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Astro Tranleft a comment
This hits on something we wrestle with constantly building Murror. We're making an AI app specifically to help young people with loneliness and isolation, and the sycophancy problem is one of the most important design constraints we work against. An AI that just validates feelings instead of gently challenging them is worse than useless for someone who's genuinely struggling. The honest version...
Are the chatbots pleasers?
Bogomil Shopov - БогоJoin the discussion
Astro Tranleft a comment
Applying with Murror, an AI app to help young people who feel lonely or isolated. We think the loneliness epidemic is one of the biggest underserved problems right now and Gen Z is hit the hardest. Honestly not sure if it's too early stage for YC but the reasoning you laid out here made me think it's worth the shot anyway. The network and the speed alone seem worth it. Good luck to everyone...
YC deadline in <2 weeks; Who's applying?
Rajiv AyyangarJoin the discussion
Astro Tranleft a comment
This resonates a lot. I'm a designer building Murror which is an AI app for loneliness, and the building part felt natural, but telling the story of why it matters to people who don't already feel the problem is genuinely hard. What I've found helps a bit is finding the specific people who already know they're lonely or isolated and talking to them directly, rather than trying to convince a...
I'm good at building. Marketing is a different story.
JamesJoin the discussion
Astro Tranleft a comment
Hey, I'm Astro — building Murror, an AI companion app for young people dealing with loneliness and isolation. The problem we're working on is real: Gen Z is the loneliest generation despite being the most digitally connected. Murror tries to help with that by giving people a space to feel heard and gradually build real social confidence. Still early but if you're curious or know anyone who...
Pitch your product here, maybe someone is looking exactly for what you offer.
Salim BoudiJoin the discussion
Astro Tranleft a comment
Building Murror, an AI app for young people who feel isolated or lonely. The core idea is that a lot of Gen Z struggles with real connection even though they're constantly "connected" online, so we're trying to actually help with that. Stack is pretty lightweight right now since it's early. React Native for mobile, Supabase for backend and auth, and OpenAI for the AI layer. For billing we're...
What are you building, and what does your stack look like?
Ryan HendricksonJoin the discussion
Astro Tranleft a comment
this one is genuinely hard when you're building for people going through something difficult. with Murror, which is about loneliness and isolation in young people, i keep asking myself: if i put this behind a paywall, am i pricing out the exact person who needs it most? the way i've been thinking about it is whether a feature helps someone understand their situation vs. helps them take action...
How do you decide what features should be free and what should be paid?
Astro Tranleft a comment
the financial and task stuff i'm fairly comfortable delegating. but the thing i'm most cautious about is emotional context. i build in the mental health space and the one thing i keep coming back to is that AI can be very convincing while still being completely off about what someone actually needs. for sensitive health or personal stuff, i think the risk isn't just misuse of data. it's the AI...
How much do you trust AI agents?
Astro Tranleft a comment
building Murror right now, an app for young people dealing with loneliness and isolation. the problem is real but most solutions either just throw people into group chats or give them a chatbot that feels hollow after a few days. we're trying to go deeper than that. stack is pretty lean: React Native on the front, Supabase for backend and auth, and we're using some custom AI logic to make the...
What are you building, and what does your stack look like?
Ryan HendricksonJoin the discussion
Astro Tranleft a comment
Coming at this from a slightly different angle. I build Murror, an AI app for emotional support and loneliness, so trust isn't just a nice-to-have for us, it's basically the whole product. If people don't feel safe being vulnerable with it, there's nothing there. What I've noticed is that trust with AI in emotional contexts is earned really slowly and lost really fast. One weird or cold...
How much do you trust AI agents?
Astro Tranleft a comment
Building Murror, an AI app for young people dealing with loneliness and isolation. The core idea is that a lot of people don't have anyone they can really talk to without judgment, and Murror tries to be that space. Stack is React Native for mobile, Node/Express on the backend, PostgreSQL, and we're using a mix of Claude and some fine-tuned models for the emotional support layer. For auth we...
What are you building, and what does your stack look like?
Ryan HendricksonJoin the discussion
Astro Tranleft a comment
I think the loneliness part of building doesn't get talked about enough. It's not just "no time for family" but more that the founder identity kind of swallows everything. You stop being a full person and just become the thing you're building. I work on Murror, an app specifically around loneliness and isolation in young people, and honestly a lot of what I see there echoes what founders go...
Are builders so busy building businesses that starting a family isn’t a priority?
Astro Tranleft a comment
Building Murror has made me think about this from both sides. I am building an AI that people trust with something really personal, their loneliness and emotional state. So the question of trust is not abstract for me. My take is that trust with AI agents is earned the same way it is with people: through consistency and transparency about what they are actually doing. The fear is not the...
How much do you trust AI agents?
Astro Tranleft a comment
For Murror I went back and forth on this a lot. The core emotional value, feeling heard and less alone, has to be free or nobody trusts you enough to even try it. You cannot gate the thing that proves the product works. What I ended up deciding is that free should get someone to their first real moment of feeling understood. Paid is for people who want that consistently as part of their life....
How do you decide what features should be free and what should be paid?
Astro Tranleft a comment
Loneliness is a big one for me. Not the dramatic kind, just the quiet persistent kind that comes from building something no one around you fully understands. You are solving a problem that matters deeply to you, but that makes it hard to connect with people outside that world. Friends and family want to support you but they do not really get it. And other founders get it conceptually but...
Biggest mental health struggles for founders today?
Axel VillamilJoin the discussion
Astro Tranleft a comment
I think about this a lot. Building something takes up a weird amount of mental and emotional space, even when you are not technically "working." And the loneliness of that path is real but rarely talked about honestly. Most founders I know are not choosing business over family on purpose. It is more like the intensity of building makes deep personal connections harder to form and maintain. You...
Are builders so busy building businesses that starting a family isn’t a priority?
Astro Transtarted a discussion
81% of founders never tell anyone what's actually stressing them out
A founder coach who surveyed hundreds of builders said something that stuck with me: every single person she interviewed used the word "lonely." That really stopped me. Because it's not just one type of founder or one stage. It's across the board. And when you look at the data it makes sense. 81% of founders are not open with the people in their lives about what is actually stressing them out....
Astro Transtarted a discussion
Who do you actually talk to when things get hard?
A Fortune piece from late last year had the CEOs of Apple, Airbnb, and PepsiCo all agreeing on something that surprised me: being at the top is one of the loneliest places to be. That resonated. But I think it starts way before you reach Fortune 500 CEO. It starts the moment you go all in on your own thing. There is this structural trap I keep seeing talked about. You can't really vent to your...
Astro Transtarted a discussion
Does building something to fight loneliness make you lonelier as a founder?
There is a strange irony I have been sitting with lately. I am building an app specifically to help young people feel less alone. And yet, some of the loneliest moments I have experienced have been in the past year, building it. No co-founder to debrief with after a bad day. Friends who do not really get what you are going through. Family who just want you to get a "real job." You share wins...
Astro Tranleft a comment
The first thing I check is whether the problem statement feels real. A lot of launches describe a product, but the best ones describe a pain I've actually felt. After that, I'll scan who made it. If it's a solo founder or a small team, I'm more curious because there's usually a personal story behind it. The "why this, why now, why them" shows up in the first two sentences if it's there at all.
What makes you click into a Product Hunt launch?
Astro Tranleft a comment
Both are happening, and I think it depends on how you approach it. When I use AI to test an idea or push back on my assumptions, it actually sharpens my thinking. But when I use it to skip the hard part of sitting with a problem, I notice the quality of my output drops. The real question is whether you're using AI as a mirror or as a replacement. The best thinking I've done recently came from...
Are we using AI to think better or to stop thinking at all?
Martin Gebara El MaalouliJoin the discussion