actually quite minimal since it's only 1 API request/week, and some % will convert and already have. Doing free was worth it to give people a chance to try it. I hope this helps with your next launch!!!

ChatPDF and PDF.ai are making millions using open source tech... here's the code

Why "copy" an existing product? The best SaaS products weren’t the first of their kind - think Slack, Shopify, Zoom, Dropbox, or HubSpot. They didn’t invent team communication, e-commerce, video conferencing, cloud storage, or marketing tools; they just made them better. What is a "Chat with PDF" SaaS? These are AI-powered PDF assistants that let you upload a PDF and ask questions about its content. You can summarize articles, extract key details from a contract, analyze a research paper, and more. To see this in action or dive deeper into the tech behind it, check out this YouTube video. Let's look at the market Made possible by advances in AI like ChatGPT and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), PDF chat tools started gaining traction in early 2023 and have seen consistent growth in market interest, which is currently at an all-time high (source:google trends) Keywords like "chat PDF" and "PDF AI" get between 1 to 10 million searches every month (source:keyword planner), with a broad target audience that includes researchers, students, and professionals across various industries. Leaders like PDF.ai and ChatPDF have already gained millions of users within a year of launch, driven by the growing market demand, with paid users subscribing at around $20/month. Alright, so how do we build this with open source? The core tech for most PDF AI tools are based on the same architecture. You generate text embeddings (AI-friendly text representations; usually via OpenAI APIs) for the uploaded PDF’s chapters/topics and store them in a vector database (like Pinecone). Now, every time the user asks a question, a similarity search is performed to find the most similar PDF topics from the vector database. The selected topic contents are then sent to an LLM (like ChatGPT) along with the question, which generates a contextual answer! Here are some of the best open source implementations for this process: GPT4 & LangChain Chatbot for large PDF docs by Mayo Oshin MultiPDF Chat App by Alejandro AO PDFToChat by Hassan El Mghari Worried about building signups, user management, payments, etc.? Here are my go-to open-source SaaS boilerplates that include everything you need out of the box: SaaS Boilerplate by Remi Wg Open SaaS by wasp-lang A few ideas to stand out from the noise: Here are a few strategies that could help you differentiate and achieve product market fit (based on the pivot principles from The Lean Startup by Eric Ries): Narrow down your target audience for a personalized UX: For instance, an exam prep assistant for students with study notes and quiz generator; or a document due diligence and analysis tool for lawyers. Add unique features to increase switching cost: You could autogenerate APIs for the uploaded PDFs to enable remote integrations (eg. support chatbot knowledge base); or build in workflow automation features for bulk analyses of PDFs. Offer platform level advantages: You could ship a native mobile/desktop apps for a more integrated UX; or (non-trivial) offer private/offline support by replacing the APIs with local open source deployments (eg. llama for LLM, an embedding model from the MTEB list, and FAISS for vector search). TMI? I’m an ex-AI engineer and product lead, so don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions! P.S. I've started a free weekly newsletter to share open-source/turnkey resources behind popular products (like this one). If you’re a founder looking to launch your next product without reinventing the wheel, please subscribe :)

I launched a site 3 weeks ago and it's made $2.6k so far, what next?

I launched my side project 3 weeks ago - an AI platform that lets you use 9+ AI apps in one (AI Music, AI Image generation, AI Chat with PDF, an AI library of tools, and 6 LLMs) It's made $2.6k so far in revenue, but now it's not growing and I need to find a new strategy (ninjachat dot ai) I made the site in around a week, did one sponsored post that took off a little to get us our first few hundred in revenue. Since then I've done more influencer marketing but now it's not converting anymore. Let me know if you have feedback on the site and any insight on how we can grow this. https://reddit.com/link/1e8xdld/video/q29zjykjyxdd1/player

I retired at 32 from my side project. Here's the path I took.

EDIT 2: Thanks for the award kind stranger! I've stopped responding to reddit comments for this post. I'm adding an FAQ to the original post based on the most common high quality questions. If you have a question that you're dying to know the answer to and that only I can help you with (vs. Google, ChatGPT, etc.), DM me. EDIT: I love how controversial this post has become (50% upvote rate), and only in this subreddit (vs. other subreddits that I posted the same content in). I trust that the open-minded half of you will find something useful in this post and my other posts and comments. I retired at 32 years old, in large part thanks to a B2C SaaS app that I developed on my own. Now, I don't have to work in order to cover my living expenses, and wouldn't have to work for quite a while. In other words, I can finally sip mai tais at the beach. I've condensed how I got there into this post. First, a super simplified timeline of events, followed by some critical details. Timeline 2013 Graduated college in the US 2013 Started first corporate job 2013 Started side project (B2C app) that would eventually lead to my retirement 2020 Started charging for use of my B2C app (was free, became freemium) 2021 Quit my last corporate job 2022 Retired: time freedom attained Details First, some summary statistics of my path to retirement: 9 years: time between graduating college and my retirement. 8 years: total length of my career where I worked at some corporate day job. 7 years: time it took my B2C app to make its first revenue dollar 2 years: time between my first dollar of SaaS revenue and my retirement. "Something something overnight success a decade in the making". I got extremely lucky on my path to retirement, both in terms of the business environment I was in and who I am as a person. I'd also like to think that some of the conscious decisions I made along the way contributed to my early retirement. Lucky Breaks Was born in the US middle class. Had a natural affinity for computer programming and entrepreneurial mindset (initiative, resourcefulness, pragmatism, courage, growth mindset). Had opportunities to develop these mindsets throughout life. Got into a good college which gave me the credentials to get high paying corporate jobs. Was early to a platform that saw large adoption (see "barnacle on whale" strategy). Business niche is shareworthy: my SaaS received free media. Business niche is relatively stable, and small enough to not be competitive. "Skillful" Decisions I decided to spend the nights and weekends of my early career working on side projects in the hopes that one would hit. I also worked a day job to support myself and build my savings. My launch funnel over roughly 7 years of working on side projects: Countless side projects prototyped. 5 side projects publically launched. 2 side projects made > $0. 1 side project ended up becoming the SaaS that would help me retire. At my corporate day jobs, I optimized for learning and work-life balance. My learning usually stalled after a year or two at one company, so I’d quit and find another job. I invested (and continute to do so) in physical and mental wellbeing via regular workouts, meditation, journaling, traveling, and good food. My fulfilling non-work-life re-energized me for my work-life, and my work-life supported my non-work-life: a virtuous cycle. I automated the most time-consuming aspects of my business (outside of product development). Nowadays, I take long vacations and work at most 20 hours a week / a three-day work week . I decided to keep my business entirely owned and operated by me. It's the best fit for my work-style (high autonomy, deep focus, fast decision-making) and need to have full creative freedom and control. I dated and married a very supportive and inspiring partner. I try not to succumb to outrageous lifestyle creep, which keeps my living expenses low and drastically extends my burn-rate. Prescription To share some aphorisms I’ve leaned with the wantrepreneurs or those who want to follow a similar path: Maximize your at bats, because you only need one hit. Bias towards action. Launch quickly. Get your ideas out into the real world for feedback. Perfect is the enemy of good. If you keep swinging and improving, you'll hit the ball eventually. Keep the big picture in mind. You don't necessarily need a home-run to be happy: a base hit will often do the job. Think about what matters most to you in life: is it a lot of money or status? Or is it something more satisfying, and often just as if not more attainable, like freedom, loving relationships, or fulfillment? Is what you’re doing now a good way to get what you want? Or is there a better way? At more of a micro-level of "keep the big picture in mind", I often see talented wantrepreneurs get stuck in the weeds of lower-level optimizations, usually around technical design choices. They forget (or maybe subconsciously avoid) the higher-level and more important questions of customer development, user experience, and distribution. For example: “Are you solving a real problem?” or “Did you launch an MVP and what did your users think?” Adopt a growth mindset. Believe that you are capable of learning whatever you need to learn in order to do what you want to do. The pain of regret is worse than the pain of failure. I’ve noticed that fear of failure is the greatest thing holding people back from taking action towards their dreams. Unless failure means death in your case, a debilitating fear of failure is a surmountable mental block. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. When all is said and done, we often regret the things we didn't do in life than the things we did. There’s more to life than just work. Blasphemous (at least among my social circle)! But the reality is that many of the dying regret having worked too much in their lives. As Miss Frizzle from The Magic Schoolbus says: "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!" Original post

Introducing Stratify: Your Ultimate AI Strategy Builder for Business Success

Hello, I’m thrilled to announce the launch of my new startup, Stratify! 🔍 What is Stratify? Stratify is an AI Strategy Builder designed to help businesses of all sizes develop, implement, and optimize their strategic plans using cutting-edge artificial intelligence. Whether you're a startup looking to scale or an established company aiming to innovate, Stratify provides the tools and insights you need to stay ahead in today's competitive landscape. 🌟 Key Features: Automated Strategy Development: Leverage AI to analyze market trends, competitor data, and internal metrics to create comprehensive strategic plans tailored to your business goals. Real-Time Analytics & Insights: Monitor your strategy's performance with real-time data dashboards, enabling you to make informed decisions quickly. Scenario Planning: Use AI-driven simulations to forecast different business scenarios and understand potential outcomes, helping you prepare for uncertainties. Collaborative Tools: Facilitate team collaboration with integrated communication features, ensuring everyone is aligned and contributing to the strategy development process. Customizable Templates: Access a library of industry-specific strategy templates that can be customized to fit your unique business needs. 💡 Why Stratify? In today's fast-paced business environment, creating and adapting effective strategies can be challenging. Many companies struggle with data overload, lack of actionable insights, and inefficient planning processes. Stratify addresses these pain points by harnessing the power of AI to streamline strategy building, making it more efficient, data-driven, and adaptable. 🚀 Our Journey So Far: Founded: August 2024 Milestones Achieved: Developed and tested our MVP with a select group of beta users What's Next: Launching our public beta in Q4 2024 Expanding our feature set based on user feedback Growing our team with experts in AI, business strategy, and customer success 🤝 How You Can Help: We’re eager to connect with early adopters, business strategists, and industry experts who can benefit from or contribute to Stratify. Here’s how you can get involved: Join Our Beta Program: Be among the first to experience Stratify and provide valuable feedback. Share Your Insights: Help us refine our features by sharing your business strategy challenges and needs. Spread the Word: If you know someone who could benefit from an AI-driven strategy builder, please share our mission and be an affiliate to earn rewards! 🌐 Learn More: Visit our website at AI-Powered Brand Strategy & Content Creation | Stratify (brandprovoke.com) and follow us for the latest updates and insights. 🙏 Thank You! A heartfelt thank you to the Reddit community for your support and encouragement. We’re excited to embark on this journey and look forward to your feedback and suggestions! Looking forward to your thoughts and questions!

I made a bunch of side projects over the last 9 months, and even accrued 500+ accounts and some donations!

I just stumbled upon this subreddit and have a bunch of fun projects I'd like to present, any thoughts/feedback/criticism, etc. all welcome. So, first things first, a little about me, I work full time in an unrelated job, but have picked up full stack and mobile programming. I have two roommates who help a bit in their own way, one is a server expert and happened to have a server in our apartment basement, and the other is my brother and he picked up some frontend programming. We're all avid cyclists and decided to start building about 9 months ago. Our first idea was https://sherpa-map.com a SPA website allowing users to create cycling routes, send them to their Garmin devices, download them as GPX files, etc. This site uses the open-source software Graphhopper on the backend which I've augmented to send back surface type information. This site has a loooonnnggg list of features, from the simple, like a live weather radar, to the extreme like this functionality: &#x200B; AI surface classification This video demonstrates the ability to classify road surface types in real time using high-resolution satellite imagery of road portions with unknown surface types! I trained a Pytorch resnet 50 model with tuned hyperparameters and 10 epochs on 200,000 satellite images of roads with known surface types! (We host a OSM Postgres server with coordinates of roads and their associated surface types, I made a script to pull images of said roads for training). I built the model into a secondary backend written in flask and piped the images being used back through live web sockets to my node.js backend to the person who is logged in! &#x200B; Okay, on to the next side project, a cycling physics simulator! https://sherpa-map.com/cycling-route-calculator.html Cycling Physics Simulation This site lets users enter information about their bike setup, upload or use a preset route, and enter in their physical information to see how different changes in their setup might affect how fast they will be throughout a course! It can also pull complex weather information throughout the course and give a full suite of nutrition details! &#x200B; Okay, Next project! The Activity Racer! https://sherpa-map.com/activity-racer.html Activity Racer This site lets users upload their own or competitors' GPX activity files and line them up against each other at any point in an event, to see who was faster where! It's great if you've done the same even year after year with differing setups, allowing you to get insights as to which might have done better at what point. &#x200B; Okay, final project, this one's pretty half-baked as I'm still in the process of implementing so many other things, a podcast creation app! (I was bored and just started working on this a week or so ago, for no good reason). Currently, this one lives on https://sherpa-map.com/podcast.html This podcasting web app creates a peer to peer to peer... mesh network using webRTC so, small groups can communicate with the highest level of fidelity both in audio and video! Simply enter a room name and have other users enter the room name as well and they're connected! I've already used tensorflow.js AI to allow a blur background option, similar to MS Teams, whereby bodypix classifier AI picks out the person and I use a blur on a JS canvas behind them. I also went a little bit off the deep end and managed to implement the RNNoise background noise suppressor on the frontend, it's written in C, but I was able to use Windows Subsystem for Linux + emscrption to compile it in just the right way, with exposed malloc and free and a JS wrapper to use on the frontend in WASM. I actually use WASM (typically Rust) in many fun ways throughout all of these projects. I'm also in the middle of recreating the first site in React-Native + Maplibre for IOS and Android as individual APPs. In addition, I'm also working on the integration of my main site into a different project for a different group. So, I have a fun collection of side projects with slightly different GUIs, across different platforms with no coherent landing page as of yet but I've been having a blaaaast putting them together. As a final note, I even have a bit of an easter egg in the automated email system I use for account verifications and password resets do\not\reply@sherpa-map.com I hooked it up to ChatGPT API and told it it is a disgruntled worker whose sole task in life is to watch a do\not\reply email box and respond sarcastic/snarky to anyone who dares send a message to it, if AI comes for humanity, I bet I'll be on a list for this one lol.

An Algorithm for Making Truly Stand-Out Advertising Content (+ something more | Part 1)

Hi everyone. my friend and I are software engineers and new to marketing. A few months ago we decided to leverage our software skills for a colleague in ecommerce. It started by implementing a Flux.1 model, then began using texture-based recreations with a canny mask, and then found that we could optimize on both with an added layer of inpainting...and the list goes on. This is the first of a series of posts here about it and I look forward to learning from your feedback. I realized that the most difficult parts of the marketing process when I started out (and most likely for other beginners too) are: Customer Acquisition Costs / Brand Differentiation: Competition is intensifying and it is getting more difficult to stand out in crowded markets and target ad spend more effectively. Maintaining Authenticity at Scale / Data Overload: Balancing growth with authenticity and leveraging available data to successfully engage with customers is a big ask. Creative Fatigue: Maintaining multiple marketing channels in hard, and it becomes harder when you're constantly demanding more and more creative content for campaigns. For 1) I tried using AI to help me summarize, systematize, and gain insights from the information available for a given brand or product (from a page link, prompt, input image, etc.). I know AI is everywhere now, many people are using it unnecessarily and many people are skeptical about it. However, I know from experience, that it is quite helpful in gaining insights/summarizing large amounts of data, and helping people make sense of the creative content, strategy, campaign, etc., that should be created. For 2) By leveraging reviews, forums, and other relevant brand information, AI is able to maintain the story that your brand currently tells, and enhance it based on how your customer base. For 3) Faster results means less creative fatigue- this translates to an easier time managing omnichannel marketing efforts and scaling advertising. If you're interested, please have a look at the result at madsimpleads.com You’ll need to log in to access the solution, and I'll add credits to your account to try it out! (we want to prevent from random people or bots using it because I'm paying to multiple providers for model access). DM me here or drop me a line at austin@madsimpleads.com if you need more. Thank you so much, I'll be happy to get your thoughts I hope the website will help with your advertising, please reach out if you like what I do and want to support the project! Disclaimers: the website looks a bit rough in terms of UI/UX, but we tried focusing on the functionality first available on mobile, works better on desktop I hope this doesn't come across as trying to advertise for my business or breaking any of the community rules. genuinely looking for feedback. Thank you

Just completed a new type of language learning website - read popular stories scaled to different reading levels

As a language learner and software developer, I bootstrapped my project superlang.com over the past year working on the side. There is a mobile friendly web app now, and iOS/Android apps coming in a few months. A year ago I discovered the concept of "comprehensible input" as a way to help me learn German. Even if it's not a silver bullet, it sounded pretty great. Rather than drilling vocab or looking at grammar charts, I could "just read" and acquire the language. I picked up some fairy tales in German, and stories like Alice in Wonderland. Unfortunately, I couldn't really read them. I had to stop every sentence to look up words and try and decipher sentence constructions. Then I turned to some purpose built simple stories for German beginners. But there was a different problem... these were not really stories with any real plot. I could only read so many "Hans goes to the market" type stories before losing interest. My idea was to try to get the best of both worlds somehow. What if I could take a real story, say Alice in Wonderland (or even War and Peace), and dial the difficulty down to my level without losing the plotline. That way, beginners can start right away with something basically comprehensible. Then, you could also re-read the same story at increasing difficulty levels as you gain confidence. As a cherry on top, more illustrations would help with comprehension so each page could have a picture. Is it revolutionary? Maybe, maybe not. I am building off a well established idea of "graded readers" which are simplified stories meant for learning languages. And there are somewhat similar ideas out there now that AI is good at simplifying text, but none that really take this idea where it needs to be with many preloaded stories, multiple difficulty levels, high quality human verified text, and all the bells and whistles. I spent a year building Superlang and it is ready to put out there. Some quick notes: There are 3 languages so far, intended for native English speakers: German, French, and Spanish There are 3 difficulty levels you can set on each story: beginner (roughly A1-A2), intermediate (roughly A2-B1), and advanced (the same level as the original story, but typically B2+) There is premium version as producing the content was somewhat expensive. You can still do a lot of reading on the free version. I have done no marketing yet, except for this post :) The implementation is a combination of AI, and human proofreading and reviewing. In particular, the simplification of stories is very heavily AI driven. The illustrations for each page are AI as well. For translation, as many of you may be aware new LLM models are typically better than Google translate, but still far from perfect. I am very much a proponent of keeping real people in the loop, and so I have real people proofread the translations. That's why there are only about 700 pages of content so far and not tens of thousands. Let me know what you think, and if you find it helpful! Alice in Wonderland - beginner level German Romeo and Juliet - beginner level Spanish

Learn how to code in 24 hours with a Private AI Tutor

Learning how to code is REALLY HARD. I remember I struggled a lot learning how to code. I just wanted to build a simple app or website but the task was super daunting. There were so many steps, so many things to learn. Terminal, git, command prompt, IDE, library, package, React, Express, GAH! It was hard. I did a lot of courses but I always got 10-20% through and gave up. They were just SO BORING. Some of the courses were too advanced, some were too beginner, and all required me to keep pausing & playing. So, I built Athens: https://www.tryathens.com/ Athens gives you a personal AI tutor that understands your skill level and modifies each challenge/lesson to your skill level. No nothing about programming? Learn from the basics of HTML. Already know the basics of React? Implement it, and then learn the backend. All of this while you build a fully-fledged clone of Instagram, Netflix, or one of the many other projects! What do you guys think about this? Would you use it? Do you have any feedback? PS: Athens will normally go for $299/year but currently it's on pre-sale for $159 (sometimes $99 with lifetime discount)

Finally launched my own app in the app store!

After reading on the sidelines here for about a year I just launched Kalo. My app is the 100th million ai powered calorie-counting app, hahaha. I know I know. Here it comes: Kalo Screenshots Despite being in a crowded space, Kalo has some caveats I am a bit proud of: \- I am a daily user of my app. Everything that bugs me will be gone ASAP. \- I have already lost 10kg with Kalo. I can't do any sports due to an energy-debilitating sickness (hello my me/cfs friends 👋), so this is huge. \- I HATE nudging. Hence, Kalo has no streaks, no notifications to rip off your valuable time. It’s just a tool to track calories and learn to get a feel for it. \- Ease of daily use and doing anything so it doesn't feel like a grind is Kalo's mission. I already implemented a lot of ways to quickly access tracking and leaving the app. \- Next feature will be tracking your own progress with some proper research based analytics is the one next step, that Im working on. \- Data: Minimal footprint as possible. Anything is currently saved only on the device, especially all health data. Check Kalo out here: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/kalo/id6739449751?l=en-GB Tech used to make it possible: There are some terrific security functions in here, and a robust paywall integration, both of which I could never have done without the MVP help of \- Claude and GPT \- Claude's Project function was basically my base project folder here. Claude is perfect when it comes to traditional features. Anything more recent than iOS14 can become a very difficult endeavour \- GPT 4o was great for error logging overview and general sorting measures. Claude's message restriction could be fended of many times here. \- GPT 1o became available more recently and its coding is a lot more robust than 4o. This helped me to not clog Claude with tedious bug fixing. Also it helped when Claude ran away in terrible directions Pre knowledge: I was a digital product designer way back, so I know a thing or two about making things easier to use, especially when it comes to the ease of daily use. Marketing: Will be my biggest focus now. I am quite shit at it, which means It can only get better. It's gonna be some rough weather to get eyes on my app. If anyone thinks they can help or knows how to, any tips are appreciated. Thats it for now. I'll try and keep you updated. I am happy. Let's see if this app will make me happy on a nicer bed, or a jet ski. Again, happy to get your impression of Kalo: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/kalo/id6739449751?l=en-GB

My Side Projects: From CEO to 4th Developer (Thanks, AI 🤖)

Hey Reddit 👋, I wanted to share a bit about some side projects I’ve been working on lately. Quick background for context: I’m the CEO of a mid-to-large-scale eCommerce company pulling in €10M+ annually in net turnover. We even built our own internal tracking software that’s now a SaaS (in early review stages on Shopify), competing with platforms like Lifetimely and TrueROAS. But! That’s not really the point of this post — there’s another journey I’ve been on that I’m super excited to share (and maybe get your feedback on!). AI Transformed My Role (and My Ideas List) I’m not a developer by trade — never properly learned how to code, and to be honest, I don’t intend to. But, I’ve always been the kind of guy who jots down ideas in a notes app and dreams about execution. My dev team calls me their “4th developer” (they’re a team of three) because I have solid theoretical knowledge and can kinda read code. And then AI happened. 🛠️ It basically turned my random ideas app into an MVP generation machine. I thought it’d be fun to share one of the apps I’m especially proud of. I am also planning to build this in public and therefore I am planning to post my progress on X and every project will have /stats page where live stats of the app will be available. Tackling My Task Management Problem 🚀 I’ve sucked at task management for YEARS, I still do! I’ve tried literally everything — Sheets, Todoist, Asana, ClickUp, Notion — you name it. I’d start… and then quit after a few weeks - always. What I struggle with the most is delegating tasks. As a CEO, I delegate a ton, and it’s super hard to track everything I’ve handed off to the team. Take this example: A few days ago, I emailed an employee about checking potential collaboration opportunities with a courier company. Just one of 10s of tasks like this I delegate daily. Suddenly, I thought: “Wouldn’t it be AMAZING if just typing out this email automatically created a task for me to track?” 💡 So… I jumped in. With the power of AI and a few intense days of work, I built a task manager that does just that. But of course, I couldn’t stop there. Research & Leveling It Up 📈 I looked at similar tools like TickTick and Todoist, scraped their G2 reviews (totally legally, promise! 😅), and ran them through AI for a deep SWOT analysis. I wanted to understand what their users liked/didn’t like and what gaps my app could fill. Some of the features people said they were missing didn’t align with the vision for my app (keeping it simple and personal), but I found some gold nuggets: Integration with calendars (Google) Reminders Customizable UX (themes) So, I started implementing what made sense and am keeping others on the roadmap for the future. And I’ve even built for that to, it still doesn’t have a name, however the point is you select on how many reviews of a specific app you want to make a SWOT analysis on and it will do it for you. Example for Todoist in comments. But more on that, some other time, maybe other post ... Key Features So Far: Here’s what’s live right now: ✅ Email to Task: Add an email as to, cc, or bcc — and it automatically creates a task with context, due dates, labels, etc. ✅ WhatsApp Reminders: Get nudged to handle your tasks via WhatsApp. ✅ WhatsApp to Task: Send a message like /task buy groceries — bam, it’s added with full context etc.. ✅ Chrome Extension (work-in-progress): Highlight text on any page, right-click, and send it straight to your task list. Next Steps: Build WITH the Community 👥 Right now, the app is 100% free while still in the early stages. But hey, API calls and server costs aren’t cheap, so pricing is something I’ll figure out with you as we grow. For now, my goal is to hit 100 users and iterate from there. My first pricing idea is, without monthly subscription, I don’t want to charge someone for something he didn’t use. So I am planning on charging "per task", what do you think? Here’s what I have planned: 📍 End of Year Goal: 100 users (starting from… 1 🥲). 💸 Revenue Roadmap: When we establish pricing, we’ll talk about that. 🛠️ Milestones: Post on Product Hunt when we hit 100 users. Clean up my self-written spaghetti code (hire a pro dev for review 🙃). Hire a part-time dev once we hit MRR that can cover its costs. You can check how are we doing on thisisatask.me/stats Other Side Projects I’m Working On: Because… what’s life without taking on too much, right? 😂 Full list of things I’m building: Internal HRM: Not public, tried and tested in-house. Android TV App: Syncs with HRM to post announcements to office TVs (streamlined and simple). Stats Tracker App: Connects to our internal software and gives me real-time company insights. Review Analyzer: Scrapes SaaS reviews (e.g., G2) and runs deep analysis via AI. This was originally for my Shopify SaaS but is quickly turning into something standalone. Coming soon! Mobile app game: secret for now. Let’s Build This Together! Would love it if you guys checked out https://thisisatask.me and gave it a spin! Still super early, super raw, but I’m pumped to hear your thoughts. Also, what’s a must-have task manager feature for you? Anything that frustrates you with current tools? I want to keep evolving this in public, so your feedback is gold. 🌟 Let me know, Reddit! Are you with me? 🙌

I spent 6 months on a web app as a side project, and got 0 users. Here is my story.

Edit Thank you all so much for your time reading my story. Your support, feedback, criticism, and skepticism; all helped me a lot, and I couldn't appreciate it enough \^\_\^ I very rarely have stuff to post on Reddit, but I share how my project is going on, just random stuff, and memes on X. In case few might want to keep up 👀 TL;DR I spent 6 months on a tool that currently has 0 users. Below is what I learned during my journey, sharing because I believe most mistakes are easily avoidable. Do not overestimate your product and assume it will be an exception to fundamental principles. Principles are there for a reason. Always look for validation before you start. Avoid building products with a low money-to-effort ratio/in very competitive fields. Unless you have the means, you probably won't make it. Pick a problem space, pick your target audience, and talk to them before thinking about a solution. Identify and match their pain points. Only then should you think of a solution. If people are not overly excited or willing to pay in advance for a discounted price, it might be a sign to rethink. Sell one and only one feature at a time. Avoid everything else. If people don't pay for that one core feature, no secondary feature will change their mind. Always spend twice as much time marketing as you do building. You will not get users if they don't know it exists. Define success metrics ("1000 users in 3 months" or "$6000 in the account at the end of 6 months") before you start. If you don't meet them, strongly consider quitting the project. If you can't get enough users to keep going, nothing else matters. VALIDATION, VALIDATION, VALIDATION. Success is not random, but most of our first products will not make a success story. Know when to admit failure, and move on. Even if a product of yours doesn't succeed, what you learned during its journey will turn out to be invaluable for your future. My story So, this is the story of a product that I’ve been working on for the last 6 months. As it's the first product I’ve ever built, after watching you all from the sidelines, I have learned a lot, made many mistakes, and did only a few things right. Just sharing what I’ve learned and some insights from my journey so far. I hope that this post will help you avoid the mistakes I made — most of which I consider easily avoidable — while you enjoy reading it, and get to know me a little bit more 🤓. A slow start after many years Summ isn’t the first product I really wanted to build. Lacking enough dev skills to even get started was a huge blocker for so many years. In fact, the first product I would’ve LOVED to build was a smart personal shopping assistant. I had this idea 4 years ago; but with no GPT, no coding skills, no technical co-founder, I didn’t have the means to make it happen. I still do not know if such a tool exists and is good enough. All I wanted was a tool that could make data-based predictions about when to buy stuff (“buy a new toothpaste every three months”) and suggest physical products that I might need or be strongly interested in. AFAIK, Amazon famously still struggles with the second one. Fast-forward a few years, I learned the very basics of HTML, CSS, and Vanilla JS. Still was not there to build a product; but good enough to code my design portfolio from scratch. Yet, I couldn’t imagine myself building a product using Vanilla JS. I really hated it, I really sucked at it. So, back to tutorial hell, and to learn about this framework I just heard about: React.React introduced so many new concepts to me. “Thinking in React” is a phrase we heard a lot, and with quite good reasons. After some time, I was able to build very basic tutorial apps, both in React, and React Native; but I have to say that I really hated coding for mobile. At this point, I was already a fan of productivity apps, and had a concept for a time management assistant app in my design portfolio. So, why not build one? Surely, it must be easy, since every coding tutorial starts with a todo app. ❌ WRONG! Building a basic todo app is easy enough, but building one good enough for a place in the market was a challenge I took and failed. I wasted one month on that until I abandoned the project for good. Even if I continued working on it, as the productivity landscape is overly competitive, I wouldn’t be able to make enough money to cover costs, assuming I make any. Since I was (and still am) in between jobs, I decided to abandon the project. 👉 What I learned: Do not start projects with a low ratio of money to effort and time. Example: Even if I get 500 monthly users, 200 of which are paid users (unrealistically high number), assuming an average subscription fee of $5/m (such apps are quite cheap, mostly due to the high competition), it would make me around $1000 minus any occurring costs. Any founder with a product that has 500 active users should make more. Even if it was relatively successful, due to the high competition, I wouldn’t make any meaningful money. PS: I use Todoist today. Due to local pricing, I pay less than $2/m. There is no way I could beat this competitive pricing, let alone the app itself. But, somehow, with a project that wasn’t even functional — let alone being an MVP — I made my first Wi-Fi money: Someone decided that the domain I preemptively purchased is worth something. By this point, I had already abandoned the project, certainly wasn’t going to renew the domain, was looking for a FT job, and a new project that I could work on. And out of nowhere, someone hands me some free money — who am I not to take it? Of course, I took it. The domain is still unused, no idea why 🤔. Ngl, I still hate the fact that my first Wi-Fi money came from this. A new idea worth pursuing? Fast-forward some weeks now. Around March, I got this crazy idea of building an email productivity tool. We all use emails, yet we all hate them. So, this must be fixed. Everyone uses emails, in fact everyone HAS TO use emails. So, I just needed to build a tool and wait for people to come. This was all, really. After all, the problem space is huge, there is enough room for another product, everyone uses emails, no need for any further validation, right? ❌ WRONG ONCE AGAIN! We all hear from the greatest in the startup landscape that we must validate our ideas with real people, yet at least some of us (guilty here 🥸) think that our product will be hugely successful and prove them to be an exception. Few might, but most are not. I certainly wasn't. 👉 Lesson learned: Always validate your ideas with real people. Ask them how much they’d pay for such a tool (not if they would). Much better if they are willing to pay upfront for a discount, etc. But even this comes later, keep reading. I think the difference between “How much” and “If” is huge for two reasons: (1) By asking them for “How much”, you force them to think in a more realistic setting. (2) You will have a more realistic idea on your profit margins. Based on my competitive analysis, I already had a solution in my mind to improve our email usage standards and email productivity (huge mistake), but I did my best to learn about their problems regarding those without pushing the idea too hard. The idea is this: Generate concise email summaries with suggested actions, combine them into one email, and send it at their preferred times. Save as much as time the AI you end up with allows. After all, everyone loves to save time. So, what kind of validation did I seek for? Talked with only a few people around me about this crazy, internet-breaking idea. The responses I got were, now I see, mediocre; no one got excited about it, just said things along the lines of “Cool idea, OK”. So, any reasonable person in this situation would think “Okay, not might not be working”, right? Well, I did not. I assumed that they were the wrong audience for this product, and there was this magical land of user segments waiting eagerly for my product, yet unknowingly. To this day, I still have not reached this magical place. Perhaps, it didn’t exist in the first place. If I cannot find it, whether it exists or not doesn’t matter. I am certainly searching for it. 👉 What I should have done: Once I decide on a problem space (time management, email productivity, etc.), I should decide on my potential user segments, people who I plan to sell my product to. Then I should go talk to those people, ask them about their pains, then get to the problem-solving/ideation phase only later. ❗️ VALIDATION COMES FROM THE REALITY OUTSIDE. What validation looks like might change from product to product; but what invalidation looks like is more or less the same for every product. Nico Jeannen told me yesterday “validation = money in the account” on Twitter. This is the ultimate form of validation your product could get. If your product doesn’t make any money, then something is invalidated by reality: Your product, you, your idea, who knows? So, at this point, I knew a little bit of Python from spending some time in tutorial hell a few years ago, some HTML/CSS/JS, barely enough React to build a working app. React could work for this project, but I needed easy-to-implement server interactivity. Luckily, around this time, I got to know about this new gen of indie hackers, and learned (but didn’t truly understand) about their approach to indie hacking, and this library called Nextjs. How good Next.js still blows my mind. So, I was back to tutorial hell once again. But, this time, with a promise to myself: This is the last time I would visit tutorial hell. Time to start building this "ground-breaking idea" Learning the fundamentals of Next.js was easier than learning of React unsurprisingly. Yet, the first time I managed to run server actions on Next.js was one of the rarest moments that completely blew my mind. To this day, I reject the idea that it is something else than pure magic under its hood. Did I absolutely need Nextjs for this project though? I do not think so. Did it save me lots of time? Absolutely. Furthermore, learning Nextjs will certainly be quite helpful for other projects that I will be tackling in the future. Already got a few ideas that might be worth pursuing in the head in case I decide to abandon Summ in the future. Fast-forward few weeks again: So, at this stage, I had a barely working MVP-like product. Since the very beginning, I spent every free hour (and more) on this project as speed is essential. But, I am not so sure it was worth it to overwork in retrospect. Yet, I know I couldn’t help myself. Everything is going kinda smooth, so what’s the worst thing that could ever happen? Well, both Apple and Google announced their AIs (Apple Intelligence and Google Gemini, respectively) will have email summarization features for their products. Summarizing singular emails is no big deal, after all there were already so many similar products in the market. I still think that what truly matters is a frictionless user experience, and this is why I built this product in a certain way: You spend less than a few minutes setting up your account, and you get to enjoy your email summaries, without ever visiting its website again. This is still a very cool concept I really like a lot. So, at this point: I had no other idea that could be pursued, already spent too much time on this project. Do I quit or not? This was the question. Of course not. I just have to launch this product as quickly as possible. So, I did something right, a quite rare occurrence I might say: Re-planned my product, dropped everything secondary to the core feature immediately (save time on reading emails), tried launching it asap. 👉 Insight: Sell only one core feature at one time. Drop anything secondary to this core feature. Well, my primary occupation is product design. So one would expect that a product I build must have stellar design. I considered any considerable time spent on design at this stage would be simply wasted. I still think this is both true and wrong: True, because if your product’s core benefits suck, no one will care about your design. False, because if your design looks amateurish, no one will trust you and your product. So, I always targeted an average level design with it and the way this tool works made it quite easy as I had to design only 2 primary pages: Landing page and user portal (which has only settings and analytics pages). However, even though I knew spending time on design was not worth much of my time, I got a bit “greedy”: In fact, I redesigned those pages three times, and still ended up with a so-so design that I am not proud of. 👉 What I would do differently: Unless absolutely necessary, only one iteration per stage as long as it works. This, in my mind, applies to everything. If your product’s A feature works, then no need to rewrite it from scratch for any reason, or even refactor it. When your product becomes a success, and you absolutely need that part of your codebase to be written, do so, but only then. Ready to launch, now is th etime for some marketing, right? By July 26, I already had a “launchable” product that barely works (I marked this date on a Notion docs, this is how I know). Yet, I had spent almost no time on marketing, sales, whatever. After all, “You build and they will come”. Did I know that I needed marketing? Of course I did, but knowingly didn’t. Why, you might ask. Well, from my perspective, it had to be a dev-heavy product; meaning that you spend most of your time on developing it, mostly coding skills. But, this is simply wrong. As a rule of thumb, as noted by one of the greatests, Marc Louvion, you should spend at least twice of the building time on marketing. ❗️ Time spent on building \* 2 people don’t know your product > they don’t use your product > you don’t get users > you don’t make money Easy as that. Following the same reasoning, a slightly different approach to planning a project is possible. Determine an approximate time to complete the project with a high level project plan. Let’s say 6 months. By the reasoning above, 2 months should go into building, and 4 into marketing. If you need 4 months for building instead of 2, then you need 8 months of marketing, which makes the time to complete the project 12 months. If you don’t have that much time, then quit the project. When does a project count as completed? Well, in reality, never. But, I think we have to define success conditions even before we start for indie projects and startups; so we know when to quit when they are not met. A success condition could look like “Make $6000 in 12 months” or “Have 3000 users in 6 months”. It all depends on the project. But, once you set it, it should be set in stone: You don’t change it unless absolutely necessary. I suspect there are few principles that make a solopreneur successful; and knowing when to quit and when to continue is definitely one of them. Marc Louvion is famously known for his success, but he got there after failing so many projects. To my knowledge, the same applies to Nico Jeannen, Pieter Levels, or almost everyone as well. ❗️ Determining when to continue even before you start will definitely help in the long run. A half-aed launch Time-leap again. Around mid August, I “soft launched” my product. By soft launch, I mean lazy marketing. Just tweeting about it, posting it on free directories. Did I get any traffic? Surely I did. Did I get any users? Nope. Only after this time, it hit me: “Either something is wrong with me, or with this product” Marketing might be a much bigger factor for a project’s success after all. Even though I get some traffic, not convincing enough for people to sign up even for a free trial. The product was still perfect in my eyes at the time (well, still is ^(\_),) so the right people are not finding my product, I thought. Then, a question that I should have been asking at the very first place, one that could prevent all these, comes to my mind: “How do even people search for such tools?” If we are to consider this whole journey of me and my so-far-failed product to be an already destined failure, one metric suffices to show why. Search volume: 30. Even if people have such a pain point, they are not looking for email summaries. So, almost no organic traffic coming from Google. But, as a person who did zero marketing on this or any product, who has zero marketing knowledge, who doesn’t have an audience on social media, there is not much I could do. Finally, it was time to give up. Or not… In my eyes, the most important element that makes a founder (solo or not) successful (this, I am not by any means) is to solve problems. ❗️ So, the problem was this: “People are not finding my product by organic search” How do I make sure I get some organic traffic and gets more visibility? Learn digital marketing and SEO as much as I can within very limited time. Thankfully, without spending much time, I came across Neil Patel's YT channel, and as I said many times, it is an absolute gold mine. I learned a lot, especially about the fundamentals, and surely it will be fruitful; but there is no magic trick that could make people visit your website. SEO certainly helps, but only when people are looking for your keywords. However, it is truly a magical solution to get in touch with REAL people that are in your user segments: 👉 Understand your pains, understand their problems, help them to solve them via building products. I did not do this so far, have to admit. But, in case you would like to have a chat about your email usage, and email productivity, just get in touch; I’d be delighted to hear about them. Getting ready for a ProductHunt launch The date was Sept 1. And I unlocked an impossible achievement: Running out of Supabase’s free plan’s Egres limit while having zero users. I was already considering moving out of their Cloud server and managing a Supabase CLI service on my Hetzner VPS for some time; but never ever suspected that I would have to do this quickly. The cheapest plan Supabase offers is $25/month; yet, at that point, I am in between jobs for such a long time, basically broke, and could barely afford that price. One or two months could be okay, but why pay for it if I will eventually move out of their Cloud service? So, instead of paying $25, I spent two days migrating out of Supabase Cloud. Worth my time? Definitely not. But, when you are broke, you gotta do stupid things. This was the first time that I felt lucky to have zero users: I have no idea how I would manage this migration if I had any. I think this is one of the core tenets of an indie hacker: Controlling their own environment. I can’t remember whose quote this is, but I suspect it was Naval: Entrepreneurs have an almost pathological need to control their own fate. They will take any suffering if they can be in charge of their destiny, and not have it in somebody else’s hands. What’s truly scary is, at least in my case, we make people around us suffer at the expense of our attempting to control our own fates. I know this period has been quite hard on my wife as well, as I neglected her quite a bit, but sadly, I know that this will happen again. It is something that I can barely help with. Still, so sorry. After working the last two weeks on a ProductHunt Launch, I finally launched it this Tuesday. Zero ranking, zero new users, but 36 kind people upvoted my product, and many commented and provided invaluable feedback. I couldn't be more grateful for each one of them 🙏. Considering all these, what lies in the future of Summ though? I have no idea, to be honest. On one hand, I have zero users, have no job, no income. So, I need a way to make money asap. On the other hand, the whole idea of it revolves around one core premise (not an assumption) that I am not so willing to share; and I couldn’t have more trust in it. This might not be the best iteration of it, however I certainly believe that email usage is one of the best problem spaces one could work on. 👉 But, one thing is for certain: I need to get in touch with people, and talk with them about this product I built so far. In fact, this is the only item on my agenda. Nothing else will save my brainchild <3. Below are some other insights and notes that I got during my journey; as they do not 100% fit into this story, I think it is more suitable to list them here. I hope you enjoyed reading this. Give Summ a try, it comes with a generous free trial, no credit card required. Some additional notes and insights: Project planning is one of the most underestimated skills for solopreneurs. It saves you enormous time, and helps you to keep your focus up. Building B2B products beats building B2C products. Businesses are very willing to pay big bucks if your product helps them. On the other hand, spending a few hours per user who would pay $5/m probably is not worth your time. It doesn’t matter how brilliant your product is if no one uses it. If you cannot sell a product in a certain category/niche (or do not know how to sell it), it might be a good idea not to start a project in it. Going after new ideas and ventures is quite risky, especially if you don’t know how to market it. On the other hand, an already established category means that there is already demand. Whether this demand is sufficient or not is another issue. As long as there is enough demand for your product to fit in, any category/niche is good. Some might be better, some might be worse. Unless you are going hardcore B2B, you will need people to find your product by means of organic search. Always conduct thorough keyword research as soon as possible.

I Made $20K in 2 Months by Building in Public on X

Hey everyone, I wanted to share my journey of making $20K in just 2 months by leveraging Twitter (X) and building in public. It’s been an exciting ride, and I hope my story inspires others to take action on their ideas. Here’s exactly what I did: Building in Public I started sharing everything about my work openly. My wins, struggles, and process. I showed: How I build MVPs for clients. The tools I use (Next.js, Supabase, Cursor AI, etc.). The challenges I face and how I solve them. Transparency builds trust, and trust brings clients. Consistency is Key For the past 2 months, I’ve posted consistently on X, even when I felt like no one was watching. Here’s what I focused on: Sharing value (pro tips, workflows, tools). Asking for advice and engaging with my community. Highlighting my projects and client work. Building an audience takes time, but showing up daily pays off. Personal Brand = Inbound Clients I never did any “engagement farming” or gimmicky posts. I just shared my knowledge, and it led to over 35M views on my tweets and 7K followers. Many of these followers turned into inbound client leads. I’ve always believed: Share value for free, and charge for implementation. The Power of Community Engaging with my community on X has been game-changing. People have: Helped refine my processes. Shared valuable tools and advice. Connected me to opportunities I wouldn’t have found otherwise. Key Takeaway: You don’t need a perfect process or a huge following to start. Be consistent. Build in public. Share your journey. In 2 months, I’ve gone from wondering if this would work to making $20K by simply showing up and adding value. If you’re thinking about building in public or starting a personal brand, DO IT. It works. Feel free to ask me anything. I’m happy to share more details about my process, tools, or lessons learned! Let’s build together.

ChatPDF and PDF.ai are making millions using open source tech... here's the code

Why "copy" an existing product? The best SaaS products weren’t the first of their kind - think Slack, Shopify, Zoom, Dropbox, or HubSpot. They didn’t invent team communication, e-commerce, video conferencing, cloud storage, or marketing tools; they just made them better. What is a "Chat with PDF" SaaS? These are AI-powered PDF assistants that let you upload a PDF and ask questions about its content. You can summarize articles, extract key details from a contract, analyze a research paper, and more. To see this in action or dive deeper into the tech behind it, check out this YouTube video. Let's look at the market Made possible by advances in AI like ChatGPT and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), PDF chat tools started gaining traction in early 2023 and have seen consistent growth in market interest, which is currently at an all-time high (source:google trends) Keywords like "chat PDF" and "PDF AI" get between 1 to 10 million searches every month (source:keyword planner), with a broad target audience that includes researchers, students, and professionals across various industries. Leaders like PDF.ai and ChatPDF have already gained millions of users within a year of launch, driven by the growing market demand, with paid users subscribing at around $20/month. Alright, so how do we build this with open source? The core tech for most PDF AI tools are based on the same architecture. You generate text embeddings (AI-friendly text representations; usually via OpenAI APIs) for the uploaded PDF’s chapters/topics and store them in a vector database (like Pinecone). Now, every time the user asks a question, a similarity search is performed to find the most similar PDF topics from the vector database. The selected topic contents are then sent to an LLM (like ChatGPT) along with the question, which generates a contextual answer! Here are some of the best open source implementations for this process: GPT4 & LangChain Chatbot for large PDF docs by Mayo Oshin MultiPDF Chat App by Alejandro AO PDFToChat by Hassan El Mghari Worried about building signups, user management, payments, etc.? Here are my go-to open-source SaaS boilerplates that include everything you need out of the box: SaaS Boilerplate by Remi Wg Open SaaS by wasp-lang A few ideas to stand out from the noise: Here are a few strategies that could help you differentiate and achieve product market fit (based on the pivot principles from The Lean Startup by Eric Ries): Narrow down your target audience for a personalized UX: For instance, an exam prep assistant for students with study notes and quiz generator; or a document due diligence and analysis tool for lawyers. Add unique features to increase switching cost: You could autogenerate APIs for the uploaded PDFs to enable remote integrations (eg. support chatbot knowledge base); or build in workflow automation features for bulk analyses of PDFs. Offer platform level advantages: You could ship a native mobile/desktop apps for a more integrated UX; or (non-trivial) offer private/offline support by replacing the APIs with local open source deployments (eg. llama for LLM, an embedding model from the MTEB list, and FAISS for vector search). TMI? I’m an ex-AI engineer and product lead, so don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions! P.S. I've started a free weekly newsletter to share open-source/turnkey resources behind popular products (like this one). If you’re a founder looking to launch your next product without reinventing the wheel, please subscribe :)

How I Implemented OpenAI's API In My First SaaS! DebateTrend!

About Me I'm a 17 y/o aspiring solopreneur from Bulgaria! I have a passion for 3D printing, coding, video creation, and space! My Project https://debatetrend.com is a website where you can debate with AI on different topics! You can have multiple debates with different debate styles for different lengths of time! The special part is that at the end of each debate, you can have another AI look through the debate! It will give you and the AI you debated with a score from a system I call "debate score" It will also give you recommendations on where you can improve your debating skills! Quick showcase How I implemented AI - ChatGPT 4-o mini It's my first time implementing AI in a project but I think I got the hang of it relatively quickly! Here's a diagram explaining what I did Diagram of the process of debate creation. I used the assistants API from the OpenAI API. Using the threads functionality, I created a different thread operated by an assistant I had already made. When a user creates a debate my app creates a thread with custom information that was decided by the user. I save parts of the thread object in my MongoDB database which is hosted on Atlas. After that, I redirect the user to a generated page in which you can chat with the AI. I maintain the connection using Pusher which is what I use for web sockets. When a user refreshes the page the previous messages are displayed by making a call to the API with the thread id. After that, I retrieve the user messages while still allowing the user to continue the debate. This is part of what I do on the back end. Of course, I have some security measures in check but I don't know if they are enough. I chose the 4-o mini because it's still very intelligent, with a good response time, and a lot cheaper than 4-o. My Tech Stack Language: Javascript Database: MongoDB hosted on Atlas Hosting: Vercel Framework: Express Auth: PassportJs Emails: Resend Payments: Stripe Front End: TailWindCSS, some regular CSS, and DaisyUI WebSockets: Pusher, because Vercel = no sockets integrated into your web app which I found the painful way AI: OpenAI’s API ChatGPT 4-o mini Do you think I could have done anything better? I would love to hear your opinions!

I just built footyGPT.com , an AI assistant for football stats, data and data-backed predictions

Hey Amigos! I am based in London and I build lots of fun tools and websites in the sports data space to help sports bettors make better data-driven decisions. One of my recently launched ones is footyGPT.com I have tried to launch this earlier in 2023 but my team were not able to achieve the end goal (I am a non-technical founder) Funny story, I bought the domain footygpt(dot)com back in 2023 and let it expire because i felt like since we weren't able to acheieve the end goal, there was no need to keep the domain. But 2 months ago I started working on it one more time with a different team, and since AI has become "more friendly" than it was early in 2023, it was a much smoother ride and i was so scared someone else had already bought the domain, only to find out it was still available to buy! I was so scared I lost such a clean domain. Below is an example of how footyGPT works: Ask FootyGPT for Predictions for a Given Fixture how footyGPT works \(case study\) Ask FootyGPT to Scrape and Summarize Data from a Stats Website using footyGPT to scrape football stats websites Ask FootyGPT for Sentiments and Online Opinion About a Given Match or Events. ask footygpt for up to date sentiments and opinions about football matches Ask FootyGPT to Find Teams with Certain Streaks, Trends, or Stats https://reddit.com/link/1frdk04/video/9oyaj5ldqjrd1/player If you are into football (soccer) please give it a spin and let me know your thoughts! Cheers Amigos

Hit a major milestone with my app that helps people find jobs and optimize their resume

I've been grinding for ~1.5 years now on my sideproject, Jobs-Scout, which helps people find jobs and optimize their resume for any specific role. I've been in industry a number of years as a senior manager, so I have done lots of interviewing and hiring and I think that helps my tool do a better job than others in knowing how to position a resume. It's the non-technical stuff, like branding, SEO etc. thats the hardest for me, but my buddy is now helping and we're starting to make in-roads and traffic is up a lot! 🚀 We hit our 200th paid customer today which is a major milestone for us, and just wanted to share! The app features: resume-to-job analysis using AI (of course!) a free job board updated daily matching and emailing new jobs to users (ie. 'scouting' for jobs hence the name!) resume builder and editor with inline AI optimization free tier (3 free analyses a month) and paid tiers If you're curious, everything's running on AWS, and I code and maintain it myself in the evenings after work, and my colleague is now on marketing and business development. Biggest lesson was finding a trustworthy co-founder. I went through a couple of iterations, but you need a certain personality that's able to keep up with the hustle. Would love feedback or tips on how to keep growing 🚀 . Edit: link: https://www.jobs-scout.com

What are Boilerplates?

What are Boilerplates? Boilerplate originally referred to the rolled steel used to make boilers for steam engines in the 19th century. Over time, the term evolved to describe any standardized piece of text or code that can be reused without significant changes. Interest in SaaS has been on the rise, and many more people now want to build products. However, building products from scratch takes a lot of time, and it can be extremely frustrating. Enter SaaS Boilerplates With the standardization of stacks and basic systems that govern SaaS tools, it has become evident that there was a need, and the time was ripe for SaaS Boilerplates. SaaS Boilerplates come with landing pages, website components, authentication modules, payment modules, and various other standard features that can save developers a significant amount of time and cost. The market is flooded with Boilerplates for various tech stacks, such as NextJS, Laravel, Swift, NuxtJS, and so forth. Pros and Cons of Boilerplates Pros Save a significant amount of time and money Reduce frustration for developers as the redundant tasks are taken care of Boilerplates often follow best practices For anywhere between $49 and $299, they provide terrific value for those looking to build something very quickly Most importantly, Boilerplates also enable aspiring founders and builders with limited technical resources or abilities to ship their products faster and more cheaply. They are beacons of hope for non-technical founders looking to build a product quickly. Cons Limited flexibility May become outdated fairly quickly Setting them up still requires time Similar landing pages and design themes can make the product look like a clone Marc Lou’s Shipfast For most of us, Marc Lou popularized the idea of SaaS Boilerplate. Marc Lou launched Shipfast in August 2023. He had built 27 projects prior to this and Shipfast was nothing but all his basic code organised properly. At that time, there were no solid NextJS boilerplates, and Shipfast just took off. He got traction via Product Hunt, Twitter and Hacker News and soon Shipfast went viral. Shipfast now generates $130K/mo, just 9 months after its launch. Marc has been building Shipfast in public, which has led to a lot of interest in SaaS Boilerplates. The market is now flooded with boilerplates for every major tech stack. Marc reaped the benefits of the first mover’s advantage as well as the social proof via his Shipfast community. I don’t think any other boilerplates are as successful as Shipfast, but there are quite a few good ones out there. Shipixen* has grossed over $20K in the 5 months Makerkit* does \~$3500/mo Moreover, there are many open-source boilerplates available for popular stacks such as NextJS. The Evolution of Boilerplates Boilerplates are quickly turning into no-code/low-code code generation tools. For instance, Shipixen allows you to generate custom code for landing pages, waitlist pages and blogs using a simple User Interface. Boilerplates are perfectly posied to sit between code and no-code. Allow the flexibility of code with the interface of a no-code tool — that will be the core value proposition of SaaS boilerplates. Should you build a Boilerplate? Well, the market is flooded, but I believe there’s still an opportunity to leverage boilerplates. You can build boilerplates for certain types of apps or tools, such as Chrome extensions Boilerplates can act as a great lead funnel for building out a great productized services business No-code/low-code code generation boilerplates can become a big thing if you can help build complex tools Niche tech stack boilerplates may still be lucrative Known strategies for successfully building a boilerplate 👇🏻 Shipfast thrives because of social proof and community SaaSRock generates most of its traffic from its Gumroad listings and blogs Usenextbase and Shipixen are being built in public Many boilerplates start with waitlists They have a very clear value proposition around saving time and cost Design & No-Code Boilerplates Here is the corrected version with improved grammar and clarity: While SaaS (code) boilerplates have become fairly popular, other types of boilerplates are emerging in the market, such as design boilerplates and no-code boilerplates. To be honest, design boilerplates have been around for a while. You will find numerous landing page packs, component libraries, and so forth. Makers are now building kits that leverage standard libraries and technologies such as Tailwind CSS, Daisy UI, and more. Nick Buzz from the famous baked.design has this *50 Landing Page Design Kit* in Tailwind CSS & Figma which is wildly popular. Lastly, there is a trend of no-code boilerplates as well. Mohit is building a Bubble Boilerplate for the popular no-code platform — Bubble. All in all, I think that people want to build products and build them fast. Boilerplates help them save a significant amount of time and cost. More importantly, boilerplates are impulse purchases for people who have not shipped but who want to ship. Introducing BuilderKit.ai We have been building AI SaaS tools for quite a while now. 10+ products across text, image, speech, RAG — we have built em all. We figured that it seems easy but actually building these so called AI Wrappers can be time consuming and frustrating — there is a lot of nuance to it. So we built BuidlerKit.ai — a NextJS SaaS Boilerpalte It takes care of everything from landing pages, authentication, dashboarding, emails, SEO to payments — everything that you need to build your tool. It also comes with 8+ production-ready apps. Moreover, the BuilderKit community is an exclusive community of AI SaaS builders (Pro Only Access) The Pre Orders are now live at https://www.builderkit.ai (First 100 Customers get $100 Off — I think we have already done \~20 odd orders since the announcement yesterday, Grab your seat asap!) Starter Plan $49, Pro Plan @ $99

I am building my agency to help founders build AI startups after 2 successful AI SaaS exits and 4 failures

Hey everyone, I have been building AI products before ChatGPT was launched. In these years, I have managed to launch, scale and exit 2 SaaS products successfully. Today I am launching a new service offering - Query Labs - Helping you build AI agents for your startups. Like all my previous products, I will be building this in public and share my learning along the way. Here's what I have built so far : Microsponsors ( Fail ) My first product ever. I tried to create a marketplace for newsletter writers to find sponsorship opportunity. Got a few very big newsletter listed on the marketplace as well. However, building marketplace is tough. I found it very difficult to bring in sponsors. Ended up shutting it down, AI Query (Exit - Pre revenue ) It was the second half of 2022 and GPT-3 was the most advance AI on the market. I decided to build a tool that can help developers and non-technical folks write SQL queries by just asking in plain english. I got my first taste of success with this. Had a decent offer even before I figured out monetisation. Accepted the offer to focus on my next product which had already started gaining traction AI Excel Bot ( Exit - Revenue Generating ) AI Excel Bot was my wild success. I had worked hard on the SEO for the site, along with the UI / UX to make it the best AI to write excel formulas and general excel task. There was already a large competitor in the market. However, the reality is that you don't need to be the top player. There is always room for multiple players to survive in a large market. You just need to find the good differentiating factor For AI Excel Bot, the differentiator was the chrome extension, that helped users access it anywhere on the internet. Scaled the product to more than 40k users at the time of exit. However, in the end I decided to exit and focus on my software service business that needed more time. Tutore AI ( Fail ) I wanted to build something useful for students to help them learn better. Tutore was my idea to build AI tools for students. I did launch quickly with multiple tools. However, wasn't motivated enough to continue with the grind. I have decided to sell the product. Have had some meetings with potential buyers but didn't agree on price. Prompt Hackers ( 1k users but no revenue ) Prompt Hackers is a directory of AI prompts for all the use cases you can image. I focused a lot on bringing traffic and newsletter subscription from the day 1. I have never had a problem bringing initial set of users to my products. Prompt Hackers was getting close to 20k page views a month. At the same time we had close to 1k newsletter subscribers. Since our target customers were people choosing to use ChatGPT / Bard instead of some specific software for their task, I built a Prompt Generation and Prompt Optimisation AI. Along with this I also created features to build private prompt library. To make the experience even better, I launched a Chrome Extension that helps users access the prompt generation AI and their prompt library while using ChatGPT. However, I couldn't figure out monetisation. I still get close to 4k page views per month with no marketing at all. There are users who use the AI tools and the prompt library feature daily. But, since I couldn't figure out monetisation, I decided to not put time into the project. There you go. These are all the products I have built in the last 3 years. I have been heavy investing myself in the latest tech in LLMs and AI agents. I know the biggest challenge for AI founders is the AI agents and backend pipelines. That's why I am launching Query Labs. To help you build the best AI implementation for your innovative AI startup. I would love to hear feedback from the community. I will be sharing my learning with my new service along the way. Thanks!

Solopreneur making $40k MRR with a No Code SaaS sideproject

Hey, I'm Elias and I do case studies analyzing successful startups and solopreneurs. I wanted to share the summarized version of this one with you because this entrepreneurial journey blew my mind. This post will be about FormulaBot (ExcelFormulaBot), an AI No Code SaaS founded by David Bressler back in August 2022. FormulaBot is currently making $40k MRR (monthly recurring revenue). How did the founder come up with the idea. David is a data guy who worked in analytics for several years. In July 2022, David got really interested in AI, especially ChatGPT. One night, he tried it out at home, just like we all did back in the time. But in his case, trying ChatGPT gave him a big idea. That idea ended up making him a lot of money and changing the life of 750 million people who use Excel. That night David started by asking GPT easy questions, then complex ones. Since he used Excel a lot and helped his colleagues with it, he thought about an AI that could make Excel easier, like generating formulas from text. He looked online but found nothing. Seeing a big chance, he decided to do something about it. What challenges did the founder face. But David didn’t have any idea about how to develop an app. However, with no-code tools this is not a problem anymore. He discovered Bubble, a no-code web app tool that could connect with the OpenAI API.After, learning Bubble from YouTube tutorials and through trial and error and spending his nights studying the OpenAI API documentation, he launched the first version of the app in around three weeks. Strategies that made the project successful. David validated his idea by posting about ExcelFormulaBot on a Reddit Excel subreddit, receiving surprising attention with 10,000 upvotes. This encouraged him to offer the tool for free to gather feedback. Facing a hefty $4,999 API bill after the Reddit post, David quickly monetized his product with a subscription-based SaaS website. On launch day, 82 customers signed up, surpassing his expectations. A successful Product Hunt launch followed, generating $2.4k in sales within 24 hours, and a TikTok influencer with 4.5 million followers brought in thousands of new users overnight with a viral video. Marketing approach: -Paid ads: FormulaBot boosted website traffic with Paid Ads, notably on Google Ads, prioritizing Quality Score. This ensured ads aligned better with user searches, maximizing visibility and cost-efficiency, targeting those seeking Excel formula assistance. -SEO: a) Content/Keyword optimization: FormulaBot improved its SEO by making helpful pages about Excel formulas, like guides on topics such as "How to use SUMIFS." b) Site Speed Enhancement: David boosted FormulaBot's marketing site speed by moving it from Bubble to Framer, aiming to improve user experience and SEO performance. c) On-page optimization: David optimized FormulaBot's on-page elements by adjusting title tags, meta descriptions, and content to enhance SEO performance and align with search intent. These strategic refinements aimed to address ranking declines and emphasize FormulaBot's uniqueness, ultimately improving its visibility and competitiveness in search results. -Virality: FormulaBot went viral as users found it highly useful and cool. Influencers on platforms like TikTok and Twitter shared it with their followers because they found it valuable. Offering numerous free features further enhanced its appeal. Lessons: successes and mistakes. ✅ Leverage industry expertise: David identified a problem in analytics and used his experience to start an online business addressing it, turning an industry challenge into a profitable venture. ✅ Embrace learning new skills: Despite lacking initial technical know-how, David learned what he needed to develop the software himself, demonstrating a commitment to continuous learning and adaptability crucial for success. ❌ Minimize dependency on third parties: Relying solely on the ChatGPT API poses risks for FormulaBot. Any issues with the API could disrupt functionality and limit scalability. ⁉️ Caution with free tools: Offering a free tool can attract users and drive viral growth, but converting them to paying customers is challenging. Avoid relying solely on a 100% free model unless your revenue comes from non-user sources like ads. For businesses dependent on user subscriptions or purchases, balancing user attraction with conversion challenges is crucial. How could you replicate this idea step-by-step. To replicate the success of FormulaBot and similar AI wrapper startups, it's crucial to tread carefully in a competitive market. Avoid mere replication of existing solutions unless you can offer something distinct or superior. Consider these steps to effectively develop an AI Wrapper/ChatGPT wrapper product using Bubble as a no-code tool: Design the user interface: Utilize Bubble's drag-and-drop editor to create a user-friendly interface with input fields, buttons, and result displays. Set up workflows: Define workflows to connect the interface with the ChatGPT API, enabling seamless interaction between users and the AI. Integrate the ChatGPT API: Obtain the API key from OpenAI and integrate it into your app using Bubble's API connector feature. Test and gather feedback: Thoroughly test your app, soliciting feedback to refine functionality and usability. Refine and optimize: Continuously improve your app based on user input and testing results to enhance performance and user experience. The in-depth version of the case study was originally posted here. Feel free to comment if you have any questions, and let me know which similar ideas you'd like me to analyze.

Introducing Vest: Your AI-Powered Due Diligence Partner - Looking for feedback!

TLDR; We are introducing Vest, an AI powered due-diligence and stock recommendation platform. We have bootstrapped ourselves so far and are wanting to get as much feedback from Reddit as we can to see where we can improve, but also what we are doing right. So please have a look around, give us feedback and if you like it, feel free to use it. Hi Reddit, My name is Drian and I'm one of the founders of Vest. We believe we are crafting something special at Vest and we want to get the word out and gather as much feedback as possible! Our major goal at Vest is to help new retail investors make sense of the investment landscape and get AI powered assistance, or even help experienced investors get confirmation of their potential moves. Overall, we want people to start their journey to financial freedom and not be daunted by the complexity of it. So how do we do this? Vest is a user-friendly service that harnesses fundamental metrics, social and news sentiment, and technical analysis, that we feed into some advanced AI models to generate clear buy, sell, or hold signals for US-based (for now!) stocks, offering our users transparent due-diligence for confident investing. The service is currently free with no ads - however, at some point we do plan on adding a paid tier. What's included: &#x200B; Financial Metrics. Our financial metrics take all the potentially complex mathematical equations and present the fundamentals of a company to users in a simple 1 pager, with a score displaying if the metric is positive for a stock. We also provide publicly available analyst ratings from investment banks as well as price targets they have set. News Sentiment. We take publications about a specific stock from new articles, journals and socials and give these all a rating to determine if social sentiment is positive around a stock or not. Each article and its rating is visible to our users through through our dashboard. AI assisted Stock Signals. We have developed an algorithm to take all the metrics, sentiment and technical analysis we collate and analyze this with historic performance data for every stock to attempt to figure out if a stock is undervalued (great time to buy) or overvalued (great time to sell). 155 US stock tickers and counting. We currently have trained our models for around 155 US based stocks on the NASDAQ and NYSE exchanges. As we get more funding/runway we do plan on adding more, with the eventual goal to expand to more exchanges, countries and securities. Knowledge base and community. Our knowledge base & community contains explanations and articles for all metrics and the other good stuff behind Vest. We don’t want to just tell users what to do, but to also assist in their financial education. We hope our knowledge base can also become a thriving community where users can interact with us and each, ask questions around investing and keep gaining knowledge. Is it 100% accurate? Absolutely not. While we do a pretty great job at tracking and surfacing signals, we are not presenting a fool-proof, silver bullet with a guarantee here - rather a starting point for users to make more informed decisions, find potential new investment opportunities and hopefully learn about investing as they do so. We encourage our users to do their own research and due-diligence and not just take our signals as gospel - we know each and every person has a different risk appetite and goals, and we encourage you to use Vest in a way that fits with your own financial goals and risk appetite. We also display our win rates, average returns, and comparisons with buy and hold for each stock - and we are transparent about it when we’ve fallen short. Next steps: &#x200B; Hope over to vestapp.ai and sign-up From the dashboard, play around, inspect our stock information and add some stocks to your watchlist. If you like what you see, and you’ve done your homework - use your favourite brokerage account to make an investment and watch Vest for changes in a stocks signals. If you don’t have one, we have a pop-up when you click buy/sell on any given stock with some non-affiliated brokerage options for the US, Australia and New Zealand - we don’t get a kickback from these brokerages, they are just what we’ve personally been using. FEEDBACK - We’re just getting started and we know the value of a fresh pair of eyes - our current mission is to get as much feedback as possible - anything you think of please send it through here or on the dedicated feedback form on our website in the sidebar on the left. Features we’re working on We're quietly thrilled about the direction Vest is headed, and we want to give you a sneak peek of what's in store for the next couple of quarters. Some of these may roll out as premium features, but we're diligently fine-tuning the details. Here's what you can expect: &#x200B; Insider Trading Insights: Get daily reports on major stock moves by whales and company insiders. Institutional Holders: We're adding daily reports on institutional holders, keeping you informed about their moves. Lobbying Activity: We're actively working on daily updates about lobbying activities, so you can stay informed. Government Contracts Data: We'll provide a quarterly snapshot of government contract values for the companies you're tracking. US Congress Stock Activity: Keep an eye on daily trading actions of House and Senate members. Daily Summaries & Signal Alerts: We're currently hard at work on this feature. Soon, receive daily email summaries covering signals, watchlist updates, and key news. Personalized Risk Management: Tailor signals to match your unique risk management strategy. Your investments, your way. AI Assistant: Our LLM integration is almost ready, allowing you to ask it straightforward questions about particular securities in plain English. It will provide you with real-time context on fundamentals, news, and all the metrics and data points we monitor.

Running and selling multiple side projects alongside a 9-5

My current side project started 56 days ago when I started writing 1,000 words per day. My core businesses are an agency and job board, and I just needed a creative outlet. The likes of Chris Guillebeau and Nathan Barry attribute their progression to writing so I thought I’d see if it might do the same for me. At first I was just vomiting words onto the screen, I made a blog and wrote mainly technical guides related to my skills. Over time I realised I was writing more and more about running a business as a solopreneur, or lean operator. There is tons of content out there giving you the Birds Eye of going from 0 to £10m. Inspiring stuff, but I think there is a void in real content, explaining the nuts and bolts of the how.  What is the day-to-day like for the solopreneurs who make a good living and have plenty of free time? That’s what I’m striving for anyway. I’m not talking about the 7-figure outliers. Or the ones teaching you to make content so you can have a business teaching others how to make content, and so on. I’m also sick of the ‘I made $X in 5 minutes and how you can too’  So, I started chatting to people in my network who run lean businesses and/or side hustles. I ask them a bit about their journey and ask them to teach something - how they operate, or a skill/process/system/tool that other people like you/me will find useful. One of my first chats was with Sam Dickie, who runs multiple side projects so thought I’d share here, see if others find it useful and get some feedback. I’ve removed all links as I’ve never posted on Reddit before so conscious of not being promotional, I’m posting this stuff to a tiny email list of friends with no upsells. Just finding my feet on whether others find it useful or not: — Sam is a serial entrepreneur who builds projects in his spare time whilst working a 9-5. He’s scaled and sold multiple ventures and currently runs one of the best newsletters out there for builders and entrepreneurs. Building audience through newsletters has always been a cornerstone strategy for him, so, along with sharing his advice on solopreneurism, he’s also generously shared his lean newsletter writing process. About Sam Sam is a Senior Product Manager who has spent the last 15 years working in the tech sector after starting his career as a town planner. In addition to his job he spends some of his spare time building side projects. These have included a 3D printing startup, a tech directory, a newsletter, a beta product directory, and consultancy. Sam is the epitome of making a success out of following your interest and curiosity. It’s clear he enjoys his business ventures and builds in a risk-free way.   It’s often touted by business gurus to avoid building around your interests, but Sam bucks the trend successfully. I think he’s someone who has already found his 1,000 true fans.  Descending rabbit holes, Sam’s journey of invention and curation 3D printing Sam’s first foray into launching a startup was with Fiilo, a 3D printing business. This was at the height of the 3D printing craze and he self-admits that he used the launch as an excuse to buy a 3D printer. He ended up with two and launching a product called GrowGo. GrowGo is a sustainable 3D-printed product that turns any bottle into somewhere that you can grow plants and herbs. He eventually sold this business and the printers, making around £10k. Along the way, he was exposed to various business tasks, including building a website in Weebly, the biggest nocode website builder of the time, and built an API that enabled print on demand for his product. NoCode.Tech The experiences of building as someone non-technical led to numerous friends asking how he built all of this tech. Back then, nocode wasn’t popular, and it had almost zero search volume, so Sam created a basic directory. A quick landing page on Weebly with a basic value prop, a short explanation and a list of the tools he had used before. It hit the top spot on Product Hunt, and he landed 2,000 subscribers in the first 48 hours. But, he hadn’t built it at this point, so he set about getting to work. He built the directory and list to 30,000 subs and monetised the site through advertising. At its peak with Sam, it was receiving about £2,000 per month in ad revenue. He was still working his 9-5 at this point, so thought it might be a good time to exit. The site was still growing, but it was becoming anxiety inducing whilst he was still working full-time. So, he ended up selling the site and making friend’s with the buyer. Fast forwarding a bit, Nocode.tech was eventually acquired by Stackr, a nocode app. Sam was working for their competitor at the time and ended up being offered a job by his friend who acquired the site. All of this from a side project in his area of passion. Creator Club After selling the directory, Sam lost his outlet for sharing his tools and learnings.  Being fascinated with curation and loving sifting through for nuggets, he invested more time into his personal website and launched Creator Club newsletter. Sam writes monthly and currently has over 8,000 subs. It’s one of the few newsletters that I let bypass my email filters and land in my main inbox. Life as a Part-Time Multipreneur Side Hustler If it’s not obvious already Sam is a curiosity led business creator. He’s found that the products without a revenue focus or intention have ironically outperformed those created for the sole purpose of creating money. He enjoys working on his side hustles. He could have run the Nocode.Tech for 10 more years and wouldn’t have tired of it as it’s a byproduct of his interest. For this reason, he has also created the Beta Directory, simply because he loves unearthing early-stage products. He admits he gets the fear when he thinks about quitting his 9-5, although he suspects if he devoted the same energy to one of his projects it could replace his income (no doubts from me here). This same fear means that he can run his ventures with less fear. This way, he can experiment with freedom and isn’t risking the ranch with a young family to consider. For example, recently he stopped paid sponsors on his newsletter as it was more stress than the value of the income to him. Sam divides his time on evenings and weekends (unequally) between the following: Creator Club Validation Co Beta directory Consultancy The pure side hustle status magnifies the need to run lean, let’s jump into his process…. Sam’s lean newsletter curation and creation process Starting out publishing his personal newsletter Going against his expertise, Sam originally over-engineered his process.  He curated with Feedly and tried to automate the full writing process with Zapier. The trouble is that there are too many points of failure which can lead the whole  chain to break down, and you spend more time fixing the system. For a 200 subscriber newsletter, he needed to pare things back. His set-up now Sam scaled back and now simple builds automations when he needs them. He keeps the process simple, right down to the design and any welcome automations. Keeping things real We touched on the trend that keeping things raw is better. Content has come full circle with the advent of AI. Everything looks too perfect and consequently, people’s tastes are changing. Sam mentioned watermarks that show content isn’t AI written, and we referenced content such as Greg Isenberg’s sketches, and Chris Donnelly’s image posts. \\Step by Step Process:\\ Using Stoop Inbox to manage sources Curation with Pocket Managing content with Airtable and Zapier Using Bearly to summarise Substack for writing Monitoring content sources Sam uses Stoop Inbox, an RSS curation tool, to manage his content sources. It gives him a dedicated email address for newsletters and he follows an Inbox Zero methodology. He checks in daily in Stoop, and on X, Reddit and IndieHackers. With X, he just uses the standard interface but has been careful to curate his feed, sometimes adding in extra notifications to hear from interesting people. Highlighting content When curating links, Sam uses Arc browser and the Pocket extension to save links. It’s super simple and lightweight. He creates tags which trigger an automation that curates the link to Airtable. If you watch the video, here’s a shoutout to Alice, the AI interface I use which has recently featured on Product Hunt. It’s a fantastic tool with bags of potential to enhance a solopreneur’s life. Ranking and sorting content He sends the links indexed using Pocket to a basic Airtable base via Zapier. From there, he grades the content and sets aside some time to read it in more depth. Pocket pulls through the title, metadata, and URL link. Review Sam does this manually but has used a tool as a shortcut for digesting long form content — Bearly.ai. Bearly.ai was created by Trung Phan and linking back to raw content, Trung is 1/3 of the hosts on the Not Investment Advice podcast. Its irreverent style and thumbnail are an example of a successful podcast that doesn’t over polish. Writing it all up Being a huge Notion fan (check out the free templates on his site), Sam originally used Notion for writing and linked it into Revue. When Elon sunsetted Revue, he switched to Substack. He loves the Substack interface so drafts in Substack based on a duplication of last month’s edition. Before publishing, Sam runs through a 10-point Notion checklist, which he shared with me. Parting Advice Keep your tool stack as lean as possible. Avoid tool switching to the shiny new object. Getting launched quickly is key. Don’t think that you have to be everywhere for distribution, Sam sticks with what he knows on X and LinkedIn. Overall, he advises just keeping things simple and therefore minimising risk. Resources He says they’re cliche, but I don’t agree; they’re timeless. Paul Graham of Y Combinator is someone Sam recommends following. He doesn’t write much, which is great as Sam gets anxiety when someone good often writes and he can’t keep up with the writing. His content is well thought out and distills complex concepts in entrepreneurship and startups. In addition, Sam loves Naval Ravikant’s approach. He mentions checking out the Almanac of Naval Ravikant for collected wisdom. Follow Sam’s Journey Again, not going to link here but you can find Sam’s stuff easily enough if you want to. His personal website is beautiful and contains loads of free downloads. He has also curated personal websites he admires if you need some inspiration. Sam is a super nice guy so reach out to him, I did before I started my personal blog recently, and he gave me some great advice. Also, worth keeping an eye on Validation Co, where he aims to help early-stage makers and creators validate their ideas. He’s building super slow — trying to enjoy the process without unachievable deadlines. Maintaining his stamina and passion. Amazing, I hope he writes more about that soon! -- That’s my second shot at an interview, hope you enjoyed it and found something useful in it. I’m talking to a marketplace founder who spends 2–3 hours per month his project, a multiple job board owner with a 9-5 and a leading book designer next. As this is my side project, should I keep going?

How I Built a $6k/mo Business with Cold Email

I scaled my SaaS to a $6k/mo business in under 6 months completely using cold email. However, the biggest takeaway for me is not a business that’s potentially worth 6-figure. It’s having a glance at the power of cold emails in the age of AI. It’s a rapidly evolving yet highly-effective channel, but no one talks about how to do it properly. Below is the what I needed 3 years ago, when I was stuck with 40 free users on my first app. An app I spent 2 years building into the void. Entrepreneurship is lonely. Especially when you are just starting out. Launching a startup feel like shouting into the dark. You pour your heart out. You think you have the next big idea, but no one cares. You write tweets, write blogs, build features, add tests. You talk to some lukewarm leads on Twitter. You do your big launch on Product Hunt. You might even get your first few sales. But after that, crickets... Then, you try every distribution channel out there. SEO Influencers Facebook ads Affiliates Newsletters Social media PPC Tiktok Press releases The reality is, none of them are that effective for early-stage startups. Because, let's face it, when you're just getting started, you have no clue what your customers truly desire. Without understanding their needs, you cannot create a product that resonates with them. It's as simple as that. So what’s the best distribution channel when you are doing a cold start? Cold emails. I know what you're thinking, but give me 10 seconds to change your mind: When I first heard about cold emailing I was like: “Hell no! I’m a developer, ain’t no way I’m talking to strangers.” That all changed on Jan 1st 2024, when I actually started sending cold emails to grow. Over the period of 6 months, I got over 1,700 users to sign up for my SaaS and grew it to a $6k/mo rapidly growing business. All from cold emails. Mastering Cold Emails = Your Superpower I might not recommend cold emails 3 years ago, but in 2024, I'd go all in with it. It used to be an expensive marketing channel bootstrapped startups can’t afford. You need to hire many assistants, build a list, research the leads, find emails, manage the mailboxes, email the leads, reply to emails, do meetings. follow up, get rejected... You had to hire at least 5 people just to get the ball rolling. The problem? Managing people sucks, and it doesn’t scale. That all changed with AI. Today, GPT-4 outperforms most human assistants. You can build an army of intelligent agents to help you complete tasks that’d previously be impossible without human input. Things that’d take a team of 10 assistants a week can now be done in 30 minutes with AI, at far superior quality with less headaches. You can throw 5000 names with website url at this pipeline and you’ll automatically have 5000 personalized emails ready to fire in 30 minutes. How amazing is that? Beyond being extremely accessible to developers who are already proficient in AI, cold email's got 3 superpowers that no other distribution channels can offer. Superpower 1/3 : You start a conversation with every single user. Every. Single. User. Let that sink in. This is incredibly powerful in the early stages, as it helps you establish rapport, bounce ideas off one another, offer 1:1 support, understand their needs, build personal relationships, and ultimately convert users into long-term fans of your product. From talking to 1000 users at the early stage, I had 20 users asking me to get on a call every week. If they are ready to buy, I do a sales call. If they are not sure, I do a user research call. At one point I even had to limit the number of calls I took to avoid burnout. The depth of the understanding of my customers’ needs is unparalleled. Using this insight, I refined the product to precisely cater to their requirements. Superpower 2/3 : You choose exactly who you talk to Unlike other distribution channels where you at best pick what someone's searching for, with cold emails, you have 100% control over who you talk to. Their company Job title Seniority level Number of employees Technology stack Growth rate Funding stage Product offerings Competitive landscape Social activity (Marital status - well, technically you can, but maybe not this one…) You can dial in this targeting to match your ICP exactly. The result is super low CAC and ultra high conversion rate. For example, My competitors are paying $10 per click for the keyword "HARO agency". I pay $0.19 per email sent, and $1.92 per signup At around $500 LTV, you can see how the first means a non-viable business. And the second means a cash-generating engine. Superpower 3/3 : Complete stealth mode Unlike other channels where competitors can easily reverse engineer or even abuse your marketing strategies, cold email operates in complete stealth mode. Every aspect is concealed from end to end: Your target audience Lead generation methods Number of leads targeted Email content Sales funnel This secrecy explains why there isn't much discussion about it online. Everyone is too focused on keeping their strategies close and reaping the rewards. That's precisely why I've chosen to share my insights on leveraging cold email to grow a successful SaaS business. More founders need to harness this channel to its fullest potential. In addition, I've more or less reached every user within my Total Addressable Market (TAM). So, if any competitor is reading this, don't bother trying to replicate it. The majority of potential users for this AI product are already onboard. To recap, the three superpowers of cold emails: You start a conversation with every single user → Accelerate to PMF You choose exactly who you talk to → Super-low CAC Complete stealth mode → Doesn’t attract competition By combining the three superpowers I helped my SaaS reach product-marketing-fit quickly and scale it to $6k per month while staying fully bootstrapped. I don't believe this was a coincidence. It's a replicable strategy for any startup. The blueprint is actually straightforward: Engage with a handful of customers Validate the idea Engage with numerous customers Scale to $5k/mo and beyond More early-stage founders should leverage cold emails for validation, and as their first distribution channel. And what would it do for you? Update: lots of DM asking about more specifics so I wrote about it here. https://coldstartblueprint.com/p/ai-agent-email-list-building

Just reached 300 users in 3 months!!!

Just reached 300 users after 3 months live!!! My co-founder has been posting a bit here and always got some strong support and he suggested I share my side of things so here it is: How it started I co-founded AirMedia almost a year ago and we both didn’t know much about design/marketing/coding (just studied programming during my 6-month exchange period. The quickest way to get started seemed to get a no-code product that we could put in front of users and get feedback. My co-founder then started learning about bubble and we put together a basic platform to show users. I was working on a custom-code database in the meantime and decided after month 2 that we wanted to get something better I.e. AI would be interacting with the UI and had to do everything custom-code for it. We’re now month 3 and started from scratch again. While I was working on the code, we started talking to some potential users and selling lifetime deals to validate the idea (this is where I would start if I had to do it over again). Well I progressively found out it was more complicated than expected and we only released our first beta product last August (6 months later) Some challenges pre-launch: Getting the Meta/LinkedIn permissions for scheduling took around 1 month As the whole process took more time than expected, the waitlist of 300 that we managed to put together only converted by 10% (into free users). Please don’t make our mistakes and always keep your waitlist updated on what’s going on. Some challenges post-launch: Getting the right feedback and how to prioritise Getting users Monetising (yes - we’re bootstrapped) To get the best feedback we implemented some tracking (according to GDPR of course) on the platform and implemented Microsoft Clarity. The latter is a game-changer, if you have a SaaS and don’t use it you’re missing out. I wasn’t really into getting users as my co-founder handled that but it’s mainly manual and personalised LinkedIn outreach at the beginning and Reddit sharing about the progress, answering questions and getting some feedback at the same time. To monetise we realised we’re too common and there are 100+ other nice schedulers around so we’re now focusing on cracking the content creation side of AI (to be released next week 👀) as there’s much less competitors and it seems like that’s our users want. In the meantime of growing the company, we had to find a way to pay the bills as it’s two of us living together. So my co-founder started using the bubble skills gained and doing some freelance. He did around 7 platforms the last 6 months and we’re now just launching a bubble agency as a part of the main company to get your idea of a SaaS done in 30 days. That’s QuickMVP. It seemed like the right move to help other people (I met many non-technical founder looking for someone to bring their idea to life that didn’t cost $10k and was reliable) and include the AirMedia subscription in the package so let’s see how this next step plays out. Thanks for reading until here :)

I built an AI Sales Copilot for Reps & Sales Engineers

I had this problem as a founder that it was really hard to transfer everything I knew about my product and industry to the reps & Sales Engineers I was hiring. This problem also exists for non-founders, say the SE manager or VP Sales ramping new teammates I solved this problem by building HeySam, the AI Sales Copilot that shadows your top reps and SEs on calls, learning the “tribal knowledge” around positioning, objection handling, and technical questions. Customize Sam with your documentation, Slack, and sales collateral to create your team's perfect sales copilot for: Sales calls with live help on objections and questions Call Intelligence to summarize meetings, identify competitive pressures, and update the CRM Meeting Prep with prospect briefs combining account research, past interactions, and competitive insights Contact Tracking to follow key relationships as people change roles. RFPs completed in minutes Slack responses to sales teams’ technical questions, freeing up SE and engineering time Docs and community for self-serve customer education You can start with any of the seven powerful use cases. One AI Agent. That’s Sam.

Looking for a technical co-founder to build LinkedIn’s rival

How do you connect with likeminded people? You see the polished wins everywhere, but what about the messy drafts , the awkward pitches and the moments you’re not sure you’ve got it right? Problem: The whole idea of founding and starting a business can be super intimidating for some people, specially those who don’t know any founders personally, those who don’t have a large network, those who don’t have rich parents with large networks, those not inserted in an entrepreneurial culture like in the US for example (which is my case). Sometimes all you need is the right support network, and too see others do what you want, to know that it’s possible! Everyone has an “ultimate guide” to make 7 figures or build a business on YouTube but NO ONE shoes you the HOW, just the results… I’ve tried joining founder communities, LinkedIn ,Reddit … you name it. Most of these founder communities are inaccessible for regular people and often ask for you to have an already existing business with a min ARR… or their simply geography based and if you’re not in a certain area you can’t really participate… As of LinkedIn… full of empty AI generated posts about how some random dude raised $10m in 7 days. Okay Jonathan, but what about the HOW?? How did you write your first pitch? How many rejection calls did you get? What is an MVP? There simply isn’t a platform out there to document your founding journey and find inspiration within a community of people who are doing the same as you. What better way to feel motivated then to see someone actually document their process? Solution: I’m working on building a social media platform for aspiring/founders to connect through the RAW, UNFILTERED process of turning ideas into reality in REAL time. It’s all gonna be around the “building in public “ concept and content creation. Picture an instagram/tiktok profile where instead of seeing someone’s dog you see them documenting their founding process—from the moment they had the idea, to the moment they launched, you’re going to see the successes, the fails, the rejected calls, all documented through actual content and not some AI generated LinkedIn post. Imagine if you wanted to learn about how Steve Jobs started Apple , you could simply go through his profile on this app—exactly. To make sure all interactions are meaningful people would have to apply. It’s a truly curated community, with REAL people, building REAL things in REAL time, and not just tell us the story of how they did it… Audience: I’m targeting people who have a burning desire of building a business and early stage founders starting their founder journeys, that don’t have a support network and simply don’t know where to start. People who are tired of watching 30 min “ultimate guides “ on how to make it on YouTube from “business gurus” selling courses. People who haven’t reached the min ARR required to join an “exclusive “ founder a community. People who can’t simply just move to the US to get into the “exclusive” YC combinator. People who want to connect with real people building real things and not anonymous people on Reddit, or LinkedIn influencers again trying to promote their services. I believe in the idea because I’m also part of my audience. Have always wanted to start my own thing just never knew how to and where to find a community of likeminded people . I don’t know any founders myself, I come from a non-entrepreneurial society and I’d pay good money to access a community of REAL passionate founders building REAL things, in REAL time. This would be my first ever business, and I want to share my journey building it and hopefully inspire others to just start so I’ve created a mailing list to keep anyone interested in the project updated on my fails , learnings and successes. I’m not worried about “making it” but just “starting” and hopefully reach the right audience and inspire anyone to start whatever they have marinating in their thoughts. If you’re a founder struggling with staying consistent or an aspiring founder with an insane desire of starting and don’t know how to start, I’d love to get your feedback on what’s stopping you, your challenges starting out and what you’d find useful in such platform. And finally would this be something that interests you?? Feel free to subscribe to get new updates 🫶🏼 : https://mailchi.mp/037c56b89994/d-founder PS: casually looking for a technical co-founder

I built an ai startup, got paying customers—then made it free because it felt like a scam

A few months ago, I launched my first AI startup, AppScriptor. It was an AI-powered tool that could generate mobile apps automatically. At first, I was thrilled—I got a lot of reactions, paying customers, and people excited about the idea. But the more I worked on it, the more I realized a major flaw: real-time app previews were nearly impossible. Users wanted instant updates and fast iterations, but the technology just wasn’t there yet. I felt guilty charging people for something that wasn’t delivering the experience they expected. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good enough. I didn’t want to keep collecting payments while knowing I couldn’t improve it quickly enough—so I made it completely free. Eventually, I shut it down. That experience taught me a crucial lesson: people don’t just want an MVP; they want something useful. That’s why I built StarterPilot—an AI-driven platform that helps entrepreneurs validate ideas, generate branding assets, and build landing pages effortlessly. This time, I’m making sure it actually delivers. What’s the hardest part of launching a startup for you? Would love to hear your experiences!

How I went from $27 to $3K as a solopreneur still in a 9-5

My journey started back in November 2023. I was scrolling through Twitter and YouTube and saw a word that I had never come across before. Solopreneur. The word caught my eye. Mainly because I was pretty sure I knew what it meant even though it's not a word you'll find in the dictionary. I liked what it was describing. A solo entrepreneur. A one man business. It completely resonated with me. As a software engineer by trade I'm used to working alone, especially since the pandemic hit and we were forced to work remotely. See, I always wanted to ditch the 9-5 thing but thought that was too big and too scary for a single person to do. Surely you would need a lot of money to get started, right? Surely you would need investors? The whole concept seemed impossible to me. That was until I found all the success stories. I became obsessed with the concept of solopreneurship. As I went further down the rabbit hole I found people like Justin Welsh, Kieran Drew and Marc Louvion to name a few. All of whom have one person businesses making huge money every year. So I thought, if they can do it, why can't I? People like this have cleared the pathway for those looking to escape the 9-5 grind. I decided 2024 would be the year I try this out. My main goal for the year? Build a one man business, earn my first $ online and learn a sh\*t ton along the way. My main goal in general? Build my business to $100K per year, quit my 9-5 and live with freedom. From December 2023 to February 2024 I began brainstorming ideas. I was like a lost puppy looking for his ball. How on earth did people find good ideas? I began writing everything and anything that came to mind down in my notes app on my phone. By February I would have approximately 70 ideas. Each as weird and whacky as the other. I was skeptical though. If I went through all the trouble of building a product for one of these ideas how would I know if anyone would even be interested in using it? I got scared and took a break for a week. All these ideas seemed too big and the chance that they would take off into the atmosphere was slim (in my mind anyways). I was learning more and more about solopreneurship as the weeks went on so I decided to build a product centered around everything I was learning about. The idea was simple. Enter a business idea and use AI to give the user details about how to market it, who their target customers were, what to write on their landing page, etc. All for a measly $27 per use. I quickly built it and launched on March 3rd 2024. I posted about it on Indie Hackers, Reddit and Hacker News. I was so excited about the prospect of earning my first internet $! Surely everyone wanted to use my product! Nope...all I got was crickets. I was quickly brought back down to earth. That was until 5 days later. I looked at my phone and had a new Stripe notification! Cha-ching! My first internet $. What a feeling! That was goal number 1 complete. It would be another 6 days before I would get my second sale...and then another 15 days to get my third. It was an emotional rollercoaster. I went from feeling like quitting the 9-5 was actually possible to thinking that maybe the ups and downs aren't worth it. On one hand I had made my first internet dollar so I should my ecstatic, and don't get me wrong, I was but I wanted more. More validation that I could do this long term. By May I was starting to give up on the product. I had learned so much in the past few months about marketing, SEO, building an audience, etc. and I wanted to build something that I thought could have more success so I focused on one critical thing that I had learned about. What was it? Building a product that had SEO potential. A product that I knew hundreds of people were looking for. See this was my thinking - If I could find a keyword that people were searching for on Google hundreds/thousands of times every month and it was easy to rank high on search engines then I would go all in (in SEO land this equates to a Keyword that has a Keyword Difficulty of = 500). I began researching and found that the keyword "micro saas ideas" was being searched for around 600 times each month. Micro Saas was something that really interested me. It was perfect for solopreneurs. Small software products that 1 person could build. What's not to like if you're in the game of software and solopreneurship? Researching keywords like this became like a game for me. I was hooked. I was doing it every day, finding gems that were being searched for hundreds and thousands of times every month that still had potential. That's when I came up with my next product idea. I decided to create a database of Micro Saas Ideas all with this sort of SEO potential. See if you can build a product that you know people are looking for then that's all the validation you need. So I put this theory to the test. I created a database of Micro Saas Ideas with SEO Potential and launched it in June 2024. This time it was different. I made $700 in the first week of launching. A large contrast to my previous failed attempt at becoming the worlds greatest solopreneur. Since launch I have grown the product to $3K and I couldn't be happier. I know what you're saying, $3K isn't a lot. But it's validation. It's validation that I can earn $ online. Validation that I can grow a business and it gives me hope that one day I'll be able to quit that 9-5 grind. My plan is to keep growing the business. I expect there to be a few challenges up ahead but I'll tackle them as I go and learn from the failures and successes. I have a newsletter where I share Micro Saas Ideas with SEO potential every week which I'll leave below in the first comment. Feel free to come along for the ride. If not I hope this post brings you some value If you're thinking about starting as a solopreneur, stop thinking and start doing, you won't regret it.

I spent 6 months on a web app as a side project, and got 0 users. Here is my story.

Edit Thank you all so much for your time reading my story. Your support, feedback, criticism, and skepticism; all helped me a lot, and I couldn't appreciate it enough \^\_\^ I very rarely have stuff to post on Reddit, but I share how my project is going on, just random stuff, and memes on X. In case few might want to keep up 👀 TL;DR I spent 6 months on a tool that currently has 0 users. Below is what I learned during my journey, sharing because I believe most mistakes are easily avoidable. Do not overestimate your product and assume it will be an exception to fundamental principles. Principles are there for a reason. Always look for validation before you start. Avoid building products with a low money-to-effort ratio/in very competitive fields. Unless you have the means, you probably won't make it. Pick a problem space, pick your target audience, and talk to them before thinking about a solution. Identify and match their pain points. Only then should you think of a solution. If people are not overly excited or willing to pay in advance for a discounted price, it might be a sign to rethink. Sell one and only one feature at a time. Avoid everything else. If people don't pay for that one core feature, no secondary feature will change their mind. Always spend twice as much time marketing as you do building. You will not get users if they don't know it exists. Define success metrics ("1000 users in 3 months" or "$6000 in the account at the end of 6 months") before you start. If you don't meet them, strongly consider quitting the project. If you can't get enough users to keep going, nothing else matters. VALIDATION, VALIDATION, VALIDATION. Success is not random, but most of our first products will not make a success story. Know when to admit failure, and move on. Even if a product of yours doesn't succeed, what you learned during its journey will turn out to be invaluable for your future. My story So, this is the story of a product that I’ve been working on for the last 6 months. As it's the first product I’ve ever built, after watching you all from the sidelines, I have learned a lot, made many mistakes, and did only a few things right. Just sharing what I’ve learned and some insights from my journey so far. I hope that this post will help you avoid the mistakes I made — most of which I consider easily avoidable — while you enjoy reading it, and get to know me a little bit more 🤓. A slow start after many years Summ isn’t the first product I really wanted to build. Lacking enough dev skills to even get started was a huge blocker for so many years. In fact, the first product I would’ve LOVED to build was a smart personal shopping assistant. I had this idea 4 years ago; but with no GPT, no coding skills, no technical co-founder, I didn’t have the means to make it happen. I still do not know if such a tool exists and is good enough. All I wanted was a tool that could make data-based predictions about when to buy stuff (“buy a new toothpaste every three months”) and suggest physical products that I might need or be strongly interested in. AFAIK, Amazon famously still struggles with the second one. Fast-forward a few years, I learned the very basics of HTML, CSS, and Vanilla JS. Still was not there to build a product; but good enough to code my design portfolio from scratch. Yet, I couldn’t imagine myself building a product using Vanilla JS. I really hated it, I really sucked at it. So, back to tutorial hell, and to learn about this framework I just heard about: React.React introduced so many new concepts to me. “Thinking in React” is a phrase we heard a lot, and with quite good reasons. After some time, I was able to build very basic tutorial apps, both in React, and React Native; but I have to say that I really hated coding for mobile. At this point, I was already a fan of productivity apps, and had a concept for a time management assistant app in my design portfolio. So, why not build one? Surely, it must be easy, since every coding tutorial starts with a todo app. ❌ WRONG! Building a basic todo app is easy enough, but building one good enough for a place in the market was a challenge I took and failed. I wasted one month on that until I abandoned the project for good. Even if I continued working on it, as the productivity landscape is overly competitive, I wouldn’t be able to make enough money to cover costs, assuming I make any. Since I was (and still am) in between jobs, I decided to abandon the project. 👉 What I learned: Do not start projects with a low ratio of money to effort and time. Example: Even if I get 500 monthly users, 200 of which are paid users (unrealistically high number), assuming an average subscription fee of $5/m (such apps are quite cheap, mostly due to the high competition), it would make me around $1000 minus any occurring costs. Any founder with a product that has 500 active users should make more. Even if it was relatively successful, due to the high competition, I wouldn’t make any meaningful money. PS: I use Todoist today. Due to local pricing, I pay less than $2/m. There is no way I could beat this competitive pricing, let alone the app itself. But, somehow, with a project that wasn’t even functional — let alone being an MVP — I made my first Wi-Fi money: Someone decided that the domain I preemptively purchased is worth something. By this point, I had already abandoned the project, certainly wasn’t going to renew the domain, was looking for a FT job, and a new project that I could work on. And out of nowhere, someone hands me some free money — who am I not to take it? Of course, I took it. The domain is still unused, no idea why 🤔. Ngl, I still hate the fact that my first Wi-Fi money came from this. A new idea worth pursuing? Fast-forward some weeks now. Around March, I got this crazy idea of building an email productivity tool. We all use emails, yet we all hate them. So, this must be fixed. Everyone uses emails, in fact everyone HAS TO use emails. So, I just needed to build a tool and wait for people to come. This was all, really. After all, the problem space is huge, there is enough room for another product, everyone uses emails, no need for any further validation, right? ❌ WRONG ONCE AGAIN! We all hear from the greatest in the startup landscape that we must validate our ideas with real people, yet at least some of us (guilty here 🥸) think that our product will be hugely successful and prove them to be an exception. Few might, but most are not. I certainly wasn't. 👉 Lesson learned: Always validate your ideas with real people. Ask them how much they’d pay for such a tool (not if they would). Much better if they are willing to pay upfront for a discount, etc. But even this comes later, keep reading. I think the difference between “How much” and “If” is huge for two reasons: (1) By asking them for “How much”, you force them to think in a more realistic setting. (2) You will have a more realistic idea on your profit margins. Based on my competitive analysis, I already had a solution in my mind to improve our email usage standards and email productivity (huge mistake), but I did my best to learn about their problems regarding those without pushing the idea too hard. The idea is this: Generate concise email summaries with suggested actions, combine them into one email, and send it at their preferred times. Save as much as time the AI you end up with allows. After all, everyone loves to save time. So, what kind of validation did I seek for? Talked with only a few people around me about this crazy, internet-breaking idea. The responses I got were, now I see, mediocre; no one got excited about it, just said things along the lines of “Cool idea, OK”. So, any reasonable person in this situation would think “Okay, not might not be working”, right? Well, I did not. I assumed that they were the wrong audience for this product, and there was this magical land of user segments waiting eagerly for my product, yet unknowingly. To this day, I still have not reached this magical place. Perhaps, it didn’t exist in the first place. If I cannot find it, whether it exists or not doesn’t matter. I am certainly searching for it. 👉 What I should have done: Once I decide on a problem space (time management, email productivity, etc.), I should decide on my potential user segments, people who I plan to sell my product to. Then I should go talk to those people, ask them about their pains, then get to the problem-solving/ideation phase only later. ❗️ VALIDATION COMES FROM THE REALITY OUTSIDE. What validation looks like might change from product to product; but what invalidation looks like is more or less the same for every product. Nico Jeannen told me yesterday “validation = money in the account” on Twitter. This is the ultimate form of validation your product could get. If your product doesn’t make any money, then something is invalidated by reality: Your product, you, your idea, who knows? So, at this point, I knew a little bit of Python from spending some time in tutorial hell a few years ago, some HTML/CSS/JS, barely enough React to build a working app. React could work for this project, but I needed easy-to-implement server interactivity. Luckily, around this time, I got to know about this new gen of indie hackers, and learned (but didn’t truly understand) about their approach to indie hacking, and this library called Nextjs. How good Next.js still blows my mind. So, I was back to tutorial hell once again. But, this time, with a promise to myself: This is the last time I would visit tutorial hell. Time to start building this "ground-breaking idea" Learning the fundamentals of Next.js was easier than learning of React unsurprisingly. Yet, the first time I managed to run server actions on Next.js was one of the rarest moments that completely blew my mind. To this day, I reject the idea that it is something else than pure magic under its hood. Did I absolutely need Nextjs for this project though? I do not think so. Did it save me lots of time? Absolutely. Furthermore, learning Nextjs will certainly be quite helpful for other projects that I will be tackling in the future. Already got a few ideas that might be worth pursuing in the head in case I decide to abandon Summ in the future. Fast-forward few weeks again: So, at this stage, I had a barely working MVP-like product. Since the very beginning, I spent every free hour (and more) on this project as speed is essential. But, I am not so sure it was worth it to overwork in retrospect. Yet, I know I couldn’t help myself. Everything is going kinda smooth, so what’s the worst thing that could ever happen? Well, both Apple and Google announced their AIs (Apple Intelligence and Google Gemini, respectively) will have email summarization features for their products. Summarizing singular emails is no big deal, after all there were already so many similar products in the market. I still think that what truly matters is a frictionless user experience, and this is why I built this product in a certain way: You spend less than a few minutes setting up your account, and you get to enjoy your email summaries, without ever visiting its website again. This is still a very cool concept I really like a lot. So, at this point: I had no other idea that could be pursued, already spent too much time on this project. Do I quit or not? This was the question. Of course not. I just have to launch this product as quickly as possible. So, I did something right, a quite rare occurrence I might say: Re-planned my product, dropped everything secondary to the core feature immediately (save time on reading emails), tried launching it asap. 👉 Insight: Sell only one core feature at one time. Drop anything secondary to this core feature. Well, my primary occupation is product design. So one would expect that a product I build must have stellar design. I considered any considerable time spent on design at this stage would be simply wasted. I still think this is both true and wrong: True, because if your product’s core benefits suck, no one will care about your design. False, because if your design looks amateurish, no one will trust you and your product. So, I always targeted an average level design with it and the way this tool works made it quite easy as I had to design only 2 primary pages: Landing page and user portal (which has only settings and analytics pages). However, even though I knew spending time on design was not worth much of my time, I got a bit “greedy”: In fact, I redesigned those pages three times, and still ended up with a so-so design that I am not proud of. 👉 What I would do differently: Unless absolutely necessary, only one iteration per stage as long as it works. This, in my mind, applies to everything. If your product’s A feature works, then no need to rewrite it from scratch for any reason, or even refactor it. When your product becomes a success, and you absolutely need that part of your codebase to be written, do so, but only then. Ready to launch, now is th etime for some marketing, right? By July 26, I already had a “launchable” product that barely works (I marked this date on a Notion docs, this is how I know). Yet, I had spent almost no time on marketing, sales, whatever. After all, “You build and they will come”. Did I know that I needed marketing? Of course I did, but knowingly didn’t. Why, you might ask. Well, from my perspective, it had to be a dev-heavy product; meaning that you spend most of your time on developing it, mostly coding skills. But, this is simply wrong. As a rule of thumb, as noted by one of the greatests, Marc Louvion, you should spend at least twice of the building time on marketing. ❗️ Time spent on building \* 2 people don’t know your product > they don’t use your product > you don’t get users > you don’t make money Easy as that. Following the same reasoning, a slightly different approach to planning a project is possible. Determine an approximate time to complete the project with a high level project plan. Let’s say 6 months. By the reasoning above, 2 months should go into building, and 4 into marketing. If you need 4 months for building instead of 2, then you need 8 months of marketing, which makes the time to complete the project 12 months. If you don’t have that much time, then quit the project. When does a project count as completed? Well, in reality, never. But, I think we have to define success conditions even before we start for indie projects and startups; so we know when to quit when they are not met. A success condition could look like “Make $6000 in 12 months” or “Have 3000 users in 6 months”. It all depends on the project. But, once you set it, it should be set in stone: You don’t change it unless absolutely necessary. I suspect there are few principles that make a solopreneur successful; and knowing when to quit and when to continue is definitely one of them. Marc Louvion is famously known for his success, but he got there after failing so many projects. To my knowledge, the same applies to Nico Jeannen, Pieter Levels, or almost everyone as well. ❗️ Determining when to continue even before you start will definitely help in the long run. A half-aed launch Time-leap again. Around mid August, I “soft launched” my product. By soft launch, I mean lazy marketing. Just tweeting about it, posting it on free directories. Did I get any traffic? Surely I did. Did I get any users? Nope. Only after this time, it hit me: “Either something is wrong with me, or with this product” Marketing might be a much bigger factor for a project’s success after all. Even though I get some traffic, not convincing enough for people to sign up even for a free trial. The product was still perfect in my eyes at the time (well, still is ^(\_),) so the right people are not finding my product, I thought. Then, a question that I should have been asking at the very first place, one that could prevent all these, comes to my mind: “How do even people search for such tools?” If we are to consider this whole journey of me and my so-far-failed product to be an already destined failure, one metric suffices to show why. Search volume: 30. Even if people have such a pain point, they are not looking for email summaries. So, almost no organic traffic coming from Google. But, as a person who did zero marketing on this or any product, who has zero marketing knowledge, who doesn’t have an audience on social media, there is not much I could do. Finally, it was time to give up. Or not… In my eyes, the most important element that makes a founder (solo or not) successful (this, I am not by any means) is to solve problems. ❗️ So, the problem was this: “People are not finding my product by organic search” How do I make sure I get some organic traffic and gets more visibility? Learn digital marketing and SEO as much as I can within very limited time. Thankfully, without spending much time, I came across Neil Patel's YT channel, and as I said many times, it is an absolute gold mine. I learned a lot, especially about the fundamentals, and surely it will be fruitful; but there is no magic trick that could make people visit your website. SEO certainly helps, but only when people are looking for your keywords. However, it is truly a magical solution to get in touch with REAL people that are in your user segments: 👉 Understand your pains, understand their problems, help them to solve them via building products. I did not do this so far, have to admit. But, in case you would like to have a chat about your email usage, and email productivity, just get in touch; I’d be delighted to hear about them. Getting ready for a ProductHunt launch The date was Sept 1. And I unlocked an impossible achievement: Running out of Supabase’s free plan’s Egres limit while having zero users. I was already considering moving out of their Cloud server and managing a Supabase CLI service on my Hetzner VPS for some time; but never ever suspected that I would have to do this quickly. The cheapest plan Supabase offers is $25/month; yet, at that point, I am in between jobs for such a long time, basically broke, and could barely afford that price. One or two months could be okay, but why pay for it if I will eventually move out of their Cloud service? So, instead of paying $25, I spent two days migrating out of Supabase Cloud. Worth my time? Definitely not. But, when you are broke, you gotta do stupid things. This was the first time that I felt lucky to have zero users: I have no idea how I would manage this migration if I had any. I think this is one of the core tenets of an indie hacker: Controlling their own environment. I can’t remember whose quote this is, but I suspect it was Naval: Entrepreneurs have an almost pathological need to control their own fate. They will take any suffering if they can be in charge of their destiny, and not have it in somebody else’s hands. What’s truly scary is, at least in my case, we make people around us suffer at the expense of our attempting to control our own fates. I know this period has been quite hard on my wife as well, as I neglected her quite a bit, but sadly, I know that this will happen again. It is something that I can barely help with. Still, so sorry. After working the last two weeks on a ProductHunt Launch, I finally launched it this Tuesday. Zero ranking, zero new users, but 36 kind people upvoted my product, and many commented and provided invaluable feedback. I couldn't be more grateful for each one of them 🙏. Considering all these, what lies in the future of Summ though? I have no idea, to be honest. On one hand, I have zero users, have no job, no income. So, I need a way to make money asap. On the other hand, the whole idea of it revolves around one core premise (not an assumption) that I am not so willing to share; and I couldn’t have more trust in it. This might not be the best iteration of it, however I certainly believe that email usage is one of the best problem spaces one could work on. 👉 But, one thing is for certain: I need to get in touch with people, and talk with them about this product I built so far. In fact, this is the only item on my agenda. Nothing else will save my brainchild <3. Below are some other insights and notes that I got during my journey; as they do not 100% fit into this story, I think it is more suitable to list them here. I hope you enjoyed reading this. Give Summ a try, it comes with a generous free trial, no credit card required. Some additional notes and insights: Project planning is one of the most underestimated skills for solopreneurs. It saves you enormous time, and helps you to keep your focus up. Building B2B products beats building B2C products. Businesses are very willing to pay big bucks if your product helps them. On the other hand, spending a few hours per user who would pay $5/m probably is not worth your time. It doesn’t matter how brilliant your product is if no one uses it. If you cannot sell a product in a certain category/niche (or do not know how to sell it), it might be a good idea not to start a project in it. Going after new ideas and ventures is quite risky, especially if you don’t know how to market it. On the other hand, an already established category means that there is already demand. Whether this demand is sufficient or not is another issue. As long as there is enough demand for your product to fit in, any category/niche is good. Some might be better, some might be worse. Unless you are going hardcore B2B, you will need people to find your product by means of organic search. Always conduct thorough keyword research as soon as possible.

How me and my team made 15+ apps and not made a single sale in 2023

Hey, my name is Michael, I am in Auckland NZ. This year was the official beginning of my adult life. I graduated from university and started a full-time job. I’ve also really dug into indiehacking/bootstrapping and started 15 projects (and it will be at least 17 before the year ends). I think I’ve learned a lot but I consciously repeated mistakes. Upto (Nov) Discord Statuses + Your Location + Facebook Poke https://preview.redd.it/4nqt7tp2tf5c1.png?width=572&format=png&auto=webp&s=b0223484bc54b45b5c65e0b1afd0dc52f9c02ad1 This was the end of uni, I often messaged (and got messaged) requests of status and location to (and from my) friends. I thought, what if we make a social app that’s super basic and all it does is show you where your friends are? To differentiate from snap maps and others we wanted something with more privacy where you select the location. However, never finished the codebase or launched it. This is because I slowly started to realize that B2C (especially social networks) are way too hard to make into an actual business and the story with Fistbump would repeat itself. However, this decision not to launch it almost launched a curse on our team. From that point, we permitted ourselves to abandon projects even before launching. Lessons: Don’t do social networks if your goal is 10k MRR ASAP. If you build something to 90% competition ship it or you will think it’s okay to abandon projects Insight Bites (Nov) Youtube Summarizer Extension &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/h6drqej4tf5c1.jpg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0f211456c390ac06f4fcb54aa51f9d50b0826658 Right after Upto, we started ideating and conveniently the biggest revolution in the recent history of tech was released → GPT. We instantly began ideating. The first problem we chose to use AI for is to summarize YouTube videos. Comical. Nevertheless, I am convinced we have had the best UX because you could right-click on a video to get a slideshow of insights instead of how everyone else did it. We dropped it because there was too much competition and unit economics didn’t work out (and it was a B2C). PodPigeon (Dec) Podcast → Tweet Threads https://preview.redd.it/0ukge245tf5c1.png?width=2498&format=png&auto=webp&s=23303e1cab330578a3d25cd688fa67aa3b97fb60 Then we thought, to make unit economics work we need to make this worthwhile for podcasters. This is when I got into Twitter and started seeing people summarize podcasts. Then I thought, what if we make something that converts a podcast into tweets? This was probably one of the most important projects because it connected me with Jason and Jonaed, both of whom I regularly stay in contact with and are my go-to experts on ideas related to content creation. Jonaed was even willing to buy Podpigeon and was using it on his own time. However, the unit economics still didn’t work out (and we got excited about other things). Furthermore, we got scared of the competition because I found 1 - 2 other people who did similar things poorly. This was probably the biggest mistake we’ve made. Very similar projects made 10k MRR and more, launching later than we did. We didn’t have a coherent product vision, we didn’t understand the customer well enough, and we had a bad outlook on competition and a myriad of other things. Lessons: I already made another post about the importance of outlook on competition. Do not quit just because there are competitors or just because you can’t be 10x better. Indiehackers and Bootstrappers (or even startups) need to differentiate in the market, which can be via product (UX/UI), distribution, or both. Asking Ace Intro.co + Crowdsharing &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/0hu2tt16tf5c1.jpg?width=1456&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3d397568ef2331e78198d64fafc1a701a3e75999 As I got into Twitter, I wanted to chat with some people I saw there. However, they were really expensive. I thought, what if we made some kind of crowdfunding service for other entrepreneurs to get a private lecture from their idols? It seemed to make a lot of sense on paper. It was solving a problem (validated via the fact that Intro.co is a thing and making things cheaper and accessible is a solid ground to stand on), we understood the market (or so we thought), and it could monetize relatively quickly. However, after 1-2 posts on Reddit and Indiehackers, we quickly learned three things. Firstly, no one cares. Secondly, even if they do, they think they can get the same information for free online. Thirdly, the reasons before are bad because for the first point → we barely talked to people, and for the second people → we barely talked to the wrong people. However, at least we didn’t code anything this time and tried to validate via a landing page. Lessons Don’t give up after 1 Redditor says “I don’t need this” Don’t be scared to choose successful people as your audience. Clarito Journaling with AI analyzer https://preview.redd.it/8ria2wq6tf5c1.jpg?width=1108&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=586ec28ae75003d9f71b4af2520b748d53dd2854 Clarito is a classic problem all amateur entrepreneurs have. It’s where you lie to yourself that you have a real problem and therefore is validated but when your team asks you how much you would pay you say I guess you will pay, maybe, like 5 bucks a month…? Turns out, you’d have to pay me to use our own product lol. We sent it off to a few friends and posted on some forums, but never really got anything tangible and decided to move away. Honestly, a lot of it is us in our own heads. We say the market is too saturated, it’ll be hard to monetize, it’s B2C, etc. Lessons: You use the Mom Test on other people. You have to do it yourself as well. However, recognizing that the Mom Test requires a lot of creativity in its investigation because knowing what questions to ask can determine the outcome of the validation. I asked myself “Do I journal” but I didn’t ask myself “How often do I want GPT to chyme in on my reflections”. Which was practically never. That being said I think with the right audience and distribution, this product can work. I just don’t know (let alone care) about the audience that much (and I thought I was one of them)/ Horns & Claw Scrapes financial news texts you whether you should buy/sell the stock (news sentiment analysis) &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/gvfxdgc7tf5c1.jpg?width=1287&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=63977bbc33fe74147b1f72913cefee4a9ebec9c2 This one we didn’t even bother launching. Probably something internal in the team and also seemed too good to be true (because if this works, doesn’t that just make us ultra-rich fast?). I saw a similar tool making 10k MRR so I guess I was wrong. Lessons: This one was pretty much just us getting into our heads. I declared that without an audience it would be impossible to ship this product and we needed to start a YouTube channel. Lol, and we did. And we couldn’t even film for 1 minute. I made bold statements like “We will commit to this for at least 1 year no matter what”. Learnery Make courses about any subject https://preview.redd.it/1nw6z448tf5c1.jpg?width=1112&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f2c73e8af23b0a6c3747a81e785960d4004feb48 This is probably the most “successful” project we’ve made. It grew from a couple of dozen to a couple of hundred users. It has 11 buy events for $9.99 LTD (we couldn’t be bothered connecting Stripe because we thought no one would buy it anyway). However what got us discouraged from seriously pursuing it more is, that this has very low defensibility, “Why wouldn’t someone just use chatGPT?” and it’s B2C so it’s hard to monetize. I used it myself for a month or so but then stopped. I don’t think it’s the app, I think the act of learning a concept from scratch isn’t something you do constantly in the way Learnery delivers it (ie course). I saw a bunch of similar apps that look like Ass make like 10k MRR. Lessons: Don’t do B2C, or if you do, do it properly Don’t just Mixpanel the buy button, connect your Stripe otherwise, it doesn’t feel real and you won’t get momentum. I doubt anyone (even me) will make this mistake again. I live in my GPT bubble where I make assumptions that everyone uses GPT the same way and as much as I do. In reality, the argument that this has low defensibility against GPT is invalid. Platforms that deliver a differentiated UX from ChatGPT to audiences who are not tightly integrated into the habit of using ChatGPT (which is like - everyone except for SOME tech evangelists). CuriosityFM Make podcasts about any subject https://preview.redd.it/zmosrcp8tf5c1.jpg?width=638&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d04ddffabef9050050b0d87939273cc96a8637dc This was our attempt at making Learnery more unique and more differentiated from chatGPT. We never really launched it. The unit economics didn’t work out and it was actually pretty boring to listen to, I don’t think I even fully listened to one 15-minute episode. I think this wasn’t that bad, it taught us more about ElevenLabs and voice AI. It took us maybe only 2-3 days to build so I think building to learn a new groundbreaking technology is fine. SleepyTale Make children’s bedtime stories https://preview.redd.it/14ue9nm9tf5c1.jpg?width=807&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=267e18ec6f9270e6d1d11564b38136fa524966a1 My 8-year-old sister gave me that idea. She was too scared of making tea and I was curious about how she’d react if she heard a bedtime story about that exact scenario with the moral that I wanted her to absorb (which is that you shouldn’t be scared to try new things ie stop asking me to make your tea and do it yourself, it’s not that hard. You could say I went full Goebbels on her). Zane messaged a bunch of parents on Facebook but no one really cared. We showed this to one Lady at the place we worked from at Uni and she was impressed and wanted to show it to her kids but we already turned off our ElevenLabs subscription. Lessons: However, the truth behind this is beyond just “you need to be able to distribute”. It’s that you have to care about the audience. I don’t particularly want to build products for kids and parents. I am far away from that audience because I am neither a kid anymore nor going to be a parent anytime soon, and my sister still asked me to make her tea so the story didn’t work. I think it’s important to ask yourself whether you care about the audience. The way you answer that even when you are in full bias mode is, do you engage with them? Are you interested in what’s happening in their communities? Are you friends with them? Etc. User Survey Analyzer Big User Survey → GPT → Insights Report Me and my coworker were chatting about AI when he asked me to help him analyze a massive survey for him. I thought that was some pretty decent validation. Someone in an actual company asking for help. Lessons Market research is important but moving fast is also important. Ie building momentum. Also don’t revolve around 1 user. This has been a problem in multiple projects. Finding as many users as possible in the beginning to talk to is key. Otherwise, you are just waiting for 1 person to get back to you. AutoI18N Automated Internationalization of the codebase for webapps This one I might still do. It’s hard to find a solid distribution strategy. However, the idea came from me having to do it at my day job. It seems a solid problem. I’d say it’s validated and has some good players already. The key will be differentiation via the simplicity of UX and distribution (which means a slightly different audience). In the backlog for now because I don’t care about the problem or the audience that much. Documate - Part 1 Converts complex PDFs into Excel https://preview.redd.it/8b45k9katf5c1.jpg?width=1344&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=57324b8720eb22782e28794d2db674b073193995 My mom needed to convert a catalog of furniture into an inventory which took her 3 full days of data entry. I automated it for her and thought this could have a big impact but there was no distribution because there was no ICP. We tried to find the ideal customers by talking to a bunch of different demographics but I flew to Kazakhstan for a holiday and so this kind of fizzled out. I am not writing this blog post linearity, this is my 2nd hour and I am tired and don’t want to finish this later so I don’t even know what lessons I learned. Figmatic Marketplace of high-quality Figma mockups of real apps https://preview.redd.it/h13yv45btf5c1.jpg?width=873&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aaa2896aeac2f22e9b7d9eed98c28bb8a2d2cdf1 This was a collab between me and my friend Alex. It was the classic Clarito where we both thought we had this problem and would pay to fix it. In reality, this is a vitamin. Neither I, nor I doubt Alex have thought of this as soon as we bought the domain. We posted it on Gumroad, sent it to a bunch of forums, and called it a day. Same issue as almost all the other ones. No distribution strategy. However, apps like Mobin show us that this concept is indeed profitable but it takes time. It needs SEO. It needs a community. None of those things, me and Alex had or was interested in. However shortly after HTML → Figma came out and it’s the best plugin. Maybe that should’ve been the idea. Podcast → Course Turns Podcaster’s episodes into a course This one I got baited by Jason :P I described to him the idea of repurposing his content for a course. He told me this was epic and he would pay. Then after I sent him the demo, he never checked it out. Anyhow during the development, we realized that doesn’t actually work because A podcast doesn’t have the correct format for the course, the most you can extract are concepts and ideas, seldom explanations. Most creators want video-based courses to be hosted on Kajabi or Udemy Another lesson is that when you pitch something to a user, what you articulate is a platform or a process, they imagine an outcome. However, the end result of your platform can be a very different outcome to what they had in mind and there is even a chance that what they want is not possible. You need to understand really well what the outcome looks like before you design the process. This is a classic problem where we thought of the solution before the problem. Yes, the problem exists. Podcasters want to make courses. However, if you really understand what they want, you can see how repurposing a podcast isn’t the best way to get there. However I only really spoke to 1-2 podcasters about this so making conclusions is dangerous for this can just be another asking ace mistake with the Redditor. Documate Part 2 Same concept as before but now I want to run some ads. We’ll see what happens. https://preview.redd.it/xb3npj0ctf5c1.jpg?width=1456&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3cd4884a29fd11d870d010a2677b585551c49193 In conclusion https://preview.redd.it/2zrldc9dtf5c1.jpg?width=1840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2b3105073e752ad41c23f205dbd1ea046c1da7ff It doesn’t actually matter that much whether you choose to do a B2C, or a social network or focus on growing your audience. All of these can make you successful. What’s important is that you choose. If I had to summarize my 2023 in one word it’s indecision. Most of these projects succeeded for other people, nothing was as fundamentally wrong about them as I proclaimed. In reality that itself was an excuse. New ideas seduce, and it is a form of discipline to commit to a single project for a respectful amount of time. https://preview.redd.it/zy9a2vzdtf5c1.jpg?width=1456&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=901c621227bba0feb4efdb39142f66ab2ebb86fe Distribution is not just posting on Indiehackers and Reddit. It’s an actual strategy and you should think of it as soon as you think of the idea, even before the Figma designs. I like how Denis Shatalin taught me. You have to build a pipeline. That means a reliable way to get leads, launch campaigns at them, close deals, learn from them, and optimize. Whenever I get an idea now I always try to ask myself “Where can I find 1000s leads in one day?” If there is no good answer, this is not a good project to do now. &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/2boh3fpetf5c1.jpg?width=1456&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1c0d5d7b000716fcbbb00cbad495e8b61e25be66 Talk to users before doing anything. Jumping on designing and coding to make your idea a reality is a satisfying activity in the short term. Especially for me, I like to create for the sake of creation. However, it is so important to understand the market, understand the audience, understand the distribution. There are a lot of things to understand before coding. https://preview.redd.it/lv8tt96ftf5c1.jpg?width=1456&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6c8735aa6ad795f216ff9ddfa2341712e8277724 Get out of your own head. The real reason we dropped so many projects is that we got into our own heads. We let the negative thoughts creep in and kill all the optimism. I am really good at coming up with excuses to start a project. However, I am equally as good at coming up with reasons to kill a project. And so you have this yin and yang of starting and stopping. Building momentum and not burning out. I can say with certainty my team ran out of juice this year. We lost momentum so many times we got burnt out towards the end. Realizing that the project itself has momentum is important. User feedback and sales bring momentum. Building also creates momentum but unless it is matched with an equal force of impact, it can stomp the project down. That is why so many of our projects died quickly after we launched. The smarter approach is to do things that have a low investment of momentum (like talking to users) but result in high impact (sales or feedback). Yes, that means the project can get invalidated which makes it more short-lived than if we built it first, but it preserves team life energy. At the end of 2023 here is a single sentence I am making about how I think one becomes a successful indiehacker. One becomes a successful Indiehacker when one starts to solve pain-killer problems in the market they understand, for an audience they care about and consistently engage with for a long enough timeframe. Therefore an unsuccessful Indiehacker in a single sentence is An unsuccessful Indiehacker constantly enters new markets they don’t understand to build solutions for people whose problems they don’t care about, in a timeframe that is shorter than than the time they spent thinking about distribution. However, an important note to be made. Life is not just about indiehacking. It’s about learning and having fun. In the human world, the best journey isn’t the one that gets you the fastest to your goals but the one you enjoy the most. I enjoyed making those silly little projects and although I do not regret them, I will not repeat the same mistakes in 2024. But while it’s still 2023, I have 2 more projects I want to do :) EDIT: For Devs, frontend is always react with vite (ts) and backend is either node with express (ts) or python. For DB either Postgres or mongo (usually Prisma for ORM). For deployment all of it is on AWS (S3, EC2). In terms of libraries/APIs Whisper.cpp is best open source for transcription Obviously the gpt apis Eleven labs for voice related stuff And other random stuff here and there

How to get your first 10 customers with cold email

Cold email is an insane channel for growth, especially for bootstrapped startups as it's very low cost but completely scalable. Yet there's a huge difference between blind cold emailing and crafting personalized outreach for select individuals. The latter is a legit channel which makes many businesses scale in short amounts of time (i.e. see Alex Hormozi’s ‘$100 Million Dollar Offer’). My goal here is to help other founders do what I did but quicker. So you can learn faster. And then teach me something new too. These are the step-by-step lessons I've learnt as a bootstrapped founder, showing you how to use cold email to get your first customers: Find your leads Write engaging email copy Personalize your outreach Send emails Scale up Find your leads This is a key step. Once you figure out exactly who you want to target and where to find them, you'll be printing money. There's a few different ways to go about finding valuable leads. The secret? Keep testing different approaches until you strike gold. First, dedicate some time every day to find and organise leads. Then, keep an eye on your numbers and bounce rates. If something's not working, switch it up. Stick with what's bringing in results and ditch what's not. It's all about staying flexible and learning as you go. Apollo.io is a great starting point as an effective lead source. Their tool allows you to specify filters including job titles, location, company size, industry, keywords, technologies, and revenue. Get specific with your searches to find your ideal customers. Once you have some results you can save and export them, you'll get a list of contact information including name, email, company, LinkedIn, ready to be verified and used. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is another good source. You can either do manual searches or use a scraper to automate the process. The scrapers I'd recommend checking out are FindyMail and Evaboot. As with Apollo, it's best to get very specific with your targeting so you know the prospect will be interested in your offer. BuiltWith is more expensive but ideal if you're targeting competitors. With BuiltWith you can build lists based on what technologies companies are using. For example if you're selling a Shopify app, you'd want to know websites or stores using Shopify, and reach out to them. The best lead sources will always be those that haven't been contacted a lot in the past. If you are able to find places where your target audience uniquely hangs out, and you can get their company website domains, they have the potential to be scrapped, and you have a way to personalize like "I spotted your comment on XYZ website". Once you've got your leads, keep them organized. Set up folders for different niches, countries, company sizes, so you can review what works and what doesn't. One more thing – before you start firing off emails, make sure those addresses are verified. Always use an email verifier to clean up your list and avoid bounces that may affect your sending reputation, and land you in the spam folder. I use Neverbounce for this but there are other tools available. Write engaging email copy Writing a good copy that gets replies is difficult, it changes depending on your offer/audience and nobody knows what's going to work. The best approach is to keep testing different targeting and messaging until you find what works. However, there are some key rules to stick to that I've outlined. For the subject line, keep it short and personalized. Try to write something that sparks interest, and mention the recipients name: Thought you’d like this {{first name}} {{firstName}} - quick question For the email body it's best to use a framework of personalization, offer, then call to action. Personalization is an entire subject in its own right, which I've covered below. In short, a personalized email opener is the best way to grab their attention, and let them know the email is relevant to them and to keep reading. Take it from Alex Hormozi and his $100M Offers playbook – your offer is very important to get right. Make sure your offer hits the mark for your target audience, and get as specific as possible. For example: I built a SaaS shopify app for small ecommerce businesses selling apparel that doubles your revenue in 60-days or your money back. We developed a cold email personalization tool for lead generation agencies that saves hundreds of hours, and can 3x your reply rate. Lastly, the CTA. The goal here isn't to get sign-ups directly from your first email. It's better to ask a brief question about whether the prospect would be interested in learning more. Something very low friction, that warrants a response. Some examples might include: Would you be interested in learning more about this? Can we connect a bit more on this? Mind if I send over a loom I recorded for you? Never send any links in the first email. You've reached out to this person because you have good reason to believe they'd find real value in your offer, and you want to verify if that's the case. After you get one reply, this is a great positive signal and from there you can send a link, book a call, provide a free resource, whatever makes sense based on their response. Personalize your outreach Personalization is one of the most important parts of the process to get right. Your recipient probably receives a multitude of emails every day, how can you make yours stand out, letting them know you've done your research, and that your email is relevant to them? Personalizing each email ensures you get more positive replies, and avoid spam filters, as your email is unique and hasn't been copied and pasted a million times over. The goal is to spark the recipient's interest, and let them know that you're contacting them for good reason. You might mention a recent achievement, blog post or product release that led you to reach out to the prospect specifically. For example: Your post on "Doing Nothing" gave me a good chuckle. Savvy marketing on Cadbury's part. Saw that you've been at Google for just under a year now as a new VP of sales. Spotted that you've got over 7 years of experience in the digital marketing space. Ideally you'll mention something specifically about the prospect or their company that relates to your offer. The downside to personalization is that it's hard to get right, and very time consuming at scale, but totally worth it. Full disclosure, me and my partner Igor just launched our new startup ColdClicks which uses AI to generate hyper-personalized email openers at scale. We built the tool as we were sending hundreds of emails a day, and personalizing every individual email took hours out of our day. ColdClicks automates this process, saving you time and getting you 2-3x more replies. Send emails At this stage you've decided on who you're targeting, you've mined some leads, and written copy. Now it's time to get sending. You can do this manually by copy and pasting each message, but one of the reasons cold email is so powerful is that it's scalable. When you build a process that gets customers, you'll want to send as many emails as you can to your target market. To get started quickly, you can use a mail-merge gmail tool, the best I've used is Maileteor. With Maileteor you upload your lead data to Google sheets, set-up an email template and Mailmetor will send out emails every day automatically. In your template you can define variables including name, company, and personalization to ensure your email is unique for each recipient. Alternatively, you may opt for a more comprehensive tool such as Instantly. Instantly includes unlimited email sending and accounts. There's more initial setup involved as you'll need to set-up Google workspace, buy sending domains, and warm up your email accounts, but when you become familiar with the process you can build a powerful lead generation / customer acquisition machine. Some key points to note, it's very important to warm up any new email accounts you set up. Warmup is the process of gradually establishing a positive reputation with email service providers like Gmail or Yahoo. Make sure to set up DKIM and DMARC on those new email accounts too, to maximise your chances of landing in the inbox. Scale up Once you've found a process that works, good things happen, and it becomes a numbers game. As you get replies and start to see new users signing up, you'll want to scale the process and send more emails. It's straightforward to add new sending accounts in a sending tool like Instantly, and you'll want to broaden your targeting when mining to test new markets. Unfortunately, sending more emails usually comes with a drop in reply rate as you have less time to personalize your messaging for each recipient. This is where ColdClicks shines. The tool allows you to upload thousands of leads and generate perfectly relevant email personalizations for every lead in your list, then export to your favorite sending tool. The examples I listed above in the personalization section were all generated by ColdClicks. Wrapping it up Cold email is an amazing way to validate your product and get new customers. The channel gets a bad rap, but there's a huge difference between blind cold emailing and crafting personalized outreach for individuals who will find value in your product. It's perfect for bootstrapped founders due to its affordability and scalability, and it's the driver of growth for many SaaS businesses. Time to get your first 10 customers! As you start sending, make it a habit to regularly check for new leads. Always experiment with market/messaging, track every campaign so you can learn what's working and iterate, and when you do get positive responses, reply as soon as you can!

We've built an AI-powered business building platform, and we're looking for entrepreneurs to try out the MVP!

Hey r/sideproject! I'm Felix, co-founder of Buildpad, and we're excited to share our latest project with you. https://reddit.com/link/1eve8n4/video/ahktfda2bgjd1/player Buildpad is an AI-powered (Claude Sonnet 3.5) business-building platform that guides entrepreneurs through every step of creating and growing a business. Here's what makes it unique: Idea validation: Leverage Reddit's API to get real-world data on your ideas through posts, comments and discussions. Structured process: Follow a clear roadmap from idea validation to launch and beyond. Team collaboration: Work with co-founders, all assisted by the same AI. Central context bank: Our AI remembers everything about your project for consistent, informed guidance. We're solving the common problem of entrepreneurs not knowing what to do next, especially during idea generation and validation phases. With Buildpad, you can validate your ideas by searching for relevant keywords across Reddit, helping you understand if people are actually experiencing the problems you're aiming to solve. We're in the MVP stage and looking for early adopters to test the platform and provide feedback. We'd love to hear from you: Does this solution resonate with your entrepreneurial challenges? What features would you find most valuable in a tool like this? Any thoughts or concerns about using AI for startup guidance? If you're interested in trying out Buildpad or have any questions, please comment below or DM me. Thanks for checking it out! buildpad.io

How I Automated Amazon Affiliate Marketing: A Developer's Journey

From Manual Labor to 1000x Efficiency As a developer who ventured into affiliate marketing, I discovered a significant gap between technical possibilities and current practices. This revelation led me to create AutoPin, a tool that's now helping hundreds of affiliate marketers reclaim their time. The Problem: A Time-Consuming Reality Every affiliate marketer knows this scenario: you spend hours copying and pasting links, checking prices, and updating product information. I found myself dedicating 4-6 hours daily to these repetitive tasks. As a programmer, this felt fundamentally wrong. The typical affiliate marketing workflow looked like this: Find promising products Generate affiliate links one by one Monitor price changes manually Check product availability regularly Update content when things change Repeat this process daily This manual process had several critical issues: Time Waste: 20-30 hours weekly on repetitive tasks Missed Opportunities: Unable to scale beyond 100 products Human Error: Inevitable mistakes in manual updates Delayed Updates: Lost commissions due to outdated information The Solution: Building AutoPin After three months of development and six months of testing, I created a system that could: Generate hundreds of affiliate links in minutes Monitor price changes automatically Update product availability in real-time Export data in multiple formats Scale infinitely without additional effort Real Results, Real Impact The impact was immediate and significant: 📊 Efficiency Metrics: Link generation: From 2 minutes per link to 0.1 seconds Monitoring capacity: From 50 to 5000+ products Update frequency: From daily to real-time Error rate: Reduced by 99.9% 💡 User Success Stories: "Increased my product portfolio by 10x without adding work hours" "Revenue grew 300% in the first month" "Finally able to focus on content creation instead of link management" Technical Insights The system architecture focuses on three core components: Data Extraction Engine Efficient web scraping Rate limiting and proxy management Data validation and cleaning Real-time Monitoring System Websocket connections for instant updates Queue management for large-scale monitoring Smart scheduling based on price volatility Export Framework Multiple format support (CSV, HTML, Markdown) Custom templating engine Batch processing capabilities The Future of Affiliate Marketing Automation We're currently developing AI capabilities to: Generate product descriptions automatically Optimize link placement for conversion Predict price trends and best promotion times Create content variations for different platforms Key Learnings Automation is Essential The future of affiliate marketing lies in automation. Manual processes simply can't compete with automated systems in terms of efficiency and accuracy. Focus on Value Creation When marketers spend less time on repetitive tasks, they can focus on strategy and content quality. Scale Matters With automation, the difference between managing 10 products and 1000 products becomes minimal. Getting Started If you're an affiliate marketer spending hours on manual tasks, it's time to automate. Here's what you can do: Analyze your current workflow Identify repetitive tasks Start with basic automation Scale gradually Monitor and optimize Conclusion The transformation from manual to automated affiliate marketing isn't just about saving time—it's about unlocking potential. When you remove the tedious aspects of affiliate marketing, you create space for creativity, strategy, and growth. Want to experience the difference? Visit AutoPin at autopin.pro and join the automation revolution. Remember: The best time to automate was yesterday. The second best time is now. About the Author: A developer turned affiliate marketer who believes in the power of automation to transform digital marketing. #AffiliateMarketing #Automation #Programming #DigitalMarketing #SaaS #ProductivityTools

I built an app to find who’s interested in your app by monitoring social media

Hi everyone! I hope you’re all doing great folks! I’d love to know your thoughts about what I’ve been working on recently! 🙏 If you’re busy or wanna see the app scroll to the bottom to see the video demo, otherwise, continue reading. Very brief presentation of myself first: I’m Marvin, and I live in Florence, Italy, 👋 This year I decided to go all-in on solopreneurship, I’ve been in tech as Software Engineer first, and then in Engineering Leadership for 10+ years, I’ve always worked in startups, except for last year, when I was the Director of Engineering at the Linux Foundation. Follow me on X or subscribe to my newsletter if you’re curious about this journey. The vision Most founders start building digital startups because they love crafting and being impactful by helping other people or companies. First-time founders then face reality when they realize that nailing distribution is key. All other founders already learned this, most likely the hard way. The outcome is the same: a great product will unlikely succeed without great distribution. Letting people know about your product should be easier and not an unfair advantage. The following meme is so true, but also quite sad. I wanna help this to change by easing the marketing and distribution part. https://preview.redd.it/g52pz46upqtd1.png?width=679&format=png&auto=webp&s=cf8398a3592f25c05c396bb2ff5d028331a36315 The story behind Distribution is a huge space: lead generation, demand generation, content marketing, social media marketing, cold outreach, etc. I cannot solve everything altogether. A few months ago I was checking the traffic to a job board I own (NextCommit). That's when I noticed that the “baseline” traffic increased by almost 10x. 🤯 I started investigating why. I realized that the monthly traffic from Reddit increased from 10-ish to 350+. Yeah, the job board doesn’t get much traffic in total, but this was an interesting finding. After digging more, it seems that all that increase came from a single Reddit comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/remotework/comments/1crwcei/comment/l5fb1yy/ This is the moment when I realized two things: It’s cool that someone quoted it! Engaging with people on Reddit, even just through comments, can be VERY powerful. And this was just one single comment! https://preview.redd.it/nhxcv4h2qqtd1.png?width=1192&format=png&auto=webp&s=d31905f56ae59426108ddbb61f2d6b668eedf27a Some weeks later I started noticing a few apps like ReplyGuy. These were automatically engaging with Reddit posts identified through keywords. I decided to sign up for the free plan of ReplyGuy to know more, but many things didn’t convince me: One of the keywords I used for my job board was “remote” and that caused a lot of false positives, The generated replies were good as a kickstart, but most of the time they needed to be tuned to sound more like me. The latter is expected. In the end, the platform doesn’t know me, doesn’t know my opinions, doesn’t know my story, etc.. The only valuable feature left for me was identifying the posts, but that also didn’t work well for me due to false positives. I ended up using it after only 15 minutes. I’m not saying they did a poor job, but it was not working well for me. In the end, the product got quite some traction, so it helped confirm there’s interest in that kind of tool. What bothered me was the combination of auto-replies that felt non-authentic. It’s not that I’m against bots, automation is becoming more common, and people are getting used to it. But in this context, I believe bots should act as an extension of ourselves, enhancing our interactions rather than just generating generic responses (like tools such as HeyGen, Synthesia, PhotoAI). I’m not there yet with my app, but a lot can be done. I'd love to reach the point where a user feels confident to automate the replies because they sound as written by themselves. I then decided to start from the same space, helping engage with Reddit posts, for these reasons: I experienced myself that it can be impactful, It aligns with my vision to ease distribution, Some competitors validated that there’s interest in this specific feature and I could use it as a starting point, I’m confident I can provide a better experience even with what I already have. The current state The product currently enables you to: Create multiple projects and assign keywords, Find the posts that are relevant for engagement using a fuzzy match of keywords and post-filtered using AI to avoid false positives, Provide an analysis of each post to assess the best way to engage, Generate a helpful reply that you’d need to review and post. So currently the product is more on the demand gen side, but this is just the beginning. I’m speaking with people from Marketing, Sales, RevOps, and Growth agencies to better understand their lives, struggles, and pain points. This will help me ensure that I build a product that enables them to help users find the products they need. I’m currently looking for up to 10 people to join the closed beta for free. If you’re interested in joining or to get notified once generally available you can do it here! https://tally.so/r/3XYbj4 After the closed beta, I will start onboarding people in batches. This will let me gather feedback, iterate, and provide a great experience to everyone aligned with my vision. I’m not going to add auto-reply unless the conditions I explained above are met or someone convinces me there’s a good reason for doing so. Each batch will probably get bigger with an increasing price until I’m confident about making it generally available. The next steps The next steps will depend on the feedback I get from the customers and the learnings from the discovery calls I’m having. I will talk about future developments in another update, but I have some ideas already. Check out the demo video below, and I'd love to hear your thoughts! ❤️ Oh and BTW, the app is called HaveYouHeard! https://reddit.com/link/1fzsnrd/video/34lat9snpqtd1/player This is the link to Loom in case the upload doesn't work: https://www.loom.com/share/460c4033b1f94e3bb5e1d081a05eedfd

[Self Promo] We made an AI accountability Buddy for ADHD Entrepreneurs

Hi Reddit, My girlfriend and I are both entrepreneurs with ADHD. We were sick of constantly starting projects and not finishing them. We both loved the idea of an accountability partner and wanted to see whether we could use AI as our own personal accountability buddy. So we built Goalhound: https://goalhound-app.vercel.app/ Try it out completely free and let us know your thoughts.

Just Launched My AI Agents Directory - Roast Away!

Hey Reddit! After countless hours of coding, caffeine-fueled nights, and a few nervous breakdowns, I’ve finally launched my side project: an AI Agents Directory! 🎉 It's a platform where you can discover and read about various AI agents. We’ve got 40+ agents listed so far, and I'm looking for some honest feedback from this awesome community. Here’s what it does: Instantly search and filter AI agents Upvote AI Agent Read detailed descriptions and use cases Submit your own AI agents I know it’s not perfect and probably has a million things that could be better. So, I'm here to ask you to roast it! Tear it apart, tell me what's terrible, what’s good, and how I can make it better. Feel free to check it out here: https://aiagentsdirectory.com/ Thanks in advance for your brutal honesty! 🙏 P.S. Be gentle… okay, maybe not. 😅 https://preview.redd.it/rpwp38sp47dd1.png?width=1592&format=png&auto=webp&s=9cf54385f1a9cc61b6a746f3ea38f8349d35b5a1

I’ve Compiled the Best AI Side Project Playbooks and Tested Them Myself—Anyone Interested?

I’ve spent the past year diving deep into AI-powered side projects, testing out all the best playbooks I could find. Some worked amazingly well, some flopped, and I learned a ton along the way. Now, I’ve compiled everything—only the most effective, step-by-step playbooks that actually work. These cover everything from idea validation to scaling, and I’ve tested them all myself to make sure they’re legit. Some of the things I’ve successfully built with AI: ✅ Automated content businesses ✅ Niche websites that generate passive income ✅ AI-powered digital product businesses ✅ Simple AI tools that people actually pay for ✅ AI-assisted freelancing strategies Would anyone be interested in checking these out? Just trying to see if there’s demand before I share more! Let me know what kind of AI side hustle you’d want to try.

Finding domains for a business: The troubles faced and how they were solved.

Hey everyone! I’m sure some of you have experience searching for a domain name for your project or startup. And you know how hard it can be to find the right one. You want it to be short, memorable, SEO-friendly, free of a bad history, and relevant to your project’s meaning. As a solo entrepreneur, I’ve faced the same challenges. I tried using domain auctions and drop-catching platforms to find short and valuable domain names for my projects and for resale. But these platforms can be frustrating – there’s too much competition, bidding wars drive up prices, and waiting for a domain to become available takes forever. GoDaddy auctions can last up to 10 days, and placing a backorder doesn’t always guarantee success. This process can be stressful and time-consuming. I just wanted a way to quickly grab the right domain and start using it immediately – without all the waiting and worrying. One day, I found a great domain on Product Hunt. The product was abandoned, and the domain was available. I thought, "What if I could find more domains like this in the same niche from this site?" and "How can I automate this?” That’s how I ended up creating GoneDomains GoneDomains helps to find available domain names from popular websites like Product Hunt, Medium, Hacker News, Forbes, and others. It saves hours of searching and eliminates the stress of competing with other buyers. Recently, I added a Domain Rating (DR) metric for each domain, making it easier to find valuable domains for SEO. If you’re familiar with DR, you know that domains with high DR can boost SEO rankings. Dashboard of GoneDomains with the filter Now, I’m working on new features: A feature that shows the average price of domains across multiple sources. A tool to check how many domain extensions are already registered for a specific name. AI-powered analysis to determine a domain’s niche and keywords, plus a filter for one-, two-, or three-word domains. Today, GoneDomains has over 30,000 available domain names sourced from platforms like Product Hunt, Medium, Hacker News, Forbes, TechCrunch, and more. New domains are added daily. GoneDomains saves you from spending hours manually searching, dealing with bidding wars, waiting for auctions to end, and unnecessary stress.

How to start online business in 7 days ?

Easy to do now. There are several tips that I can give you to start your own digital business. 1) Solve your own problem. If you use the Internet, you know that there are a lot of problems that need to be solved. But focus on your problem first. Once you can figure it out and solve your problem. You can move on to solving people's problems. Ideally, to use tools and technology you know. If you don't know, use NO-CODE tools to build it. For example, if you need to create a website, use landing page builder. If you want to automate your own work, like booking meetings, use Zapier to automate tasks. If you want to create a game, sure, use AI Tools to solve it. I don't care what you will use. Use whatever you want. All I want from you is to solve that problem. 2) After solving your own problem. You can focus on people's problems. Because if you can't solve your own shit, why do you want to solve others problems? Remember that always. If you need to build e-commerce, use Shopify. If you need to build a directory, use directory builder. If you need to build landing pages, use landing page builders. Rule of thumb: Niche, Niche, Niche. Try to focus on a specific niche, solve their problem, and make money on it. Then only thinking about exploring new opportunities. You can use No-Code builders or AI tools or hire developers or hire agencies to do it. It depends on your choice. If you are good at coding, build on your own or delegate to a developer or agency. If you have enough time, use AI Tools to build your own thing. If you want to solve a common problem but with a different perspective, yeah, sure, use No-Code builders for that. 3) Digital business works exactly the same as offline business with one difference. You can move a lot faster, build a lot faster, risk a lot faster, fail a lot faster, earn a lot faster, sell a lot faster, and scale a lot faster. In one week, you can build e-commerce. In the second week, you can build SaaS. In the third week, you can build an AI agent. In the fourth week, you can build your own channel on social media. 4) It gives more power. With great power comes great responsibility. From day one, invest in SEO, social media presence, traffic, and acquiring customers. Don't focus on tech stuff. Don't focus on tools. Focus on the real problem: • Traffic • Marketing • Sales • Conversion rate

I’ve built a gaming recommendation and exploration platform called Which Game Next

Hello there! Me and a few of my best friends are software engineers, and we’ve been working part-time on developing a side project for the past 12 months. It’s called www.whichgamenext.com, and we’ve recently launched into open beta for everyone to check out. Your feedback would be invaluable to us! Our aim has been to build a gaming recommendation engine, alongside providing market oversight for where you can legally and officially purchase or obtain modern games from multiple stores and/or subscriptions. It’s often difficult to figure out what you have access to if you only have a single specific subscription, like Game Pass PC, or if you’re only interested in games on GOG/Nintendo (what a mix!). We started by identifying the available digital stores and subscriptions and slowly compiling our database using multiple automated services to gather data on these games. Think JustWatch, but for games! One major service we’ve partnered with is IGDB, which has been supplying us with JSON data dumps that served as the initial seed for our game data. A massive thank you to them for their continued support! With the data in place, we’ve been focusing on exploring new features. So far, this has included private and public user-generated lists, personal backlog tracking, and the ability to like or dislike games. We’re now improving our recommendation engine, tackling the complexities that come with it, and having a lot of fun along the way. We’re utilising modern AI strategies and solving fascinating problems related to large-scale data aggregation. We truly can’t wait to share this fantastic work! In addition to this, you can soon expect curated collections, articles about games, and supporting links to help you make informed, unbiased purchasing decisions. Your shared data will drive the recommendations. But it doesn’t stop there—we have plenty of other features on our radar, such as importing games from your favourite stores, syncing your gameplay time, surfacing data like “How Long to Beat,” and creating new and exciting ways to interact with this growing community! This is a passion project created by a group of gamers who want to spend their time and money wisely, without purchasing biases. Since it’s a side project, we mostly work on it at night, but we’re excited to grow the community, share our vision, and, who knows, maybe one day make it our full-time job! Let’s dive into the technical details: • Monorepo architecture: This speeds up development by sharing libraries, living style guides, configs, etc. Nx.js has been brilliant, enabling us to create a dependency graph of changes and only build/deploy what’s modified in a PR. • AWS: We’re using the free tier (with a few exceptions where we pay for smaller services). Achieving self-sufficiency is critical for us. Additionally, we applied to the AWS Startup Foundation programme and received $1,000 in AWS credits, which has been incredibly helpful! • Infrastructure: Fully deployed as code with Terraform. • Backends: Built using Express and Nest.js, split into around 40 projects and counting! Each project plays a unique role in gathering and syncing game data. • Scalability: Designed from the ground up, utilising AWS Lambdas with auto-scaling and load balancing. • Databases: We use Postgres with RDS and DynamoDB for storing various data. • Frontend stack: Built with React, Next.js, Tailwind, Zustand, TanStack Query, Jest, and Storybook. • CI/CD: Managed with GitHub Actions and Amplify hooks for deploying the frontends. • Admin portal: We’ve built a bespoke CMS to control the main website. It synchronises with external services, tracks game data changes, and allows us to selectively apply ‘patches’ from sites like IGDB. The system also includes data override and rollback capabilities, ensuring we maintain control over game data. • Automation: Partially automated, so manual intervention is rarely needed. • Scraping tools: Fully integrated into the admin portal with log trail capabilities. • Cloudflare: Used for on-the-fly image transformations; we’re considering moving to it full-time as our CDN for free WebP conversions. • Authentication: Handled by Cognito, with a custom frontend built from scratch. Key learnings so far: • AWS cold starts: Not ideal! While the platform is still new, we ping endpoints to keep them responsive. This won’t be an issue once traffic increases. • Lambda memory matters: We learned the hard way that low-memory configurations can delay responses by 2-3 seconds. • DynamoDB partition keys: If not designed correctly from the start, you might have to start over (yes, we’ve been there!). • GitHub Actions: Setting up node\_modules cache reuse takes time, but it’s worth it—don’t give up! We don’t know where this project will take us yet, but it’s been a fantastic journey so far. We’ve learned a lot, explored technologies we don’t typically use in our day jobs, and built something we’re genuinely passionate about. Your feedback would mean the world to us. What do you think of what we’ve done so far? What would you like to see added? Is this a service you’d use? Do you see the value in it as we do? Thanks for reading, and we hope to see you in the comments! (or our newly created /r/whichgamenext

Built an AI to stop me from procrastinating on Reddit, it actually spies on my browser tabs & it's kinda freaking me out (but it works)

hey guys, So, I have a problem. A major procrastination problem. You know the type? I start all good, like, "ok, I'm gonna spend the next 2 hrs REALLY researching this specific Reddit thread about optimizing workflow automation for small businesses." (That's literally what I'm supposed to be doing rn, lol) And then... BAM. Suddenly I'm 15 posts deep into r/aww looking at baby sloths, or somehow I've ended up on Wikipedia reading about competitive hot dog eating. It's like my brain has a mind of its own, seriously. I've tried everything. Cold Turkey, Freedom, all those blocker apps. And honestly? They kinda suck. They're so... blunt. Like, "NO REDDIT FOR U!!" But I need Reddit for my actual research! It is my research, ffs. The problem is those apps just see a URL and block it. They don't understand context. They're just digital bouncers, and terrible ones. Total roadblocks, and a complete pain. That's why I got desperate. I even spent, like, 3 solid hrs one night just chatting with an AI cuz I was too embarrassed to admit to my friends how bad I was at staying on track. Pathetic, I know. But that's when it hit me. I needed something that understood what I was supposed to be doing, and then actively, intelligently, stopped me when I got sidetracked. Something that, like, gets that this is what I meant to use, so it blocks other posts or subs. So, I built it. It's a Chrome extension, and it's basically like having a tiny, hyper-observant AI therapist/drill sergeant living in my browser. Here's the freaky part: it actually watches what I'm doing. Like, it learns my specific task. If I tell it I'm researching on Reddit, it lets me use Reddit, but only for that specific research. If I try to sneak off to r/funny or check my notifs, it knows. It's not just blocking URLs; it's analyzing the content of the pages I'm on and comparing it to what I'm supposed to be doing. It even has these lil "achievement" things, which sound cheesy, but seeing "Focused for 90 mins straight!" pop up is weirdly motivating. And it has this brutal feature that shows u, in plain numbers, how much time you've wasted. Ouch. It's been working, which is amazing, and scary at the same time! Like, the scary part is, it feels weird sharing my own edge over procrastination. I mean, if u use my lil tool too! It also kinda gives off that creepy, AI overlord watching my thoughts vibe? Why I'm even posting this: I'm looking for a few (maybe 5?) people who are as desperate as I was. People who've tried every productivity hack, app, and technique, and are still staring at the ceiling at 3 am, filled with regret. If this sounds familiar, DM "DM me". Tell me your worst procrastination story. The winner (loser?) gets a copy. I need honest, brutally honest, feedback. Does this actually work for anyone else, or am I just fooling myself? Edit: shared the extension with some of you, and for others you can give it a spin here i made it live to the chrome store: https://getfocusai.com/

PlumbingJobs.com - I launched a niche job board with hand-curated jobs for plumbers. Here's the summary of how it's going after the 3rd month

On October 12th 2024, I launched PlumbingJobs.com, and this is my first update (January 2025) in what I hope will be a long journey. To stay accountable and track progress, I’ll be sharing monthly updates about the site's stats, achievements, challenges, and my plans moving forward. While these posts are mostly to document the journey, I hope they’ll also be helpful to others, especially members of r/SideProject who might be working on their own first online projects. If this post isn’t a good fit for this subreddit, I’m happy to remove it or move updates elsewhere. The goal for PlumbingJobs.com is clear: to become the #1 job board for plumber jobs, featuring hand-picked opportunities the plumbing industry. Let’s dive right in: Statistics update ~ 4th Quarter of 2024 |\-|October|November|December| |:-|:-|:-|:-| |Jobs Posted:|2|16|43| |Paid Post:|0|2|2| |Free Post:|0|1|2| |Visitors:|72|138|1,164| |Avg. Time Per Visit:|1 min. 24 sec|2 min. 15 sec|3 min. 41 sec| |Pageviews:|196|308|2,590| |Avg. Actions:|1.1|2.3|2.3| |Bounce Rate:|87%|73%|40%| I'm not a very technical guy and I don't know how to code. So the best way for me was learning to build it using Wordpress through YouTube. Also, I believe in the power of a great .COM domain name, and the stats from the first three months have only reinforced that belief: 49.2% of traffic comes directly from users typing the URL into their browsers. 48% of traffic is from search engines like Google and Bing. The remaining 1.8% comes from social media and other backlinks. Pricing Tiers and Early Wins I offer three pricing tiers for job listings: Free Listing: Basic exposure for job openings. Silver Listing ($45): Greater visibility and placement on the site. Gold Listing ($95): Premium visibility and enhanced promotion. To my surprise, my very first sale in October was a Gold Listing! That initial $95 sale was the motivation I needed to keep building. Later that month, I sold a Silver Listing, bringing my total revenue for October to $140. The same revenue was generated in December 2024, showing consistent early interest. Steps Taken in December To boost SEO and add value to the site, I created a Plumbing Directory, featuring: Plumbing companies across the U.S. Their stories, contact information, logos, addresses, business hours, and more. This directory serves as free marketing for these businesses and increases the likelihood they’ll discover my site and support it by posting job openings. Plans Moving Forward Social Media Marketing: I plan to automate posts using AI to expand reach and drive more traffic to the site. Consistency in Job Postings: I’m committed to posting 2–3 plumbing jobs daily to keep the site fresh and useful for plumbers seeking work. Looking forward to grow this niche job board slowly but surely this 2025. If you have any questions, concerns, come across glitches - feel free to reach out, happy to chat. Thank you all again, and see you in a month. Romel@plumbingjobs.com

My humble analysis on how @levelsio grew PhotoAI to 155K/m

In 2023,@levelsiol aunched PhotoAi and nailed perfect timing with the AI-generated photo trend He saw the rise of AI Image Generators as early as Jan 2023—when search volume was just 246K. Fast forward to now, that’s exploded to 1M+ searches/month! @levelsio didn’t guess—he tracked this exponential growth, built fast, and launched a product that people needed before they even realized it themselves. That’s how you go from idea to$155K/month in revenue. But why does this work? Demand Explosion: The need for AI tools like PhotoAI surged as more creators, marketers, and businesses searched for automated ways to generate images (graph 1 shows this insane growth curve). Timing is everything: When trends move this fast, you have to act quicker. He launched at the right time, capturing the early adopters and setting the foundation for sustainable revenue (graph 2 showcases the clear spike). Build based on data, not assumptions: The growth of AI Character Generators also hit major traction (graph 3). Both trends signaled an opportunity, and he jumped in before the market was saturated. Lesson: Don’t guess what people want—watch the trends and build fast. Trends show you what’s working, before the mainstream even knows it. This is how you launch products that solve real problems. Check out the graphs for context: AI Image Generator Growth \(graph 1\) Search volume spiking \(graph 2\) AI Character Generators \(graph 3\) Use data, not just intuition. Track the trends and execute. Simple but powerful. I hope you liked this thread.

Digital copilot for your iPhone | Create your own AI plugins with Smart Shortcuts | The only AI app that you will need

Hello all, I've worked on an app for iPhones - Unicorn : Your Digital Aide, available at https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/unicorn-your-digital-aide/id6449691938 It supports: Plugin creation and automated plugin calls through intent detection (Has unlimited potential) AI powered image generation and image editing, functions based on intent detection in chat Interact in your native language (whisper support) Summarizes and plans your day with calendar integration Much more coming soon. Let me know how you all find the app, and if you have feature requests. Thanks, and best regards

I built an AI social monitoring that looks for relevant posts, not just keywords

Hey everyone! I've been working on a side project that I'm excited to share with you all—it's called BillyBuzz What is BillyBuzz? BillyBuzz is an AI-powered social monitoring tool that helps businesses spot and analyze relevant conversations on social media platforms, starting with Reddit. It surfaces the most promising leads directly to your Slack channels, email, or Discord, so you don't have to spend hours scrolling through threads. Why I Built It I was spending a ton of time searching for relevant posts in niche subreddits for another product I was working to get off the ground. It was not only time-consuming but also distracting (you know how easy it is to fall into a Reddit rabbit hole). I couldn't find any existing tool that did more than basic keyword searches—which wasn't enough, especially if your brand name has multiple meanings (like "Apple"). So, I decided to build BillyBuzz. It uses AI to understand your business, products, target audience, and value proposition, alongside specific keywords you might want to include. This way, it finds posts where you can genuinely contribute by introducing your product. I used BillyBuzz for a previous product launch and managed to grow it to over $80k/month in volume within about 3 months, purely through Reddit engagement. How It Works Add Information About Your Business: Input details about your business and products. Select Subreddits to Monitor: Choose the subreddits relevant to your niche. Receive Timely Alerts: Get notified via Slack, email, or Discord when relevant posts are identified. Features AI-Powered Relevancy Scoring: Goes beyond keywords by understanding the context to identify truly relevant opportunities. Subreddit Tracking: Monitor specific subreddits with AI-recommended keywords tailored to your company's needs. Real-Time Alerts: Checks for new relevant conversations every 15 minutes, so you can engage at the perfect time. Automated Categorization (Coming Soon): The AI will categorize conversations into topics like competitors, customer complaints, and more. Who It's For BillyBuzz is designed for startup founders, growth marketers, and small business owners who are tech-savvy and focused on scaling their operations. If you're looking to save time and engage more effectively with your target audience on social media, this might be up your alley. Looking for Feedback I'm sharing this here because I'd love to get your thoughts, feedback, or any suggestions you might have. If you're interested in checking it out, you can find more info here: https://billybuzz.com. Feel free to ask me anything or share your experiences with similar challenges!

0-20+ faceless AI automated YouTube channels in 1 year - my process and tools

First of all before diving deep into this process (scroll a bit below) I have to say something that everyone keeps asking me, is it profitable? Yes. It's by far my most profitable venture outside of my regular 9-5... But it took a lot of work, delegation and building processes to get here. So the one thing I would love to get out of this post - if you have any insights, feedback or tools I might be missing out post them below and let's help each other out. Now, how you can get started with (AI) YouTube automation: Pick a topic that is BOTH: a) in demand b) interesting to you & you have knowledge about Do everything yourself at first - delegate later No one cares about the videos as much as you do, so make sure to nail the ideation, scripts, editing, format and packaging yourself first. Now that we got that out of the way: Use this workflow: VidIQ - outliers sections is pure gold, I use it all the time to find trending video packaging, topics, etc. ChatGPT or Claude - high level video ideas at scale and your assistant (I use projects inside ChatGPT and its really good at managing and prioritizing). If you are using it for scripts please for the love of god, make final edits yourself by hand. Add character, personal insights, ideas, etc. Katalist AI - all in one video generator tool I use to quickly go from video idea to script, storyboard, AI voiceover and then final visuals. It's surprisingly good and to make a decent video it only takes about 1-2 hours in TOTAL. Once you understand how it works and have a process, delegate to tech savvy VAs / content creators for $5-$15/hour and you have final, good quality videos for less than $30. Pikzels / Krea AI - your AI thumbnail generator, I dont remember the last time we used Photoshop outside of quick text or image edits. Its basically AI image manipulation at scale and it costs 10-30x less than a human thumbnail designer and the thumbnails are really good. VidIQ+TubeBuddy - titles & optimization, but you have to know that most of the views come usually from recommended, so dont over obsess and add 392x keywords in your title and description. Its all about the packaging. Now whats left is track performance & iterate - it's practically impossible to nail it the first few times, but each video you make look at the data (not just in YT studio) and UNDERSTAND why it did not perform as well as you thought it would. Regarding monetization, adsense sucks - sell digital products. If I was relying on adsense alone I would never ever be profitable, but selling mini digital products and mentioning CTAs in the actual video not just in the description makes this super profitable and scaleable, especially since video production is so cheap. Final thoughts: (AI) YouTube automation absolutely works, but it’s not an overnight success or a total hands-off cashcow machine. It’s a real business and you need systems, consistent effort, iteration, failing and learning along the way. If you’ve got any tips, hidden gems or tools I might be missing, drop them below & let’s help each other out.

How me and my team made 15+ apps and not made a single sale in 2023

Hey, my name is Michael, I am in Auckland NZ. This year was the official beginning of my adult life. I graduated from university and started a full-time job. I’ve also really dug into indiehacking/bootstrapping and started 15 projects (and it will be at least 17 before the year ends). I think I’ve learned a lot but I consciously repeated mistakes. Upto (Nov) Discord Statuses + Your Location + Facebook Poke https://preview.redd.it/4nqt7tp2tf5c1.png?width=572&format=png&auto=webp&s=b0223484bc54b45b5c65e0b1afd0dc52f9c02ad1 This was the end of uni, I often messaged (and got messaged) requests of status and location to (and from my) friends. I thought, what if we make a social app that’s super basic and all it does is show you where your friends are? To differentiate from snap maps and others we wanted something with more privacy where you select the location. However, never finished the codebase or launched it. This is because I slowly started to realize that B2C (especially social networks) are way too hard to make into an actual business and the story with Fistbump would repeat itself. However, this decision not to launch it almost launched a curse on our team. From that point, we permitted ourselves to abandon projects even before launching. Lessons: Don’t do social networks if your goal is 10k MRR ASAP. If you build something to 90% competition ship it or you will think it’s okay to abandon projects Insight Bites (Nov) Youtube Summarizer Extension &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/h6drqej4tf5c1.jpg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0f211456c390ac06f4fcb54aa51f9d50b0826658 Right after Upto, we started ideating and conveniently the biggest revolution in the recent history of tech was released → GPT. We instantly began ideating. The first problem we chose to use AI for is to summarize YouTube videos. Comical. Nevertheless, I am convinced we have had the best UX because you could right-click on a video to get a slideshow of insights instead of how everyone else did it. We dropped it because there was too much competition and unit economics didn’t work out (and it was a B2C). PodPigeon (Dec) Podcast → Tweet Threads https://preview.redd.it/0ukge245tf5c1.png?width=2498&format=png&auto=webp&s=23303e1cab330578a3d25cd688fa67aa3b97fb60 Then we thought, to make unit economics work we need to make this worthwhile for podcasters. This is when I got into Twitter and started seeing people summarize podcasts. Then I thought, what if we make something that converts a podcast into tweets? This was probably one of the most important projects because it connected me with Jason and Jonaed, both of whom I regularly stay in contact with and are my go-to experts on ideas related to content creation. Jonaed was even willing to buy Podpigeon and was using it on his own time. However, the unit economics still didn’t work out (and we got excited about other things). Furthermore, we got scared of the competition because I found 1 - 2 other people who did similar things poorly. This was probably the biggest mistake we’ve made. Very similar projects made 10k MRR and more, launching later than we did. We didn’t have a coherent product vision, we didn’t understand the customer well enough, and we had a bad outlook on competition and a myriad of other things. Lessons: I already made another post about the importance of outlook on competition. Do not quit just because there are competitors or just because you can’t be 10x better. Indiehackers and Bootstrappers (or even startups) need to differentiate in the market, which can be via product (UX/UI), distribution, or both. Asking Ace Intro.co + Crowdsharing &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/0hu2tt16tf5c1.jpg?width=1456&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3d397568ef2331e78198d64fafc1a701a3e75999 As I got into Twitter, I wanted to chat with some people I saw there. However, they were really expensive. I thought, what if we made some kind of crowdfunding service for other entrepreneurs to get a private lecture from their idols? It seemed to make a lot of sense on paper. It was solving a problem (validated via the fact that Intro.co is a thing and making things cheaper and accessible is a solid ground to stand on), we understood the market (or so we thought), and it could monetize relatively quickly. However, after 1-2 posts on Reddit and Indiehackers, we quickly learned three things. Firstly, no one cares. Secondly, even if they do, they think they can get the same information for free online. Thirdly, the reasons before are bad because for the first point → we barely talked to people, and for the second people → we barely talked to the wrong people. However, at least we didn’t code anything this time and tried to validate via a landing page. Lessons Don’t give up after 1 Redditor says “I don’t need this” Don’t be scared to choose successful people as your audience. Clarito Journaling with AI analyzer https://preview.redd.it/8ria2wq6tf5c1.jpg?width=1108&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=586ec28ae75003d9f71b4af2520b748d53dd2854 Clarito is a classic problem all amateur entrepreneurs have. It’s where you lie to yourself that you have a real problem and therefore is validated but when your team asks you how much you would pay you say I guess you will pay, maybe, like 5 bucks a month…? Turns out, you’d have to pay me to use our own product lol. We sent it off to a few friends and posted on some forums, but never really got anything tangible and decided to move away. Honestly, a lot of it is us in our own heads. We say the market is too saturated, it’ll be hard to monetize, it’s B2C, etc. Lessons: You use the Mom Test on other people. You have to do it yourself as well. However, recognizing that the Mom Test requires a lot of creativity in its investigation because knowing what questions to ask can determine the outcome of the validation. I asked myself “Do I journal” but I didn’t ask myself “How often do I want GPT to chyme in on my reflections”. Which was practically never. That being said I think with the right audience and distribution, this product can work. I just don’t know (let alone care) about the audience that much (and I thought I was one of them)/ Horns & Claw Scrapes financial news texts you whether you should buy/sell the stock (news sentiment analysis) &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/gvfxdgc7tf5c1.jpg?width=1287&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=63977bbc33fe74147b1f72913cefee4a9ebec9c2 This one we didn’t even bother launching. Probably something internal in the team and also seemed too good to be true (because if this works, doesn’t that just make us ultra-rich fast?). I saw a similar tool making 10k MRR so I guess I was wrong. Lessons: This one was pretty much just us getting into our heads. I declared that without an audience it would be impossible to ship this product and we needed to start a YouTube channel. Lol, and we did. And we couldn’t even film for 1 minute. I made bold statements like “We will commit to this for at least 1 year no matter what”. Learnery Make courses about any subject https://preview.redd.it/1nw6z448tf5c1.jpg?width=1112&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f2c73e8af23b0a6c3747a81e785960d4004feb48 This is probably the most “successful” project we’ve made. It grew from a couple of dozen to a couple of hundred users. It has 11 buy events for $9.99 LTD (we couldn’t be bothered connecting Stripe because we thought no one would buy it anyway). However what got us discouraged from seriously pursuing it more is, that this has very low defensibility, “Why wouldn’t someone just use chatGPT?” and it’s B2C so it’s hard to monetize. I used it myself for a month or so but then stopped. I don’t think it’s the app, I think the act of learning a concept from scratch isn’t something you do constantly in the way Learnery delivers it (ie course). I saw a bunch of similar apps that look like Ass make like 10k MRR. Lessons: Don’t do B2C, or if you do, do it properly Don’t just Mixpanel the buy button, connect your Stripe otherwise, it doesn’t feel real and you won’t get momentum. I doubt anyone (even me) will make this mistake again. I live in my GPT bubble where I make assumptions that everyone uses GPT the same way and as much as I do. In reality, the argument that this has low defensibility against GPT is invalid. Platforms that deliver a differentiated UX from ChatGPT to audiences who are not tightly integrated into the habit of using ChatGPT (which is like - everyone except for SOME tech evangelists). CuriosityFM Make podcasts about any subject https://preview.redd.it/zmosrcp8tf5c1.jpg?width=638&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d04ddffabef9050050b0d87939273cc96a8637dc This was our attempt at making Learnery more unique and more differentiated from chatGPT. We never really launched it. The unit economics didn’t work out and it was actually pretty boring to listen to, I don’t think I even fully listened to one 15-minute episode. I think this wasn’t that bad, it taught us more about ElevenLabs and voice AI. It took us maybe only 2-3 days to build so I think building to learn a new groundbreaking technology is fine. SleepyTale Make children’s bedtime stories https://preview.redd.it/14ue9nm9tf5c1.jpg?width=807&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=267e18ec6f9270e6d1d11564b38136fa524966a1 My 8-year-old sister gave me that idea. She was too scared of making tea and I was curious about how she’d react if she heard a bedtime story about that exact scenario with the moral that I wanted her to absorb (which is that you shouldn’t be scared to try new things ie stop asking me to make your tea and do it yourself, it’s not that hard. You could say I went full Goebbels on her). Zane messaged a bunch of parents on Facebook but no one really cared. We showed this to one Lady at the place we worked from at Uni and she was impressed and wanted to show it to her kids but we already turned off our ElevenLabs subscription. Lessons: However, the truth behind this is beyond just “you need to be able to distribute”. It’s that you have to care about the audience. I don’t particularly want to build products for kids and parents. I am far away from that audience because I am neither a kid anymore nor going to be a parent anytime soon, and my sister still asked me to make her tea so the story didn’t work. I think it’s important to ask yourself whether you care about the audience. The way you answer that even when you are in full bias mode is, do you engage with them? Are you interested in what’s happening in their communities? Are you friends with them? Etc. User Survey Analyzer Big User Survey → GPT → Insights Report Me and my coworker were chatting about AI when he asked me to help him analyze a massive survey for him. I thought that was some pretty decent validation. Someone in an actual company asking for help. Lessons Market research is important but moving fast is also important. Ie building momentum. Also don’t revolve around 1 user. This has been a problem in multiple projects. Finding as many users as possible in the beginning to talk to is key. Otherwise, you are just waiting for 1 person to get back to you. AutoI18N Automated Internationalization of the codebase for webapps This one I might still do. It’s hard to find a solid distribution strategy. However, the idea came from me having to do it at my day job. It seems a solid problem. I’d say it’s validated and has some good players already. The key will be differentiation via the simplicity of UX and distribution (which means a slightly different audience). In the backlog for now because I don’t care about the problem or the audience that much. Documate - Part 1 Converts complex PDFs into Excel https://preview.redd.it/8b45k9katf5c1.jpg?width=1344&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=57324b8720eb22782e28794d2db674b073193995 My mom needed to convert a catalog of furniture into an inventory which took her 3 full days of data entry. I automated it for her and thought this could have a big impact but there was no distribution because there was no ICP. We tried to find the ideal customers by talking to a bunch of different demographics but I flew to Kazakhstan for a holiday and so this kind of fizzled out. I am not writing this blog post linearity, this is my 2nd hour and I am tired and don’t want to finish this later so I don’t even know what lessons I learned. Figmatic Marketplace of high-quality Figma mockups of real apps https://preview.redd.it/h13yv45btf5c1.jpg?width=873&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aaa2896aeac2f22e9b7d9eed98c28bb8a2d2cdf1 This was a collab between me and my friend Alex. It was the classic Clarito where we both thought we had this problem and would pay to fix it. In reality, this is a vitamin. Neither I, nor I doubt Alex have thought of this as soon as we bought the domain. We posted it on Gumroad, sent it to a bunch of forums, and called it a day. Same issue as almost all the other ones. No distribution strategy. However, apps like Mobin show us that this concept is indeed profitable but it takes time. It needs SEO. It needs a community. None of those things, me and Alex had or was interested in. However shortly after HTML → Figma came out and it’s the best plugin. Maybe that should’ve been the idea. Podcast → Course Turns Podcaster’s episodes into a course This one I got baited by Jason :P I described to him the idea of repurposing his content for a course. He told me this was epic and he would pay. Then after I sent him the demo, he never checked it out. Anyhow during the development, we realized that doesn’t actually work because A podcast doesn’t have the correct format for the course, the most you can extract are concepts and ideas, seldom explanations. Most creators want video-based courses to be hosted on Kajabi or Udemy Another lesson is that when you pitch something to a user, what you articulate is a platform or a process, they imagine an outcome. However, the end result of your platform can be a very different outcome to what they had in mind and there is even a chance that what they want is not possible. You need to understand really well what the outcome looks like before you design the process. This is a classic problem where we thought of the solution before the problem. Yes, the problem exists. Podcasters want to make courses. However, if you really understand what they want, you can see how repurposing a podcast isn’t the best way to get there. However I only really spoke to 1-2 podcasters about this so making conclusions is dangerous for this can just be another asking ace mistake with the Redditor. Documate Part 2 Same concept as before but now I want to run some ads. We’ll see what happens. https://preview.redd.it/xb3npj0ctf5c1.jpg?width=1456&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3cd4884a29fd11d870d010a2677b585551c49193 In conclusion https://preview.redd.it/2zrldc9dtf5c1.jpg?width=1840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2b3105073e752ad41c23f205dbd1ea046c1da7ff It doesn’t actually matter that much whether you choose to do a B2C, or a social network or focus on growing your audience. All of these can make you successful. What’s important is that you choose. If I had to summarize my 2023 in one word it’s indecision. Most of these projects succeeded for other people, nothing was as fundamentally wrong about them as I proclaimed. In reality that itself was an excuse. New ideas seduce, and it is a form of discipline to commit to a single project for a respectful amount of time. https://preview.redd.it/zy9a2vzdtf5c1.jpg?width=1456&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=901c621227bba0feb4efdb39142f66ab2ebb86fe Distribution is not just posting on Indiehackers and Reddit. It’s an actual strategy and you should think of it as soon as you think of the idea, even before the Figma designs. I like how Denis Shatalin taught me. You have to build a pipeline. That means a reliable way to get leads, launch campaigns at them, close deals, learn from them, and optimize. Whenever I get an idea now I always try to ask myself “Where can I find 1000s leads in one day?” If there is no good answer, this is not a good project to do now. &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/2boh3fpetf5c1.jpg?width=1456&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1c0d5d7b000716fcbbb00cbad495e8b61e25be66 Talk to users before doing anything. Jumping on designing and coding to make your idea a reality is a satisfying activity in the short term. Especially for me, I like to create for the sake of creation. However, it is so important to understand the market, understand the audience, understand the distribution. There are a lot of things to understand before coding. https://preview.redd.it/lv8tt96ftf5c1.jpg?width=1456&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6c8735aa6ad795f216ff9ddfa2341712e8277724 Get out of your own head. The real reason we dropped so many projects is that we got into our own heads. We let the negative thoughts creep in and kill all the optimism. I am really good at coming up with excuses to start a project. However, I am equally as good at coming up with reasons to kill a project. And so you have this yin and yang of starting and stopping. Building momentum and not burning out. I can say with certainty my team ran out of juice this year. We lost momentum so many times we got burnt out towards the end. Realizing that the project itself has momentum is important. User feedback and sales bring momentum. Building also creates momentum but unless it is matched with an equal force of impact, it can stomp the project down. That is why so many of our projects died quickly after we launched. The smarter approach is to do things that have a low investment of momentum (like talking to users) but result in high impact (sales or feedback). Yes, that means the project can get invalidated which makes it more short-lived than if we built it first, but it preserves team life energy. At the end of 2023 here is a single sentence I am making about how I think one becomes a successful indiehacker. One becomes a successful Indiehacker when one starts to solve pain-killer problems in the market they understand, for an audience they care about and consistently engage with for a long enough timeframe. Therefore an unsuccessful Indiehacker in a single sentence is An unsuccessful Indiehacker constantly enters new markets they don’t understand to build solutions for people whose problems they don’t care about, in a timeframe that is shorter than than the time they spent thinking about distribution. However, an important note to be made. Life is not just about indiehacking. It’s about learning and having fun. In the human world, the best journey isn’t the one that gets you the fastest to your goals but the one you enjoy the most. I enjoyed making those silly little projects and although I do not regret them, I will not repeat the same mistakes in 2024. But while it’s still 2023, I have 2 more projects I want to do :) EDIT: For Devs, frontend is always react with vite (ts) and backend is either node with express (ts) or python. For DB either Postgres or mongo (usually Prisma for ORM). For deployment all of it is on AWS (S3, EC2). In terms of libraries/APIs Whisper.cpp is best open source for transcription Obviously the gpt apis Eleven labs for voice related stuff And other random stuff here and there

I searched for unexplored AI business opportunities for 2024 and found 8 promising ideas

https://solansync.beehiiv.com/p/8-innovative-ai-business-opportunities-2024-evaluation-resources Entering 2024, the AI landscape presents numerous uncharted business opportunities. Solan Sync, on February 06, 2024, shared an insightful exploration into nine innovative AI business prospects that stand out for their potential market impact and implementation feasibility. Here's a brief overview of each: No-Code AI Chatbot Development Platforms: These platforms enable businesses to create efficient chatbots without coding knowledge, catering to a variety of communication needs and boasting a significant market potential projected at $19.8 billion by 2027. AI-Powered Document Management Systems: Offering a solution to automate data extraction and management, this opportunity targets sectors overwhelmed by paperwork, with a market growth expected to reach $4.4 billion by 2026. Automated AI Customer Support Platforms: AI-driven platforms are transforming customer support by handling inquiries with advanced conversational agents, aiming for a part of the $15.3 billion market by 2027. AI-Driven Content Generation Platforms: Utilizing advanced language models for content creation, this area addresses the high demand for engaging content across digital platforms, with the market projected to hit $12 billion by 2025. AI-Powered Recommendation System APIs: Tailored product recommendations can significantly enhance user experience, tapping into a market anticipated to grow to $6.3 billion by 2027. AI-Enhanced Digital Media Buying Solutions: These platforms optimize advertising strategies using AI, targeting the native advertising market expected to reach $59 billion by 2025. Enterprise-grade Voice-activated AI Assistants: Improving workplace efficiency with voice commands, this segment has a potential market of $1.1 billion by 2026. AI-Enhanced Supply Chain Management Solutions: By applying AI for real-time optimization, this opportunity aims at improving efficiency within the vast data-rich environments of modern supply chains. Each idea is detailed with its overview, target customer segments, key AI functionalities, profitability evaluations, and examples of current pioneers. This exploration not only highlights the vast potential within AI-driven business models but also encourages entrepreneurs and corporations to delve into these promising sectors. The rapid advancement of AI technology and its practical applications suggest these ideas represent just the beginning of what the future holds. Now is the time to leverage AI's capabilities to innovate and enhance products, services, and operations across industries.

I retired at 32 from my side project. Here's the path I took.

EDIT 2: Thanks for the award kind stranger! I've stopped responding to reddit comments for this post. I'm adding an FAQ to the original post based on the most common high quality questions. If you have a question that you're dying to know the answer to and that only I can help you with (vs. Google, ChatGPT, etc.), DM me. EDIT: I love how controversial this post has become (50% upvote rate), and only in this subreddit (vs. other subreddits that I posted the same content in). I trust that the open-minded half of you will find something useful in this post and my other posts and comments. I retired at 32 years old, in large part thanks to a B2C SaaS app that I developed on my own. Now, I don't have to work in order to cover my living expenses, and wouldn't have to work for quite a while. In other words, I can finally sip mai tais at the beach. I've condensed how I got there into this post. First, a super simplified timeline of events, followed by some critical details. Timeline 2013 Graduated college in the US 2013 Started first corporate job 2013 Started side project (B2C app) that would eventually lead to my retirement 2020 Started charging for use of my B2C app (was free, became freemium) 2021 Quit my last corporate job 2022 Retired: time freedom attained Details First, some summary statistics of my path to retirement: 9 years: time between graduating college and my retirement. 8 years: total length of my career where I worked at some corporate day job. 7 years: time it took my B2C app to make its first revenue dollar 2 years: time between my first dollar of SaaS revenue and my retirement. "Something something overnight success a decade in the making". I got extremely lucky on my path to retirement, both in terms of the business environment I was in and who I am as a person. I'd also like to think that some of the conscious decisions I made along the way contributed to my early retirement. Lucky Breaks Was born in the US middle class. Had a natural affinity for computer programming and entrepreneurial mindset (initiative, resourcefulness, pragmatism, courage, growth mindset). Had opportunities to develop these mindsets throughout life. Got into a good college which gave me the credentials to get high paying corporate jobs. Was early to a platform that saw large adoption (see "barnacle on whale" strategy). Business niche is shareworthy: my SaaS received free media. Business niche is relatively stable, and small enough to not be competitive. "Skillful" Decisions I decided to spend the nights and weekends of my early career working on side projects in the hopes that one would hit. I also worked a day job to support myself and build my savings. My launch funnel over roughly 7 years of working on side projects: Countless side projects prototyped. 5 side projects publically launched. 2 side projects made > $0. 1 side project ended up becoming the SaaS that would help me retire. At my corporate day jobs, I optimized for learning and work-life balance. My learning usually stalled after a year or two at one company, so I’d quit and find another job. I invested (and continute to do so) in physical and mental wellbeing via regular workouts, meditation, journaling, traveling, and good food. My fulfilling non-work-life re-energized me for my work-life, and my work-life supported my non-work-life: a virtuous cycle. I automated the most time-consuming aspects of my business (outside of product development). Nowadays, I take long vacations and work at most 20 hours a week / a three-day work week . I decided to keep my business entirely owned and operated by me. It's the best fit for my work-style (high autonomy, deep focus, fast decision-making) and need to have full creative freedom and control. I dated and married a very supportive and inspiring partner. I try not to succumb to outrageous lifestyle creep, which keeps my living expenses low and drastically extends my burn-rate. Prescription To share some aphorisms I’ve leaned with the wantrepreneurs or those who want to follow a similar path: Maximize your at bats, because you only need one hit. Bias towards action. Launch quickly. Get your ideas out into the real world for feedback. Perfect is the enemy of good. If you keep swinging and improving, you'll hit the ball eventually. Keep the big picture in mind. You don't necessarily need a home-run to be happy: a base hit will often do the job. Think about what matters most to you in life: is it a lot of money or status? Or is it something more satisfying, and often just as if not more attainable, like freedom, loving relationships, or fulfillment? Is what you’re doing now a good way to get what you want? Or is there a better way? At more of a micro-level of "keep the big picture in mind", I often see talented wantrepreneurs get stuck in the weeds of lower-level optimizations, usually around technical design choices. They forget (or maybe subconsciously avoid) the higher-level and more important questions of customer development, user experience, and distribution. For example: “Are you solving a real problem?” or “Did you launch an MVP and what did your users think?” Adopt a growth mindset. Believe that you are capable of learning whatever you need to learn in order to do what you want to do. The pain of regret is worse than the pain of failure. I’ve noticed that fear of failure is the greatest thing holding people back from taking action towards their dreams. Unless failure means death in your case, a debilitating fear of failure is a surmountable mental block. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. When all is said and done, we often regret the things we didn't do in life than the things we did. There’s more to life than just work. Blasphemous (at least among my social circle)! But the reality is that many of the dying regret having worked too much in their lives. As Miss Frizzle from The Magic Schoolbus says: "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!" Original post

Introducing Stratify: Your Ultimate AI Strategy Builder for Business Success

Hello, I’m thrilled to announce the launch of my new startup, Stratify! 🔍 What is Stratify? Stratify is an AI Strategy Builder designed to help businesses of all sizes develop, implement, and optimize their strategic plans using cutting-edge artificial intelligence. Whether you're a startup looking to scale or an established company aiming to innovate, Stratify provides the tools and insights you need to stay ahead in today's competitive landscape. 🌟 Key Features: Automated Strategy Development: Leverage AI to analyze market trends, competitor data, and internal metrics to create comprehensive strategic plans tailored to your business goals. Real-Time Analytics & Insights: Monitor your strategy's performance with real-time data dashboards, enabling you to make informed decisions quickly. Scenario Planning: Use AI-driven simulations to forecast different business scenarios and understand potential outcomes, helping you prepare for uncertainties. Collaborative Tools: Facilitate team collaboration with integrated communication features, ensuring everyone is aligned and contributing to the strategy development process. Customizable Templates: Access a library of industry-specific strategy templates that can be customized to fit your unique business needs. 💡 Why Stratify? In today's fast-paced business environment, creating and adapting effective strategies can be challenging. Many companies struggle with data overload, lack of actionable insights, and inefficient planning processes. Stratify addresses these pain points by harnessing the power of AI to streamline strategy building, making it more efficient, data-driven, and adaptable. 🚀 Our Journey So Far: Founded: August 2024 Milestones Achieved: Developed and tested our MVP with a select group of beta users What's Next: Launching our public beta in Q4 2024 Expanding our feature set based on user feedback Growing our team with experts in AI, business strategy, and customer success 🤝 How You Can Help: We’re eager to connect with early adopters, business strategists, and industry experts who can benefit from or contribute to Stratify. Here’s how you can get involved: Join Our Beta Program: Be among the first to experience Stratify and provide valuable feedback. Share Your Insights: Help us refine our features by sharing your business strategy challenges and needs. Spread the Word: If you know someone who could benefit from an AI-driven strategy builder, please share our mission and be an affiliate to earn rewards! 🌐 Learn More: Visit our website at AI-Powered Brand Strategy & Content Creation | Stratify (brandprovoke.com) and follow us for the latest updates and insights. 🙏 Thank You! A heartfelt thank you to the Reddit community for your support and encouragement. We’re excited to embark on this journey and look forward to your feedback and suggestions! Looking forward to your thoughts and questions!