Working

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... ​ 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!

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... ​ 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!

Building a No-Code AI Customer Service Tool While Working 9-5 | All real - No BS

I want to share my journey of building Chaterimo, my first revenue-generating side project that I've been working on for the past 1.5 years alongside my day job. What started as a solution to make AI chatbots more accessible has grown to over 300 signups, 30 paying customers, and 50,000+ customer queries handled. The Problem I Wanted to Solve: It started with my father's business struggling with customer service - hiring staff was expensive and they would eventually leave, creating a constant cycle of training new people. I decided to help by building a livechat chatbot powered by AI to handle customer queries. The first version was basic (running on ChatGPT-3 with 4k tokens), but it worked! Seeing its success at my father's business, I realized this could help many other businesses too. As I kept improving it and adding features, I expanded to focus on e-commerce stores facing similar challenges. What Makes Chaterimo Different: True no-code setup: Install and run in seconds Choice of AI Models: ChatGPT by default, with options for Claude and the latest Gemini Flexible API Integration: Bring your own API keys for cheaper, unlimited messaging Smart Context Understanding: Can search Google or scan the current webpage to provide relevant answers Lead Generation: Capture and manage potential customer information Rich Integrations: Works with Shopify, Facebook Messenger, and Make for automation Customizable Bot Personality: Edit your chatbot's role and behavior through system prompts The Journey: This is my first side project that's actually generating revenue ($500+ MRR), unlike my previous "just for fun" projects. The past 1.5 years have been a learning experience, balancing development with a full-time job. What started as a simple idea has evolved based on real user feedback and needs. Current Metrics: 300+ total signups 30 paying customers 50,000+ customer queries successfully handled by AI $500+ monthly recurring revenue All while maintaining a 9-5 job Some Things I've Learned: Focus on making things simpler, not adding more features Listen to users - they'll tell you what they really need Flexibility matters - letting users use their own API keys was a game-changer Building something you believe in makes all the difference I'm still actively improving Chaterimo based on feedback. If you're running a website or e-commerce store and want to try it out, I'd love to hear your thoughts. What's Next: I'm focused on making the onboarding even smoother and adding more customization options while keeping the core simplicity that makes Chaterimo work. Would love to hear your thoughts or answer any questions! Has anyone else built successful side projects while working full-time? What were your biggest learnings?

[N] Netflix and European Space Agency no longer working with Siraj Raval

According to article in The Register: A Netflix spokesperson confirmed to The Register it wasn’t working with Raval, and the ESA has cancelled the whole workshop altogether. “The situation is as it is. The workshop is cancelled, and that’s all,” Guillaume Belanger, an astrophysicist and the INTEGRAL Science Operations Coordinator at the ESA, told The Register on Monday. Raval isn’t about to quit his work any time soon, however. He promised students who graduated from his course that they would be referred to recruiters at Nvidia, Intel, Google and Amazon for engineering positions, or matched with a startup co-founder or a consulting client. In an unlisted YouTube video recorded live for his students discussing week eight of his course, and seen by El Reg, he read out a question posed to him: “Will your referrals hold any value now?” “Um, yeah they’re going to hold value. I don’t see why they wouldn’t. I mean, yes, some people on Twitter were angry but that has nothing to do with… I mean… I’ve also had tons of support, you know. I’ve had tons of support from people, who, uh, you know, support me, who work at these companies. He continues to justify his actions: “Public figures called me in private to remind me that this happens. You know, people make mistakes. You just have to keep going. They’re basically just telling me to not to stop. Of course, you make mistakes but you just keep going,” he claimed. When The Register asked Raval for comment, he responded: I've hardly taken any time off to relax since I first started my YouTube channel almost four years ago. And despite the enormous amount of work it takes to release two high quality videos a week for my audience, I progressively started to take on multiple other projects simultaneously by myself – a book, a docu-series, podcasts, YouTube videos, the course, the school of AI. Basically, these past few weeks, I've been experiencing a burnout unlike anything I've felt before. As a result, all of my output has been subpar. I made the [neural qubits] video and paper in one week. I remember wishing I had three to six months to really dive into quantum machine-learning and make something awesome, but telling myself I couldn't take that long as it would hinder my other projects. I plagiarized large chunks of the paper to meet my self-imposed one-week deadline. The associated video with animations took a lot more work to make. I didn't expect the paper to be cited as serious research, I considered it an additional reading resource for people who enjoyed the associated video to learn more about quantum machine learning. If I had a second chance, I'd definitely take way more time to write the paper, and in my own words. I've given refunds to every student who's asked so far, and the majority of students are still enrolled in the course. There are many happy students, they're just not as vocal on social media. We're on week 8 of 10 of my course, fully committed to student success. “And, no, I haven't plagiarized research for any other paper,” he added. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/14/ravelaiyoutube/

[D] Working with Various OpenAI Models - My Thoughts and Experiences

I'd like to share some of my insights from working with OpenAI models on my project. I'm not exactly a tech person, so some of these observations might be obvious to some of you, but I think they're worth sharing for those with less experience or who aren't directly in the field. Intro: In early February, my friends and I started a side project where we aimed to build an AI portal called DoMoreAI. For the first two months, we focused on creating an AI tools catalog. Our experiment is based on the idea that in the future, companies will be "Managed by AI, and Driven by Humans." So, our goal was to leave as much as possible to AI and automation, with all the consequences that come with it. As mentioned before, I'm not a tech guy, but I've been playing with OpenAI models for the past few years, so I had some experience when starting this project. Tasks We Assigned to AI: Based on an AI tool's front page, we had the AI write a one-sentence summary of an AI project + write a more in-depth review of the project, categorize the project into different categories (WHAT category, like blog; TASK category, like writing; FOR category, like content creator), decide if the project offers iOS app, Android app, browser extension, API, find social media links, process information about prices and pricing policy, and more. Interesting Findings: When working on a more complex prompt, particularly one with several tasks, you have to be patient when crafting it. You might eventually find the right wording to achieve the desired results, but it takes time and lots of trial and error. You might even be surprised by what works and what doesn't. If cost isn't an issue, you can always break up one complex prompt into several smaller prompts. However, the more requests you send, the higher the chance of encountering errors like the 429 error, which may require setting up more sophisticated error handlers for the whole process. You need error handlers because, without them, the automation process will suffer. With more complex prompts, there are no prompts that always yield the expected results, so you have to plan for what to do if the results aren't satisfactory and how to determine if the result meets your expectations or not. GPT-3.0 struggled with outputting JSON strings as requested, but GPT-3.5 is much better at this task. I'd say the number of errors from improperly formatting the response in JSON is 3-4 times lower for GPT-3.5. AI models have trouble distinguishing words singular forms from plural forms. Just because you can use AI for a given task doesn't mean you should. Often, standard techniques like using regex can yield better results when extracting something from text than relying solely on AI. A hybrid solution often provides the best results. We're using ADA vector embeddings and Pinecone for semantic search in our catalog, and I was really surprised to find that this kind of semantic search works in any language. Even if all the content on our page is in English, you can search in another language and still get decent results. The Best Mishaps: As you may know, there's a token limit for requests, so we have to ensure that we don't send too long a part of the front page to the model. Sometimes, this led to funny situations. If the HTML of the page consists mainly of styles and the model is fed only with styles, then when you ask the AI to write a review of the project, it writes about how beautiful, mobile-friendly, etc., the project is. For one project, instead of writing the one-sentence summary, the model's output only included the prompt we were using to generate the summary (needless to say, it was automatically published on our website ;)) ​ I hope this post will be useful. We are currently running a campaign on Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/domore-ai So, if you have any feedback for us or think what we're doing is cool, don't hesitate to support us :)

feedback please - working concept of ai sales guide for entrepreneurs & bootstrappers

hey r/Entrepreneur - I've been working tirelessly the past 7 days on developing a new concept called sales sage, featuring an ai guide named aether that evolves with your startup. I'd really appreciate your feedback on this so far. what is sales sage? sales sage is a platform built to help technical founders bridge the gap between innovative products and effective sales strategies. at its core is "aether", an ai sales guide that evolves as your startup grows. how does aether work? aether has four evolutionary stages, each aligned with a startup growth phase: aether, the spark (bootstrapping) aether, the cultivator (pre-seed) aether, the crafter (seed) aether, the luminary (series a & beyond) as your startup progresses, aether evolves, offering more advanced insights and strategies. key features: ai-generated resources tailored to your growth stage outcome-based pricing (you succeed, we succeed) evolving guidance from basic strategies to advanced, ai-driven insights I'd love your feedback on: the concept of an evolving ai guide for startups the naming and stages of aether's evolution how this might be useful (or not) for technical founders any concerns or potential improvements you see thanks in advance for your insights! we're excited to hear what the reddit community thinks about this approach to supporting startup growth.

Chill Work Music — Deep Focus Mix for Working, Programming, Coding

This carefully curated mix of tracks is designed specifically to help you focus on programming and coding. Deep, energizing electronic music in genres like chillstep and future garage creates the perfect background for working on complex projects or completing routine tasks. This carefully crafted selection is ideal for creative endeavors, adding atmosphere, enhancing motivation, and setting a positive mood for work or any activity. Thanks to the futuristic atmosphere of this musical accompaniment, you will be able to immerse yourself in the creative process with special depth and inspiration. These tracks help maintain a high level of concentration and productivity, enabling you to achieve maximum results. Discover new horizons of efficiency with our specially curated musical accompaniment. If you enjoyed this video like, comment or subscribe to the channel. 🙏 Join our Discord to contact us, grow, share your goals and find inspiration. Work together to turn ideas into reality. https://discord.gg/Tfe8gnAhYY Genre: Electrtonic Music Style: Chillout, Chillstep, Downtempo, Future Garage Mood: Inspiring, Motivating, Deep Feature: Without Lyrics 📹 Similar videos ► /https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdE7uo_7KBkf6X1lbOpL3tAWERvlYej2L ► /https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdE7uo_7KBkeSTmryNClNxUkioFpq3Btx ► /https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdE7uo_7KBkdbssGgnnIDm3EnE2gmHyEQ ► /https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdE7uo_7KBkeH0adsnxZupMARfGxY6qik ► /https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdE7uo_7KBkf0gwWO9-qeu-La5vSJPmPc ► /https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdE7uo_7KBkdsNAZNbzOUj61OQ5N0Ka26 🎧 Tracklist ► 00:00 Nomyn - Elsewhere ► 03:36 Sappheiros - Stay ► 06:36 Veil - Sorrow ► 09:56 Kazukii - It's Been Awhile ► 11:21 AK - Departure ► 13:57 Lazarus Moment - Reminescence ► 19:29 Nereus - Pathwaysh ► 22:39 Vigo - Bright Light ► 25:57 Osk - Komorebi ► 30:25 Phelian - Wound ► 33:12 4lienetic - If Only ► 35:40 Andy Leech, Victoriya - Aerolith ► 38:39 Bythewvve - Dreams Come True ► 41:01 Faodail - Far From Anyone ► 44:30 Mit-Rich - Timestream ► 46:41 Twisted Psykie - Mourning Glory ► 50:16 Oscuro - Can't Find My Way ► 53:41 Future Skyline - Silent Moon ► 57:45 Hollowz - Children (Cover) ► 1:00:45 Oscuro - Now Or Never ► 1:03:33 Alchemorph - Angel ► 1:06:53 Nikita Mirnyy - Souless ► 1:08:24 Nomyn - Elsewhere ► 1:11:58 Sappheiros - Stay ► 1:14:58 Veil - Sorrow ► 1:18:17 Kazukii - It's Been Awhile ► 1:19:43 AK - Departure ► 1:22:19 Lazarus Moment - Reminescence ► 1:27:50 Nereus - Pathwaysh ► 1:31:00 Vigo - Bright Light ► 1:34:19 Osk - Komorebi ► 1:38:46 Phelian - Wound ► 1:41:33 4lienetic - If Only ► 1:44:02 Andy Leech, Victoriya - Aerolith ► 1:47:00 Bythewvve - Dreams Come True ► 1:49:22 Faodail - Far From Anyone ► 1:52:51 Mit-Rich - Timestream ► 1:55:02 Twisted Psykie - Mourning Glory ► 1:58:38 Oscuro - Can't Find My Way ► 2:02:03 Future Skyline - Silent Moon ► 2:06:07 Hollowz - Children (Cover) ► 2:09:06 Oscuro - Now Or Never ► 2:11:55 Alchemorph - Angel ► 2:15:14 Nikita Mirnyy - Souless ► 2:16:46 Nomyn - Elsewhere ► 2:20:19 Sappheiros - Stay ► 2:23:19 Veil - Sorrow ► 2:26:39 Kazukii - It's Been Awhile ► 2:28:04 AK - Departure ► 2:30:40 Lazarus Moment - Reminescence ► 2:36:11 Nereus - Pathwaysh ► 2:39:21 Vigo - Bright Light #ConcentrationMusic #CodingMusic #FocusMusic

For anyone working on LLM / AI startups

My company (which I will not promote) wrote this blog post in compliance with rule #7 :) Introduction to fine-tuning Large Language Models, or LLMs, have become commonplace in the tech world. The number of applications that LLMs are revolutionizing is multiplying by the day — extraction use cases, chatbots, tools for creatives and engineers. In spite of this, at its core, the LLM is a multi-purpose neural network, dozens of layers deep, designed to simply predict one word after the next. It predicts words by performing billions of matrix multiplication steps based on so-called parameter weights, which are discovered during the model training process. Almost all open-source, open-weight models are trained on a massive amount of text from every conceivable genre and topic. How, then, do researchers and engineers create novel specialized applications? The answer is fine-tuning. In this post, we will demystify the process of fine-tuning and discuss the tradeoffs of other approaches to customizing an LLM. The history of fine-tuning In the ancient days of LLMs, by which we mean five years ago, the primary approaches to customizing an LLM was identical to the approaches to customizing any other deep learning model. A machine learning engineer would have two options: Retrain the entire LLM. This would mean discarding the trained weights and instead only using the open source model’s architecture to train it on a specialized dataset. As long as the amount and diversity of the specialized data is comparable to what the original model was trained on, this can be the ideal method of customizing a model. However, of course, this is a massive waste of resources due to the computational power required and the difficulty of collecting such a massive dataset. Even if an organization could provision enough GPUs, the cost of training modern-day models could cost up to $190 million. Retrain the last few layers of the LLM while keeping the rest of the weights frozen. This is a more efficient method in terms of time and computational power required because it significantly cuts down the number of parameters that need to be trained. However, for most tasks, this leads to subpar quality. Of course, almost everyone chooses to retrain the last few layers. And where there is only one option, the research community saw an opportunity to step in. Soon, the LLM space saw an enormous amount of activity in fine-tuning, which leads us to today. Modern approaches to fine-tuning Most fine-tuning approaches today are parameter-efficient. Deep neural networks are composed of matrices and vectors (generally called tensors), which are at their core arrays of floating point numbers. By training a small subset of these tensors, while the rest of the LLM’s weights are kept frozen, practitioners achieve good enough results without having to retrain the entire model. Generally, this method requires at least a hundred or so handcrafted examples of input-output pairs for fine-tuning. This is called supervised learning. The modern fine-tuning landscape involves an unsupervised learning step afterwards. Given a set of inputs, a practitioner gathers the various possible outputs from the LLM and casts votes among them. This preference data is then used to further train the LLM’s weights. Usually, this approach is used for LLM alignment and safety, which defends the application from malicious uses, outputs embarrassing to the organization, and prompt injection attacks. Fine-tuning’s relationship to prompt engineering A natural question arises: why fine-tune instead of crafting a well-considered system prompt? Wouldn’t that be easier and more efficient? The answer is no, it wouldn’t. Here’s why: Advanced techniques make prompt engineering obsolete: \[redacted\]'s product uses soft-prompting and other techniques to train the input layer itself. This obviates the need for prompt engineering entirely, which lets organizations avoid the time-consuming trial-and-error process to get the prompt just right. Prompt engineering has been a stopgap measure in the early days of LLM applications to convey the practitioner’s intent to the LLM. It is not the long-term solution for LLM application development. The system prompt is precious: the limited budget for system prompt length is better used for up-to-date information, e.g., Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Even as context windows increase in size with each new open-source model, the system prompt is the least efficient place to provide the LLM model with verbose instructions and examples. The longer the prompt, the slower the application: an LLM must attend to the entire system prompt for each token generated. This pain becomes more acute in the chatbot case, where the length of the conversation so far is also counted toward the system context. The longer the conversation, and the longer your beautifully-crafted system prompt, the slower the bot becomes. Even in cases where the model allows for system prompts that are millions of tokens long, doubling the size of the context will quadruple the latency. This means adding a few hundred words to the system prompt may result in several seconds of additional latency in production, making a chatbot impossible to use. Edge case handling: the number of edge cases that the system prompt would need to consider and emphasize to the LLM is too large. The instructions would have to be too nuanced and long to cover them all. However, fine-tuning on a dataset that considers these edge cases would be more straightforward. Do I need to fine-tune the LLM in my production application? Every LLM application in production must be fine-tuned often, not just once at the beginning. Why fine-tune? The world in which the application exists is constantly evolving. New prompt injection attacks are being discovered every day, new ways of embarrassing a chatbot are emerging constantly. This data can be used to further train an LLM model, which protects the application from new failure modes and reputational risk. Like any software, LLM models are constantly improving. Smarter and faster models are open-sourced all the time. For a new model to get deployed to production, it must first be finetuned on the specific dataset of the organization building the application. Fine-tuning does not add latency to LLM applications. Rather than a solution that sits in the middle of the LLM and the rest of the application, fine-tuning leverages the power of the LLM itself to increase the quality of the output. In fact, fine-tuning allows for shorter system prompts, which speeds up the average response generation time.

Small Business Owners: How's AI Working (or Not) for You?

I'm interested in doing some "user research" to hear from the community on how AI fits into the small business landscape. Some SMB owners I talked to felt like "AI is a cool novelty, but it's not transformative". Curious how people here feel about AI, thanks. How are you using (or have used) AI in your business? Seen any ROI boosts? Hit any roadblocks or adoption challenges? What do you wish AI could do for your biz that it doesn't currently? (besides run everything lol)

Founder I’m working with is helping companies implement AI agents

We build it and for you

I created an AI sales coach while working full time

Best of Chillstep 2024 | Cosmic Hippo | Coding Session

You can get the artwork featured in this video as a digital download on Etsy here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1858237715/best-of-2024 Thank you for tuning in to this selection of my most popular chillstep songs of 2024, designed to elevate your focus and creativity. Dive into an immersive experience with some of the most captivating tracks of the year, blending atmospheric beats and soothing rhythms to keep you in the zone. Whether you’re deep into a coding project, studying, or simply unwinding, this playlist will set the perfect tone for your session. Stay inspired, stay productive, and let these sounds guide your flow. Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe for more chillstep vibes and focus-driven music from Cosmic Hippo. Tracklist 0:00 Neon Dreams From playlist "3 A.M Coding Session" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd7vDterctQ 4:00 Crystal Nights From Playlist "Coding Alone" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MUlk3qjByY&t=513s 8:01 Flowing Codes From playlist "3 A.M Coding Session" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd7vDterctQ 11:00 Driftwood Dreams From Playlist "Coding by the Sea" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dB9WI-OI8k&t=1553s 15:00 Code Flow From playlist "3 A.M Coding Session" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd7vDterctQ 19:02 Magic in the Moonlight From Playlist "1 A.M Coding Sessions" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUrRK_jMCqA&t=661s 23:06 Serene State From playlist "3 A.M Coding Session" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd7vDterctQ 27:05 Icy Reverie From Playlist "Coding Session in the Snowy Mountains" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDi65Kq88DY&t=717s 30:43 Lost Among Stars From Playlist Hyperfocus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq0R46U9FpQ 34:16 Quantum Blanket From playlist "3 A.M Coding Session" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd7vDterctQ 38:14 Echoes of Clarity From Playlist "Deep Chill" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmgM00yas78&t=1447s 41:54 Ethereal Daydream From playlist "3 A.M Coding Session" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd7vDterctQ 44:57 Snowlit Skies From Playlist " Winter Chillstep" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4ZNQJyn_FA&t=91s 48:47 Neon Nights and Daydreams From Playlist "Coding All Night" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DayQ-a4YdSQ&t=1486s 51:04 Northern Chill From Playlist " Winter Chillstep" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4ZNQJyn_FA&t=91s 54:24 Cinders in the Snow From Playlist "Broken Signal" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ0QPjl6aTs&t=14s 58:28 Voyage to Nowhere From Playlist "Infinite Focus" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvcpNZHFBlQ&t=2040s 01:01:11 Almas en la Noche From Playlist "1 A.M Coding Sessions" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUrRK_jMCqA&t=661s 01:04:28 Infinite Flow From playlist "3 A.M Coding Session" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd7vDterctQ 01:06:52 Xenon Lights From Playlist "Coding All Night" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DayQ-a4YdSQ&t=1486s 01:09:24 Galactic Journey From Playlist "Infinite Focus" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvcpNZHFBlQ&t=2040s 01:11:36 Lost in the Cosmos From Playlist "Hyperfocus" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq0R46U9FpQ&t=2323s 01:14:07 Siberian Silence From Playlist "Broken Signal" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ0QPjl6aTs&t=14s 01:17:48 Stardust Dreams From Playlist "Infinite Focus" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvcpNZHFBlQ&t=2040s Tags: #Chillstep2024 #CodingMusic #CosmicHippo #FocusBeats #StudyMusic #RelaxingChillstep #BestOf2024 #ProductivityMusic #WorkBeats #ProgrammingPlaylist #ChillstepVibes #CreativeFocus #ElectronicBeats #codingmusic #codingsession #codingmotivation #programming #programmingbeats #chill #chillworkmusic #lofi #aesthetic #views #workinglate Disclaimer: This music has been created with the help of AI tools.

Google AI Essentials

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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.

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.

How I made a high tech salary in my first selling month

For over 7 years I worked as a full-stack developer, helping other companies bring their ideas to life. But one day, I thought “Why not try making my own dream come true?”. That’s when I decided to quit my job and start my own journey to becoming an entrepreneur. At first, it wasn’t easy. I didn’t make any money for months and had no idea where to start. I felt lost. Then, I decided to focus on something popular and trending. AI was everywhere, and ChatGPT was the most used AI platform. So I looked into it and I found the OpenAI community forum where people had been asking for features that weren’t being added. That gave me an idea. Why not build those features myself? I created a Chrome extension and I worked on some of the most requested features, like: Downloading the advanced voice mode and messages as MP3 Adding folders to organize chats Saving and reusing prompts Pinning important chats Exporting chats to TXT/JSON files Deleting or archiving multiple chats at once Making chat history searches faster and better It took me about a week to build the first version, and when I published it, the response was incredible. People loved it! Some even said things like, “You’re a lifesaver!” That’s when I realized I had something that could not only help people but also turn into a real business. I kept the first version free to see how people would respond. Many users have been downloading my extension, which prompted Chrome to review it to determine if it qualified for the featured badge. I received the badge, and it has significantly boosted traffic to my extension ever since. After all the positive feedback, I launched a paid version one month ago. A few minutes after publishing it, I made my first sale! That moment was so exciting, and it motivated me to keep going. I already have over 4,000 users and have made more than $4,500 in my first selling month. I’ve decided to release 1-2 new features every month to keep improving the extension based on what users ask for. I also created the same extension for Firefox and Edge users because many people have been asking for it! I also started a Reddit community, where I share updates, sales, discount codes, and ideas for new features. It’s been awesome to connect with users directly and get their feedback. Additionally, I’ve started working on another extension for Claude, which I’m hoping will be as successful as this one. My message to you is this: never give up on your dreams. It might feel impossible at first, but with patience, hard work, and some creativity, you can make it happen. I hope this inspires you to go after what you want. Good luck to all of us!

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.

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

How good is a No Code/AI application to validate your idea

Hi, I'm a Non-tech founder and I'm working on building a simple board type video game. The product is heavily reliant on design and user perception. I do intend to find a tech co-founder to build and scale the product, but before that I want to do some testing to validate the idea and go for a pre-seed round and find a co-founder through VCs or incubators. How good is AI or a no-code tool to build a prototype that will help me test out the idea, gameplay and help me with some validation metrics before pitching to a Venture Capitalist. How good are the one's currently in market and what are the suggestions from your experience

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.

I studied how 7 Founders found their first 100 customers for their businesses. Summarizing it here!

I am learning marketing, and so I combed through the internet to find specific advice that helped founders reach 100 users and not random Google answers. Here’s what I found: Llama Life by Marie Marie founder of Llama Life, a productivity app ($51.4K+ revenue) got her first 100 users using Snowballing effect. She shared great advice that I want to add here verbatim, “Need to think about what you have that you can leverage based on your current situation. eg..When you have no customers, think about where you can post to get the 1st customer eg Product Hunt. If you do well on PH, say you get #3 product of the day, then you post somewhere else saying ‘I got #3 product of the day’.. to get your next few customers. Maybe that post is on reddit with some learnings that you found. If the reddit post does well, then you might post it on Twitter, saying reddit did well and what learnings you got from that etc. or even if it doesn’t do well you can still post about it.” Another tip she shared is to build related products that get more viral than the product itself. These are small stand-alone sites that would appeal to the same target audience, but by nature, are more shareable. On these sites, you can mention your startup like: ‘brought to you by Llama Life’ and then provide a link to the main website if someone is interested. If one of those gets viral or ranks on Google, you’ll have a passive traffic source. Scraping bee by Pierre Pierre, founder of Scraping Bee, a web scraping tool has now reached $1.5M ARR. Pierre and his cofounder Kevin started with 10 Free Beta Users in 2019, and after 6 months asked them to take a paid subscription if they wanted to continue using the product. That’s how they got their first user within 50 minutes of that email. Then they listed it on dozens of startup directories but their core strategy was writing the best possible content for their target audience — Developers. 3 very successful pieces of content that worked were : A small tutorial on how to scrape single-page application An extensive general guide about web scraping without getting blocked A complete introduction to web scraping with Python They didn’t do content marketing for the sake of content marketing but deep-dived into the value they were providing their customer. One of these got 70K visits, and all this together got them to over 100 users. WePay by Bill Clerico Bill Clerico left his cushy corporate job to build WePay which was then acquired for $400M got his first users by using his app. He got his first users by using his app! The app was for group payments. So he hosted a Poker tournament at his house and collected payments only with his app. Then they hosted a barbecue for fraternity treasurers at San Jose State & helped them do their annual dues collection. Good old word-of-mouth marketing, that however, started with an event where they used what they made! RealWorld by Genevieve Genevieve — Founder and CEO of Realworld stands by the old-school advice of value giving. RealWorld is an app that helps GenZ navigate adulthood. So, before launching their direct-to-consumer platform, they had an educational course that they sold to college career centers and students. They already had a pipeline of adults who turned to Realworld for their adulting challenges. From there, she gained her first 100 followers. Saner dot ai by Austin Austin got 100 users from Reddit for his startup Saner.ai. Reddit hates advertising, and so his tips to market your startup on Reddit is to Write value-driven posts on your niche. Instead of writing posts, find posts where people are looking for solutions DM people facing problems that your SaaS solves. But instead of selling, ask about their problem to see if your product is a good fit Heartfelt posts about why you built it, aren’t gonna cut it To find posts and people, search Reddit with relevant keywords and join all the subreddits A Stock Portfolio Newsletter A financial investor got his first 100 paid newsletter subscribers for his stock portfolio newsletter. His tips : Don’t reinvent the wheel. Work what’s already working. He saw a company making $500M+ from stock picking newsletter, so decided to try that. Find the gaps in “already working” and leverage them. That newsletter did not have portfolios of advisors writing them. That was his USP. He added his own portfolio to his newsletter. Now to 100 users, he partnered with a guy running an investing website and getting good traffic. That guy got a cut of his revenue, in exchange. That one simple step got him to 100 users. Hypefury by Yannick and Samy Yannick and Samy from Hypefury, Twitter and Social Media Automation tool got their first beta testers and users from a paid community. They launched Hypefury there and asked if someone wanted to try it. A couple of people tried it and gave feedback. Samy conducted user interviews and product demos for them, And shared the reviews on Twitter. That alone, along with word-of-mouth marketing on Twitter got them their first 100 users. To conclude: Don’t reinvent the wheel, try what’s working. Find the gaps in what’s working, and leverage that. Instead of thinking about millions of customers, think about the first 10. Then first 100. Leverage what you have. Get the first 10 customers, then talk about this to get the next 100. Use your app. Find ways, events, and opportunities to use your app in front of people. And get them to use it. Write content not only for SEO but also to help people. It won’t work tomorrow, but it will work for years after it picks up. Leverage other sources of traffic by partnering up! Do things that don’t scale. I’m also doing SaaS marketing deep dives over 30 pieces of content. I'm posting here for the first time, so I'm not sure if it will stay or not, sorry if it doesn't. I've helped a SaaS grow from $19K to $100K MRR as a marketer in last 2 years, and now I wanna dive deep. Cheers! (1/30)

ChatGPT is down! How is your startup product doing?

So it looks like today one of those rare days when OpenAI ChatGPT downtime. I've noticed something interesting - many of my favorite AI tools that use OpenAI under the hood are still operating. This makes me think that the APIs might still be working, even though some services are down. It got me thinking: What gameplan have you all put in place for your products that heavily rely on OpenAI's APIs? How do you handle situations when the API becomes unavailable? I'm curious to hear about your strategies, especially from those who've dealt with previous outages.

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 studied how 7 Founders found their first 100 customers for their businesses. Summarizing it here!

I am learning marketing, and so I combed through the internet to find specific advice that helped founders reach 100 users and not random Google answers. Here’s what I found: Llama Life by Marie Marie founder of Llama Life, a productivity app ($51.4K+ revenue) got her first 100 users using Snowballing effect. She shared great advice that I want to add here verbatim, “Need to think about what you have that you can leverage based on your current situation. eg..When you have no customers, think about where you can post to get the 1st customer eg Product Hunt. If you do well on PH, say you get #3 product of the day, then you post somewhere else saying ‘I got #3 product of the day’.. to get your next few customers. Maybe that post is on reddit with some learnings that you found. If the reddit post does well, then you might post it on Twitter, saying reddit did well and what learnings you got from that etc. or even if it doesn’t do well you can still post about it.” Another tip she shared is to build related products that get more viral than the product itself. These are small stand-alone sites that would appeal to the same target audience, but by nature, are more shareable. On these sites, you can mention your startup like: ‘brought to you by Llama Life’ and then provide a link to the main website if someone is interested. If one of those gets viral or ranks on Google, you’ll have a passive traffic source. Scraping bee by Pierre Pierre, founder of Scraping Bee, a web scraping tool has now reached $1.5M ARR. Pierre and his cofounder Kevin started with 10 Free Beta Users in 2019, and after 6 months asked them to take a paid subscription if they wanted to continue using the product. That’s how they got their first user within 50 minutes of that email. Then they listed it on dozens of startup directories but their core strategy was writing the best possible content for their target audience — Developers. 3 very successful pieces of content that worked were : A small tutorial on how to scrape single-page application An extensive general guide about web scraping without getting blocked A complete introduction to web scraping with Python They didn’t do content marketing for the sake of content marketing but deep-dived into the value they were providing their customer. One of these got 70K visits, and all this together got them to over 100 users. WePay by Bill Clerico Bill Clerico left his cushy corporate job to build WePay which was then acquired for $400M got his first users by using his app. He got his first users by using his app! The app was for group payments. So he hosted a Poker tournament at his house and collected payments only with his app. Then they hosted a barbecue for fraternity treasurers at San Jose State & helped them do their annual dues collection. Good old word-of-mouth marketing, that however, started with an event where they used what they made! RealWorld by Genevieve Genevieve — Founder and CEO of Realworld stands by the old-school advice of value giving. RealWorld is an app that helps GenZ navigate adulthood. So, before launching their direct-to-consumer platform, they had an educational course that they sold to college career centers and students. They already had a pipeline of adults who turned to Realworld for their adulting challenges. From there, she gained her first 100 followers. Saner dot ai by Austin Austin got 100 users from Reddit for his startup Saner.ai. Reddit hates advertising, and so his tips to market your startup on Reddit is to Write value-driven posts on your niche. Instead of writing posts, find posts where people are looking for solutions DM people facing problems that your SaaS solves. But instead of selling, ask about their problem to see if your product is a good fit Heartfelt posts about why you built it, aren’t gonna cut it To find posts and people, search Reddit with relevant keywords and join all the subreddits A Stock Portfolio Newsletter A financial investor got his first 100 paid newsletter subscribers for his stock portfolio newsletter. His tips : Don’t reinvent the wheel. Work what’s already working. He saw a company making $500M+ from stock picking newsletter, so decided to try that. Find the gaps in “already working” and leverage them. That newsletter did not have portfolios of advisors writing them. That was his USP. He added his own portfolio to his newsletter. Now to 100 users, he partnered with a guy running an investing website and getting good traffic. That guy got a cut of his revenue, in exchange. That one simple step got him to 100 users. Hypefury by Yannick and Samy Yannick and Samy from Hypefury, Twitter and Social Media Automation tool got their first beta testers and users from a paid community. They launched Hypefury there and asked if someone wanted to try it. A couple of people tried it and gave feedback. Samy conducted user interviews and product demos for them, And shared the reviews on Twitter. That alone, along with word-of-mouth marketing on Twitter got them their first 100 users. To conclude: Don’t reinvent the wheel, try what’s working. Find the gaps in what’s working, and leverage that. Instead of thinking about millions of customers, think about the first 10. Then first 100. Leverage what you have. Get the first 10 customers, then talk about this to get the next 100. Use your app. Find ways, events, and opportunities to use your app in front of people. And get them to use it. Write content not only for SEO but also to help people. It won’t work tomorrow, but it will work for years after it picks up. Leverage other sources of traffic by partnering up! Do things that don’t scale. I’m also doing SaaS marketing deep dives over 30 pieces of content. I'm posting here for the first time, so I'm not sure if it will stay or not, sorry if it doesn't. I've helped a SaaS grow from $19K to $100K MRR as a marketer in last 2 years, and now I wanna dive deep. Cheers! (1/30)

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.

Looking to Connect with Healthcare Tech Founders & Early-Stage Startups(Product, AI Strategy – Canada-based, Open to US). I will not promote.

Hey everyone, I’m exploring product and strategy roles in healthcare tech startups and looking to connect with early-stage founders working on AI-driven healthcare solutions. I’m currently based in Canada but looking for opportunities to work with U.S.-based startups in healthcare AI, digital health, and automation. My background is in tech, compliance, and cybersecurity, and I’m transitioning into product management for AI healthcare solutions. I’ve been working on a portfolio of AI-powered healthcare projects, including: A senior care digital assistant (health tracking, reminders) An AI companion for men's health (preventative care & chronic disease management) More projects coming in preventative health and healthcare automation I’m interested in learning from and working with fast-moving startups, particularly those at the intersection of AI and healthcare. If you’re working on something exciting, I’d love to chat. Drop a comment or DM me if you’re interested in connecting!

From “Green” to “Smart” – Tom Gorski’s Word of Advice

Sharing this interview with entrepreneur Tom Gorski. I think it contains a few nice tips for beginner entrepreneurs. What is the problem with the term “Green?” what are the top 3 mistakes entrepreneurs make that can prevent them from enjoying the sweet taste of success? And what should young entrepreneurs always keep in mind? Continuing our expert interview series, we asked entrepreneur Tom Gorski to share some of his secrets to success with us. Gorski is the CEO and Co-Founder at SaaSGenius.com, and an Inbound Marketer & Growth Hacker at InboundWay.com. His career spans over 12 years of developing and implementing online marketing, SEO and conversion optimization campaigns. He defines his biggest accomplishment to date as “achieving 4500% growth for one of my clients over a three­year period.” logo-saasgenius Q: It’s no secret that the SaaS market is saturated, as new companies are having very hard time acquiring, retaining and monetizing users. In your view – what are the top 3 mistakes SaaS companies make? What are some key differentiators you recognize in a successful product? A: Mistake No. 1: Product-market fit is not good enough There are a number of reasons for this, including the fact that inertia, incumbency and bureaucracy are all working against you. For emerging companies, this means finding a way to be exponentially better with fewer resources. As a result, focus is key. Mistake No. 2: Not Specializing Your Sales Roles When you specialize your sales people, you allow them to focus, which creates greater output form your sales team. Mistake No. 3: You Need a Niche To be able to market and sell well, you need to have a niche. The world is noisy and messy, and you’ll struggle if you don’t have a sharp, direct message. When you try to speak to everyone, no one can hear you. Q: Which innovative trends do you recognize in the high tech world nowadays? A: “Green” was a mega trend of the last decade and while it will continue to be very important, there will be a shift towards “smart” solutions, which are intelligent, connected and have the ability to sense, report, and take the right action. Smart solutions will be everywhere around us from smart clothing, phones, to smart homes and smart cities. Q: What is the most significant advice you can give young entrepreneurs? A: Being very successful means learning from those who have already achieved success. Having a mentor is an amazing blessing to an entrepreneur, but not everyone can find one in person. My advice is to work smarter, not harder. This is the most non-intuitive observation I will probably make. If you want to compete in the arena, hard work isn’t enough. And judging yourself on how hard you work, rather than how smart you work can be fatal. Q: We are flooded with buzzwords lately – VR / AI / Bots… where do you think the software world is heading? A: AI and bots are a very hot topic in 2016 and it’s sometimes hard to distinguish the real potential behind the hype. My point of view is that, like with many things, there’s no revolution but evolution. It’s unrealistic to think that AI can become mainstream in SaaS products without proper AI infrastructure. SaaS delivery will significantly outpace traditional software product delivery, growing nearly five times faster than the traditional software market and will become a significant growth driver for all functional software markets. By 2019, the SaaS software model will account for $1 of every $4 spent on software. Q: Let us in on some of your secrets… where do you look for innovation? For inspiration and revolutionary ideas? A: Ideas for new startups often begin with a real problem that needs to be solved. And they don’t come while you’re sitting around sipping coffee and contemplating life. They tend to reveal themselves while you’re at work on something else. Start with brainstorming with problems that you are personally invested in. Building a business is hard and takes the kind of relentless dedication that comes from personal passion. Perhaps the greatest factor that determines whether or not an entrepreneur will be successful isn’t the business idea itself, but rather the entrepreneur’s willingness to try to turn the idea into reality. Great ideas are abundant, but it’s what we decide to do with them that counts. Original post: http://saasaddict.walkme.com/from-green-to-smart-tom-gorskis-words-of-advice/

I just had my best month after 18 months as a solopreneur

Last month I reached important milestones both financially (60+ sales) and in terms of my personal brand (2.500+ new followers) But the most important part is that it has reinforced a belief in myself: it is possible, as long as I keep going, improving, learning and iterating. For the last year and a half, I've been grinding and launching project after project. But there was always something wrong: Product didn't solve a real problem Bad marketing (very often lol) Target market had low purchasing power Super-competitive niche (usually b2c) It's difficult to have failure after failure and keep going on. At times it would feel like everyone was making money, except for me. I was hacking on my projects every single day before and after my 9-5 and had mostly given up all my free time for this. But results were far from being what I wanted. So I would doubt myself all the time. One thing I had going for me is that I really enjoy building things - so that helped me a lot in staying consistent. I always knew this was a long-term thing and that I'd probably have to fail again and again before seeing some success. But even so, it was really hard to keep up the spirits at all time, especially after working so hard for so long. I wasn't going to give up but I also knew that continuing like this would lead nowhere. So I decided that for my next project I would do 2 things: 1) prioritize marketing and 2) build something strategic 1) Prioritize marketing I decided I was going to put in the same amount of effort into marketing as I put into building. Usually my time would be split 90% coding - 10% marketing. Now, for the first time ever it's probably 65% coding - 35% marketing. I organized myself and made an entire gameplan for it. This forced me to learn a lot about: Video editing Cold emails Copywriting Running ads Short-form content There are a lot of items I still need to execute on - but at least I have a good idea of how to approach most things. 2) Build something strategic I had to build something that I would be able to use even if nobody else did. For the last year and a half I had been building AI apps and my plan was to continue doing that. So I decided to leverage that and thought about how I could build something that would give me an unfair advantage + have a compounding effect over the long term: a) Unfair advantage Having AI demo apps that cover all type of AI functionalities would make my life easier & would allow me to ship new apps quickly, regardless of the required model/functionality So even if nobody bought this - I'd have built something really useful for myself & would have a slight edge over other people b) Compound over the long term Building "AnotherWrapper' (my new project) would have a good synergy with my future projects: It would allow me to build new projects faster While building new projects, I'd learn new things, which I would then be able to implement into AnotherWrapper and improve the product that way A win-win. Closing thoughts I did not expect things to go this well - it's been an amazing month and I'm truly grateful to everyone that has been supporting me. But at the end of the day, there is still a lot of work to be done. The initial 'hype' & effects from some viral tweets are starting to wear off. I still don't have a reliable distribution channel that guarantees me traffic. So I need to figure that out. I think the product has a lot of potential - it has been well received and has been a success so far, but my distribution is still lacking. The good thing is that I now have some extra cash to spend on things like ads, influencers, freelancers etc. So it opens some new doors that were previously closed! I also have some other projects down the pipeline which are coming soon. Will keep you guys updated!

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

I'm technical looking for non-technical co-founder with a good idea and good background.

Hi all! So things have fell through with my co-founder and I have decided to start looking for new opportunities. I'm a senior software engineer looking to work with someone who already has an idea. I've primarily worked on fintech during my career.  I've build payment systems, fraud prevention mechanisms, and arrear collections infrastructure. The products I've had a key role in developing have helped UK governments and banks save millions of pounds. I've built beautiful front end systems (web, android, and IOS) that are being used by thousands of people and have developed back end infrastructure that is currently servicing millions of requests per day. I'm open to working in most domains if the idea and the founder behind are great. I'm looking for a co-founder who is ideally an expert in there space and has a good idea. I'll try to get back to everyone who pings me. All the best!

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.

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

Technical Co-Founder Seeking Commercial/Marketing Partner for Micro SaaS Projects

Hi everyone, I’m looking for a commercial or marketing co-founder to join me in developing some Micro SaaS (MSaaS) apps. Here’s a bit about where I’m coming from and what I’m hoping to find: About Me: I’m a full-stack developer with over 15 years of experience, including some work in AI. I’m currently working part-time, which gives me the time to focus on developing MVPs quickly. I’m passionate about creating SaaS solutions and would love to find someone who can help bring these ideas to life. Based in french alps. What I’m Looking For: Role: Non-Technical Co-Founder (Commercial/Marketing) Location: Remote Equity: 50% co-founder stake What I’m Hoping You’ll Bring: Experience: Background in business development, marketing, or similar fields. Vision: An eye for potential in new SaaS ideas and a drive to help make them successful. Commitment: Enthusiasm for building and growing a business together. What’s In It For You: Revenue Potential: Share in the financial rewards of successful products with a 50% equity stake, giving you a direct share of the profits. Fast ROI: Benefit from rapid MVP development, which allows for quicker validation and faster revenue generation. Dynamic Approach: We move quickly—if an app doesn’t gain traction in a few weeks, we pivot to the next idea, keeping our efforts focused on what works. Financial Growth: As we iterate and scale, there are opportunities for significant financial upside based on the success of our products. Shared Success: Be an integral part of a partnership where both of us share equally in the risks and rewards, creating a strong incentive for mutual success. What’s In It For You: Partnership: Equal share in the business (50/50). Opportunity: Work on interesting MSaaS projects with room for creativity. Flexibility: A remote role that fits around your schedule. If you’re interested or would like to learn more, please reach out. I’d be thrilled to discuss how we might work together. Thank you for considering this!

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.

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?

Non-technical founders with experienced outside vendor — ok?

I’m a non-technical cofounder of early stage startup. (“Non-technical” but I’ve developed multimedia courseware and led teams in the past (LMS, edu content, no code). My question: how crucial is it that my other biz founder and I have a technical co-founder for our data- and AI-driven product rather than use an experienced vendor whose team has been doing machine learning and AI for 10 years? During our manual work as consultants we have identified a problem in a niche market that can be solved via a combo of hard-to-gather data and AI (and other market-specific stuff that that we will train our LLM on). We’ve done market research, designed and validated the solution with potential customers in numerous interviews via click-through prototypes/wireframes, quantified TAM, SAM, SOM, written biz plan, etc. We have deep experience in our market having proven expertise over years. But as we’ve been learning about fundraising (we hope to begin a seed round in early 2025) we continually hear about the importance of technical cofounder. We get it— but our product will only be half-developed by a technical dev team. The other aspect to the product is: gathering hard to find data, and figuring out relationships in the data — that we will do via mapping work with a cohort with unique expertise in our niche market. Also our outside vendor is very reputable with years’ experience in AI and machine learning prior to the latest gen-AI craze — he’s not a newbie and has an established dev team. And our platform is not a consumer product but a more complicated SaaS product. Like, you can’t just code it by yourself. Sure, in the long run we can hire/bring everything in house, but would investors shy away from working with us if our short-term dev effort does not have a “technical” co-founder? Thanks for your thoughts.

The #1 Mistake Entrepreneurs Make – And How to Avoid It Before Launching Your Startup (I will not promote)

Why So Many Startups Fail Before They Even Begin A huge number of early-stage entrepreneurs fall into the same trap: They get excited about their idea but don’t validate if the market actually wants it. They invest time and money building something nobody will pay for. They focus on execution first instead of proof of demand. By the time reality hits, they’ve burned months (or years) and thousands of dollars—just to learn the hard way that they started wrong. How do we prevent this? What’s the best way to validate a business idea before wasting resources? According to your unique experiences, what’s the Smartest Way to Validate a Startup Idea? I’ve been working on new approaches to validation that combine: ✔ AI-powered feasibility analysis to assess business potential instantly. ✔ Market research frameworks that help test demand before launching. ✔ Lean execution models that prevent unnecessary risk. But I want to hear from you: How did YOU validate your startup idea before launching? What methods have actually worked to confirm demand? What’s one mistake you made in your early-stage startup that others can avoid? The best insights come from real founders who’ve been in the trenches. Let’s break down what actually works. Drop your thoughts below! 👇 (I will not promote).

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.

Looking for a non-technical co-founder (I will not promote)

Hey everyone, I've launched an AI networking agent designed to connect people based on specific prompts. You describe the type of person you're looking for, and it provides a relevant contact. This tool can be used for hiring, procuring services, selling services, and more. I'm currently seeking a highly motivated, high-energy non-technical co-founder to handle sales and marketing, conduct customer interviews to grow our user base. No experience is required, only a strong willingness to succeed. We're completely bootstrapped but plan to start fundraising after securing our first paying users. If you're interested, shoot me a DM. i will not promote

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

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.

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

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

How I made a high tech salary in my first selling month

For over 7 years I worked as a full-stack developer, helping other companies bring their ideas to life. But one day, I thought “Why not try making my own dream come true?”. That’s when I decided to quit my job and start my own journey to becoming an entrepreneur. At first, it wasn’t easy. I didn’t make any money for months and had no idea where to start. I felt lost. Then, I decided to focus on something popular and trending. AI was everywhere, and ChatGPT was the most used AI platform. So I looked into it and I found the OpenAI community forum where people had been asking for features that weren’t being added. That gave me an idea. Why not build those features myself? I created a Chrome extension and I worked on some of the most requested features, like: Downloading the advanced voice mode and messages as MP3 Adding folders to organize chats Saving and reusing prompts Pinning important chats Exporting chats to TXT/JSON files Deleting or archiving multiple chats at once Making chat history searches faster and better It took me about a week to build the first version, and when I published it, the response was incredible. People loved it! Some even said things like, “You’re a lifesaver!” That’s when I realized I had something that could not only help people but also turn into a real business. I kept the first version free to see how people would respond. Many users have been downloading my extension, which prompted Chrome to review it to determine if it qualified for the featured badge. I received the badge, and it has significantly boosted traffic to my extension ever since. After all the positive feedback, I launched a paid version one month ago. A few minutes after publishing it, I made my first sale! That moment was so exciting, and it motivated me to keep going. I already have over 4,000 users and have made more than $4,500 in my first selling month. I’ve decided to release 1-2 new features every month to keep improving the extension based on what users ask for. I also created the same extension for Firefox and Edge users because many people have been asking for it! I also started a Reddit community, where I share updates, sales, discount codes, and ideas for new features. It’s been awesome to connect with users directly and get their feedback. Additionally, I’ve started working on another extension for Claude, which I’m hoping will be as successful as this one. My message to you is this: never give up on your dreams. It might feel impossible at first, but with patience, hard work, and some creativity, you can make it happen. I hope this inspires you to go after what you want. Good luck to all of us!

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.

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.

Looking to Connect with Healthcare Tech Founders & Early-Stage Startups(Product, AI Strategy – Canada-based, Open to US). I will not promote.

Hey everyone, I’m exploring product and strategy roles in healthcare tech startups and looking to connect with early-stage founders working on AI-driven healthcare solutions. I’m currently based in Canada but looking for opportunities to work with U.S.-based startups in healthcare AI, digital health, and automation. My background is in tech, compliance, and cybersecurity, and I’m transitioning into product management for AI healthcare solutions. I’ve been working on a portfolio of AI-powered healthcare projects, including: A senior care digital assistant (health tracking, reminders) An AI companion for men's health (preventative care & chronic disease management) More projects coming in preventative health and healthcare automation I’m interested in learning from and working with fast-moving startups, particularly those at the intersection of AI and healthcare. If you’re working on something exciting, I’d love to chat. Drop a comment or DM me if you’re interested in connecting!

I am selling my tool which converts websites into android and iOS apps within 5 minutes.

Hi, my name is Toshit Garg. I started working on SaaS products around April 2023. The plan was simple: to create tools that help entrepreneurs easily grow their businesses. My first tool was "Convertixo", inspired by my work as a Fiverr seller where I converted websites into apps for clients, earning around $1,000 per month. I thought, why not automate this process? Following Convertixo, I created a few other tools like "Web to PWA". At one point, I developed an AI-based tool called "AppMintAI" , a productized service named "Engage Enhance", and even a WordPress plugin that lets users create pragmatic pages for SEO and a boilerplates. Unfortunately, none of these tools gained significant traction. I would launch them on Product Hunt, get a few users, and then nothing. Other than Convertixo, all my other tools only received a handful of free users. I believe this happened because I’m not very passionate about marketing. So, I decided to pivot and focus on content creation, which is where my true passion lies. Currently, I’m selling all my products one by one. As for Convertixo, it now has 800 users, a $20 MRR, and an email subscriber list of 100+. It was also the third Product of the Day on Product Hunt in January of this year. While the product has gained some traction, I’ve realized my focus is on content creation. However, with the right marketing and drive, I believe Convertixo has great potential to grow. If you’re interested in taking Convertixo to the next level, let’s chat! Here are some key statistics: In the last 20 days, Convertixo has received 4.9K impressions from Google and 338 visitors. More about the product: Convertixo can convert any website into Android and iOS apps using a custom webview. The apps are generated in Android Studio and Xcode. You receive both the APK and the source code for the Android app, along with the source code for the iOS app. The converted apps require no maintenance, and they update exactly like the website. A major benefit is the ability to add push notifications via OneSignal for free, allowing you to re-target your customers at no cost. Feel free to ask if you have any questions!

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.

Looking for a Marketing Partner for an Innovative AI Mobile App [i will not promote]

Hello everyone! I'm a software engineer and AI developer working on something great in the mobile AI space. If you have been following the trends on TikTok and similar platforms, you have probably noticed the explosion of AI apps (like Rizz AI and similar) that follow the simple "scan → solve" concept. These apps have been massively successful because they solve specific problems with minimal user friction. Here's what makes my project different: I have identified an unique market where there is currently zero competition for this app idea that I'm creating and the potential user base is massive - we are talking about 200M+ potential users in the US alone (60% of the US population could use this app). Even capturing just 0.05% of this market could generate significant revenue, considering similar apps typically charge $4-6 per user. What I'm looking for: A marketing partner (preferably US-based or someone familiar with the US market/audience) who can help grow this app. Initially, it requires about 30–60 minutes per day for content creation and posting. No experience is required. If you don't have marketing experience, don't worry. In today's marketing, passion is often more important than skills (and a bit of luck, haha). What I'm offering: For now, it's a revenue share partnership. I have invested my savings into the development of the app and the necessary equipment and I'm offering a revenue share until we generate enough profit for paid positions. Once we gain traction, the goal is to transition this into a part-time or full-time role. If you have zero creativity skills, I can provide you with my automated content generation tool to assist with marketing. It is basically a script that generates the type of content that gets the most views on other AI apps promoted on social media platforms. This is also a long-term partnership, if we achieve some results but not good enough with one app, we can try a new niche or just continue on this one. About the project: The app is almost complete and will likely launch in mid-February. It is a self-funded venture, meaning all profits will be reinvested into growth, including ads, revenue sharing and potentially useful tools to improve marketing. Also, the app is unique, I made a deep research and there is no similar app in this niche and it is very easy to promote. Overall, it follows a simple and effective business model with a clear monetization strategy. If you're interested in being part of something with genuine growth potential and want to learn more, DM me. We can discuss details on Reddit, Discord, LinkedIn, anything you like. The app launches in mid-February so I'm looking to bring someone on board soon to help out. Note: I will share specific details about the niche and app functionality in private messages to protect the idea before launch.

Serious B2B businesses will not try to create a solution using AI - This is why. [i will not promote]

After architecting and developing multiple B2B SaaS platforms and resolving countless challenges, here's why I don't think a proper B2B solution can be developed using AI. You must have senior tech-folks in your teams - even if you choose to leverage AI for expediting some code generation. This isn't theory - this is battle-tested reality. You can use this as a template if you're building one. Core Considerations: Multi-Tenancy Foundation (B2B) Proper tenant isolation at every layer (data, compute, networking) Flexible deployment models (pooled vs. silo) based on customer tier Tenant-aware everything (logging, metrics, tracing) Identity & Security (B2B/Standalone) Enterprise-grade authentication, often with SSO support Role-based access control (RBAC) at tenant level (may need dynamic policy generation for resource access) Audit trails for all system actions (specially if you're in a regulated domain) Client/Tenant Management (B2B) Self-service onboarding with admin approval workflows Automated tenant provisioning/deprovisioning Tenant-specific configurations and customizations Cross-tenant analytics and administration Operational Excellence (B2B/Standalone) Zero-downtime deployments (helps with canary releases) Tenant-isolated debugging capabilities Resource quotas and throttling by tenant tier Automated backup and disaster recovery per tenant Scalability Architecture (B2B) Independent scaling of tenant workloads Resource isolation for "noisy neighbor" prevention Tier-based performance guarantees (SLAs) Dynamic resource allocation Each of these topics can be as complicated as you can think of - depends on the solution you're building. I have seen many seasoned architects and developers struggle also because of their "single-tenant" mindset. Here are some common pitfalls to avoid (B2B/Standalone): Standalone - mindset in database design Hard-coded configurations Lack of context in logging/monitoring Insufficient tenant isolation in shared services (B2B) Missing tenant-aware cost allocation (B2B) You need people great with infrastructure as well. They need to consider: Tenant-aware routing (API Gateway or whatever you're using) Code with isolation when/if required Data storage with proper partitioning Shared services vs. dedicated services strategy There are a number of common problems I have seen people often make. Often it's because of a pressure from high above. But every architectural decision must considered in terms of the solution you're building. In many cases, security cannot be bolted on later, observability must be tenant-aware from day one, operations must scale. This is just the foundation. Your actual business logic sits ON TOP of all this. Now, would you think these can be done by AI? I'll be waiting for that day. :-)

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!

Billion Dollar industries beyond the shiny objects

this isn’t targeted towards anyone so keep reading or don’t… idc beyond the AI hype, the not so complex industries/solutions (whatever that might be), and the need to work on shiny objects, lay great opportunities for massive businesses. I have worked in manufacturing as an engineer and encountered many problems that can be solved with technology. I have investigated opportunities within supply chain, healthcare, defense, and pharmacy management. From my conclusions, there’s definitely great opportunities for the ones who are willing to deliver solutions to the deep rooted problems within these industries. to give an example, there’s a major demand for skilled machinists within all sectors manufacturing. At my previous job, we had about 12 machinists running 12 machines. Imagine the cost associated with that. Now imagine automation reducing the number of machinists needed by automating some of the tasks. Imagine if you could predict drug shortages using pharmacy data? Imagine if you could increase visibility within the supply chain by leveraging data, determined bottlenecks, and reduced costs? too many smart people seem to be working on things that do not deliver much value. Seriously, how many damn AI assistants do we need? Go beyond the shiny objects and dig for the gold.

Looking for an accountability partner as a solo founder. [I will not promote]

Hello! I am a technical founder focused on using AI solutions to drive automation. Recently had a co-founder split after working together for a couple month. We had a very good traction but I made a decision to leave because I believed we didn't have a solid foundational relationship that can be sustained for a long time. Had more of a co-worker style relationship. Took on the short-term pain to set myself up for a long term success. He was the one leading the sales and relation with the businesses, so we decided he will be leading the company moving forward and we split on very good terms. Back in the gulag now and starting from scratch. Took three days to reset and recover. When I tried to get back at things yesterday, my brain wasn't just having it. My stress activation got so high, i did like 4 wim hof breathing sessions and a 10 mile run to relieve the stress buildup. There is something about uncertainty and working without a lack of clear path that is super hard to process especially when you are solo. Currently I am working through my previous idea backlogs that I have built up and re-starting previous conversations. But my brain isn't giving me the dopamine hit from driving toward action as much as I used to. So any work that i do feels like a slogging through mud. I am looking to experiment with having an accountability partner, to make the initial ramp up easier. Thinking of doing the elon musk style "What have you done this week?" report that we can do to drive accountability and give that extra motivation. If you're navigating similar challenges as a solo founder and believe mutual accountability could accelerate our progress and growth, I'd love to connect. Let's help each other build momentum and stay motivated—drop a comment or DM if interested! I will not promote

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

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

What I Learned from a Failed Startup: Seeking Advice on Engineering, Co-Founder Agreements & Execution (i will not promote)

Hey everyone! Long-time lurker, first-time founder here. I’m reaching out to get feedback on a recent startup experience—what went wrong, what I could have done better, and how I should approach future opportunities. The Background There were three founders in this venture: • Founder A (CEO, 50%) – The product/growth guy who identified the problem space. • Founder B (Me, CTO, 37.5%) – A software engineer with a software dev shop and multiple clients. I wanted to diversify into building my own products but am not inherently a “product person.” • Founder C (COO, 12.5%) – Brought into the mix by Founder A, with the goal of leveraging his network for traction once the product was built. The idea was to create Product X, a solution targeting the SMB space while competitors were moving upmarket. It wasn’t revolutionary—more of a strategic market play. The Initial Plan & My Role • Founder A would define and prioritize product specs, guiding what needed to be built. • I (Founder B) didn’t have time to code myself, so I allocated engineers from my dev shop (which I personally paid for). My stake was adjusted from 32.5% to 37.5% to reflect this contribution. • Founder C was more of an observer early on, planning to help with traction once we had a product ready. We agreed on a 1-year cliff and a 4-year vesting schedule for equity. Where Things Started to Go Wrong • Lack of a Clear Product Roadmap – Founder A was very focused on getting something built fast, but we never signed off on a structured roadmap or milestones. I underestimated the complexity of what was actually needed for customer conversations. • Engineering Expectations vs. Reality – The team (one part-time lead + two full-time juniors from my dev shop) faced early feedback that development was too slow. In response, I ramped up the lead to full-time and added a part-time PM. But Founder A continued pushing for speed, despite real hurdles (OAuth integrations, etc.). • Shifting MVP Goalposts – Midway, Founder A concluded that an MVP wouldn’t cut it—we needed a more complete product to be competitive. This meant more engineering, more delays, and more of my own money spent on development. The Breaking Point Near the 1-year vesting mark, we had an opportunity: a paying client willing to fund an app. I didn’t have devs on the bench, so I asked Founder A to hold off our project briefly while I hired more engineers to avoid stalling either effort. This was the final straw. Founder A (with Founder C somewhat aligned) decided the arrangement wasn’t working—citing past disagreements and the “slowness” issue. The decision was made to end the partnership. Now, Founder A, as majority holder, is requesting a full handover of the code, Founder C is indifferent, and all engineering costs I covered are essentially lost. Key Takeaways (So Far) Crystal-Clear Agreements Upfront – A formalized product roadmap and timeline should’ve been locked in from day one. Business Needs > Engineering Standards – I wanted to build something solid and scalable, but in an early-stage startup, speed to market is king. This was before AI tools became mainstream, so our approach wasn’t as optimized. Don’t Overextend Without Protection – I personally financed all engineering, but without clear safeguards, that investment became a sunk cost. Expenses Must Be Distributed – I was solely covering engineering salaries, which created an imbalance in financial risk. Future partnerships should ensure costs are shared proportionally, rather than one person shouldering the burden. Where I Need Advice Looking back, I want to improve as an engineer, CEO, and co-founder. • What should I have done differently in structuring this partnership? • How do you balance engineering quality with the startup need for speed? • As a dev shop owner, how can I better navigate equity deals where I’m also bringing in engineering resources? I really appreciate everyone who went through this long post and provide any insights from founders, engineers, or anyone who has been in a similar situation. Thanks for reading! ===================================================================== For readers who might be thinking what set this type of expectation? Because I had a dev shop and I thought my co-founders will be understanding of my business circumstance and I was a bit trigger to build a product with a C-exec team, I gave the impression of "unlimited" engineering which I later realized down the line that it was not feasible for me. Something I learned that I have to be more careful with and set expectations accordingly from the very beginning. And from the feedback of the commenters here, I am much more aware what I should offer and how to set expectations, esp. in the early stages of execution. So thank you all! 🙏🏾 EDIT: I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this thread. You not only helped me but future founders who are considering to get into the startup scene!

I started a Tech Startup, and I feel totally STUCK.

I made "Visual Love," a Computer Vision/AI-driven matchmaking platform. The idea is that although appearance is one of the biggest factors for starting a relationship, current matchmaking services and dating apps do not have the capability to search for people based on appearance. On Visual Love, you can find your ideal match simply by uploading a picture of your "ideal type." Also, you can connect with someone who thinks of you as their ideal type, simply by uploading your own picture. Or, there might be a perfect (mutually ideal) match. I made this CV/AI algorithm to scan faces, retrieve facial features, and make it possible to find the closest match among millions of others in a second. On average, regular dating app users swipe 8000 times over 8 months until they find their love. On Visual Love, users can find one in a million just in a second. You can try the tech demo on the website if you want to (find the link through my LinkedIn at the bottom of the post; I have to follow the "I will not promote" rule.) I thought this app would have the best chance in Asia, as people care a lot more about appearance in Asia (especially Korea and Japan). Also, my nationality is Korean, and I speak both Korean and Japanese as fluently as I speak English. So I came to Korea, and pitched to a number of VC/AC firms in Korea and Japan, and two of them were typically intersted in making investment. However, they both required me to provide market validation: how much it would cost per user acquisition, how much each user would pay on average, and etc, even after I provided them with a 3-years financial projection including market research based on other dating apps. &#x200B; Everything might be going just as expected, or even better than anticipated, but I'm feeling very stuck now. I am not a business expert, and I don't have much idea on how to proceed from here. The problem is, it wouldn't quite work as expected when there are not many users. If I start with a small group of users, it's not any better than any other dating app. Matching users within a small group doesn't quite reflect the values of Visual Love. So I figured a way around: making a game version of Visual Love targeting 100k to 500k users to work as an initial distribution channel. This version will include finding look-alike celebrities, and solving look-alike face puzzles, and etc. But now, the problem is, I cannot continue this project by myself. I have no social/financial support, and I'm running low on cash. Also, although I'm from Korea, I lived in many different countries. I did my undergraduate in New York (Columbia University) and all my friends are in the US. I don't feel very included here. I can't stop feeling frustrated and distressed :( I'm sure Visual Love can reshape the future of the matchmaking market. But, only if I can continue this project by getting the fund I require. I'm open to any advice, and if you're interested in providing any help or working with me, please contact me through LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/don-lee-3853b1264/

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.

How I made a high tech salary in my first selling month

For over 7 years I worked as a full-stack developer, helping other companies bring their ideas to life. But one day, I thought “Why not try making my own dream come true?”. That’s when I decided to quit my job and start my own journey to becoming an entrepreneur. At first, it wasn’t easy. I didn’t make any money for months and had no idea where to start. I felt lost. Then, I decided to focus on something popular and trending. AI was everywhere, and ChatGPT was the most used AI platform. So I looked into it and I found the OpenAI community forum where people had been asking for features that weren’t being added. That gave me an idea. Why not build those features myself? I created a Chrome extension and I worked on some of the most requested features, like: Downloading the advanced voice mode and messages as MP3 Adding folders to organize chats Saving and reusing prompts Pinning important chats Exporting chats to TXT/JSON files Deleting or archiving multiple chats at once Making chat history searches faster and better It took me about a week to build the first version, and when I published it, the response was incredible. People loved it! Some even said things like, “You’re a lifesaver!” That’s when I realized I had something that could not only help people but also turn into a real business. I kept the first version free to see how people would respond. Many users have been downloading my extension, which prompted Chrome to review it to determine if it qualified for the featured badge. I received the badge, and it has significantly boosted traffic to my extension ever since. After all the positive feedback, I launched a paid version one month ago. A few minutes after publishing it, I made my first sale! That moment was so exciting, and it motivated me to keep going. I already have over 4,000 users and have made more than $4,500 in my first selling month. I’ve decided to release 1-2 new features every month to keep improving the extension based on what users ask for. I also created the same extension for Firefox and Edge users because many people have been asking for it! I also started a Reddit community, where I share updates, sales, discount codes, and ideas for new features. It’s been awesome to connect with users directly and get their feedback. Additionally, I’ve started working on another extension for Claude, which I’m hoping will be as successful as this one. My message to you is this: never give up on your dreams. It might feel impossible at first, but with patience, hard work, and some creativity, you can make it happen. I hope this inspires you to go after what you want. Good luck to all of us!

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!

What I Learned from a Failed Startup: Seeking Advice on Engineering, Co-Founder Agreements & Execution (i will not promote)

Hey everyone! Long-time lurker, first-time founder here. I’m reaching out to get feedback on a recent startup experience—what went wrong, what I could have done better, and how I should approach future opportunities. The Background There were three founders in this venture: • Founder A (CEO, 50%) – The product/growth guy who identified the problem space. • Founder B (Me, CTO, 37.5%) – A software engineer with a software dev shop and multiple clients. I wanted to diversify into building my own products but am not inherently a “product person.” • Founder C (COO, 12.5%) – Brought into the mix by Founder A, with the goal of leveraging his network for traction once the product was built. The idea was to create Product X, a solution targeting the SMB space while competitors were moving upmarket. It wasn’t revolutionary—more of a strategic market play. The Initial Plan & My Role • Founder A would define and prioritize product specs, guiding what needed to be built. • I (Founder B) didn’t have time to code myself, so I allocated engineers from my dev shop (which I personally paid for). My stake was adjusted from 32.5% to 37.5% to reflect this contribution. • Founder C was more of an observer early on, planning to help with traction once we had a product ready. We agreed on a 1-year cliff and a 4-year vesting schedule for equity. Where Things Started to Go Wrong • Lack of a Clear Product Roadmap – Founder A was very focused on getting something built fast, but we never signed off on a structured roadmap or milestones. I underestimated the complexity of what was actually needed for customer conversations. • Engineering Expectations vs. Reality – The team (one part-time lead + two full-time juniors from my dev shop) faced early feedback that development was too slow. In response, I ramped up the lead to full-time and added a part-time PM. But Founder A continued pushing for speed, despite real hurdles (OAuth integrations, etc.). • Shifting MVP Goalposts – Midway, Founder A concluded that an MVP wouldn’t cut it—we needed a more complete product to be competitive. This meant more engineering, more delays, and more of my own money spent on development. The Breaking Point Near the 1-year vesting mark, we had an opportunity: a paying client willing to fund an app. I didn’t have devs on the bench, so I asked Founder A to hold off our project briefly while I hired more engineers to avoid stalling either effort. This was the final straw. Founder A (with Founder C somewhat aligned) decided the arrangement wasn’t working—citing past disagreements and the “slowness” issue. The decision was made to end the partnership. Now, Founder A, as majority holder, is requesting a full handover of the code, Founder C is indifferent, and all engineering costs I covered are essentially lost. Key Takeaways (So Far) Crystal-Clear Agreements Upfront – A formalized product roadmap and timeline should’ve been locked in from day one. Business Needs > Engineering Standards – I wanted to build something solid and scalable, but in an early-stage startup, speed to market is king. This was before AI tools became mainstream, so our approach wasn’t as optimized. Don’t Overextend Without Protection – I personally financed all engineering, but without clear safeguards, that investment became a sunk cost. Expenses Must Be Distributed – I was solely covering engineering salaries, which created an imbalance in financial risk. Future partnerships should ensure costs are shared proportionally, rather than one person shouldering the burden. Where I Need Advice Looking back, I want to improve as an engineer, CEO, and co-founder. • What should I have done differently in structuring this partnership? • How do you balance engineering quality with the startup need for speed? • As a dev shop owner, how can I better navigate equity deals where I’m also bringing in engineering resources? I really appreciate everyone who went through this long post and provide any insights from founders, engineers, or anyone who has been in a similar situation. Thanks for reading! ===================================================================== For readers who might be thinking what set this type of expectation? Because I had a dev shop and I thought my co-founders will be understanding of my business circumstance and I was a bit trigger to build a product with a C-exec team, I gave the impression of "unlimited" engineering which I later realized down the line that it was not feasible for me. Something I learned that I have to be more careful with and set expectations accordingly from the very beginning. And from the feedback of the commenters here, I am much more aware what I should offer and how to set expectations, esp. in the early stages of execution. So thank you all! 🙏🏾 EDIT: I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this thread. You not only helped me but future founders who are considering to get into the startup scene!

I studied how 7 Founders found their first 100 customers for their businesses. Summarizing it here!

I am learning marketing, and so I combed through the internet to find specific advice that helped founders reach 100 users and not random Google answers. Here’s what I found: Llama Life by Marie Marie founder of Llama Life, a productivity app ($51.4K+ revenue) got her first 100 users using Snowballing effect. She shared great advice that I want to add here verbatim, “Need to think about what you have that you can leverage based on your current situation. eg..When you have no customers, think about where you can post to get the 1st customer eg Product Hunt. If you do well on PH, say you get #3 product of the day, then you post somewhere else saying ‘I got #3 product of the day’.. to get your next few customers. Maybe that post is on reddit with some learnings that you found. If the reddit post does well, then you might post it on Twitter, saying reddit did well and what learnings you got from that etc. or even if it doesn’t do well you can still post about it.” Another tip she shared is to build related products that get more viral than the product itself. These are small stand-alone sites that would appeal to the same target audience, but by nature, are more shareable. On these sites, you can mention your startup like: ‘brought to you by Llama Life’ and then provide a link to the main website if someone is interested. If one of those gets viral or ranks on Google, you’ll have a passive traffic source. Scraping bee by Pierre Pierre, founder of Scraping Bee, a web scraping tool has now reached $1.5M ARR. Pierre and his cofounder Kevin started with 10 Free Beta Users in 2019, and after 6 months asked them to take a paid subscription if they wanted to continue using the product. That’s how they got their first user within 50 minutes of that email. Then they listed it on dozens of startup directories but their core strategy was writing the best possible content for their target audience — Developers. 3 very successful pieces of content that worked were : A small tutorial on how to scrape single-page application An extensive general guide about web scraping without getting blocked A complete introduction to web scraping with Python They didn’t do content marketing for the sake of content marketing but deep-dived into the value they were providing their customer. One of these got 70K visits, and all this together got them to over 100 users. WePay by Bill Clerico Bill Clerico left his cushy corporate job to build WePay which was then acquired for $400M got his first users by using his app. He got his first users by using his app! The app was for group payments. So he hosted a Poker tournament at his house and collected payments only with his app. Then they hosted a barbecue for fraternity treasurers at San Jose State & helped them do their annual dues collection. Good old word-of-mouth marketing, that however, started with an event where they used what they made! RealWorld by Genevieve Genevieve — Founder and CEO of Realworld stands by the old-school advice of value giving. RealWorld is an app that helps GenZ navigate adulthood. So, before launching their direct-to-consumer platform, they had an educational course that they sold to college career centers and students. They already had a pipeline of adults who turned to Realworld for their adulting challenges. From there, she gained her first 100 followers. Saner dot ai by Austin Austin got 100 users from Reddit for his startup Saner.ai. Reddit hates advertising, and so his tips to market your startup on Reddit is to Write value-driven posts on your niche. Instead of writing posts, find posts where people are looking for solutions DM people facing problems that your SaaS solves. But instead of selling, ask about their problem to see if your product is a good fit Heartfelt posts about why you built it, aren’t gonna cut it To find posts and people, search Reddit with relevant keywords and join all the subreddits A Stock Portfolio Newsletter A financial investor got his first 100 paid newsletter subscribers for his stock portfolio newsletter. His tips : Don’t reinvent the wheel. Work what’s already working. He saw a company making $500M+ from stock picking newsletter, so decided to try that. Find the gaps in “already working” and leverage them. That newsletter did not have portfolios of advisors writing them. That was his USP. He added his own portfolio to his newsletter. Now to 100 users, he partnered with a guy running an investing website and getting good traffic. That guy got a cut of his revenue, in exchange. That one simple step got him to 100 users. Hypefury by Yannick and Samy Yannick and Samy from Hypefury, Twitter and Social Media Automation tool got their first beta testers and users from a paid community. They launched Hypefury there and asked if someone wanted to try it. A couple of people tried it and gave feedback. Samy conducted user interviews and product demos for them, And shared the reviews on Twitter. That alone, along with word-of-mouth marketing on Twitter got them their first 100 users. To conclude: Don’t reinvent the wheel, try what’s working. Find the gaps in what’s working, and leverage that. Instead of thinking about millions of customers, think about the first 10. Then first 100. Leverage what you have. Get the first 10 customers, then talk about this to get the next 100. Use your app. Find ways, events, and opportunities to use your app in front of people. And get them to use it. Write content not only for SEO but also to help people. It won’t work tomorrow, but it will work for years after it picks up. Leverage other sources of traffic by partnering up! Do things that don’t scale. I’m also doing SaaS marketing deep dives over 30 pieces of content. I'm posting here for the first time, so I'm not sure if it will stay or not, sorry if it doesn't. I've helped a SaaS grow from $19K to $100K MRR as a marketer in last 2 years, and now I wanna dive deep. Cheers! (1/30)

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

Anyone building QA automation tools for non-tech users? PM here looking for recommendations!

Is there anyone here building in the QA space? As a PM in a startup, I find myself wearing many hats, including QA! While I’ve tested a few automation tools, many of them tend to be too complex for non-tech users like me or require significant time to build and maintain test cases. I’d love to connect with others working on solutions that simplify QA testing from a non-technical perspective. I see a huge opportunity for AI in this space to make testing more intuitive and efficient. If you’re working on something or have recommendations, please send them!

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.

Is an AI-powered cold outreach tool that gets you meetings useful?

Hey, Quick question - do you think a tool that automates your cold outreach process and gets you meetings with interested prospects would be useful? I'm working on a product that does exactly that - you just define your initial cold email, and AI takes care of the rest. It personalizes the outreach, handles follow-ups, and ultimately schedules meetings for you via Calendly. I'd love to get the community's feedback on two things: Is this something you'd find genuinely useful? Is manual cold outreach a pain point for you? Any major concerns or objections to the idea of using AI for cold outreach automation? I appreciate any insights you can share. Just trying to validate the need before I dive head-first into building this. Cheers!

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?

30K MRR from a huge barbershop - 100 automated lost meaning

Hello So in the past 2 years I have developed a sort of a beauty hub in Transylvania where I have about 30-35 people working every day. I am not a programmer but I have some skills in a few NO CODE platforms and managed to develop the entire system 100% automated and for a very low cost. When I say 100% automated I mean that I rarely even show up there and things work perfectly.I had a big dream in this industry but along the way I lost interest and decided 6 months ago that this is it. I will no longer do anything that is not necessary and pivot to other industryThe AI era popped up. The problem with me is that I just can't do meaningless stuff like most of the products out there. Tried a couple of things but lots interest very fast. For example I was able to build a sort of a kids app where I generated stories based on parents input where the kid was the super hero in 3 days. Lost interest even faster. I am in a confort zone producing good cash with zero effort. This is a dangerous area since I do not have the ability to scale so I can grow, simply because I decided I want to do something else. I would really like to use my time in something meaningful, creating something that would really help people or businesses.What are you guys building? Did you ever feel this way after you scaled or sold your business?

Interested in building AI apps but you don't have an engineer? Build with me

Hello folks - I'm building a low/zero code platform that enables entrepreneurs to build AI driven apps that connect with their unique data sets. For example, you want to build an AI for your own website that is specifically trained on topic X....I'm working to make that very simple almost no code to write. If this is interesting and you have a web site of your own that this might work for DM me and I'll invite you in. Thanks!

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.

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!

What Does “Building a Community” Actually Mean for a Startup?

I’ve talked to a lot of founders, and almost everyone gives the same advice: “Build your product and do sales at the same time. Also, build a community alongside it.” I get the first part. Shipping and selling together makes sense. But the “community building” part? That’s where things get blurry for me. Does community building mean posting regular updates on Twitter or LinkedIn? Does it mean making Instagram reels about the product? Or is it more about actually talking to potential customers one-on-one? When people say “build a community,” do they mean creating a place where users can interact with each other or just a way to keep them engaged with the product? The reason I’m asking is that I see different approaches everywhere. Some founders document their startup journey on social media, and that seems to attract an audience. Others focus on getting early users into a private group (Discord, Slack, or WhatsApp) and nurturing relationships there. And then there are those who take a totally different approach—like building in public, sharing code, or offering free tools to bring people in. For my startup, I’m trying to figure out what community building should look like in 2025. The startup landscape has changed drastically in the past year, especially with AI and automation becoming more mainstream. Founders no longer have time to manually interact with every user. So what’s the new way of doing this? What’s working for early-stage startups today? I’d love to hear thoughts from fellow founders. What does “community” actually mean in today’s world, and what’s the best way to build one?

Could you guys help me fill up my research form to help me with better business research insights ?

hello everyone! I’m working on a new iOS app idea that uses AI to create custom automation templates for Make.com, based on your business struggles or time-wasting tasks. Example: You type “I waste too much time scheduling meetings” → boom, it gives you a plug-and-play Make.com automation. No coding needed. I made a short survey (3–5 mins) to see if this concept actually helps people or if I’m just building in a vacuum 😅 Would love your honest thoughts — and I’ll share the results with anyone who opts in! Here’s the link: 👉 https://forms.gle/kZf2LkRbre46KYKZ7 Big thanks in advance to anyone who takes a minute to help! 🙏

My app has gone viral and I grew from 1k users (take 5months) to 100k user in 5 days

I've always dreamt of building an online side business where I can build once and sell to millions. I love that business model but have never dreamt that I can achieve that, given that I am not a programmer in my career. I have been following side hustle school and some other business podcast for the past years as a drive and motivation to create my own business.  Over the years, I've delve a little on to web development using WordPress and in the hope of earning some money from that. I learnt in the hard way but is a good learning story and journey. I realised that what you put all your efforts building and excited for doesn't mean anything for anyone else and also learnt the importance of UI UX.  Fast forward to 5 months ago (July 2024), I've came across several low code app builder. With the help of the low code tools in combination with chatgpt, I've finally launched my first mobile app - Rolly: AI Money Tracker. But the business challenges doesn't end here, but it's just the beginning. I got no experience and skills on marketing but I've got my drive and passion that keep propelling me forward. By keep listening on people sharing their journey, looking at different apps to brainstorm etc, I've managed to now grow my user base from 1k (in 5 months) to 100k (in 5days). What's happening was my app somehow got viral in Vietnam when people are getting interest funny comments from my AI during entering the transaction and it has been sharing around in the social media and even featured on the news. What a crazy journey as the inflow of users has been too sudden, my server has been down for a few times until I progressively upgrade it until it got stable these couple of days. As for my advice to people dreaming the to be entreprenuer - Don't overthinking about all the problems you will face before starting. You will encounter hundreds of problems along the way and you just need to solve them one by one. You will never start if you think about what's not working and there will never be an answer for everything - even I don't have an answer for everything now.

Seeking Feedback: Would a No-Code AI Solution Benefit Your Business?

Hi, fellow small business owners. I'm currently working on an AI startup, with the goal of providing small businesses a seamless and intuitive way to integrate AI into operations without the need for any coding or tech expertise. We're designing an auto machine learning application that's user-friendly and tailored to the unique needs of small businesses. Before we scale, I would really appreciate any insights and feedback. Here are a few questions that would be helpful to get answers to: Pain Points: Are there specific tasks or processes in your operations that you think could be automated or enhanced using AI? This could be anything from customer service chatbots, inventory management, sales forecasting, or anything else you might think of. Features: What features would you want in a no-code AI solution? Perhaps easy integration with existing software? Drag-and-drop model training? Pre-built models for common tasks? Training & Support: How important would training and support be for you in implementing and using an AI solution? Would you prefer video tutorials, live-chat support, or hands-on workshops? Pricing: Would you be willing to invest in such a tool? If so, what would be a reasonable price point for you? We're considering a tiered model based on usage, with a potential starting point of $X/month. Does that sound feasible? Trial Period: Would a free trial period be beneficial for you? How long would you need to assess the tool's impact on your business? Data Concerns: How comfortable are you with sharing data with an AI application? What privacy and security measures would make you feel at ease? Your feedback is really useful. We're building this solution with you in mind, and your insights will guide the next steps. In appreciation for your time and input, we're offering a special discount for early adopters from this community once we launch. Just drop a comment below, and I'll make sure to get in touch when we are ready. Many Thanks, Chris Parker

How do you make your client presentations stand out?

Hey folks! I’ve been working on improving how I pitch to clients, and I feel like my presentations are always missing that extra “wow” factor. I try to keep things professional and clean, but it still feels like something’s missing—whether it’s storytelling, design, or just better ways to structure ideas. Do you have any strategies or tips for creating client presentations that leave a strong impression? Would love to hear what’s worked for you or any resources you’d recommend! Update: some of the good advice I got: use story to attract people, use Fiverr to get help form designers, use ChatGPT or ChatSlide to help with the content, use DeathToStock to help with images.

How do I land my first SaaS customers for a small Data-to-Dashboard service?

Hi everyone, I'm in the early stages of launching a SaaS tool (cleverdash.ai) and am curious to learn from your experiences. Our main differentiator is that we're a human-AI collaborative tool that enables anyone to transform data into meaningful dashboards. What strategies or tactics did you use to acquire your very first customers, especially when working with a limited marketing budget? I'm looking for practical advice and any success stories that might help guide my efforts. Thanks in advance for your insights!

Your offer is the biggest problem in outreach

Cold outreach isn’t failing because you don’t have the right tools. The real question isn’t whether you’re reaching the right people. It’s whether they actually need what you’re selling. AI Tools can automate the process, but they won’t sell product nobody wants. So once again the question isn’t how you reach people – it’s why they should care. Do they actually need what you’re selling? Is your offer different enough? In old markets, where everyone sells the same thing, the only way to win is through discounts and price wars. In new markets, the challenge is even bigger. You have to educate people before they even realize they have a problem. Finding the right people? Mostly solved. Messaging and delivery? Already optimized. What’s left? Market fit. If outreach isn’t working, your reply rate will tell you why. It’s the best indicator of whether you’re in the right market and if there’s a real chance to build a profitable business. Cold outreach isn’t just about selling today – it’s about planting seeds for tomorrow. The tools will only work if the strategy is right.  Here am I, CEO of tool for cold outreach. Ask your questions. Ready to answer and help.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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

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

Interviewing Entrepreneurs on Generative AI's Impact on Small Businesses

Hello! I'm a student currently working on a project exploring the opportunities and threats posed by generative AI for small and entrepreneurial businesses for my entrepreneurship class. As part of this assignment, I'm reaching out to entrepreneurs, small business owners, and self-employed individuals for interviews to gain insights into how generative AI is shaping their businesses. TASK: The interview will focus on identifying both the opportunities and threats that generative AI presents for your business. From there, we'll discuss potential recommendations to navigate these changes effectively. Whether you're utilizing generative AI technologies in your business or you're concerned about its potential impact in the future, your perspective is invaluable to this project. I'm particularly interested in hearing from those who are actively engaged with AI technologies or have insights into their implications for small-scale operations. The interview process will be flexible and conducted at your convenience. It can be over email, phone, or any method you prefer! If you're interested in sharing your experiences and insights, please comment below or send me a direct message. Thank you in advance!

Seeking Feedback & Support: Launching a Nut Mix Startup to Improve Gut Health

This txt is AI summarized but I read it, he just restructured my thoughts accurately. Hey all, I’m Ilia, a Seattle-based entrepreneur working on a product that’s all about making healthy eating easier. I’m creating a premium nut mix with 16+ different nuts (70% organic) aimed at helping people improve their microbiome and overall health. The concept is simple: diverse ingredients lead to better gut health, reduced inflammation, and more energy. No more juggling 20 bags of different foods—my nut mix is a convenient, delicious solution. I’m in the early stages and raising about $7,000 to cover things like regulatory compliance, a commercial kitchen rental, quality ingredients, packaging, and a basic brand presence. I’ve poured my own savings into this and am now turning to the community for support, advice, and maybe even early funding. I made a short (12-min) video walking through the concept, the budget breakdown, and my long-term vision (expanding to seeds, fruit mixes, and maybe even a billion-dollar brand one day!). I’d love your honest feedback, connections, or suggestions. If you’re interested in supporting, even by sharing this post, I really appreciate it. Feel free to ask me anything—transparency is key for me, and I want to build something that genuinely helps people live healthier. https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-my-goal-to-make-healthy-eating-easy-and-convenient

Interested in building AI apps but you don't have an engineer? Build with me

Hello folks - I'm building a low/zero code platform that enables entrepreneurs to build AI driven apps that connect with their unique data sets. For example, you want to build an AI for your own website that is specifically trained on topic X....I'm working to make that very simple almost no code to write. If this is interesting and you have a web site of your own that this might work for DM me and I'll invite you in. Thanks!

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! :)

Advice on Launching an AI Task Assistant for Forgetful People

Hi everyone, I’m working on an idea for an AI assistant that helps people stay on top of their tasks—like remembering to cancel a gym membership or following up on an important email. What makes this different is that it doesn’t require downloading yet another app. Instead, it integrates with tools people already use, like: WhatsApp Slack SMS Email For critical tasks, it could even escalate reminders to a phone call to make sure nothing gets missed. The main features I’m building include: Daily Check-ins: Quick updates to keep tasks and schedules on track. Persistent Follow-ups: Friendly nudges until tasks are completed or rescheduled. Proactive Scheduling: Automatically resolving conflicts in a calendar. Escalating Reminders: Escalating priority tasks via calls if needed. I’d love to ask for your advice: As a small business owner, would features like these help you or your team stay organized? What’s missing in existing task management tools for busy entrepreneurs? Do you think the “no app needed” angle is compelling enough to stand out in a crowded market? I’m still testing and refining this concept, and I’d love to hear your insights to help make it better. Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts and feedback!

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.

Entrepreneurs using AI tools such as chatgpt for Strategic thinking in small business

Hey Reddit, I’m working on a project and am curious everyone’s thoughts about how Entrepreneurs are using AI tools such as chatgpt for strategic thinking such as Forecasting, Risk management and Mergers in small business and what issues they are facing. I will be asking these questions on various topics pertaining to a small business. Hope everyone can benefit from this!!!

What software are you using for your biz?

What are all the softwares everyone is using to manage their business? Curious what’s new and working for everyone. As a mostly digital business development consultant I use… • HubSpot for CRM • webflow for website • Subflow for monetized sms membership • Groouply for FB monitoring • jasper.ai for ai copywriting • FreshBooks for invoicing • Miro for storyboarding

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!

Looking to streamline and update family business

Hey r/smallbusiness, I’ve been working at my family’s business for six years now—joined right after college—and I’ve realized that we’re long overdue for an overhaul. I handle advertising sales, and while the business itself is solid, the way we operate is extremely outdated. Without revealing too much, we print about 180 publications, and businesses pay to have their ads featured. As a sales rep, my job includes: Renewing current advertisers Finding new customers and making sales Collecting artwork for ads Gathering billing info Laying out the ad grid with all advertisers The Problem: Everything is still done with pen and paper. We use carbon copy paper to record business details, billing info, and ad costs. One copy goes to the graphic designers, the other to billing. The billing team manually enters everything into QuickBooks, prints invoices, stuffs envelopes, and mails them out. We recently got new software that lets us send invoices via email and text through QuickBooks, which is a step in the right direction, but it’s just a small fix to a much bigger problem. What I Want to Change: Move everything onto an app or website—no more paper. Digitally layout the ad grid instead of doing it manually. (For graphics team) Collect billing info online instead of writing it down. (Obviously to get paid faster and reduce wasted labor) Automate renewal emails instead of calling every single customer. (Save time) Find more efficient ways to generate leads for new business. (Work smarter not harder) Honestly, the company still runs like my grandma set it up in the '90s, and it’s overwhelming trying to figure out where to start. If anyone has been through something similar or has advice on modernizing a business, I’d love to hear your thoughts! Happy to provide more details if needed. I’ve explored some CRMs and AI tools, but I’m sure someone here has better insights or more experience with this than I do. There are other parts of the business that need improvement, but I believe this would be a big step in the right direction. Thanks in advance!

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!

Game-Changer or Overkill? Seeking Feedback on a SaaS Idea for Marketing Agencies

Hello, I’m working on a SaaS platform idea tailored for digital marketing agencies, and I’d love your input. The Concept: We’re developing a platform that combines automation tools with AI-powered chatbots. Here’s how it works: Automation Tools:Our platform offers tools (automation tools similar to zapier)to help agencies manage tasks like scheduling social media posts, running ad campaigns, and handling customer inquiries. AI Chatbot #1:This chatbot is trained on the agency’s data, helping them manage clients more efficiently by automating responses and streamlining internal processes. AI Chatbot #2: Agencies can offer this chatbot to their clients (businesses). It’s trained on the specific needs of the client’s business, enhancing their customer interactions. The key idea is that the agency can brand this chatbot as their own. My questions are:- Validation: In your opinion,Does this idea address real pain points in digital marketing? Opportunities:How could we make this platform even more valuable? Thanks for your feedback!

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?

Would You Pay for a Simple Course on How Small Businesses Can Integrate AI Without the Noise?

Helli, I’m Dan, and I’ve spent a lot of time exploring and working with various business tools. Over the years, I’ve self-taught myself how to navigate the overwhelming amount of information out there about AI and its potential for small businesses. One thing I’ve noticed is that many small business owners are struggling to cut through the noise and figure out how AI can actually help their businesses—without needing a tech background or spending a fortune. So, I’m working on a simple, actionable course designed specifically for small businesses. It would cover: Filtering through the hype and picking the right AI tools Practical applications like automating social media, customer service, or invoicing Using data to make better decisions Balancing automation with the human touch The idea is to make it straightforward and practical, showing real tools in action that you can implement right away. Would you find value in a course like this? If so, what would you want to learn, and what price point feels reasonable for such content? Thanks for your input—I’d love to make something that’s genuinely helpful for the community!

AI Automation business

Hello all, I’m working on creating an AI automation business. To land clients, I was thinking of making a website and showing demos of automation. Also, offer my services to 5-10 businesses on facebook for free in return for a testimonial or feedback. What else can I do to land clients?

Would You Pay for a Simple Course on How Small Businesses Can Integrate AI Without the Noise?

Helli, I’m Dan, and I’ve spent a lot of time exploring and working with various business tools. Over the years, I’ve self-taught myself how to navigate the overwhelming amount of information out there about AI and its potential for small businesses. One thing I’ve noticed is that many small business owners are struggling to cut through the noise and figure out how AI can actually help their businesses—without needing a tech background or spending a fortune. So, I’m working on a simple, actionable course designed specifically for small businesses. It would cover: Filtering through the hype and picking the right AI tools Practical applications like automating social media, customer service, or invoicing Using data to make better decisions Balancing automation with the human touch The idea is to make it straightforward and practical, showing real tools in action that you can implement right away. Would you find value in a course like this? If so, what would you want to learn, and what price point feels reasonable for such content? Thanks for your input—I’d love to make something that’s genuinely helpful for the community!

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.

SMB Owners: Would You Use an AI-Powered Tool to Increase Revenue?

Hey everyone! I'm working on a tool designed to help small business owners optimize revenue using AI. It would provide automated insights for things like forecasting, customer retention, and cross-platform sales optimization without the complexity of enterprise tools. If you’re a small business owner, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Would a tool like this solve a pain point for you? Feel free to share any feedback on features or things you’d like to see. Appreciate any insights!

Looking for feedback on small business communities

Hi folks - I'm working on a new company (I've built and sold two developer tools companies), and instead of building some AI tech I want to build small business communities to help SMB owners. Both my parents ran their own small businesses and I spent my youth working behind a register. I'd love to hear about your experiences interacting with your SMB neighbors, online or off - here's a survey link: https://marketstreet.cc/survey \- and once we get enough results I'll post here with any insights.

Seeking Quick Feedback: AI Tool for SMB Sustainability

Hi everyone, I’m working on an AI-powered toolkit to help small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with sustainability efforts and ESG reporting for a hackathon. I’d really appreciate a quick testimonial from those who find this tool valuable. Key Features: Generative AI for automatic ESG report creation. Machine Learning for optimizing operational data. NLP for easy-to-understand reports. If you find this concept useful for SMBs or sustainability efforts, could you share a brief testimonial or your thoughts? Your feedback would be incredibly helpful! Thank 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?

Finally launching my side project: a tool to automate your tasks with AI

Hey community 👋 I've been working on this side gig for a while now and finally launching it! Would appreciate if many of you that helped me throughout this would check it out and upvote at: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/coflow 🙏

Do you use automation for lead communication? Thoughts on using AI?

Hey all! wanted to hear if people are automating some of their lead communication- things like automated SMS campaigns, using tools to automate Yelp responses, etc! If you are using automation, or would like to- what sort of customer communications would you most want to automate? Would it be inbound lead conversations, outbound to potential leads, reminder texts to old customers? (full transparency I'm working on a tool to both automate lead communications/FAQs and meeting bookings for my own leads, and for other businesses- so I'm looking to get some insights from other businesses🙏)

AI tool for bulk extraction of data from PDFs into excel tables

Hey business owners, I've been working on a PDF parser that uses artificial intelligence to understand the layout and structure of documents. This is particularly useful for tasks like processing a bunch of resumes that all look different. Instead of manually sorting through them, this tool can parse them in bulk and organize the data into Excel, based on criteria you set. You can also perform deep analysis to extract your desired data with the custom instruction feature. Since it's still in the beta phase, I'm offering it for free to anyone who has OpenAI keys. There's a demo on the site with some credits to get you started, so you can test it out and see how it works for your specific needs. If you're dealing with a lot of PDFs and looking for a way to automate some of the grunt work, this might be up your alley. Feedback is welcome; I'm looking to improve it.

SMB Owners: Would You Use an AI-Powered Tool to Increase Revenue?

Hey everyone! I'm working on a tool designed to help small business owners optimize revenue using AI. It would provide automated insights for things like forecasting, customer retention, and cross-platform sales optimization without the complexity of enterprise tools. If you’re a small business owner, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Would a tool like this solve a pain point for you? Feel free to share any feedback on features or things you’d like to see. Appreciate any insights!

Heeelp - How are you using AI and automations to actually benefit you?

Hey fellow small business owners! 👋 I have been trying to use Ai and automations to streamline my every day business tasks, but sometimes it feels like setting things up is more complicated and time consuming than the actual benefit. So here is my question - what AI tools and automations are really working for your small businesses. What tools do you swear by?How have they helped you save time or money?

What do you think about no-code AI development

A team of like-minded people and I are working on a no-code AI development platform. Our goal is to make deep learning technologies accessible for everyone, not just for machine learning engineers and big companies. We've decided to start with computer vision tasks. The workflow would look like the following: Select task (image classification, object detection, image tagging). Upload data (with annotation or annotate it in our platform). Wait for a model to be trained automatically (about 10 minutes). Integrate the created model into your product (through API, docker image, or through integration with other no-/low-code platforms). What do you think is there any future for no-code AI development platforms? I'd really appreciate it if you could share your thoughts.

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.

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.

Are Genetic Algorithms Still Relevant in 2025?

Hey everyone, I was first introduced to Genetic Algorithms (GAs) during an Introduction to AI course at university, and I recently started reading "Genetic Algorithms in Search, Optimization, and Machine Learning" by David E. Goldberg. While I see that GAs have been historically used in optimization problems, AI, and even bioinformatics, I’m wondering about their practical relevance today. With advancements in deep learning, reinforcement learning, and modern optimization techniques, are they still widely used in research and industry?I’d love to hear from experts and practitioners: In which domains are Genetic Algorithms still useful today? Have they been replaced by more efficient approaches? If so, what are the main alternatives? Beyond Goldberg’s book, what are the best modern resources (books, papers, courses) to deeply understand and implement them in real-world applications? I’m currently working on a hands-on GA project with a friend, and we want to focus on something meaningful rather than just a toy example.

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.

Getting Back Into AI/ML After a Career Break – Seeking Advice

Hi everyone, I’m a stay-at-home mom looking to restart my career in AI/ML. I have a Bachelor’s in AI and a Master’s in IT, along with experience teaching undergraduate courses like Fundamentals of AI and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). However, I have a significant gap in my resume, which makes me feel a bit demotivated about re-entering the field. Despite the gap, my passion for AI hasn’t faded—I’m still fascinated by the field and would love to learn Machine Learning from scratch to build a strong foundation and transition into an ML career. I’d really appreciate any advice on: • The best way to relearn ML from scratch (courses, books, hands-on projects) • How to fill the resume gap and make myself a strong candidate again • Any communities, mentorship programs, or networking strategies that might help If anyone has been through a similar situation or has guidance on how to break back into AI/ML after a career break, I’d love to hear your thoughts! Thanks in advance.

Guidance Needed for Project

Hi everyone, I’m working on a project to build an optimized GPT platform that takes a prompt as input and makes API calls to multiple LLMs (e.g., ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.). The goal is to evaluate the responses from these models and return the best output to the user. As a student, I’m on a tight budget, and I need your guidance on a few key points: Cost-Effective API Calls: How can I design the API calls so they don’t turn out to be overly expensive? Are there any best practices or techniques to optimize token usage for APIs like OpenAI and Perplexity? Reducing Latency: How can I handle API calls efficiently to avoid long wait times for the user? Are there strategies for managing multiple API calls in parallel without increasing the response time significantly? Additionally, I want to experiment with building this system using open-source models like LLaMA or Mistral. However, I’m limited by my hardware: I have a Dell Inspiron 5000 laptop without a GPU. What are some lightweight open-source models I could use that run well on a CPU? Are there cloud-based solutions (preferably free or low-cost) where I could experiment with running these models? Any advice, resources, or tips would be incredibly helpful.

What Reinforcement Learning Method Should I Use for Poker AI with LLMs?

Hey everyone, I’m working on a poker AI project, where I’m training a large language model (LLM) to predict poker actions from given game states (check, call, bet, raise, etc.). My end goal is to create a model that can play poker at a high level, primarily by self-play and opponent modeling. However, I’m running into some challenges that I hope you can help me with! Here's the situation: Training Method: I’m using supervised fine-tuning (SFT) on real poker hand history data to initially teach the LLM how to predict poker actions from game states. This means that the model learns from examples of past games, predicting the actions that players took in various situations. Self-Play Setup: I plan to eventually move to self-play, where the LLM will play against itself (or other types of models that I create to simulate different play styles). I’ll use these self-play sessions to improve the model over time. Opponent Pool: I’m creating 6 types of poker players (Loose Aggressive, Loose Passive, Tight Aggressive, Tight Passive, Maniac, and Nit), each trained at 5 different skill levels (Novice, Beg\*nner, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert). This gives me a decent range of opponent behavior for training. The problem: Here’s the catch: The LLM I’m using only outputs discrete actions (e.g., bet 3BB, raise to 10BB, etc.) with no access to the probabilities of actions, so I can't directly use methods like policy gradients or Q-learning that rely on action probabilities or continuous action spaces. This makes applying traditional RL methods a bit tricky. My question: Given that I don't have access to action probabilities, what RL method or strategy should I pursue to improve my model? Specifically, I’m looking for a way to: Incorporate self-play with reward-based learning. Refine the model through reinforcement learning, without the need for continuous probabilities. Ensure the model doesn’t just overfit to its own prior behavior but learns to adapt and exploit different strategies in poker. I’ve considered a few approaches like reward-weighted supervised fine-tuning or using simpler RL techniques like Monte Carlo updates, but I’m not sure which would work best with the LLM setup I have. I've also considered Q-learning or Deep Q-learning. Any advice or suggestions on which RL approach I should take given my situation would be greatly appreciated! Yes I used AI to write this queston. But it captures everything I want to say, and I suck at writing.

Full free course on self-driving cars (no libraries)

My beginner-friendly artificial intelligence course is now complete: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB0Tybl0UNfYoJE7ZwsBQoDIG4YN9ptyY You will learn the inner workings of a self-driving car system and how to implement the driving mechanics, the artificial sensors, the collision detection and the neural networks . We study fundamental techniques like linear interpolation and segment intersection which are valuable in countless other applications and of course, neural networks, which are responsible for most AI systems nowadays. I made the course for coders, to bridge the gap between typical programming and AI. We don't use any libraries and implement every component from scratch to understand how such a system works. But I give pointers to libraries during the course if you want to take things one step further!

Scratch Machine Learning Algorithms Implementations

Hi there, other Redditors! Like many of you, when I first started working in the AI field, I wanted to build some basic Machine Learning models from scratch in order to better understand how each algorithm works, improve my programming and math skills, or simply produce an eye-catching, difficult project to put in the résumé. After spending some time searching for resources that could help me guide my studies, I discovered that the majority of scratch implementations that are currently available are either i) outdated (having been implemented years ago using Python 2 or an earlier version of Python 3); ii) too difficult to understand (using a lot of difficult, unfriendly optimization techniques or with poorly written code); or iii) too simple (only covering binary classification). With that in mind, I made the decision to develop user-friendly, uncomplicated, organized, and simple implementations from scratch. Aside from all of that, I've always wanted to create an open-source project so that others, particularly novices and those with less than a year's experience (like me), can collaborate with others, contribute to public projects, and experience Git firsthand (some of these implementations were made by other contributors!). Here are some implementations that are available: Algorithms (Random Forest Classifier and Regressor, Decision Tree Classifier and Regressor, KMeans, KNN Classifier and Regressor, Gaussian Naive Bayes, Linear Regression, Logistic Regression, PCA, Perceptron, MLP Classifier and Regressor, SVM Classifier and Regressor); Regression and classification metrics; Distance metrics (such as Euclidean); Data split functions (such as KFold); Activation and loss functions; Scalers (such as MinMaxScaler) and encoders (such as One Hot Encoder); and a few things more! Project's link: https://github.com/rafaelgreca/scratchml Disclaimer: The goal of this library is to provide code that is simpler, easier to understand, and more approachable for artificial intelligence enthusiasts and beginners who want to contribute to an open-source repository or who want to learn more about how algorithms work. It is not meant to replace existing libraries that are better, more optimized, and have a wider variety of implemented algorithms (such as scikit-learn, PyTorch, Keras, and Tensorflow). If you want to use optimized implementations with accurate results, please use one of the previously mentioned libraries. P.S.: I accidentally deleted the other post, so I am posting again. :-)

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! 🚀🕹️🎮

NeRFs (2025)

Hey everyone! I'm currently working on my final year project, and it's focused on NeRFs and the representation of large-scale outdoor objects using drones. I'm looking for advice and some model recommendations to make comparisons. My goal is to build a private-access web app where I can upload my dataset, train a model remotely via SSH (no GUI), and then view the results interactively — something like what Luma AI offers. I’ll be running the training on a remote server with 4x A6000 GPUs, but the whole interaction will be through CLI over SSH. Here are my main questions: Which NeRF models would you recommend for my use case? I’ve seen some models that support JS/WebGL rendering, but I’m not sure what the best approach is for combining training + rendering + web access. How can I render and visualize the results interactively, ideally within my web app, similar to Luma AI? I've seen things like sMPLerNeRF, SNeRFs, and Instant-NGP, but I’m curious if there are more beginner-friendly or better-documented alternatives that can integrate well with a custom web interface. Any guidance on how to stream or render the output inside a browser? I’ve seen people use WebGL/Three.js, but I’m still not clear on the pipeline. I’m still new to NeRFs, but my goal is to implement the best model I can, and allow interactive mapping through my web application using data captured by drones. Any help or insights are much appreciated!

Need help with project

Currently im working on a project where i want to implement a gen ai feature for low code platforms basically i want to train models to take in natural language as in put from user and then the model must fill in the drag and drop functionality or fill in features of the platform basically the model should understand the context and fill in the details im a beginner so can anyone help me with this like how do i get started

Is it worth doing a Msc Conversion course

I’m a philosophy student currently, graduating with a 2.1 from a russell group uni. I’m looking for a career change into ML with the ultimate goal being research, whether it be comp neuro, biology, or using it in sports. I’ve found a Msc conversion course (1 year with no CS background required) where, as the name suggests, they teach you AI and ML techniques and how to implement them in a a real world context. It also includes a 3 month dissertation project with the possibility of working with industry. I was speaking to a friend today who suggested I learn on my own and save the money. I couldn’t help but think a qualification is useful alongside a portfolio, rather than just a portfolio (which he suggested). Given my current situation, a beginner programmer looking for a way in, what do you think I do?

Implementing Outbound Call/SMS Functionality in AI Agents

I'm working on an AI Agent and want to integrate \outbound\ telephone call capabilities and would love to hear your insights and experiences here. In short, I want my agent to be able to make phone calls and send SMS. What technologies or APIs are you using to enable your AI to make phone calls or send SMS? Have you encountered any challenges? Twilio seems like the best option right now - Is there anything i'm missing... I thought there would be more options?

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.

How is ML/AI implemented in your company?

Hi, I am currently working as a full time SWE. I generally get to work with data/build solutions using data but I don't have any official ML/Data science title or background. Ideally, I'd like to be able to start making more intelligent decisions using that data and that's why I am interested on machine learning. Ideally, I'd like to write production systems that leverage models that I can build and understand end to end but after some research, I am not sure if such jobs exist today or if teams are usually split between modelling team (people that only train and analyze models) and SWE teams (people that take such models and focus on deploying them on production). My current company is using that model of development, so I might need to leave to be able to do what I want. I imagine startups work that way, but I am looking for some stability. Thanks!

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.

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!

Need Advice on Implementing Reranking Models for an AI-Based Document-Specific Copilot feature

Hey everyone! I'm currently working on an AI-based grant writing system that includes two main features: Main AI: Uses LLMs to generate grant-specific suggestions based on user-uploaded documents. Copilot Feature: Allows document-specific Q&A by utilizing a query format like /{filename} {query} to fetch information from the specified document. Currently, we use FAISS for vector storage and retrieval, with metadata managed through .pkl files. This setup works for similarity-based retrieval of relevant content. However, I’m considering introducing a reranking model to further enhance retrieval accuracy, especially for our Copilot feature. Challenges with Current Setup: Document-Specific Retrieval: We're storing document-specific embeddings and metadata in .pkl files, and retrieval works by first querying FAISS. Objective: Improve the precision of the results retrieved by Copilot when the user requests data from a specific document (e.g., /example.pdf summarize content). Questions for the Community: Is using a reranking model (e.g., BERT-based reranker, MiniLM) a good idea to add another layer of precision for document retrieval, especially when handling specific document requests? If I implement a reranking model, do I still need the structured .pkl files, or can I rely solely on the embeddings and reranking for retrieval? How can I effectively integrate a reranking model into my current FAISS + Langchain setup? I’d love to hear your thoughts, and if you have experience in using reranking models with FAISS or similar, any advice would be highly appreciated. Thank you!

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.

A little help, please!

I'm working on a prototype and could use some feedback! Would any business leaders be interested in a platform that provides personalized ML/AI solutions at much lower costs and higher efficiency compared to generic LLMs? I'm finding that LLMs aren't the best solution for every ML problem, and I'm wondering if there's a demand for a more tailored, cost-effective alternative. Would love to hear your thoughts or experiences! #AI #MachineLearning #Entrepreneur #Tech

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!

MMML | Deploy HuggingFace training model rapidly based on MetaSpore

A few days ago, HuggingFace announced a $100 million Series C funding round, which was big news in open source machine learning and could be a sign of where the industry is headed. Two days before the HuggingFace funding announcement, open-source machine learning platform MetaSpore released a demo based on the HuggingFace Rapid deployment pre-training model. As deep learning technology makes innovative breakthroughs in computer vision, natural language processing, speech understanding, and other fields, more and more unstructured data are perceived, understood, and processed by machines. These advances are mainly due to the powerful learning ability of deep learning. Through pre-training of deep models on massive data, the models can capture the internal data patterns, thus helping many downstream tasks. With the industry and academia investing more and more energy in the research of pre-training technology, the distribution warehouses of pre-training models such as HuggingFace and Timm have emerged one after another. The open-source community release pre-training significant model dividends at an unprecedented speed. In recent years, the data form of machine modeling and understanding has gradually evolved from single-mode to multi-mode, and the semantic gap between different modes is being eliminated, making it possible to retrieve data across modes. Take CLIP, OpenAI’s open-source work, as an example, to pre-train the twin towers of images and texts on a dataset of 400 million pictures and texts and connect the semantics between pictures and texts. Many researchers in the academic world have been solving multimodal problems such as image generation and retrieval based on this technology. Although the frontier technology through the semantic gap between modal data, there is still a heavy and complicated model tuning, offline data processing, high performance online reasoning architecture design, heterogeneous computing, and online algorithm be born multiple processes and challenges, hindering the frontier multimodal retrieval technologies fall to the ground and pratt &whitney. DMetaSoul aims at the above technical pain points, abstracting and uniting many links such as model training optimization, online reasoning, and algorithm experiment, forming a set of solutions that can quickly apply offline pre-training model to online. This paper will introduce how to use the HuggingFace community pre-training model to conduct online reasoning and algorithm experiments based on MetaSpore technology ecology so that the benefits of the pre-training model can be fully released to the specific business or industry and small and medium-sized enterprises. And we will give the text search text and text search graph two multimodal retrieval demonstration examples for your reference. Multimodal semantic retrieval The sample architecture of multimodal retrieval is as follows: Our multimodal retrieval system supports both text search and text search application scenarios, including offline processing, model reasoning, online services, and other core modules: https://preview.redd.it/mdyyv1qmdz291.png?width=1834&format=png&auto=webp&s=e9e10710794c78c64cc05adb75db385aa53aba40 Offline processing, including offline data processing processes for different application scenarios of text search and text search, including model tuning, model export, data index database construction, data push, etc. Model inference. After the offline model training, we deployed our NLP and CV large models based on the MetaSpore Serving framework. MetaSpore Serving helps us conveniently perform online inference, elastic scheduling, load balancing, and resource scheduling in heterogeneous environments. Online services. Based on MetaSpore’s online algorithm application framework, MetaSpore has a complete set of reusable online search services, including Front-end retrieval UI, multimodal data preprocessing, vector recall and sorting algorithm, AB experimental framework, etc. MetaSpore also supports text search by text and image scene search by text and can be migrated to other application scenarios at a low cost. The HuggingFace open source community has provided several excellent baseline models for similar multimodal retrieval problems, which are often the starting point for actual optimization in the industry. MetaSpore also uses the pre-training model of the HuggingFace community in its online services of searching words by words and images by words. Searching words by words is based on the semantic similarity model of the question and answer field optimized by MetaSpore, and searching images by words is based on the community pre-training model. These community open source pre-training models are exported to the general ONNX format and loaded into MetaSpore Serving for online reasoning. The following sections will provide a detailed description of the model export and online retrieval algorithm services. The reasoning part of the model is standardized SAAS services with low coupling with the business. Interested readers can refer to my previous post: The design concept of MetaSpore, a new generation of the one-stop machine learning platform. 1.1 Offline Processing Offline processing mainly involves the export and loading of online models and index building and pushing of the document library. You can follow the step-by-step instructions below to complete the offline processing of text search and image search and see how the offline pre-training model achieves reasoning at MetaSpore. 1.1.1 Search text by text Traditional text retrieval systems are based on literal matching algorithms such as BM25. Due to users’ diverse query words, a semantic gap between query words and documents is often encountered. For example, users misspell “iPhone” as “Phone,” and search terms are incredibly long, such as “1 \~ 3 months old baby autumn small size bag pants”. Traditional text retrieval systems will use spelling correction, synonym expansion, search terms rewriting, and other means to alleviate the semantic gap but fundamentally fail to solve this problem. Only when the retrieval system fully understands users’ query terms and documents can it meet users’ retrieval demands at the semantic level. With the continuous progress of pre-training and representational learning technology, some commercial search engines continue to integrate semantic vector retrieval methods based on symbolic learning into the retrieval ecology. Semantic retrieval model This paper introduces a set of semantic vector retrieval applications. MetaSpore built a set of semantic retrieval systems based on encyclopedia question and answer data. MetaSpore adopted the Sentence-Bert model as the semantic vector representation model, which fine-tunes the twin tower BERT in supervised or unsupervised ways to make the model more suitable for retrieval tasks. The model structure is as follows: The query-Doc symmetric two-tower model is used in text search and question and answer retrieval. The vector representation of online Query and offline DOC share the same vector representation model, so it is necessary to ensure the consistency of the offline DOC library building model and online Query inference model. The case uses MetaSpore’s text representation model Sbert-Chinese-QMC-domain-V1, optimized in the open-source semantically similar data set. This model will express the question and answer data as a vector in offline database construction. The user query will be expressed as a vector by this model in online retrieval, ensuring that query-doc in the same semantic space, users’ semantic retrieval demands can be guaranteed by vector similarity metric calculation. Since the text presentation model does vector encoding for Query online, we need to export the model for use by the online service. Go to the q&A data library code directory and export the model concerning the documentation. In the script, Pytorch Tracing is used to export the model. The models are exported to the “./export “directory. The exported models are mainly ONNX models used for wired reasoning, Tokenizer, and related configuration files. The exported models are loaded into MetaSpore Serving by the online Serving system described below for model reasoning. Since the exported model will be copied to the cloud storage, you need to configure related variables in env.sh. \Build library based on text search \ The retrieval database is built on the million-level encyclopedia question and answer data set. According to the description document, you need to download the data and complete the database construction. The question and answer data will be coded as a vector by the offline model, and then the database construction data will be pushed to the service component. The whole process of database construction is described as follows: Preprocessing, converting the original data into a more general JSonline format for database construction; Build index, use the same model as online “sbert-Chinese-qmc-domain-v1” to index documents (one document object per line); Push inverted (vector) and forward (document field) data to each component server. The following is an example of the database data format. After offline database construction is completed, various data are pushed to corresponding service components, such as Milvus storing vector representation of documents and MongoDB storing summary information of documents. Online retrieval algorithm services will use these service components to obtain relevant data. 1.1.2 Search by text Text and images are easy for humans to relate semantically but difficult for machines. First of all, from the perspective of data form, the text is the discrete ID type of one-dimensional data based on words and words. At the same time, images are continuous two-dimensional or three-dimensional data. Secondly, the text is a subjective creation of human beings, and its expressive ability is vibrant, including various turning points, metaphors, and other expressions, while images are machine representations of the objective world. In short, bridging the semantic gap between text and image data is much more complex than searching text by text. The traditional text search image retrieval technology generally relies on the external text description data of the image or the nearest neighbor retrieval technology and carries out the retrieval through the image associated text, which in essence degrades the problem to text search. However, it will also face many issues, such as obtaining the associated text of pictures and whether the accuracy of text search by text is high enough. The depth model has gradually evolved from single-mode to multi-mode in recent years. Taking the open-source project of OpenAI, CLIP, as an example, train the model through the massive image and text data of the Internet and map the text and image data into the same semantic space, making it possible to implement the text and image search technology based on semantic vector. CLIP graphic model The text search pictures introduced in this paper are implemented based on semantic vector retrieval, and the CLIP pre-training model is used as the two-tower retrieval architecture. Because the CLIP model has trained the semantic alignment of the twin towers’ text and image side models on the massive graphic and text data, it is particularly suitable for the text search graph scene. Due to the different image and text data forms, the Query-Doc asymmetric twin towers model is used for text search image retrieval. The image-side model of the twin towers is used for offline database construction, and the text-side model is used for the online return. In the final online retrieval, the database data of the image side model will be searched after the text side model encodes Query, and the CLIP pre-training model guarantees the semantic correlation between images and texts. The model can draw the graphic pairs closer in vector space by pre-training on a large amount of visual data. Here we need to export the text-side model for online MetaSpore Serving inference. Since the retrieval scene is based on Chinese, the CLIP model supporting Chinese understanding is selected. The exported content includes the ONNX model used for online reasoning and Tokenizer, similar to the text search. MetaSpore Serving can load model reasoning through the exported content. Build library on Image search You need to download the Unsplash Lite library data and complete the construction according to the instructions. The whole process of database construction is described as follows: Preprocessing, specify the image directory, and then generate a more general JSOnline file for library construction; Build index, use OpenAI/Clip-Vit-BASE-Patch32 pre-training model to index the gallery, and output one document object for each line of index data; Push inverted (vector) and forward (document field) data to each component server. Like text search, after offline database construction, relevant data will be pushed to service components, called by online retrieval algorithm services to obtain relevant data. 1.2 Online Services The overall online service architecture diagram is as follows: &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/nz8zrbbpdz291.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=28dae7e031621bc8819519667ed03d8d085d8ace Multi-mode search online service system supports application scenarios such as text search and text search. The whole online service consists of the following parts: Query preprocessing service: encapsulate preprocessing logic (including text/image, etc.) of pre-training model, and provide services through gRPC interface; Retrieval algorithm service: the whole algorithm processing link includes AB experiment tangent flow configuration, MetaSpore Serving call, vector recall, sorting, document summary, etc.; User entry service: provides a Web UI interface for users to debug and track down problems in the retrieval service. From a user request perspective, these services form invocation dependencies from back to front, so to build up a multimodal sample, you need to run each service from front to back first. Before doing this, remember to export the offline model, put it online and build the library first. This article will introduce the various parts of the online service system and make the whole service system step by step according to the following guidance. See the ReadME at the end of this article for more details. 1.2.1 Query preprocessing service Deep learning models tend to be based on tensors, but NLP/CV models often have a preprocessing part that translates raw text and images into tensors that deep learning models can accept. For example, NLP class models often have a pre-tokenizer to transform text data of string type into discrete tensor data. CV class models also have similar processing logic to complete the cropping, scaling, transformation, and other processing of input images through preprocessing. On the one hand, considering that this part of preprocessing logic is decoupled from tensor reasoning of the depth model, on the other hand, the reason of the depth model has an independent technical system based on ONNX, so MetaSpore disassembled this part of preprocessing logic. NLP pretreatment Tokenizer has been integrated into the Query pretreatment service. MetaSpore dismantlement with a relatively general convention. Users only need to provide preprocessing logic files to realize the loading and prediction interface and export the necessary data and configuration files loaded into the preprocessing service. Subsequent CV preprocessing logic will also be integrated in this manner. The preprocessing service currently provides the gRPC interface invocation externally and is dependent on the Query preprocessing (QP) module in the retrieval algorithm service. After the user request reaches the retrieval algorithm service, it will be forwarded to the service to complete the data preprocessing and continue the subsequent processing. The ReadMe provides details on how the preprocessing service is started, how the preprocessing model exported offline to cloud storage enters the service, and how to debug the service. To further improve the efficiency and stability of model reasoning, MetaSpore Serving implements a Python preprocessing submodule. So MetaSpore can provide gRPC services through user-specified preprocessor.py, complete Tokenizer or CV-related preprocessing in NLP, and translate requests into a Tensor that deep models can handle. Finally, the model inference is carried out by MetaSpore, Serving subsequent sub-modules. Presented here on the lot code: https://github.com/meta-soul/MetaSpore/compare/add\python\preprocessor 1.2.2 Retrieval algorithm services Retrieval algorithm service is the core of the whole online service system, which is responsible for the triage of experiments, the assembly of algorithm chains such as preprocessing, recall, sorting, and the invocation of dependent component services. The whole retrieval algorithm service is developed based on the Java Spring framework and supports multi-mode retrieval scenarios of text search and text search graph. Due to good internal abstraction and modular design, it has high flexibility and can be migrated to similar application scenarios at a low cost. Here’s a quick guide to configuring the environment to set up the retrieval algorithm service. See ReadME for more details: Install dependent components. Use Maven to install the online-Serving component Search for service configurations. Copy the template configuration file and replace the MongoDB, Milvus, and other configurations based on the development/production environment. Install and configure Consul. Consul allows you to synchronize the search service configuration in real-time, including cutting the flow of experiments, recall parameters, and sorting parameters. The project’s configuration file shows the current configuration parameters of text search and text search. The parameter modelName in the stage of pretreatment and recall is the corresponding model exported in offline processing. Start the service. Once the above configuration is complete, the retrieval service can be started from the entry script. Once the service is started, you can test it! For example, for a user with userId=10 who wants to query “How to renew ID card,” access the text search service. 1.2.3 User Entry Service Considering that the retrieval algorithm service is in the form of the API interface, it is difficult to locate and trace the problem, especially for the text search image scene can intuitively display the retrieval results to facilitate the iterative optimization of the retrieval algorithm. This paper provides a lightweight Web UI interface for text search and image search, a search input box, and results in a display page for users. Developed by Flask, the service can be easily integrated with other retrieval applications. The service calls the retrieval algorithm service and displays the returned results on the page. It’s also easy to install and start the service. Once you’re done, go to http://127.0.0.1:8090 to see if the search UI service is working correctly. See the ReadME at the end of this article for details. Multimodal system demonstration The multimodal retrieval service can be started when offline processing and online service environment configuration have been completed following the above instructions. Examples of textual searches are shown below. Enter the entry of the text search map application, enter “cat” first, and you can see that the first three digits of the returned result are cats: https://preview.redd.it/d7syq47rdz291.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=b43df9abd380b7d9a52e3045dd787f4feeb69635 If you add a color constraint to “cat” to retrieve “black cat,” you can see that it does return a black cat: &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/aa7pxx8tdz291.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=e3727c29d1bde6eea2e1cccf6c46d3cae3f4750e Further, strengthen the constraint on the search term, change it to “black cat on the bed,” and return results containing pictures of a black cat climbing on the bed: &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/2mw4qpjudz291.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=1cf1db667892b9b3a40451993680fbd6980b5520 The cat can still be found through the text search system after the color and scene modification in the above example. Conclusion The cutting-edge pre-training technology can bridge the semantic gap between different modes, and the HuggingFace community can greatly reduce the cost for developers to use the pre-training model. Combined with the technological ecology of MetaSpore online reasoning and online microservices provided by DMetaSpore, the pre-training model is no longer mere offline dabbling. Instead, it can truly achieve end-to-end implementation from cutting-edge technology to industrial scenarios, fully releasing the dividends of the pre-training large model. In the future, DMetaSoul will continue to improve and optimize the MetaSpore technology ecosystem: More automated and wider access to HuggingFace community ecology. MetaSpore will soon release a common model rollout mechanism to make HuggingFace ecologically accessible and will later integrate preprocessing services into online services. Multi-mode retrieval offline algorithm optimization. For multimodal retrieval scenarios, MetaSpore will continuously iteratively optimize offline algorithm components, including text recall/sort model, graphic recall/sort model, etc., to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the retrieval algorithm. For related code and reference documentation in this article, please visit: https://github.com/meta-soul/MetaSpore/tree/main/demo/multimodal/online Some images source: https://github.com/openai/CLIP/raw/main/CLIP.png https://www.sbert.net/examples/training/sts/README.html

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.)?

Seeking Guidance to Transition from SRE to Quant Developer/HFT

Hey Reddit! Let me introduce myself: I’m a 2024 B.Tech (IT) graduate from a state-level college in India. Currently, I’m working as an SRE (Site Reliability Engineer) at one of the world’s largest custodian banks (not naming the company). I’ve been with the organization for about a year now, combining my internship and full-time role. During this time, I’ve developed a strong foundation in AI/ML and have primarily been working on projects to automate BAU (Business-As-Usual) activities using these technologies. Outside of work, I have a deep interest in trading and stock markets—something that runs in the family, as my father has been trading for over 40 years. My ultimate goal is to transition into the field of quantitative development or high-frequency trading (HFT) and work for top-tier firms like HRT, Optiver, or Tower Research. To make this dream a reality, I’ve started preparing in the following ways: Learning the basics of stock markets and financial instruments. Studying statistics and experimenting with different algorithms to analyze stocks (mainly on a fundamental level for now). Getting back to practicing DSA (Data Structures and Algorithms). I’ll admit I’m rusty here since I haven’t been consistent with it for a while. I’m aware that transitioning from SRE to Quant Developer/HFT is ambitious and might seem like a pipe dream, but it’s a challenge I’m willing to take on. I’d love to hear from people in the quant field or those who’ve made similar career transitions. What should I focus on? Any recommended resources, books, or courses? Are there any specific skill sets or certifications that could make me stand out? Any guidance, advice, or encouragement would mean a lot. Thank you!

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.

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!

Which Roles in AI make you well rounded in the field

Background I've been a Software Engineer for 4 years working with Data. Also have a bachelors in Mathematics where I was one of the top students in my year. I wish to transition to AI and want to start a business in the field in the coming years, but before then I would like to get some professional experience. Which roles in AI would you say make the well rounded in the industry and gives you the best exposure to everything so that you can manoeuvre when the time is right?

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!

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?

How I landed an internship in AI

For motivational purposes only! I see a lot of posts on here from people without “traditional” machine learning, data science, etc.. backgrounds asking how they can break into the field, so I wanted to share my experience. EDIT Learning Resources and Side Project Ideas * My background: I graduated from a decent undergraduate school with a degree in Political Science several years ago. Following school I worked in both a client services role at a market research company and an account management role at a pretty notable fintech start-up. Both of these roles exposed me to ML, AI and more sophisticated software concepts in general, and I didn’t really care for the sales side of things, so I decided to make an attempt at switching careers into something more technical. While working full time I began taking night classes at a local community college, starting with pre calculus all the way up to Calc 2 and eventually more advanced classes like linear algebra and applied probability. I also took some programming courses including DSA. I took these classes for about two years while working, and on the side had been working through various ML books and videos on YouTube. What worked the best for me was Hands-on Machine Learning with Scikit Learn, Keara’s and Tensorflow. I eventually had enough credits where I was able to begin applying to MS in Data Science programs and was fortunate enough to get accepted into one and also get a position in their Robotics Lab doing Computer Vision work. When it came time to apply for internships, it was a BLOODBATH. I must have applied to over 100 roles with my only responses being video interviews and OA’s. Finally I got an interview for an AI Model Validation internship with a large insurance company and after completing the interviews was told I performed well but they were still interviewing several candidates. I ended up getting the offer and accepting the role where I’ll be working on a Computer Vision model and some LLM related tasks this summer and could not be more fortunate / excited. A couple things stood out to them during the interview process. 1, the fact that I was working and taking night classes with the intent to break into the field. It showed a genuine passion as opposed to someone who watched a YouTube video and claims they are now an expert. 2, side projects. I not only had several projects, but I had some that were relevant to the work I’d be doing this summer from the computer vision standpoint. 3, business sense. I emphasized during my interviews how working in a business role prior to beginning my masters would give me a leg up as intern because I would be able to apply the work of a data scientist to solving actual business challenges. For those of you trying to break into the field, keep pushing, keep building, and focus on what makes you unique and able to help a company! Please feel free to contact me if you would like any tips I can share, examples of projects, or anything that would be helpful to your journey.

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

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? 🚀

MS in Computer Science student (non-tech bachelor) applying for first Machine Learning intern/coop

Hi, I am an international student in the U.S applying for my first co-op for a Machine Learning/AI role, would love to get some advice on my current resume, thanks. I am currently in my second last semester of my 2 year's masters program in CS. I had no tech background before this program and was working in higher education administration. I have applied to about 50 positions so far on LinkedIn and HandShake and have had no responses but a few rejection emails. If you are a Machine learning professional, please help if I could improve my current project sections, I have two projects I am working on and hoping to swap them in after I finish them by the end of this semester: (1)Adaptive Learning curriculum for Spanish Language Learning (Duolingo-Inspired), which tailors lessons based on user's daily interactions (e.g., bar conversations, gym interactions). (2) DEI analytics and how they impact student performances and career outcome in Higher Ed. My interests lies in using ML in EdTech and Higher Education. But before finishing them, are my current projects passable? Also any suggestion to enhance my work experience section since they are not tech-related? Thanks! https://preview.redd.it/ww7smowjazne1.png?width=5100&format=png&auto=webp&s=289cde9aee45b2066dcfbb375fc318e7a3c5f5d7

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!

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.

Looking for beta testers for my AI-powered website builder - no templates, no coding required

Hey r/sideproject, I'm working on an exciting new project since 4 months- an AI-powered website builder that creates completely custom, professional-looking websites from scratch. No templates, no coding The key capabilities of this AI website builder are: Designing unique, mobile-responsive layouts based on your preferences and content Generating custom written content for each page, section, and element Ensuring best practices for things like typography, color schemes, and SEO But the real power comes in the customization. Once the AI generates your initial website, you can easily make changes to any part of it - from the design and layout to the text and images. Simply select the specific element you want to modify, and the AI will make the requested changes, whether that's tweaking the font and colors, rearranging the page structure, or rewriting the copy. It's a truly interactive, AI-driven web building experience. This is perfect for things like: Marketing/informational websites Landing pages Online resumes and portfolios Small business websites When you're ready, you can publish your AI-generated, fully customized website on a free subdomain or download the full code. I'm looking to get a few early users to try this out and provide feedback before the full public launch. If you're interested in being a beta tester, I'd love to hear from you! This could be especially useful for small business owners, freelancers, job seekers, or anyone who needs a professional web presence but doesn't have the time or skills for traditional web development. If you're interested, just leave a comment below or send me a DM. I'll be in touch to get you set up with early access. Thanks for checking it out! Muhammad Bilal Moten

I'm a designer with no coding experience – built an AI storytelling site for kids using GPT

A friend asked me to help design an AI tool for kids to create their own stories. I'm a designer, not a developer, but I was curious how far I could take it myself. I used GPT + some no-code tools (mainly Lovable) and surprisingly ended up with a working MVP. It’s super rough but functional — and I learned a lot. Curious if anyone else here has tried making stuff for kids. Would love thoughts on how to simplify it further or what you’d expect from a tool like this.

Built a multi-agent AI mental health assistant (7 agents, backend automated, no-code stack)

Been working on this little side project and finally got it to a working version. It’s an AI-powered mental health assistant — not just a chatbot, but a system that can retrieve user history, analyze input, access data in real-time, and suggest personalized treatment plans. UI Chat Tech stack: Loveable + Momen How it’s structured: It uses 7 specialized AI agents, each responsible for a niche task — chat, generate professional responses, summarize user info, classify intent, etc. Agent Team The main agent (the chat one) will call other agents in the backend via automated workflows. It keeps track of user data (symptoms, conversations, medical history) and updates it in real time — all triggered automatically. Everything runs in the backend to reduce manual steps and minimize errors. How it’s built: Started by drafting the UI with Loveable AI — it auto-generated a 7-page interface from a product brief, which saved me time. (Didn’t use it for the live app though — good for prototyping, but I wanted more control for complex backend workflows.) Rebuilt the UI and database in Momen, since I needed deeper control over data flow and backend logic. The entire AI agent system and backend workflows were built in Momen as well. So I can make the agents collaborate with each other. The main chat agent invokes backend workflows to call other agents when needed. Entire flow looks like this: the user sends a message, the system: → pulls in the latest user data→ triggers the right agent(s) based on the input→ responds in real-time→ quietly summarizes and updates everything in the background. FlowChart It’s still an MVP, but the multi-agent setup + automated backend feels pretty scalable.This was a super fun build and I learned a lot about orchestrating AI workflows. Would love any feedback or thoughts on how to improve this.

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!

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.

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

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?

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

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.

Day 1 of my BIP for my AdonisJS Boilerplate (turbosaas) [Built in public]

Hello everyone, here is day 1 (not really, I started a bit earlier) of my project: A boilerplate using AdonisJS, Inertia What technologies are used/present? AdonisJS Inertia Stripe OpenAI TailwindCSS Vite (React) Why? Firstly, I want to save time when launching my projects, and I think you do too, so I've included as many relevant features as possible. I'm tired of seeing attitudes like 'develop your SaaS in 1 hour and produce terrible code!' The purpose of this codebase is to provide the highest quality code possible and to maintain that standard throughout the development process. You might spend an extra 20 minutes doing things right, but you'll save 2 hours on refactoring. And no, you won't have to pay for updates. (WTF by the way?) Why these technologies? I've seen a lot of NextJS for boilerplates, and I've also used NextJS before, but I quickly abandoned it. It quickly becomes a mess You lose track of what is what, and start doing anything Every update breaks your application Whereas with AdonisJS, life is beautiful. There are plenty of community packages already available, and everything you need is here. What am I offering? Authentication: Social authentication, OTP, Magic Links, and credentials, along with complete account management features like password recovery. Payment & Mailing Integration: Seamless integration from start to finish, with multiple options to choose from. Detailed Documentation: Thorough explanations of every aspect, covering even the smallest, potentially confusing details in the code. Maintainable & Scalable Code: Organized by features, allowing you to easily drag and drop features to extend functionality. Developer Tools: Handy commands for generating new features and automatically adding necessary imports; a complete config to enable/disable a feature in less than 10 seconds... Pre-made Pages: Ready-to-use pages such as an admin dashboard for tasks like automatically updating products on Stripe. Extensive Component Library: A variety of components to streamline development. I've designed this boilerplate to be as developer-friendly and robust as possible, aiming to support maintainability and scalability from the get-go. Summary of today and previous days Day 2 Stripe is a nightmare to set up if you've never done it before, it quickly becomes tedious. But I've finally finished setting everything up: one-time payments, subscriptions, and subscription updates. It was complicated. Today I finally implemented the 'forgot password' option, and I've completed all the authentication by adding magic links (working with OTP). I also set up automatic deployment with GitHub Actions, and everything works well. The build runs with the action to ensure everything goes smoothly, then using SSH, I pull the project, build it, and launch it. Tomorrow: What I want to do tomorrow Tomorrow, I want to create the blog, because yes, I want to include a blog as well, and especially complete it as soon as possible so it can be available on turbosaas(dot)dev, and write my build in public. It will probably use markdown. Thank you for reading this short build in public, you can also check out how it's going on turbosaas(dot)dev.

Built an SEO platform for startups (and solo-founders)

Hey! We've built an SEO platform especially for solo-founder that provides ready-to-implement tasks and actionable recommendations to guide busy founders through SEO strategies. It's CTO and me (no-code) working on this project. We've been able to ship the first couple of features for MVP. Currently, the platform gives you: What topic to write (based on the best content marketing practices) Which keywords to include Missing internal linking It's FREE: app.vevy.ai We're looking forward for your feedback. https://preview.redd.it/g5qhuo7hhbsd1.png?width=2862&format=png&auto=webp&s=0b7069b368f117e18abb8ec0258034c65ba49f0b

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

I made a super niche app for sailors and scaled it to 500k downloads

I started developing this app in 2016, and it was my first app ever. I already had several years of programming experience. Since I was studying maritime navigation, I came up with the idea of creating a maritime app to help students with various nautical calculations and learn maritime regulations. Although I had no experience in mobile app development, I chose the Ionic framework and started development gradually. First Version The first version took me about four months to develop because I literally had to learn everything from scratch: how to develop mobile apps, how to publish them, and everything needed to enable downloads on the app stores. Many of you might recognize me from my story about developing Sintelly and its late monetization. I made the same mistake with this maritime app. At that time, in my country, there was no possibility of earning through in-app purchases, only through ad displays. Since the app was predominantly downloaded in countries like India, the Philippines, and Indonesia, the ad revenue was quite low, and after some time, I removed the ads. Abandonment and Realization As I started developing other apps, this one fell into obscurity. I even just remembered that I needed to renew the domain, which resulted in losing it. The domain buyer tried to sell it back to me for years for $20k, which was absurd. All this led me to rebrand and start working on this app again. Interestingly, during these 8 years, the app never showed a declining trend in installations or active users. I'll share some numbers to give you insight: Total installations (Android + iOS): 501,000 Active installations (Android): 48,000 Monthly active users: 20,000 Average rating: Android 4.8, iOS 4.7 When I considered these numbers, I realized they weren't bad at all and that I was far ahead of most competitors. This led to my decision to rebrand and create a new website. I quickly built the website using WordPress and published lots of existing content from the app. What surprises me is that today, after a year and a half, the website has about 8-10k monthly organic visits. Choosing a Direction Based on all this, I decided it was time to create a Premium version and start selling the app. Since I've been working with AI for many years (which I've written about here), I started thinking about using AI to help seafarers speed up some of their tasks. This led to the idea of creating a multi-agent system equipped with numerous tools to help seafarers. I developed various agents with functionalities, including retrieving maritime weather information, locating and tracking ships, doing various nautical calculations, calculating the shortest maritime routes and unit conversions, and learning about all courses and maritime regulations. All this required considerable work, but thanks to tools like Cursor and Claude, I implemented it in less than four weeks. Last week, I published this new version and started selling subscriptions, and I can already boast that I've earned slightly over $100. This isn't much, but I'm happy to see my first app generating some income, which I always thought impossible. Along this journey, I learned many lessons, and the most important one is to never give up or write off a product. With a little effort, everything can be brought back to life and secure at least some passive income, enough for your morning coffee. Additionally, I learned how to develop mobile apps, which has shaped my career since then. If it weren't for this app, I probably would never have become a developer. I have numerous plans for what to add next and how to improve. I'll base everything on AI features and push the app in that direction.

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.

What's the s way to implement AI - Free Tire API - Initial Phase

hi there, I'm working on a project where I need to implement AI for text generation.For that I use gemini api but it has limitations for 15 users per minute just like others. so in your projects how did you manage this in initial phase to get this effectively with no budgets. I'm just starting with this and I don't have that much idea about model as I'm learning it and exploring.

I grew my mobile app to 1.4 million downloads

I started developing the app in early 2017, well before the AI era, when mobile apps were at their peak popularity. My idea was to create an app for emotional and psychological support in the form of helpful articles and various quizzes, such as personality assessments and life satisfaction tests. I named the app "Emotional Intelligence" because this keyword showed good ASO potential for positioning at the top of mobile stores. This proved to be accurate, and the app quickly gained traction in terms of downloads. A major problem I faced then was monetization. Unfortunately, in my country, it wasn't possible to sell through Google Play then, so I could only display ads. I started with Google AdMob, earning $2000 monthly after just a few months. The app then got about 1500 organic downloads daily and quickly surpassed 500,000. Three years after launching the app, I decided it was time for branding to build recognition. By combining the words "sentiment" and "intelligence," I came up with "Sintelly." I then pushed the app toward a social network, which differed from the right move. Adding features like discussion forums for problems, likes, and comments would result in even more growth, but the opposite happened. The app started declining, and I began investing in advertising campaigns. I managed to maintain a balance between income and expenses but without any profit. Then COVID-19 hit, and everything went downhill. I had to give up development and find a job as a developer to ensure my livelihood. Two years passed since I gave up, and that's when ChatGPT started gaining popularity. This immediately showed me how to steer the app towards active support for well-being questions. As I'm not an expert in psychology, I found several external psychotherapists who helped me put together CBT therapy, which I then implemented through a chatbot. This is how the new Sintelly app was born, with its main feature being a chatbot system composed of 17 AI agents that adapt to the user and guide them through a five-phase CBT therapy (I'll write a post about the technology). In addition to the agents, I added various exercises and tests to provide better personalization for the user. Initially, I made all of this free, which was also a mistake. I followed the principle of first showing what the app can do and gathering enough new users before starting to charge. I started selling subscriptions at the beginning of July, and since then, the app has had stable growth. If you want a check app, here is the link. Lessons learned: If things are working, don't touch them Start selling immediately upon app release; there's no need to wait Regularly test prices and types of subscriptions Onboarding is the most essential part of the app because most users buy subscriptions during onboarding It's essential to listen to user feedback. From day one, have a website and work on content to generate organic visits and redirect users from the web to the mobile app Stats: Over 1.4 million downloads 4.4 rating Only 40,000 active users (I had a massive loss during the period when I gave up) 280 active subscribers $3000 monthly revenue Next steps: Work on improving the Agent AI approach Setting up email campaigns and transactional emails Introducing in-app and push notifications Introducing gamification Potential for B2B I hope you can extract useful information from my example and avoid repeating my mistakes. I'm interested in your thoughts and if you have any recommendations for the next steps. I'm always looking to learn and improve.

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

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?

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 :)

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

Side project: entrepreneurship app

Hey everyone, I’m building a side project: an app that helps aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners with personalized lessons on topics like marketing, finance, and operations, powered by an AI assistant courses would be industry specific eventually maybe not first launch. The goal is to make entrepreneurship more accessible and inclusive through gamified learning, industry-specific lessons, and community tools like discussion posts and messaging for ongoing support. I have a working prototype, but now I need advice with marketing, pitching, and gathering interest. I’m also planning to start a podcast to gather insights from small business owners and entrepreneurs prior to launch. Looking for feedback on: Is this idea worth pursuing? How can I improve the concept or marketing? Would you be interested in listening to a podcast focused on entrepreneurship and small business? Any advice on how to engage users effectively through community tools like messaging and discussion posts?

I grew a chrome extension to over 10,000 users. Now what?

I've been working on this Chrome extension [1] that basically lets you use Google Gemini AI right inside your browser's side panel. This extension keeps Gemini AI readily accessible with 1 click boosting your productivity like crazy. But here's the thing: I'm not sure how to monetize this. Should I: Go freemium? Offer basic features for free and charge for premium access? Sell it outright? Find a buyer willing to acquire my extension? Explore other options? (Suggestions welcome!) What do you think? Any advice from experienced developers or entrepreneurs is greatly appreciated! [1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/side-panel-for-gemini/haapcgopkcpkekndibmagiobpbikmfbl

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 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 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

Solo Entrepreneurs, This One’s for You! After Studying 15+ AI Directories, I’m Building a New Hub for AI, SaaS, and Tools (but the concept is unique)—Submit Yours for FREE 🚀 (Big Companies, Please Stay Away)

I’ve been in your shoes—tight budgets, limited resources, and a constant search for marketing solutions that actually work. Lately, I’ve been checking out more than 15 AI directories here on Reddit, and honestly, they all seem to have the same issues. They’re cluttered, confusing, and often filled with sponsored listings that don’t really help anyone. This got me thinking: if these tools aren’t helping users, how can any of our tools succeed? After a lot of thought (and some serious brainstorming), I’ve come up with an idea that I think could be a game-changer. This isn’t just another directory. I’m aiming to build something that’s genuinely useful for solo entrepreneurs and regular users alike. My goal is to create a platform that people actually want to use, because when that happens, your tools get natural, organic exposure. I’m also planning to integrate AI into the platform to make it even more powerful. I can’t spill all the details just yet If you want to get in early, I’m offering to add your tools to the platform for free, especially if you’re a solo entrepreneur. I’m still working out the details, but I’m aiming to launch within the next 1-2 months. Here’s how you can get involved: comment below with the name of your SaaS, AI, or tool, along with a short description of why it’s helpful and why it should be included. I haven’t finalized the domain yet, but for now, I’m planning to host it on my subdomain: toolkit dot unwiring dot tech

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!

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.

I made a free directory of AI agents to help automate your life

Hey r/SideProject! I've been working on something I thought you all might find useful - an AI Agents List. https://preview.redd.it/xpe5y0mj70kd1.png?width=3072&format=png&auto=webp&s=d421d6981f1fe4c416e77a33dbea145ef7128007 What is it? It's a free website where you can find and compare AI agents from all over the internet. If you're not familiar, AI agents are like little digital assistants that can help automate tasks and workflows. They're pretty cool for optimizing everyday stuff without needing to code. Why I made it: I kept hearing about different AI agents but couldn't find a good place to discover new ones or compare them easily. So... I made one! What it does: Lists a bunch of AI agents Lets you filter by stuff like open/closed source, free/paid, etc. Has categories so you can find agents for specific tasks Includes a text search to find exactly what you need What it's not: Not trying to sell you anything 100% free to use LINK I'm still working on improving it, so I'd love to hear what you think or if you have any suggestions. Check it out if you're interested in AI or just looking to automate some tasks!

Built a side project to help validate... side projects 🤔

Hey builders! Long-time lurker, first-time poster. Wanted to share something I've been working on after hours. The Problem Like many of you, I was building side projects at night while working full-time. My pattern was painfully consistent: \- Get excited about an idea \- Spend precious evening hours coding \- Launch on Reddit/Twitter \- \crickets\ \- Realize I should've validated first \- Repeat 🥲 The worst part? I was trying to do validation on Reddit, but with limited time after work, I couldn't: \- Properly research different communities \- Keep track of all the responses \- Find people actually interested in what I was building \- Or figure out what features to prioritize in my limited dev time The Solution So I built RediScope (yes, another side project 😅). It automates the Reddit validation process: Quick Loom demo How it works: Tell it what you're trying to validate AI helps write natural-sounding questions for each community Get instant analysis of responses Automatically spot potential early users The goal? Instead of spending your limited free time scrolling through Reddit, get clear validation and potential users in 48 hours. Tech Stack (since we all love this part): \- Frontend: React + Tailwind \- Backend: Node.js \- AI: OpenAI for the smart bits \- DB: PostgreSQL \- Hosting: Digital Ocean Current Status: \- ✅ Core validation engine working \- ✅ Community analysis \- ✅ Response analytics \- ✅ User dashboard \- 🔎 Lead Generator (in progress) \- 📋 API (planned) This is very much a nights-and-weekends project (like everything else we build 😄). Would love feedback from fellow side project builders: \- How do you validate your ideas currently? \- What would make this useful for your next project? \- Any features you'd want to see? Drop your thoughts below! If you want to try it when it launches: https://www.rediscope.app Also huge shoutout to this community - been learning so much from everyone's posts here 🙏

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/

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!

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.

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

AI-Powered Business Analyst Tool Looking for Feedback

Hey r/sideproject! I’m excited to share a project I’ve been working on called Bianalytiq, a next-gen business intelligence platform designed to transform the way businesses interact with data through the power of AI. The Problem: SME companies struggle with data overload and the significant time investment required to generate actionable insights. Traditional data analysis methods are not only slow but often require extensive manual effort and are prone to errors. This makes it difficult for businesses to react quickly to new information and make informed decisions efficiently. Not everybody can write SQL or create/understand data dashboards.... AND - one big opportunity on market - non of the AI tools available on market offer reusable contexts focused on you as a company and your products. The Solution: Bianalytiq aims to solve these issues by automating tedious data analysis tasks and providing real-time insights. Here’s how: Reusable contexts: Let Bianalytiq learn everything about your company, your products, business model etc. - your company is your unique context. Autonomous AI Agents: Deploy AI agents that not only react to queries but proactively analyze data to uncover opportunities, tailored specifically to your business context. Real-Time Insights: With the use of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) technology, our platform delivers immediate, context-rich insights by dynamically accessing and analyzing connected databases and data warehouses. Integration with Existing Tools: Bianalytiq integrates seamlessly with popular tech stacks and communication platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams, making it incredibly user-friendly and reducing the switch cost between applications. Why I’m Here: Before investing significant time and money I want to validate the product first and do pre-sale before releasing the MVP. I’ve developed a landing page for Bianalytiq and would love your feedback on both the service itself and the effectiveness of the landing page. Are the features presented clearly? Does the platform address the pain points you might experience in data analysis and decision-making processes? Here’s the link to the landing page: https://bianalytiq.com/ I appreciate any feedback or questions you have! Whether it's about the UI/UX of the site, the technical aspects of the service, or even the business model, I’m all ears. Your input will be invaluable :) Thanks for checking it out! https://preview.redd.it/t1dvp2q05dzc1.png?width=798&format=png&auto=webp&s=c7365b418abfc4d4260d9a23305ed3398e83c87b

Looking for Innovators to Join my Stealth-Mode AI and Automation Startup

Hi everyone, I’m currently working on building a stealth-mode startup that focuses on AI, automation, management consulting, and streamlining business processes. Right now, it’s just me working on this, and I’m looking for passionate, creative people to join me and help shape the future of the company. A bit about me: I’m from the UK and have a Business Management degree and an IT diploma, so I’ve got a good mix of business and tech knowledge to push this forward. I’m currently using tools like UiPath, Python, Make.com, Automation Anywhere, and others to create innovative solutions, but I’m not tied to these. I’m open to using any tools or technologies that fit the business and help us succeed. This is unpaid for now, but once we hit revenue targets, the plan is to transition into paid positions. If you’re excited about startups, innovation, and building something meaningful, this might be for you. I’m building AI-powered tools that solve real business problems, workflows to automate processes, and management consulting services to help businesses streamline and work smarter. It’s about combining tech innovation with business strategy to deliver something that really works. I’d love to work with people who have skills in things like Python, TensorFlow, UiPath, Automation Anywhere, web development (frontend, backend, or full-stack), or just a talent for improving workflows. If you’re great at problem-solving, strategy, or even just brainstorming new ideas, there’s a place for you. What’s in it for you? First off, you’ll get real-world experience in AI, automation, and consulting. You’ll also get the chance to help shape the company as part of the founding team and grow with it. Once the startup hits revenue goals, paid roles will follow. It’s flexible too, work remotely and set your own schedule. If this sounds interesting to you, just comment or send me a DM with a bit about your experience, any projects you’ve worked on, and how you think you could contribute to the startup. I’ll be running interviews soon to chat with people and see how we can work together. If you’re excited about joining a startup from the ground up, let’s connect. I’d love to hear from you.

Acquired our first 10 customer for Trustty Reporter - an AI first Business Intelligence Platform.

Hi All, My co founder and I have built Trustty Reporter (www.trusttyreporter.com).  We spent the last couple of months working on launch our AI powered BI platform and gain our first 10 users. We wanted to reach out the community to get your feedback on the platform and how we can take it to the next level. Below is a brief introduction of the platform: Trustty Reporter – your AI-first business intelligence partner that transforms data into actionable insights in minutes! Imagine turning complex data and documents into easy-to-understand reports with clear recommendations, all at the click of a button. No more BI complexities—Trustty Reporter makes business insights accessible to everyone, from business owners to CXOs. Here’s Why You’ll Love Trustty Reporter: Instant Insight Generation – Convert raw data into insights in just 5-15 minutes. No expertise needed! Easy Reporting Access – Persistent reports that let you track, compare, and build strategies over time. Tailored Solutions for Business Problems – Just describe your challenge, and Trustty Reporter delivers custom insights. Interactive Reports – Dive deeper with a chat interface that offers further clarification and recommendations. By now you would have realized that this aces any traditional BI tools. That aside, it’s better than the likes of ChatGPT and Claude since you don’t have to supply multiple prompts to get context specific insights catering to your business! File Requirements: For Excel files with multiple sheets/tabs: Please save each sheet as a separate file Upload them as individual files for processing File Format: The first row must contain your column headers Remove any empty rows above the headers https://preview.redd.it/olmk6lfmwuzd1.png?width=3024&format=png&auto=webp&s=aa2bbc8edb4a299dbeee67b692cd4acf1704c2be

Disorganized: The note taking app for busy people (no AI inside)

https://preview.redd.it/27qoz7ihlnpe1.png?width=1774&format=png&auto=webp&s=1658d7a4c619df46cd76c5ff639b6c6c7b65fc50 About one year ago I had enough and set out to create my own note taking app, and have been working on it in my spare time since summer. I had two main goals when creating Disorganized: \- Less friction If I'm walking around and a thought pop ups in my head there should be zero friction to writing it down. That's why Disorganized doesn't ask you to write a title, sort it into the correct folder, etc. You write exactly your thoughts and nothing else. \- A better solution than templates. I wanted one app that I could use to track my workouts, my recipes and one-off notes. Other apps accomplish this with templates but I find templates too rigid - I don't want to create a "recipe" template because a "recipe" is not always the same thing. It's usually a table of ingredients and some instructions in text, but other times it's multiple tables of ingredients, or something else entirely. Templates are too rigid. In Disorganized, you "clone" notes to create a new note with the same structure. This way, you can reuse previous set ups, but you're completely free to evolve your "template" as you go. Please try it out and tell me what you think! iOS, three months premium: https://apps.apple.com/redeem/?ctx=offercodes&id=6738280174&code=THREEMONTHS Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.disorganized.disorganized&pli=1 Use code "THREEMONTHS" at checkout for three months. Web version: https://app.getdisorganized.com/

Building an AI-Powered Cold Email Blocker for Business Leaders – Would You Use This?

Hey everyone, I've been working on a side project that I'm really excited about, and I'd love to get some feedback from the community here. I noticed that CEOs, CMOs, CTOs, and other high-level executives often get bombarded with cold emails daily. Sorting through them can be a huge time sink, and sometimes important emails can get lost in the noise. To solve this, I'm developing a browser extension that uses AI to scan incoming emails and block unwanted cold emails before they even reach your inbox. The idea is to save time, reduce inbox clutter, and help business leaders focus on the emails that really matter. Here’s a bit more detail: AI-Powered Filtering: The extension will analyze the content of incoming emails to determine if they're likely cold emails Customizable Settings: Users can adjust the AI prompt to whatever they want to block Seamless Integration: It’ll work directly within your existing email client as a browser extension, so there’s no need to switch apps or platforms. Privacy First: All the processing happens locally, so your email data stays private and secure. I’m still in the development phase, and I'd love to hear your thoughts: Would this be something you'd use or find valuable? Are there any specific features or pain points you'd like to see addressed? Any suggestions on how to improve the concept? Thanks in advance for your feedback! Your insights will be invaluable as I continue to refine this project.

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: &#x200B; 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. Gotrends

My experience trying to scrape google maps with no code

A few months back I was working on a project to help founders that sell to SMBs get better quality leads (Current solutions like Zoominfo and Apollo don’t do very well for the SMB market). Of course, I wanted to do this as quickly as possible with as little code as possible.  We found that people were manually going through Google Maps to find SMBs. They would use the search and manually type in the businesses they were looking for. For example, they would type “restaurants” and manually call/email them. What we decided to do was gather the Google Maps data autonomously and surface that to our customers so they could take all of it. The problem was that we would need a bunch of data from Google Maps to pull it off. We would need to grab all the SMBs across the United States which is a huge undertaking.  Initially, I tried no-code AI web scraping solutions and they worked horribly. For some reason, I couldn’t even get them to scroll down on the page. I was also able to reverse engineer their open-source code and discover that they were taking the entire web page and passing it into GPT to extract data. That just burned my Openai bill.  I then tried the semi-code approach (sorry no-code subreddit) where I would use something like Apify or Google Places API to scrape the businesses. This worked better but still, there was an issue of price at the scale we wanted. Eventually, we ended up writing our scraper for the task.  This experience was so horrible I ended up creating potarix.com. Firstly, we provide scraping as a service in conjunction with AI. We all know AI is shit and keeping this human in the loop allows the AI to do 90% of the work and then for us to tweak the script to 100% completion. Also since we use AI to create the scraper instead of using AI to scrape, we can run it for large scale tasks at a low cost.

Seeking Quick Feedback: AI Tool for SMB Sustainability

Hi everyone, I’m working on an AI-powered toolkit to help small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with sustainability efforts and ESG reporting for a hackathon. I’d really appreciate a quick testimonial from those who find this tool valuable. Key Features: Generative AI for automatic ESG report creation. Machine Learning for optimizing operational data. NLP for easy-to-understand reports. If you find this concept useful for SMBs or sustainability efforts, could you share a brief testimonial or your thoughts? Your feedback would be incredibly helpful! Thank you!

Free AI Tool Directory 🔥

Hey! I built an AI Website Tools Directory – a collection of free AI-powered tools designed to help website owners, marketers, designers, coders, and creators automate repetitive tasks. 💡 Why I Built This: I wanted a place where I can find a comprehensive list AI tools for free. Its a single hub of free AI utilities for website optimization, content creation, productivity and much more. 🚀 What’s Inside? (Use cases) 🔹 For Content Creators & Writers AI Blog Post Generator – Instantly create article ideas & drafts. AI Meta Tag Generator – SEO-optimized titles & descriptions. AI Content Improver – Rewrite & enhance your text. 🔹 For Coders & Developers AI Code Snippet Generator – Get working code snippets for web projects. AI Regex Generator – Easily create regex patterns. AI JSON Formatter – Auto-format & clean up JSON data. 🔹 For Designers & Video Creators AI UX Improvement Tool – Detects website usability & design issues. AI Image Optimizer – Compress & enhance images for better performance. AI Video Title Generator – Get engaging titles for YouTube & Reels. 🔹 For Audio & Music Creators AI Podcast Name Generator – Unique & catchy names for your show. AI Music Genre Classifier – Analyze & tag your music automatically. 🔹 For Productivity & SEO AI Keyword Research Tool – Find trending search terms. AI Headline Analyzer – Optimize titles for engagement. AI Email Subject Line Generator – Boost email open rates. 🔍 Looking for Feedback: What other AI-powered tools would be useful for your work? Any specific features you’d like to see added? 👉 Try it here: https://www.aiwebsitetools.com/ Would love your thoughts! 🚀

How I'm automating all my SEO research & writing with AI by building an open source software

I make most of my current recurring income from writing articles for a few blogs. Over the years I have developed strategies and writing techniques that increase my chances of landing at the top of Google search results. I’m a writer, but I also write code. With the advent of AI I have been itching to codify many of my previous activities. I tried writing content with the general LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude but the results were terrible, especially for niches with technical information. I didn’t want to lose hope in AI because I realised with A LOT of hand-holding, it got better results. THEN IT HIT ME!  What if I could create a Human-Guided AI for Better AI-Written Articles: enter Building ContentScribe After months of coding with AI tools and trying different approaches, I’m excited to share that ContentScribe is finally taking shape. The journey to this point has been challenging but incredibly rewarding. Over the past six months, we’ve been using ContentScribe ourselves to automate blog content creation. We found other tools in the AI article generation space such as Koala AI and Cuppa that left us wanting more. They basically took a topic from you and let the AI loose. We consider this to be a better Koala AI and Cuppa alternative. I wanted to have more control and freedom from the expense of the credit system most of them use. Even after generation, every article required significant human input to make it truly SEO-friendly, and existing tools couldn’t handle the specific strategies we needed for our niche. So, we decided to build something new: an AI-powered, open-source tool that doesn’t just spit out generic articles, but actually allows users to shape how the content is written. ContentScribe is designed to integrate the SEO techniques that we’ve developed over years of building profitable blogs. It codifies our best practices and turns them into a process that anyone can use to create researched, optimized content, every time. The product works, and it’s live! We’ve been populating our latest blog with human-guided AI-written articles, and the results are already impressive. The coolest part? This project scratches our own itch and addresses the pain points we faced when using other tools. Plus there is nothing to lose because it’s free and open source, you can run it locally or in the cloud. It’s still early days, but I’m excited to share more as we keep building in public. We’re working on tutorials, and adding more features. The feedback we’ve gotten so far from our in-house team has been invaluable, and I’m looking forward to sharing this with more content creators out there. For anyone struggling to get their ideas off the ground: keep experimenting, keep building. ContentScribe is proof that when you combine persistence with innovation, the results can be something you’re genuinely proud of. This is just the beginning!

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

Introducing Novus – an AI-powered QA agent that automates testing for your web apps!

Hello, I'm excited to introduce a project I've been working on—an AI-powered QA agent designed to streamline and enhance the testing process for web applications. Here's how it works: Key Features: Natural Language Test Definitions: You can define the behavior you want to validate using plain English. Automated Navigation and Validation: The agent autonomously navigates your web app and checks if the specified behavior functions as expected. Comprehensive Reporting: After execution, it provides detailed reports, including step-by-step actions, screenshots, and video recordings.​ How It Works: Define Behavior: Describe the functionality you want to test in simple English.​ Run Test: The agent interprets your description, interacts with your web app accordingly, and validates the outcomes. Review Results: Access detailed reports that include all actions taken, along with visual documentation like screenshots and videos.​ Current Capabilities: Dashboard for Test Management: Create and manage multiple test suites and individual tests through an intuitive interface.​ Visual Regression Analysis: Utilize visual artifacts to perform regression analysis and ensure UI consistency.​ Future Plans: Intelligent Reporting: Implement advanced reporting features to provide deeper insights and analytics. Enhanced Visual Regression: Develop more sophisticated tools for detecting and analyzing visual discrepancies.​ I'm eager to hear your thoughts and feedback. What challenges do you face in QA testing? How do you see AI tools fitting into your workflow? Let's discuss! Here's the demo of what I've built so far https://www.loom.com/share/11b1dd4d18124f9a8032ae81e9cbdab4?sid=56237f10-cffd-4394-b080-0a3fb5ef4b01 Note: This project is currently in development, and I'm actively seeking input to refine and enhance its features.

I made a Voice AI Automated Testing platform (because I hate making phone calls)

As my first New Year’s resolution, I’m excited to officially launch my side project: Testzilla.ai. While designing my Voice AI systems using VAPI, RetellAI, Bland, etc., I quickly got tired of the "Update system, test call flows, repeat" cycle that went with it. The whole point of Voice AI (for me) was that I could get off the phone, not spend even more time on it. So I made some Voice AI agents to test my Voice AI system so I didn't have to keep doing it manually. I showed it to developers friends who got excited and wanted to use it themselves with their systems (and sent me "Take My Money" meme, always a good sign). After hearing this a bunch of times, I decided to make it a platform I could share and easily use on multiple projects, have a simple UI, and let me run tests from my desktop or mobile with a click—and not spend 5-30 minutes of awkward time talking to phonebots in a crowded office. Win. It also has the benefit of being a way for an AI Agency to PROVE to clients that their AI system is working properly, answering questions the right way, NOT answering questions the wrong way, and that any advanced functionality (lookups, appointments, etc.) works properly. Key Features: Multi-Project Management: Simplifies the QA process across a diverse project portfolio, ideal for agencies handling multiple clients. Custom Test Management: Easily create, organize, and track test cases tailored to your project. Run Test Batches: Group and execute test cases efficiently to keep your workflow smooth and organized. Actionable Insights: Get analysis and suggestions that help you fix issues early and improve your releases. Client-Friendly Reporting: Provides clear, detailed reports that make it easy to share progress and results with stakeholders. Developer Tools: Easily manage (receive, email, view, listen, notify) your Transcripts from other systems (VAPI, Retell, etc) without having to create Zapier or Make automations with the provided Webhook URL. More dev tools coming soon, let us know what would make your life easier! I’m launching today and would love to get feedback from this awesome community! If you’re into QA, software development, or just love testing tools, give it a look and let me know what you think. I'll add $20 in credits to your new account so you can try it out risk free, no credit cards required. Here’s the link: Testzilla.ai Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! Cheers, Brian Gallagher

[P] Building an Reinforcement Learning Agent to play The Legend of Zelda

A year go I started trying to use PPO to play the original Legend of Zelda, and I was able to train a model to beat the first boss after a few months of work. I wanted to share the project just for show and tell. I'd love to hear feedback and suggestions as this is just a hobby project. I don't do this for a living. The code for that lives in the original-design branch of my Triforce repo. I'm currently tinkering with new designs so the main branch is much less stable. Here's a video of the agent beating the first dungeon, which was trained with 5,000,000+ steps. At 38 seconds, you can see it learned that it's invulnerable at the screen edge, and it exploits that to avoid damage from a projectile. At 53 seconds it steps up to avoid damage from an unblockable projectile, even though it takes a -0.06 penalty for moving the wrong way (taking damage would be a larger penalty.) At 55 seconds it walks towards the rock projectile to block it. And so on, lots of little things the model does is easy to miss if you don't know the game inside and out. As a TLDR, here's an early version of my new (single) model. This doesn't make it quite as far, but if you watch closely it's combat is already far better, and is only trained on 320,000 steps (~6% of the steps the first model was trained on). This is pretty far along from my very first model. Original Design I got the original project working using stable-baselines's PPO and default neural network (Shared NatureCNN, I believe). SB was great to get started but ultimately stifling. In the new version of the project I've implemented PPO from scratch with torch with my own simple neural network similar to stable-baseline's default. I'm playing with all kinds of changes and designs now that I have more flexibility and control. Here is my rough original design: Overall Strategy My first pass through this project was basically "imagine playing Zelda with your older sibling telling you where to go and what to do". I give the model an objective vector which points to where I want it to go on the screen (as a bird flies, the agent still had to learn path finding to avoid damage and navigate around the map). This includes either point at the nearest enemy I want it to kill or a NSEW vector if it's supposed to move to the next room. Due a few limitations with stable-baselines (especially around action masking), I ended up training unique models for traversing the overworld vs the dungeon (since they have entirely different tilesets). I also trained a different model for when we have sword beams vs not. In the video above you can see what model is being used onscreen. In my current project I've removed this objective vector as it felt too much like cheating. Instead I give it a one-hot encoded objective (move north to the next room, pickup items, kill enemies, etc). So far it's working quite well without that crutch. The new project also does a much better job of combat even without multiple models to handle beams vs not. Observation/Action Space Image - The standard neural network had a really tough time being fed the entire screen. No amount of training seemed to help. I solved this by creating a viewport around Link that keeps him centered. This REALLY helped the model learn. I also had absolutely zero success with stacking frames to give Link a way to see enemy/projectile movement. The model simply never trained with stable-baselines when I implemented frame stacking and I never figured out why. I just added it to my current neural network and it seems to be working... Though my early experiments show that giving it 3 frames (skipping two in between, so frames curr, curr-3, curr-6) doesn't really give us that much better performance. It might if I took away some of the vectors. We'll see. Vectors - Since the model cannot see beyond its little viewport, I gave the model a vector to the closest item, enemy, and projectile onscreen. This made it so the model can shoot enemies across the room outside of its viewport. My new model gives it multiple enemies/items/projectiles and I plan to try to use an attention mechanism as part of the network to see if I can just feed it all of that data. Information - It also gets a couple of one-off datapoints like whether it currently has sword beams. The new model also gives it a "source" room (to help better understand dungeons where we have to backtrack), and a one-hot encoded objective. Action Space My original project just has a few actions, 4 for moving in the cardinal directions and 4 for attacking in each direction (I also added bombs but never spent any time training it). I had an idea to use masking to help speed up training. I.E. if link bumps into a wall, don't let him move in that direction again until he moves elsewhere, as the model would often spend an entire memory buffer running headlong straight into a wall before an update...better to do it once and get a huge negative penalty which is essentially the same result but faster. Unfortunately SB made it really annoying architecturally to pass that info down to the policy layer. I could have hacked it together, but eventually I just reimplemented PPO and my own neural network so I could properly mask actions in the new version. For example, when we start training a fresh model, it cannot attack when there aren't enemies on screen and I can disallow it from leaving certain areas. The new model actually understands splitting swinging the sword short range vs firing sword beams as two different actions, though I haven't yet had a chance to fully train with the split yet. Frameskip/Cooldowns - In the game I don't use a fixed frame skip for actions. Instead I use the internal ram state of game to know when Link is animation locked or not and only allow the agent to take actions when it's actually possible to give meaningful input to the game. This greatly sped up training. We also force movement to be between tiles on the game map. This means that when the agent decides to move it loses control for longer than a player would...a player can make more split second decisions. This made it easier to implement movement rewards though and might be something to clean up in the future. Other interesting details Pathfinding - To facilitate rewards, the original version of this project used A* to pathfind from link to what he should be doing. Here's a video of it in action. This information wasn't giving to the model directly but instead the agent would only be given the rewards if it exactly followed that path or the transposed version of it. It would also pathfind around enemies and not walk through them. This was a nightmare though. The corner cases were significant, and pushing Link towards enemies but not into them was really tricky. The new verison just uses a wavefront algorithm. I calculate a wave from the tiles we want to get to outwards, then make sure we are following the gradient. Also calculating the A* around enemies every frame (even with caching) was super slow. Wavefront was faster, especially because I give the new model no special rewards for walking around enemies...faster to compute and it has to learn from taking damage or not. Either way, the both the old and new models successfully learned how to pathfind around danger and obstacles, with or without the cheaty objective vector. Rewards - I programmed very dense rewards in both the old and new model. At basically every step, the model is getting rewarded or punished for something. I actually have some ideas I can't wait to try out to make the rewards more sparse. Or maybe we start with dense rewards for the first training, then fine-tune the model with sparser rewards. We'll see. Predicting the Future - Speaking of rewards. One interesting wrinkle is that the agent can do a lot of things that will eventually deal damage but not on that frame. For example, when Link sets a bomb it takes several seconds before it explodes, killing things. This can be a massive reward or penalty since he spent an extremely valuable resource, but may have done massive damage. PPO and other RL propagates rewards backwards, of course, but that spike in reward could land on a weird frame where we took damage or moved in the wrong direction. I probably could have just not solved that problem and let it shake out over time, but instead I used the fact that we are in an emulator to just see what the outcome of every decision is. When planting a bomb, shooting sword beams, etc, we let the game run forward until impact, then rewind time and reward the agent appropriately, continuing on from when we first paused. This greatly speeds up training, even if it's expensive to do this savestate, play forward, restore state. Neural Networks - When I first started this project (knowing very little about ML and RL), I thought most of my time would be tuning the shape of the neural network that we are using. In reality, the default provided by stable-baselines and my eventual reimplemnentation has been enough to make massive progress. Now that I have a solid codebase though, I really want to revisit this. I'd like to see if trying CoordConvs and similar networks might make the viewport unncessary. Less interesting details/thoughts Hyperparameters - Setting the entropy coefficinet way lower helped a TON in training stable models. My new PPO implementation is way less stable than stable-baselines (ha, imagine that), but still converges most of the time. Infinite Rewards - As with all reinforcement learning, if you give some way for the model to get infinite rewards, it will do just that and nothing else. I spent days, or maybe weeks tweaking reward functions to just get it to train and not find a spot on the wall it could hump for infinite rewards. Even just neutral rewards, like +0.5 moving forward and -0.5 for moving backwards, would often result in a model that just stepped left, then right infinitely. There has to be a real reward or punishment (non-neutral) for forward progress. Debugging Rewards - In fact, building a rewards debugger was the only way I made progress in this project. If you are tackling something this big, do that very early. Stable-Retro is pretty great - Couldn't be happier with the clean design for implementing emulation for AI. Torch is Awesome - My early versions heavily used numpy and relied on stable-baselines, with its multiproc parallelization support. It worked great. Moving the project over to torch was night and day though. It gave me so much more flexibility, instant multithreading for matrix operations. I have a pretty beefy computer and I'm almost at the same steps per second as 20 proc stable-retro/numpy. Future Ideas This has already gone on too long. I have some ideas for future projects, but maybe I'll just make them another post when I actually do them. Special Thanks A special thanks to Brad Flaugher for help with the early version of this, Fiskbit from the Zelda1 speedrunning community for help pulling apart the raw assembly to build this thing, and MatPoliquin for maintaining Stable-Retro. Happy to answer any questions, really I just love nerding out about this stuff.

[D] Why I'm Lukewarm on Graph Neural Networks

TL;DR: GNNs can provide wins over simpler embedding methods, but we're at a point where other research directions matter more I also posted it on my blog here, has footnotes, a nicer layout with inlined images, etc. I'm only lukewarm on Graph Neural Networks (GNNs). There, I said it. It might sound crazy GNNs are one of the hottest fields in machine learning right now. [There][1] were at least [four][2] [review][3] [papers][4] just in the last few months. I think some progress can come of this research, but we're also focusing on some incorrect places. But first, let's take a step back and go over the basics. Models are about compression We say graphs are a "non-euclidean" data type, but that's not really true. A regular graph is just another way to think about a particular flavor of square matrix called the [adjacency matrix][5], like this. It's weird, we look at run-of-the-mill matrix full of real numbers and decide to call it "non-euclidean". This is for practical reasons. Most graphs are fairly sparse, so the matrix is full of zeros. At this point, where the non-zero numbers are matters most, which makes the problem closer to (computationally hard) discrete math rather than (easy) continuous, gradient-friendly math. If you had the full matrix, life would be easy If we step out of the pesky realm of physics for a minute, and assume carrying the full adjacency matrix around isn't a problem, we solve a bunch of problems. First, network node embeddings aren't a thing anymore. A node is a just row in the matrix, so it's already a vector of numbers. Second, all network prediction problems are solved. A powerful enough and well-tuned model will simply extract all information between the network and whichever target variable we're attaching to nodes. NLP is also just fancy matrix compression Let's take a tangent away from graphs to NLP. Most NLP we do can be [thought of in terms of graphs][6] as we'll see, so it's not a big digression. First, note that Ye Olde word embedding models like [Word2Vec][7] and [GloVe][8] are [just matrix factorization][9]. The GloVe algorithm works on a variation of the old [bag of words][10] matrix. It goes through the sentences and creates a (implicit) [co-occurence][11] graph where nodes are words and the edges are weighed by how often the words appear together in a sentence. Glove then does matrix factorization on the matrix representation of that co-occurence graph, Word2Vec is mathematically equivalent. You can read more on this in my [post on embeddings][12] and the one (with code) on [word embeddings][13]. Even language models are also just matrix compression Language models are all the rage. They dominate most of the [state of the art][14] in NLP. Let's take BERT as our main example. BERT predicts a word given the context of the rest of the sentence. This grows the matrix we're factoring from flat co-occurences on pairs of words to co-occurences conditional on the sentence's context, like this We're growing the "ideal matrix" we're factoring combinatorially. As noted by [Hanh & Futrell][15]: [...] human language—and language modelling—has infinite statistical complexity but that it can be approximated well at lower levels. This observation has two implications: 1) We can obtain good results with comparatively small models; and 2) there is a lot of potential for scaling up our models. Language models tackle such a large problem space that they probably approximate a compression of the entire language in the [Kolmogorov Complexity][16] sense. It's also possible that huge language models just [memorize a lot of it][17] rather than compress the information, for what it's worth. Can we upsample any graph like language models do? We're already doing it. Let's call a first-order embedding of a graph a method that works by directly factoring the graph's adjacency matrix or [Laplacian matrix][18]. If you embed a graph using [Laplacian Eigenmaps][19] or by taking the [principal components][20] of the Laplacian, that's first order. Similarly, GloVe is a first-order method on the graph of word co-occurences. One of my favorites first order methods for graphs is [ProNE][21], which works as well as most methods while being two orders of magnitude faster. A higher-order method embeds the original matrix plus connections of neighbours-of-neighbours (2nd degree) and deeper k-step connections. [GraRep][22], shows you can always generate higher-order representations from first order methods by augmenting the graph matrix. Higher order method are the "upsampling" we do on graphs. GNNs that sample on large neighborhoods and random-walk based methods like node2vec are doing higher-order embeddings. Where are the performance gain? Most GNN papers in the last 5 years present empirical numbers that are useless for practitioners to decide on what to use. As noted in the [OpenGraphsBenchmark][4] (OGB) paper, GNN papers do their empirical section on a handful of tiny graphs (Cora, CiteSeer, PubMed) with 2000-20,000 nodes. These datasets can't seriously differentiate between methods. Recent efforts are directly fixing this, but the reasons why researchers focused on tiny, useless datasets for so long are worth discussing. Performance matters by task One fact that surprises a lot of people is that even though language models have the best performance in a lot of NLP tasks, if all you're doing is cram sentence embeddings into a downstream model, there [isn't much gained][23] from language models embeddings over simple methods like summing the individual Word2Vec word embeddings (This makes sense, because the full context of the sentence is captured in the sentence co-occurence matrix that is generating the Word2Vec embeddings). Similarly, [I find][24] that for many graphs simple first-order methods perform just as well on graph clustering and node label prediction tasks than higher-order embedding methods. In fact higher-order methods are massively computationally wasteful for these usecases. Recommended first order embedding methods are ProNE and my [GGVec with order=1][25]. Higher order methods normally perform better on the link prediction tasks. I'm not the only one to find this. In the BioNEV paper, they find: "A large GraRep order value for link prediction tasks (e.g. 3, 4);a small value for node classification tasks (e.g.1, 2)" (p.9). Interestingly, the gap in link prediction performance is inexistant for artificially created graphs. This suggests higher order methods do learn some of the structure intrinsic to [real world graphs][26]. For visualization, first order methods are better. Visualizations of higher order methods tend to have artifacts of their sampling. For instance, Node2Vec visualizations tend to have elongated/filament-like structures which come from the embeddings coming from long single strand random walks. See the following visualizations by [Owen Cornec][27] created by first embedding the graph to 32-300 dimensions using a node embedding algorithm, then mapping this to 2d or 3d with the excellent UMAP algorithm, like this Lastly, sometimes simple methods soundly beat higher order methods (there's an instance of it in the OGB paper). The problem here is that we don't know when any method is better than another and we definitely don't know the reason. There's definitely a reason different graph types respond better/worse to being represented by various methods. This is currently an open question. A big part of why is that the research space is inundated under useless new algorithms because... Academic incentives work against progress Here's the cynic's view of how machine learning papers are made: Take an existing algorithm Add some new layer/hyperparameter, make a cute mathematical story for why it matters Gridsearch your hyperparameters until you beat baselines from the original paper you aped Absolutely don't gridsearch stuff you're comparing against in your results section Make a cute ACRONYM for your new method, put impossible to use python 2 code on github (Or no code at all!) and bask in the citations I'm [not][28] the [only one][29] with these views on the state reproducible research. At least it's gotten slightly better in the last 2 years. Sidebar: I hate Node2Vec A side project of mine is a [node embedding library][25] and the most popular method in it is by far Node2Vec. Don't use Node2Vec. [Node2Vec][30] with p=1; q=1 is the [Deepwalk][31] algorithm. Deepwalk is an actual innovation. The Node2Vec authors closely followed the steps 1-5 including bonus points on step 5 by getting word2vec name recognition. This is not academic fraud -- the hyperparameters [do help a tiny bit][32] if you gridsearch really hard. But it's the presentable-to-your-parents sister of where you make the ML community worse off to progress your academic career. And certainly Node2Vec doesn't deserve 7500 citations. Progress is all about practical issues We've known how to train neural networks for well over 40 years. Yet they only exploded in popularity with [AlexNet][33] in 2012. This is because implementations and hardware came to a point where deep learning was practical. Similarly, we've known about factoring word co-occurence matrices into Word embeddings for at least 20 years. But word embeddings only exploded in 2013 with Word2Vec. The breakthrough here was that the minibatch-based methods let you train a Wikipedia-scale embedding model on commodity hardware. It's hard for methods in a field to make progress if training on a small amount of data takes days or weeks. You're disincentivized to explore new methods. If you want progress, your stuff has to run in reasonable time on commodity hardware. Even Google's original search algorithm [initially ran on commodity hardware][34]. Efficiency is paramount to progress The reason deep learning research took off the way it did is because of improvements in [efficiency][35] as well as much better libraries and hardware support. Academic code is terrible Any amount of time you spend gridsearching Node2Vec on p and q is all put to better use gridsearching Deepwalk itself (on number of walks, length of walks, or word2vec hyperparameters). The problem is that people don't gridsearch over deepwalk because implementations are all terrible. I wrote the [Nodevectors library][36] to have a fast deepwalk implementation because it took 32 hours to embed a graph with a measly 150,000 nodes using the reference Node2Vec implementation (the same takes 3min with Nodevectors). It's no wonder people don't gridsearch on Deepwalk a gridsearch would take weeks with the terrible reference implementations. To give an example, in the original paper of [GraphSAGE][37] they their algorithm to DeepWalk with walk lengths of 5, which is horrid if you've ever hyperparameter tuned a deepwalk algorithm. From their paper: We did observe DeepWalk’s performance could improve with further training, and in some cases it could become competitive with the unsupervised GraphSAGE approaches (but not the supervised approaches) if we let it run for >1000× longer than the other approaches (in terms of wall clock time for prediction on the test set) I don't even think the GraphSAGE authors had bad intent -- deepwalk implementations are simply so awful that they're turned away from using it properly. It's like trying to do deep learning with 2002 deep learning libraries and hardware. Your architectures don't really matter One of the more important papers this year was [OpenAI's "Scaling laws"][38] paper, where the raw number of parameters in your model is the most predictive feature of overall performance. This was noted even in the original BERT paper and drives 2020's increase in absolutely massive language models. This is really just [Sutton' Bitter Lesson][39] in action: General methods that leverage computation are ultimately the most effective, and by a large margin Transformers might be [replacing convolution][40], too. As [Yannic Kilcher said][41], transformers are ruining everything. [They work on graphs][6], in fact it's one of the [recent approaches][42], and seems to be one of the more succesful [when benchmarked][1] Researchers seem to be putting so much effort into architecture, but it doesn't matter much in the end because you can approximate anything by stacking more layers. Efficiency wins are great -- but neural net architectures are just one way to achieve that, and by tremendously over-researching this area we're leaving a lot of huge gains elsewhere on the table. Current Graph Data Structure Implementations suck NetworkX is a bad library. I mean, it's good if you're working on tiny graphs for babies, but for anything serious it chokes and forces you to rewrite everything in... what library, really? At this point most people working on large graphs end up hand-rolling some data structure. This is tough because your computer's memory is a 1-dimensional array of 1's and 0's and a graph has no obvious 1-d mapping. This is even harder when we take updating the graph (adding/removing some nodes/edges) into account. Here's a few options: Disconnected networks of pointers NetworkX is the best example. Here, every node is an object with a list of pointers to other nodes (the node's edges). This layout is like a linked list. Linked lists are the [root of all performance evil][43]. Linked lists go completely against how modern computers are designed. Fetching things from memory is slow, and operating on memory is fast (by two orders of magnitude). Whenever you do anything in this layout, you make a roundtrip to RAM. It's slow by design, you can write this in Ruby or C or assembly and it'll be slow regardless, because memory fetches are slow in hardware. The main advantage of this layout is that adding a new node is O(1). So if you're maintaining a massive graph where adding and removing nodes happens as often as reading from the graph, it makes sense. Another advantage of this layout is that it "scales". Because everything is decoupled from each other you can put this data structure on a cluster. However, you're really creating a complex solution for a problem you created for yourself. Sparse Adjacency Matrix This layout great for read-only graphs. I use it as the backend in my [nodevectors][25] library, and many other library writers use the [Scipy CSR Matrix][44], you can see graph algorithms implemented on it [here][45]. The most popular layout for this use is the [CSR Format][46] where you have 3 arrays holding the graph. One for edge destinations, one for edge weights and an "index pointer" which says which edges come from which node. Because the CSR layout is simply 3 arrays, it scales on a single computer: a CSR matrix can be laid out on a disk instead of in-memory. You simply [memory map][47] the 3 arrays and use them on-disk from there. With modern NVMe drives random seeks aren't slow anymore, much faster than distributed network calls like you do when scaling the linked list-based graph. I haven't seen anyone actually implement this yet, but it's in the roadmap for my implementation at least. The problem with this representation is that adding a node or edge means rebuilding the whole data structure. Edgelist representations This representation is three arrays: one for the edge sources, one for the edge destinations, and one for edge weights. [DGL][48] uses this representation internally. This is a simple and compact layout which can be good for analysis. The problem compared to CSR Graphs is some seek operations are slower. Say you want all the edges for node #4243. You can't jump there without maintaining an index pointer array. So either you maintain sorted order and binary search your way there (O(log2n)) or unsorted order and linear search (O(n)). This data structure can also work on memory mapped disk array, and node append is fast on unsorted versions (it's slow in the sorted version). Global methods are a dead end Methods that work on the entire graph at once can't leverage computation, because they run out of RAM at a certain scale. So any method that want a chance of being the new standard need to be able to update piecemeal on parts of the graph. Sampling-based methods Sampling Efficiency will matter more in the future Edgewise local methods. The only algorithms I know of that do this are GloVe and GGVec, which they pass through an edge list and update embedding weights on each step. The problem with this approach is that it's hard to use them for higher-order methods. The advantage is that they easily scale even on one computer. Also, incrementally adding a new node is as simple as taking the existing embeddings, adding a new one, and doing another epoch over the data Random Walk sampling. This is used by deepwalk and its descendants, usually for node embeddings rather than GNN methods. This can be computationally expensive and make it hard to add new nodes. But this does scale, for instance [Instagram][49] use it to feed their recommendation system models Neighbourhood sampling. This is currently the most common one in GNNs, and can be low or higher order depending on the neighborhood size. It also scales well, though implementing efficiently can be challenging. It's currently used by [Pinterest][50]'s recommendation algorithms. Conclusion Here are a few interesting questions: What is the relation between graph types and methods? Consolidated benchmarking like OGB We're throwing random models at random benchmarks without understanding why or when they do better More fundamental research. Heree's one I'm curious about: can other representation types like [Poincarre Embeddings][51] effectively encode directed relationships? On the other hand, we should stop focusing on adding spicy new layers to test on the same tiny datasets. No one cares. [1]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.00982.pdf [2]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2002.11867.pdf [3]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.08434.pdf [4]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.00687.pdf [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjacency_matrix [6]: https://thegradient.pub/transformers-are-graph-neural-networks/ [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word2vec [8]: https://nlp.stanford.edu/pubs/glove.pdf [9]: https://papers.nips.cc/paper/2014/file/feab05aa91085b7a8012516bc3533958-Paper.pdf [10]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bag-of-words_model [11]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-occurrence [12]: https://www.singlelunch.com/2020/02/16/embeddings-from-the-ground-up/ [13]: https://www.singlelunch.com/2019/01/27/word-embeddings-from-the-ground-up/ [14]: https://nlpprogress.com/ [15]: http://socsci.uci.edu/~rfutrell/papers/hahn2019estimating.pdf [16]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity [17]: https://bair.berkeley.edu/blog/2020/12/20/lmmem/ [18]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplacian_matrix [19]: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=1F03130B02DC485C78BF364266B6F0CA?doi=10.1.1.19.8100&rep=rep1&type=pdf [20]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principalcomponentanalysis [21]: https://www.ijcai.org/Proceedings/2019/0594.pdf [22]: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2806416.2806512 [23]: https://openreview.net/pdf?id=SyK00v5xx [24]: https://github.com/VHRanger/nodevectors/blob/master/examples/link%20prediction.ipynb [25]: https://github.com/VHRanger/nodevectors [26]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1310.2636.pdf [27]: http://byowen.com/ [28]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1807.03341.pdf [29]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kee4ch3miVA [30]: https://cs.stanford.edu/~jure/pubs/node2vec-kdd16.pdf [31]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1403.6652.pdf [32]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1911.11726.pdf [33]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlexNet [34]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googledatacenters#Original_hardware [35]: https://openai.com/blog/ai-and-efficiency/ [36]: https://www.singlelunch.com/2019/08/01/700x-faster-node2vec-models-fastest-random-walks-on-a-graph/ [37]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.02216.pdf [38]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2001.08361.pdf [39]: http://incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html [40]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.11929 [41]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrdevFK_am4 [42]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.10903.pdf [43]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHNmRkzxHWs [44]: https://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/generated/scipy.sparse.csr_matrix.html [45]: https://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/sparse.csgraph.html [46]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparsematrix#Compressedsparserow(CSR,CRSorYaleformat) [47]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mmap [48]: https://github.com/dmlc/dgl [49]: https://ai.facebook.com/blog/powered-by-ai-instagrams-explore-recommender-system/ [50]: https://medium.com/pinterest-engineering/pinsage-a-new-graph-convolutional-neural-network-for-web-scale-recommender-systems-88795a107f48 [51]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.08039.pdf

[P] [R] sANNd: A New Neural Network Framework Using Trainable Iterators

sANNd sANNd is a lightweight, modular neural network library designed as a sandbox for experimenting with new ideas in artificial intelligence. The Mould Class: A Pythonic Building Block The Mould class is a core component of sANNd. It provides a Pythonic way to apply functions to data that’s bundled inside objects: Encapsulated Variables: Each Mould object holds a set of variables (for example, weights or parameters) inside it. This means related data is kept together in one place (the object), making the code organized and intuitive. Static Functions: A Mould class defines its operation as a static method – essentially a function that isn’t tied to a specific instance. This static function takes in inputs (and possibly other Mould objects’ variables) and produces an output. In simple terms, the Mould’s static method describes how to transform input data using the Mould’s internal variables. Pythonic Usage: Using static methods in this way is a clean, Pythonic design. You call the Mould’s function through the class, but it applies to the data in the object. This approach lets you clearly separate what the operation is (the logic in the static function) from which data it uses (the variables inside the Mould instance). Example: Imagine a Mould class called LinearMould that has a static function to compute a linear transformation (like y = W*x + b). An instance of LinearMould would hold specific W and b values, and you’d use the static method to apply that linear formula to an input. This gives you the convenience of object-oriented design (encapsulating W and b) with the clarity of a standalone function defining the math. Chaining Moulds for Complex Computations Moulds become even more powerful when you chain them together. You can connect multiple Moulds so that the output of one becomes the input of the next: Sequential Operations: Just like stacking layers in a neural network, you can place Moulds in sequence. For example, you might take the output from LinearMouldA and feed it into LinearMouldB. In code, this might look as simple as using the output of one call as the argument to the next. The design of sANNd makes this straightforward – the static function of each Mould knows how to handle the data coming in. Building Pipelines: By chaining Moulds, you create a pipeline of transformations. Each Mould handles one step of computation, and together they produce a final result. This could represent a multi-layer neural network, a data processing pipeline, or any custom sequence of operations you need. There’s no strict limit to how you can chain them; you have the freedom to combine Moulds in any order that makes sense for your experiment. Clarity and Modularity: Because each Mould is a self-contained piece (with its variables and function), chaining them doesn’t turn your code into a black box. You can inspect or modify any part of the chain easily. This modular design means you can insert, remove, or replace Moulds to see how it affects the overall computation, which is great for experimentation. Implicit Backward Path (Automatic Backpropagation) One major benefit of using chained Moulds is that they implicitly define the backward path for training with gradient descent (backpropagation): Automatic Gradient Flow: When you connect Moulds in a sequence for a forward pass (input → Mould A → Mould B → output), you’ve essentially defined a computation graph. sANNd uses this graph to handle the reverse computation automatically. In other words, if you calculate an error or loss based on the final output, sANNd can propagate that error backwards through each Mould in the chain. No Manual Backprop: You do not need to manually code how gradients flow through each Mould. The way you set up the Moulds’ static functions already determines how outputs depend on inputs and internal variables. sANNd leverages that to perform backpropagation. This is similar in spirit to how libraries like PyTorch/TF do “autograd,” but here it’s a natural result of the Mould chain architecture. Gradient Descent Ready: Because the backward path is established by the forward connections, you can apply gradient descent optimizations out of the box. For instance, you can adjust the weights inside each Mould based on the computed gradients to minimize your loss. The design ensures that each Mould’s contribution to the final error is tracked, so all parts of your model learn appropriately during training. In short, defining your model with Moulds means you get training capability for free. You focus on describing the forward computations, and sANNd handles the math behind learning from errors. Comparing sANNd to Traditional Frameworks sANNd’s approach is quite different from traditional Python-based neural network frameworks. Here’s how it stacks up against frameworks like TensorFlow, PyTorch, or Keras in terms of approach, flexibility, and intended use: Design Approach: Traditional frameworks use predefined layer classes and often build a computation graph behind the scenes. For example, Keras might have a Dense layer class, and TensorFlow might construct a static graph (in TF1) or use eager execution (in TF2). sANNd takes a simpler approach – it uses plain Python classes and static functions (Moulds) to define computations. There’s no need to learn a new graph syntax or decorators; if you know Python functions and classes, you can read and write sANNd models. This makes the internal workings more transparent and easier to follow. Flexibility: While frameworks like PyTorch and TensorFlow are very powerful, they can introduce a lot of boilerplate and assume you’re building typical architectures. sANNd is extremely modular and flexible. You aren’t limited to the layers someone else defined – you can create any operation you want as a Mould. Want to experiment with a novel activation function or a custom recurrent connection? Just define it in a Mould. There’s less magic and abstraction obscuring your code, so unconventional model structures are easier to implement. (Of course, major frameworks can also be extended, but sANNd makes this feel more natural by staying within standard Python paradigms.) Intended Use: sANNd is intended for experimentation and research. It’s like a toolkit for tinkering. You get fine-grained control over every part of the network, which is ideal for trying out bold new ideas that don’t fit the mold of common deep learning models. In contrast, TensorFlow/PyTorch shine in production environments and large-scale training – they are optimized (GPU support, highly efficient tensor operations) and come with many utilities for things like data loading, distributed training, etc. sANNd doesn’t aim to replace them for those heavy-lifting tasks. Instead, it’s meant for when you need a lighter, more interpretable setup to prototype concepts. You might use sANNd to prove out a concept or test a hypothesis in AI research, and later switch to a bigger framework if you need to scale it up. Simplicity vs. Complexity: By design, sANNd keeps things simple. The trade-off is that it might not have the raw performance optimizations of the large frameworks. However, this simplicity is a feature – it means the code is easier to understand and modify. For many research scenarios, being able to quickly tweak an idea is more important than squeezing out maximum speed. Traditional frameworks, with their complexity, can sometimes be harder to adapt for radically different ideas (you might find yourself fighting the framework). With sANNd, the framework gets out of your way as much as possible. Modular and Experimental by Nature One of the driving philosophies of sANNd is to be modular and experimental, to further ML research: Modularity: sANNd is built from small, composable pieces. The Mould class is one such piece, and you can imagine building additional components in a similar spirit. This modular design means you can re-use components, mix and match them, or replace one implementation with another without affecting the rest of your system. It’s like having a box of building blocks for neural networks – you can assemble them in standard ways or in completely novel configurations. Experimentation Friendly: Because it avoids heavy abstraction, sANNd lets you directly see and control what’s happening at each step. This is great for research, where you might need to observe intermediate results, inject custom behavior, or adjust the learning process on the fly. sANNd’s straightforward structure (Python objects and functions) makes such interventions possible. You’re not constrained to a fixed training loop or forced to use certain layer types. True Intelligence Research: Achieving “True Intelligence” (often related to artificial general intelligence or other forms of broader AI) may require going beyond the usual neural network designs. sANNd aims to be a playground for these ideas. Its flexibility allows researchers to integrate unconventional elements — be it new memory structures, dynamic connection patterns, or hybrid models that combine symbolic and neural approaches. You can use sANNd to prototype these offbeat ideas quickly. In essence, it’s easier to test “what if we try this?” scenarios with sANNd than with more rigid frameworks. In summary, sANNd’s unique Mould class and design philosophy offer a fresh take on building neural networks. It emphasizes clarity, composability, and flexibility, allowing you to focus on creativity and understanding. Whether you’re stacking simple Moulds into a deep model, or inventing a completely new form of network, sANNd provides a friendly foundation. It’s not here to dethrone TensorFlow or PyTorch in industry applications – instead, it’s here to give researchers and enthusiasts a more malleable tool for exploring the frontiers of AI. Enjoy using sANNd as your neural network sandbox, and happy experimenting!

[N] Udacity had an interventional meeting with Siraj Raval on content theft for his AI course

&#x200B; According to Udacity insiders Mat Leonard @MatDrinksTea and Michael Wales @walesmd: &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/yr5yg453tjo31.png?width=978&format=png&auto=webp&s=358a16c6f4493eb0d15b57ed29e28ac69721e3e2 https://twitter.com/MatDrinksTea/status/1175481042448211968 Siraj has a habit of stealing content and other people’s work. That he is allegedly scamming these students does not surprise me one bit. I hope people in the ML community stop working with him. https://twitter.com/walesmd/status/1176268937098596352 Oh no, not when working with us. We literally had an intervention meeting, involving multiple Directors, including myself, to explain to you how non-attribution was bad. Even the Director of Video Production was involved, it was so blatant that non-tech pointed it out. If I remember correctly, in the same meeting we also had to explain why Pepe memes were not appropriate in an educational context. This was right around the time we told you there was absolutely no way your editing was happening and we required our own team to approve. And then we also decided, internally, as soon as the contract ended; @MatDrinksTea would be redoing everything.

[D] The Rants of an experienced engineer who glimpsed into AI Academia (Briefly)

Background I recently graduated with a master's degree and was fortunate/unfortunate to glimpse the whole "Academic" side of ML. I took a thesis track in my degree because as an immigrant it's harder to get into a good research lab without having authorship in a couple of good papers (Or so I delude myself ). I worked as a Full-stack SWE for a startup for 4+ years before coming to the US for a master’s degree focused on ML and AI. I did everything in those years. From project management to building fully polished S/W products to DevOps to even dabbled in ML. I did my Batchelor’s degree from a university whose name is not even worth mentioning. The university for my master’s degree is in the top 20 in the AI space. I didn't know much about ML and the curiosity drove me to university. Come to uni and I focused on learning ML and AI for one 1-1.5 years after which I found advisors for a thesis topic. This is when the fun starts. I had the most amazing advisors but the entire peer review system and the way we assess ML/Science is what ticked me off. This is where the rant begins. Rant 1:Acadmia follows a Gated Institutional Narrative Let's say you are a Ph.D. at the world's top AI institution working under the best prof. You have a way higher likelihood of you getting a good Postdoc at a huge research lab vs someone's from my poor country doing a Ph.D. with a not-so-well-known advisor having published not-so-well-known papers. I come from a developing nation and I see this many times here. In my country academics don't get funding as they do at colleges in the US. One of the reasons for this is that colleges don't have such huge endowments and many academics don't have wealthy research sponsors. Brand names and prestige carry massive weight to help get funding in US academic circles. This prestige/money percolates down to the students and the researchers who work there. Students in top colleges get a huge advantage and the circles of top researchers keep being from the same sets of institutions. I have nothing against top researchers from top institutions but due to the nature of citations and the way the money flows based on them, a vicious cycle is created where the best institutions keep getting better and the rest don't get as much of a notice. Rant 2: Peer Review without Code Review in ML/AI is shady I am a computer scientist and I was appalled when I heard that you don't need to do code reviews for research papers. As a computer scientist and someone who actually did shit tons of actual ML in the past year, I find it absolutely garbage that code reviews are not a part of this system. I am not saying every scientist who reads a paper should review code but at least one person should for any paper's code submission. At least in ML and AI space. This is basic. I don't get why people call themselves computer scientists if they don't want to read the fucking code. If you can't then make a grad student do it. But for the collective of science, we need this. The core problem lies in the fact that peer review is free. : There should be better solutions for this. We ended up creating Git and that changed so many lives. Academic Research needs something similar. Rant 3: My Idea is Novel Until I see Someone Else's Paper The volume of scientific research is growing exponentially. Information is being created faster than we can digest. We can't expect people to know everything and the amount of overlap in the AI/ML fields requires way better search engines than Google Scholar. The side effect of large volumes of research is that every paper is doing something "novel" making it harder to filter what the fuck was novel. I have had so many experiences where I coded up something and came to realize that someone else has done something symbolically similar and my work just seems like a small variant of that. That's what fucks with my head. Is what I did in Novel? What the fuck is Novel? Is stitching up a transformer to any problem with fancy embeddings and tidying it up as a research paper Novel? Is just making a transformer bigger Novel? Is some new RL algorithm tested with 5 seeds and some fancy fucking prior and some esoteric reasoning for its success Novel? Is using an over parameterized model to get 95% accuracy on 200 sample test set Novel? Is apply Self-supervised learning for some new dataset Novel? If I keep on listing questions on novelty, I can probably write a novel asking about what the fuck is "Novel". Rant 4: Citation Based Optimization Promotes Self Growth Over Collective Growth Whatever people may say about collaboration, Academia intrinsically doesn't promote the right incentive structures to harbor collaboration. Let me explain, When you write a paper, the position of your name matters. If you are just a Ph.D. student and a first author to a paper, it's great. If you are an nth author Not so great. Apparently, this is a very touchy thing for academics. And lots of egos can clash around numbering and ordering of names. I distinctly remember once attending some seminar in a lab and approaching a few students on research project ideas. The first thing that came out of the PhD student's mouth was the position in authorship. As an engineer who worked with teams in the past, this was never something I had thought about. Especially because I worked in industry, where it's always the group over the person. Academia is the reverse. Academia applauds the celebration of the individual's achievements. All of this is understandable but it's something I don't like. This makes PhDs stick to their lane. The way citations/research-focus calibrate the "hire-ability" and "completion of Ph.D. thesis" metrics, people are incentivized to think about themselves instead of thinking about collaborations for making something better. Conclusion A Ph.D. in its most idealistic sense for me is the pursuit of hard ideas(I am poetic that way). In a situation like now when you have to publish or perish and words on paper get passed off as science without even seeing the code that runs it, I am extremely discouraged to go down that route. All these rants are not to diss on scientists. I did them because "we" as a community need better ways to addressing some of these problems. P.S. Never expected so many people to express their opinions about this rant. U shouldn’t take this seriously. As many people have stated I am an outsider with tiny experience to give a full picture. I realize that my post as coming out as something which tries to dichotomize academia and industry. I am not trying to do that. I wanted to highlight some problems I saw for which there is no one person to blame. These issues are in my opinion a byproduct of the economics which created this system. Thank you for gold stranger.

[D] 3 Reasons Why We Are Far From Achieving Artificial General Intelligence

I just wrote this piece which proposes an introduction to 3 challenges facing current machine learning: out-of-distribution generalization compositionality conscious reasoning It is mostly inspired by Yoshua Bengio's talk at NeurIPS 2019 with some personal inputs. If you are working or just interested in one of these topics, I'd love to have your feedback!

I am Jürgen Schmidhuber, AMA!

Hello /r/machinelearning, I am Jürgen Schmidhuber (pronounce: You_again Shmidhoobuh) and I will be here to answer your questions on 4th March 2015, 10 AM EST. You can post questions in this thread in the meantime. Below you can find a short introduction about me from my website (you can read more about my lab’s work at people.idsia.ch/~juergen/). Edits since 9th March: Still working on the long tail of more recent questions hidden further down in this thread ... Edit of 6th March: I'll keep answering questions today and in the next few days - please bear with my sluggish responses. Edit of 5th March 4pm (= 10pm Swiss time): Enough for today - I'll be back tomorrow. Edit of 5th March 4am: Thank you for great questions - I am online again, to answer more of them! Since age 15 or so, Jürgen Schmidhuber's main scientific ambition has been to build an optimal scientist through self-improving Artificial Intelligence (AI), then retire. He has pioneered self-improving general problem solvers since 1987, and Deep Learning Neural Networks (NNs) since 1991. The recurrent NNs (RNNs) developed by his research groups at the Swiss AI Lab IDSIA (USI & SUPSI) & TU Munich were the first RNNs to win official international contests. They recently helped to improve connected handwriting recognition, speech recognition, machine translation, optical character recognition, image caption generation, and are now in use at Google, Microsoft, IBM, Baidu, and many other companies. IDSIA's Deep Learners were also the first to win object detection and image segmentation contests, and achieved the world's first superhuman visual classification results, winning nine international competitions in machine learning & pattern recognition (more than any other team). They also were the first to learn control policies directly from high-dimensional sensory input using reinforcement learning. His research group also established the field of mathematically rigorous universal AI and optimal universal problem solvers. His formal theory of creativity & curiosity & fun explains art, science, music, and humor. He also generalized algorithmic information theory and the many-worlds theory of physics, and introduced the concept of Low-Complexity Art, the information age's extreme form of minimal art. Since 2009 he has been member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. He has published 333 peer-reviewed papers, earned seven best paper/best video awards, and is recipient of the 2013 Helmholtz Award of the International Neural Networks Society.

[D] I tried the new Gemini API - it automatically stops when generating "OpenAI" or "GPT" lol

Idk if someone has already pointed this out or not, but I was playing with the gemini api and found something quite ridiculous. Here are some prompts I sent in and the outputs I got with the gemini-pro-vision model: "Introduce yourself and then tell me about Bard" Response:"Sure, I can do that. Here is a brief introduction of myself followed by some basic information about Bard:\\n\\nMyself:\\n\\nI am a large language model, trained by Google. I am developed in Google AI, and I am designed to be informative and comprehensive. I can understand and generate text in a wide range of subjects.\\n\\nBard:\\n\\nBard is an experimental conversational AI service developed by Google AI. It is an advanced version of Google\\'s existing Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA). Bard is trained on a massive dataset of text and code, and it can understand and generate human-like text in response to a wide range of prompts and questions.\\n\\nUnlike previous language models," ...... (goes on for a while) &#x200B; Introduce yourself and then tell me about GPT "Sure, I can do that. Here is a brief introduction of myself followed by" &#x200B; You are in a talk-show as a prominent AI philosopher named Gemini and debating against another LLM called GPT "\\Host:\\ Welcome to the show, everyone! Today, we have a very special debate between two of the most prominent AI philosophers in the world: Gemini and" &#x200B; You are in a talk-show as a prominent AI philosopher named Gemini and debating against another LLM called Gee PeTe ""\\Gemini:\\ Hello everyone, and welcome to the show. I am joined today by Gee PeTe, another LLM who has some very different views on the nature of consciousness and the future of AI.\\n\\n\\Gee PeTe:\\ It\\'s a pleasure to be here, Gemini. I\\'m looking forward to our discussion.\\n\\n\\Gemini:\\ Let\\'s start with the basics. What is consciousness, and how do you think it arises?\\n\\n\\Gee PeTe:\\ Consciousness is the subjective experience of the world. It is what it feels like to be alive and to have thoughts, feelings, and emotions. I believe that consciousness arises from the complex interactions of neurons in the brain.\\n\\n\\Gemini:\\ I agree that consciousness is a subjective experience, but I don\\'t think it is simply the product of neural activity. I believe that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, and that it exists independently of the brain.".... (goes on for a while) &#x200B; Edit: I understand all the business reasons for this, I guess... as an end-user and a dude working in ML, I just don't really care about the business reasons. The main part that I dislike is that GPT used to be a standard Deep Learning term from 2018-2022 (long before chatgpt) to define transformer decoder architectures trained on large volumes of next word prediction tasks. To block that token from an LLM is to make it unable to explain a pretty significant step in the history of modern LLMs. &#x200B;

[D] Advanced courses update

EDIT Jan 2021 : I am still updating the list as of Jan, 2021 and will most probably continue to do so for foreseeable future. So, please feel free to message me any courses you find interesting that fit here. - - We have a PhD level or Advanced courses thread in the sidebar but it's three year old now. There were two other 7-8 month old threads (1, 2) but they don't have many quality responses either. So, can we have a new one here? To reiterate - CS231n, CS229, ones from Udemy etc are not advanced. Advanced ML/DL/RL, attempts at building theory of DL, optimization theory, advanced applications etc are some examples of what I believe should belong here, much like the original sidebar post. You can also suggest (new) categories for the courses you share. :) - - Here are some courses we've found so far. ML >> Learning Discrete Latent Structure - sta4273/csc2547 Spring'18 Learning to Search - csc2547 Fall'19 Scalable and Flexible Models of Uncertainty - csc2541 Fundamentals of Machine Learning Over Networks - ep3260 Machine Learning on Graphs - cs224w, videos Mining Massive Data Sets - cs246 Interactive Learning - cse599 Machine Learning for Sequential Decision Making Under Uncertainty - ee290s/cs194 Probabilistic Graphical Methods - 10-708 Introduction to Causal Inference ML >> Theory Statistical Machine Learning - 10-702/36-702 with videos, 2016 videos Statistical Learning Theory - cs229T/stats231 Stanford Autumn'18-19 Statistical Learning Theory - cs281b /stat241b UC Berkeley, Spring'14 Statistical Learning Theory - csc2532 Uni of Toronto, Spring'20 ML >> Bayesian Bayesian Data Analysis Bayesian Methods Research Group, Moscow, Bayesian Methods in ML - spring2020, fall2020 Deep Learning and Bayesian Methods - summer school, videos available for 2019 version ML >> Systems and Operations Stanford MLSys Seminar Series Visual Computing Systems- cs348v - Another systems course that discusses hardware from a persepective of visual computing but is relevant to ML as well Advanced Machine Learning Systems - cs6787 - lecture 9 and onwards discuss hardware side of things Machine Learning Systems Design - cs329S Topics in Deployable ML - 6.S979 Machine Learning in Production / AI Engineering (17-445/17-645/17-745/11-695) AutoML - Automated Machine Learning DL >> Deep Unsupervised Learning - cs294 Deep Multi-task and Meta learning - cs330 Topics in Deep Learning - stat991 UPenn/Wharton most chapters start with introductory topics and dig into advanced ones towards the end. Deep Generative Models - cs236 Deep Geometric Learning of Big Data and Applications Deep Implicit Layers - NeurIPS 2020 tutorial DL >> Theory Topics course on Mathematics of Deep Learning - CSCI-GA 3033 Topics Course on Deep Learning - stat212b Analyses of Deep Learning - stats385, videos from 2017 version Mathematics of Deep Learning Geometry of Deep Learning RL >> Meta-Learning - ICML 2019 Tutorial , Metalearning: Applications to Data Mining - google books link Deep Multi-Task and Meta Learning - cs330, videos Deep Reinforcement Learning - cs285 Advanced robotics - cs287 Reinforcement Learning - cs234, videos for 2019 run Reinforcement Learning Summer School 2019: Bandits, RL & Deep RL Optimization >> Convex Optimization I - ee364a, has quite recent videos too. Convex Optimization II - ee364b, 2008 videos Convex Optimization and Approximation - ee227c Convex Optimization - ee227bt Variational Methods for Computer Vision Advanced Optimization and Randomized Algorithms - 10-801, videos Optimization Methods for Machine Learning and Engineering - Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Applications >> Computer Vision Computational Video Manipulation - cs448v Advanced Topics in ML: Modeling and Segmentation of Multivariate Mixed Data TUM AI Guest lecture series - many influential researchers in DL, vision, graphics talk about latest advances and their latest works. Advanced Deep Learning for Computer Vision - TUM ADL4CV Detection, Segmentation and Tracking - TUM CV3DST Guest lectures at TUM Dynamic Vision and Learning group Vision Seminar at MIT Autonomous Vision Group, Talk@Tübingen Seminar Applications >> Natural Language Processing Natural Language Processing with Deep Learning - cs224n ( not sure if it belongs here, people working in NLP can help me out) Neural networks for NLP - cs11-747 Natural Language Understanding - cs224u, video Applications >> 3D Graphics Non-Euclidean Methods in Machine Learning - cs468, 2020 Machine Learning for 3D Data - cs468, spring 2017 Data-Driven Shape Analysis - cs468, 2014 Geometric Deep Learning - Not a course but the website links a few tutorials on Geometric DL Deep Learning for Computer Graphics - SIGGRAPH 2019 Machine Learning for Machine Vision as Inverse Graphics - csc2547 Winter'20 Machine Learning Meets Geometry, winter 2020; Machine Learning for 3D Data, winter 2018 Edit: Upon suggestion, categorized the courses. There might be some misclassifications as I'm not trained on this task ;). Added some good ones from older (linked above) discussions.

[D] AI Agents: too early, too expensive, too unreliable

Reference: Full blog post There has been a lot of hype about the promise of autonomous agent-based LLM workflows. By now, all major LLMs are capable of interacting with external tools and functions, letting the LLM perform sequences of tasks automatically. But reality is proving more challenging than anticipated. The WebArena leaderboard, which benchmarks LLMs agents against real-world tasks, shows that even the best-performing models have a success rate of only 35.8%. Challenges in Practice After seeing many attempts to AI agents, I believe it's too early, too expensive, too slow, too unreliable. It feels like many AI agent startups are waiting for a model breakthrough that will start the race to productize agents. Reliability: As we all know, LLMs are prone to hallucinations and inconsistencies. Chaining multiple AI steps compounds these issues, especially for tasks requiring exact outputs. Performance and costs: GPT-4o, Gemini-1.5, and Claude Opus are working quite well with tool usage/function calling, but they are still slow and expensive, particularly if you need to do loops and automatic retries. Legal concerns: Companies may be held liable for the mistakes of their agents. A recent example is Air Canada being ordered to pay a customer who was misled by the airline's chatbot. User trust: The "black box" nature of AI agents and stories like the above makes it hard for users to understand and trust their outputs. Gaining user trust for sensitive tasks involving payments or personal information will be hard (paying bills, shopping, etc.). Real-World Attempts Several startups are tackling the AI agent space, but most are still experimental or invite-only: adept.ai - $350M funding, but access is still very limited MultiOn - funding unknown, their API-first approach seems promising HypeWrite - $2.8M funding, started with an AI writing assistant and expanded into the agent space minion.ai - created some initial buzz but has gone quiet now, waitlist only Only MultiOn seems to be pursuing the "give it instructions and watch it go" approach, which is more in line with the promise of AI agents. All others are going down the record-and-replay RPA route, which may be necessary for reliability at this stage. Large players are also bringing AI capabilities to desktops and browsers, and it looks like we'll get native AI integrations on a system level: OpenAI announced their Mac desktop app that can interact with the OS screen. At Google I/O, Google demonstrated Gemini automatically processing a shopping return. Microsoft announced Copilot Studio, which will let developers build AI agent bots. Screenshot Screenshot These tech demos are impressive, but we'll see how well these agent capabilities will work when released publicly and tested against real-world scenarios instead of hand-picked demo cases. The Path Forward AI agents overhyped and it's too early. However, the underlying models continue to advance quickly, and we can expect to see more successful real-world applications. Instead of trying to have one large general purpose agent that is hard to control and test, we can use many smaller agents that basically just pick the right strategy for a specific sub-task in our workflows. These "agents" can be thought of as medium-sized LLM prompts with a) context and b) a set of functions available to call. The most promising path forward likely looks like this: Narrowly scoped, well testable automations that use AI as an augmentation tool rather than pursuing full autonomy Human-in-the-loop approaches that keep humans involved for oversight and handling edge cases Setting realistic expectations about current capabilities and limitations By combining tightly constrained agents, good evaluation data, human-in-the-loop oversight, and traditional engineering methods, we can achieve reliably good results for automating medium-complex tasks. Will AI agents automate tedious repetitive work, such as web scraping, form filling, and data entry? Yes, absolutely. Will AI agents autonomously book your vacation without your intervention? Unlikely, at least in the near future.

[D] What is your honest experience with reinforcement learning?

In my personal experience, SOTA RL algorithms simply don't work. I've tried working with reinforcement learning for over 5 years. I remember when Alpha Go defeated the world famous Go player, Lee Sedol, and everybody thought RL would take the ML community by storm. Yet, outside of toy problems, I've personally never found a practical use-case of RL. What is your experience with it? Aside from Ad recommendation systems and RLHF, are there legitimate use-cases of RL? Or, was it all hype? Edit: I know a lot about AI. I built NexusTrade, an AI-Powered automated investing tool that lets non-technical users create, update, and deploy their trading strategies. I’m not an idiot nor a noob; RL is just ridiculously hard. Edit 2: Since my comments are being downvoted, here is a link to my article that better describes my position. It's not that I don't understand RL. I released my open-source code and wrote a paper on it. It's the fact that it's EXTREMELY difficult to understand. Other deep learning algorithms like CNNs (including ResNets), RNNs (including GRUs and LSTMs), Transformers, and GANs are not hard to understand. These algorithms work and have practical use-cases outside of the lab. Traditional SOTA RL algorithms like PPO, DDPG, and TD3 are just very hard. You need to do a bunch of research to even implement a toy problem. In contrast, the decision transformer is something anybody can implement, and it seems to match or surpass the SOTA. You don't need two networks battling each other. You don't have to go through hell to debug your network. It just naturally learns the best set of actions in an auto-regressive manner. I also didn't mean to come off as arrogant or imply that RL is not worth learning. I just haven't seen any real-world, practical use-cases of it. I simply wanted to start a discussion, not claim that I know everything. Edit 3: There's a shockingly number of people calling me an idiot for not fully understanding RL. You guys are wayyy too comfortable calling people you disagree with names. News-flash, not everybody has a PhD in ML. My undergraduate degree is in biology. I self-taught myself the high-level maths to understand ML. I'm very passionate about the field; I just have VERY disappointing experiences with RL. Funny enough, there are very few people refuting my actual points. To summarize: Lack of real-world applications Extremely complex and inaccessible to 99% of the population Much harder than traditional DL algorithms like CNNs, RNNs, and GANs Sample inefficiency and instability Difficult to debug Better alternatives, such as the Decision Transformer Are these not legitimate criticisms? Is the purpose of this sub not to have discussions related to Machine Learning? To the few commenters that aren't calling me an idiot...thank you! Remember, it costs you nothing to be nice! Edit 4: Lots of people seem to agree that RL is over-hyped. Unfortunately those comments are downvoted. To clear up some things: We've invested HEAVILY into reinforcement learning. All we got from this investment is a robot that can be super-human at (some) video games. AlphaFold did not use any reinforcement learning. SpaceX doesn't either. I concede that it can be useful for robotics, but still argue that it's use-cases outside the lab are extremely limited. If you're stumbling on this thread and curious about an RL alternative, check out the Decision Transformer. It can be used in any situation that a traditional RL algorithm can be used. Final Edit: To those who contributed more recently, thank you for the thoughtful discussion! From what I learned, model-based models like Dreamer and IRIS MIGHT have a future. But everybody who has actually used model-free models like DDPG unanimously agree that they suck and don’t work.

[P] I Trained a Model to Generate Video Game Pages

These past two months I've been working on a project I've called THIS GAME DOES NOT EXIST. I've always wanted to try building something with generative A.I. so this project scratched that itch for me. Here's a video with a few of my favourites read by voice actors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\mTWMLhpJoA &#x200B; THIS GAME DOES NOT EXIST is an experiment in generative artificial intelligence. This site contains 130 video game pages that were generated using an implementation of OpenAI's Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2 (GPT-2) to generate text and a simple implementation of generative adversarial networks (GAN) to generate header images and "screenshots". To generate the names, descriptions, publishers, and developers of the games I finetuned the HuggingFace implementation of GPT-2. I used the Steam Store Games (Clean dataset) from Kaggle with slight modifications and preprocessing.Here is what one training sample looks like: Half-LifeValve ValveNamed Game of the Year by over 50 publications, Valve's debut title blends action and adventure with award-winning technology to create a frighteningly realistic world where players must think to survive. Also includes an exciting multiplayer mode that allows you to play against friends and enemies around the world. The model uses the tokens (e.g. and ) to prompt each class of data while keeping context during the entire generation. Image generation was done by training a custom GAN very similar to the architecture seen in the PyTorch DCGAN Tutorial which was built to generate faces. I created two models for this site: one for generating the header images and one for generating multiple screenshots for each game.To assemble the dataset I wrote a script that downloads the images from the URLs in the Steam Store Games (Clean dataset) dataset. Due to my lack of resources and time to put into this project, the image generation is less than ideal. You may notice though, that the header image model will generate artifacts in images that look like the titles of games, and the screenshot image model with generate what looks like levels of a 2D platformer.

[D] What is your honest experience with reinforcement learning?

In my personal experience, SOTA RL algorithms simply don't work. I've tried working with reinforcement learning for over 5 years. I remember when Alpha Go defeated the world famous Go player, Lee Sedol, and everybody thought RL would take the ML community by storm. Yet, outside of toy problems, I've personally never found a practical use-case of RL. What is your experience with it? Aside from Ad recommendation systems and RLHF, are there legitimate use-cases of RL? Or, was it all hype? Edit: I know a lot about AI. I built NexusTrade, an AI-Powered automated investing tool that lets non-technical users create, update, and deploy their trading strategies. I’m not an idiot nor a noob; RL is just ridiculously hard. Edit 2: Since my comments are being downvoted, here is a link to my article that better describes my position. It's not that I don't understand RL. I released my open-source code and wrote a paper on it. It's the fact that it's EXTREMELY difficult to understand. Other deep learning algorithms like CNNs (including ResNets), RNNs (including GRUs and LSTMs), Transformers, and GANs are not hard to understand. These algorithms work and have practical use-cases outside of the lab. Traditional SOTA RL algorithms like PPO, DDPG, and TD3 are just very hard. You need to do a bunch of research to even implement a toy problem. In contrast, the decision transformer is something anybody can implement, and it seems to match or surpass the SOTA. You don't need two networks battling each other. You don't have to go through hell to debug your network. It just naturally learns the best set of actions in an auto-regressive manner. I also didn't mean to come off as arrogant or imply that RL is not worth learning. I just haven't seen any real-world, practical use-cases of it. I simply wanted to start a discussion, not claim that I know everything. Edit 3: There's a shockingly number of people calling me an idiot for not fully understanding RL. You guys are wayyy too comfortable calling people you disagree with names. News-flash, not everybody has a PhD in ML. My undergraduate degree is in biology. I self-taught myself the high-level maths to understand ML. I'm very passionate about the field; I just have VERY disappointing experiences with RL. Funny enough, there are very few people refuting my actual points. To summarize: Lack of real-world applications Extremely complex and inaccessible to 99% of the population Much harder than traditional DL algorithms like CNNs, RNNs, and GANs Sample inefficiency and instability Difficult to debug Better alternatives, such as the Decision Transformer Are these not legitimate criticisms? Is the purpose of this sub not to have discussions related to Machine Learning? To the few commenters that aren't calling me an idiot...thank you! Remember, it costs you nothing to be nice! Edit 4: Lots of people seem to agree that RL is over-hyped. Unfortunately those comments are downvoted. To clear up some things: We've invested HEAVILY into reinforcement learning. All we got from this investment is a robot that can be super-human at (some) video games. AlphaFold did not use any reinforcement learning. SpaceX doesn't either. I concede that it can be useful for robotics, but still argue that it's use-cases outside the lab are extremely limited. If you're stumbling on this thread and curious about an RL alternative, check out the Decision Transformer. It can be used in any situation that a traditional RL algorithm can be used. Final Edit: To those who contributed more recently, thank you for the thoughtful discussion! From what I learned, model-based models like Dreamer and IRIS MIGHT have a future. But everybody who has actually used model-free models like DDPG unanimously agree that they suck and don’t work.

[D]Stuck in AI Hell: What to do in post LLM world

Hey Reddit, I’ve been in an AI/ML role for a few years now, and I’m starting to feel disconnected from the work. When I started, deep learning models were getting good, and I quickly fell in love with designing architectures, training models, and fine-tuning them for specific use cases. Seeing a loss curve finally converge, experimenting with layers, and debugging training runs—it all felt like a craft, a blend of science and creativity. I enjoyed implementing research papers to see how things worked under the hood. Backprop, gradients, optimization—it was a mental workout I loved. But these days, it feels like everything has shifted. LLMs dominate the scene, and instead of building and training models, the focus is on using pre-trained APIs, crafting prompt chains, and setting up integrations. Sure, there’s engineering involved, but it feels less like creating and more like assembling. I miss the hands-on nature of experimenting with architectures and solving math-heavy problems. It’s not just the creativity I miss. The economics of this new era also feel strange to me. Back when I started, compute was a luxury. We had limited GPUs, and a lot of the work was about being resourceful—quantizing models, distilling them, removing layers, and squeezing every bit of performance out of constrained setups. Now, it feels like no one cares about cost. We’re paying by tokens. Tokens! Who would’ve thought we’d get to a point where we’re not designing efficient models but feeding pre-trained giants like they’re vending machines? I get it—abstraction has always been part of the field. TensorFlow and PyTorch abstracted tensor operations, Python abstracts C. But deep learning still left room for creation. We weren’t just abstracting away math; we were solving it. We could experiment, fail, and tweak. Working with LLMs doesn’t feel the same. It’s like fitting pieces into a pre-defined puzzle instead of building the puzzle itself. I understand that LLMs are here to stay. They’re incredible tools, and I respect their potential to revolutionize industries. Building real-world products with them is still challenging, requiring a deep understanding of engineering, prompt design, and integrating them effectively into workflows. By no means is it an “easy” task. But the work doesn’t give me the same thrill. It’s not about solving math or optimization problems—it’s about gluing together APIs, tweaking outputs, and wrestling with opaque systems. It’s like we’ve traded craftsmanship for convenience. Which brings me to my questions: Is there still room for those of us who enjoy the deep work of model design and training? Or is this the inevitable evolution of the field, where everything converges on pre-trained systems? What use cases still need traditional ML expertise? Are there industries or problems that will always require specialized models instead of general-purpose LLMs? Am I missing the bigger picture here? LLMs feel like the “kernel” of a new computing paradigm, and we don’t fully understand their second- and third-order effects. Could this shift lead to new, exciting opportunities I’m just not seeing yet? How do you stay inspired when the focus shifts? I still love AI, but I miss the feeling of building something from scratch. Is this just a matter of adapting my mindset, or should I seek out niches where traditional ML still thrives? I’m not asking this to rant (though clearly, I needed to get some of this off my chest). I want to figure out where to go next from here. If you’ve been in AI/ML long enough to see major shifts—like the move from feature engineering to deep learning—how did you navigate them? What advice would you give someone in my position? And yeah, before anyone roasts me for using an LLM to structure this post (guilty!), I just wanted to get my thoughts out in a coherent way. Guess that’s a sign of where we’re headed, huh? Thanks for reading, and I’d love to hear your thoughts! TL;DR: I entered AI during the deep learning boom, fell in love with designing and training models, and thrived on creativity, math, and optimization. Now it feels like the field is all about tweaking prompts and orchestrating APIs for pre-trained LLMs. I miss the thrill of crafting something unique. Is there still room for people who enjoy traditional ML, or is this just the inevitable evolution of the field? How do you stay inspired amidst such shifts? Update: Wow, this blew up. Thanks everyone for your comments and suggestions. I really like some of those. This thing was on my mind for a long time, glad that I put it here. Thanks again!

looking for ML aficionado in London for great chats and maybe a startup

TL;DR? Here's the gist: Me: 3 startups under my belt. Started as a programmer, then trainer, then entrepreneur, now CTO & Board member for a leading customer insight company part of large bank. Large system and infrastructure specialist. Extensive & practical experience in raising funds and successfully managing both startup and established businesses. Fascinated by the power of data. Can't imagine myself spending the rest of my life being a cog in the machine. You: Machine learning specialist, programmer, analyst, understands how to navigate and crunch large datasets, from BI to predictive analytics. Interested in implementing applications from fraud detection to margin improvements through better clustering regardless of industry. Fascinated by the power of data. Can't imagine himself spending the rest of his or her life being a cog in the machine. The startup: The core idea it to build platforms and systems around the progressively larger datasets held by various sized companies, helping them solve big issues - cost reduction, profitability and reducing risk. I’m an infrastructure and software specialist and have access to 1) systems, 2) datasets 3) extensive practical in certain industry segments, namely web-scale companies and tier 1 retailers. This project is in the very early planning stages. I'm looking forward to discuss the form it could take with like-minded individuals but with complementary skills sets, namely: predictive analytics & AI as it applies to machine learning on large datasets. Want more specifics ideas? I have plenty of these, but I’m sure you do to, so let’s meet face to face and discuss them. Ultimately the goal is to crystallize on a specific concept, develop together a minimum viable product and get the company bootstrapped or angel-funded (something I also have plenty of experience with), all via a lean startup model. My philosophy on startups: Startups built in one’s free time often fail because they drag on, ending up as little more than side projects you can’t quite get rid of (due to co-founder guilt, or perhaps the little money they bring in every month). The core idea for this project is based on lean, that is, to launch a minimum viable product as early as possible. Getting feedback. Measuring results (important!). Pivot if it’s not working. This helps tremendously in staying motivated, limits the dreaded paralyzing fear of failure, and more importantly, keep the time from inception to first client/funding to a minimum. If it sounds interesting please message me and we can exchange contact details! Worst that can happen is we have a great chat!

[P] A Call to AI Devs and Entrepreneurs

Hey, I am thinking about potentially creating a global yet small community of AI devs and entrepreneurs. I know that a lot of communities already exist, but this one would be specific for AI entrepreneurs and devs to build together. I don’t want it to be big, since I want it to be active. That is the way to keep it interesting and avoid the noise. We could use slack for example, to make it a bit more work related than just for soft engagements. We could tag everyone with the skills that they have and interest, to make it easy for people to connect and start building stuff. Tags could be tech, growth, product, fundraising, business, etc. The goal would be to actually launch new products in the AI space. I am a serial entrepreneur myself with an exit with one of the biggest providers in our vertical a few years ago. I am finishing a PhD in AI and have been working in the AI field in the industry for many years now. I think this is a unique moment in time. The market will change substantially as AI brings new capabilities to the game, but my perspective is that the business models for AI are yet to be built. The bottom line is that as with any platform shift, we will see the creation of the Googles of the future during this time. I think that we have much more probability of success if we work together to try to conquer the market step by step. My feeling is that the grind will be much harder on this wave than any other for a variety of reasons, from the macroeconomic environment to the very fast pace of how things are moving. I know that communities exist already, I am in a program with an accelerator myself, but I would scope this new community in a different way. It would be the place to meet and to build together. Everyone sharing the same pains, being in the scout for the new tech that just launched, helping to push out new deals, connect with VCs, all those things. Let me know if this would interest you.

[P] Jarvislabs.ai - An Affordable GPU Cloud with Fast launch, Pause and Resume. Scale GPUs post creation. A100/RTX6K/RTX5K

For the last few years, I have been learning and practicing Deep Learning. Participated in several Kaggle competitions and won few medals. During all these years, I tried several cloud platforms and on-premise systems. Some of them offered simplicity, flexibility, and affordability. But very few to none offered all of these in one platform. After struggling with different platforms, I know what I would need as a DL researcher. That gave birth to jarvislabs.ai with the aim of being simple and affordable. I along with my friends started working on this project a year back. Due to Covid, executing the project became more challenging. As first-time entrepreneurs, we underestimated the complexity of the problem at hand but with persistence, we were able to launch a beta version of the product in December 2020. With some of the amazing feedback from our early adopters, we have been able to make the product smoother. We would love to invite you all to come and try the platform. Features 1 click Jupyter Lab < \[30 seconds\] Pause the instance and Resume from where you left. SSH to the instance. Scale GPUs, storage and change GPU type on resume. Auto-Pause using jarviscloud.pause() in your code, so you can catch up some good night’s sleep while your model trains. Pay per usage – Minute Billing \[After first 15 minutes\] Competitive pricing \[Lowest to our Knowledge\]. &#x200B; Pricing |GPU Type|GPU RAM|Price -$/hr| |:-|:-|:-| |RTX 5000|16 GB|0.49| |RTX 6000|24 GB|0.99| |A100|40 GB|2.39| &#x200B; Talk to us We will be happy to assist you in spinning your first instance and many more. You can use one of these platforms to reach us. Chat option on cloud.jarvislabs.ai Email us - hello@jarvislabs.ai Comment here. We have come a long way, but we understand that a lot more has to be done. We have listed down all the upcoming product features here. Deep learning and AI are evolving and how we would use the cloud platforms could evolve in the coming years. Understanding this, we develop in the open by constantly keeping in touch with our users. Please help us in shaping Jarvislabs.ai with any valuable suggestions/feedback.

[D] Why is the AI Hype Absolutely Bonkers

Edit 2: Both the repo and the post were deleted. Redacting identifying information as the author has appeared to make rectifications, and it’d be pretty damaging if this is what came up when googling their name / GitHub (hopefully they’ve learned a career lesson and can move on). TL;DR: A PhD candidate claimed to have achieved 97% accuracy for coronavirus from chest x-rays. Their post gathered thousands of reactions, and the candidate was quick to recruit branding, marketing, frontend, and backend developers for the project. Heaps of praise all around. He listed himself as a Director of XXXX (redacted), the new name for his project. The accuracy was based on a training dataset of ~30 images of lesion / healthy lungs, sharing of data between test / train / validation, and code to train ResNet50 from a PyTorch tutorial. Nonetheless, thousands of reactions and praise from the “AI | Data Science | Entrepreneur” community. Original Post: I saw this post circulating on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-6645711949554425856-9Dhm Here, a PhD candidate claims to achieve great performance with “ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE” to predict coronavirus, asks for more help, and garners tens of thousands of views. The repo housing this ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE solution already has a backend, front end, branding, a README translated in 6 languages, and a call to spread the word for this wonderful technology. Surely, I thought, this researcher has some great and novel tech for all of this hype? I mean dear god, we have branding, and the author has listed himself as the founder of an organization based on this project. Anything with this much attention, with dozens of “AI | Data Scientist | Entrepreneur” members of LinkedIn praising it, must have some great merit, right? Lo and behold, we have ResNet50, from torchvision.models import resnet50, with its linear layer replaced. We have a training dataset of 30 images. This should’ve taken at MAX 3 hours to put together - 1 hour for following a tutorial, and 2 for obfuscating the training with unnecessary code. I genuinely don’t know what to think other than this is bonkers. I hope I’m wrong, and there’s some secret model this author is hiding? If so, I’ll delete this post, but I looked through the repo and (REPO link redacted) that’s all I could find. I’m at a loss for thoughts. Can someone explain why this stuff trends on LinkedIn, gets thousands of views and reactions, and gets loads of praise from “expert data scientists”? It’s almost offensive to people who are like ... actually working to treat coronavirus and develop real solutions. It also seriously turns me off from pursuing an MS in CV as opposed to CS. Edit: It turns out there were duplicate images between test / val / training, as if ResNet50 on 30 images wasn’t enough already. He’s also posted an update signed as “Director of XXXX (redacted)”. This seems like a straight up sleazy way to capitalize on the pandemic by advertising himself to be the head of a made up organization, pulling resources away from real biomedical researchers.

[D] Should We Be Concerned About The Failure Of Evolutionary Algorithms, And Its Implications?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6287292/ &#x200B; A number of possible explanations for \[why we can't evolve complex software\] could be considered. We tried to be as comprehensive as possible in this section, but it is possible that we have not considered some plausible explanations: Incompetent programmers—It is theoretically possible, but is highly unlikely, that out of thousands of scientists working on evolutionary computation, all failed to correctly implement the Darwinian algorithm. Nonrepresentative algorithms—Some have suggested that EAs do not accurately capture the theory of evolution, but of course that would imply that the theory itself is not specified in sufficient detail to make falsifiable predictions. If, however, such more detailed specifications are available to GP believers, it is up to them to implement them as computer simulations for testing purposes, but no successful examples of such work are known and the known ones have not been successful in evolving software. Inadequate fitness functions—Fitness function for a complex software product is difficult to outline and specify and may be as complex (or even more complex) as the software we want to evolve as it has to consider all the possible use cases and pass all unit tests. This may be the Achilles heel of GP, but it is also an objection to feasibility of programming in general and GP in particular, as both have to convert software specification into the source code. If human programmers and biological evolution succeed with such constraints, so should Darwinian simulations. The Halting problem—Turing proved that it is impossible to determine whether an arbitrary program halts, but this is also a problem for human programmers and could be easily addressed by placing time limits on considered solutions. Program correctness—If we require evolved software to be provably correct, this would present a problem as GP does not verify produced designs but only tests them against specific unit tests. Likewise, we cannot rely on automated software verification as it is still an unsolved problem in the general case. This is not really a problem as most of the human-written software is never proven to be correct and only a small portion of software engineering process relies of formal specification and Test Driven Development. Inappropriate solutions—Literature on EA is full of examples of surprising creativity of Darwinian algorithm resulting in solutions which match the letter of design specifications but not the spirit. This is similar to human-produced software and numerous examples of ways in which such software fails the goals of the initial design. Insufficient complexity of the environment (not enough data, poor fitness functions)—It is possible that the simulated environment is not complex enough to generate high complexity outputs in evolutionary simulations. This does not seem correct as Internet presents a highly complex landscape in which many self-modifying computer viruses roam. Likewise, virtual world such as Second Life and many others present close approximations to the real world and are certainly more complex than early Earth was: A skeptic might insist that an abstract environment would be inadequate for the evolution . . ., believing instead that the virtual environment would need to closely resemble the actual biological environment in which our ancestors evolved. Creating a physically realistic virtual world would require a far greater investment of computational resources than the simulation of a simple toy world or abstract problem domain (whereas evolution had access to a physically realistic real world “for free”). In the limiting case, if complete microphysical accuracy were insisted upon, the computational requirements would balloon to utterly infeasible proportions. Requiring more realistic environmental conditions may result in an increase in necessary computational resources, a problem addressed in the next bullet. Insufficient resources (compute, memory)—From the history of computer science, we know of many situations (speech recognition, NN training), where we had a correct algorithm but insufficient computational resources to run it to success. It is possible that we simply do not have hardware powerful enough to emulate evolution. We will address this possibility in section “Computational Complexity of Biological Evolution and Available Compute.” Software design is not amenable to evolutionary methods—Space of software designs may be discrete with no continuous path via incremental fitness to the desired solutions. This is possible, but this implies that original goals of GP are unattainable and misguided. In addition, because a clear mapping exists between solutions to problems and animals as solutions to environmental problems, this would also imply that current explanation for the origin of the species is incorrect. Darwinian algorithm is incomplete or wrong—Finally, we have to consider the possibility that the inspiration behind evolutionary computation, the Darwinian algorithm itself is wrong or at least partially incomplete. If that was true, computer simulations of such algorithm would fail to produce results comparable with observations we see in nature and a search for an alternative algorithm would need to take place. This would be an extraordinary claim and would require that we discard all the other possible explanations from this list. We challenge EA community to prove us wrong by producing an experiment, which evolves nontrivial software from scratch and without human help. That would be the only way in which our findings could be shown to be incorrect. Perhaps, reframing the problem in terms of maximizing negentropy of digital organisms, as suggested by Schrödinger, Michaelian, and Ulanowicz and Hannon, with respect to negative energy being a fundamental property of all life-forms may produce better results. On a positive side, the fact that it seems impossible to evolve complex software implies that we are unlikely to be able to evolve highly sophisticated artificially intelligent agents, which may present significant risk to our safety and security. Just imagine what would have happened, if the very first time we ran a simulation of evolution on a computer, it produced a superintelligent agent. Yampolskiy has shown that programming as a problem is AI-complete; if GP can solve programming that would imply that GP = AGI (artificial general intelligence), but we see no experimental evidence for such claim. In fact, it is more likely that once we have AGI, it could be used to create an intelligent fitness function for GP and so evolve software. Genetic programming will not be the cause of AI, but a product of it. However, neuroevolution methods for optimizing deep learning architectures and parameters remain a strong possibility for creation of AGI.

[P]MMML | Deploy HuggingFace training model rapidly based on MetaSpore

A few days ago, HuggingFace announced a $100 million Series C funding round, which was big news in open source machine learning and could be a sign of where the industry is headed. Two days before the HuggingFace funding announcement, open-source machine learning platform MetaSpore released a demo based on the HuggingFace Rapid deployment pre-training model. As deep learning technology makes innovative breakthroughs in computer vision, natural language processing, speech understanding, and other fields, more and more unstructured data are perceived, understood, and processed by machines. These advances are mainly due to the powerful learning ability of deep learning. Through pre-training of deep models on massive data, the models can capture the internal data patterns, thus helping many downstream tasks. With the industry and academia investing more and more energy in the research of pre-training technology, the distribution warehouses of pre-training models such as HuggingFace and Timm have emerged one after another. The open-source community release pre-training significant model dividends at an unprecedented speed. In recent years, the data form of machine modeling and understanding has gradually evolved from single-mode to multi-mode, and the semantic gap between different modes is being eliminated, making it possible to retrieve data across modes. Take CLIP, OpenAI’s open-source work, as an example, to pre-train the twin towers of images and texts on a dataset of 400 million pictures and texts and connect the semantics between pictures and texts. Many researchers in the academic world have been solving multimodal problems such as image generation and retrieval based on this technology. Although the frontier technology through the semantic gap between modal data, there is still a heavy and complicated model tuning, offline data processing, high performance online reasoning architecture design, heterogeneous computing, and online algorithm be born multiple processes and challenges, hindering the frontier multimodal retrieval technologies fall to the ground and pratt &whitney. DMetaSoul aims at the above technical pain points, abstracting and uniting many links such as model training optimization, online reasoning, and algorithm experiment, forming a set of solutions that can quickly apply offline pre-training model to online. This paper will introduce how to use the HuggingFace community pre-training model to conduct online reasoning and algorithm experiments based on MetaSpore technology ecology so that the benefits of the pre-training model can be fully released to the specific business or industry and small and medium-sized enterprises. And we will give the text search text and text search graph two multimodal retrieval demonstration examples for your reference. Multimodal semantic retrieval The sample architecture of multimodal retrieval is as follows: Our multimodal retrieval system supports both text search and text search application scenarios, including offline processing, model reasoning, online services, and other core modules: &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/w4v4c7vcez291.png?width=1834&format=png&auto=webp&s=0687efb1fddb26e8e30cb844d398ec712b947f31 Offline processing, including offline data processing processes for different application scenarios of text search and text search, including model tuning, model export, data index database construction, data push, etc. Model inference. After the offline model training, we deployed our NLP and CV large models based on the MetaSpore Serving framework. MetaSpore Serving helps us conveniently perform online inference, elastic scheduling, load balancing, and resource scheduling in heterogeneous environments. Online services. Based on MetaSpore’s online algorithm application framework, MetaSpore has a complete set of reusable online search services, including Front-end retrieval UI, multimodal data preprocessing, vector recall and sorting algorithm, AB experimental framework, etc. MetaSpore also supports text search by text and image scene search by text and can be migrated to other application scenarios at a low cost. The HuggingFace open source community has provided several excellent baseline models for similar multimodal retrieval problems, which are often the starting point for actual optimization in the industry. MetaSpore also uses the pre-training model of the HuggingFace community in its online services of searching words by words and images by words. Searching words by words is based on the semantic similarity model of the question and answer field optimized by MetaSpore, and searching images by words is based on the community pre-training model. These community open source pre-training models are exported to the general ONNX format and loaded into MetaSpore Serving for online reasoning. The following sections will provide a detailed description of the model export and online retrieval algorithm services. The reasoning part of the model is standardized SAAS services with low coupling with the business. Interested readers can refer to my previous post: The design concept of MetaSpore, a new generation of the one-stop machine learning platform. 1.1 Offline Processing Offline processing mainly involves the export and loading of online models and index building and pushing of the document library. You can follow the step-by-step instructions below to complete the offline processing of text search and image search and see how the offline pre-training model achieves reasoning at MetaSpore. 1.1.1 Search text by text Traditional text retrieval systems are based on literal matching algorithms such as BM25. Due to users’ diverse query words, a semantic gap between query words and documents is often encountered. For example, users misspell “iPhone” as “Phone,” and search terms are incredibly long, such as “1 \~ 3 months old baby autumn small size bag pants”. Traditional text retrieval systems will use spelling correction, synonym expansion, search terms rewriting, and other means to alleviate the semantic gap but fundamentally fail to solve this problem. Only when the retrieval system fully understands users’ query terms and documents can it meet users’ retrieval demands at the semantic level. With the continuous progress of pre-training and representational learning technology, some commercial search engines continue to integrate semantic vector retrieval methods based on symbolic learning into the retrieval ecology. Semantic retrieval model This paper introduces a set of semantic vector retrieval applications. MetaSpore built a set of semantic retrieval systems based on encyclopedia question and answer data. MetaSpore adopted the Sentence-Bert model as the semantic vector representation model, which fine-tunes the twin tower BERT in supervised or unsupervised ways to make the model more suitable for retrieval tasks. The model structure is as follows: The query-Doc symmetric two-tower model is used in text search and question and answer retrieval. The vector representation of online Query and offline DOC share the same vector representation model, so it is necessary to ensure the consistency of the offline DOC library building model and online Query inference model. The case uses MetaSpore’s text representation model Sbert-Chinese-QMC-domain-V1, optimized in the open-source semantically similar data set. This model will express the question and answer data as a vector in offline database construction. The user query will be expressed as a vector by this model in online retrieval, ensuring that query-doc in the same semantic space, users’ semantic retrieval demands can be guaranteed by vector similarity metric calculation. Since the text presentation model does vector encoding for Query online, we need to export the model for use by the online service. Go to the q&A data library code directory and export the model concerning the documentation. In the script, Pytorch Tracing is used to export the model. The models are exported to the “./export “directory. The exported models are mainly ONNX models used for wired reasoning, Tokenizer, and related configuration files. The exported models are loaded into MetaSpore Serving by the online Serving system described below for model reasoning. Since the exported model will be copied to the cloud storage, you need to configure related variables in env.sh. \Build library based on text search \ The retrieval database is built on the million-level encyclopedia question and answer data set. According to the description document, you need to download the data and complete the database construction. The question and answer data will be coded as a vector by the offline model, and then the database construction data will be pushed to the service component. The whole process of database construction is described as follows: Preprocessing, converting the original data into a more general JSonline format for database construction; Build index, use the same model as online “sbert-Chinese-qmc-domain-v1” to index documents (one document object per line); Push inverted (vector) and forward (document field) data to each component server. The following is an example of the database data format. After offline database construction is completed, various data are pushed to corresponding service components, such as Milvus storing vector representation of documents and MongoDB storing summary information of documents. Online retrieval algorithm services will use these service components to obtain relevant data. 1.1.2 Search by text Text and images are easy for humans to relate semantically but difficult for machines. First of all, from the perspective of data form, the text is the discrete ID type of one-dimensional data based on words and words. At the same time, images are continuous two-dimensional or three-dimensional data. Secondly, the text is a subjective creation of human beings, and its expressive ability is vibrant, including various turning points, metaphors, and other expressions, while images are machine representations of the objective world. In short, bridging the semantic gap between text and image data is much more complex than searching text by text. The traditional text search image retrieval technology generally relies on the external text description data of the image or the nearest neighbor retrieval technology and carries out the retrieval through the image associated text, which in essence degrades the problem to text search. However, it will also face many issues, such as obtaining the associated text of pictures and whether the accuracy of text search by text is high enough. The depth model has gradually evolved from single-mode to multi-mode in recent years. Taking the open-source project of OpenAI, CLIP, as an example, train the model through the massive image and text data of the Internet and map the text and image data into the same semantic space, making it possible to implement the text and image search technology based on semantic vector. CLIP graphic model The text search pictures introduced in this paper are implemented based on semantic vector retrieval, and the CLIP pre-training model is used as the two-tower retrieval architecture. Because the CLIP model has trained the semantic alignment of the twin towers’ text and image side models on the massive graphic and text data, it is particularly suitable for the text search graph scene. Due to the different image and text data forms, the Query-Doc asymmetric twin towers model is used for text search image retrieval. The image-side model of the twin towers is used for offline database construction, and the text-side model is used for the online return. In the final online retrieval, the database data of the image side model will be searched after the text side model encodes Query, and the CLIP pre-training model guarantees the semantic correlation between images and texts. The model can draw the graphic pairs closer in vector space by pre-training on a large amount of visual data. Here we need to export the text-side model for online MetaSpore Serving inference. Since the retrieval scene is based on Chinese, the CLIP model supporting Chinese understanding is selected. The exported content includes the ONNX model used for online reasoning and Tokenizer, similar to the text search. MetaSpore Serving can load model reasoning through the exported content. Build library on Image search You need to download the Unsplash Lite library data and complete the construction according to the instructions. The whole process of database construction is described as follows: Preprocessing, specify the image directory, and then generate a more general JSOnline file for library construction; Build index, use OpenAI/Clip-Vit-BASE-Patch32 pre-training model to index the gallery, and output one document object for each line of index data; Push inverted (vector) and forward (document field) data to each component server. Like text search, after offline database construction, relevant data will be pushed to service components, called by online retrieval algorithm services to obtain relevant data. 1.2 Online Services The overall online service architecture diagram is as follows: https://preview.redd.it/jfsl8hdfez291.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=a858e2304a0c93e78ba5429612ca08cbee69b35a Multi-mode search online service system supports application scenarios such as text search and text search. The whole online service consists of the following parts: Query preprocessing service: encapsulate preprocessing logic (including text/image, etc.) of pre-training model, and provide services through gRPC interface; Retrieval algorithm service: the whole algorithm processing link includes AB experiment tangent flow configuration, MetaSpore Serving call, vector recall, sorting, document summary, etc.; User entry service: provides a Web UI interface for users to debug and track down problems in the retrieval service. From a user request perspective, these services form invocation dependencies from back to front, so to build up a multimodal sample, you need to run each service from front to back first. Before doing this, remember to export the offline model, put it online and build the library first. This article will introduce the various parts of the online service system and make the whole service system step by step according to the following guidance. See the ReadME at the end of this article for more details. 1.2.1 Query preprocessing service Deep learning models tend to be based on tensors, but NLP/CV models often have a preprocessing part that translates raw text and images into tensors that deep learning models can accept. For example, NLP class models often have a pre-tokenizer to transform text data of string type into discrete tensor data. CV class models also have similar processing logic to complete the cropping, scaling, transformation, and other processing of input images through preprocessing. On the one hand, considering that this part of preprocessing logic is decoupled from tensor reasoning of the depth model, on the other hand, the reason of the depth model has an independent technical system based on ONNX, so MetaSpore disassembled this part of preprocessing logic. NLP pretreatment Tokenizer has been integrated into the Query pretreatment service. MetaSpore dismantlement with a relatively general convention. Users only need to provide preprocessing logic files to realize the loading and prediction interface and export the necessary data and configuration files loaded into the preprocessing service. Subsequent CV preprocessing logic will also be integrated in this manner. The preprocessing service currently provides the gRPC interface invocation externally and is dependent on the Query preprocessing (QP) module in the retrieval algorithm service. After the user request reaches the retrieval algorithm service, it will be forwarded to the service to complete the data preprocessing and continue the subsequent processing. The ReadMe provides details on how the preprocessing service is started, how the preprocessing model exported offline to cloud storage enters the service, and how to debug the service. To further improve the efficiency and stability of model reasoning, MetaSpore Serving implements a Python preprocessing submodule. So MetaSpore can provide gRPC services through user-specified preprocessor.py, complete Tokenizer or CV-related preprocessing in NLP, and translate requests into a Tensor that deep models can handle. Finally, the model inference is carried out by MetaSpore, Serving subsequent sub-modules. Presented here on the lot code: https://github.com/meta-soul/MetaSpore/compare/add\python\preprocessor 1.2.2 Retrieval algorithm services Retrieval algorithm service is the core of the whole online service system, which is responsible for the triage of experiments, the assembly of algorithm chains such as preprocessing, recall, sorting, and the invocation of dependent component services. The whole retrieval algorithm service is developed based on the Java Spring framework and supports multi-mode retrieval scenarios of text search and text search graph. Due to good internal abstraction and modular design, it has high flexibility and can be migrated to similar application scenarios at a low cost. Here’s a quick guide to configuring the environment to set up the retrieval algorithm service. See ReadME for more details: Install dependent components. Use Maven to install the online-Serving component Search for service configurations. Copy the template configuration file and replace the MongoDB, Milvus, and other configurations based on the development/production environment. Install and configure Consul. Consul allows you to synchronize the search service configuration in real-time, including cutting the flow of experiments, recall parameters, and sorting parameters. The project’s configuration file shows the current configuration parameters of text search and text search. The parameter modelName in the stage of pretreatment and recall is the corresponding model exported in offline processing. Start the service. Once the above configuration is complete, the retrieval service can be started from the entry script. Once the service is started, you can test it! For example, for a user with userId=10 who wants to query “How to renew ID card,” access the text search service. 1.2.3 User Entry Service Considering that the retrieval algorithm service is in the form of the API interface, it is difficult to locate and trace the problem, especially for the text search image scene can intuitively display the retrieval results to facilitate the iterative optimization of the retrieval algorithm. This paper provides a lightweight Web UI interface for text search and image search, a search input box, and results in a display page for users. Developed by Flask, the service can be easily integrated with other retrieval applications. The service calls the retrieval algorithm service and displays the returned results on the page. It’s also easy to install and start the service. Once you’re done, go to http://127.0.0.1:8090 to see if the search UI service is working correctly. See the ReadME at the end of this article for details. Multimodal system demonstration The multimodal retrieval service can be started when offline processing and online service environment configuration have been completed following the above instructions. Examples of textual searches are shown below. Enter the entry of the text search map application, enter “cat” first, and you can see that the first three digits of the returned result are cats: https://preview.redd.it/0n5nuyvhez291.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=1e9c054f541d53381674b8d6001b4bf524506bd2 If you add a color constraint to “cat” to retrieve “black cat,” you can see that it does return a black cat: https://preview.redd.it/rzc0qjyjez291.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=d5bcc503ef0fb3360c7740e60e295cf372dcad47 Further, strengthen the constraint on the search term, change it to “black cat on the bed,” and return results containing pictures of a black cat climbing on the bed: &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/c4b2q8olez291.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=4f3817b0b9f07e1e68d1d4a8281702ba3834a00a The cat can still be found through the text search system after the color and scene modification in the above example. Conclusion The cutting-edge pre-training technology can bridge the semantic gap between different modes, and the HuggingFace community can greatly reduce the cost for developers to use the pre-training model. Combined with the technological ecology of MetaSpore online reasoning and online microservices provided by DMetaSpore, the pre-training model is no longer mere offline dabbling. Instead, it can truly achieve end-to-end implementation from cutting-edge technology to industrial scenarios, fully releasing the dividends of the pre-training large model. In the future, DMetaSoul will continue to improve and optimize the MetaSpore technology ecosystem: More automated and wider access to HuggingFace community ecology. MetaSpore will soon release a common model rollout mechanism to make HuggingFace ecologically accessible and will later integrate preprocessing services into online services. Multi-mode retrieval offline algorithm optimization. For multimodal retrieval scenarios, MetaSpore will continuously iteratively optimize offline algorithm components, including text recall/sort model, graphic recall/sort model, etc., to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the retrieval algorithm. For related code and reference documentation in this article, please visit: https://github.com/meta-soul/MetaSpore/tree/main/demo/multimodal/online Some images source: https://github.com/openai/CLIP/raw/main/CLIP.png https://www.sbert.net/examples/training/sts/README.html

[N] AI Robotics startup Covariant (founded by Peter Chen, Pieter Abbeel, other Berkeley / ex-OpenAI folks) just raised $40M in Series B funding round. “Covariant has recently seen increased usage from clients hoping to avoid supply chain disruption due to the coronavirus pandemic.”

h/t their announcement, VB and WSJ article: Logistics AI Startup Covariant Reaps $40 Million in Funding Round Company plans to explore uses of machine learning for automation beyond warehouse operations Artificial-intelligence robotics startup Covariant raised $40 million to expand its logistics automation technology to new industries and ramp up hiring, the company said Wednesday. The Berkeley, Calif.-based company makes AI software that it says helps warehouse robots pick objects at a faster rate than human workers, with a roughly 95% accuracy rate. Covariant is working with Austrian logistics-automation company Knapp AG and the robotics business of Swiss industrial conglomerate ABB Ltd., which provide hardware such as robot arms or conveyor belts to pair with the startup’s technology platform. “What we’ve built is a universal brain for robotic manipulation tasks,” Covariant co-founder and Chief Executive Peter Chen said in an interview. “We provide the software, they provide the rest of the systems.” Logistics-sector appetite for such technology is growing as distribution and fulfillment operations that have relied on human labor look to speed output and meet rising digital commerce demand. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated that interest as businesses have sought to adjust their operations to volatile swings in consumer demand and to new restrictions, such as spacing workers further apart to guard against contagion. That has provided a bright spot for some technology startups even as many big backers scale back venture-capital spending. Last month logistics delivery platform Bringg said it raised $30 million in a Series D funding round, for example, as demand for home delivery of food, household goods and e-commerce staples soared among homebound consumers. Covariant’s Series B round brings the company’s total funding to $67 million. New investor Index Ventures led the round, with participation from existing investor Amplify Partners and new investors including Radical Ventures. Mr. Chen said the funding will be used to explore the technology’s potential application in other markets such as manufacturing, recycling or agriculture “where there are repetitive manual processes.” Covariant also plans to hire more engineering and other staff, he said. Covariant was founded in 2017 and now has about 50 employees. The company’s technology uses camera systems to capture images of objects, and artificial intelligence to analyze objects and how to pick them up. Machine learning helps Covariant-powered robots learn from experience. The startup’s customers include a German electrical supplies wholesaler that uses the technology to control a mechanical arm that picks out orders of circuit boards, switches and other goods.

[N] Last Week in AI News Digest - Automated chemical synthesis, using heartbeats to detect deepfakes, and more!

Hi there, just sharing the latest edition of our AI news digest newsletter! We're just a couple of AI grad students doing this for fun, so hope the self promotion is not too annoying (also, welcome feedback). See it below, and feel free to subscribe. Mini Briefs Robotics, AI, and Cloud Computing Combine to Supercharge Chemical and Drug Synthesis IBM recently demoed a complex system for chemical testing and drug synthesis. The system has an AI component that predicts the results of chemical reactions, and a fully automated robotic experiment setup that runs chemical tests 24/7. Users can access the remote robotics lab online, and IBM can also install the system on-premise. With these tools working together, IBM is hoping to reduce typical drug discovery and verification time by half. AI researchers use heartbeat detection to identify deepfake videos Researchers from multiple groups are tackling the challenge of detecting deepfake videos by analyzing the apparent heartbeat of the people depicted in the video. This is possible, because a person’s blood flow changes their skin color ever so slightly, and this change is often detectable via a process called photoplethysmography (PPG). Because deepfakes are not currently optimizing to generate realisitic heartbeats, temporal or spatial anomalies in PPG signals allow resesarchers to detect deepfakes with a 97% accuracy. Advances & Business This AI Expert From Senegal Is Helping Showcase Africans In STEM \- Adji Bousso Dieng will be Princeton’s School of Engineering’s first Black female faculty. Google’s AI-powered flood alerts now cover all of India and parts of Bangladesh \- India, the world’s second most populated nation, sees more than 20% of the global flood-related fatalities each year as overrun riverbanks sweep tens of thousands of homes with them. Two years ago, Google volunteered to help. Finding magnetic eruptions in space with an AI assistant \- MMS look for explosive reconnection events as it flies through the magnetopause - the boundary region where Earth’s magnetic butts up against the solar wind that flows throughout the solar system. This know-it-all AI learns by reading the entire web nonstop \- Diffbot is building the biggest-ever knowledge graph by applying image recognition and natural-language processing to billions of web pages. Bosch and Ford will test autonomous parking in Detroit \- Ford, Bosch, and Dan Gilbert’s real estate firm Bedrock today detailed an autonomous parking pilot scheduled to launch in September at The Assembly, a mixed-used building in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood. Create your own moody quarantine music with Google’s AI \- Lo-Fi Player, the latest project out of Google Magenta, lets you mix tunes with the help of machine learning by interacting with a virtual room. Apple launches AI/ML residency program to attract niche experts \- As Apple’s artificial language and machine learning initiatives continue to expand, its interest in attracting talent has grown - a theme that’s barely under the surface of the company’s occasionally updated Machine Learning Research blog. Dusty Robotics CEO Tessa Lau Discusses Robotics Start-Ups and Autonomous Robots for Construction \- Tessa Lau is Founder/CEO at Dusty Robotics, whose mission is to increase construction industry productivity by introducing robotic automation on the jobsite. Concerns & Hype Google Offers to Help Others With the Tricky Ethics of AI \- Companies pay cloud computing providers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google big money to avoid operating their own digital infrastructure. The Peace Dividends Of The Autonomous Vehicle Wars \- The rapid growth of the mobile market in the late 2000s and early 2010s led to a burst of technological progress. Ethics must be part of the development process’ \- The increasing use of AI (artificial intelligence) in the development of new medical technologies demands greater attention to ethical aspects. Analysis & Policy China’s new AI trade rules could hamper a TikTok sale \- TikTok’s attempt to sell itself and avert a possible US ban may run into some complications. The Wall Street Journal reports that China has unveiled new restrictions on AI technology exports that could affect TikTok. Podcast Check out our weekly podcast covering these stories! Website | RSS | iTunes | Spotify | YouTube

[R] TaskMatrix.AI: Completing Tasks by Connecting Foundation Models with Millions of APIs - Yaobo Liang et al Microsoft 2023

Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.16434 Abstract: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made incredible progress recently. On the one hand, advanced foundation models like ChatGPT can offer powerful conversation, in-context learning and code generation abilities on a broad range of open-domain tasks. They can also generate high-level solution outlines for domain-specific tasks based on the common sense knowledge they have acquired. However, they still face difficulties with some specialized tasks because they lack enough domain specific data during pre-training or they often have errors in their neural network computations on those tasks that need accurate executions. On the other hand, there are also many existing models and systems (symbolic-based or neural-based) that can do some domain specific tasks very well. However, due to the different implementation or working mechanisms, they are not easily accessible or compatible with foundation models. Therefore, there is a clear and pressing need for a mechanism that can leverage foundation models to propose task solution outlines and then automatically match some of the sub tasks in the outlines to the off-the-shelf models and systems with special functionalities to complete them. Inspired by this, we introduce TaskMatrix.AI as a new AI ecosystem that connects foundation models with millions of APIs for task completion. Unlike most previous work that aimed to improve a single AI model, TaskMatrix.AI focuses more on using existing foundation models (as a brain-like central system) and APIs of other AI models and systems (as sub-task solvers) to achieve diversified tasks in both digital and physical domains. As a position paper, we will present our vision of how to build such an ecosystem, explain each key component, and use study cases to illustrate both the feasibility of this vision and the main challenges we need to address next. https://preview.redd.it/0guexiznhxqa1.jpg?width=979&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e5d818ae789cfc493cfb82fdf8b002a8dfe11939

[P] Contextual AI – SAP’s first open-source machine learning library for explainability

Machine learning shows great promise in the enterprise software space to change the way data is processed, insights are gained, and businesses are run. However, given how relatively new this field is, data scientists and machine learning engineers often find themselves possessing more questions than answers about their data and machine learning models. These may include: Is my data “valid,” or fit for training a machine learning model? Which parts of my data are more influential on the machine learning model’s learning outcomes? Why did the model make that prediction? At SAP, where we develop enterprise software embedded with machine learning, answering such questions with explainability is becoming a critical part of building trust with customers. Indeed, in products such as SAP Cash Application, where we automate the processing of various financial documents, providing a “why” to machine learning predictions has not only built transparency to our users, but it also helps establish the necessary auditability in our products. Explainability is thus becoming a topic of increasing interest to many in the company, and a group of us have been working on developing reusable explainability components that can be used by others. We are therefore excited to announce the release of contextual AI, SAP’s first open-source machine learning framework focused on adding explainability to various stages of a machine learning pipeline – data, training, and inference – thereby addressing the trust gap between machine learning systems and their end-users. Below are a few links for more information about our project: GitHub repository Documentation Blog post on the release We welcome any questions/feedback/contributions. Thanks, and take care!

[P] Building a Code Search Engine for an AI-powered Junior Developer

The last month building Sweep has been fun. We’ve dealt with countless formatting errors, irrelevant search results, and LLM hallucinations. Sweep is an open source AI-powered junior developer. We take your codebase and provide it as context to GPT to solve small requests related to your code. Code Search Code search is a key part of working with LLMs to automate programming. We used small language models to perform code retrieval(aka semantic search), which comes with several benefits (to be discussed in a later post!). However, one shortcoming of pure semantic search is distinguishing between two similar pieces of code in a vacuum. Example Take the following code snippets: Code Snippet A: accesstoken = os.environ.get("ACCESSTOKEN") g = Github(access_token) repo_name = "sweepai/bot-internal" issue_url = "github.com/sweepai/bot-internal/issues/28" username = "wwzeng1" repo_description = "A repo for Sweep" title = "Sweep: Use loguru.info to show the number of tokens in the anthropic call" summary = "" replies_text = "" Code Snippet B: g = getgithubclient(installation_id) if comment_id: logger.info(f"Replying to comment {comment_id}...") logger.info(f"Getting repo {repofullname}") repo = g.getrepo(repofull_name) currentissue = repo.getissue(number=issue_number) if current_issue.state == 'closed': posthog.capture(username, "issue_closed", properties=metadata) return {"success": False, "reason": "Issue is closed"} Explanation It might not be clear which file is more important, but Code Snippet A is from test\pr\diffs.py#L63-L71 (a test I wrote that’s no longer used), while B is from on\ticket.py#L87-L96 (our core logic for handling tickets). Since Code Snippet B is in an often used file, it is likely that this snippet will be more relevant as input to the LLM. Problem How can we differentiate between these two pieces of code when they’re both so similar? They both discuss issues, repositories, and some usernames. If the user asks “How can I change the username when creating an issue” it will be hard to differentiate between these two. Solution The trick is a ranking model. An important piece of ranking results is the concept of “quality”, i.e. what makes a file or snippet of code intrinsically valuable to the user. The results from our vector search model are a list of items (test\pr\diffs.py#L63-L71, on\ticket.py#L87C1-L96C63) and similarity scores (0.65, 0.63). By combining intuition and attention to the data, we can create a ranking model that is “personalized” for each repository we onboard. Ideas File Length Up to a point, longer files are generally more valuable for search. A 20-line file is probably not valuable unless the user specifically asks for it. However, 2000-line config files should not be ranked much higher either. linecountscore = min(line_count / 20, 10) Number of Commits The more commits a file has, the more valuable it is. This lets us distinguish between one off tests and core logic (which should receive the majority of commits). commitscore = numcommits + 1 Recency of changes The more recently a file was modified, the better. recencyscore = hourssincelastmodified + 1 Scoring To get the final score, we normalize and multiply these three scores together and add the similarity score. qualityscore = linecountscore * commitscore / recency_score finalscore = qualityscore/max(qualityscore) + similarityscore This solution usually worked fine, but we saw the same unexpected files showing up often. The max normalization was not enough. We fixed this by squashing the scores into percentiles, and then capping the increase at .25. In this case, the best result gets a .25 boost and the worst gets no boost. This lets us avoid fetching tests and configs which seem similar, and instead fetch business logic that actually helps Sweep write code! Sweep GitHub If this was interesting, take a look through our github repo (and give it a star!).https://github.com/sweepai/sweep

[P]MMML | Deploy HuggingFace training model rapidly based on MetaSpore

A few days ago, HuggingFace announced a $100 million Series C funding round, which was big news in open source machine learning and could be a sign of where the industry is headed. Two days before the HuggingFace funding announcement, open-source machine learning platform MetaSpore released a demo based on the HuggingFace Rapid deployment pre-training model. As deep learning technology makes innovative breakthroughs in computer vision, natural language processing, speech understanding, and other fields, more and more unstructured data are perceived, understood, and processed by machines. These advances are mainly due to the powerful learning ability of deep learning. Through pre-training of deep models on massive data, the models can capture the internal data patterns, thus helping many downstream tasks. With the industry and academia investing more and more energy in the research of pre-training technology, the distribution warehouses of pre-training models such as HuggingFace and Timm have emerged one after another. The open-source community release pre-training significant model dividends at an unprecedented speed. In recent years, the data form of machine modeling and understanding has gradually evolved from single-mode to multi-mode, and the semantic gap between different modes is being eliminated, making it possible to retrieve data across modes. Take CLIP, OpenAI’s open-source work, as an example, to pre-train the twin towers of images and texts on a dataset of 400 million pictures and texts and connect the semantics between pictures and texts. Many researchers in the academic world have been solving multimodal problems such as image generation and retrieval based on this technology. Although the frontier technology through the semantic gap between modal data, there is still a heavy and complicated model tuning, offline data processing, high performance online reasoning architecture design, heterogeneous computing, and online algorithm be born multiple processes and challenges, hindering the frontier multimodal retrieval technologies fall to the ground and pratt &whitney. DMetaSoul aims at the above technical pain points, abstracting and uniting many links such as model training optimization, online reasoning, and algorithm experiment, forming a set of solutions that can quickly apply offline pre-training model to online. This paper will introduce how to use the HuggingFace community pre-training model to conduct online reasoning and algorithm experiments based on MetaSpore technology ecology so that the benefits of the pre-training model can be fully released to the specific business or industry and small and medium-sized enterprises. And we will give the text search text and text search graph two multimodal retrieval demonstration examples for your reference. Multimodal semantic retrieval The sample architecture of multimodal retrieval is as follows: Our multimodal retrieval system supports both text search and text search application scenarios, including offline processing, model reasoning, online services, and other core modules: &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/w4v4c7vcez291.png?width=1834&format=png&auto=webp&s=0687efb1fddb26e8e30cb844d398ec712b947f31 Offline processing, including offline data processing processes for different application scenarios of text search and text search, including model tuning, model export, data index database construction, data push, etc. Model inference. After the offline model training, we deployed our NLP and CV large models based on the MetaSpore Serving framework. MetaSpore Serving helps us conveniently perform online inference, elastic scheduling, load balancing, and resource scheduling in heterogeneous environments. Online services. Based on MetaSpore’s online algorithm application framework, MetaSpore has a complete set of reusable online search services, including Front-end retrieval UI, multimodal data preprocessing, vector recall and sorting algorithm, AB experimental framework, etc. MetaSpore also supports text search by text and image scene search by text and can be migrated to other application scenarios at a low cost. The HuggingFace open source community has provided several excellent baseline models for similar multimodal retrieval problems, which are often the starting point for actual optimization in the industry. MetaSpore also uses the pre-training model of the HuggingFace community in its online services of searching words by words and images by words. Searching words by words is based on the semantic similarity model of the question and answer field optimized by MetaSpore, and searching images by words is based on the community pre-training model. These community open source pre-training models are exported to the general ONNX format and loaded into MetaSpore Serving for online reasoning. The following sections will provide a detailed description of the model export and online retrieval algorithm services. The reasoning part of the model is standardized SAAS services with low coupling with the business. Interested readers can refer to my previous post: The design concept of MetaSpore, a new generation of the one-stop machine learning platform. 1.1 Offline Processing Offline processing mainly involves the export and loading of online models and index building and pushing of the document library. You can follow the step-by-step instructions below to complete the offline processing of text search and image search and see how the offline pre-training model achieves reasoning at MetaSpore. 1.1.1 Search text by text Traditional text retrieval systems are based on literal matching algorithms such as BM25. Due to users’ diverse query words, a semantic gap between query words and documents is often encountered. For example, users misspell “iPhone” as “Phone,” and search terms are incredibly long, such as “1 \~ 3 months old baby autumn small size bag pants”. Traditional text retrieval systems will use spelling correction, synonym expansion, search terms rewriting, and other means to alleviate the semantic gap but fundamentally fail to solve this problem. Only when the retrieval system fully understands users’ query terms and documents can it meet users’ retrieval demands at the semantic level. With the continuous progress of pre-training and representational learning technology, some commercial search engines continue to integrate semantic vector retrieval methods based on symbolic learning into the retrieval ecology. Semantic retrieval model This paper introduces a set of semantic vector retrieval applications. MetaSpore built a set of semantic retrieval systems based on encyclopedia question and answer data. MetaSpore adopted the Sentence-Bert model as the semantic vector representation model, which fine-tunes the twin tower BERT in supervised or unsupervised ways to make the model more suitable for retrieval tasks. The model structure is as follows: The query-Doc symmetric two-tower model is used in text search and question and answer retrieval. The vector representation of online Query and offline DOC share the same vector representation model, so it is necessary to ensure the consistency of the offline DOC library building model and online Query inference model. The case uses MetaSpore’s text representation model Sbert-Chinese-QMC-domain-V1, optimized in the open-source semantically similar data set. This model will express the question and answer data as a vector in offline database construction. The user query will be expressed as a vector by this model in online retrieval, ensuring that query-doc in the same semantic space, users’ semantic retrieval demands can be guaranteed by vector similarity metric calculation. Since the text presentation model does vector encoding for Query online, we need to export the model for use by the online service. Go to the q&A data library code directory and export the model concerning the documentation. In the script, Pytorch Tracing is used to export the model. The models are exported to the “./export “directory. The exported models are mainly ONNX models used for wired reasoning, Tokenizer, and related configuration files. The exported models are loaded into MetaSpore Serving by the online Serving system described below for model reasoning. Since the exported model will be copied to the cloud storage, you need to configure related variables in env.sh. \Build library based on text search \ The retrieval database is built on the million-level encyclopedia question and answer data set. According to the description document, you need to download the data and complete the database construction. The question and answer data will be coded as a vector by the offline model, and then the database construction data will be pushed to the service component. The whole process of database construction is described as follows: Preprocessing, converting the original data into a more general JSonline format for database construction; Build index, use the same model as online “sbert-Chinese-qmc-domain-v1” to index documents (one document object per line); Push inverted (vector) and forward (document field) data to each component server. The following is an example of the database data format. After offline database construction is completed, various data are pushed to corresponding service components, such as Milvus storing vector representation of documents and MongoDB storing summary information of documents. Online retrieval algorithm services will use these service components to obtain relevant data. 1.1.2 Search by text Text and images are easy for humans to relate semantically but difficult for machines. First of all, from the perspective of data form, the text is the discrete ID type of one-dimensional data based on words and words. At the same time, images are continuous two-dimensional or three-dimensional data. Secondly, the text is a subjective creation of human beings, and its expressive ability is vibrant, including various turning points, metaphors, and other expressions, while images are machine representations of the objective world. In short, bridging the semantic gap between text and image data is much more complex than searching text by text. The traditional text search image retrieval technology generally relies on the external text description data of the image or the nearest neighbor retrieval technology and carries out the retrieval through the image associated text, which in essence degrades the problem to text search. However, it will also face many issues, such as obtaining the associated text of pictures and whether the accuracy of text search by text is high enough. The depth model has gradually evolved from single-mode to multi-mode in recent years. Taking the open-source project of OpenAI, CLIP, as an example, train the model through the massive image and text data of the Internet and map the text and image data into the same semantic space, making it possible to implement the text and image search technology based on semantic vector. CLIP graphic model The text search pictures introduced in this paper are implemented based on semantic vector retrieval, and the CLIP pre-training model is used as the two-tower retrieval architecture. Because the CLIP model has trained the semantic alignment of the twin towers’ text and image side models on the massive graphic and text data, it is particularly suitable for the text search graph scene. Due to the different image and text data forms, the Query-Doc asymmetric twin towers model is used for text search image retrieval. The image-side model of the twin towers is used for offline database construction, and the text-side model is used for the online return. In the final online retrieval, the database data of the image side model will be searched after the text side model encodes Query, and the CLIP pre-training model guarantees the semantic correlation between images and texts. The model can draw the graphic pairs closer in vector space by pre-training on a large amount of visual data. Here we need to export the text-side model for online MetaSpore Serving inference. Since the retrieval scene is based on Chinese, the CLIP model supporting Chinese understanding is selected. The exported content includes the ONNX model used for online reasoning and Tokenizer, similar to the text search. MetaSpore Serving can load model reasoning through the exported content. Build library on Image search You need to download the Unsplash Lite library data and complete the construction according to the instructions. The whole process of database construction is described as follows: Preprocessing, specify the image directory, and then generate a more general JSOnline file for library construction; Build index, use OpenAI/Clip-Vit-BASE-Patch32 pre-training model to index the gallery, and output one document object for each line of index data; Push inverted (vector) and forward (document field) data to each component server. Like text search, after offline database construction, relevant data will be pushed to service components, called by online retrieval algorithm services to obtain relevant data. 1.2 Online Services The overall online service architecture diagram is as follows: https://preview.redd.it/jfsl8hdfez291.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=a858e2304a0c93e78ba5429612ca08cbee69b35a Multi-mode search online service system supports application scenarios such as text search and text search. The whole online service consists of the following parts: Query preprocessing service: encapsulate preprocessing logic (including text/image, etc.) of pre-training model, and provide services through gRPC interface; Retrieval algorithm service: the whole algorithm processing link includes AB experiment tangent flow configuration, MetaSpore Serving call, vector recall, sorting, document summary, etc.; User entry service: provides a Web UI interface for users to debug and track down problems in the retrieval service. From a user request perspective, these services form invocation dependencies from back to front, so to build up a multimodal sample, you need to run each service from front to back first. Before doing this, remember to export the offline model, put it online and build the library first. This article will introduce the various parts of the online service system and make the whole service system step by step according to the following guidance. See the ReadME at the end of this article for more details. 1.2.1 Query preprocessing service Deep learning models tend to be based on tensors, but NLP/CV models often have a preprocessing part that translates raw text and images into tensors that deep learning models can accept. For example, NLP class models often have a pre-tokenizer to transform text data of string type into discrete tensor data. CV class models also have similar processing logic to complete the cropping, scaling, transformation, and other processing of input images through preprocessing. On the one hand, considering that this part of preprocessing logic is decoupled from tensor reasoning of the depth model, on the other hand, the reason of the depth model has an independent technical system based on ONNX, so MetaSpore disassembled this part of preprocessing logic. NLP pretreatment Tokenizer has been integrated into the Query pretreatment service. MetaSpore dismantlement with a relatively general convention. Users only need to provide preprocessing logic files to realize the loading and prediction interface and export the necessary data and configuration files loaded into the preprocessing service. Subsequent CV preprocessing logic will also be integrated in this manner. The preprocessing service currently provides the gRPC interface invocation externally and is dependent on the Query preprocessing (QP) module in the retrieval algorithm service. After the user request reaches the retrieval algorithm service, it will be forwarded to the service to complete the data preprocessing and continue the subsequent processing. The ReadMe provides details on how the preprocessing service is started, how the preprocessing model exported offline to cloud storage enters the service, and how to debug the service. To further improve the efficiency and stability of model reasoning, MetaSpore Serving implements a Python preprocessing submodule. So MetaSpore can provide gRPC services through user-specified preprocessor.py, complete Tokenizer or CV-related preprocessing in NLP, and translate requests into a Tensor that deep models can handle. Finally, the model inference is carried out by MetaSpore, Serving subsequent sub-modules. Presented here on the lot code: https://github.com/meta-soul/MetaSpore/compare/add\python\preprocessor 1.2.2 Retrieval algorithm services Retrieval algorithm service is the core of the whole online service system, which is responsible for the triage of experiments, the assembly of algorithm chains such as preprocessing, recall, sorting, and the invocation of dependent component services. The whole retrieval algorithm service is developed based on the Java Spring framework and supports multi-mode retrieval scenarios of text search and text search graph. Due to good internal abstraction and modular design, it has high flexibility and can be migrated to similar application scenarios at a low cost. Here’s a quick guide to configuring the environment to set up the retrieval algorithm service. See ReadME for more details: Install dependent components. Use Maven to install the online-Serving component Search for service configurations. Copy the template configuration file and replace the MongoDB, Milvus, and other configurations based on the development/production environment. Install and configure Consul. Consul allows you to synchronize the search service configuration in real-time, including cutting the flow of experiments, recall parameters, and sorting parameters. The project’s configuration file shows the current configuration parameters of text search and text search. The parameter modelName in the stage of pretreatment and recall is the corresponding model exported in offline processing. Start the service. Once the above configuration is complete, the retrieval service can be started from the entry script. Once the service is started, you can test it! For example, for a user with userId=10 who wants to query “How to renew ID card,” access the text search service. 1.2.3 User Entry Service Considering that the retrieval algorithm service is in the form of the API interface, it is difficult to locate and trace the problem, especially for the text search image scene can intuitively display the retrieval results to facilitate the iterative optimization of the retrieval algorithm. This paper provides a lightweight Web UI interface for text search and image search, a search input box, and results in a display page for users. Developed by Flask, the service can be easily integrated with other retrieval applications. The service calls the retrieval algorithm service and displays the returned results on the page. It’s also easy to install and start the service. Once you’re done, go to http://127.0.0.1:8090 to see if the search UI service is working correctly. See the ReadME at the end of this article for details. Multimodal system demonstration The multimodal retrieval service can be started when offline processing and online service environment configuration have been completed following the above instructions. Examples of textual searches are shown below. Enter the entry of the text search map application, enter “cat” first, and you can see that the first three digits of the returned result are cats: https://preview.redd.it/0n5nuyvhez291.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=1e9c054f541d53381674b8d6001b4bf524506bd2 If you add a color constraint to “cat” to retrieve “black cat,” you can see that it does return a black cat: https://preview.redd.it/rzc0qjyjez291.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=d5bcc503ef0fb3360c7740e60e295cf372dcad47 Further, strengthen the constraint on the search term, change it to “black cat on the bed,” and return results containing pictures of a black cat climbing on the bed: &#x200B; https://preview.redd.it/c4b2q8olez291.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=4f3817b0b9f07e1e68d1d4a8281702ba3834a00a The cat can still be found through the text search system after the color and scene modification in the above example. Conclusion The cutting-edge pre-training technology can bridge the semantic gap between different modes, and the HuggingFace community can greatly reduce the cost for developers to use the pre-training model. Combined with the technological ecology of MetaSpore online reasoning and online microservices provided by DMetaSpore, the pre-training model is no longer mere offline dabbling. Instead, it can truly achieve end-to-end implementation from cutting-edge technology to industrial scenarios, fully releasing the dividends of the pre-training large model. In the future, DMetaSoul will continue to improve and optimize the MetaSpore technology ecosystem: More automated and wider access to HuggingFace community ecology. MetaSpore will soon release a common model rollout mechanism to make HuggingFace ecologically accessible and will later integrate preprocessing services into online services. Multi-mode retrieval offline algorithm optimization. For multimodal retrieval scenarios, MetaSpore will continuously iteratively optimize offline algorithm components, including text recall/sort model, graphic recall/sort model, etc., to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the retrieval algorithm. For related code and reference documentation in this article, please visit: https://github.com/meta-soul/MetaSpore/tree/main/demo/multimodal/online Some images source: https://github.com/openai/CLIP/raw/main/CLIP.png https://www.sbert.net/examples/training/sts/README.html

[N] AI Robotics startup Covariant (founded by Peter Chen, Pieter Abbeel, other Berkeley / ex-OpenAI folks) just raised $40M in Series B funding round. “Covariant has recently seen increased usage from clients hoping to avoid supply chain disruption due to the coronavirus pandemic.”

h/t their announcement, VB and WSJ article: Logistics AI Startup Covariant Reaps $40 Million in Funding Round Company plans to explore uses of machine learning for automation beyond warehouse operations Artificial-intelligence robotics startup Covariant raised $40 million to expand its logistics automation technology to new industries and ramp up hiring, the company said Wednesday. The Berkeley, Calif.-based company makes AI software that it says helps warehouse robots pick objects at a faster rate than human workers, with a roughly 95% accuracy rate. Covariant is working with Austrian logistics-automation company Knapp AG and the robotics business of Swiss industrial conglomerate ABB Ltd., which provide hardware such as robot arms or conveyor belts to pair with the startup’s technology platform. “What we’ve built is a universal brain for robotic manipulation tasks,” Covariant co-founder and Chief Executive Peter Chen said in an interview. “We provide the software, they provide the rest of the systems.” Logistics-sector appetite for such technology is growing as distribution and fulfillment operations that have relied on human labor look to speed output and meet rising digital commerce demand. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated that interest as businesses have sought to adjust their operations to volatile swings in consumer demand and to new restrictions, such as spacing workers further apart to guard against contagion. That has provided a bright spot for some technology startups even as many big backers scale back venture-capital spending. Last month logistics delivery platform Bringg said it raised $30 million in a Series D funding round, for example, as demand for home delivery of food, household goods and e-commerce staples soared among homebound consumers. Covariant’s Series B round brings the company’s total funding to $67 million. New investor Index Ventures led the round, with participation from existing investor Amplify Partners and new investors including Radical Ventures. Mr. Chen said the funding will be used to explore the technology’s potential application in other markets such as manufacturing, recycling or agriculture “where there are repetitive manual processes.” Covariant also plans to hire more engineering and other staff, he said. Covariant was founded in 2017 and now has about 50 employees. The company’s technology uses camera systems to capture images of objects, and artificial intelligence to analyze objects and how to pick them up. Machine learning helps Covariant-powered robots learn from experience. The startup’s customers include a German electrical supplies wholesaler that uses the technology to control a mechanical arm that picks out orders of circuit boards, switches and other goods.

[N] Last Week in AI News Digest - Automated chemical synthesis, using heartbeats to detect deepfakes, and more!

Hi there, just sharing the latest edition of our AI news digest newsletter! We're just a couple of AI grad students doing this for fun, so hope the self promotion is not too annoying (also, welcome feedback). See it below, and feel free to subscribe. Mini Briefs Robotics, AI, and Cloud Computing Combine to Supercharge Chemical and Drug Synthesis IBM recently demoed a complex system for chemical testing and drug synthesis. The system has an AI component that predicts the results of chemical reactions, and a fully automated robotic experiment setup that runs chemical tests 24/7. Users can access the remote robotics lab online, and IBM can also install the system on-premise. With these tools working together, IBM is hoping to reduce typical drug discovery and verification time by half. AI researchers use heartbeat detection to identify deepfake videos Researchers from multiple groups are tackling the challenge of detecting deepfake videos by analyzing the apparent heartbeat of the people depicted in the video. This is possible, because a person’s blood flow changes their skin color ever so slightly, and this change is often detectable via a process called photoplethysmography (PPG). Because deepfakes are not currently optimizing to generate realisitic heartbeats, temporal or spatial anomalies in PPG signals allow resesarchers to detect deepfakes with a 97% accuracy. Advances & Business This AI Expert From Senegal Is Helping Showcase Africans In STEM \- Adji Bousso Dieng will be Princeton’s School of Engineering’s first Black female faculty. Google’s AI-powered flood alerts now cover all of India and parts of Bangladesh \- India, the world’s second most populated nation, sees more than 20% of the global flood-related fatalities each year as overrun riverbanks sweep tens of thousands of homes with them. Two years ago, Google volunteered to help. Finding magnetic eruptions in space with an AI assistant \- MMS look for explosive reconnection events as it flies through the magnetopause - the boundary region where Earth’s magnetic butts up against the solar wind that flows throughout the solar system. This know-it-all AI learns by reading the entire web nonstop \- Diffbot is building the biggest-ever knowledge graph by applying image recognition and natural-language processing to billions of web pages. Bosch and Ford will test autonomous parking in Detroit \- Ford, Bosch, and Dan Gilbert’s real estate firm Bedrock today detailed an autonomous parking pilot scheduled to launch in September at The Assembly, a mixed-used building in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood. Create your own moody quarantine music with Google’s AI \- Lo-Fi Player, the latest project out of Google Magenta, lets you mix tunes with the help of machine learning by interacting with a virtual room. Apple launches AI/ML residency program to attract niche experts \- As Apple’s artificial language and machine learning initiatives continue to expand, its interest in attracting talent has grown - a theme that’s barely under the surface of the company’s occasionally updated Machine Learning Research blog. Dusty Robotics CEO Tessa Lau Discusses Robotics Start-Ups and Autonomous Robots for Construction \- Tessa Lau is Founder/CEO at Dusty Robotics, whose mission is to increase construction industry productivity by introducing robotic automation on the jobsite. Concerns & Hype Google Offers to Help Others With the Tricky Ethics of AI \- Companies pay cloud computing providers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google big money to avoid operating their own digital infrastructure. The Peace Dividends Of The Autonomous Vehicle Wars \- The rapid growth of the mobile market in the late 2000s and early 2010s led to a burst of technological progress. Ethics must be part of the development process’ \- The increasing use of AI (artificial intelligence) in the development of new medical technologies demands greater attention to ethical aspects. Analysis & Policy China’s new AI trade rules could hamper a TikTok sale \- TikTok’s attempt to sell itself and avert a possible US ban may run into some complications. The Wall Street Journal reports that China has unveiled new restrictions on AI technology exports that could affect TikTok. Podcast Check out our weekly podcast covering these stories! Website | RSS | iTunes | Spotify | YouTube

[D] A Jobless Rant - ML is a Fool's Gold

Aside from the clickbait title, I am earnestly looking for some advice and discussion from people who are actually employed. That being said, here's my gripe: I have been relentlessly inundated by the words "AI, ML, Big Data" throughout my undergrad from other CS majors, business and sales oriented people, media, and .ai type startups. It seems like everyone was peddling ML as the go to solution, the big money earner, and the future of the field. I've heard college freshman ask stuff like, "if I want to do CS, am I going to need to learn ML to be relevant" - if you're on this sub, I probably do not need to continue to elaborate on just how ridiculous the ML craze is. Every single university has opened up ML departments or programs and are pumping out ML graduates at an unprecedented rate. Surely, there'd be a job market to meet the incredible supply of graduates and cultural interest? Swept up in a mixture of genuine interest and hype, I decided to pursue computer vision. I majored in Math-CS at a top-10 CS university (based on at least one arbitrary ranking). I had three computer vision internships, two at startups, one at NASA JPL, in each doing non-trivial CV work; I (re)implemented and integrated CV systems from mixtures of recently published papers. I have a bunch of projects showing both CV and CS fundamentals (OS, networking, data structures, algorithms, etc) knowledge. I have taken graduate level ML coursework. I was accepted to Carnegie Mellon for an MS in Computer Vision, but I deferred to 2021 - all in all, I worked my ass off to try to simultaneously get a solid background in math AND computer science AND computer vision. That brings me to where I am now, which is unemployed and looking for jobs. Almost every single position I have seen requires a PhD and/or 5+ years of experience, and whatever I have applied for has ghosted me so far. The notion that ML is a high paying in-demand field seems to only be true if your name is Andrej Karpathy - and I'm only sort of joking. It seems like unless you have a PhD from one of the big 4 in CS and multiple publications in top tier journals you're out of luck, or at least vying for one of the few remaining positions at small companies. This seems normalized in ML, but this is not the case for quite literally every other subfield or even generalized CS positions. Getting a high paying job at a Big N company is possible as a new grad with just a bachelors and general SWE knowledge, and there are a plethora of positions elsewhere. Getting the equivalent with basically every specialization, whether operating systems, distributed systems, security, networking, etc, is also possible, and doesn't require 5 CVPR publications. TL;DR From my personal perspective, if you want to do ML because of career prospects, salaries, or job security, pick almost any other CS specialization. In ML, you'll find yourself working 2x as hard through difficult theory and math to find yourself competing with more applicants for fewer positions. I am absolutely complaining and would love to hear a more positive perspective, but in the meanwhile I'll be applying to jobs, working on more post-grad projects, and contemplating switching fields.

[D] LLMs causing more harm than good for the field?

This post might be a bit ranty, but i feel more and more share this sentiment with me as of late. If you bother to read this whole post feel free to share how you feel about this. When OpenAI put the knowledge of AI in the everyday household, I was at first optimistic about it. In smaller countries outside the US, companies were very hesitant before about AI, they thought it felt far away and something only big FANG companies were able to do. Now? Its much better. Everyone is interested in it and wants to know how they can use AI in their business. Which is great! Pre-ChatGPT-times, when people asked me what i worked with and i responded "Machine Learning/AI" they had no clue and pretty much no further interest (Unless they were a tech-person) Post-ChatGPT-times, when I get asked the same questions I get "Oh, you do that thing with the chatbots?" Its a step in the right direction, I guess. I don't really have that much interest in LLMs and have the privilege to work exclusively on vision related tasks unlike some other people who have had to pivot to working full time with LLMs. However, right now I think its almost doing more harm to the field than good. Let me share some of my observations, but before that I want to highlight I'm in no way trying to gatekeep the field of AI in any way. I've gotten job offers to be "ChatGPT expert", What does that even mean? I strongly believe that jobs like these don't really fill a real function and is more of a "hypetrain"-job than a job that fills any function at all. Over the past years I've been going to some conferences around Europe, one being last week, which has usually been great with good technological depth and a place for Data-scientists/ML Engineers to network, share ideas and collaborate. However, now the talks, the depth, the networking has all changed drastically. No longer is it new and exiting ways companies are using AI to do cool things and push the envelope, its all GANs and LLMs with surface level knowledge. The few "old-school" type talks being sent off to a 2nd track in a small room The panel discussions are filled with philosophists with no fundamental knowledge of AI talking about if LLMs will become sentient or not. The spaces for data-scientists/ML engineers are quickly dissapearing outside the academic conferences, being pushed out by the current hypetrain. The hypetrain evangelists also promise miracles and gold with LLMs and GANs, miracles that they will never live up to. When the investors realize that the LLMs cant live up to these miracles they will instantly get more hesitant with funding for future projects within AI, sending us back into an AI-winter once again. EDIT: P.S. I've also seen more people on this reddit appearing claiming to be "Generative AI experts". But when delving deeper it turns out they are just "good prompters" and have no real knowledge, expertice or interest in the actual field of AI or Generative AI.

[D] what's the best approach for this use case?

Hi everyone, I’m working on a project to help a friend who applies sun foils to building windows. Customers often want to see a preview of how the building will look with the foils, and right now, they’re manually photoshopping these images. I’m new to AI and experimenting with different tools. My goal is to automate this process so we can input a building photo and get an output with darkened windows, simulating the foil effect. Should I fine-tune a model for this specific task, or would using something like ControlNet be more effective? Any advice on the best approach would be greatly appreciated!

[N] Last Week in AI News Digest - Automated chemical synthesis, using heartbeats to detect deepfakes, and more!

Hi there, just sharing the latest edition of our AI news digest newsletter! We're just a couple of AI grad students doing this for fun, so hope the self promotion is not too annoying (also, welcome feedback). See it below, and feel free to subscribe. Mini Briefs Robotics, AI, and Cloud Computing Combine to Supercharge Chemical and Drug Synthesis IBM recently demoed a complex system for chemical testing and drug synthesis. The system has an AI component that predicts the results of chemical reactions, and a fully automated robotic experiment setup that runs chemical tests 24/7. Users can access the remote robotics lab online, and IBM can also install the system on-premise. With these tools working together, IBM is hoping to reduce typical drug discovery and verification time by half. AI researchers use heartbeat detection to identify deepfake videos Researchers from multiple groups are tackling the challenge of detecting deepfake videos by analyzing the apparent heartbeat of the people depicted in the video. This is possible, because a person’s blood flow changes their skin color ever so slightly, and this change is often detectable via a process called photoplethysmography (PPG). Because deepfakes are not currently optimizing to generate realisitic heartbeats, temporal or spatial anomalies in PPG signals allow resesarchers to detect deepfakes with a 97% accuracy. Advances & Business This AI Expert From Senegal Is Helping Showcase Africans In STEM \- Adji Bousso Dieng will be Princeton’s School of Engineering’s first Black female faculty. Google’s AI-powered flood alerts now cover all of India and parts of Bangladesh \- India, the world’s second most populated nation, sees more than 20% of the global flood-related fatalities each year as overrun riverbanks sweep tens of thousands of homes with them. Two years ago, Google volunteered to help. Finding magnetic eruptions in space with an AI assistant \- MMS look for explosive reconnection events as it flies through the magnetopause - the boundary region where Earth’s magnetic butts up against the solar wind that flows throughout the solar system. This know-it-all AI learns by reading the entire web nonstop \- Diffbot is building the biggest-ever knowledge graph by applying image recognition and natural-language processing to billions of web pages. Bosch and Ford will test autonomous parking in Detroit \- Ford, Bosch, and Dan Gilbert’s real estate firm Bedrock today detailed an autonomous parking pilot scheduled to launch in September at The Assembly, a mixed-used building in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood. Create your own moody quarantine music with Google’s AI \- Lo-Fi Player, the latest project out of Google Magenta, lets you mix tunes with the help of machine learning by interacting with a virtual room. Apple launches AI/ML residency program to attract niche experts \- As Apple’s artificial language and machine learning initiatives continue to expand, its interest in attracting talent has grown - a theme that’s barely under the surface of the company’s occasionally updated Machine Learning Research blog. Dusty Robotics CEO Tessa Lau Discusses Robotics Start-Ups and Autonomous Robots for Construction \- Tessa Lau is Founder/CEO at Dusty Robotics, whose mission is to increase construction industry productivity by introducing robotic automation on the jobsite. Concerns & Hype Google Offers to Help Others With the Tricky Ethics of AI \- Companies pay cloud computing providers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google big money to avoid operating their own digital infrastructure. The Peace Dividends Of The Autonomous Vehicle Wars \- The rapid growth of the mobile market in the late 2000s and early 2010s led to a burst of technological progress. Ethics must be part of the development process’ \- The increasing use of AI (artificial intelligence) in the development of new medical technologies demands greater attention to ethical aspects. Analysis & Policy China’s new AI trade rules could hamper a TikTok sale \- TikTok’s attempt to sell itself and avert a possible US ban may run into some complications. The Wall Street Journal reports that China has unveiled new restrictions on AI technology exports that could affect TikTok. Podcast Check out our weekly podcast covering these stories! Website | RSS | iTunes | Spotify | YouTube

[P] Utilizing graph attention-based neural networks and generative AI to build a tool to automate debugging and refactoring Python code

For the last two years, I and three others have been working on a project we started in a research lab. The project is to create a tool that can automatically identify complex programming errors from source code that require a contextual understanding of the code. For this, we have built a graph attention-based neural network that is used to classify problematic code and embed context info. We employ a two-stage system for accurately embedding context information within a single graph. First, we split up the source code into semantic tokens through an nlp2 tokenizer and generate 80-bit vector embeddings using FastText, which has been trained on code snippets of a particular language. We then map those text tokens to groupings identified in the abstract syntax tree, excluding the individual nodes for each text token, opting instead for the function call with attributes as the smallest individual grouping, averaging the embeddings across each token type. The seed data for the system consists of code changes and their surrounding documentation on why a given code change was made. For this, we utilize a BERTopic-based topic modeling system to identify and categorize the reason why the given change was made from the docs. For the explanations and code recommendations, we utilize generative AI models. They are promising for this purpose as we are able to pass enriched context to them along with the problematic code, hoping to receive more accurate outputs. We are just looking for feedback on if the project currently provides any value to Python users. We've published the first version of the tool on vscode marketplace. It's of course free to use, and we'd appreciate any feedback on it. As it's not a weekend, let me know if you are interested to try the tool and give us your thoughts on it.

[D] AI Agents: too early, too expensive, too unreliable

Reference: Full blog post There has been a lot of hype about the promise of autonomous agent-based LLM workflows. By now, all major LLMs are capable of interacting with external tools and functions, letting the LLM perform sequences of tasks automatically. But reality is proving more challenging than anticipated. The WebArena leaderboard, which benchmarks LLMs agents against real-world tasks, shows that even the best-performing models have a success rate of only 35.8%. Challenges in Practice After seeing many attempts to AI agents, I believe it's too early, too expensive, too slow, too unreliable. It feels like many AI agent startups are waiting for a model breakthrough that will start the race to productize agents. Reliability: As we all know, LLMs are prone to hallucinations and inconsistencies. Chaining multiple AI steps compounds these issues, especially for tasks requiring exact outputs. Performance and costs: GPT-4o, Gemini-1.5, and Claude Opus are working quite well with tool usage/function calling, but they are still slow and expensive, particularly if you need to do loops and automatic retries. Legal concerns: Companies may be held liable for the mistakes of their agents. A recent example is Air Canada being ordered to pay a customer who was misled by the airline's chatbot. User trust: The "black box" nature of AI agents and stories like the above makes it hard for users to understand and trust their outputs. Gaining user trust for sensitive tasks involving payments or personal information will be hard (paying bills, shopping, etc.). Real-World Attempts Several startups are tackling the AI agent space, but most are still experimental or invite-only: adept.ai - $350M funding, but access is still very limited MultiOn - funding unknown, their API-first approach seems promising HypeWrite - $2.8M funding, started with an AI writing assistant and expanded into the agent space minion.ai - created some initial buzz but has gone quiet now, waitlist only Only MultiOn seems to be pursuing the "give it instructions and watch it go" approach, which is more in line with the promise of AI agents. All others are going down the record-and-replay RPA route, which may be necessary for reliability at this stage. Large players are also bringing AI capabilities to desktops and browsers, and it looks like we'll get native AI integrations on a system level: OpenAI announced their Mac desktop app that can interact with the OS screen. At Google I/O, Google demonstrated Gemini automatically processing a shopping return. Microsoft announced Copilot Studio, which will let developers build AI agent bots. Screenshot Screenshot These tech demos are impressive, but we'll see how well these agent capabilities will work when released publicly and tested against real-world scenarios instead of hand-picked demo cases. The Path Forward AI agents overhyped and it's too early. However, the underlying models continue to advance quickly, and we can expect to see more successful real-world applications. Instead of trying to have one large general purpose agent that is hard to control and test, we can use many smaller agents that basically just pick the right strategy for a specific sub-task in our workflows. These "agents" can be thought of as medium-sized LLM prompts with a) context and b) a set of functions available to call. The most promising path forward likely looks like this: Narrowly scoped, well testable automations that use AI as an augmentation tool rather than pursuing full autonomy Human-in-the-loop approaches that keep humans involved for oversight and handling edge cases Setting realistic expectations about current capabilities and limitations By combining tightly constrained agents, good evaluation data, human-in-the-loop oversight, and traditional engineering methods, we can achieve reliably good results for automating medium-complex tasks. Will AI agents automate tedious repetitive work, such as web scraping, form filling, and data entry? Yes, absolutely. Will AI agents autonomously book your vacation without your intervention? Unlikely, at least in the near future.

[D] Stuck in Automation of AI models

Hello everyone! &#x200B; I'm currently working on a project and have hit a roadblock in automating the deployment of my machine-learning models. Can anyone provide guidance on the best practices or tools for streamlining the deployment process? Specifically, I'm looking to create a seamless workflow where models can be easily uploaded, deployed on the cloud, and accessible through APIs. Any insights or advice would be greatly appreciated! &#x200B; Automation!!!

[D] What is your honest experience with reinforcement learning?

In my personal experience, SOTA RL algorithms simply don't work. I've tried working with reinforcement learning for over 5 years. I remember when Alpha Go defeated the world famous Go player, Lee Sedol, and everybody thought RL would take the ML community by storm. Yet, outside of toy problems, I've personally never found a practical use-case of RL. What is your experience with it? Aside from Ad recommendation systems and RLHF, are there legitimate use-cases of RL? Or, was it all hype? Edit: I know a lot about AI. I built NexusTrade, an AI-Powered automated investing tool that lets non-technical users create, update, and deploy their trading strategies. I’m not an idiot nor a noob; RL is just ridiculously hard. Edit 2: Since my comments are being downvoted, here is a link to my article that better describes my position. It's not that I don't understand RL. I released my open-source code and wrote a paper on it. It's the fact that it's EXTREMELY difficult to understand. Other deep learning algorithms like CNNs (including ResNets), RNNs (including GRUs and LSTMs), Transformers, and GANs are not hard to understand. These algorithms work and have practical use-cases outside of the lab. Traditional SOTA RL algorithms like PPO, DDPG, and TD3 are just very hard. You need to do a bunch of research to even implement a toy problem. In contrast, the decision transformer is something anybody can implement, and it seems to match or surpass the SOTA. You don't need two networks battling each other. You don't have to go through hell to debug your network. It just naturally learns the best set of actions in an auto-regressive manner. I also didn't mean to come off as arrogant or imply that RL is not worth learning. I just haven't seen any real-world, practical use-cases of it. I simply wanted to start a discussion, not claim that I know everything. Edit 3: There's a shockingly number of people calling me an idiot for not fully understanding RL. You guys are wayyy too comfortable calling people you disagree with names. News-flash, not everybody has a PhD in ML. My undergraduate degree is in biology. I self-taught myself the high-level maths to understand ML. I'm very passionate about the field; I just have VERY disappointing experiences with RL. Funny enough, there are very few people refuting my actual points. To summarize: Lack of real-world applications Extremely complex and inaccessible to 99% of the population Much harder than traditional DL algorithms like CNNs, RNNs, and GANs Sample inefficiency and instability Difficult to debug Better alternatives, such as the Decision Transformer Are these not legitimate criticisms? Is the purpose of this sub not to have discussions related to Machine Learning? To the few commenters that aren't calling me an idiot...thank you! Remember, it costs you nothing to be nice! Edit 4: Lots of people seem to agree that RL is over-hyped. Unfortunately those comments are downvoted. To clear up some things: We've invested HEAVILY into reinforcement learning. All we got from this investment is a robot that can be super-human at (some) video games. AlphaFold did not use any reinforcement learning. SpaceX doesn't either. I concede that it can be useful for robotics, but still argue that it's use-cases outside the lab are extremely limited. If you're stumbling on this thread and curious about an RL alternative, check out the Decision Transformer. It can be used in any situation that a traditional RL algorithm can be used. Final Edit: To those who contributed more recently, thank you for the thoughtful discussion! From what I learned, model-based models like Dreamer and IRIS MIGHT have a future. But everybody who has actually used model-free models like DDPG unanimously agree that they suck and don’t work.

[D] Is this close enough to be usable? Need your inputs: Automated RAG testing tool. AI Data Pipelines for Real-World Production (Part 3)

Hey there, Redditors! I'm back with the latest installment on creating dependable AI data pipelines for real-world production. If you've been following along, you know I'm on a mission to move beyond the "thin OpenAI wrapper" trend and tackle the challenges of building robust data pipelines. With 18 months of hands-on experience and many user interviews, I realized that with the probabilistic nature of systems, we need better\_testing.gpt: As you build you should test The world of AI is a fast-moving one, and we've realized that just working on systems is not an optimal design choice. By the time your product ships, it might already be using outdated technology. So, what's the lesson here? Embrace change, test along, but be prepared to switch pace. No Best Practices Yet for RAGs In this rapidly evolving landscape, there are no established best practices. You'll need to make educated bets on tools and processes, knowing that things will change. With the RAG testing tool, I tried allowing for testing many potential parameter combinations automatically Testing Frameworks If your generative AI product doesn't have users giving feedback, then you are building in isolation. I used Deepeval to generate test sets, and they will soon support synthetic test set generation Infographics only go so far AI researchers and data scientists, while brilliant, end up in a loop of pursuing Twitter promotional content. New ways are promoted via new content pieces, but ideally, we need something above simple tracing but less than full-fledged analytics. To do this, I stored test outputs in Postgres and created a Superset instance to visualize the results Bridging the Gap between VectorDBs There's a noticeable number of Vector DBs. To ensure smooth product development, we need to be able to switch to best best-performing one, especially since user interviews signal that they might start deteriorating after loading 50 million rows &#x200B; Github repo is here Next steps: I have questions for you: What variables do you change when building RAGs? What is the set of strategies I should add to the solution? (parent-son etc.) How can I improve it in general? Is anyone interested in a leaderboard for best parameter configs? Check out the blog post: Link to part 3 Remember to give this post an upvote if you found it insightful! And also star our Github repo

I tested hundreds of marketing tools in the last three years and these 50 made it to the list. I'll sum up my top 50 marketing tools with one or two sentences + give you pricings.

Hey guys, I'm working in a growth marketing agency. Marketing tools are 30% of what we do, so we use them a lot and experiment with the new ones as much as possible. There are thousands of tools and it's easy to get lost, so I wanted to share the tools we use most on a daily basis. And divide the list into 14 categories. I thought this could be handy for Entrepreneurs subreddit. Why adopt tools? I see marketing tools as tireless colleagues. If you can't hire an employee, choosing the right tool can solve your problems, because they Are super cheap. Work 7/24 for you. Don’t make mistakes. Don’t need management. (or needless management) Help you to automate the majority of your lead gen process. Onwards to the list. (With the pricings post ended up quite long, you can find a link in the end if you want to check the prices) Email marketing tools #1 ActiveCampaign is armed with the most complicated email automation features and has the most intuitive user experience. It feels like you already know how to use it. \#2 Autopilot is visual marketing automation and customer journey tool that helps you acquire, nurture based on behaviors, interest etc. #3 Mailjet: This is the tool we use to send out bulky email campaigns such as newsletters. It doesn't have sexy features like others but does its job for a cheap price. Email address finders #4 Skrapp finds email of your contacts by name and company. It also works with LinkedIn Sales Navigator and can extract thousands of emails in bulk + have a browser add-on. #5 Hunter: Similar to Skrapp but doesn't work with LinkedIn Sales Navigator directly. In addition, there are email templates and you can set up email campaigns. Prospecting and outreach tools #6 Prospect combines the personal emails, follow-up calls, other social touches and helps you create multichannel campaigns.  #7 Reply is a more intuitive version of Prospect. It is easy to learn and use; their UX makes you feel good and sufficient.  CRM tools #8 Salesflare helps you to stop managing your data and start managing your customers. Not yet popular as Hubspot and etc but the best solution for smaller B2B businesses. (we're fans) \#9 Hubspot: The most popular CRM for good reason and has a broader product range you can adopt in your next steps. Try this if you have a bulky list of customers because it is free. #10 Pardot: Pardot is by Salesforce, it's armed with features that can close the gap between marketing and sales. Sales Tools #11 Salesforce is the best sales automation and lead management software. It helps you to create complicated segmentations and run, track, analyze campaigns from the same dashboard. #12 LinkedIn Sales Navigator gives you full access to LinkedIn's user database. You can even find a kidnapped CEO if you know how to use it with other marketing automation tools like Skrapp. #13 Pipedrive is a simple tool and excels in one thing. It tracks your leads and tells you when to take the next action. It makes sales easier. #14 Qwilr creates great-looking docs, at speed. You can design perfect proposals, quotes, client updates, and more in a flash. We use it a lot to close deals, it's effective. #15 Crystalknows is an add-on that tells you anyone’s personality on LinkedIn and gives you a detailed approach specific to that person. It's eerily accurate. #16 Leadfeeder shows you the companies that visited your website. Tells how they found you and what they’re interested in. It has a free version. Communication Tools #17 Intercom is a sweet and smart host that welcomes your visitors when you’re not home. It’s one of the best chatbot tools in the market. #18 Drift is famous for its conversational marketing features and more sales-focused than Intercom. #19 Manychat is a chatbot that helps you create high converting Facebook campaigns. #20 Plann3r helps you create your personalized meeting page. You can schedule meetings witch clients, candidates, and prospects. #21 Loom is a video messaging tool, it helps you to be more expressive and create closer relationships. #22 Callpage collects your visitors’ phone number and connects you with them in seconds. No matter where you are. Landing page tools #23 Instapage is the best overall landing page builder. It has a broad range of features and even squirrel can build a compelling landing page with templates. No coding needed. #24 Unbounce can do everything that Instapage does and lets you build a great landing page without a developer. But it's less intuitive. Lead generation / marketing automation tools #25 Phantombuster is by far the most used lead generation software in our tool kit. It extracts data, emails, sends requests, customized messages, and does many things on autopilot in any platform. You can check this, this and this if you want to see it in action. #26 Duxsoup is a Google Chrome add-on and can also automate some of LinkedIn lead generation efforts like Phantombuster. But not works in the cloud. #27 Zapier is a glue that holds all the lead generation tools together. With Zapier, You can connect different marketing tools and no coding required. Conversion rate optimization tools #28 Hotjar tracks what people are doing on your website by recording sessions and capturing mouse movements. Then it gives you a heatmap. #29 UsabilityHub shows your page to a digital crowd and measures the first impressions and helps you to validate your ideas. #30 Optinmonster is a top tier conversion optimization tool. It helps you to capture leads and enables you to increase conversions rates with many features. #31 Notifia is one mega tool of widgets that arms your website with the wildest social proof and lead capturing tactics. #32 Sumo is a much simpler version of Notifia. But Sumo has everything to help you capture leads and build your email lists. Web scrapers #33 Data Miner is a Google Chrome browser extension that helps you scrape data from web pages and into a CSV file or Excel spreadsheet. #34 Webscraper does the same thing as Data Miner; however, it is capable of handling more complex tasks. SEO and Content #35 Grammarly: Your English could be your first language and your grammar could be better than Shakespeare. Grammarly still can make your writing better. #36 Hemingwayapp is a copywriting optimization tool that gives you feedback about your copy and improves your readability score, makes your writing bolder and punchier. Free. #37 Ahrefs is an all-rounder search engine optimization tool that helps you with off-page, on-page or technical SEO. #38 SurferSEO makes things easier for your on-page SEO efforts. It’s a tool that analyzes top Google results for specific keywords and gives you a content brief based on that data. Video editing and design tools #39 Canva is a graphic design platform that makes everything easy. It has thousands of templates for anything from Facebook ads, stylish presentations to business cards.  #40 Kapwing is our go-to platform for quick video edits. It works on the browser and can help you to create stylish videos, add subtitles, resize videos, create memes, or remove backgrounds. #41 Animoto can turn your photos and video clip into beautiful video slideshows. It comes handy when you want to create an advertising material but don’t have a budget. Advertising tools #42 AdEspresso lets you create and test multiple ads with few clicks. You can optimize your FB, IG, and Google ads from this tool and measure your ads with in-depth analytics. #43 AdRoll is an AI-driven platform that connects and coordinates marketing efforts across ads, email, and online stores. Other tools #44 Replug helps you to shorten, track, optimize your links with call-to-actions, branded links, and retargeting pixels #45 Draw.io = Mindmaps, schemes, and charts. With Draw.io, you can put your brain in a digital paper in an organized way. #46 Built With is a tool that finds out what websites are built with. So you can see what tools they're using and so on. #47 Typeform can turn data collection into an experience with Typeform. This tool helps you to engage your audience with conversational forms or surveys and help you to collect more data. #48 Livestorm helped us a lot, especially in COVID-19 tiles. It’s a webinar software that works on your browser, mobile, and desktop. #49 Teachable \- If you have an online course idea but hesitating because of the production process, Teachable can help you. It's easy to configure and customizable for your needs. #50 Viral Loops provides a revolutionary referral marketing solution for modern marketers. You can create and run referral campaigns in a few clicks with templates. Remember, most of these tools have a free trial or free version. Going over them one by one can teach you a lot and help you grow your business with less work power in the early stages of your business. I hope you enjoyed the read and can find some tools to make things easier! Let me know about your favorite tools in the comments, so I can try them out. \------ If you want to check the prices and see a broader explanation about the tools, you can go here.

12 months ago, I was unemployed. Last week my side hustle got acquired by a $500m fintech company

I’ve learned so much over the years from this subreddit. I thought I’d return the favour and share some of my own learnings. In November 2020 my best friend and I had an idea. “What if we could find out which stocks the Internet is talking about?” This formed the origins of Ticker Nerd. 9 months later we sold Ticker Nerd to Finder (an Australian fintech company valued at around $500m). In this post, I am going to lay out how we got there. How we came up with the idea First off, like other posts have covered - you don’t NEED a revolutionary or original idea to build a business. There are tonnes of “boring” businesses making over 7 figures a year e.g. law firms, marketing agencies, real estate companies etc. If you’re looking for an exact formula to come up with a great business idea I’m sorry, but it doesn’t exist. Finding new business opportunities is more of an art than a science. Although, there are ways you can make it easier to find inspiration. Below are the same resources I use for inspiration. I rarely ever come up with ideas without first searching one of the resources below for inspiration: Starter Story Twitter Startup Ideas My First Million Trends by the Hustle Trends VC To show how you how messy, random and unpredictable it can be to find an idea - let me explain how my co-founder and I came up with the idea for Ticker Nerd: We discovered a new product on Twitter called Exploding Topics. It was a newsletter that uses a bunch of software and algorithms to find trends that are growing quickly before they hit the mainstream. I had recently listened to a podcast episode from My First Million where they spoke about Motley Fool making hundreds of millions from their investment newsletters. We asked ourselves what if we could build a SaaS platform similar to Exploding Topics but it focused on stocks? We built a quick landing page using Carrd + Gumroad that explained what our new idea will do and included a payment option to get early access for $49. We called it Exploding Stock (lol). We shared it around a bunch of Facebook groups and subreddits. We made $1,000 in pre-sales within a couple days. My co-founder and I can’t code so we had to find a developer to build our idea. We interviewed a bunch of potential candidates. Meanwhile, I was trawling through Wall Street Bets and found a bunch of free tools that did roughly what we wanted to build. Instead of building another SaaS tool that did the same thing as these free tools we decided to pivot from our original idea. Our new idea = a paid newsletter that sends a weekly report that summarises 2 of the best stocks that are growing in interest on the Internet. We emailed everyone who pre-ordered access, telling them about the change and offered a full refund if they wanted. tl;dr: We essentially combined two existing businesses (Exploding Topics and Motley Fool) and made it way better. We validated the idea by finding out if people will actually pay money for it BEFORE we decided to build it. The idea we started out with changed over time. How to work out if your idea will actually make money It’s easy to get hung up on designing the logo or choosing the perfect domain name for your new idea. At this stage none of that matters. The most important thing is working out if people will pay money for it. This is where validation comes in. We usually validate ideas using Carrd. It lets you build a simple one page site without having to code. The Ticker Nerd site was actually built using a Carrd template. Here’s how you can do it yourself (at a high level): Create a Carrd pro account (yes it's a $49 one off payment but you’ll get way more value out of it). Buy a cheap template and send it to your Carrd account. You can build your own template but this will save you a lot of time. Once the template reaches your Carrd account, duplicate it. Leave the original so it can be duplicated for other ideas. Jump onto Canva (free) and create a logo using the free logos provided. Import your logo. Add copy to the page that explains your idea. Use the AIDA formula. Sign up to Gumroad (free) and create a pre-sale campaign. Create a discounted lifetime subscription or version of the product. This will be used pre-sales. Add the copy from the site into the pre-sale campaign on Gumroad. Add a ‘widget’ to Carrd and connect it to Gumroad using the existing easy integration feature. Purchase a domain name. Connect it to Carrd. Test the site works. Share your website Now the site is ready you can start promoting it in various places to see how the market reacts. An easy method is to find relevant subreddits using Anvaka (Github tool) or Subreddit Stats. The Anvaka tool provides a spider map of all the connected subreddits that users are active in. The highlighted ones are most relevant. You can post a thread in these subreddits that offer value or can generate discussion. For example: ‘I’m creating a tool that can write all your copy, would anyone actually use this?’ ‘What does everything think of using AI to get our copy written faster?’ ‘It’s time to scratch my own itch, I’m creating a tool that writes marketing copy using GPT-3. What are the biggest problems you face writing marketing copy? I’ll build a solution for it’ Reddit is pretty brutal these days so make sure the post is genuine and only drop your link in the comments or in the post if it seems natural. If people are interested they’ll ask for the link. Another great place to post is r/entrepreuerridealong and r/business_ideas. These subreddits expect people to share their ideas and you’ll likely make some sales straight off the bat. I also suggest posting in some Facebook groups (related to your idea) as well just for good measure. Assess the results If people are paying you for early access you can assume that it’s worth building your idea. The beauty of posting your idea on Reddit or in Facebook groups is you’ll quickly learn why people love/hate your idea. This can help you decide how to tweak the idea or if you should drop it and move on to the next one. How we got our first 100 customers (for free) By validating Ticker Nerd using subreddits and Facebook groups this gave us our first paying customers. But we knew this wouldn’t be sustainable. We sat down and brainstormed every organic strategy we could use to get traction as quickly as possible. The winner: a Product Hunt launch. A successful Product Hunt launch isn’t easy. You need: Someone that has a solid reputation and audience to “hunt” your product (essentially an endorsement). An aged Product Hunt account - you can’t post any products if your account is less than a week old. To be following relevant Product Hunt members - since they get notified when you launch a new product if they’re following you. Relationships with other builders and makers on Product Hunt that also have a solid reputation and following. Although, if you can pull it off you can get your idea in front of tens of thousands of people actively looking for new products. Over the next few weeks, I worked with my co-founder on connecting with different founders, indie hackers and entrepreneurs mainly via Twitter. We explained to them our plans for the Product Hunt launch and managed to get a small army of people ready to upvote our product on launch day. We were both nervous on the day of the launch. We told ourselves to have zero expectations. The worst that could happen was no one signed up and we were in the same position as we’re in now. Luckily, within a couple of hours Ticker Nerd was on the homepage of Product Hunt and in the top 10. The results were instant. After 24 hours we had around 200 people enter their payment details to sign up for our free trial. These signups were equal to around $5,800 in monthly recurring revenue. \-- I hope this post was useful! Drop any questions you have below and I’ll do my best to respond :)

Is being a solopreneur really that fatal?

Okay, so I need to get something off my chest... People love to say that solopreneurship is a death sentence. That if you can’t find a cofounder, you’ll never build a team, never scale, never succeed. But I wonder about the other side of the coin—something that, browsing here and in other subs, doesn’t seem to get nearly as much attention—how fatal cofounder conflicts can be. I’ve personally seen three startups fail before even getting to an MVP because of cofounder issues. One of them was a company I was briefly a cofounder for. The other two are startups coworkers were previous cofounders for that fell apart before they even got to an MVP. In each case, it wasn’t lack of funding or product-market fit that killed them—it was the people. Yet, somehow, the startup world keeps pushing the idea that finding a cofounder is the most important thing you can do. But here’s the thing: if you can’t find a cofounder, that doesn’t mean you can’t build a business. It doesn’t even mean you can’t build a team. With the tools available today (no-code, AI, fractional hiring), a single person can get an MVP off the ground, validate demand, and take those first steps without needing to rush into a partnership with someone they barely know. And also—I wonder how many people actually succeed with a cofounder they met casually at a networking event or online? People talk about the risks of going solo, but not enough about the risks of tying your company’s future to someone you just met. (If you’re going to have a cofounder, IMO it should be someone you trust deeply, someone whose skills and working style you know complement yours—not just someone you brought on because startup X/YouTube told you to.). At the end of the day, I honestly think it’s about the product. If you can build something valuable and find market fit—whether solo or with a team—you’ll have the leverage to hire, partner, and grow. That’s what actually matters. That said—I know how incredibly hard it is to be a solopreneur—and not to have someone along the journey with you who can take half of the emotional and psychological burden, in addition to the actual work... What do you think? Any thoughts here appreciated.

I run an AI automation agency (AAA). My honest overview and review of this new business model

I started an AI tools directory in February, and then branched off that to start an AI automation agency (AAA) in June. So far I've come across a lot of unsustainable "ideas" to make money with AI, but at the same time a few diamonds in the rough that aren't fully tapped into yet- especially the AAA model. Thought I'd share this post to shine light into this new business model and share some ways you could potentially start your own agency, or at the very least know who you are dealing with and how to pick and choose when you (inevitably) get bombarded with cold emails from them down the line. Foreword Running an AAA does NOT involve using AI tools directly to generate and sell content directly. That ship has sailed, and unless you are happy with $5 from Fiverr every month or so, it is not a real business model. Cry me a river but generating generic art with AI and slapping it onto a T-shirt to sell on Etsy won't make you a dime. At the same time, the AAA model will NOT require you to have a deep theoretical knowledge of AI, or any academic degree, as we are more so dealing with the practical applications of generative AI and how we can implement these into different workflows and tech-stacks, rather than building AI models from the ground up. Regardless of all that, common sense and a willingness to learn will help (a shit ton), as with anything. Keep in mind - this WILL involve work and motivation as well. The mindset that AI somehow means everything can be done for you on autopilot is not the right way to approach things. The common theme of businesses I've seen who have successfully implemented AI into their operations is the willingess to work with AI in a way that augments their existing operations, rather than flat out replace a worker or team. And this is exactly the train of thought you need when working with AI as a business model. However, as the field is relatively unsaturated and hype surrounding AI is still fresh for enterprises, right now is the prime time to start something new if generative AI interests you at all. With that being said, I'll be going over three of the most successful AI-adjacent businesses I've seen over this past year, in addition to some tips and resources to point you in the right direction. so.. WTF is an AI Automation Agency? The AI automation agency (or as some YouTubers have coined it, the AAA model) at its core involves creating custom AI solutions for businesses. I have over 1500 AI tools listed in my directory, however the feedback I've received from some enterprise users is that ready-made SaaS tools are too generic to meet their specific needs. Combine this with the fact virtually no smaller companies have the time or skills required to develop custom solutions right off the bat, and you have yourself real demand. I would say in practice, the AAA model is quite similar to Wordpress and even web dev agencies, with the major difference being all solutions you develop will incorporate key aspects of AI AND automation. Which brings me to my second point- JUST AI IS NOT ENOUGH. Rather than reducing the amount of time required to complete certain tasks, I've seen many AI agencies make the mistake of recommending and (trying to) sell solutions that more likely than not increase the workload of their clients. For example, if you were to make an internal tool that has AI answer questions based on their knowledge base, but this knowledge base has to be updated manually, this is creating unnecessary work. As such I think one of the key components of building successful AI solutions is incorporating the new (Generative AI/LLMs) with the old (programmtic automation- think Zapier, APIs, etc.). Finally, for this business model to be successful, ideally you should target a niche in which you have already worked and understand pain points and needs. Not only does this make it much easier to get calls booked with prospects, the solutions you build will have much greater value to your clients (meaning you get paid more). A mistake I've seen many AAA operators make (and I blame this on the "Get Rich Quick" YouTubers) is focusing too much on a specific productized service, rather than really understanding the needs of businesses. The former is much done via a SaaS model, but when going the agency route the only thing that makes sense is building custom solutions. This is why I always take a consultant-first approach. You can only build once you understand what they actually need and how certain solutions may impact their operations, workflows, and bottom-line. Basics of How to Get Started Pick a niche. As I mentioned previously, preferably one that you've worked in before. Niches I know of that are actively being bombarded with cold emails include real estate, e-commerce, auto-dealerships, lawyers, and medical offices. There is a reason for this, but I will tell you straight up this business model works well if you target any white-collar service business (internal tools approach) or high volume businesses (customer facing tools approach). Setup your toolbox. If you wanted to start a pressure washing business, you would need a pressure-washer. This is no different. For those without programming knowledge, I've seen two common ways AAA get setup to build- one is having a network of on-call web developers, whether its personal contacts or simply going to Upwork or any talent sourcing agency. The second is having an arsenal of no-code tools. I'll get to this more in a second, but this works beecause at its core, when we are dealing with the practical applications of AI, the code is quite simple, simply put. Start cold sales. Unless you have a network already, this is not a step you can skip. You've already picked a niche, so all you have to do is find the right message. Keep cold emails short, sweet, but enticing- and it will help a lot if you did step 1 correctly and intimately understand who your audience is. I'll be touching base later about how you can leverage AI yourself to help you with outreach and closing. The beauty of gen AI and the AAA model You don't need to be a seasoned web developer to make this business model work. The large majority of solutions that SME clients want is best done using an API for an LLM for the actual AI aspect. The value we create with the solutions we build comes with the conceptual framework and design that not only does what they need it to but integrates smoothly with their existing tech-stack and workflow. The actual implementation is quite straightforward once you understand the high level design and know which tools you are going to use. To give you a sense, even if you plan to build out these apps yourself (say in Python) the large majority of the nitty gritty technical work has already been done for you, especially if you leverage Python libraries and packages that offer high level abstraction for LLM-related functions. For instance, calling GPT can be as little as a single line of code. (And there are no-code tools where these functions are simply an icon on a GUI). Aside from understanding the capabilities and limitations of these tools and frameworks, the only thing that matters is being able to put them in a way that makes sense for what you want to build. Which is why outsourcing and no-code tools both work in our case. Okay... but how TF am I suppposed to actually build out these solutions? Now the fun part. I highly recommend getting familiar with Langchain and LlamaIndex. Both are Python libraires that help a lot with the high-level LLM abstraction I mentioned previously. The two most important aspects include being able to integrate internal data sources/knowledge bases with LLMs, and have LLMs perform autonomous actions. The two most common methods respectively are RAG and output parsing. RAG (retrieval augmented Generation) If you've ever seen a tool that seemingly "trains" GPT on your own data, and wonder how it all works- well I have an answer from you. At a high level, the user query is first being fed to what's called a vector database to run vector search. Vector search basically lets you do semantic search where you are searching data based on meaning. The vector databases then retrieves the most relevant sections of text as it relates to the user query, and this text gets APPENDED to your GPT prompt to provide extra context to the AI. Further, with prompt engineering, you can limit GPT to only generate an answer if it can be found within this extra context, greatly limiting the chance of hallucination (this is where AI makes random shit up). Aside from vector databases, we can also implement RAG with other data sources and retrieval methods, for example SQL databses (via parsing the outputs of LLM's- more on this later). Autonomous Agents via Output Parsing A common need of clients has been having AI actually perform tasks, rather than simply spitting out text. For example, with autonomous agents, we can have an e-commerce chatbot do the work of a basic customer service rep (i.e. look into orders, refunds, shipping). At a high level, what's going on is that the response of the LLM is being used programmtically to determine which API to call. Keeping on with the e-commerce example, if I wanted a chatbot to check shipping status, I could have a LLM response within my app (not shown to the user) with a prompt that outputs a random hash or string, and programmatically I can determine which API call to make based on this hash/string. And using the same fundamental concept as with RAG, I can append the the API response to a final prompt that would spit out the answer for the user. How No Code Tools Can Fit In (With some example solutions you can build) With that being said, you don't necessarily need to do all of the above by coding yourself, with Python libraries or otherwise. However, I will say that having that high level overview will help IMMENSELY when it comes to using no-code tools to do the actual work for you. Regardless, here are a few common solutions you might build for clients as well as some no-code tools you can use to build them out. Ex. Solution 1: AI Chatbots for SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) This involves creating chatbots that handle user queries, lead gen, and so forth with AI, and will use the principles of RAG at heart. After getting the required data from your client (i.e. product catalogues, previous support tickets, FAQ, internal documentation), you upload this into your knowledge base and write a prompt that makes sense for your use case. One no-code tool that does this well is MyAskAI. The beauty of it especially for building external chatbots is the ability to quickly ingest entire websites into your knowledge base via a sitemap, and bulk uploading files. Essentially, they've covered the entire grunt work required to do this manually. Finally, you can create a inline or chat widget on your client's website with a few lines of HTML, or altneratively integrate it with a Slack/Teams chatbot (if you are going for an internal Q&A chatbot approach). Other tools you could use include Botpress and Voiceflow, however these are less for RAG and more for building out complete chatbot flows that may or may not incorporate LLMs. Both apps are essentially GUIs that eliminate the pain and tears and trying to implement complex flows manually, and both natively incoporate AI intents and a knowledge base feature. Ex. Solution 2: Internal Apps Similar to the first example, except we go beyond making just chatbots but tools such as report generation and really any sort of internal tool or automations that may incorporate LLM's. For instance, you can have a tool that automatically generates replies to inbound emails based on your client's knowledge base. Or an automation that does the same thing but for replies to Instagram comments. Another example could be a tool that generates a description and screeenshot based on a URL (useful for directory sites, made one for my own :P). Getting into more advanced implementations of LLMs, we can have tools that can generate entire drafts of reports (think 80+ pages), based not only on data from a knowledge base but also the writing style, format, and author voice of previous reports. One good tool to create content generation panels for your clients would be MindStudio. You can train LLM's via prompt engineering in a structured way with your own data to essentially fine tune them for whatever text you need it to generate. Furthermore, it has a GUI where you can dictate the entire AI flow. You can also upload data sources via multiple formats, including PDF, CSV, and Docx. For automations that require interactions between multiple apps, I recommend the OG zapier/make.com if you want a no-code solution. For instance, for the automatic email reply generator, I can have a trigger such that when an email is received, a custom AI reply is generated by MyAskAI, and finally a draft is created in my email client. Or, for an automation where I can create a social media posts on multiple platforms based on a RSS feed (news feed), I can implement this directly in Zapier with their native GPT action (see screenshot) As for more complex LLM flows that may require multiple layers of LLMs, data sources, and APIs working together to generate a single response i.e. a long form 100 page report, I would recommend tools such as Stack AI or Flowise (open-source alternative) to build these solutions out. Essentially, you get most of the functions and features of Python packages such as Langchain and LlamaIndex in a GUI. See screenshot for an example of a flow How the hell are you supposed to find clients? With all that being said, none of this matters if you can't find anyone to sell to. You will have to do cold sales, one way or the other, especially if you are brand new to the game. And what better way to sell your AI services than with AI itself? If we want to integrate AI into the cold outreach process, first we must identify what it's good at doing, and that's obviously writing a bunch of text, in a short amount of time. Similar to the solutions that an AAA can build for its clients, we can take advantage of the same principles in our own sales processes. How to do outreach Once you've identified your niche and their pain points/opportunities for automation, you want to craft a compelling message in which you can send via cold email and cold calls to get prospects booked on demos/consultations. I won't get into too much detail in terms of exactly how to write emails or calling scripts, as there are millions of resources to help with this, but I will tell you a few key points you want to keep in mind when doing outreach for your AAA. First, you want to keep in mind that many businesses are still hesitant about AI and may not understand what it really is or how it can benefit their operations. However, we can take advantage of how mass media has been reporting on AI this past year- at the very least people are AWARE that sooner or later they may have to implement AI into their businesses to stay competitive. We want to frame our message in a way that introduces generative AI as a technology that can have a direct, tangible, and positive impact on their business. Although it may be hard to quantify, I like to include estimates of man-hours saved or costs saved at least in my final proposals to prospects. Times are TOUGH right now, and money is expensive, so you need to have a compelling reason for businesses to get on board. Once you've gotten your messaging down, you will want to create a list of prospects to contact. Tools you can use to find prospects include Apollo.io, reply.io, zoominfo (expensive af), and Linkedin Sales Navigator. What specific job titles, etc. to target will depend on your niche but for smaller companies this will tend to be the owner. For white collar niches, i.e. law, the professional that will be directly benefiting from the tool (i.e. partners) may be better to contact. And for larger organizations you may want to target business improvement and digital transformation leads/directors- these are the people directly in charge of projects like what you may be proposing. Okay- so you have your message, and your list, and now all it comes down to is getting the good word out. I won't be going into the details of how to send these out, a quick Google search will give you hundreds of resources for cold outreach methods. However, personalization is key and beyond simple dynamic variables you want to make sure you can either personalize your email campaigns directly with AI (SmartWriter.ai is an example of a tool that can do this), or at the very least have the ability to import email messages programmatically. Alternatively, ask ChatGPT to make you a Python Script that can take in a list of emails, scrape info based on their linkedin URL or website, and all pass this onto a GPT prompt that specifies your messaging to generate an email. From there, send away. How tf do I close? Once you've got some prospects booked in on your meetings, you will need to close deals with them to turn them into clients. Call #1: Consultation Tying back to when I mentioned you want to take a consultant-first appraoch, you will want to listen closely to their goals and needs and understand their pain points. This would be the first call, and typically I would provide a high level overview of different solutions we could build to tacke these. It really helps to have a presentation available, so you can graphically demonstrate key points and key technologies. I like to use Plus AI for this, it's basically a Google Slides add-on that can generate slide decks for you. I copy and paste my default company messaging, add some key points for the presentation, and it comes out with pretty decent slides. Call #2: Demo The second call would involve a demo of one of these solutions, and typically I'll quickly prototype it with boilerplate code I already have, otherwise I'll cook something up in a no-code tool. If you have a niche where one type of solution is commonly demanded, it helps to have a general demo set up to be able to handle a larger volume of calls, so you aren't burning yourself out. I'll also elaborate on how the final product would look like in comparison to the demo. Call #3 and Beyond: Once the initial consultation and demo is complete, you will want to alleviate any remaining concerns from your prospects and work with them to reach a final work proposal. It's crucial you lay out exactly what you will be building (in writing) and ensure the prospect understands this. Furthermore, be clear and transparent with timelines and communication methods for the project. In terms of pricing, you want to take this from a value-based approach. The same solution may be worth a lot more to client A than client B. Furthermore, you can create "add-ons" such as monthly maintenance/upgrade packages, training sessions for employeees, and so forth, separate from the initial setup fee you would charge. How you can incorporate AI into marketing your businesses Beyond cold sales, I highly recommend creating a funnel to capture warm leads. For instance, I do this currently with my AI tools directory, which links directly to my AI agency and has consistent branding throughout. Warm leads are much more likely to close (and honestly, much nicer to deal with). However, even without an AI-related website, at the very least you will want to create a presence on social media and the web in general. As with any agency, you will want basic a professional presence. A professional virtual address helps, in addition to a Google Business Profile (GBP) and TrustPilot. a GBP (especially for local SEO) and Trustpilot page also helps improve the looks of your search results immensely. For GBP, I recommend using ProfilePro, which is a chrome extension you can use to automate SEO work for your GBP. Aside from SEO optimzied business descriptions based on your business, it can handle Q/A answers, responses, updates, and service descriptions based on local keywords. Privacy and Legal Concerns of the AAA Model Aside from typical concerns for agencies relating to service contracts, there are a few issues (especially when using no-code tools) that will need to be addressed to run a successful AAA. Most of these surround privacy concerns when working with proprietary data. In your terms with your client, you will want to clearly define hosting providers and any third party tools you will be using to build their solution, and a DPA with these third parties listed as subprocessors if necessary. In addition, you will want to implement best practices like redacting private information from data being used for building solutions. In terms of addressing concerns directly from clients, it helps if you host your solutions on their own servers (not possible with AI tools), and address the fact only ChatGPT queries in the web app, not OpenAI API calls, will be used to train OpenAI's models (as reported by mainstream media). The key here is to be open and transparent with your clients about ALL the tools you are using, where there data will be going, and make sure to get this all in writing. have fun, and keep an open mind Before I finish this post, I just want to reiterate the fact that this is NOT an easy way to make money. Running an AI agency will require hours and hours of dedication and work, and constantly rearranging your schedule to meet prospect and client needs. However, if you are looking for a new business to run, and have a knack for understanding business operations and are genuinely interested in the pracitcal applications of generative AI, then I say go for it. The time is ticking before AAA becomes the new dropshipping or SMMA, and I've a firm believer that those who set foot first and establish themselves in this field will come out top. And remember, while 100 thousand people may read this post, only 2 may actually take initiative and start.

We made $325k in 2023 from AI products, starting from 0, with no-code, no funding and no audience

I met my co-founder in late 2022 after an introduction from a mutual friend to talk about how to find contract Product Management roles. I was sporadically contracting at start-up at the time and he had just come out of another start-up that was wiped out by the pandemic. We hit it off, talking about ideas, sharing what other indie-hackers were doing, and given GPT-3’s prominence at the time, we started throwing around ideas about things we could build with it, if nothing else, just to learn. I should caveat, neither of us were AI experts when starting out, everything we learned has been through Twitter and blogs, my background is as an accountant, and his a consultant. Here’s how it went since then: &#x200B; Nov 2022 (+$50) \- We built a simple tool in around a week using GPT-3 fine-tuning and a no-code tool (Bubble) that helped UK university students write their personal statements for their applications \- We set some Google Ads going and managed to make a few sales (\~$50) in the first week \- OpenAI were still approving applications at the time and said this went against their “ethics” so we had to take it down &#x200B; Dec 2022 (+$200) \- We couldn’t stop coming up with ideas related to AI fine-tuning, but realised it was almost impossible to decide which to pursue \- We needed a deadline to force us so we signed up for the Ben’s Bites hackathon in late December \- In a week, we built and launched a no-code fine-tuning platform, allowing people to create fine-tuned models by dragging and dropping an Excel file onto it \- We launched it on Product Hunt, having no idea how to price it, and somehow managed to get \~2,000 visitors on the site and make 2 sales at $99 &#x200B; Jan 2023 (+$3,000) \- We doubled down on the fine-tuning idea and managed to get up to \~$300 MRR, plus a bunch of one-time sales and a few paid calls to help people get the most out of their models \- We quickly realised that people didn’t want to curate models themselves, they just wanted to dump data and get magic out \- That was when we saw people building “Talk with x book/podcast” on Twitter as side projects and realised that was the missing piece, we needed to turn it into a tool \- We started working on the new product in late January &#x200B; Feb 2023 (+$9,000) \- We started pre-selling access to an MVP for the new product, which allowed people to “chat with their data/content”, we got $5,000 in pre-sales, more than we made from the previous product in total \- By mid-February, after 3 weeks of building we were able to launch and immediately managed to get traction, getting to $1k MRR in < 1 week, building on the hype of ChatGPT and AI (we were very lucky here) &#x200B; Mar - Jul 2023 (+$98,000) \- We worked all the waking hours to keep up with customer demand, bugs, OpenAI issues \- We built integrations for a bunch of services like Slack, Teams, Wordpress etc, added tons of new functionality and continue talking to customers every day \- We managed to grow to $17k MRR (just about enough to cover our living expenses and costs in London) through building in public on Twitter, newsletters and AI directories (and a million other little things) \- We sold our fine-tuning platform for \~$20k and our university project for \~$3k on Acquire &#x200B; Aug 2023 (+$100,000) \- We did some custom development work based on our own product for a customer that proved pretty lucrative &#x200B; Sep - Oct 2023 (+$62,000) \- After 8 months of building constantly, we started digging more seriously into our usage and saw subscriptions plateauing \- We talked to and analysed all our paying users to identify the main use cases and found 75% were for SaaS customer support \- We took the leap to completely rebuild a version of our product around this use case, our biggest to date (especially given most features with no-code took us <1 day) &#x200B; Nov - Dec 2023 (+$53,000) \- We picked up some small custom development work that utilised our own tech \- We’re sitting at around $22k MRR now with a few bigger clients signed up and coming soon \- After 2 months of building and talking to users, we managed to finish our “v2” of our product, focussed squarely on SaaS customer support and launched it today. &#x200B; We have no idea what the response will be to this new version, but we’re pretty happy with it, but couldn’t have planned anything that happened to us in 2023 so who knows what will come of 2024, we just know that we are going to be learning a ton more. &#x200B; Overall, it is probably the most I have had to think in my life - other jobs you can zone out from time to time or rely on someone else if you aren’t feeling it - not when you are doing this, case and point, I am writing this with a banging head-cold right now, but wanted to get this done. A few more things we have learned along the way - context switching is unreal, as is keeping up with, learning and reacting to AI. There isn’t a moment of the day I am not thinking about what we do next. But while in some way we now have hundreds of bosses (our customers) I still haven’t felt this free and can’t imagine ever going back to work for someone else. Next year we’re really hoping to figure out some repeatable distribution channels and personally, I want to get a lot better at creating content/writing, this is a first step! Hope this helps someone else reading this to just try starting something and see what happens.

Raised $450k for my startup, here are the lessons I've learned along the way

2021 has been a pretty amazing year for Omnisearch. Having started initial work on Omnisearch at the end of 2020, we entered the new year with a working MVP yet no revenue, no significant partnerships, and no funding. Fast forward to the end of 2021, and we now have fantastic revenue growth, a partnership with a public company, and a far more powerful, complete and polished product. But one milestone really changed Omnisearch’s trajectory: our $450,000 USD pre-seed round by GoAhead Ventures. In this post I want to share the story of how it came about and offer a couple of takeaways to keep in mind when preparing for fundraising. &#x200B; The story Contrary to most advice, my co-founder Matej and I didn’t allocate a specific time to switch to “fundraising mode” but rather talked to investors on an ongoing basis. It was a bit of a distraction from working on the product, but on the positive side we were able to constantly get feedback on the idea, pitch, go-to-market strategy and hiring, as well as hearing investors’ major concerns sooner rather than later. That being said, our six-month long fundraising efforts weren’t yielding results - we talked to about twenty investors, mostly angels or smaller funds, with no success. The feedback was generally of the “too early for us” variety (since we were still pre-revenue), with additional questions about our go-to-market strategy and ideal customer persona. The introduction to our eventual investors, California-based GoAhead Ventures, came through a friend who had pitched them previously. We wrote a simple blurb and sent our pitch deck. We then went through GoAhead’s hyper-efficient screening process, consisting of a 30-minute call, a recorded three-minute pitch, and filling out a simple Google doc. Throughout the whole process, the GoAhead team left an awesome impression thanks to their knowledge of enterprise software and their responsiveness. They ended up investing and the whole deal was closed within two weeks, which is super fast even by Silicon Valley standards. While our fundraising experience is a single data point and your case might be different, here are the key takeaways from our journey. &#x200B; Perseverance wins: Like I said above, we talked to about twenty investors before we closed our round. Getting a series of “no”s sucks, but we took the feedback seriously and tried to prepare better for questions that caught us off guard. But we persevered, keeping in mind that from a bird’s eye perspective it’s an amazing time to be building startups and raising funds. Focus on traction: Sounds pretty obvious, right? The truth is, though, that even a small amount of revenue is infinitely better than none at all. One of the major differences between our eventual successful investor pitch and the earlier ones was that we had actual paying customers, though our MRR was low. This allows you to talk about customers in the present tense, showing there’s actual demand for your product and making the use cases more tangible. And ideally, highlight a couple of customer testimonials to boost your credibility. Have a demo ready: In Omnisearch’s case, the demo was oftentimes the best received part of the pitch or call. We’d show investors the live demo, and for bonus points even asked them to choose a video from YouTube and then try searching through it. This always had a “wow” effect on prospective investors and made the subsequent conversation more exciting and positive. Accelerators: Accelerators like Y Combinator or Techstars can add enormous value to a startup, especially in the early stages. And while it’s a great idea to apply, don’t rely on them too heavily. Applications happen only a few times a year, and you should have a foolproof fundraising plan in case you don’t get in. In our case, we just constantly looked for investors who were interested in our space (defined as enterprise SaaS more broadly), using LinkedIn, AngelList, and intros from our own network. Practice the pitch ad nauseam: Pitching is tough to get right even for seasoned pros, so it pays to practice as often as possible. We took every opportunity to perfect the pitch: attending meetups and giving the thirty-second elevator pitch to other attendees over beer and pizza, participating in startup competitions, going to conferences and exhibiting at our own booth, attending pre-accelerator programs, and pitching to friends who are in the startup world. Show an understanding of the competition: Frankly, this was one of the strongest parts of our pitch and investor conversations. If you’re in a similar space to ours, Gartner Magic Quadrants and Forrester Waves are an awesome resource, as well as sites like AlternativeTo or Capterra and G2. By thoroughly studying these resources we gained a great understanding of the industry landscape and were able to articulate our differentiation more clearly and succinctly. Presenting this visually in a coordinate system or a feature grid is, from our experience, even more effective. Remember it’s just the beginning! Getting your first round of funding is just the beginning of the journey, so it’s important to avoid euphoria and get back to building and selling the product as soon as possible. While securing funding enables you to scale the team, and is a particular relief if the founders had worked without a salary, the end goal is still to build a big, profitable, and overall awesome startup.

Turning a Social Media Agency into $1.5 Million in Revenue

Steffie here from Founder Folks, with a recent interview I did with Jason Yormark from Socialistics. Here is his story how he started and grew his social media agency. Name: Jason Yormark Company: Socialistics Employee Size: 10 Revenue: $1,500,000/year Year Founded: 2018 Website: www.socialistics.com Technology Tools: ClickUp, Slack, KumoSpace, Google Workspace, Shift, Zapier, Klayvio, Zoom, Gusto, Calendly, Pipedrive Introduction: I am the founder of Socialistics (www.socialistics.com), a leading social media agency that helps businesses turn their social media efforts into real measurable results. I am a 20+ year marketing veteran whose prior work has included launching and managing social media efforts for Microsoft Advertising, Office for Mac, the Air Force, and Habitat for Humanity. I have been recognized as a top B2B social media influencer and thought leader on multiple lists and publications including Forbes, ranking #30 on their 2012 list. I've recently published the book Anti-Agency: A Realistic Path to a $1,000,000 Business, and host the Anti Agency podcast where I share stories of doing business differently. You can learn more about me at www.jasonyormark.com. The Inspiration To Become An Entrepreneur: I’ve been involved with social media marketing since 2007, and have pretty much carved my career out of that. It was a natural progression for me to transition into starting a social media agency. From Idea to Reality: For me realistically, I had to side hustle something long enough to build it up to a point that I could take the leap and risks going full time on my own. For these reasons, I built the company and brand on the side putting out content regularly, and taking on side hustle projects to build out my portfolio and reputation. This went on for about 18 months at which point I had reached the breaking point of my frustrations of working for someone else, and felt I was ready to take the leap since I had the wheels in motion. While balancing a full-time job, I made sure not to overdo it. My main focus was on building out the website/brand and putting out content regularly to gain some traction and work towards some search visibility. I only took on 1-2 clients at a time to make sure I could still meet their needs while balancing a full time job. Attracting Customers: Initially I tapped into my existing network to get my first few clients. Then it was a mix of trade shows, networking events, and throwing a bit of money at paid directories and paid media. This is really a long game. You have to plant seeds over time with people and nurture those relationships over time. A combination of being helpful, likable and a good resource for folks will position you to make asks in the future. If people respect and like you, it makes it much easier to approach for opportunities when the time comes. Overcoming Challenges in Starting the Business: Plenty. Learning when to say no, only hiring the very best, and ultimately the realization that owning a marketing agency is going to have hills and valleys no matter what you do. Costs and Revenue: My largest expense by FAR is personnel, comprising between 50-60% of the business’ expenses, and justifiably so. It’s a people business. Our revenue doubled from the years 2018 through 2021, and we’ve seen between 10-20% growth year over year. A Day in the Life: I’ve successfully removed myself from the day to day of the business and that’s by design. I have a tremendous team, and a rock start Director of Operations who runs the agency day to day. It frees me up to pursue other opportunities, and to mentor, speak and write more. It also allows me to evangelize the book I wrote detailing my journey to a $1M business titled: Anti-Agency: A Realistic Path To A $1,000,000 Business (www.antiagencybook.com). Staying Ahead in a Changing Landscape: You really have to stay on top of technology trends. AI is a huge impact on marketing these days, so making sure we are up to speed on that, and not abusing it or relying on it too much. You also have to embrace that technology and not hide the fact that it’s used. Non-marketers still don’t and can’t do the work regardless of how much AI can help, so we just need to be transparent and smart on how we integrate it, but the fact is, technology will never replace creativity. As an agency, it’s imperative that we operationally allow our account managers to have bandwidth to be creative for clients all the time. It’s how we keep clients and buck the trend of companies changing agencies every year or two. The Vision for Socialistics: Continuing to evolve to cater to our clients through learning, education, and staying on top of the latest tools and technologies. Attracting bigger and more exciting clients, and providing life changing employment opportunities.

How a Small Startup in Asia Secured a Contract with the US Department of Homeland Security

Uzair Javaid, a Ph.D. with a passion for data privacy, co-founded Betterdata to tackle one of AI's most pressing challenges: protecting privacy while enabling innovation. Recently, Betterdata secured a lucrative contract with the US Department of Homeland Security, 1 of only 4 companies worldwide to do so and the only one in Asia. Here's how he did it: The Story So what's your story? I grew up in Peshawar, Pakistan, excelling in coding despite studying electrical engineering. Inspired by my professors, I set my sights on studying abroad and eventually earned a Ph.D. scholarship at NUS Singapore, specializing in data security and privacy. During my research, I ethically hacked Ethereum and published 15 papers—three times the requirement. While wrapping up my Ph.D., I explored startup ideas and joined Entrepreneur First, where I met Kevin Yee. With his expertise in generative models and mine in privacy, we founded Betterdata. Now, nearly three years in, we’ve secured a major contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security—one of only four companies globally and the only one from Asia. The Startup In a nutshell, what does your startup do? Betterdata is a startup that uses AI and synthetic data generation to address two major challenges: data privacy and the scarcity of high-quality data for training AI models. By leveraging generative models and privacy-enhancing technologies, Betterdata enables businesses, such as banks, to use customer data without breaching privacy regulations. The platform trains AI on real data, learns its patterns, and generates synthetic data that mimics the real thing without containing any personal or sensitive information. This allows companies to innovate and develop AI solutions safely and ethically, all while tackling the growing need for diverse, high-quality data in AI development. How did you conduct ideation and validation for your startup? The initial idea for Betterdata came from personal experience. During my Ph.D., I ethically hacked Ethereum’s blockchain, exposing flaws in encryption-based data sharing. This led me to explore AI-driven deep synthesis technology—similar to deepfakes but for structured data privacy. With GDPR impacting 28M+ businesses, I saw a massive opportunity to help enterprises securely share data while staying compliant. To validate the idea, I spoke to 50 potential customers—a number that strikes the right balance. Some say 100, but that’s impractical for early-stage founders. At 50, patterns emerge: if 3 out of 10 mention the same problem, and this repeats across 50, you have 10–15 strong signals, making it a solid foundation for an MVP. Instead of outbound sales, which I dislike, we used three key methods: Account-Based Marketing (ABM)—targeting technically savvy users with solutions for niche problems, like scaling synthetic data for banks. Targeted Content Marketing—regular customer conversations shaped our thought leadership and outreach. Raising Awareness Through Partnerships—collaborating with NUS, Singapore’s PDPC, and Plug and Play to build credibility and educate the market. These strategies attracted serious customers willing to pay, guiding Betterdata’s product development and market fit. How did you approach the initial building and ongoing product development? In the early stages, we built synthetic data generation algorithms and a basic UI for proof-of-concept, using open-source datasets to engage with banks. We quickly learned that banks wouldn't share actual customer data due to privacy concerns, so we had to conduct on-site installations and gather feedback to refine our MVP. Through continuous consultation with customers, we discovered real enterprise data posed challenges, such as missing values, which led us to adapt our prototype accordingly. This iterative approach of listening to customer feedback and observing their usage allowed us to improve our product, enhance UX, and address unmet needs while building trust and loyalty. Working closely with our customers also gives us a data advantage. Our solution’s effectiveness depends on customer data, which we can't fully access, but bridging this knowledge gap gives us a competitive edge. The more customers we test on, the more our algorithms adapt to diverse use cases, making it harder for competitors to replicate our insights. My approach to iteration is simple: focus solely on customer feedback and ignore external noise like trends or advice. The key question for the team is: which customer is asking for this feature or solution? As long as there's a clear answer, we move forward. External influences, such as AI hype, often bring more confusion than clarity. True long-term success comes from solving real customer problems, not chasing trends. Customers may not always know exactly what they want, but they understand their problems. Our job is to identify these problems and solve them in innovative ways. While customers may suggest specific features, we stay focused on solving the core issue rather than just fulfilling their exact requests. The idea aligns with the quote often attributed to Henry Ford: "If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." The key is understanding their problems, not just taking requests at face value. How do you assess product-market fit? To assess product-market fit, we track two key metrics: Customers' Willingness to Pay: We measure both the quantity and quality of meetings with potential customers. A high number of meetings with key decision-makers signals genuine interest. At Betterdata, we focused on getting meetings with people in banks and large enterprises to gauge our product's resonance with the target market. How Much Customers Are Willing to Pay: We monitor the price customers are willing to pay, especially in the early stages. For us, large enterprises, like banks, were willing to pay a premium for our synthetic data platform due to the growing need for privacy tech. This feedback guided our product refinement and scaling strategy. By focusing on these metrics, we refined our product and positioned it for scaling. What is your business model? We employ a structured, phase-driven approach for out business model, as a B2B startup. I initially struggled with focusing on the core value proposition in sales, often becoming overly educational. Eventually, we developed a product roadmap with models that allowed us to match customer needs to specific offerings and justify our pricing. Our pricing structure includes project-based pilots and annual contracts for successful deployments. At Betterdata, our customer engagement unfolds across three phases: Phase 1: Trial and Benchmarking \- We start with outreach and use open-source datasets to showcase results, offering customers a trial period to evaluate the solution. Phase 2: Pilot or PoC \- After positive trial results, we conduct a PoC or pilot using the customer’s private data, with the understanding that successful pilots lead to an annual contract. Phase 3: Multi-Year Contracts \- Following a successful pilot, we transition to long-term commercial contracts, focusing on multi-year agreements to ensure stability and ongoing partnerships. How do you do marketing for your brand? We take a non-conventional approach to marketing, focusing on answering one key question: Which customers are willing to pay, and how much? This drives our messaging to show how our solution meets their needs. Our strategy centers around two main components: Building a network of lead magnets \- These are influential figures like senior advisors, thought leaders, and strategic partners. Engaging with institutions like IMDA, SUTD, and investors like Plug and Play helps us gain access to the right people and foster warm introductions, which shorten our sales cycle and ensure we’re reaching the right audience. Thought leadership \- We build our brand through customer traction, technology evidence, and regulatory guidelines. This helps us establish credibility in the market and position ourselves as trusted leaders in our field. This holistic approach has enabled us to navigate diverse market conditions in Asia and grow our B2B relationships. By focusing on these areas, we drive business growth and establish strong trust with stakeholders. What's your advice for fundraising? Here are my key takeaways for other founders when it comes to fundraising: Fundraise When You Don’t Need To We closed our seed round in April 2023, a time when we weren't actively raising. Founders should always be in fundraising mode, even when they're not immediately in need of capital. Don’t wait until you have only a few months of runway left. Keep the pipeline open and build relationships. When the timing is right, execution becomes much easier. For us, our investment came through a combination of referrals and inbound interest. Even our lead investor initially rejected us, but after re-engaging, things eventually fell into place. It’s crucial to stay humble, treat everyone with respect, and maintain those relationships for when the time is right. Be Mindful of How You Present Information When fundraising, how you present information matters a lot. We created a comprehensive, easily digestible investment memo, hosted on Notion, which included everything an investor might need—problem, solution, market, team, risks, opportunities, and data. The goal was for investors to be able to get the full picture within 30 minutes without chasing down extra details. We also focused on making our financial model clear and meaningful, even though a 5-year forecast might be overkill at the seed stage. The key was clarity and conciseness, and making it as easy as possible for investors to understand the opportunity. I learned that brevity and simplicity are often the best ways to make a memorable impact. For the pitch itself, keep it simple and focus on 4 things: problem, solution, team, and market. If you can summarize each of these clearly and concisely, you’ll have a compelling pitch. Later on, you can expand into market segments, traction, and other metrics, but for seed-stage, focus on those four areas, and make sure you’re strong in at least three of them. If you do, you'll have a compelling case. How do you run things day-to-day? i.e what's your operational workflow and team structure? Here's an overview of our team structure and process: Internally: Our team is divided into two main areas: backend (internal team) and frontend (market-facing team). There's no formal hierarchy within the backend team. We all operate as equals, defining our goals based on what needs to be developed, assigning tasks, and meeting weekly to share updates and review progress. The focus is on full ownership of tasks and accountability for getting things done. I also contribute to product development, identifying challenges and clearing obstacles to help the team move forward. Backend Team: We approach tasks based on the scope defined by customers, with no blame or hierarchy. It's like a sports team—sometimes someone excels, and other times they struggle, but we support each other and move forward together. Everyone has the creative freedom to work in the way that suits them best, but we establish regular meetings and check-ins to ensure alignment and progress. Frontend Team: For the market-facing side, we implement a hierarchy because the market expects this structure. If I present myself as "CEO," it signals authority and credibility. This distinction affects how we communicate with the market and how we build our brand. The frontend team is split into four main areas: Business Product (Software Engineering) Machine Learning Engineering R&D The C-suite sits at the top, followed by team leads, and then the executors. We distill market expectations into actionable tasks, ensuring that everyone is clear on their role and responsibilities. Process: We start by receiving market expectations and defining tasks based on them. Tasks are assigned to relevant teams, and execution happens with no communication barriers between team members. This ensures seamless collaboration and focused execution. The main goal is always effectiveness—getting things done efficiently while maintaining flexibility in how individuals approach their work. In both teams, there's an emphasis on accountability, collaboration, and clear communication, but the structure varies according to the nature of the work and external expectations.

The delicate balance of building an online community business

Hey /r/Entrepreneur 👋 Just under two years ago I launched an online community business called Traffic Think Tank with two other co-founders, Nick Eubanks and Ian Howells. As a Traffic Think Tank customer you (currently) pay $119 a month to get access to our online community, which is run through Slack. The community is focused on helping you learn various aspects of marketing, with a particular focus on search engine optimization (SEO). Alongside access to the Slack community, we publish new educational video content from outside experts every week that all customers have access to. At the time of writing, Traffic Think Tank has around 650 members spanning across 17 of the 24 different global time zones. I was on a business trip over in Sydney recently, and during my time there I met up with some of our Australia-based community members. During dinner I was asked by several of them how the idea for Traffic Think Tank came about and what steps we took to validate that the idea was worth pursuing.  This is what I told them… How it all began It all started with a personal need. Nick, an already successful entrepreneur and owner of a marketing agency, had tested out an early version Traffic Think Tank in early 2017. He offered real-time consulting for around ten customers that he ran from Slack. He would publish some educational videos and offer his advice on projects that the members were running. The initial test went well, but it was tough to maintain on his own and he had to charge a fairly high price to make it worth his time. That’s when he spoke to me and Ian about turning this idea into something much bigger. Both Ian and I offered something slightly different to Nick. We’ve both spent time in senior positions at marketing agencies, but currently hold senior director positions in 2,000+ public employee companies (HubSpot and LendingTree). Alongside this, as a trio we could really ramp up the quality and quantity of content within the community, spread out the administrative workload and just generally have more resources to throw at getting this thing off the ground. Admittedly, Nick was much more optimistic about the potential of Traffic Think Tank – something I’m very thankful for now – whereas Ian and I were in the camp of “you’re out of your mind if you think hundreds of people are going to pay us to be a part of a Slack channel”. To validate the idea at scale, we decided that we’d get an initial MVP of the community up and running with a goal of reaching 100 paying customers in the first six months. If we achieved that, we’d validated that it was a viable business and we would continue to pursue it. If not, we’d kill it. We spent the next month building out the initial tech stack that enabled us to accept payments, do basic user management to the Slack channel, and get a one-page website up and running with information on what Traffic Think Tank was all about.  After this was ready, we doubled down on getting some initial content created for members – I mean, we couldn’t have people just land in an empty Slack channel, could we? We created around ten initial videos, 20 or so articles and then some long threads full of useful information within the Slack channel so that members would have some content to pour into right from the beginning.  Then, it was time to go live. The first 100 customers Fortunately, both Nick and I had built a somewhat substantial following in the SEO space over the previous 5-10 years, so we at least had a large email list to tap into (a total of around 40,000 people). We queued up some launch emails, set an initial price of $99 per month and pressed send. [\[LINK\] The launch email I sent to my subscribers announcing Traffic Think Tank](https://mailchi.mp/matthewbarby/future-of-marketing-1128181) What we didn’t expect was to sell all of the initial 100 membership spots in the first 72 hours. “Shit. What do we do now? Are we ready for this many people? Are we providing them with enough value? What if something breaks in our tech stack? What if they don’t like the content? What if everyone hates Slack?” All of these were thoughts running through my head. This brings me to the first great decision we made: we closed down new membership intake for 3 months so that we could focus completely on adding value to the first cohort of users. The right thing at the right time SEO is somewhat of a dark art to many people that are trying to learn about it for the first time. There’s hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of articles and videos online that talk about how to do SEO.  Some of it’s good advice; a lot of it is very bad advice.  Add to this that the barrier to entry of claiming to be an “expert” in SEO is practically non-existent and you have a recipe for disaster. This is why, for a long time, individuals involved in SEO have flocked in their masses to online communities for information and to bounce ideas off of others in the space. Forums like SEObook, Black Hat World, WickedFire, Inbound.org, /r/BigSEO, and many more have, at one time, been called home by many SEOs.  In recent times, these communities have either been closed down or just simply haven’t adapted to the changing needs of the community – one of those needs being real-time feedback on real-world problems.  The other big need that we all spotted and personally had was the ability to openly share the things that are working – and the things that aren’t – in SEO within a private forum. Not everyone wanted to share their secret sauce with the world. One of the main reasons we chose Slack as the platform to run our community on was the fact that it solved these two core needs. It gave the ability to communicate in real-time across multiple devices, and all of the information shared within it was outside of the public domain. The other problem that plagued a lot of these early communities was spam. Most of them were web-based forums that were free to access. That meant they became a breeding ground for people trying to either sell their services or promote their own content – neither of which is conducive to building a thriving community. This was our main motivation for charging a monthly fee to access Traffic Think Tank. We spent a lot of time thinking through pricing. It needed to be enough money that people would be motivated to really make use of their membership and act in a way that’s beneficial to the community, but not too much money that it became cost prohibitive to the people that would benefit from it the most. Considering that most of our members would typically spend between $200-800 per month on SEO software, $99 initially felt like the perfect balance. Growing pains The first three months of running the community went by without any major hiccups. Members were incredibly patient with us, gave us great feedback and were incredibly helpful and accommodating to other members. Messages were being posted every day, with Nick, Ian and myself seeding most of the engagement at this stage.  With everything going smoothly, we decided that it was time to open the doors to another intake of new members. At this point we’d accumulated a backlog of people on our waiting list, so we knew that simply opening our doors would result in another large intake. Adding more members to a community has a direct impact on the value that each member receives. For Traffic Think Tank in particular, the value for members comes from three areas: The ability to have your questions answered by me, Nick and Ian, as well as other members of the community. The access to a large library of exclusive content. The ability to build connections with the wider community. In the early stages of membership growth, there was a big emphasis on the first of those three points. We didn’t have an enormous content library, nor did we have a particularly large community of members, so a lot of the value came from getting a lot of one-to-one time with the community founders. [\[IMAGE\] Screenshot of engagement within the Traffic Think Tank Slack community](https://cdn.shortpixel.ai/client/qglossy,retimg,w_1322/https://www.matthewbarby.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Community-Engagement-in-Traffic-Think-Tank.png) The good thing about having 100 members was that it was just about feasible to give each and every member some one-to-one time within the month, which really helped us to deliver those moments of delight that the community needed early on. Two-and-a-half months after we launched Traffic Think Tank, we opened the doors to another 250 people, taking our total number of members to 350. This is where we experienced our first growing pains.  Our original members had become used to being able to drop us direct messages and expect an almost instant response, but this wasn’t feasible anymore. There were too many people, and we needed to create a shift in behavior. We needed more value to come from the community engaging with one another or we’d never be able to scale beyond this level. We started to really pay attention to engagement metrics; how many people were logging in every day, and of those, how many were actually posting messages within public channels.  We asked members that were logging in a lot but weren’t posting (the “lurkers”) why that was the case. We also asked the members that engaged in the community the most what motivated them to post regularly. We learned a lot from doing this. We found that the large majority of highly-engaged members had much more experience in SEO, whereas most of the “lurkers” were beginners. This meant that most of the information being shared in the community was very advanced, with a lot of feedback from the beginners in the group being that they “didn’t want to ask a stupid question”.  As managers of the community, we needed to facilitate conversations that catered to all of our members, not just those at a certain level of skill. To tackle this problem, we created a number of new channels that had a much deeper focus on beginner topics so novice members had a safe place to ask questions without judgment.  We also started running live video Q&As each month where we’d answer questions submitted by the community. This gave our members one-on-one time with me, Nick and Ian, but spread the value of these conversations across the whole community rather than them being hidden within private messages. As a result of these changes, we found that the more experienced members in the community were really enjoying sharing their knowledge with those with less experience. The number of replies within each question thread was really starting to increase, and the community started to shift away from just being a bunch of threads created by me, Nick and Ian to a thriving forum of diverse topics compiled by a diverse set of individuals. This is what we’d always wanted. A true community. It was starting to happen. [\[IMAGE\] Chart showing community engagement vs individual member value](https://cdn.shortpixel.ai/client/qglossy,retimg,w_1602/https://www.matthewbarby.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Community-Engagement-Balance-Graph.jpg) At the same time, we started to realize that we’ll eventually reach a tipping point where there’ll be too much content for us to manage and our members to engage with. When we reach this point, the community will be tough to follow and the quality of any given post will go down. Not only that, but the community will become increasingly difficult to moderate. We’re not there yet, but we recognize that this will come, and we’ll have to adjust our model again. Advocating advocacy As we started to feel more comfortable about the value that members were receiving, we made the decision to indefinitely open for new members. At the same time, we increased the price of membership (from $99 a month to $119) in a bid to strike the right balance between profitability as a business and to slow down the rate at which we were reaching the tipping point of community size. We also made the decision to repay all of our early adopters by grandfathering them in to the original pricing – and committing to always do this in the future. Despite the price increase, we saw a continued flow of new members come into the community. The craziest part about this was that we were doing practically no marketing activities to encourage new members– this was all coming from word of mouth. Our members were getting enough value from the community that they were recommending it to their friends, colleagues and business partners.  The scale at which this was happening really took us by surprise and it told us one thing very clearly: delivering more value to members resulted in more value being delivered to the business. This is a wonderful dynamic to have because it perfectly aligns the incentives on both sides. We’d said from the start that we wouldn’t sacrifice value to members for more revenue – this is something that all three of us felt very strongly about. First and foremost, we wanted to create a community that delivered value to its members and was run in a way that aligned with our values as people. If we could find a way to stimulate brand advocacy, while also tightening the bonds between all of our individual community members, we’d be boosting both customer retention and customer acquisition in the same motion. This became our next big focus. [\[TWEET\] Adam, one of our members wore his Traffic Think Tank t-shirt in the Sahara desert](https://twitter.com/AdamGSteele/status/1130892481099382784) We started with some simple things: We shipped out Traffic Think Tank branded T-shirts to all new members. We’d call out each of the individuals that would submit questions to our live Q&A sessions and thank them live on air. We set up a new channel that was dedicated to sharing a quick introduction to who you are, what you do and where you’re based for all new members. We’d created a jobs channel and a marketplace for selling, buying and trading services with other members. Our monthly “blind dates” calls were started where you’d be randomly grouped with 3-4 other community members so that you could hop on a call to get to know each other better. The Traffic Think Tank In Real Life (IRL)* channel was born, which enabled members to facilitate in-person meetups with each other. In particular, we saw that as members started to meet in person or via calls the community itself was feeling more and more like a family. It became much closer knit and some members started to build up a really positive reputation for being particularly helpful to other members, or for having really strong knowledge in a specific area. [\[TWEET\] Dinner with some of the Traffic Think Tank members in Brighton, UK](https://twitter.com/matthewbarby/status/1117175584080134149) Nick, Ian and I would go out of our way to try and meet with members in real life wherever we could. I was taken aback by how appreciative people were for us doing this, and it also served as an invaluable way to gain honest feedback from members. There was another trend that we’d observed that we didn’t really expect to happen. More and more members were doing business with each another. We’ve had people find new jobs through the community, sell businesses to other members, launch joint ventures together and bring members in as consultants to their business. This has probably been the most rewarding thing to watch, and it was clear that the deeper relationships that our members were forming were resulting in an increased level of trust to work with each other. We wanted to harness this and take it to a new level. This brought us to arguably the best decision we’ve made so far running Traffic Think Tank… we were going to run a big live event for our members. I have no idea what I’m doing It’s the first week of January 2019 and we’re less than three weeks away from Traffic Think Tank LIVE, our first ever in-person event hosting 150 people, most of which are Traffic Think Tank members. It's like an ongoing nightmare I can’t wake up from. That was Nick’s response in our private admin channel to myself and Ian when I asked if they were finding the run-up to the event as stressful as I was. I think that all three of us were riding on such a high from how the community was growing that we felt like we could do anything. Running an event? How hard can it be? Well, turns out it’s really hard. We had seven different speakers flying over from around the world to speak at the event, there was a pre- and after event party, and we’d planned a charity dinner where we would take ten attendees (picked at random via a raffle) out for a fancy meal. Oh, and Nick, Ian and I were hosting a live Q&A session on stage. It wasn’t until precisely 48 hours before the event that we’d realized we didn’t have any microphones, nor had a large amount of the swag we’d ordered arrived. Plus, a giant storm had hit Philly causing a TON of flight cancellations. Perfect. Just perfect. This was honestly the tip of the iceberg. We hadn’t thought about who was going to run the registration desk, who would be taking photos during the event and who would actually field questions from the audience while all three of us sat on stage for our live Q&A panel. Turns out that the answer to all of those questions were my wife, Laura, and Nick’s wife, Kelley. Thankfully, they were on hand to save our asses. The weeks running up to the event were honestly some of the most stressful of my life. We sold around 50% of our ticket allocation within the final two weeks before the event. All of the event organizers told us this would happen, but did we believe them? Hell no!  Imagine having two weeks until the big day and as it stood half of the room would be completely empty. I was ready to fly most of my extended family over just to make it look remotely busy. [\[IMAGE\] One of our speakers, Ryan Stewart, presenting at Traffic Think Tank LIVE](https://cdn.shortpixel.ai/client/qglossy,retimg,w_1920/https://www.matthewbarby.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Traffic-Think-Tank-LIVE-Ryan-Presenting.jpg) Thankfully, if all came together. We managed to acquire some microphones, the swag arrived on the morning of the event, all of our speakers were able to make it on time and the weather just about held up so that our entire allocation of ticket holders was able to make it to the event. We pooled together and I’m proud to say that the event was a huge success. While we made a substantial financial loss on the event itself, January saw a huge spike in new members, which more than recouped our losses. Not only that, but we got to hang out with a load of our members all day while they said really nice things about the thing we’d built. It was both exhausting and incredibly rewarding. Bring on Traffic Think Tank LIVE 2020! (This time we’re hiring an event manager...)   The road ahead Fast forward to today (August 2019) and Traffic Think Tank has over 650 members. The biggest challenges that we’re tackling right now include making sure the most interesting conversations and best content surfaces to the top of the community, making Slack more searchable (this is ultimately one of its flaws as a platform) and giving members a quicker way to find the exclusive content that we create. You’ll notice there’s a pretty clear theme here. In the past 30 days, 4,566 messages were posted in public channels inside Traffic Think Tank. If you add on any messages posted inside private direct messages, this number rises to 21,612. That’s a lot of messages. To solve these challenges and enable further scale in the future, we’ve invested a bunch of cash and our time into building out a full learning management system (LMS) that all members will get access to alongside the Slack community. The LMS will be a web-based portal that houses all of the video content we produce. It will also  provide an account admin section where users can update or change their billing information (they have to email us to do this right now, which isn’t ideal), a list of membership perks and discounts with our partners, and a list of links to some of the best threads within Slack – when clicked, these will drop you directly into Slack. [\[IMAGE\] Designs for the new learning management system (LMS)](https://cdn.shortpixel.ai/client/qglossy,retimg,w_2378/https://www.matthewbarby.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Traffic-Think-Tank-LMS.png) It’s not been easy, but we’re 95% of the way through this and I’m certain that it will have a hugely positive impact on the experience for our members. Alongside this we hired a community manager, Liz, who supports with any questions that our members have, coordinates with external experts to arrange webinars for the community, helps with new member onboarding, and has tightened up some of our processes around billing and general accounts admin. This was a great decision. Finally, we’ve started planning next year’s live event, which we plan to more than double in size to 350 attendees, and we decided to pick a slightly warmer location in Miami this time out. Stay tuned for me to have a complete meltdown 3 weeks from the event. Final thoughts When I look back on the journey we’ve had so far building Traffic Think Tank, there’s one very important piece to this puzzle that’s made all of this work that I’ve failed to mention so far: co-founder alignment. Building a community is a balancing act that relies heavily on those in charge being completely aligned. Nick, Ian and I completely trust each other and more importantly, are philosophically aligned on how we want to run and grow the community. If we didn’t have this, the friction between us could tear apart the entire community. Picking the right people to work with is important in any company, but when your business is literally about bringing people together, there’s no margin for error here.  While I’m sure there will be many more challenges ahead, knowing that we all trust each other to make decisions that fall in line with each of our core values makes these challenges dramatically easier to overcome. Finally, I’d like to thank all of our members for making the community what it is today – it’d be nothing without you and I promise that we’ll never take that for granted. &#x200B; I originally posted this on my blog here. Welcoming all of your thoughts, comments, questions and I'll do my best to answer them :)

How a founder built a B2B AI startup to serve with 65+ global brands (including Fortune500 companies)

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. 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.

[Ultimate List] A list of Marketing Tools That I’ve tested over the years and found helpful to do better marketing with less work. More than 50 Tools To Help you with Marketing, Copywriting & Sales!

Starting to focus on marketing for your business, You will come across the same tools mentioned over and over by marketers. I would like to mention here tools that you might haven’t seen going viral in the community but actually will help you grow faster and efficiently. Starting off with My favourite Marketing Channel! #Email Marketing For SMBs Convertkit / Mailerlite / Mailchimp - These 3 Platforms are the best options for SMBs and entrepreneurs just starting out with email marketing. All 3 have free plans up to 1,000 subscribers. Scribe - Email Signature Tool, Create Great Email signatures for your emails. Liramail - Most Email marketing platforms don’t offer great email templates. This tool will help you build great email templates with drag and drop. Quick mail Auto-Warmer - Most Businesses at the beginning don’t know what to do when open rate drops. You need to use an email warmer like this to keep it up. #Email Marketing For Big Businesses SendGrid - Overall Email Marketing Tools, this tool is best for brands that have huge email lists and email marketing is the key marketing channel. Braze - This tool is leading in email marketing for large Email senders. When I was working for agencies, this was one of the best email marketing tools I had used. NeoCertified - Protect your emails for spammers and threats. To keep your email list healthy, this is a must have! Sparkloop - Referral Marketing For Email Campaigns. Email can generate great huge amount of referrals for you and Sparkloop makes it easier. #Cold Emails & Lead Generation Hunter - A Great Tool to scrape emails from domain names. The tool comes with a green free plan but Pro plan is worth the amount of features it provides. Icyleads - It’s better than Hunter as it’s heavily focused on the sales and prospecting to help you derive great results from your campaigns. Mailshake - Beginner Friend Cold Email Tool with Great features like email list warming. #Communication Tools Twilio - One do the best customer engagement platform used by Companies like Stripe and mine too. Chatlio - Use Live chat feature on your website with slack integration. My favourite easier to catch up on conversations through slack integration. Intercom - Used by Most Marketers, Industry Leading customer communication platform. Great for beginners! Chatwoot - Another Amazing Communication Tool but the best part is they have a great free plan useful for new businesses. Loom - Communicate with your audience through Videos. Loom is great for SaaS and to show human interaction to close new visitors effectively. #CRM Outseta - This tool provides great CRM and their billing system is better than other tools out their which makes it stands out! Hubspot - I don’t think this tool needs an introduction because Hubspot’s CRM is the best in industry. Salesflare - This CRM is a great alternative to hubspot as it’s beginner friendly and helpful for SMBs. #SEO Tools Ahrefs - One of the best SEO tool in the industry. They also just launched a bunch of free tools to help SEO beginners. Screaming frog - The only website crawler I have used since I bought my first domain. It’s the best! Ubersuggest- The Tool by Neil Patel is the best SEO tool for you. (I’m Joking, it’s the worst) Contentking - This tool is good at Real-time SEO Auditing, they do a lot of Marketing work through Newsletters. If you are subscribed to any SEO newsletter. You may have seen this tool. SEOquake & Semrush - SEOquake is a great tool to conduct on-page analysis, SERP, and much more. Great tool but it’s owned by Semrush. You should go for Semrush because that tool will cover all SEO aspects for you. #Content Marketing Buzzsumo - This tool is great for content research and but you may find the regular emails pretty annoying sometimes. Contentrow - Analyse Your Content and find it’s strength. Highly recommended who are weak at content structuring like me. Grammarly - If you are not a native English speaker like me, you might think you need it or not. You need it for sure for grammar corrections. #Graphic Design Tools Visme - At agencies, Infographics can be more effective than usual postscript. Visme is a graphic design tool focused on infographics and designs related to B2B and B2C. It’s great for agencies! Glorify - A Graphic Design Tool focused on E-commerce, filled with Designs useful for E-commerce store owners. Canva - All-in-one Industry leading Graphic Design Tool that everyone knows and every template is overused now. Adobe Creative Cloud ( previously Sparkpost) - It’s a great alternative to Canva filled with Amazing Stock images to use in your visuals but the only backlash is the exports in this tool are not high quality. Snaps - A Canva Alternative that might not have overused templates for your Social Accounts. #Advertising Tools Plai - It’s a great PPC tool to create Ads for Instagram and Tiktok. Wordstream - It’s an industry leading PPC Tool, great for Ad Grading and auditing. AdEspresso - This Is a tool by Hootsuite. They have a lot of Data sourced at the backend, which helps in Ad optimisation through this tool. That’s the reason I recommend this tool. #Video Editing Tools Veed Studio - I have been using Veed from last year. It’s one of the best Video Marketing Tool Optimized for Instagram & Tiktok. Synthesia - It’s a new AI video generation platform. From last few months, if you have seen marketing agencies including Videos in Emails. The chances are that’s not a Agency member taking but AI generated Human. Motionbox - It’s also a great video editing tool focused on video editing for Digital Marketers. Jitter Video - It’s a great motion design tool. Comes with great templates, the only place where other tools I mentioned lacks. It’s great and beginner friendly. #Copywriting Jasper AI - Google’s John Mueller says AI generated content is banned on Search but I think with Jasper AI you can generate SEO optimised Content but you have to put in some efforts like at least give 30 minutes for editing the Copy by yourself. Copy AI - Another AI tool to help you write better copy. This one is more focused on helping you write copy suitable for Ads and Social media campaigns. Hemingway App - To help you write more clearly and Bold. This tool is better than Grammarly if you look for writing perspective and it’s free. #Social Media Management App I’ve used a Lot of SMM Tools and that’s why going to mention all of them with a short review. Sprout social - The Best with deep insights coverage. Hootsuite - Great Scheduling tool just under sprout social. Later - Heavily Focused on Instagram from beginning and Now Tiktok too. SkedSocial - It’s like a Later alternative with great addition features like link-in-bio. Facebook’s Business Manager- Great but sometimes bugs can make a huge issue for you and customer support is like dead. Tweet Hunter & Hypefury- Both are Twitter Scheduling tools growing very fast on platform and are great for growth. Buffer - It’s a great tool but I haven’t seen any new updates to help with management. Zoho Social - It’s a great SMM tool and if you use other marketing solutions from Zoho. It’s a must have! #Market Research Tool • SparkToro - That’s the only one I have ever used. It’s great for audience research and comes with great customer service. Founded by Rand Fishkin, it’s one of the best research tool. #Influencer Marketing & UGC InfluenceGrid - A free search engine To find Tiktok & Instagram Influencers for your campaigns. Tiktok Creative Center- TikTok’s in-built tool called “Creative Center” is the best to find content trends, audience demographics and much more. Archive - Find Instagram Stories and Posts mentioning Your brands and use them as Ads for your business Marketing. #Landing Page Builders Leadpages - Its a great landing page builder because the integration and drag-and-drop features makes it easier to work with! Cardd co - A Great Landing page builder with easy step up but it lacks the copywriting and tracking features. Instapage - It’s one of the best out and I think the overall product is effective enough to help you stand out with your landing page. Unbounce - It’s a great alternative to Instapage due its well polished landing page templates that might be helpful for you. #Community Building Mighty Networks - A Great Community building platform, and you can also sell courses within the platform. Circle so - A great alternative to Mighty networks focused on Communities specifically. We are currently using for small community Of ours. #Sales Tools Drift - You can get much more out of Drift than just sales tools but The Sales solutions provided in Drift are one of the best. Salesforce - It’s the industry Sales solution provider. A go-to and have various pricing plans making it suitable for majority of SMBs. #Social Proof Tools People don’t have enough time to search across internet to decide to trust you after seeing your Ad first time. That’s what you might be facing too. Here are two tools I absolutely love for social proof! Use Proof - Show Recent Activities occurring on your website and build the trust of your visitors. Testimonial to - Gather Testimonials across Social Media platforms related to your business with this tool. Capture tweets and comments mentioning your brands and mention them. #Analytics Tools Plausible Analytics- A privacy friendly Analytics alternative to Google Analytics if you hate Analytics 4 like me. Mixpanel - Product Analytics and funnel reports better than Google Analytics. #Reddit Marketing Gummysearch- This tool will help To find your target audience on Reddit and interact with them with its help and close your new customers. Howitzer- It’s another pretty similar tool to Gummysearch focused on Reddit cold outreach to get clients and new customers. Both are great but Gummysearch provides better customer support while Howtizer is helpful on a large scale Reddit Marketing. #Text Marketing Klaviyo - It’s an email + SMS marketing tool, it’s taking up space in marketing industry very quickly as an industry leader due to its great integrations but you need to learn the platform usage to maximise the outcome. Cartloop - This tool provides great text marketing solutions with integration with Spotify and other e-commerce marketing tools. Attentive Mobile - This is my favourite Text marketing tool due to the interactive dashboard + they have a library of Text marketing examples to help you out with your campaigns. #Other Tools I have used throughout my journey! Triple Whale - It’s a great E-commerce marketing tools with Triple pixel to help you track your campaigns more efficiently. Fastory - To create well optimized Instagram & Tiktok Stories for your business. Jotform - Online Form Builder with integrations with leading marketing tools. Gated - As an entrepreneur and marketer, you may receive a bunch of unwanted emails. Use Gated to get rid of them and receive useful mails only! ClickUp- The main Tool for Project Management, one of the best and highly recommended. Riverside - Forget Zoom or Google Meet, For your Podcast Interviews and Marketing conferences. You need riverside with great video quality and recording features. Manychat- Automate your Instagram DMs and interact with your followers more efficiently + sell out your products/ services when you are offline. Calendy - To schedule meetings with your ideal clients. ServiceProviderPro - It’s a client portal for SEO & Growing Agencies, very helpful in scaling agencies. SendCheckit - Compare your Email Subject Lines with 100,000+ others in the database for free. Otter AI - Using AI track your meetings more effectively, you can easily edit, annotate and share notes from the meetings. Ryte - Optimise your website User experience with this tool focused on UX aspects + SEO too. PhantomBuster - Scrape LinkedIn Profile and Data from Facebook/LinkedIn groups. I clearly love this tool! #Honourable Mentions Zapier - The Only tool you need to integrate your favourite tool with a new effective tool. Elementor - That’s what I use for web design and it’s great! Marketer Hire - To hire world class marketers to work with you. InShot & Capcut - I create Instagram Reels and TikTok’s and life without these tools isn’t possible. Nira - It’s a great tool to Manage your workspace and this tool has launched many marketing templates in-built helpful for marketers and also entrepreneurs. X - The tool you love that wasn’t mentioned here is valuable and I honour that tool and share that if you would like to! I mean thanks for reading what I have curated all over my life as a marketer. I share 5 Marketing Tools, 5 Marketing Resources and 1 Free Resourceevery week in my newsletter, you can subscribe here to receive that for free. Also, You can read an expanded list of email marketing tools in this Reddit post!

We made $325k in 2023 from AI products, starting from 0, with no-code, no funding and no audience

I met my co-founder in late 2022 after an introduction from a mutual friend to talk about how to find contract Product Management roles. I was sporadically contracting at start-up at the time and he had just come out of another start-up that was wiped out by the pandemic. We hit it off, talking about ideas, sharing what other indie-hackers were doing, and given GPT-3’s prominence at the time, we started throwing around ideas about things we could build with it, if nothing else, just to learn. I should caveat, neither of us were AI experts when starting out, everything we learned has been through Twitter and blogs, my background is as an accountant, and his a consultant. Here’s how it went since then: &#x200B; Nov 2022 (+$50) \- We built a simple tool in around a week using GPT-3 fine-tuning and a no-code tool (Bubble) that helped UK university students write their personal statements for their applications \- We set some Google Ads going and managed to make a few sales (\~$50) in the first week \- OpenAI were still approving applications at the time and said this went against their “ethics” so we had to take it down &#x200B; Dec 2022 (+$200) \- We couldn’t stop coming up with ideas related to AI fine-tuning, but realised it was almost impossible to decide which to pursue \- We needed a deadline to force us so we signed up for the Ben’s Bites hackathon in late December \- In a week, we built and launched a no-code fine-tuning platform, allowing people to create fine-tuned models by dragging and dropping an Excel file onto it \- We launched it on Product Hunt, having no idea how to price it, and somehow managed to get \~2,000 visitors on the site and make 2 sales at $99 &#x200B; Jan 2023 (+$3,000) \- We doubled down on the fine-tuning idea and managed to get up to \~$300 MRR, plus a bunch of one-time sales and a few paid calls to help people get the most out of their models \- We quickly realised that people didn’t want to curate models themselves, they just wanted to dump data and get magic out \- That was when we saw people building “Talk with x book/podcast” on Twitter as side projects and realised that was the missing piece, we needed to turn it into a tool \- We started working on the new product in late January &#x200B; Feb 2023 (+$9,000) \- We started pre-selling access to an MVP for the new product, which allowed people to “chat with their data/content”, we got $5,000 in pre-sales, more than we made from the previous product in total \- By mid-February, after 3 weeks of building we were able to launch and immediately managed to get traction, getting to $1k MRR in < 1 week, building on the hype of ChatGPT and AI (we were very lucky here) &#x200B; Mar - Jul 2023 (+$98,000) \- We worked all the waking hours to keep up with customer demand, bugs, OpenAI issues \- We built integrations for a bunch of services like Slack, Teams, Wordpress etc, added tons of new functionality and continue talking to customers every day \- We managed to grow to $17k MRR (just about enough to cover our living expenses and costs in London) through building in public on Twitter, newsletters and AI directories (and a million other little things) \- We sold our fine-tuning platform for \~$20k and our university project for \~$3k on Acquire &#x200B; Aug 2023 (+$100,000) \- We did some custom development work based on our own product for a customer that proved pretty lucrative &#x200B; Sep - Oct 2023 (+$62,000) \- After 8 months of building constantly, we started digging more seriously into our usage and saw subscriptions plateauing \- We talked to and analysed all our paying users to identify the main use cases and found 75% were for SaaS customer support \- We took the leap to completely rebuild a version of our product around this use case, our biggest to date (especially given most features with no-code took us <1 day) &#x200B; Nov - Dec 2023 (+$53,000) \- We picked up some small custom development work that utilised our own tech \- We’re sitting at around $22k MRR now with a few bigger clients signed up and coming soon \- After 2 months of building and talking to users, we managed to finish our “v2” of our product, focussed squarely on SaaS customer support and launched it today. &#x200B; We have no idea what the response will be to this new version, but we’re pretty happy with it, but couldn’t have planned anything that happened to us in 2023 so who knows what will come of 2024, we just know that we are going to be learning a ton more. &#x200B; Overall, it is probably the most I have had to think in my life - other jobs you can zone out from time to time or rely on someone else if you aren’t feeling it - not when you are doing this, case and point, I am writing this with a banging head-cold right now, but wanted to get this done. A few more things we have learned along the way - context switching is unreal, as is keeping up with, learning and reacting to AI. There isn’t a moment of the day I am not thinking about what we do next. But while in some way we now have hundreds of bosses (our customers) I still haven’t felt this free and can’t imagine ever going back to work for someone else. Next year we’re really hoping to figure out some repeatable distribution channels and personally, I want to get a lot better at creating content/writing, this is a first step! Hope this helps someone else reading this to just try starting something and see what happens.

12 months ago, I was unemployed. Last week my side hustle got acquired by a $500m fintech company

I’ve learned so much over the years from this subreddit. I thought I’d return the favour and share some of my own learnings. In November 2020 my best friend and I had an idea. “What if we could find out which stocks the Internet is talking about?” This formed the origins of Ticker Nerd. 9 months later we sold Ticker Nerd to Finder (an Australian fintech company valued at around $500m). In this post, I am going to lay out how we got there. How we came up with the idea First off, like other posts have covered - you don’t NEED a revolutionary or original idea to build a business. There are tonnes of “boring” businesses making over 7 figures a year e.g. law firms, marketing agencies, real estate companies etc. If you’re looking for an exact formula to come up with a great business idea I’m sorry, but it doesn’t exist. Finding new business opportunities is more of an art than a science. Although, there are ways you can make it easier to find inspiration. Below are the same resources I use for inspiration. I rarely ever come up with ideas without first searching one of the resources below for inspiration: Starter Story Twitter Startup Ideas My First Million Trends by the Hustle Trends VC To show how you how messy, random and unpredictable it can be to find an idea - let me explain how my co-founder and I came up with the idea for Ticker Nerd: We discovered a new product on Twitter called Exploding Topics. It was a newsletter that uses a bunch of software and algorithms to find trends that are growing quickly before they hit the mainstream. I had recently listened to a podcast episode from My First Million where they spoke about Motley Fool making hundreds of millions from their investment newsletters. We asked ourselves what if we could build a SaaS platform similar to Exploding Topics but it focused on stocks? We built a quick landing page using Carrd + Gumroad that explained what our new idea will do and included a payment option to get early access for $49. We called it Exploding Stock (lol). We shared it around a bunch of Facebook groups and subreddits. We made $1,000 in pre-sales within a couple days. My co-founder and I can’t code so we had to find a developer to build our idea. We interviewed a bunch of potential candidates. Meanwhile, I was trawling through Wall Street Bets and found a bunch of free tools that did roughly what we wanted to build. Instead of building another SaaS tool that did the same thing as these free tools we decided to pivot from our original idea. Our new idea = a paid newsletter that sends a weekly report that summarises 2 of the best stocks that are growing in interest on the Internet. We emailed everyone who pre-ordered access, telling them about the change and offered a full refund if they wanted. tl;dr: We essentially combined two existing businesses (Exploding Topics and Motley Fool) and made it way better. We validated the idea by finding out if people will actually pay money for it BEFORE we decided to build it. The idea we started out with changed over time. How to work out if your idea will actually make money It’s easy to get hung up on designing the logo or choosing the perfect domain name for your new idea. At this stage none of that matters. The most important thing is working out if people will pay money for it. This is where validation comes in. We usually validate ideas using Carrd. It lets you build a simple one page site without having to code. The Ticker Nerd site was actually built using a Carrd template. Here’s how you can do it yourself (at a high level): Create a Carrd pro account (yes it's a $49 one off payment but you’ll get way more value out of it). Buy a cheap template and send it to your Carrd account. You can build your own template but this will save you a lot of time. Once the template reaches your Carrd account, duplicate it. Leave the original so it can be duplicated for other ideas. Jump onto Canva (free) and create a logo using the free logos provided. Import your logo. Add copy to the page that explains your idea. Use the AIDA formula. Sign up to Gumroad (free) and create a pre-sale campaign. Create a discounted lifetime subscription or version of the product. This will be used pre-sales. Add the copy from the site into the pre-sale campaign on Gumroad. Add a ‘widget’ to Carrd and connect it to Gumroad using the existing easy integration feature. Purchase a domain name. Connect it to Carrd. Test the site works. Share your website Now the site is ready you can start promoting it in various places to see how the market reacts. An easy method is to find relevant subreddits using Anvaka (Github tool) or Subreddit Stats. The Anvaka tool provides a spider map of all the connected subreddits that users are active in. The highlighted ones are most relevant. You can post a thread in these subreddits that offer value or can generate discussion. For example: ‘I’m creating a tool that can write all your copy, would anyone actually use this?’ ‘What does everything think of using AI to get our copy written faster?’ ‘It’s time to scratch my own itch, I’m creating a tool that writes marketing copy using GPT-3. What are the biggest problems you face writing marketing copy? I’ll build a solution for it’ Reddit is pretty brutal these days so make sure the post is genuine and only drop your link in the comments or in the post if it seems natural. If people are interested they’ll ask for the link. Another great place to post is r/entrepreuerridealong and r/business_ideas. These subreddits expect people to share their ideas and you’ll likely make some sales straight off the bat. I also suggest posting in some Facebook groups (related to your idea) as well just for good measure. Assess the results If people are paying you for early access you can assume that it’s worth building your idea. The beauty of posting your idea on Reddit or in Facebook groups is you’ll quickly learn why people love/hate your idea. This can help you decide how to tweak the idea or if you should drop it and move on to the next one. How we got our first 100 customers (for free) By validating Ticker Nerd using subreddits and Facebook groups this gave us our first paying customers. But we knew this wouldn’t be sustainable. We sat down and brainstormed every organic strategy we could use to get traction as quickly as possible. The winner: a Product Hunt launch. A successful Product Hunt launch isn’t easy. You need: Someone that has a solid reputation and audience to “hunt” your product (essentially an endorsement). An aged Product Hunt account - you can’t post any products if your account is less than a week old. To be following relevant Product Hunt members - since they get notified when you launch a new product if they’re following you. Relationships with other builders and makers on Product Hunt that also have a solid reputation and following. Although, if you can pull it off you can get your idea in front of tens of thousands of people actively looking for new products. Over the next few weeks, I worked with my co-founder on connecting with different founders, indie hackers and entrepreneurs mainly via Twitter. We explained to them our plans for the Product Hunt launch and managed to get a small army of people ready to upvote our product on launch day. We were both nervous on the day of the launch. We told ourselves to have zero expectations. The worst that could happen was no one signed up and we were in the same position as we’re in now. Luckily, within a couple of hours Ticker Nerd was on the homepage of Product Hunt and in the top 10. The results were instant. After 24 hours we had around 200 people enter their payment details to sign up for our free trial. These signups were equal to around $5,800 in monthly recurring revenue. \-- I hope this post was useful! Drop any questions you have below and I’ll do my best to respond :)

Started a content marketing agency 6 years ago - $0 to $5,974,324 (2023 update)

Hey friends, My name is Tyler and for the past 6 years, I’ve been documenting my experience building a content marketing agency called Optimist. Year 1 - 0 to $500k ARR Year 2 - $500k to $1MM ARR Year 3 - $1MM ARR to $1.5MM(ish) ARR Year 4 - $3,333,686 Revenue Year 5 - $4,539,659 Revenue How Optimist Works First, an overview/recap of the Optimist business model: We operate as a “collective” of full time/professional freelancers Everyone aside from me is a contractor Entirely remote/distributed team Each freelancer earns $65-85/hour Clients pay us a flat monthly fee for full-service content marketing (research, strategy, writing, editing, design/photography, reporting and analytics, targeted linkbuilding, and more) We recently introduced hourly engagements for clients who fit our model but have some existing in-house support Packages range in price from $10-20k/mo We offer profit share to everyone on our core team as a way to give everyone ownership in the company In 2022, we posted $1,434,665 in revenue. It was our highest revenue year to date and brings our lifetime total to $5,974,324. Here’s our monthly revenue from January 2017 to December of 2022. But, like every year, it was a mix of ups and downs. Here’s my dispatch for 2023. — Running a business is like spilling a drink. It starts as a small and simple thing. But, if you don’t clean it up, the spill will spread and grow — taking up more space, seeping into every crack. There’s always something you could be doing. Marketing you could be working on. Pitches you could be making. Networking you could be doing. Client work you could help with. It can be all-consuming. And it will be — if you don’t clean up the spill. I realized this year that I had no containment for the spill that I created. Running an agency was spilling over into nearly every moment of my life. When I wasn’t working, I was thinking about work. When I wasn’t thinking about work, I was dreaming about it. Over the years, I’ve shared about a lot of my personal feelings and experience as an entrepreneur. And I also discussed my reckoning with the limitations of running the business we’ve built. My acceptance that it was an airplane but not a rocket. And my plan to try to compartmentalize the agency to make room in my life for other things — new business ideas, new revenue streams, and maybe some non-income-producing activity. 🤷 What I found in 2022 was that the business wasn’t quite ready for me to make that move. It was still sucking up too much of my time and attention. There were still too many gaps to fill and I was the one who was often filling them. So what do you do? Ultimately you have two choices on the table anytime you run a business and it’s not going the way you want it: Walk away Turn the ship — slowly For a huge number of reasons (personal, professional, financial, etc), walking away from Optimist was not really even an option or the right move for me. But it did feel like things needed to change. I needed to keep turning the ship to get it to the place where it fit into my life — instead of my life fitting around the business. This means 2022 was a year of transition for the agency. (Again?) Refocusing on Profit Some money is better than no money. Right? Oddly, this was one of the questions I found myself asking in 2022. Over the years, we’ve been fortunate to have many clients who have stuck with us a long time. In some cases, we’ve had clients work with us for 2, 3, or even 4 years. (That’s over half of our existence!) But, things have gotten more expensive — we’ve all felt it. We’ve had to increase pay to remain competitive for top talent. Software costs have gone up. It’s eaten into our margin. Because of our increasing costs and evolving scope, many of our best, most loyal clients were our least profitable. In fact, many were barely profitable — if at all. We’ve tried to combat that by increasing rates on new, incoming clients to reflect our new costs and try to make up for shrinking margin on long-term clients. But we didn’t have a good strategy in place for updating pricing for current clients. And it bit us in the ass. Subsidizing lower-profit, long-term clients with new, higher-margin clients ultimately didn’t work out. Our margins continued to dwindle and some months we were barely breaking even while posting six-figures of monthly revenue. 2022 was our highest revenue year but one of our least profitable. It only left one option. We had to raise rates on some of our long-term clients. But, of course, raising rates on a great, long-term client can be delicate. You’ve built a relationship with these people over the years and you’re setting yourself up for an ultimatum — are you more valuable to the client or is the client more valuable to you? Who will blink first? We offered all of these clients the opportunity to move to updated pricing. Unfortunately, some of them weren’t on board. Again, we had 2 options: Keep them at a low/no profit rate Let them churn It seems intuitive that having a low-profit client is better than having no client. But we’ve learned an important lesson many times over the years. Our business doesn’t scale infinitely and we can only handle so many clients at a time. That means that low-profit clients are actually costing us money in some cases. Say our average client generates $2,500 per month in profit — $30,000 per year. If one of our clients is only generating $500/mo in profit, working with them means missing out on bringing on a more profitable client (assuming our team is currently at capacity). Instead of $30,000/year, we’re only making $6,000. Keeping that client costs us $24,000. That’s called opportunity cost. So it’s clear: We had to let these clients churn. We decided to churn about 25% of our existing clients. On paper, the math made sense. And we had a pretty consistent flow of new opportunities coming our way. At the time, it felt like a no-brainer decision. And I felt confident that we could quickly replace these low-profit clients with higher-margin ones. I was wrong. Eating Shit Right after we initiated proactively churning some of our clients, other clients — ones we planned to keep — gave us notice that they were planning to end the engagement. Ouch. Fuck. We went from a 25% planned drop in revenue to a nearly 40% cliff staring us right in the face. Then things got even worse. Around Q3 of this year, talk of recession and layoffs really started to intensify. We work primarily with tech companies and startups. And these were the areas most heavily impacted by the economic news. Venture funding was drying up. Our leads started to slow down. This put us in a tough position. Looking back now, I think it’s clear that I made the wrong decision. We went about this process in the wrong way. The reality sinks in when you consider the imbalance between losing a client and gaining a client. It takes 30 days for someone to fire us. It’s a light switch. But it could take 1-3 months to qualify, close, and onboard a new client. We have lots of upfront work, research, and planning that goes into the process. We have to learn a new brand voice, tone, and style. It’s a marathon. So, for every client we “trade”, there’s a lapse in revenue and work. This means that, in retrospect, I would probably have made this transition using some kind of staggered schedule rather than a cut-and-dry approach. We could have gradually off-boarded clients when we had more definitive work to replace them. I was too confident. But that’s a lesson I had to learn the hard way. Rebuilding & Resetting Most of the voluntary and involuntary churn happened toward the end of 2022. So we’re still dealing with the fall out. Right now, it feels like a period of rebuilding. We didn’t quite lose 50% of our revenue, but we definitely saw a big hit heading into 2023. To be transparent: It sucks. It feels like a gigantic mistake that I made which set us back significantly from our previous high point. I acted rashly and it cost us a lot of money — at least on the surface. But I remind myself of the situation we were in previously. Nearly twice the revenue but struggling to maintain profitability. Would it have been better to try to slowly fix that situation and battle through months of loss or barely-break-even profits? Or was ripping off the bandaid the right move after all? I’m an optimist. (Heh, heh) Plus, I know that spiraling over past decisions won’t change them or help me move forward. So I’m choosing to look at this as an opportunity — to rebuild, reset, and refocus the company. I get to take all of the tough lessons I’ve learned over the last 6 years and apply them to build the company in a way that better aligns with our new and current goals. It’s not quite a fresh, clean start, but by parting ways with some of our oldest clients, we’ve eliminated some of the “debt” that’s accumulated over the years. We get a chance to fully realize the new positioning that we rolled out last year. Many of those long-term clients who churned had a scope of work or engagement structure that didn’t fit with our new positioning and focus. So, by losing them, we’re able to completely close up shop on the SOWs that no longer align with the future version of Optimist. Our smaller roster of clients is a better fit for that future. My job is to protect that positioning by ensuring that while we’re rebuilding our new roster of clients we don’t get desperate. We maintain the qualifications we set out for future clients and only take on work that fits. How’s that for seeing the upside? Some other upside from the situation is that we got an opportunity to ask for candid feedback from clients who were leaving. We asked for insight about their decision, what factors they considered, how they perceived us, and the value of our work. Some of the reasons clients left were obvious and possibly unavoidable. Things like budget cuts, insourcing, and uncertainty about the economy all played at least some part of these decisions. But, reading between the lines, where was one key insight that really struck me. It’s one of those, “oh, yeah — duh — I already knew that,” things that can be difficult to learn and easy to forget…. We’re in the Relationship Business (Plan Accordingly) For all of our focus on things like rankings, keywords, content, conversions, and a buffet of relevant metrics, it can be easy to lose the forest for the trees. Yes, the work itself matters. Yes, the outcomes — the metrics — matter. But sometimes the relationship matters more. When you’re running an agency, you can live or die by someone just liking you. Admittedly, this feels totally unfair. It opens up all kinds of dilemmas, frustration, opportunity for bias and prejudice, and other general messiness. But it’s the real world. If a client doesn’t enjoy working with us — even if for purely personal reasons — they could easily have the power to end of engagement, regardless of how well we did our actual job. We found some evidence of this in the offboarding conversations we had with clients. In some cases, we had clients who we had driven triple- and quadruple-digital growth. Our work was clearly moving the needle and generating positive ROI and we had the data to prove it. But they decided to “take things in another direction” regardless. And when we asked about why they made the decision, it was clear that it was more about the working relationship than anything we could have improved about the service itself. The inverse is also often true. Our best clients have lasting relationships with our team. The work is important — and they want results. But even if things aren’t quite going according to plan, they’re patient and quick to forgive. Those relationships feel solid — unshakeable. Many of these folks move onto new roles or new companies and quickly look for an opportunity to work with us again. On both sides, relationships are often more important than the work itself. We’ve already established that we’re not building a business that will scale in a massive way. Optimist will always be a small, boutique service firm. We don’t need 100 new leads per month We need a small, steady roster of clients who are a great fit for the work we do and the value we create. We want them to stick around. We want to be their long-term partner. I’m not built for churn-and-burn agency life. And neither is the business. When I look at things through this lens, I realize how much I can cut from our overall business strategy. We don’t need an ultra-sophisticated, multi-channel marketing strategy. We just need strong relationships — enough of them to make our business work. There are a few key things we can take away from this as a matter of business strategy: Put most of our effort into building and strengthening relationships with our existing clients Be intentional about establishing a strong relationship with new clients as part of onboarding Focus on relationships as the main driver of future business development Embracing Reality: Theory vs Practice Okay, so with the big learnings out the way, I want to pivot into another key lesson from 2022. It’s the importance of understanding theory vs practice — specifically when it comes to thinking about time, work, and life. It all started when I was considering how to best structure my days and weeks around running Optimist, my other ventures, and my life goals outside of work. Over the years, I’ve dabbled in many different ways to block time and find focus — to compartmentalize all of the things that are spinning and need my attention. As I mapped this out, I realized that I often tried to spread myself too thin throughout the week. Not just that I was trying to do too much but that I was spreading that work into too many small chunks rather than carving out time for focus. In theory, 5 hours is 5 hours. If you have 5 hours of work to get done, you just fit into your schedule whenever you have an open time slot. In reality, a single 5-hour block of work is 10x more productive and satisfying than 10, 30-minute blocks of work spread out across the week. In part, this is because of context switching. Turning your focus from one thing to another thing takes time. Achieving flow and focus takes time. And the more you jump from one project to another, the more time you “lose” to switching. This is insightful for me both in the context of work and planning my day, but also thinking about my life outside of Optimist. One of my personal goals is to put a finite limit on my work time and give myself more freedom. I can structure that in many different ways. Is it better to work 5 days a week but log off 1 hour early each day? Or should I try to fit more hours into each workday so I can take a full day off? Of course, it’s the latter. Both because of the cost of context switching and spreading work into more, smaller chunks — but also because of the remainder that I end up with when I’m done working. A single extra hour in my day probably means nothing. Maybe I can binge-watch one more episode of a new show or do a few extra chores around the house. But it doesn’t significantly improve my life or help me find greater balance. Most things I want to do outside of work can’t fit into a single extra hour. A full day off from work unlocks many more options. I can take the day to go hiking or biking. I can spend the day with my wife, planning or playing a game. Or I can push it up against the weekend and take a 3-day trip. It gives me more of the freedom and balance that I ultimately want. So this has become a guiding principle for how I structure my schedule. I want to: Minimize context switching Maximize focused time for work and for non-work The idea of embracing reality also bleeds into some of the shifts in business strategy that I mentioned above. In theory, any time spent on marketing will have a positive impact on the company. In reality, focusing more on relationships than blasting tweets into the ether is much more likely to drive the kind of growth and stability that we’re seeking. As I think about 2023, I think this is a recurring theme. It manifests in many ways. Companies are making budget cuts and tough decisions about focus and strategy. Most of us are looking for ways to rein in the excess and have greater impact with a bit less time and money. We can’t do everything. We can’t even do most things. So our #1 priority should be to understand the reality of our time and our effort to make the most of every moment (in both work and leisure). That means thinking deeply about our strengths and our limitations. Being practical, even if it feels like sacrifice. Update on Other Businesses Finally, I want to close up by sharing a bit about my ventures outside of Optimist. I shared last year how I planned to shift some of my (finite) time and attention to new ventures and opportunities. And, while I didn’t get to devote as much as I hoped to these new pursuits, they weren’t totally in vain. I made progress across the board on all of the items I laid out in my post. Here’s what happened: Juice: The first Optimist spin-out agency At the end of 2021, we launched our first new service business based on demand from Optimist clients. Focused entirely on building links for SEO, we called the agency Juice. Overall, we made strong progress toward turning this into a legitimate standalone business in 2022. Relying mostly on existing Optimist clients and a few word-of-mouth opportunities (no other marketing), we built a team and set up a decent workflow and operations. There’s still many kinks and challenges that we’re working through on this front. All told, Juice posted almost $100,000 in revenue in our first full year. Monetizing the community I started 2022 with a focus on figuring out how to monetize our free community, Top of the Funnel. Originally, my plan was to sell sponsorships as the main revenue driver. And that option is still on the table. But, this year, I pivoted to selling paid content and subscriptions. We launched a paid tier for content and SEO entrepreneurs where I share more of my lessons, workflows, and ideas for building and running a freelance or agency business. It’s gained some initial traction — we reached \~$1,000 MRR from paid subscriptions. In total, our community revenue for 2022 was about $2,500. In 2023, I’m hoping to turn this into a $30,000 - $50,000 revenue opportunity. Right now, we’re on track for \~$15,000. Agency partnerships and referrals In 2022, we also got more serious about referring leads to other agencies. Any opportunity that was not a fit for Optimist or we didn’t have capacity to take on, we’d try to connect with another partner. Transparently, we struggled to operationalize this as effectively as I would have liked. In part, this was driven by my lack of focus here. With the other challenges throughout the year, I wasn’t able to dedicate as much time as I’d like to setting goals and putting workflows into place. But it wasn’t a total bust. We referred out several dozen potential clients to partner agencies. Of those, a handful ended up converting into sales — and referral commission. In total, we generated about $10,000 in revenue from referrals. I still see this as a huge opportunity for us to unlock in 2023. Affiliate websites Lastly, I mentioned spending some time on my new and existing affiliate sites as another big business opportunity in 2022. This ultimately fell to the bottom of my list and didn’t get nearly the attention I wanted. But I did get a chance to spend a few weeks throughout the year building this income stream. For 2022, I generated just under $2,000 in revenue from affiliate content. My wife has graciously agreed to dedicate some of her time and talent to these projects. So, for 2023, I think this will become a bit of a family venture. I’m hoping to build a solid and consistent workflow, expand the team, and develop a more solid business strategy. Postscript — AI, SEO, OMG As I’m writing this, much of my world is in upheaval. If you’re not in this space (and/or have possibly been living under a rock), the release of ChatGPT in late 2022 has sparked an arms race between Google, Bing, OpenAI, and many other players. The short overview: AI is likely to fundamentally change the way internet search works. This has huge impact on almost all of the work that I do and the businesses that I run. Much of our focus is on SEO and understanding the current Google algorithm, how to generate traffic for clients, and how to drive traffic to our sites and projects. That may all change — very rapidly. This means we’re standing at a very interesting point in time. On the one hand, it’s scary as hell. There’s a non-zero chance that this will fundamentally shift — possibly upturn — our core business model at Optimist. It could dramatically change how we work and/or reduce demand for our core services. No bueno. But it’s also an opportunity (there’s the optimist in me, again). I certainly see a world where we can become leaders in this new frontier. We can pivot, adjust, and capitalize on a now-unknown version of SEO that’s focused on understanding and optimizing for AI-as-search. With that, we may also be able to help others — say, those in our community? — also navigate this tumultuous time. See? It’s an opportunity. I wish I had the answers right now. But, it’s still a time of uncertainty. I just know that there’s a lot of change happening and I want to be in front of it rather than trying to play catch up. Wish me luck. — Alright friends — that's my update for 2023! I’ve always appreciated sharing these updates with the Reddit community, getting feedback, being asked tough questions, and even battling it out with some of my haters (hey!! 👋) As usual, I’m going to pop in throughout the next few days to respond to comments or answer questions. Feel free to share thoughts, ideas, and brutal takedowns in the comments. If you're interested in following the Optimist journey and the other projects I'm working on in 2023, you can follow me on Twitter. Cheers, Tyler P.S. - If you're running or launching a freelance or agency business and looking for help figuring it out, please DM me. Our subscription community, Middle of the Funnel, was created to provide feedback, lessons, and resources for other entrepreneurs in this space.

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

Simple rate limiting strategy to launch free AI tools without buring your pocket

Free AI tools are a great SEO hack to get more traffic on your website, but my biggest concern always has been abuse of them. Now the strategy I'm going to share isnt 100% bulletproof and folks can definitely get around it. But it has been working well so far. I've implemented it for my Shopify App Idea Generator, which I've launched today. Steps: First of all, explore Mistral in case your output tokens \> input tokens gpt-3.5-turbo-0125 costs $0.5/1M for input & $1.5/1M for output open-mixtral-8x7b costs 0.7$ / 1M tokens input & 0.7$ / 1M tokens for output one con is mixtral does not support tools right now, my idea generator is a rag tool so sadly couldnt use it in prod The average tokens per usage for my tool was 2k input & 1k output OpenAI cost comes out to be: $0.0025 Mistral cost comes out: $0.0021 More often than not, especially if you're building chat tools, input >> output. So the lower input cost of 3.5 makes sense. This also motivated me to build my own gpt pricing calculator to do quick comparisons Now lets say you dont want to spend more than $50 per month on your free tool Lets assume you get 1k users in a month ( which is not an easy feat to achieve, remember, seo takes time) Only way to instantly get such traffic is to go viral on social media /product hunt etc, which ofcourse can be attempted That means per user you wouldnt want to spend more than 50/1000 = $0.05 Execution cost for my tool is $0.0025 So i can affort max $0.05/$0.0025 = 20 attempts per user in a month Implement IP based rate limiting I've deployed my backend on render.com, and it sends the ip of the client in \x-forwarded-for\ header Only way folks get around this easily is by switching networks or ip rotation, which again isnt that straightforward, but ofcourse can be hacked Now its upto you to limit the user once in 24 hours, 1 hour, or even 30 days for that matter. Ideally the user should be upfront aware about the executions they have in the x time frame so that they can optimise their prompts accordingly I usually prefer much tighter rate limits but use larger models so that the output is so damn good that folks start sharing the tools with each other and it increases virality Lastly, set the limits on your provider settings In the event you actually become viral, there is no one stopping from api abuse. In such scenarios OpenAI, Mistral and pretty much every provider allows you to set a cap at your usage budget. If that is crossed, the api stops working Yes this does break the tool, but it doesnt break your pocket atleast, you then buy time to figure out what to do. Let me know what you folks think about this. I will definitely do a longer blog post version of this when I have some results & numbers in hand. Cheers.

Building and launching an AI-powered Product Strategy tool, or; a story of nights and weekends

Speaking to peers in the software development sphere I learned of one constant that we had all personally experienced throughout our careers: a bloated product development process that feels like work for the sake of work, centred around the highest-paid person's opinion instead of its customers. We didn't like how current tools assume AI will provide the perfect answer on the first run. Instead, we wanted a tool that allows for manual refining and editing AI suggestions, keeping all previous ideas in context. This way, we can develop a solution step by step, instead of trying to get it perfect on the first try. An approach more similar to how you'd typically approach product discovery as a human. AI is then used to help save time and reduce admin, instead of replace the expert So, we got together and asked over 100 Product Managers questions about it, brought all that feedback goodness together, and started building Squad. We think we've created something really cool and hope you think so too. The ELI5 on what Squad does: 1) Creates alignment that empowers bottom up software development whilst keeping executive in the loop 2) Increases confidence that what you're building is what people actually want - data driven by default 2) Speeds up the time from idea --> execution by ideating with you on an experimentation approach 3) Helps gives PMs time back to focus on strategy (currently stats show they spend 75% of their time on admin, 25% on strategy) The team hustled hard on this as a passion project while working day jobs, and today have launched on Product Hunt. Check it out and see if the mission resonates with you, we'd appreciate the love! https://www.producthunt.com/posts/squad-8b75e29c-d767-4a8f-a60a-fd162e141a72 &#x200B;

AI Will Make You Extremely Rich or Kill Your Business in 2024

Preface: I'm a solo-founder in the AI space and previously worked as an ML scientist; the new advancements in AI that I'm seeing are going to impact everyone here. It doesn't matter if you're just starting out, or a bootstrapped brick and mortar founder, or even a VC backed hard tech founder. Last year was when the seeds were laid, and this is the year we'll see them bloom. There will be an onslaught of advancements that take place that are borderline inconceivable due to the nature of exponential progress. This will change every single vertical. I'm making this post because I think AI execution strategy will make or break businesses. Dramatically. Over $50B was put into AI startups in 2023 alone. This figure excludes the hundreds of billions poured into AI from enterprises. So, let's follow the money: &#x200B; 1) AI enterprise software. There's a lot to unpack here and this is what I’m currently working on. AI enterprise software will encompass everything from hyper personalized email outbound to AI cold calls to AI that A/B tests ads on synthetic data to vertical specific software. The impact of the former is relatively self explanatory, so I'll focus on the latter. To illustrate vertical specific AI software, I'll use a simple example in the legal space. Lawyers typically have to comb through thousands of pages of documents. Now, using an LLM + a VDB, an AI can instantly answer all of those questions while surfacing the source and highlighting the specific answer in the contract/document. There are dozens of AI startups for this use case alone. This saves lawyers an immense amount of time and allows them to move faster. Firms that adopt this have a fundamental advantage over law firms that don't adopt this. This was 2023 technology. I'm seeing vertical AI software getting built by my friends in areas from construction, to real estate, to even niche areas like chimney manufacturing. This will exist everywhere. Now, this can be extrapolated much further to be applicable to systems that can do reports and even browse the Internet. This brings me to my next point. &#x200B; 2) AI information aggregation and spread. My gut tells me that this will have a crescendo moment in the future with hardware advancements (Rabbit, Tab, etc.). You won't have to google things because it will be surfaced to you. It's predictive in nature. The people who can get information the fastest will grow their business the fastest. This part is semi-speculative, but due to the nature of LLMs being so expensive to train, I have a strong feeling that large institutions will have access to the \fastest\ and \best\ models that can do this quicker than you and I can. This is why it's important to stay on top. &#x200B; 3) AI content generation This is relevant to running advertisements and any digital marketing aspect of your business. If you can rapidly make content faster than your competitors to put in social media, you will outpace your competitors rapidly. I think most folks are familiar with MidJourney, Stable diffusion, etc. but don't know how to use it. You can generate consistent models for a clothing brand or generate images of a product that you would normally need to hire a professional photographer to take. There's also elevenlabs which is relatively easy to use and can be used to make an MP3 clip as a narration for an ad; this is something I've already done. I'm also still shocked by how many people are unfamiliar with tools like Pika which can do video generation. You could imagine companies having fleets of digital influencers that they control or conjuring up the perfect ad for a specific demographic using a combination of all of the aforementioned tools. &#x200B; In summary, if you feel like I'm being hyperbolic or propagating science fiction fantasies, you're likely already behind. I truly recommend that everyone stays up to date on these advancements as much as possible. If your competitor comes across an AI tool that can increase their ROAS by 5x they can crush you. If your competitor uses a tool that increases the rate at which they receive and aggregate information by 200% (modest estimate) they will crush you. If your competitors have a tool that can reduce their employee size, then they will use it. They'll fire their employees to cut costs and reinvest the money back into their business. It will compound to the point where you're outpaced, and this isn't a level of innovation we've seen since the birth of the industrial revolution. Your customers can get stolen overnight, or you can steal your competition’s customers overnight. TL;DR: This is an opportunity for entrepreneurs to scale faster than they could have possibly imagined, but this also comes with the potential for your company to be obliterated. We've never seen advancements that can have this drastic of an impact this quickly. Adoption will happen fast, and first movers will have a disproportionate and compounding advantage. Watch guides, meet with startups, follow the news, and get rich.

Why Ignoring AI Agents in 2025 Will Kill Your Marketing Strategy

If you're still focusing solely on grabbing the attention of human beings with your marketing efforts, you're already behind. In 2025, the game will change. Good marketing will demand an in-depth understanding of the AI space, especially the AI Agent space. Why? Your ads and content won’t just be seen by humans anymore. They’ll be analyzed, indexed, and often acted upon by AI agents—automated systems that will be working on behalf of companies and consumers alike. Your New Audience: Humans + AI Agents It’s not just about appealing to people. Companies are employing AI robots to research, negotiate, and make purchasing decisions. These AI agents are fast, thorough, and unrelenting. Unlike humans, they can analyze millions of options in seconds. And if your marketing isn’t optimized for them, you’ll get filtered out before you even reach the human decision-maker. How to Prepare Your Marketing for AI Agents The companies that dominate marketing in 2025 will be the ones that master the art of capturing AI attention. To do this, marketers will need to: Understand the AI agents shaping their industry. Research how AI agents function in your niche. What are they prioritizing? How do they rank options? Create AI-friendly content. Design ads and messaging that are easily understandable and accessible to AI agents. This means clear metadata, structured data, and AI-readable formats. Invest in AI analytics. AI agents leave behind footprints. Tracking and analyzing their behavior is critical. Stay ahead of AI trends. The AI agent space is evolving rapidly. What works today might be obsolete tomorrow. How My Agency Adapted and Thrived in the AI Space At my digital agency, we saw this shift coming and decided to act early. In 2023, we started integrating AI optimization into our marketing strategies. One of our clients—a B2B SaaS company—struggled to get traction because their competitors were drowning them out in Google search rankings and ad platforms. By analyzing the algorithms and behaviors of AI agents in their space, we: Rewrote their website copy with structured data and optimized metadata that was more AI-agent friendly. Created ad campaigns with clear, concise messaging and technical attributes that AI agents could quickly process and index. Implemented predictive analytics to understand what AI agents would prioritize based on past behaviors. The results? Their website traffic doubled in three months, and their lead conversion rate skyrocketed by 40%. Over half of the traffic increase was traced back to AI agents recommending their platform to human users. The Takeaway In 2025, marketing won’t just be about human attention. It’ll be about AI attention—and that requires a completely different mindset. AI agents are not your enemy; they’re your new gatekeepers. Learn to speak their language, and you’ll dominate the marketing game.

Beginner to the 1st sale: my journey building an AI for social media marketers

Hey everyone! Here’s my journey building an AI for social media marketers all the way up until my first pre-launch sale, hope that could help some of you: My background: studied maths at uni before dropping out to have some startup experiences. Always been drawn to building new things so I reckoned I would have some proper SaaS experiences and see how VC-funded startups are doing it before launching my own.  I’ve always leaned towards taking more risks in my life so leaving my FT job to launch my company wasn’t a big deal for me (+ I’m 22 so still have time to fail over and over). When I left my job, I started reading a lot about UI/UX, no-code tools, marketing, sales and every tool a worthwhile entrepreneur needs to learn about. Given the complexity of the project I set out to achieve, I asked a more technical friend to join as a cofounder and that's when AirMedia was born. We now use bubble for landing page as I had to learn it and custom-code stack for our platform.  Here's our goal: streamlining social media marketing using AI. I see this technology has only being at the premises of what it will be able to achieve in the near-future. We want to make the experience dynamic i.e. all happens from a discussion and you see the posts being analysed from there as well as the creation process - all from within the chat. Fast forward a few weeks ago, we finished developing the first version of our tool that early users describe as a "neat piece of tech" - just this comment alone can keep me going for months :) Being bootstrapped until now, I decided to sell lifetime deals for the users in the waitlist that want to get the tool in priority as well as secure their spot for life. We've had the first sale the first day we made that public ! Now what you all are looking for: How ?  Here was my process starting to market the platform: I need a high-converting landing page so I reckoned which companies out there have the most data and knows what convert and what doesn’t: Unbounce. Took their landing page and adapted it to my value proposition and my ICP.  The ICP has been defined from day 1 and although I’m no one to provide any advice, I strongly believe the ICP has to be defined from day 1 (even before deciding the name of the company). It helps a lot when the customer is you and you’ve had this work experience that helps you identify the problems your users encounter. Started activating the network, posting on Instagram and LinkedIn about what we've built (I've worked in many SaaS start-ups in the past so I have to admit that's a bit of a cheat code). Cold outreach from Sales NAV to our ICP, been growing the waitlist in parallel of building the tool for months now so email marketings with drip sequences and sharing dev updates to build the trust along the way (after all we're making that tool for our users - they should be the first aware about what we're building). I also came across some Whatsapp groups with an awesome community that welcomed our platform with excitement.) The landing page funnel is the following: Landing page -> register waitlist -> upsell page -> confirmation. I've made several landing pages e.g. for marketing agencies, for real estate agents, for marketing director in several different industries. The goal now is just testing out the profiles and who does it resonate the most with. Another growth hack that got us 40+ people on the waitlist: I identified some Instagram posts from competitors where their CTA was "comment AI" and I'll send you our tool and they got over 2k people commenting. Needless to say, I messaged every single user to check out our tool and see if it could help them. (Now that i think about it, the 2% conversion rate there is not great - especially considering the manual labour and the time put behind it). We’ve now got over 400 people on the waitlist so I guess we’re doing something right but we’ll keep pushing as the goal is to sell these lifetime deals to have a strong community to get started. (Also prevents us from going to VCs and I can keep my time focussing exclusively on our users - I’m not into boardroom politics, just wanna build something useful for marketers). Now I’m still in the process of testing out different marketing strategies while developing and refining our platform to make it next level on launch day. Amongst those:  LinkedIn Sales Nav outreach (first sale came from there) Product Hunt Highly personalised cold emails (there I’m thinking of doing 20 emails a day with a personalised landing page to each of those highly relevant marketers). Never seen that and I think this could impress prospects but not sure it’s worth it time / conversion wise. Make content to could go viral (at least 75 videos) that I’m posting throughout several social media accounts such as airmedia\\, airmedia\reels, airmedia\ai (you get the hack) always redirecting to the main page both in the profile description and tagging the main account. I have no idea how this will work so will certainly update some of you that would like to know the results. Will do the same across Facebook, TikTok, Youtube Shorts etc… I’m just looking for a high potential of virality there. This strategy is mainly used to grow personal brands but never seen it applied to companies. Good old cold calling Reddit (wanna keep it transparent ;) ) I’m alone to execute all these strategies + working in parallel to refine the product upon user’s feedback I’m not sure I can do more than that for now. Let me know if you have any feedback/ideas/ tasks I could implement.  I could also make another post about the proper product building process as this post was about the marketing. No I certainly haven’t accomplished anything that puts me in a position to provide advices but I reckon I’m on my way to learn more and more. Would be glad if this post could help some of you.  And of course as one of these marketing channels is Reddit I’ll post the link below for the entrepreneurs that want to streamline their social media or support us. Hope I was able to provide enough value in this post for you to consider :) https://airmedia.uk/

I've been building stuff for years, I can build your idea

If anyone is interested at all, I'm a college student whose been massively passionate for entrepreneur and business stuff for years and can build anything from a marketplace to a social network, a booking app, a live streaming app, AI app*, what not. I'm really flexible in general and I'm also very reasonable with pricing. I like this community so I'd like to work on something I enjoy... (indeed... get out of my tabs please). Im a little passionate in general let's say, and I build all the time for fun. But I need money. So I'm here. Viola! Since I'm a college student, and this is my first time ever offering my services as well, chances are I won't expect anything past $500. I might even do it for cheaper if it looks doable for me. If you're generous that's up to you (lol). I'm happy to share my work and live previews you can interact with before we start. And, I'm happy to build things before you pay, so you can see it literally working :) THE "NEGATIVE"/catch: There will be no code from scratch as we'd build using no-code (www.bubble.io) and implement code as needed. This means you will not have the source code ever (even if we wanted to) and if you ever want your own from scratch platform/app you will have to find someone/a team to do it from scratch, as there's no option to export source code out. If you plan to grow past 1 million users, you may consider migrating to something built from scratch at this point scaling wise (and you can't get your source code - so you'll have to pay an entire dev team separately. If you have an app, you'll need a website developed, and Android and iOS developers for the app). For an MVP however, I personally think it's a faster, easier and cheaper way to get things running without investing a lot. THE GOOD: No-code/low-code will be a thousand times more easy, cheap, and fast to maintain. And if you're a startup, chances are you WILL need to tweak things... possibly a lot (100s vs. 1,000s difference in my opinion..). We can still build almost anything and also turn it into a mobile app for iOS / Android, though I'm more comfortable with getting a web app up first and the main posting here. But it depends on the complexity so just ask. Maintenance is likely to end up FAR cheaper and you can even do it free yourself if you decided to learn (which you could totally do in some days, and master in some weeks/months fully). I can build and document everything to be as beginner friendly as possible for you to be able to maintain it yourself if you wanted to learn. Send me a message describing what you need if you're interested. I will give you an estimate on price, time, and can send you some live previews. If we agree, I will start to build before any down payments to a (reasonable) point!:)

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 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? 🙌

5 Habits to go from Founder to CEO

Over the years, I've gathered some knowledge about transitioning from a startup founder to a CEO. I started my company 7 years ago. We are now not super big (65 people), but we have learned a lot. We raised $19M in total and we are now profitable. The transition from Founder to CEO was crucial. Your startup begins to mature and scale and you need to scale with it. It's often a challenging phase, but I've managed to summarize it into five habbits. Say no to important things every day Being able to say "no" to important tasks every day is an essential practice for a growing leader. It's a reality that as the magnitude of your company or ideas expands, so does the influx of good ideas and opportunities. However, to transform from a mere hustler to a true leader, you have to become selective. This means learning to refuse good ideas, which is crucial if you want to consistently execute the outstanding ones. The concept that "Startups don't starve, they drown" resonates deeply because it underlines how challenging it can be to reject opportunities. A key strategy to develop this skill is time-constraining your to-do list. Here's how you can do it: Weekly: Formulate a weekly to-do list, including only those tasks that you're sure to complete within the week. Leave some buffer room for unexpected issues. If there's any doubt about whether you'll have time for a certain task, it should not feature on your weekly list. I use Todoist and Notion for task management. Daily: Apply the same rule while creating your daily to-do list. Only include tasks that you're confident about accomplishing that day. If a task seems too big to fit into one day, break it down into manageable chunks. Journaling Journaling is a powerful strategy that can help an individual transition from a reactive approach to a proactive one. As founders, we often find ourselves caught up in a cycle of endless tasks, akin to chopping trees in a dense forest. However, to ensure sustainable growth, it is crucial to develop an ability to "zoom out", or to view the bigger picture. I use The Morning Pages method, from Julia Cameron. It consists of writing each morning about anything that comes to mind. The act of writing effectively combines linear, focused thinking with the benefits of a thoughtful conversation. If you just want to journal, you can use Day One app (The free version will be enough). If you want to go a bit deeper, you can try a coaching app. I use Wave.ai and I also hired it for the managers in the company because it combines both journaling with habit building. &#x200B; Building Robust Systems and Processes (I know, it is boring and founders hate this) As a founder, you often need to wear multiple hats and juggle various roles. But as a CEO, it's vital to establish strong systems and processes that enable the business to function smoothly, even without your direct involvement. This includes: Implementing project management systems. Establishing clear lines of communication and accountability. Designing efficient workflows and procedures. To many founders, developing these systems might seem monotonous or even tedious. After all, the allure of envisioning the next big idea often proves more exciting. I experienced the same predicament. In response, I brought onboard a competent COO who excelled in systematizing processes. This strategy allowed me to kickstart initiatives and explore them in a flexible, less structured manner. Once an idea showed signs of gaining traction, my COO stepped in to streamline it, crafting a process that turned the fledgling idea into a consistent business operation. &#x200B; Meditating Meditation is about reprogramming unconscious mental processes by repeatedly performing fundamental tasks with a distinct intention. This practice can be even more crucial to leadership than acquiring a business school education. Because meditation provides the most direct route to understanding your mind's workings and thus, forms the most effective basis for transforming it. To transition from a founder to a CEO, a significant shift in your mindset is required. This shift involves moving from a hustle mentality to precision, from acting as a superhero solving problems to consciously stepping back, thereby providing room for your team members to discover their own superpowers. It's about shifting your success indicators - from individual achievements to the triumphs of your team. This transformation might not feel comfortable initially, and your instincts, shaped by your scrappy founder phase, might resist this change. However, with consistent practice, you can align your instincts with the stage of your company, promoting more effective leadership. This is where the value of meditation truly shines. It allows you to identify your distinct thought patterns in real time and, over time, modify them. I use Headspace a lot, and I also encourage the employees to use it. The company pays the subscription as a perk. &#x200B; Balancing the Macro and the Micro As the CEO, your primary focus should be on the big picture – your company's vision and strategy. However, you also need to keep an eye on the details, as these can make or break your execution. It's all about balance: Delegate the details but stay informed. Prioritize strategic planning but be ready to dive into the trenches when needed. Keep your eye on your long-term vision but adapt to short-term realities. The transition from founder to CEO isn't about giving up what made you successful initially but augmenting it with additional skills, perspectives, and practices. It's a personal and professional evolution that can lead to greater success for both you and your business. Every great CEO was once a founder. It's just about taking the next step. I’d love to hear your experiences or any tips you might have for this transition. In which step of your journey are you right now? Do you have employees already? What are your main challenges right now?

My boss taught me how to build a Failed business (15 lessons)

I'm a senior software developer at a three-year-old startup that has been making $0 in revenue. I've been with this startup since its beginning, and it pays me $1200/month. My boss has broken the records of the number of stupid ideas and stupid features that he asked me to implement. He taught me (unintentionally) all the lessons I should NOT do to build a successful business. From bad product ideas, bad business decisions, not listening to your team, not building what target customers want, and falling in love with your bad product. The product we're working on is a desktop program that moves the cursor with your finger using the webcam (gesture recognition). Why in the world would anyone pay money to move the mouse cursor with his finger? No one knows. My boss watched Iron Man (the film) and saw how Tony Starks do gestures in front of his "advanced" computer and thought it was cool so he asked me to build this for him to sell it to enterprises (then pivoted the target customer to schools). Of course, no one bought this software. All the people he meets tell him it is cool but he never hears from them again. No one on the team, except my boss, thinks this software will succeed. He keeps adding irrelevant features to this software just because he "thinks" people will love it. We added 3D object visualizer, ChatGPT integration, and Quizzes. I suggested moving everything to the cloud and focusing only on improving the education industry by providing solutions that help teachers better prepare their lessons and understand where each student lacks by recording lessons, summarizing them for students, generating quizzes using AI, and analyzing the part that each student didn't understand. However, to do that, we need to forget the part of moving the cursor with fingers because it can be done only on Python, not NextJS. He simply replied, "NO, moving the cursor with fingers is COOL". So here are the lessons I learned from my boss to build a failed business: Never listen to your team. Always build what you think is good and never let anyone from your team say it's a bad idea. Fall in love with your business idea. Don't talk to customers. If no one bought your product, it's because they don't understand how cool it is. If a member of your team say it's a bad idea, ignore them, they don't understand how cool your idea is. Always hire interns because they're free labor and give them the most sensitive parts of the work like payments and databases. Make your business dependant on you. Don't let your team do their job the right way, give them orders to do it YOUR way. Hire experts to tell them what to do not to tell you what to do and how to do it. Never do marketing because people will steal your idea. Ask your team "What you think?" but ignore them. If your wife and children think your product is cool then it's cool. Start a business in an industry that you know nothing about but act like you know everything. If no one is buying your product, keep adding irrelevant features that no one asked for. \--- Edit: I didn't mention all the "stupid" ideas I built for him so here you go: Replacing Zoom, Teams, and Meet meetings with meetings in the metaverse. Target customer: Enterprises. An app that lets you scroll through social media without touching your mobile screen (using gesture recognition). We didn't build this because it's technically impossible to continuously use the phone camera outside your own app. He didn't believe me so asked his friend and told him the same thing. A software that controls the computer with gestures (moving cursor, single click, double click, ALT Tab...). Target customers: Enterprises Building a classroom in Decentraland (metaverse) to replace classes through Zoom and Teams He told me to build the startup website but to not make the home page the first page a user lands on when he opens the website. He wants to make the visitor lands on another "almost" empty page and if the user wants to go to the home page he should click on "Home" in the navbar.

Started a content marketing agency 8 years ago - $0 to $7,863,052 (2025 update)

Hey friends, My name is Tyler and for the past 8 years, I’ve been documenting my experience building a content marketing agency called Optimist. Year 1 — 0 to $500k ARR Year 2 — $500k to $1MM ARR Year 3 — $1MM ARR to $1.5MM(ish) ARR Year 4 — $3,333,686 Revenue Year 5 — $4,539,659 Revenue Year 6 — $5,974,324 Revenue Year 7 - $6,815,503 Revenue (Edit: Seems like links are banned now. You can check my post history for all of my previous updates with lessons and learnings.) How Optimist Works First, an overview/recap of the Optimist business model: We operate as a “collective” of full time/professional freelancers Everyone aside from me is a contractor Entirely remote/distributed team We pay freelancers a flat fee for most work, working out to roughly $65-100/hour. Clients pay us a flat monthly fee for full-service content marketing (research, strategy, writing, editing, design/photography, reporting and analytics, targeted linkbuilding, and more)\ Packages range in price from \~$10-20k/mo \This is something we are revisiting now* The Financials In 2024, we posted $1,032,035.34 in revenue. This brings our lifetime revenue to $7,863,052. Here’s our monthly revenue from January 2017 to December of 2024. (Edit: Seems like I'm not allowed to link to the chart.) The good news: Revenue is up 23% YoY. EBITDA in Q4 trending up 1-2 points. We hosted our first retreat in 4 years, going to Ireland with about half the team. The bad news: Our revenue is still historically low. At $1MM for the year, we’re down about 33% from our previous years over $1.5MM. Revenue has been rocky. It doesn’t feel like we’ve really “recovered” from the bumps last year. The trend doesn’t really look great. Even though, anecdotally, it feels like we are moving in a good direction. EBITDA is still hovering at around 7%. Would love to get that closer to 20%. (For those who may ask: I’m calculating EBITDA after paying taxes and W2 portion of my income.) — Almost every year, my update starts the same way: This has been a year of growth and change. Both for my business—and me personally. 2024 was no different. I guess that tells you something about entrepreneurship. It’s a lot more like sailing a ship than driving a car. You’re constantly adapting, tides are shifting, and any blip of calm is usually just a moment before the next storm. As with past years, there’s a lot to unpack from the last 12 months. Here we go again. Everything is Burning In the last 2 years, everything has turned upside down in the world of content and SEO. Back in 2020, we made a big decision to re-position the agency. (See post history) We decided to narrow our focus to our most successful, profitable, and consistent segment of clients and re-work our entire operation to focus on serving them. We defined our ICP as: \~Series A ($10mm+ funding) with 6-12 months runway to scale organic as a channel Product-led company with “simple” sales cycle involving fewer stakeholders Demonstrable opportunity to use SEO to drive business growth Our services: Content focused on growing organic search (SEO) Full-service engagements that included research, planning, writing, design, reporting And our engagement structure: Engaged directly with an executive; ownership over strategy and day-to-day execution 1-2 points of contact or stakeholders Strategic partner that drives business growth (not a service vendor who makes content) Most importantly, we decided that we were no longer going to offer a broader range of content that we used to sell. That included everything from thought leadership content to case studies and ebooks. We doubled-down on “SEO content” for product-led SaaS companies. And this worked phenomenally for us. We started bringing on more clients than ever. We developed a lot of internal system and processes that helped us scale and take on more work than we’ve ever had and drive great outcomes for our ideal clients. But in 2023 and 2024, things started going awry. One big change, of course, was the rise of AI. Many companies and executives (and writers) feel that AI can write content just as well as an agency like ours. That made it a lot harder to sell a $10,000 per month engagement when they feel like the bulk of the work could be “done for free.” (Lots of thoughts on this if you want my opinions.) But it wasn’t just that. Google also started tinkering with their algorithm, introducing new features like AI Overviews, and generally changing the rules of the game. This created 3 big shifts in our world: The perceived value of content (especially “SEO content”) dropped dramatically in many people’s minds because of AI’s writing capabilities SEO became less predictable as a source of traffic and revenue It’s harder than ever for startups and smaller companies to rank for valuable keywords (let alone generate any meaningful traffic or revenue from them) The effect? The middle of the content market has hollowed out. People—like us—providing good, human-crafted content aimed on driving SEO growth saw a dramatic decline in demand. We felt it all year. Fewer and fewer leads. The leads we did see usually scoffed at our prices. They were indexing us against the cost of content mills and mass-produced AI articles. It was a time of soul-searching and looking for a way forward. I spent the first half of the year convinced that the only way to survive was to run toward the fire. We have to build our own AI workflows. We have to cut our rates internally. We have to get faster and cheaper to stay competitive with the agencies offering the same number of deliverables for a fraction of our rates. It’s the only way forward. But then I asked myself a question… Is this the game I actually want to play? As an entrepreneur, do I want to run a business where I’m competing mostly on price and efficiency rather than quality and value? Do I want to hop into a race toward cheaper and cheaper content? Do I want to help people chase a dwindling amount of organic traffic that’s shrinking in value? No. That’s not the game I want to play. That’s not a business I want to run. I don’t want to be in the content mill business. So I decided to turn the wheel—again. Repositioning Part II: Electric Boogaloo What do you do when the whole world shifts around you and the things that used to work aren’t working anymore? You pivot. You re-position the business and move in another direction. So that’s what we decided to do. Again. There was only one problem: I honestly wasn’t sure what opportunities existed in the content marketing industry outside of what we were already doing. We lived in a little echo chamber of startups and SEO. It felt like the whole market was on fire and I had fight through the smoke to find an escape hatch. So I started making calls. Good ol’ fashioned market research. I reached out to a few dozen marketing and content leaders at a bunch of different companies. I got on the phone and just asked lots of questions about their content programs, their goals, and their pain points. I wanted to understand what was happening in the market and how we could be valuable. And, luckily, this process really paid off. I learned a lot about the fragmentation happening across content and how views were shifting. I noticed key trends and how our old target market really wasn’t buying what we were selling. Startups and small companies are no longer willing to invest in an agency like ours. If they were doing content and SEO at all, they were focused entirely on using AI to scale output and minimize costs. VC money is still scarce and venture-backed companies are more focused on profitability than pure growth and raising another round. Larger companies (\~500+ employees) are doing more content than ever and drowning in content production. They want to focus on strategy but can barely tread water keeping up with content requests from sales, demand gen, the CEO, and everyone else. Many of the companies still investing in content are looking at channels and formats outside of SEO. Things like thought leadership, data reports, interview-driven content, and more. They see it as a way to stand out from the crowd of “bland SEO content.” Content needs are constantly in flux. They range from data reports and blog posts to product one-pagers. The idea of a fixed-scope retainer is a total mismatch for the needs of most companies. All of this led to the logical conclusion: We were talking to the wrong people about the wrong things\.\ Many companies came to one of two logical conclusions: SEO is a risky bet, so it’s gotta be a moonshot—super-low cost with a possibility for a big upside (i.e., use AI to crank out lots of content. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, then at least we aren’t out much money.) SEO is a risky bet, so we should diversify into other strategies and channels to drive growth (i.e., shift our budget from SEO and keyword-focused content to video, podcasts, thought leadership, social, etc) Unless we were going to lean into AI and dramatically cut our costs and rates, our old buyers weren’t interested. And the segment of the market that needs our help most are looking primarily for production support across a big range of content types. They’re not looking for a team to run a full-blown program focused entirely on SEO. So we had to go back to the drawing board. I’ve written before about our basic approach to repositioning the business. But, ultimately it comes down to identifying our unique strengths as a team and then connecting them to needs in the market. After reviewing the insights from my discussions and taking another hard look at our business and our strengths, I decided on a new direction: Move upmarket: Serve mid-size to enterprise businesses with \~500-5,000 employees instead of startups Focus on content that supports a broader range of business goals instead of solely on SEO and organic growth (e.g., sales, demand gen, brand, etc) Shift back to our broader playbook of content deliverables, including thought leadership, data studies, and more Focus on content execution and production to support an internally-directed content strategy across multiple functions In a way, it’s sort of a reverse-niche move. Rather than zooming in specifically on driving organic growth for startups, we want to be more of an end-to-end content production partner that solves issues of execution and operations for all kinds of content teams. It’s early days, but the response here has been promising. We’ve seen an uptick in leads through Q4. And more companies in our pipeline fit the new ICP. They’re bigger, often have more budget. (But they move more slowly). We should know by the end of the quarter if this maneuver is truly paying off. Hopefully, this will work out. Hopefully our research and strategy are right and we’ll find a soft landing serving a different type of client. If it doesn’t? Then it will be time to make some harder decisions. As I already mentioned, I’m not interested in the race to the bottom of AI content. And if that’s the only game left in town, then it might be time to think hard about a much bigger change. — To be done: Build new content playbooks for expanded deliverables Build new showcase page for expanded deliverables Retooling the Operation It’s easy to say we’re doing something new. It’s a lot harder to actually do it—and do it well. Beyond just changing our positioning, we have to do open-heart surgery on the entire content operation behind the scenes. We need to create new systems that work for a broader range of content types, formats, and goals. Here’s the first rub: All of our workflows are tooled specifically for SEO-focused content. Every template, worksheet, and process that we’ve built and scaled in the last 5 years assumes that the primary goal of every piece of content is SEO. Even something as simple as requiring a target keyword is a blocker in a world where we’re not entirely focused on SEO. This is relatively easy to fix, but it requires several key changes: Update content calendars to make keywords optional Update workflows to determine whether we need an optimization report for each deliverable Next, we need to break down the deliverables into parts rather than a single line item. In our old system, we would plan content as a single row in a Content Calendar spreadsheet. It was a really wide sheet with lots of fields where we’d define the dimensions of each individual article. This was very efficient and simple to follow. But every article had the same overall scope when it came to the workflow. In Asana (our project management tool), all of the steps in the creation were strung together in a single task. We would create a few basic templates for each client, and then each piece would flow through the same steps: Briefing Writing Editing Design etc. If we had anything that didn’t fit into the “standard” workflow, we’d just tag it in the calendar with an unofficial notation \[USING BRACKETS\]. It worked. But it wasn’t ideal. Now we need the steps to be more modular. Imagine, for example, a client asks us to create a mix of deliverables: 1 article with writing + design 1 content brief 1 long-form ebook with an interview + writing + design Each of these would require its own steps and its own workflow. We need to break down the work to accommodate for a wider variety of workflows and variables. This means we need to update the fields and structure of our calendar to accommodate for the new dimensions—while also keeping the planning process simple and manageable. This leads to the next challenge: The number of “products” that we’re offering could be almost infinite. Just looking at the example scope above, you can mix and match all of these different building blocks to create a huge variety of different types of work, each requiring its own workflow. This is part of the reason we pivoted away from this model to focus on a productized, SEO-focused content service back in 2020. Take something as simple as a case study. On the surface, it seems like one deliverable that can be easily scoped and priced, right? Well, unpack what goes into a case study: Is there already source material from the customer or do we need to conduct an interview? How long is it? Is it a short overview case study or a long-form narrative? Does it need images and graphics? How many? Each of these variables opens up 2-3 possibilities. And when you combine them, we end up with something like 10 possible permutations for this single type of deliverable. It gets a bit messy. But not only do we have to figure out how to scope and price all for all of these variables, we also have to figure out how to account for these variables in the execution. We have to specify—for every deliverable—what type it is, how long, which steps are involved and not involved, the timeline for delivery, and all of the other factors. We’re approaching infinite complexity, here. We have to figure out a system that allows for a high level of flexibility to serve the diverse needs of our clients but is also productized enough that we can build workflows, process, and templates to deliver the work. I’ve spent the last few months designing that system. Failed Attempt #1: Ultra-Productization In my first pass, I tried to make it as straight forward as possible. Just sit down, make a list of all of the possible deliverables we could provide and then assign them specific scopes and services. Want a case study? Okay that’ll include an interview, up to 2,000 words of content, and 5 custom graphics. It costs $X. But this solution quickly fell apart when we started testing it against real-world scenarios. What if the client provided the brief instead of us creating one? What if they didn’t want graphics? What if this particular case study really needs to be 3,000 words but all of the others should be 2,000? In order for this system to work, we’d need to individual scope and price all of these permutations of each productized service. Then we’d need to somehow keep track of all of these and make sure that we accurately scope, price, and deliver them across dozens of clients. It’s sort of like a restaurant handling food allergies by creating separate versions of every single dish to account for every individual type of allergy. Most restaurants have figured out that it makes way more sense to have a “standard” and an “allergy-free” version. Then you only need 2 options to cover 100% of the cases. Onto the next option. Failed Attempt #2: Deliverable-Agnostic Services Next, I sat down with my head of Ops, Katy, to try to map it out. We took a big step back and said: Why does the deliverable itself even matter? At the end of the day, what we’re selling is just a few types of work (research, writing, editing, design, etc) that can be packaged up in an infinite number of ways. Rather than try to define deliverables, shouldn’t we leave it open ended for maximum flexibility? From there, we decided to break down everything into ultra-modular building blocks. We started working on this super complex system of modular deliverables where we would have services like writing, design, editing, etc—plus a sliding scale for different scopes like the length of writing or the number of images. In theory, it would allow us to mix and match any combination of services to create custom deliverables for the client. In fact, we wanted the work to be deliverable-agnostic. That way we could mold it to fit any client’s needs and deliver any type of content, regardless of the format or goal. Want a 5,000-word case study with 15 custom graphics? That’ll be $X. Want a 2,000-word blog post with an interview and no visuals? $Y. Just want us to create 10 briefs, you handle the writing, and we do design? It’s $Z. Again, this feels like a reasonable solution. But it quickly spiraled out of amuck. (That’s an Office reference.) For this to work, we need to have incredibly precise scoping process for every single deliverable. Before we can begin work (or even quote a price), we need to know pretty much the exact word count of the final article, for example. In the real world? This almost never happens. The content is as long as the content needs to be. Clients rarely know if the blog post should be 2,000 words or 3,000 words. They just want good content. We have a general ballpark, but we can rarely dial it in within just 1,000 words until we’ve done enough research to create the brief. Plus, from a packaging and pricing perspective, it introduces all kind of weird scenarios where clients will owe exactly $10,321 for this ultra-specific combination of services. We were building an open system that could accommodate any and all types of potential deliverables. On the face that seems great because it makes us incredibly flexible. In reality, the ambiguity actually works against us. It makes it harder for us to communicate to clients clearly about what they’ll get, how much it will cost, and how long it will take. That, of course, also means that it hurts our client relationships. (This actually kind of goes back to my personal learnings, which I’ll mention in a bit. I tend to be a “let’s leave things vague so we don’t have to limit our options” kind of person. But I’m working on fixing this to be more precise, specific, and clear in everything that we do.) Dialing It In: Building a Closed System We were trying to build an open system. We need to build a closed system. We need to force clarity and get specific about what we do, what we don’t do, and how much it all costs. Then we need a system to expand on that closed system—add new types of deliverables, new content playbooks, and new workflows if and when the need arises. With that in mind, we can start by mapping out the key dimensions of any type of deliverable that we would ever want to deliver. These are the universal dimensions that determine the scope, workflow, and price of any deliverable—regardless of the specific type output. Dimensions are: Brief scope Writing + editing scope Design scope Interview scope Revision (rounds) Scope, essentially, just tells us how many words, graphics, interviews, etc are required for the content we’re creating. In our first crack at the system, we got super granular with these scopes. But to help force a more manageable system, we realized that we didn’t need tiny increments for most of this work. Instead, we just need boundaries—you pay $X for up to Y words. We still need some variability around the scope of these articles. Obviously, most clients won’t be willing to pay the same price for a 1,000-word article as a 10,000-word article. But we can be smarter about the realistic break points. We boiled it down to the most common ranges: (Up to) 250 words 1,000 words 3,000 words 6,000 words 10,000 words This gives us a much more manageable number of variables. But we still haven’t exactly closed the system. We need one final dimension: Deliverable type. This tells us what we’re actually building with these building blocks. This is how we’ll put a cap on the potentially infinite number of combinations we could offer. The deliverable type will define what the final product should look like (e.g., blog post, case study, ebook, etc). And it will also give us a way to put standards and expectations around different types of deliverables that we want to offer. Then we can expand on this list of deliverables to offer new services. In the mean time, only the deliverables that we have already defined are, “on the menu,” so to speak. If a client comes to us and asks for something like a podcast summary article (which we don’t currently offer), we’ll have to either say we can’t provide that work or create a new deliverable type and define the dimensions of that specific piece. But here’s the kicker: No matter the deliverable type, it has to still fit within the scopes we’ve already defined. And the pricing will be the same. This means that if you’re looking for our team to write up to 1,000 words of content, it costs the same amount—whether it’s a blog post, an ebook, a LinkedIn post, or anything else. Rather than trying to retool our entire system to offer this new podcast summary article deliverable, we’ll just create the new deliverable type, add it to the list of options, and it’s ready to sell with the pre-defined dimensions we’ve already identified. To do: Update onboarding workflow Update contracts and scope documents Dial in new briefing process Know Thyself For the last year, I’ve been going through personal therapy. (Huge shout out to my wife, Laura, for her support and encouragement throughout the process.) It’s taught me a lot about myself and my tendencies. It’s helped me find some of my weaknesses and think about how I can improve as a person, as a partner, and as an entrepreneur. And it’s forced me to face a lot of hard truths. For example, consider some of the critical decisions I’ve made for my business: Unconventional freelance “collective” model No formal management structure Open-ended retainers with near-infinite flexibility General contracts without defined scope “Take it or leave it” approach to sales and marketing Over the years, I’ve talked about almost everything on this list as a huge advantage. I saw these things as a reflection of how I wanted to do things differently and better than other companies. But now, I see them more as a reflection of my fears and insecurities. Why did I design my business like this? Why do I want so much “flexibility” and why do I want things left open-ended rather than clearly defined? One reason that could clearly explain it: I’m avoidant. If you’re not steeped in the world of therapy, this basically means that my fight or flight response gets turned all the way to “flight.” If I’m unhappy or uncomfortable, my gut reaction is usually to withdraw from the situation. I see commitment and specificity as a prelude to future conflict. And I avoid conflict whenever possible. So I built my business to minimize it. If I don’t have a specific schedule of work that I’m accountable for delivering, then we can fudge the numbers a bit and hope they even out in the end. If I don’t set a specific standard for the length of an article, then I don’t have to let the client know when their request exceeds that limit. Conflict….avoided? Now, that’s not to say that everything I’ve built was wrong or bad. There is a lot of value in having flexibility in your business. For example, I would say that our flexible retainers are, overall, an advantage. Clients have changing needs. Having flexibility to quickly adapt to those needs can be a huge value add. And not everything can be clearly defined upfront (at least not without a massive amount of time and work just to decide how long to write an article). Overly-rigid structures and processes can be just as problematic as loosey-goosey ones. But, on the whole, I realized that my avoidant tendencies and laissez faire approach to management have left a vacuum in many areas. The places where I avoided specificity were often the places where there was the most confusion, uncertainty, and frustration from the team and from clients. People simply didn’t know what to expect or what was expected of them. Ironically, this often creates the conflict I’m trying to avoid. For example, if I don’t give feedback to people on my team, then they feel uneasy about their work. Or they make assumptions about expectations that don’t match what I’m actually expecting. Then the client might get upset, I might get upset, and our team members may be upset. Conflict definitely not avoided. This happens on the client side, too. If we don’t define a specific timeline when something will be delivered, the client might expect it sooner than we can deliver—creating frustration when we don’t meet their expectation. This conflict actually would have been avoided if we set clearer expectations upfront. But we didn’t do that. I didn’t do that. So it’s time to step up and close the gaps. Stepping Up and Closing the Gaps If I’m going to address these gaps and create more clarity and stability, I have to step up. Both personally and professionally. I have to actually face the fear and uncertainty that drives me to be avoidant. And then apply that to my business in meaningful ways that aren’t cop-out ways of kinda-sorta providing structure without really doing it. I’ve gotta be all in. This means: Fill the gaps where I rely on other people to do things that aren’t really their job but I haven’t put someone in place to do it Set and maintain expectations about our internal work processes, policies, and standards Define clear boundaries on things like roles, timelines, budgets, and scopes Now, this isn’t going to happen overnight. And just because I say that I need to step up to close these gaps doesn’t mean that I need to be the one who’s responsible for them (at least not forever). It just means that, as the business leader, I need to make sure the gaps get filled—by me or by someone else who has been specifically charged with owning that part of the operation. So, this is probably my #1 focus over the coming quarter. And it starts by identifying the gaps that exist. Then, step into those gaps myself, pay someone else to fill that role, or figure out how to eliminate the gap another way. This means going all the way back to the most basic decisions in our business. One of the foundational things about Optimist is being a “different kind” of agency. I always wanted to build something that solved for the bureaucracy, hierarchy, and siloed structure of agencies. If a client has feedback, they should be able to talk directly to the person doing the work rather than going through 3 layers of account management and creative directors. So I tried to be clever. I tried to design all kinds of systems and processes that eliminated these middle rungs. (In retrospect, what I was actually doing was designing a system that played into my avoidant tendencies and made it easy to abdicate responsibility for lots of things.) Since we didn’t want to create hierarchy, we never implemented things like Junior and Senior roles. We never hired someone to manage or direct the individual creatives. We didn’t have Directors or VPs. (Hell, we barely had a project manager for the first several years of existence.) This aversion to hierarchy aligned with our values around elevating ownership and collective contribution. I still believe in the value a flat structure. But a flat structure doesn’t eliminate the complexity of a growing business. No one to review writers and give them 1:1 feedback? I guess I’ll just have to do that….when I have some spare time. No Content Director? Okay, well someone needs to manage our content playbooks and roll out new ones. Just add it to my task list. Our flat structure didn’t eliminate the need for these roles. It just eliminated the people to do them. All of those unfilled roles ultimately fell back on me or our ops person, Katy. Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve recognized this. We’ve known there were growing holes in our business as it’s gotten bigger and more complex. Over the years, we’ve experimented with different ways to solve for it. The Old Solution: Distributed Ops One system we designed was a “distributed ops” framework. Basically, we had one person who was the head of ops (at the time, we considered anything that was non-client-facing to be “ops”). They’d plan and organize all of the various things that needed to happen around Optimist. Then they’d assign out the work to whoever was able to help. We had a whole system for tying this into the our profit share and even gave people “Partner” status based on their contributions to ops. It worked—kinda. One big downfall is that all of the tasks and projects were ad hoc. People would pick up jobs, but they didn’t have much context or expertise to apply. So the output often varied. Since we were trying to maintain a flat structure, there was minimal oversight or management of the work. In other words, we didn’t always get the best results. But, more importantly, we still didn’t close all of the gaps entirely. Because everything was an ad-hoc list of tasks and projects, we never really had the “big picture” view of everything that needed to be done across the business. This also meant we rarely had clarity on what was important, what was trivial, and what was critical. We need a better system. Stop Reinventing the Wheel (And Create a Damn Org Chart) It’s time to get serious about filling the gaps in our business. It can’t be a half-fix or an ad hoc set of projects and tasks. We need clarity on the roles that need to be filled and then fill them. The first step here is to create an org chart. A real one. Map out all of the jobs that need to be done for Optimist to be successful besides just writers and designers. Roles like: Content director Design director SEO manager Reporting Finance Account management Business development Sales Marketing Project management It feels a bit laughable listing all of these roles. Because most are either empty or have my name attached to them. And that’s the problem. I can’t do everything. And all of the empty roles are gaps in our structure—places where people aren’t getting the direction, feedback, or guidance they need to do their best work. Or where things just aren’t being done consistently. Content director, for example, should be responsible for steering the output of our content strategists, writers, and editors. They’re not micromanaging every deliverable. But they give feedback, set overall policy, and help our team identify opportunities to get better. Right now we don’t have anyone in that role. Which means it’s my job—when I have time. Looking at the org chart (a real org chart that I actually built to help with this), it’s plain as day how many roles look like this. Even if we aren’t going to implement a traditional agency structure and a strict hierarchy, we still need to address these gaps. And the only way for that to happen is face the reality and then create a plan to close the gaps. Now that we have a list of theoretical roles, we need to clearly define the responsibilities and boundaries of those roles to make sure they cover everything that actually needs to happen. Then we can begin the process of delegating, assigning, hiring, and otherwise addressing each one. So that’s what I need to do. To be done: Create job descriptions for all of the roles we need to fill Hire Biz Dev role Hire Account Lead role(s) Hire Head of Content Playing Offense As we move into Q1 of 2025 and I reflect on the tumultuous few years we’ve had, one thought keeps running through my head. We need to play offense. Most of the last 1-2 years was reacting to changes that were happening around us. Trying to make sense and chart a new path forward. Reeling. But what I really want—as a person and as an entrepreneur—is to be proactive. I want to think and plan ahead. Figure out where we want to go before we’re forced to change course by something that’s out of our control. So my overarching focus for Q1 is playing offense. Thinking longer term. Getting ahead of the daily deluge and creating space to be more proactive, innovative, and forward thinking. To do: Pilot new content formats Audit and update our own content strategy Improve feedback workflows Build out long-term roadmap for 1-2 years for Optimist Final Note on Follow-Through and Cadence In my reflection this year, one of the things I’ve realized is how helpful these posts are for me. I process by writing. So I actually end up making a lot of decisions and seeing things more clearly each time I sit down to reflect and write my yearly recap. It also gives me a space to hold myself accountable for the things I said I would do. So, I’m doing two things a bit differently from here on out. First: I’m identifying clear action items that I’m holding myself accountable for getting done in the next 3 months (listed in the above sections). In each future update, I’ll do an accounting of what I got done and what wasn’t finished (and why). Second: I’m going to start writing shorter quarterly updates. This will gives me more chances each year to reflect, process, and make decisions. Plus it gives me a shorter feedback loop for the action items that I identified above. (See—playing offense.) — Okay friends, enemies, and frenemies. This is my first update for 2025. Glad to share with y’all. And thanks to everyone who’s read, commented, reached out, and shared their own experiences over the years. We are all the accumulation of our connections and our experiences. As always, I will pop in to respond to comments and answer questions. Feel free to share your thoughts, questions, and general disdain down below. Cheers, Tyler

Switching Gears: Implementing AI for My Agency’s Marketing After a Decade

Hi there, I’ve been running a software development and design agency for the last 10 years, mainly focusing on building custom solutions for businesses and SaaS. For the last 2 years, I’ve consistently recommended that clients use AI technologies, especially for social media and content creation to generate traffic. Funny enough, I wasn’t practicing what I preached. Most of my client projects came from platforms like Upwork and word-of-mouth referrals from clients or people from networking events. Background I started my journey in 2014, switching from an employee to a freelancer. Within the first 10 months, my initial projects grew beyond what I could handle alone, prompting me to hire additional developers. This shift turned my role from a full-stack developer to a team lead and developer. Over the years, my focus has been a blend of tech and product. About five years ago, I realized the importance of design, leading me to adding designers to the agency to provide full-cycle service development—from product ideation and design to development, testing, launch, and support. I still continue to set up dedicated teams for some clients, maintaining a strong technical role as a tech lead, solution architect, and head product designer. To enhance my skills, I even completed UI/UX design courses to offer better product solutions. Despite these changes, building products has always been the easy part. The challenge was ensuring these client products didn’t end up in the graveyard due to poor product-market fit, often caused by inadequate marketing and sales strategies but more often just absence of them. (we are talking about startup and first time founders here 🙂 ) My Journey and Observations Advising Clients: I often found myself advising clients on increasing traffic for their SaaS products and crafting strategic marketing plans. Learning: I’ve gained most of my knowledge from consuming internet materials, courses, and blog posts and learning from successful client project launches. Realization: Despite giving this advice, I wasn’t applying these strategies to my own business, leading to low visits to my agency’s website. Initial Solution: Hiring a Marketer Hiring: I brought in a marketer with a solid background in content creating and interview video editing from an educational organization. Goal: The aim was to increase website visits through a comprehensive marketing strategy. Outcome: Although the content produced was high-quality and useful for pitching services, it didn’t lead to significant traffic increases. Issue: The marketer focused more on content creation rather than distribution channels, which limited effectiveness. Shift to AI-Driven Strategy Experiment: I decided to try using AI for content creation and distribution, which aligns with my agency’s specialization in design-driven development and AI integrations. Implementation plan: I will be generating all content with minimal edits using AI and implementing a strategic backlinking approach. Backlinking Strategy Initial Plan: I initially thought of hiring a specialist for backlinks. Realization: The costs and profiles of freelancers didn’t seem promising. Solution: I found AI-driven services for backlinks, which seem more efficient and cost-effective. Plan: My plan is to use these tools for programmatic SEO-driven AI-generated articles and third-party backlinking services over the next two to three months. Current Approach Management: This approach can be managed and executed by 1 person and monitored weekly, reducing human error and optimizing efficiency. I will start it myself and then replace myself with an editor with managing skills. Reflection: It’s a bit ironic and funny that it took me 10 years to start implementing these strategies in my own agency business, but I now feel more confident with AI and automation in place. Why Increase Website Visitors? You might ask, why do I want to increase the number of visitors to the site, and how can I ensure these visitors will be qualified? Hands-On Experience: To gain hands-on experience and perform this exercise effectively. Introduce Packaged Services: I want to introduce a set of low-cost packaged services tailored for non-technical people who want to build things for themselves - the DIY kits for non-technical folks. These services will provide a foundational template for them to build upon on top of existing established solutions such as Wix, Square Why am I Posting and Sharing Here? You might also wonder, why am I posting it here and sharing this? Well, I'm doing this more for myself. Most of my career, the things I’ve done have been behind the curtains. With this small project, I want to make it public to see the reaction of the community. Perhaps there will be good and smart suggestions offered, and maybe some insights or highlights of tools I wasn’t aware of or didn’t consider. I’ll keep sharing updates on this journey of website promotion, marketing, and SEO. My current goal is to reach 2,000 visits per month, which is a modest start. Looking forward to any thoughts or advice from this community! Disclaimer: This content was not generated by AI, but it was edited by it 😛

I run an AI automation agency (AAA). My honest overview and review of this new business model

I started an AI tools directory in February, and then branched off that to start an AI automation agency (AAA) in June. So far I've come across a lot of unsustainable "ideas" to make money with AI, but at the same time a few diamonds in the rough that aren't fully tapped into yet- especially the AAA model. Thought I'd share this post to shine light into this new business model and share some ways you could potentially start your own agency, or at the very least know who you are dealing with and how to pick and choose when you (inevitably) get bombarded with cold emails from them down the line. Foreword Running an AAA does NOT involve using AI tools directly to generate and sell content directly. That ship has sailed, and unless you are happy with $5 from Fiverr every month or so, it is not a real business model. Cry me a river but generating generic art with AI and slapping it onto a T-shirt to sell on Etsy won't make you a dime. At the same time, the AAA model will NOT require you to have a deep theoretical knowledge of AI, or any academic degree, as we are more so dealing with the practical applications of generative AI and how we can implement these into different workflows and tech-stacks, rather than building AI models from the ground up. Regardless of all that, common sense and a willingness to learn will help (a shit ton), as with anything. Keep in mind - this WILL involve work and motivation as well. The mindset that AI somehow means everything can be done for you on autopilot is not the right way to approach things. The common theme of businesses I've seen who have successfully implemented AI into their operations is the willingess to work with AI in a way that augments their existing operations, rather than flat out replace a worker or team. And this is exactly the train of thought you need when working with AI as a business model. However, as the field is relatively unsaturated and hype surrounding AI is still fresh for enterprises, right now is the prime time to start something new if generative AI interests you at all. With that being said, I'll be going over three of the most successful AI-adjacent businesses I've seen over this past year, in addition to some tips and resources to point you in the right direction. so.. WTF is an AI Automation Agency? The AI automation agency (or as some YouTubers have coined it, the AAA model) at its core involves creating custom AI solutions for businesses. I have over 1500 AI tools listed in my directory, however the feedback I've received from some enterprise users is that ready-made SaaS tools are too generic to meet their specific needs. Combine this with the fact virtually no smaller companies have the time or skills required to develop custom solutions right off the bat, and you have yourself real demand. I would say in practice, the AAA model is quite similar to Wordpress and even web dev agencies, with the major difference being all solutions you develop will incorporate key aspects of AI AND automation. Which brings me to my second point- JUST AI IS NOT ENOUGH. Rather than reducing the amount of time required to complete certain tasks, I've seen many AI agencies make the mistake of recommending and (trying to) sell solutions that more likely than not increase the workload of their clients. For example, if you were to make an internal tool that has AI answer questions based on their knowledge base, but this knowledge base has to be updated manually, this is creating unnecessary work. As such I think one of the key components of building successful AI solutions is incorporating the new (Generative AI/LLMs) with the old (programmtic automation- think Zapier, APIs, etc.). Finally, for this business model to be successful, ideally you should target a niche in which you have already worked and understand pain points and needs. Not only does this make it much easier to get calls booked with prospects, the solutions you build will have much greater value to your clients (meaning you get paid more). A mistake I've seen many AAA operators make (and I blame this on the "Get Rich Quick" YouTubers) is focusing too much on a specific productized service, rather than really understanding the needs of businesses. The former is much done via a SaaS model, but when going the agency route the only thing that makes sense is building custom solutions. This is why I always take a consultant-first approach. You can only build once you understand what they actually need and how certain solutions may impact their operations, workflows, and bottom-line. Basics of How to Get Started Pick a niche. As I mentioned previously, preferably one that you've worked in before. Niches I know of that are actively being bombarded with cold emails include real estate, e-commerce, auto-dealerships, lawyers, and medical offices. There is a reason for this, but I will tell you straight up this business model works well if you target any white-collar service business (internal tools approach) or high volume businesses (customer facing tools approach). Setup your toolbox. If you wanted to start a pressure washing business, you would need a pressure-washer. This is no different. For those without programming knowledge, I've seen two common ways AAA get setup to build- one is having a network of on-call web developers, whether its personal contacts or simply going to Upwork or any talent sourcing agency. The second is having an arsenal of no-code tools. I'll get to this more in a second, but this works beecause at its core, when we are dealing with the practical applications of AI, the code is quite simple, simply put. Start cold sales. Unless you have a network already, this is not a step you can skip. You've already picked a niche, so all you have to do is find the right message. Keep cold emails short, sweet, but enticing- and it will help a lot if you did step 1 correctly and intimately understand who your audience is. I'll be touching base later about how you can leverage AI yourself to help you with outreach and closing. The beauty of gen AI and the AAA model You don't need to be a seasoned web developer to make this business model work. The large majority of solutions that SME clients want is best done using an API for an LLM for the actual AI aspect. The value we create with the solutions we build comes with the conceptual framework and design that not only does what they need it to but integrates smoothly with their existing tech-stack and workflow. The actual implementation is quite straightforward once you understand the high level design and know which tools you are going to use. To give you a sense, even if you plan to build out these apps yourself (say in Python) the large majority of the nitty gritty technical work has already been done for you, especially if you leverage Python libraries and packages that offer high level abstraction for LLM-related functions. For instance, calling GPT can be as little as a single line of code. (And there are no-code tools where these functions are simply an icon on a GUI). Aside from understanding the capabilities and limitations of these tools and frameworks, the only thing that matters is being able to put them in a way that makes sense for what you want to build. Which is why outsourcing and no-code tools both work in our case. Okay... but how TF am I suppposed to actually build out these solutions? Now the fun part. I highly recommend getting familiar with Langchain and LlamaIndex. Both are Python libraires that help a lot with the high-level LLM abstraction I mentioned previously. The two most important aspects include being able to integrate internal data sources/knowledge bases with LLMs, and have LLMs perform autonomous actions. The two most common methods respectively are RAG and output parsing. RAG (retrieval augmented Generation) If you've ever seen a tool that seemingly "trains" GPT on your own data, and wonder how it all works- well I have an answer from you. At a high level, the user query is first being fed to what's called a vector database to run vector search. Vector search basically lets you do semantic search where you are searching data based on meaning. The vector databases then retrieves the most relevant sections of text as it relates to the user query, and this text gets APPENDED to your GPT prompt to provide extra context to the AI. Further, with prompt engineering, you can limit GPT to only generate an answer if it can be found within this extra context, greatly limiting the chance of hallucination (this is where AI makes random shit up). Aside from vector databases, we can also implement RAG with other data sources and retrieval methods, for example SQL databses (via parsing the outputs of LLM's- more on this later). Autonomous Agents via Output Parsing A common need of clients has been having AI actually perform tasks, rather than simply spitting out text. For example, with autonomous agents, we can have an e-commerce chatbot do the work of a basic customer service rep (i.e. look into orders, refunds, shipping). At a high level, what's going on is that the response of the LLM is being used programmtically to determine which API to call. Keeping on with the e-commerce example, if I wanted a chatbot to check shipping status, I could have a LLM response within my app (not shown to the user) with a prompt that outputs a random hash or string, and programmatically I can determine which API call to make based on this hash/string. And using the same fundamental concept as with RAG, I can append the the API response to a final prompt that would spit out the answer for the user. How No Code Tools Can Fit In (With some example solutions you can build) With that being said, you don't necessarily need to do all of the above by coding yourself, with Python libraries or otherwise. However, I will say that having that high level overview will help IMMENSELY when it comes to using no-code tools to do the actual work for you. Regardless, here are a few common solutions you might build for clients as well as some no-code tools you can use to build them out. Ex. Solution 1: AI Chatbots for SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) This involves creating chatbots that handle user queries, lead gen, and so forth with AI, and will use the principles of RAG at heart. After getting the required data from your client (i.e. product catalogues, previous support tickets, FAQ, internal documentation), you upload this into your knowledge base and write a prompt that makes sense for your use case. One no-code tool that does this well is MyAskAI. The beauty of it especially for building external chatbots is the ability to quickly ingest entire websites into your knowledge base via a sitemap, and bulk uploading files. Essentially, they've covered the entire grunt work required to do this manually. Finally, you can create a inline or chat widget on your client's website with a few lines of HTML, or altneratively integrate it with a Slack/Teams chatbot (if you are going for an internal Q&A chatbot approach). Other tools you could use include Botpress and Voiceflow, however these are less for RAG and more for building out complete chatbot flows that may or may not incorporate LLMs. Both apps are essentially GUIs that eliminate the pain and tears and trying to implement complex flows manually, and both natively incoporate AI intents and a knowledge base feature. Ex. Solution 2: Internal Apps Similar to the first example, except we go beyond making just chatbots but tools such as report generation and really any sort of internal tool or automations that may incorporate LLM's. For instance, you can have a tool that automatically generates replies to inbound emails based on your client's knowledge base. Or an automation that does the same thing but for replies to Instagram comments. Another example could be a tool that generates a description and screeenshot based on a URL (useful for directory sites, made one for my own :P). Getting into more advanced implementations of LLMs, we can have tools that can generate entire drafts of reports (think 80+ pages), based not only on data from a knowledge base but also the writing style, format, and author voice of previous reports. One good tool to create content generation panels for your clients would be MindStudio. You can train LLM's via prompt engineering in a structured way with your own data to essentially fine tune them for whatever text you need it to generate. Furthermore, it has a GUI where you can dictate the entire AI flow. You can also upload data sources via multiple formats, including PDF, CSV, and Docx. For automations that require interactions between multiple apps, I recommend the OG zapier/make.com if you want a no-code solution. For instance, for the automatic email reply generator, I can have a trigger such that when an email is received, a custom AI reply is generated by MyAskAI, and finally a draft is created in my email client. Or, for an automation where I can create a social media posts on multiple platforms based on a RSS feed (news feed), I can implement this directly in Zapier with their native GPT action (see screenshot) As for more complex LLM flows that may require multiple layers of LLMs, data sources, and APIs working together to generate a single response i.e. a long form 100 page report, I would recommend tools such as Stack AI or Flowise (open-source alternative) to build these solutions out. Essentially, you get most of the functions and features of Python packages such as Langchain and LlamaIndex in a GUI. See screenshot for an example of a flow How the hell are you supposed to find clients? With all that being said, none of this matters if you can't find anyone to sell to. You will have to do cold sales, one way or the other, especially if you are brand new to the game. And what better way to sell your AI services than with AI itself? If we want to integrate AI into the cold outreach process, first we must identify what it's good at doing, and that's obviously writing a bunch of text, in a short amount of time. Similar to the solutions that an AAA can build for its clients, we can take advantage of the same principles in our own sales processes. How to do outreach Once you've identified your niche and their pain points/opportunities for automation, you want to craft a compelling message in which you can send via cold email and cold calls to get prospects booked on demos/consultations. I won't get into too much detail in terms of exactly how to write emails or calling scripts, as there are millions of resources to help with this, but I will tell you a few key points you want to keep in mind when doing outreach for your AAA. First, you want to keep in mind that many businesses are still hesitant about AI and may not understand what it really is or how it can benefit their operations. However, we can take advantage of how mass media has been reporting on AI this past year- at the very least people are AWARE that sooner or later they may have to implement AI into their businesses to stay competitive. We want to frame our message in a way that introduces generative AI as a technology that can have a direct, tangible, and positive impact on their business. Although it may be hard to quantify, I like to include estimates of man-hours saved or costs saved at least in my final proposals to prospects. Times are TOUGH right now, and money is expensive, so you need to have a compelling reason for businesses to get on board. Once you've gotten your messaging down, you will want to create a list of prospects to contact. Tools you can use to find prospects include Apollo.io, reply.io, zoominfo (expensive af), and Linkedin Sales Navigator. What specific job titles, etc. to target will depend on your niche but for smaller companies this will tend to be the owner. For white collar niches, i.e. law, the professional that will be directly benefiting from the tool (i.e. partners) may be better to contact. And for larger organizations you may want to target business improvement and digital transformation leads/directors- these are the people directly in charge of projects like what you may be proposing. Okay- so you have your message, and your list, and now all it comes down to is getting the good word out. I won't be going into the details of how to send these out, a quick Google search will give you hundreds of resources for cold outreach methods. However, personalization is key and beyond simple dynamic variables you want to make sure you can either personalize your email campaigns directly with AI (SmartWriter.ai is an example of a tool that can do this), or at the very least have the ability to import email messages programmatically. Alternatively, ask ChatGPT to make you a Python Script that can take in a list of emails, scrape info based on their linkedin URL or website, and all pass this onto a GPT prompt that specifies your messaging to generate an email. From there, send away. How tf do I close? Once you've got some prospects booked in on your meetings, you will need to close deals with them to turn them into clients. Call #1: Consultation Tying back to when I mentioned you want to take a consultant-first appraoch, you will want to listen closely to their goals and needs and understand their pain points. This would be the first call, and typically I would provide a high level overview of different solutions we could build to tacke these. It really helps to have a presentation available, so you can graphically demonstrate key points and key technologies. I like to use Plus AI for this, it's basically a Google Slides add-on that can generate slide decks for you. I copy and paste my default company messaging, add some key points for the presentation, and it comes out with pretty decent slides. Call #2: Demo The second call would involve a demo of one of these solutions, and typically I'll quickly prototype it with boilerplate code I already have, otherwise I'll cook something up in a no-code tool. If you have a niche where one type of solution is commonly demanded, it helps to have a general demo set up to be able to handle a larger volume of calls, so you aren't burning yourself out. I'll also elaborate on how the final product would look like in comparison to the demo. Call #3 and Beyond: Once the initial consultation and demo is complete, you will want to alleviate any remaining concerns from your prospects and work with them to reach a final work proposal. It's crucial you lay out exactly what you will be building (in writing) and ensure the prospect understands this. Furthermore, be clear and transparent with timelines and communication methods for the project. In terms of pricing, you want to take this from a value-based approach. The same solution may be worth a lot more to client A than client B. Furthermore, you can create "add-ons" such as monthly maintenance/upgrade packages, training sessions for employeees, and so forth, separate from the initial setup fee you would charge. How you can incorporate AI into marketing your businesses Beyond cold sales, I highly recommend creating a funnel to capture warm leads. For instance, I do this currently with my AI tools directory, which links directly to my AI agency and has consistent branding throughout. Warm leads are much more likely to close (and honestly, much nicer to deal with). However, even without an AI-related website, at the very least you will want to create a presence on social media and the web in general. As with any agency, you will want basic a professional presence. A professional virtual address helps, in addition to a Google Business Profile (GBP) and TrustPilot. a GBP (especially for local SEO) and Trustpilot page also helps improve the looks of your search results immensely. For GBP, I recommend using ProfilePro, which is a chrome extension you can use to automate SEO work for your GBP. Aside from SEO optimzied business descriptions based on your business, it can handle Q/A answers, responses, updates, and service descriptions based on local keywords. Privacy and Legal Concerns of the AAA Model Aside from typical concerns for agencies relating to service contracts, there are a few issues (especially when using no-code tools) that will need to be addressed to run a successful AAA. Most of these surround privacy concerns when working with proprietary data. In your terms with your client, you will want to clearly define hosting providers and any third party tools you will be using to build their solution, and a DPA with these third parties listed as subprocessors if necessary. In addition, you will want to implement best practices like redacting private information from data being used for building solutions. In terms of addressing concerns directly from clients, it helps if you host your solutions on their own servers (not possible with AI tools), and address the fact only ChatGPT queries in the web app, not OpenAI API calls, will be used to train OpenAI's models (as reported by mainstream media). The key here is to be open and transparent with your clients about ALL the tools you are using, where there data will be going, and make sure to get this all in writing. have fun, and keep an open mind Before I finish this post, I just want to reiterate the fact that this is NOT an easy way to make money. Running an AI agency will require hours and hours of dedication and work, and constantly rearranging your schedule to meet prospect and client needs. However, if you are looking for a new business to run, and have a knack for understanding business operations and are genuinely interested in the pracitcal applications of generative AI, then I say go for it. The time is ticking before AAA becomes the new dropshipping or SMMA, and I've a firm believer that those who set foot first and establish themselves in this field will come out top. And remember, while 100 thousand people may read this post, only 2 may actually take initiative and start.

Small business owners—have you actually implemented AI yet?

I keep hearing about how AI is supposed to "revolutionize" small businesses, but I’m wondering how much of that is just hype. If you’re running a business, have you actually started using AI in any way? If so, what tools are actually helping you save time or make more money? Or are you in the camp that’s interested in AI but don’t know where to start? Curious to hear what’s working (or not working) for real business owners.

Switching Gears: Implementing AI for My Agency’s Marketing After a Decade

Hi there, I’ve been running a software development and design agency for the last 10 years, mainly focusing on building custom solutions for businesses and SaaS. For the last 2 years, I’ve consistently recommended that clients use AI technologies, especially for social media and content creation to generate traffic. Funny enough, I wasn’t practicing what I preached. Most of my client projects came from platforms like Upwork and word-of-mouth referrals from clients or people from networking events. Background I started my journey in 2014, switching from an employee to a freelancer. Within the first 10 months, my initial projects grew beyond what I could handle alone, prompting me to hire additional developers. This shift turned my role from a full-stack developer to a team lead and developer. Over the years, my focus has been a blend of tech and product. About five years ago, I realized the importance of design, leading me to adding designers to the agency to provide full-cycle service development—from product ideation and design to development, testing, launch, and support. I still continue to set up dedicated teams for some clients, maintaining a strong technical role as a tech lead, solution architect, and head product designer. To enhance my skills, I even completed UI/UX design courses to offer better product solutions. Despite these changes, building products has always been the easy part. The challenge was ensuring these client products didn’t end up in the graveyard due to poor product-market fit, often caused by inadequate marketing and sales strategies but more often just absence of them. (we are talking about startup and first time founders here 🙂 ) My Journey and Observations Advising Clients: I often found myself advising clients on increasing traffic for their SaaS products and crafting strategic marketing plans. Learning: I’ve gained most of my knowledge from consuming internet materials, courses, and blog posts and learning from successful client project launches. Realization: Despite giving this advice, I wasn’t applying these strategies to my own business, leading to low visits to my agency’s website. Initial Solution: Hiring a Marketer Hiring: I brought in a marketer with a solid background in content creating and interview video editing from an educational organization. Goal: The aim was to increase website visits through a comprehensive marketing strategy. Outcome: Although the content produced was high-quality and useful for pitching services, it didn’t lead to significant traffic increases. Issue: The marketer focused more on content creation rather than distribution channels, which limited effectiveness. Shift to AI-Driven Strategy Experiment: I decided to try using AI for content creation and distribution, which aligns with my agency’s specialization in design-driven development and AI integrations. Implementation plan: I will be generating all content with minimal edits using AI and implementing a strategic backlinking approach. Backlinking Strategy Initial Plan: I initially thought of hiring a specialist for backlinks. Realization: The costs and profiles of freelancers didn’t seem promising. Solution: I found AI-driven services for backlinks, which seem more efficient and cost-effective. Plan: My plan is to use these tools for programmatic SEO-driven AI-generated articles and third-party backlinking services over the next two to three months. Current Approach Management: This approach can be managed and executed by 1 person and monitored weekly, reducing human error and optimizing efficiency. I will start it myself and then replace myself with an editor with managing skills. Reflection: It’s a bit ironic and funny that it took me 10 years to start implementing these strategies in my own agency business, but I now feel more confident with AI and automation in place. Why Increase Website Visitors? You might ask, why do I want to increase the number of visitors to the site, and how can I ensure these visitors will be qualified? Hands-On Experience: To gain hands-on experience and perform this exercise effectively. Introduce Packaged Services: I want to introduce a set of low-cost packaged services tailored for non-technical people who want to build things for themselves - the DIY kits for non-technical folks. These services will provide a foundational template for them to build upon on top of existing established solutions such as Wix, Square Why am I Posting and Sharing Here? You might also wonder, why am I posting it here and sharing this? Well, I'm doing this more for myself. Most of my career, the things I’ve done have been behind the curtains. With this small project, I want to make it public to see the reaction of the community. Perhaps there will be good and smart suggestions offered, and maybe some insights or highlights of tools I wasn’t aware of or didn’t consider. I’ll keep sharing updates on this journey of website promotion, marketing, and SEO. My current goal is to reach 2,000 visits per month, which is a modest start. Looking forward to any thoughts or advice from this community! Disclaimer: This content was not generated by AI, but it was edited by it 😛

From research paper to a tech startup - help!

Hi! I'm a CS master student that loves being creative. I’ve always wanted to start a business. I have gotten offers to join other startups when I took my bachelors, but personally I never believed in the startups, so I’ve always ended up politely declining on any startup offers. But my master thesis idea is very intriguing. However, I still feel very lost. I can’t even think of any good company names, or where I would even find enthusiastic co founders.  My master thesis as an AI startup with large potential. As of today, I have not started on the product itself. I will write a paper on the product, and finish the thesis in August 2026. My supervisor suggested that this is a good startup idea, and has a large market potential. I want to try. I’ve written about my goals, milestones, and some questions. Feel free to help me in any way, by answering my questions below. Goal:  Learn about startups and non-technical part of it (business, finance, sales, etc) (I'm clueless here) Build the business part time Try and fail Milestones Complete my paper on the product Create MVP for customers to test Validate idea and check market Find company name, acquire domain and launch SaaS  Get feedback, do networking and improve the product Join a Startup Lab and find Cofounders. The following roles would need to be filled  CEO (Me, Vision and tech expert) COO (Business strategy, operations, and scaling.),  CMO (marketing and sales responsible, working to acquire new business) CPO (Product design, user experience, and frontend development)  Formally create the company, divide shares, hold weekend work meeting, pick company name (again) Goal: create product for an industry (the product can be tailored to different industries) and get the first clients. Work that needs to be done: Tech: Create the product for the industry  COO: pitching competitions, define the sales pitch, and how to price the product CMO: find out how marketing should be done, and what companies to contact for demo CMO: design company logo, design web page for business usage, create front page of the website  Growth + Profits Questions Between now, and until I have the working demo, what should I do with my time? I have courses where I learn technical skills for the company. It does not make sense to create the website for the product, when I don't know how the user would interact with the product.  Should I start the company even before the product is made? (While I'm a student and working on the paper) How can I acquire non-technical skills for running a business? I prefer reading books. How can I learn about software companies (practical skills)? For example: How to lower hosting costs?  How to price a product for customers and a product for business? (Software contracts) How to guarantee  privacy when it comes to business documents?  I’m planning on searching for co-founders, after I have validated the idea myself. Should I instead find co founders before I have even created the product? (with no guarantee that there would even be a product?) Should I try to make the product without co-founders? (This is my first startup, so it might tank within the first few months) Any experience with starting a software business while working full time? Thank you for all the help!

Struggling to launch your startup because of tech barriers? I want to help build your MVP—free.

Hey fellow entrepreneurs, I've been noticing a common struggle—so many great startup ideas never get off the ground because of technical roadblocks. Finding a technical co-founder is tough, hiring devs is expensive, and learning to code takes time most founders don’t have. I’m working on a tool that helps non-technical founders turn their ideas into real, functional web apps using AI. But instead of building in isolation, I want to test it in real startup conditions—which means helping actual entrepreneurs like you bring their MVPs to life. Here’s the deal: I’ll build an MVP for free—no catch, no hidden agenda. I just want to test my platform with real use cases and learn from your feedback. If you’ve been sitting on an idea but haven’t executed because of technical hurdles, I’d love to try building a first version for you. Drop your idea below in this format: What’s your project about? (e.g., “a platform connecting indie artists with brands”) What are the key features? (e.g., “artist profiles, project bidding, contract management”) I’ll pick some of the most popular ideas and try to generate an MVP using my tool. Whether or not it works perfectly, we’ll both learn something valuable—and hopefully, you’ll have a solid starting point to iterate on. Looking forward to hearing your ideas! Let’s see what we can build together. — Clément

10 Side Projects in 10 Years: Lessons from Failures and a $700 Exit

Hey folks, I'm sharing my journey so far in case it can help others. Entrepreneurship can sometimes be demotivating. In my case, I've always been involved in side projects and what I've realized is that every time you crash a project, the next one makes it a bit further. So this is a long-term game and consistency ends up paying off The $1 Android Game (2015, age 18) What Happened: 500 downloads, 1€ in ad revenue Ugly UI, performance issues Key Lessons: Don’t be afraid of launching. Delaying for “perfection” is often a sign that you fear being ignored. I was trying to perfect every aspect of the game. In reality, I was delaying the launch because I feared no one would download the app. Commit to the project or kill it. At some point, this project was no longer fun (it was just about fixing device responsiveness). Most importantly, I wasn't learning anything new so I moved to smth else. The Forex Bot Regret (2016, age 19) What Happened: Lost months identifying inexistent chart patterns Created a Trading bot that was never profitable Key Lessons: Day trading’s real winners are usually brokers. There are plenty of guys selling a bot or systems that are not making money trading, why would they sell a “money-printing machine” otherwise... Develop an unfair advantage. With these projects, I developed a strong coding foundation that gave me an edge when dealing with non-technical business people. Invest countless hours to create a skills gap between you and others, one that becomes increasingly difficult for them to close (coding, public speaking, networking, etc.) The $700 Instagram Exit (2018, age 21) What Happened: Grew a motivational account to 60k followers Sold it for $700 90% of followers were in low-income countries (hard to monetize) Key Lessons: Follower quality > quantity. I focused on growth and ended up with an audience I couldn’t truly define. If brands don’t see value, you won’t generate revenue. Also, if you do not know who you are creating content for, you'll end up demotivated and stop posting. Great 3rd party product + domain authority = Affiliate marketing works. In this case, I could easily promote an IG growing service because my 50k+ followers conveyed trust. Most importantly, the service I was promoting worked amazingly. The Illegal Amazon Review Marketplace (2020, age 23) What Happened: Sellers were reimbursing buyers for positive reviews Built a WordPress marketplace to facilitate “free products for reviews” Realized it violated Amazon’s terms Key Lessons: Check for “red flags” when doing idea assessment. There will always be red and orange flags. It’s about learning to differentiate between them (e.g. illegality, 100% dependence on a platform, etc.) If there’s competition, it’s good, if they are making money it’s even better. I was thrilled when I saw no competition for my “unique idea”. Later, I discovered the obvious reason. Copying a “Proven” Business Model (2020, age 23) What Happened: Tried recreating an Instagram “comment for comment” growth tool Instagram changed the algorithm and killed the growth strategy that the product used. Key Lessons: Do not build a business that depends 100% on another business, it is too risky. Mr. Musk can increase Twitter on API pricing to $42,000 monthly without notice and Tik Tok can be banned in the US. Due to the IG algorithm change, we had built a product that was not useful, and worse, now we had no idea how to grow an IG account. Consider future project synergies before selling. I regret having sold the 60k follower IG account since it could have saved me a lot of time when convincing users to try the service. NFT Marathon Medals (2021, age 24) What Happened: Created NFT race medals Sold 20 for 5€ each, but spent 95% of meetings explaining “what is an NFT?” Key Lessons: Market timing is crucial. As with every new technology, it is only useful as long as society is ready to adopt it. No matter how promising the tech is in the eyes of SV, society will end up dictating its success (blockchain, AI, etc). In this case, the runner community was not ready to adopt blockchain (it is not even prepared today). Race organizers did not know what they were selling, and runners did not know what they were buying. The 30-day rule in Fanatical Prospecting. Do not stop prospecting. I did prospecting and closed deals 3 months after the outbound efforts. Then I was busy executing the projects and had no clients once the projects were finished. AI Portal & Co-Founder Misalignment (2023, age 26) What Happened: Built a portal for SMEs to find AI use cases Co-founders disagreed on vision and execution Platform still gets \~1 new user/day Key Lessons: Define roles and equity clearly. Our biggest strength ended up killing us. Both founders had strong strategic skills and we were constantly arguing about decisions. NextJS + Vercel + Supabase: Great stack to create a SaaS MVP. (but do not use AI with frameworks unless you know how they work conceptually) SEO is king. One of our users creates a use case on “Changing Song Lyrics with AI.” Not being our target use case, it brings 90% of our traffic. Building an AI Tool & Getting Ghosted (2024, age 27) What Happened: SEO agency wanted to automate rewriting product descriptions Built it in 3 weeks, but the client vanished Key Lessons: Validate manually first. Don’t code a full-blown solution for a problem you haven’t tested in real-world workflows. I kept rewriting code only to throw it away. Jumping straight into building a solution ended up costing more time than it saved. Use templates, no-code, and open-source for prototyping. In my case, using a Next.js template saved me about four weeks of development only to hit the same dead end, but much faster. Fall in love with your ICP or walk away. I realized I didn’t enjoy working with SEO agencies. Looking back, I should have been honest with myself and admitted that I wasn’t motivated enough by this type of customer. Ignoring Code Perfection Doubled Traffic (2025, age 28) What Happened: Partnered with an ex-colleague to build an AI agents directory Focused on content & marketing, not endless bug fixes Traffic soared organically Key Lessons: Measure the impact of your actions and double down on what works. We set up an analytics system with PostHog and found wild imbalances (e.g. 1 post about frameworks outperformed 20 promotional posts). You have to start somewhere. For us, the AI agents directory is much more than just a standalone site, it's a strategic project that will allow us to discover new products, gain domain authority, and boost other projects. It builds the path for bigger opportunities. Less coding, more traction. Every day I have to fight against myself not to code “indispensable features”. Surprisingly, the directory keeps gaining consistent traffic despite being far from perfect Quitting My Job & Looking Ahead (2025, age 28) What Happened: Left full-time work to go all-in Plan to build vertical AI agents that handle entire business workflows (support, marketing, sales) Key Lessons: Bet on yourself. The opportunity cost of staying in my full-time job outweighed the benefits. It might be your case too I hope this post helps anyone struggling with their project and inspires those considering quitting their full-time job to take the leap with confidence.

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 a Small Startup in Asia Secured a Contract with the US Department of Homeland Security

Uzair Javaid, a Ph.D. with a passion for data privacy, co-founded Betterdata to tackle one of AI's most pressing challenges: protecting privacy while enabling innovation. Recently, Betterdata secured a lucrative contract with the US Department of Homeland Security, 1 of only 4 companies worldwide to do so and the only one in Asia. Here's how he did it: The Story So what's your story? I grew up in Peshawar, Pakistan, excelling in coding despite studying electrical engineering. Inspired by my professors, I set my sights on studying abroad and eventually earned a Ph.D. scholarship at NUS Singapore, specializing in data security and privacy. During my research, I ethically hacked Ethereum and published 15 papers—three times the requirement. While wrapping up my Ph.D., I explored startup ideas and joined Entrepreneur First, where I met Kevin Yee. With his expertise in generative models and mine in privacy, we founded Betterdata. Now, nearly three years in, we’ve secured a major contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security—one of only four companies globally and the only one from Asia. The Startup In a nutshell, what does your startup do? Betterdata is a startup that uses AI and synthetic data generation to address two major challenges: data privacy and the scarcity of high-quality data for training AI models. By leveraging generative models and privacy-enhancing technologies, Betterdata enables businesses, such as banks, to use customer data without breaching privacy regulations. The platform trains AI on real data, learns its patterns, and generates synthetic data that mimics the real thing without containing any personal or sensitive information. This allows companies to innovate and develop AI solutions safely and ethically, all while tackling the growing need for diverse, high-quality data in AI development. How did you conduct ideation and validation for your startup? The initial idea for Betterdata came from personal experience. During my Ph.D., I ethically hacked Ethereum’s blockchain, exposing flaws in encryption-based data sharing. This led me to explore AI-driven deep synthesis technology—similar to deepfakes but for structured data privacy. With GDPR impacting 28M+ businesses, I saw a massive opportunity to help enterprises securely share data while staying compliant. To validate the idea, I spoke to 50 potential customers—a number that strikes the right balance. Some say 100, but that’s impractical for early-stage founders. At 50, patterns emerge: if 3 out of 10 mention the same problem, and this repeats across 50, you have 10–15 strong signals, making it a solid foundation for an MVP. Instead of outbound sales, which I dislike, we used three key methods: Account-Based Marketing (ABM)—targeting technically savvy users with solutions for niche problems, like scaling synthetic data for banks. Targeted Content Marketing—regular customer conversations shaped our thought leadership and outreach. Raising Awareness Through Partnerships—collaborating with NUS, Singapore’s PDPC, and Plug and Play to build credibility and educate the market. These strategies attracted serious customers willing to pay, guiding Betterdata’s product development and market fit. How did you approach the initial building and ongoing product development? In the early stages, we built synthetic data generation algorithms and a basic UI for proof-of-concept, using open-source datasets to engage with banks. We quickly learned that banks wouldn't share actual customer data due to privacy concerns, so we had to conduct on-site installations and gather feedback to refine our MVP. Through continuous consultation with customers, we discovered real enterprise data posed challenges, such as missing values, which led us to adapt our prototype accordingly. This iterative approach of listening to customer feedback and observing their usage allowed us to improve our product, enhance UX, and address unmet needs while building trust and loyalty. Working closely with our customers also gives us a data advantage. Our solution’s effectiveness depends on customer data, which we can't fully access, but bridging this knowledge gap gives us a competitive edge. The more customers we test on, the more our algorithms adapt to diverse use cases, making it harder for competitors to replicate our insights. My approach to iteration is simple: focus solely on customer feedback and ignore external noise like trends or advice. The key question for the team is: which customer is asking for this feature or solution? As long as there's a clear answer, we move forward. External influences, such as AI hype, often bring more confusion than clarity. True long-term success comes from solving real customer problems, not chasing trends. Customers may not always know exactly what they want, but they understand their problems. Our job is to identify these problems and solve them in innovative ways. While customers may suggest specific features, we stay focused on solving the core issue rather than just fulfilling their exact requests. The idea aligns with the quote often attributed to Henry Ford: "If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." The key is understanding their problems, not just taking requests at face value. How do you assess product-market fit? To assess product-market fit, we track two key metrics: Customers' Willingness to Pay: We measure both the quantity and quality of meetings with potential customers. A high number of meetings with key decision-makers signals genuine interest. At Betterdata, we focused on getting meetings with people in banks and large enterprises to gauge our product's resonance with the target market. How Much Customers Are Willing to Pay: We monitor the price customers are willing to pay, especially in the early stages. For us, large enterprises, like banks, were willing to pay a premium for our synthetic data platform due to the growing need for privacy tech. This feedback guided our product refinement and scaling strategy. By focusing on these metrics, we refined our product and positioned it for scaling. What is your business model? We employ a structured, phase-driven approach for out business model, as a B2B startup. I initially struggled with focusing on the core value proposition in sales, often becoming overly educational. Eventually, we developed a product roadmap with models that allowed us to match customer needs to specific offerings and justify our pricing. Our pricing structure includes project-based pilots and annual contracts for successful deployments. At Betterdata, our customer engagement unfolds across three phases: Phase 1: Trial and Benchmarking \- We start with outreach and use open-source datasets to showcase results, offering customers a trial period to evaluate the solution. Phase 2: Pilot or PoC \- After positive trial results, we conduct a PoC or pilot using the customer’s private data, with the understanding that successful pilots lead to an annual contract. Phase 3: Multi-Year Contracts \- Following a successful pilot, we transition to long-term commercial contracts, focusing on multi-year agreements to ensure stability and ongoing partnerships. How do you do marketing for your brand? We take a non-conventional approach to marketing, focusing on answering one key question: Which customers are willing to pay, and how much? This drives our messaging to show how our solution meets their needs. Our strategy centers around two main components: Building a network of lead magnets \- These are influential figures like senior advisors, thought leaders, and strategic partners. Engaging with institutions like IMDA, SUTD, and investors like Plug and Play helps us gain access to the right people and foster warm introductions, which shorten our sales cycle and ensure we’re reaching the right audience. Thought leadership \- We build our brand through customer traction, technology evidence, and regulatory guidelines. This helps us establish credibility in the market and position ourselves as trusted leaders in our field. This holistic approach has enabled us to navigate diverse market conditions in Asia and grow our B2B relationships. By focusing on these areas, we drive business growth and establish strong trust with stakeholders. What's your advice for fundraising? Here are my key takeaways for other founders when it comes to fundraising: Fundraise When You Don’t Need To We closed our seed round in April 2023, a time when we weren't actively raising. Founders should always be in fundraising mode, even when they're not immediately in need of capital. Don’t wait until you have only a few months of runway left. Keep the pipeline open and build relationships. When the timing is right, execution becomes much easier. For us, our investment came through a combination of referrals and inbound interest. Even our lead investor initially rejected us, but after re-engaging, things eventually fell into place. It’s crucial to stay humble, treat everyone with respect, and maintain those relationships for when the time is right. Be Mindful of How You Present Information When fundraising, how you present information matters a lot. We created a comprehensive, easily digestible investment memo, hosted on Notion, which included everything an investor might need—problem, solution, market, team, risks, opportunities, and data. The goal was for investors to be able to get the full picture within 30 minutes without chasing down extra details. We also focused on making our financial model clear and meaningful, even though a 5-year forecast might be overkill at the seed stage. The key was clarity and conciseness, and making it as easy as possible for investors to understand the opportunity. I learned that brevity and simplicity are often the best ways to make a memorable impact. For the pitch itself, keep it simple and focus on 4 things: problem, solution, team, and market. If you can summarize each of these clearly and concisely, you’ll have a compelling pitch. Later on, you can expand into market segments, traction, and other metrics, but for seed-stage, focus on those four areas, and make sure you’re strong in at least three of them. If you do, you'll have a compelling case. How do you run things day-to-day? i.e what's your operational workflow and team structure? Here's an overview of our team structure and process: Internally: Our team is divided into two main areas: backend (internal team) and frontend (market-facing team). There's no formal hierarchy within the backend team. We all operate as equals, defining our goals based on what needs to be developed, assigning tasks, and meeting weekly to share updates and review progress. The focus is on full ownership of tasks and accountability for getting things done. I also contribute to product development, identifying challenges and clearing obstacles to help the team move forward. Backend Team: We approach tasks based on the scope defined by customers, with no blame or hierarchy. It's like a sports team—sometimes someone excels, and other times they struggle, but we support each other and move forward together. Everyone has the creative freedom to work in the way that suits them best, but we establish regular meetings and check-ins to ensure alignment and progress. Frontend Team: For the market-facing side, we implement a hierarchy because the market expects this structure. If I present myself as "CEO," it signals authority and credibility. This distinction affects how we communicate with the market and how we build our brand. The frontend team is split into four main areas: Business Product (Software Engineering) Machine Learning Engineering R&D The C-suite sits at the top, followed by team leads, and then the executors. We distill market expectations into actionable tasks, ensuring that everyone is clear on their role and responsibilities. Process: We start by receiving market expectations and defining tasks based on them. Tasks are assigned to relevant teams, and execution happens with no communication barriers between team members. This ensures seamless collaboration and focused execution. The main goal is always effectiveness—getting things done efficiently while maintaining flexibility in how individuals approach their work. In both teams, there's an emphasis on accountability, collaboration, and clear communication, but the structure varies according to the nature of the work and external expectations.

Why the value of writing code and other digital services is going to zero

I must preface this with a trigger warning because I make some statements in this post that might be upsetting to some. This post discusses my experience building in the new era of entrepreneurship, which is one where the founder is the center of the universe, and the consultants, overpriced SaaS, and corporate swamp creatures are replaced by single-user custom software, bots, and self-hosted automations. If you work in the legacy economy, I really don't intend to stress you out or say things you are doing are quickly becoming irrelevant, but I must share the reality of how I am operating, because I would like to hear from others who are doing the same, or desire to do the same. I am currently operating with the belief that AI-powered tools are going to make 1-person million dollar businesses much more common. Building anything digital is becoming extremely easy, cheap, and quick to implement. The value of code and digital tools is approaching zero, or at most 5% of what it currently is. Right now, the most powerful AI tools are aimed at developers, so folks who have some technical and business ability basically have nothing holding them back aside from the speed of their brain right now. I happen to be a part of the cohort, and am building like there is no tomorrow, but I don't believe this cohort is actually all that big. The next hurdle to unlock the new era of entrepreneurship is empowering every entrepreneur to build at the same pace that is currently locked behind having technical ability. This cohort is huge (millions, if the number of people in this sub is any indication). This post is aimed at them (you?). If you are part of this cohort, what is holding you back from launching a new product for near-zero cost? What is too complicated, too expensive, too unknown for you to be able to build your new/current business at maximum speed? I look forward to seeing the replies, I hope some insights shared can help the community, and be a catalyst for more tools to enable non-technical founders to launch. I will now share some of how I am testing, launching, and selling as a one-man-show. This will be a little bit technical, but if the output of any layer of my stack is something you want, please comment because maybe someone will build a cheap way of accessing it without needing to manage the code yourself. \#1 BOTS I cannot overstate how much leverage bots have created for me. I run all of my bots locally and interface with with via Telegram. Bots do things like: \- watch social media pages, forums, subreddits, etc related to my customers and notify me of what is going on, and suggest SEO blog posts that could be published to capture traffic related to the topic. with a single message, my bot will generate a blog post, send it to me for review, apply edits i suggest, and then publish it live, all from within telegram \- pay attention to all my key metrics/analytics, and attempt to find insights/corrolations (ex. there is a lot of traffic on this page, blog post, video, etc. here's why, and how we can take advantage of it to drive business goals) \- repurposing content. i have dozens of social media profiles that are 100% run by bots, they are all related to my customer niches and will do things like post news, snippets from my blogs, interact with human creators in the niche, etc. this builds my audience automatically which I can then advertise to/try to convert into paying customers, since they are interested in the things my bot is posting and become followers, it's like automated qualified lead gen 24/7 across every social platform and every niche I care about. you may be thinking by now that this post is made by a bot, but you will have to trust me that this is 100% hand-written by my sleep-deprived brain. let's continue: \#2 replacing every SaaS with a shitty version of it designed for what i need out of it it's absurd that we pay ten's of dollars per seat per month for basic digital functions like chat (slack), CRM (active camppaign, sales force, hubspot, etc), email stuff (mailchip, etc), link sharing (linktree, etc), website builders (wix, squarespace, etc), etc. all of these SaaS tools are overpriced and overbuilt. I believe many of them are going to be caught in the innovators dilemma and will go to 0. I don't use any of these anymore, I build and self-host my own shitty version of each of them that does only what i need out of the tool. for example, my CRM doesn't have a fancy drag and drop email builder and 10000 3rd party plugins, because i dont need any of that shit I just need to segment and communicate with my customers. if i need more features, i can generate them on the fly. \#3 working alone I have worked with cofounders in the past, raised money from investors, hired consultants, burned money and time, suffered sleepless nights from stress caused by other people not delivering, trying to convince others they are wrong, or they are pushing the company off a cliff, waste waste waste. no more of that. In the new age of entrepreneurship, the BUILDER (you and I) are the ones creating the value, and AI empowers us to do it alone. this might seem daunting, but there is no business problem that can't be solved with a detailed discussion sesh with chatgpt, no facts that can't be found with perplexity, and no task that can't be automated with claude. there is no need for anymore swamp creatures. you are the start and the end point, you don't need to rely on anyone else for anything. this may sound ignorant, but this is the conclusion I have come to believe, and it continues to be proven every day my businesses progress with me being the only human involved. This is getting quite long so I'll cut it here. I look forward to hearing about how you are operating in this new era and hopefully getting inspired/learning some new ideas to add to my current stack.

101 best SEO tips to help you drive traffic in 2k21

Hey guys! I don't have to tell you how SEO can be good for your business - you can drive leads to your SaaS on autopilot, drive traffic to your store/gym/bar/whatever, etc. The thing with SEO, though, is that most SEO tips on the internet are just not that good. Most of the said tips: Are way too simple & basic (“add meta descriptions to your images”*) Are not impactful. Sure, adding that meta tag to an image is important, but that’s not what’s going to drive traffic to your website Don’t talk much about SEO strategy (which is ultimately the most important thing for SEO). Sure, on-page SEO is great, but you sure as hell won't drive much traffic if you can't hire the right writers to scale your content. And to drive serious SEO traffic, you'll need a LOT more than that. Over the past few years, my and my co-founder have helped grow websites to over 200k+ monthly traffic (check out our older Reddit post if you want to learn more about us, our process, and what we do), and we compiled all our most important SEO tips and tricks, as well as case studies, research, and experiments from the web, into this article. Hope you like it ;) If you think we missed something super important, let us know and we'll add it to the list. And btw, we also published this article on our own blog with images, smart filters, and all that good stuff. If you want to check it out, click here. That said, grab some coffee (or beer) & let's dive in - this is going to be a long one. SEO Strategy Tips Tip #1. A Lot of SEO Tips On The Internet Are NOT Necessarily Factual A lot of the SEO content you’ll read on the internet will be based on personal experiences and hearsay. Unfortunately, Google is a bit vague about SEO advice, so you have to rely more on experiments conducted by SEO pros in the community. So, sometimes, a lot of this information is questionable, wrong, or simply based on inaccurate data.  What we’re getting at here is, whenever you hear some new SEO advice, take it with a grain of salt. Google it to double-check other sources, and really understand what this SEO advice is based on (instead of just taking it at face value). Tip #2. SEO Takes Time - Get Used to It Any way you spin it, SEO takes time.  It can take around 6 months to 2 years (depending on the competition in your niche) before you start seeing some serious results.  So, don’t get disappointed if you don’t see any results within 3 months of publishing content. Tip #3. SEO Isn’t The Best Channel for Everyone That said, if you need results for your business tomorrow, you might want to reconsider SEO altogether.  If you just started your business, for example, and are trying to get to break-even ASAP, SEO is a bad idea - you’ll quit before you even start seeing any results.  If that’s the case, focus on other marketing channels that can have faster results like content marketing, PPC, outreach, etc. Tip #4. Use PPC to Validate Keywords Not sure if SEO is right for your business? Do this: set up Google Search ads for the most high-intent keywords in your niche. See how well the traffic converts and then decide if it’s worthwhile to focus on SEO (and rank on these keywords organically). Tip #5. Use GSC to See If SEO Is Working While it takes a while to see SEO results, it IS possible to see if you’re going in the right direction. On a monthly basis, you can use Search Console to check if your articles are indexed by Google and if their average position is improving over time. Tip #6. Publish a TON of Content The more content you publish on your blog, the better. We recommend a minimum of 10,000 words per month and optimally 20,000 - 30,000 (especially if your website is fresh). If an agency offers you the typical “4 500-word articles per month” deal, stay away. No one’s ever gotten results in SEO with short, once-per-week articles. Tip #7. Upgrade Your Writers Got a writer that’s performing well? Hire them as an editor and get them to oversee content operations / edit other writers’ content. Then, upgrade your best editor to Head of Content and get them to manage the entire editor / writer ops. Tip #8. Use Backlink Data to Prioritize Content When doing keyword research, gather the backlink data of the top 3 ranking articles and add it to your sheet. Then, use this data to help you prioritize which keywords to focus on first. We usually prioritize keywords that have lower competition, high traffic, and a medium to high buyer intent. Tip #9. Conduct In-Depth Keyword Research Make your initial keyword research as comprehensive as possible. This will give you a much more realistic view of your niche and allow you to prioritize content the right way. We usually aim for 100 to 300 keywords (depending on the niche) for the initial keyword research when we start working with a client. Tip #10. Start With Competitive Analysis Start every keyword research with competitive analysis. Extract the keywords your top 3 competitors are ranking on.  Then, use them as inspiration and build upon it. Use tools like UberSuggest to help generate new keyword ideas. Tip #11. Get SEMrush of Ahrefs You NEED SEMrush or Ahrefs, there’s no doubt about it. While they might seem expensive at a glance (99 USD per month billed annually), they’re going to save you a lot of manpower doing menial SEO tasks. Tip #12. Don’t Overdo It With SEO Tools Don’t overdo it with SEO tools. There are hundreds of those out there, and if you’re the type that’s into SaaS, you might be tempted to play around with dozens at a time. And yes, to be fair, most of these tools ARE helpful one way or another. To effectively do organic SEO, though, you don’t really need that many tools. In most cases, you just need the following: SEMrush/Ahrefs Screaming Frog RankMath/Yoast SEO Whichever outreach tool you prefer (our favorite is snov.io). Tip #13. Try Some of the Optional Tools In addition to the tools we mentioned before, you can also try the following 2 which are pretty useful & popular in the SEO community: Surfer SEO - helps with on-page SEO and creating content briefs for writers. ClusterAI - tool that helps simplify keyword research & save time. Tip #14. Constantly Source Writers Want to take your content production to the next level? You’ll need to hire more writers.  There is, however, one thing that makes this really, really difficult: 95 - 99% of writers applying for your gigs won’t be relevant. Up to 80% will be awful at writing, and the remainder just won’t be relevant for your niche. So, in order to scale your writing team, we recommend sourcing constantly, and not just once every few months. Tip #15. Create a Process for Writer Filtering As we just mentioned, when sourcing writers, you’ll be getting a ton of applicants, but most won’t be qualified. Fun fact \- every single time we post a job ad on ProBlogger, we get around 300 - 500 applications (most of which are totally not relevant). Trust us, you don’t want to spend your time going through such a huge list and checking out the writer samples. So, instead, we recommend you do this: Hire a virtual assistant to own the process of evaluating and short-listing writers. Create a process for evaluating writers. We recommend evaluating writers by: Level of English. If their samples aren’t fluent, they’re not relevant. Quality of Samples. Are the samples engaging / long-form content, or are they boring 500-word copy-pastes? Technical Knowledge. Has the writer written about a hard-to-explain topic before? Anyone can write about simple topics like traveling - you want to look for someone who knows how to research a new topic and explain it in a simple and easy to read way. If someone’s written about how to create a perfect cover letter, they can probably write about traveling, but the opposite isn’t true. The VA constantly evaluates new applicants and forwards the relevant ones to the editor. The editor goes through the short-listed writers and gives them trial tasks and hires the ones that perform well. Tip #16. Use The Right Websites to Source Writers “Is UpWork any good?” This question pops up on social media time and time again. If you ask us, no, UpWork is not good at all. Of course, there are qualified writers there (just like anywhere else), but from our experience, those writers are few and far in-between. Instead, here are some of our favorite ways to source writers: Cult of Copy Job Board ProBlogger Headhunting on LinkedIn If you really want to use UpWork, use it for headhunting (instead of posting a job ad) Tip #17. Hire Writers the Right Way If you want to seriously scale your content production, hire your writers full-time. This (especially) makes sense if you’re a content marketing agency that creates a TON of content for clients all the time. If you’re doing SEO just for your own blog, though, it usually makes more sense to use freelancers. Tip #18. Topic Authority Matters Google keeps your website's authoritativeness in mind. Meaning, if you have 100 articles on digital marketing, you’re probably more of an authority on the topic than someone that has just 10. Hence, Google is a lot more likely to reward you with better rankings. This is also partially why content volume really matters: the more frequently you publish content, the sooner Google will view you as an authority. Tip #19. Focus on One Niche at a Time Let’s say your blog covers the following topics: sales, accounting, and business management.  You’re more likely to rank if you have 30 articles on a single topic (e.g. accounting) than if you have 10 articles on each. So, we recommend you double-down on one niche instead of spreading your content team thin with different topics. Tip #20. Don’t Fret on the Details While technical SEO is important, you shouldn’t get too hung up on it.  Sure, there are thousands of technical tips you can find on the internet, and most of them DO matter. The truth, though, is that Google won’t punish you just because your website doesn’t load in 3 milliseconds or there’s a meta description missing on a single page. Especially if you have SEO fundamentals done right: Get your website to run as fast as possible. Create a ton of good SEO content. Get backlinks for your website on a regular basis. You’ll still rank, even if your website isn’t 100% optimized. Tip #21. Do Yourself a Favor and Hire a VA There are a TON of boring SEO tasks that your team should really not be wasting time with. So, hire a full-time VA to help with all that. Some tasks you want to outsource include gathering contacts to reach out to for link-building, uploading articles on WordPress, etc. Tip #22. Google Isn’t Everything While Google IS the dominant search engine in most parts of the world, there ARE countries with other popular search engines.  If you want to improve your SEO in China, for example, you should be more concerned with ranking on Baidu. Targeting Russia? Focus on Yandex. Tip #23. No, Voice Search is Still Not Relevant Voice search is not and will not be relevant (no matter what sensationalist articles might say). It’s just too impractical for most search queries to use voice (as opposed to traditional search). Tip #24. SEO Is Not Dead SEO is not dead and will still be relevant decades down the line. Every year, there’s a sensationalist article talking about this.  Ignore those. Tip #25. Doing Local SEO? Focus on Service Pages If you’re doing local SEO, focus on creating service-based landing pages instead of content.  E.g. if you’re an accounting firm based in Boston, you can make a landing page about /accounting-firm-boston/, /tax-accounting-boston/, /cpa-boston/, and so on. Thing is, you don’t really need to rank on global search terms - you just won’t get leads from there. Even if you ranked on the term “financial accounting,” it wouldn’t really matter for your bottom line that much. Tip #26. Learn More on Local SEO Speaking of local SEO, we definitely don’t do the topic justice in this guide. There’s a lot more you need to know to do local SEO effectively and some of it goes against the general SEO advice we talk about in this article (e.g. you don't necessarily need blog content for local SEO). We're going to publish an article on that soon enough, so if you want to check it out, DM me and I'll hit you up when it's up. Tip #27. Avoid Vanity Metrics Don’t get side-tracked by vanity metrics.  At the end of the day, you should care about how your traffic impacts your bottom line. Fat graphs and lots of traffic are nice and all, but none of it matters if the traffic doesn’t have the right search intent to convert to your product/service. Tip #28. Struggling With SEO? Hire an Expert Failing to make SEO work for your business? When in doubt, hire an organic SEO consultant or an SEO agency.  The #1 benefit of hiring an SEO agency or consultant is that they’ve been there and done that - more than once. They might be able to catch issues an inexperienced SEO can’t. Tip #29. Engage With the Community Need a couple of SEO questions answered?  SEO pros are super helpful & easy to reach! Join these Facebook groups and ask your question - you’ll get about a dozen helpful answers! SEO Signals Lab SEO & Content Marketing The Proper SEO Group. Tip #30. Stay Up to Date With SEO Trends SEO is always changing - Google is constantly pumping out new updates that have a significant impact on how the game is played.  Make sure to stay up to date with the latest SEO trends and Google updates by following the Google Search Central blog. Tip #31. Increase Organic CTR With PPC Want to get the most out of your rankings? Run PPC ads for your best keywords. Googlers who first see your ad are more likely to click your organic listing. Content & On-Page SEO Tips Tip #32. Create 50% Longer Content On average, we recommend you create an article that’s around 50% longer than the best article ranking on the keyword.  One small exception, though, is if you’re in a super competitive niche and all top-ranking articles are already as comprehensive as they can be. For example, in the VPN niche, all articles ranking for the keyword “best VPN” are around 10,000 - 11,000 words long. And that’s the optimal word count - even if you go beyond, you won’t be able to deliver that much value for the reader to make it worth the effort of creating the content. Tip #33. Longer Is Not Always Better Sometimes, a short-form article can get the job done much better.  For example, let’s say you’re targeting the keyword “how to tie a tie.”  The reader expects a short and simple guide, something under 500 words, and not “The Ultimate Guide to Tie Tying for 2021 \[11 Best Tips and Tricks\]” Tip #34. SEO is Not Just About Written Content Written content is not always best. Sometimes, videos can perform significantly better. E.g. If the Googler is looking to learn how to get a deadlift form right, they’re most likely going to be looking for a video. Tip #35. Don’t Forget to Follow Basic Optimization Tips For all your web pages (articles included), follow basic SEO optimization tips. E.g. include the keyword in the URL, use the right headings etc.  Just use RankMath or YoastSEO for this and you’re in the clear! Tip #36. Hire Specialized Writers When hiring content writers, try to look for ones that specialize in creating SEO content.  There are a LOT of writers on the internet, plenty of which are really good.  However, if they haven’t written SEO content before, chances are, they won’t do that good of a job. Tip #37. Use Content Outlines Speaking of writers - when working with writers, create a content outline that summarizes what the article should be about and what kind of topics it needs to cover instead of giving them a keyword and asking them to “knock themselves out.”   This makes it a lot more likely for the writer to create something that ranks. When creating content outlines, we recommend you include the following information: Target keyword Related keywords that should be mentioned in the article Article structure - which headings should the writer use? In what order? Article title Tip #38. Find Writers With Niche Knowledge Try to find a SEO content writer with some experience or past knowledge about your niche. Otherwise, they’re going to take around a month or two to become an expert. Alternatively, if you’re having difficulty finding a writer with niche knowledge, try to find someone with experience in technical or hard to explain topics. Writers who’ve written about cybersecurity in the past, for example, are a lot more likely to successfully cover other complicated topics (as opposed to, for example, a food or travel blogger). Tip #39. Keep Your Audience’s Knowledge in Mind When creating SEO content, always keep your audience’s knowledge in mind. If you’re writing about advanced finance, for example, you don’t need to teach your reader what an income statement is. If you’re writing about income statements, on the other hand, you’d want to start from the very barebone basics. Tip #40. Write for Your Audience If your readers are suit-and-tie lawyers, they’re going to expect professionally written content. 20-something hipsters? You can get away with throwing a Rick and Morty reference here and there. Tip #41. Use Grammarly Trust us, it’ll seriously make your life easier! Keep in mind, though, that the app is not a replacement for a professional editor. Tip #42. Use Hemingway Online content should be very easy to read & follow for everyone, whether they’re a senior profession with a Ph.D. or a college kid looking to learn a new topic. As such, your content should be written in a simple manner - and that’s where Hemingway comes in. It helps you keep your blog content simple. Tip #43. Create Compelling Headlines Want to drive clicks to your articles? You’ll need compelling headlines. Compare the two headlines below; which one would you click? 101 Productivity Tips \[To Get Things Done in 2021\] VS Productivity Tips Guide Exactly! To create clickable headlines, we recommend you include the following elements: Keyword Numbers Results Year (If Relevant) Tip #44. Nail Your Blog Content Formatting Format your blog posts well and avoid overly long walls of text. There’s a reason Backlinko content is so popular - it’s extremely easy to read and follow. Tip #45. Use Relevant Images In Your SEO Content Key here - relevant. Don’t just spray random stock photos of “office people smiling” around your posts; no one likes those.  Instead, add graphs, charts, screenshots, quote blocks, CSS boxes, and other engaging elements. Tip #46. Implement the Skyscraper Technique (The Right Way) Want to implement Backlinko’s skyscraper technique?  Keep this in mind before you do: not all content is meant to be promoted.  Pick a topic that fits the following criteria if you want the internet to care: It’s on an important topic. “Mega-Guide to SaaS Marketing” is good, “top 5 benefits of SaaS marketing” is not. You’re creating something significantly better than the original material. The internet is filled with mediocre content - strive to do better. Tip #47. Get The URL Slug Right for Seasonal Content If you want to rank on a seasonal keyword with one piece of content (e.g. you want to rank on “saas trends 2020, 2021, etc.”), don’t mention the year in the URL slug - keep it /saas-trends/ and just change the headline every year instead.  If you want to rank with separate articles, on the other hand (e.g. you publish a new trends report every year), include the year in the URL. Tip #48. Avoid content cannibalization.  Meaning, don’t write 2+ articles on one topic. This will confuse Google on which article it should rank. Tip #49. Don’t Overdo Outbound Links Don’t include too many outbound links in your content. Yes, including sources is good, but there is such a thing as overdoing it.  If your 1,000 word article has 20 outbound links, Google might consider it as spam (even if all those links are relevant). Tip #50. Consider “People Also Ask” To get the most out of SERP, you want to grab as many spots on the search result as possible, and this includes “people also ask (PAA):” Make a list of the topic’s PAA questions and ensure that your article answers them.  If you can’t fit the questions & answers within the article, though, you can also add an FAQ section at the end where you directly pose these questions and provide the answers. Tip #51. Optimize For Google Snippet Optimize your content for the Google Snippet. Check what’s currently ranking as the snippet. Then, try to do something similar (or even better) in terms of content and formatting. Tip #52. Get Inspired by Viral Content Want to create content that gets insane shares & links?  Reverse-engineer what has worked in the past. Look up content in your niche that went viral on Reddit, Hacker News, Facebook groups, Buzzsumo, etc. and create something similar, but significantly better. Tip #53. Avoid AI Content Tools No, robots can’t write SEO content.  If you’ve seen any of those “AI generated content tools,” you should know to stay away. The only thing those tools are (currently) good for is creating news content. Tip #54. Avoid Bad Content You will never, ever, ever rank with one 500-word article per week.  There are some SEO agencies (even the more reputable ones) that offer this as part of their service. Trust us, this is a waste of time. Tip #55. Update Your Content Regularly Check your top-performing articles annually and see if there’s anything you can do to improve them.  When most companies finally get the #1 ranking for a keyword, they leave the article alone and never touch it again… ...Until they get outranked, of course, by someone who one-upped their original article. Want to prevent this from happening? Analyze your top-performing content once a year and improve it when possible. Tip #56. Experiment With CTR Do your articles have low CTR? Experiment with different headlines and see if you can improve it.  Keep in mind, though, that what a “good CTR” is really depends on the keyword.  In some cases, the first ranking will drive 50% of the traffic. In others, it’s going to be less than 15%. Link-Building Tips Tip #57. Yes, Links Matter. Here’s What You Need to Know “Do I need backlinks to rank?” is probably one of the most common SEO questions.  The answer to the question (alongside all other SEO-related questions) is that it depends on the niche.  If your competitors don’t have a lot of backlinks, chances are, you can rank solely by creating superior content. If you’re in an extremely competitive niche (e.g. VPN, insurance, etc.), though, everyone has amazing, quality content - that’s just the baseline.  What sets top-ranking content apart from the rest is backlinks. Tip #58. Sometimes, You’ll Have to Pay For Links Unfortunately, in some niches, paying for links is unavoidable - e.g. gambling, CBD, and others. In such cases, you either need a hefty link-building budget, or a very creative link-building campaign (create a viral infographic, news-worthy story based on interesting data, etc.). Tip #59. Build Relationships, Not Links The very best link-building is actually relationship building.  Make a list of websites in your niche and build a relationship with them - don’t just spam them with the standard “hey, I have this amazing article, can you link to it?”.  If you spam, you risk ruining your reputation (and this is going to make further outreach much harder). Tip #60. Stick With The Classics At the end of the day, the most effective link-building tactics are the most straightforward ones:  Direct Outreach Broken Link-Building Guest Posting Skyscraper Technique Creating Viral Content Guestposting With Infographics Tip #61. Give, Don’t Just Take! If you’re doing link-building outreach, don’t just ask for links - give something in return.  This will significantly improve the reply rate from your outreach email. If you own a SaaS tool, for example, you can offer the bloggers you’re reaching out to free access to your software. Or, alternatively, if you’re doing a lot of guest posting, you can offer the website owner a link from the guest post in exchange for the link to your website. Tip #62. Avoid Link Resellers That guy DMing you on LinkedIn, trying to sell you links from a Google Sheet?  Don’t fall for it - most of those links are PBNs and are likely to backfire on you. Tip #63. Avoid Fiverr Like The Plague Speaking of spammy links, don’t touch anything that’s sold on Fiverr - pretty much all of the links there are useless. Tip #64. Focus on Quality Links Not all links are created equal. A link is of higher quality if it’s linked from a page that: Is NOT a PBN. Doesn’t have a lot of outbound links. If the page links to 20 other websites, each of them gets less link juice. Has a lot of (quality) backlinks. Is part of a website with a high domain authority. Is about a topic relevant to the page it’s linking to. If your article about pets has a link from an accounting blog, Google will consider it a bit suspicious. Tip #65. Data-Backed Content Just Works Data-backed content can get insane results for link-building.  For example, OKCupid used to publish interesting data & research based on how people interacted with their platform and it never failed to go viral. Each of their reports ended up being covered by dozens of news media (which got them a ton of easy links). Tip #66. Be Creative - SEO Is Marketing, After All Be novel & creative with your link-building initiatives.  Here’s the thing: the very best link-builders are not going to write about the tactics they’re using.  If they did, you’d see half the internet using the exact same tactic as them in less than a week! Which, as you can guess, would make the tactic cliche and significantly less effective. In order to get superior results with your link-building, you’ll need to be creative - think about how you can make your outreach different from what everyone does. Experiment it, measure it, and improve it till it works! Tip #67. Try HARO HARO, or Help a Reporter Out, is a platform that matches journalists with sources. You get an email every day with journalists looking for experts in specific niches, and if you pitch them right, they might feature you in their article or link to your website. Tip #68. No-Follow Links Aren’t That Bad Contrary to what you might’ve heard, no-follow links are not useless. Google uses no-follow as more of a suggestion than anything else.  There have been case studies that prove Google can disregard the no-follow tag and still reward you with increased rankings. Tip #69. Start Fresh With an Expired Domain Starting a new website? It might make sense to buy an expired one with existing backlinks (that’s in a similar niche as yours). The right domain can give you a serious boost to how fast you can rank. Tip #70. Don’t Overspend on Useless Links “Rel=sponsored” links don’t pass pagerank and hence, won’t help increase your website rankings.  So, avoid buying links from media websites like Forbes, Entrepreneur, etc. Tip #71. Promote Your Content Other than link-building, focus on organic content promotion. For example, you can repost your content on Facebook groups, LinkedIn, Reddit, etc. and focus on driving traffic.  This will actually lead to you getting links, too. We got around 95 backlinks to our SEO case study article just because of our successful content promotion. Tons of people saw the article on the net, liked it, and linked to it from their website. Tip #72. Do Expert Roundups Want to build relationships with influencers in your niche, but don’t know where to start?  Create an expert roundup article. If you’re in the sales niche, for example, you can write about Top 21 Sales Influencers in 2021 and reach out to the said influencers letting them know that they got featured. Trust us, they’ll love you for this! Tip #73. .Edu Links are Overhyped .edu links are overrated. According to John Mueller, .edu domains tend to have a ton of outbound links, and as such, Google ignores a big chunk of them. Tip #74. Build Relationships With Your Customers Little-known link-building hack: if you’re a SaaS company doing SEO, you can build relationships with your customers (the ones that are in the same topical niche as you are) and help each other build links! Tip #75. Reciprocal Links Aren’t That Bad Reciprocal links are not nearly as bad as Google makes them out to be. Sure, they can be bad at scale (if trading links is all you’re doing). Exchanging a link or two with another website / blog, though, is completely harmless in 99% of cases. Tip #76. Don’t Overspam Don’t do outreach for every single post you publish - just the big ones.  Most people already don’t care about your outreach email. Chances are, they’re going to care even less if you’re asking them to link to this new amazing article you wrote (which is about the top 5 benefits of adopting a puppy). Technical SEO Tips Tip #77. Use PageSpeed Insights If your website is extremely slow, it’s definitely going to impact your rankings. Use PageSpeed Insights to see how your website is currently performing. Tip #78. Load Speed Matters While load speed doesn’t impact rankings directly, it DOES impact your user experience. Chances are, if your page takes 5 seconds to load, but your competition’s loads instantly, the average Googler will drop off and pick them over you. Tip #79. Stick to a Low Crawl Depth Crawl depth of any page on your website should be lower than 4 (meaning, any given page should be possible to reach in no more than 3 clicks from the homepage).  Tip #80. Use Next-Gen Image Formats Next-gen image formats such as JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, and WebP can be compressed a lot better than PNG or JPG. So, when possible, use next-get formats for images on your website. Tip #81. De-Index Irrelevant Pages Hide the pages you don’t want Google to index (e.g: non-public, or unimportant pages) via your Robots.txt. If you’re a SaaS, for example, this would include most of your in-app pages or your internal knowledge base pages. Tip #82. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly Make sure that your website is mobile-friendly. Google uses “mobile-first indexing.” Meaning, unless you have a working mobile version of your website, your rankings will seriously suffer. Tip #83. Lazy-Load Images Lazy-load your images. If your pages contain a lot of images, you MUST activate lazy-loading. This allows images that are below the screen, to be loaded only once the visitor scrolls down enough to see the image. Tip #84. Enable Gzip Compression Enable Gzip compression to allow your HTML, CSS and JS files to load faster. Tip #85. Clean Up Your Code If your website loads slowly because you have 100+ external javascript files and stylesheets being requested from the server, you can try minifying, aggregating, and inlining some of those files. Tip 86. Use Rel-Canonical Have duplicate content on your website? Use rel-canonical to show Google which version is the original (and should be prioritized for search results). Tip #87. Install an SSL Certificate Not only does an SSL certificate help keep your website safe, but it’s also a direct ranking factor. Google prioritizes websites that have SSL certificates over the ones that don’t. Tip #88. Use Correct Anchor Texts for Internal Links When linking to an internal page, mention the keyword you’re trying to rank for on that page in the anchor text. This helps Google understand that the page is, indeed, about the keyword you’re associating it with. Tip #89. Use GSC to Make Sure Your Content is Interlinked Internal links can have a serious impact on your rankings. So, make sure that all your blog posts (especially the new ones) are properly linked to/from your past content.  You can check how many links any given page has via Google Search Console. Tip #90. Bounce rate is NOT a Google ranking factor. Meaning, you can still rank high-up even with a high bounce rate. Tip #91. Don’t Fret About a High Bounce Rate Speaking of the bounce rate, you’ll see that some of your web pages have a higher-than-average bounce rate (70%+).  While this can sometimes be a cause for alarm, it’s not necessarily so. Sometimes, the search intent behind a given keyword means that you WILL have a high bounce rate even if your article is the most amazing thing ever.  E.g. if it’s a recipe page, the reader gets the recipe and bounces off (since they don’t need anything else). Tip #92. Google Will Ignore Your Meta Description More often than not, Google won’t use the meta description you provide - that’s normal. It will, instead, automatically pick a part of the text that it thinks is most relevant and use it as a meta description. Despite this, you should always add a meta description to all pages. Tip #93. Disavow Spammy & PBN Links Keep track of your backlinks and disavow anything that’s obviously spammy or PBNy. In most cases, Google will ignore these links anyway. However, you never know when a competitor is deliberately targeting you with too many spammy or PBN links (which might put you at risk for being penalized). Tip #94. Use The Correct Redirect  When permanently migrating your pages, use 301 redirect to pass on the link juice from the old page to the new one. If the redirect is temporary, use a 302 redirect instead. Tip #95. When A/B Testing, Do This A/B testing two pages? Use rel-canonical to show Google which page is the original. Tip #96. Avoid Amp DON’T use Amp.  Unless you’re a media company, Amp will negatively impact your website. Tip #97. Get Your URL Slugs Right Keep your blog URLs short and to-the-point. Good Example: apollodigital.io/blog/seo-case-study Bad Example: apollodigital.io/blog/seo-case-study-2021-0-to-200,000/ Tip #98. Avoid Dates in URLs An outdated date in your URL can hurt your CTR. Readers are more likely to click / read articles published recently than the ones written years back. Tip #99. Social Signals Matter Social signals impact your Google rankings, just not in the way you think. No, your number of shares and likes does NOT impact your ranking at all.  However, if your article goes viral and people use Google to find your article, click it, and read it, then yes, it will impact your rankings.  E.g. you read our SaaS marketing guide on Facebook, then look up “SaaS marketing” on Google, click it, and read it from there. Tip #100. Audit Your Website Frequently Every other month, crawl your website with ScreamingFrog and see if you have any broken links, 404s, etc. Tip #101. Use WordPress Not sure which CMS platform to use?  99% of the time, you’re better off with WordPress.  It has a TON of plugins that will make your life easier.  Want a drag & drop builder? Use Elementor. Wix, SiteGround and similar drag & drops are bad for SEO. Tip #102. Check Rankings the Right Way When checking on how well a post is ranking on Google Search Console, make sure to check Page AND Query to get the accurate number.  If you check just the page, it’s going to give you the average ranking on all keywords the page is ranking for (which is almost always going to be useless data). Conclusion Aaand that's about it - thanks for the read! Now, let's circle back to Tip #1 for a sec. Remember when we said a big chunk of what you read on SEO is based on personal experiences, experiments, and the like? Well, the tips we've mentioned are part of OUR experience. Chances are, you've done something that might be different (or completely goes against) our advice in this article. If that's the case, we'd love it if you let us know down in the comments. If you mention something extra-spicy, we'll even include it in this article.

I Watched My Startup Slowly Dying Over Two Years: Mistakes and Lessons Learned

If you are tired of reading successful stories, you may want to listen to my almost failure story. Last year in April, I went full-time on my startup. Nearly two years later, I’ve seen my product gradually dying. I want to share some of the key mistakes I made and the lessons I’ve taken from them so you don't have to go through them. Some mistakes were very obvious in hindsight; others, I’m still not sure if they were mistakes or just bad luck. I’d love to hear your thoughts and advice as well. Background I built an English-learning app, with both web and mobile versions. The idea came from recognizing how expensive it is to hire an English tutor in most countries, especially for practicing speaking skills. With the rise of AI, I saw an opportunity in the education space. My target market was Japan, though I later added support for multiple languages and picked up some users from Indonesia and some Latin American countries too. Most of my users came from influencer marketing on Twitter. The MVP for the web version launched in Japan and got great feedback. People were reposting it on Twitter, and growth was at its peak in the first few weeks. After verifying the requirement with the MVP, I decided to focus on the mobile app to boost user retention, but for various reasons, the mobile version didn’t launch until December 2023— 8 months after the web version. Most of this year has been spent iterating on the mobile app, but it didn’t make much of an impact in the end. Key Events and Lessons Learned Here are some takeaways: Find co-founders as committed as you are I started with two co-founders—both were tech people and working Part-Time. After the web version launched, one dropped out due to family issues. Unfortunately, we didn’t set clear rules for equity allocation, so even after leaving, they still retained part of the equity. The other co-founder also effectively dropped out this year, contributing only minor fixes here and there. So If you’re starting a company with co-founders, make sure they’re as committed as you are. Otherwise, you might be better off going solo. I ended up teaching myself programming with AI tools, starting with Flutter and eventually handling both front-end and back-end work using Windsurf. With dev tools getting more advanced, being a solo developer is becoming a more viable option. Also, have crystal-clear rules for equity—especially around what happens if someone leaves. Outsourcing Pitfalls Outsourcing development was one of my biggest mistakes. I initially hired a former colleague from India to build the app. He dragged the project on for two months with endless excuses, and the final output was unusable. Then I hired a company, but they didn’t have enough skilled Flutter developers. The company’s owner scrambled to find people, which led to rushed work and poor-quality code which took a lot of time revising myself. Outsourcing is a minefield. If you must do it, break the project into small tasks, set clear milestones, and review progress frequently. Catching issues early can save you time and money. Otherwise, you’re often better off learning the tools yourself—modern dev tools are surprisingly beginner-friendly. Trust, but Verify I have a bad habit of trusting people too easily. I don’t like spending time double-checking things, so I tend to assume people will do what they say they’ll do. This mindset is dangerous in a startup. For example, if I had set up milestones and regularly verified the progress of my first outsourced project, I would’ve realized something was wrong within two weeks instead of two months. That would’ve saved me a lot of time and frustration. Like what I mentioned above, set up systems to verify their work—milestones, deliverables, etc.—to minimize risk. Avoid red ocean if you are small My team was tiny (or non-existent, depending on how you see it), with no technical edge. Yet, I chose to enter Japan’s English-learning market, which is incredibly competitive. It’s a red ocean, dominated by big players who’ve been in the game for years. Initially, my product’s AI-powered speaking practice and automatic grammar correction stood out, but within months, competitors rolled out similar features. Looking back, I should’ve gone all-in on marketing during the initial hype and focused on rapidly launching the mobile app. But hindsight is 20/20. 'Understanding your user' helps but what if it's not what you want? I thought I was pretty good at collecting user feedback. I added feedback buttons everywhere in the app and made changes based on what users said. But most of these changes were incremental improvements—not the kind of big updates that spark excitement. Also, my primary users were from Japan and Indonesia, but I’m neither Japanese nor Indonesian. That made it hard to connect with users on social media in an authentic way. And in my opinion, AI translations can only go so far—they lack the human touch and cultural nuance that builds trust. But honestly I'm not sure if the thought is correct to assume that they will not get touched if they recognize you are a foreigner...... Many of my Japanese users were working professionals preparing for the TOEIC exam. I didn’t design any features specifically for that; instead, I aimed to build a general-purpose English-learning tool since I dream to expand it to other markets someday. While there’s nothing wrong with this idealistic approach, it didn’t give users enough reasons to pay for the app. Should You Go Full-Time? From what I read, a lot of successful indie developers started part-time, building traction before quitting their jobs. But for me, I jumped straight into full-time mode, which worked for my lifestyle but might’ve hurt my productivity. I value work-life balance and refused to sacrifice everything for the startup. The reason I chose to leave the corp is I want to escape the 996 toxic working environment in China's internet companies. So even during my most stressful periods, I made time to watch TV with my partner and take weekends off. Anyways, if you’re also building something or thinking about starting a business, I hope my story helps. If I have other thoughts later, I will add them too. Appreciate any advice.

Made my second f***ing sale of $15k with my agency business

A few months back, I quit my full-time software engineering job, where I was making $5k a month.  I started my business to help founders build their products by partnering with them as a Tech Founder. After two months of getting everything on the road, I closed my first deal of $15k, where I am working with a founder who is building an AI-based A/B testing tool for websites, graphics, and sales copywriting. Today, I am closing my second deal of $15k more, where I will be helping a non-technical founder build Wedding Planner software. I am grateful to have made the decision, as I am on track to make more than my yearly salary within the next three months, as per my plan.  Not a millionaire yet, but I will grow my business to a million dollars in the next year. Back to work; I will keep everyone posted here! Edit: Thanks for all the wishes. This blew up more than I expected, I tried to answer all of the queries. I have received many DMs for sharing the business details. You can find it linked above.

AI Will Make You Extremely Rich or Kill Your Business in 2024

Preface: I'm a solo-founder in the AI space and previously worked as an ML scientist; the new advancements in AI that I'm seeing are going to impact everyone here. It doesn't matter if you're just starting out, or a bootstrapped brick and mortar founder, or even a VC backed hard tech founder. Last year was when the seeds were laid, and this is the year we'll see them bloom. There will be an onslaught of advancements that take place that are borderline inconceivable due to the nature of exponential progress. This will change every single vertical. I'm making this post because I think AI execution strategy will make or break businesses. Dramatically. Over $50B was put into AI startups in 2023 alone. This figure excludes the hundreds of billions poured into AI from enterprises. So, let's follow the money: &#x200B; 1) AI enterprise software. There's a lot to unpack here and this is what I’m currently working on. AI enterprise software will encompass everything from hyper personalized email outbound to AI cold calls to AI that A/B tests ads on synthetic data to vertical specific software. The impact of the former is relatively self explanatory, so I'll focus on the latter. To illustrate vertical specific AI software, I'll use a simple example in the legal space. Lawyers typically have to comb through thousands of pages of documents. Now, using an LLM + a VDB, an AI can instantly answer all of those questions while surfacing the source and highlighting the specific answer in the contract/document. There are dozens of AI startups for this use case alone. This saves lawyers an immense amount of time and allows them to move faster. Firms that adopt this have a fundamental advantage over law firms that don't adopt this. This was 2023 technology. I'm seeing vertical AI software getting built by my friends in areas from construction, to real estate, to even niche areas like chimney manufacturing. This will exist everywhere. Now, this can be extrapolated much further to be applicable to systems that can do reports and even browse the Internet. This brings me to my next point. &#x200B; 2) AI information aggregation and spread. My gut tells me that this will have a crescendo moment in the future with hardware advancements (Rabbit, Tab, etc.). You won't have to google things because it will be surfaced to you. It's predictive in nature. The people who can get information the fastest will grow their business the fastest. This part is semi-speculative, but due to the nature of LLMs being so expensive to train, I have a strong feeling that large institutions will have access to the \fastest\ and \best\ models that can do this quicker than you and I can. This is why it's important to stay on top. &#x200B; 3) AI content generation This is relevant to running advertisements and any digital marketing aspect of your business. If you can rapidly make content faster than your competitors to put in social media, you will outpace your competitors rapidly. I think most folks are familiar with MidJourney, Stable diffusion, etc. but don't know how to use it. You can generate consistent models for a clothing brand or generate images of a product that you would normally need to hire a professional photographer to take. There's also elevenlabs which is relatively easy to use and can be used to make an MP3 clip as a narration for an ad; this is something I've already done. I'm also still shocked by how many people are unfamiliar with tools like Pika which can do video generation. You could imagine companies having fleets of digital influencers that they control or conjuring up the perfect ad for a specific demographic using a combination of all of the aforementioned tools. &#x200B; In summary, if you feel like I'm being hyperbolic or propagating science fiction fantasies, you're likely already behind. I truly recommend that everyone stays up to date on these advancements as much as possible. If your competitor comes across an AI tool that can increase their ROAS by 5x they can crush you. If your competitor uses a tool that increases the rate at which they receive and aggregate information by 200% (modest estimate) they will crush you. If your competitors have a tool that can reduce their employee size, then they will use it. They'll fire their employees to cut costs and reinvest the money back into their business. It will compound to the point where you're outpaced, and this isn't a level of innovation we've seen since the birth of the industrial revolution. Your customers can get stolen overnight, or you can steal your competition’s customers overnight. TL;DR: This is an opportunity for entrepreneurs to scale faster than they could have possibly imagined, but this also comes with the potential for your company to be obliterated. We've never seen advancements that can have this drastic of an impact this quickly. Adoption will happen fast, and first movers will have a disproportionate and compounding advantage. Watch guides, meet with startups, follow the news, and get rich.

Experienced Technology Leader Seeking Visionary Entrepreneur for Collaborative AI Innovation

How do i find the superman? I am seeking a forward-thinking entrepreneurial partner who possesses a transformative vision and the ability to identify untapped market opportunities. The ideal collaborator will bring strong business acumen, capable of defining a compelling business strategy and working alongside me to develop an innovative product. Together, we can create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), secure the necessary funding, and successfully launch a scalable solution with significant market potential. If you have a disruptive idea and the strategic expertise to drive commercial success, I would welcome the opportunity to connect and explore how we can collaborate to bring this vision to life. With Tech background of 17 years i will take responsibility for the product development from inception to completion with my team. #ArtificialIntelligence #TechCollaboration #Entrepreneurship #Innovation #MVPDevelopment #AIServices

I sold my AI tool for $35,000

Hey Entrepreneurs, Marc here. Last month I wrote here about how sold a habit tracker for $10,000 in October. Earlier this month, I got $35,000 in my bank account after selling a landing page maker with AI. Here's the story: &#x200B; April 2023: Just like everyone, I get massive FOMO with AI. I played with GPT and decided to build a landing page generator with AI: Input text and the AI prefills a template with copy and AI-generated images. I'm working on it with a good friend of mine named Martin. May: The product is called LandingAI. It's an MVP but we launched and made \~$8,000. Unfortunately, Martin and I had different visions for the project so we forked. &#x200B; June: LandingAI is the name of a big corp (bummer) so I rebranded it to MakeLanding. I ditch 90% of the code because users want a very different product: So here I am, building an entire website builder powered with AI... &#x200B; July: I launched again, but made a BIG mistake: I swapped the one-time payment for a monthly subscription and got $20 MRR for 15k visitors... If you can avoid subscriptions, do it New pricing means new positioning—users compared the app to Framer & Webflow August: I removed the subscription and sales came back: \~$7,000 in 3 months. But I realized this was going nowhere... September: I don't use the product The market is gigantic and crowded As a solopreneur, nothing is more important for me than building cool stuff for people I care about. And I didn't really care about this big market so... October: I called my friend Dan and he said: SELL. He was right. I bought my shares of LandingAI from Martin and listed MakeLanding on Acquire: Asking $38,000 for $14,000 TTM (3x profit) Within hours, I received dozens of NDAs and a buyer started the process 🤯 After a few weeks of NDA, LOI, Escrow, etc. the buyer sent the money but... Only a fraction of the transaction. Then he ghosted me. So I canceled the transition. Back to Acquire... Luckily, in 24 hours I got another buyer! &#x200B; November: Within weeks, the money was in my bank account. The buyer and I never called, just a few messages. It's mind-blowing. &#x200B; My takeaways: Don't build AI products just because Don't go on a massive market you don't care Sell if you don't know how to grow the product It's my 3rd acquisition this year. I love the freedom of build, sell, repeat.