My journey in startups began 10 years ago, and I've launched 18 startups, most of which failed. Briefly on why they failed: 1. Contract Online my first startup in 2015, which was supposed to be an online service for remote signing of contracts for any transactions between individuals. A kind of analogue of a secure transaction. For this startup, I even managed to attract a business angel who invested $16,500.
Reason for failure: I had two lawyers on my team who discovered in the process that the legal framework at the time could not provide reliable grounds for protecting our users in remote transactions. The contracts would not have been considered legally signed. 2. Natural Products In 2015-2018, I became very passionate about healthy eating, but in the process, I discovered that products in all chain stores are full of chemicals, and stores with truly natural products are inaccessible to the majority. Hence, the idea emerged to create my own online platform where you could order natural products directly from farmers at affordable prices.
Reason for failure: For several years, I tried to launch this project, even trained as a baker of natural bread and tried to create my own farm, but in the process, I found that few people are willing to pay for truly natural products, even if these products were only 20-30% more expensive than market prices, and not 2-3 times more, as in premium stores. Hence, the market was so small that all my attempts were doomed.
Friends, thanks to your support, ProblemHunt took 3rd place in the Product of the Day race!
1. The race featured exactly 222 products, including: ChatGPT Atlas by OpenAI, XMind with over 100 million users, the much-talked-about Manus AI, and many other strong competitors. Admittedly, it wasn't easy. But thanks to our close-knit, responsive, and friendly community, we managed to break into the top 3. This genuinely inspires us and gives us energy to actively develop ProblemHunt for you. From the bottom of our hearts thank you to each and every one of you!
@OpenAI just launched ChatGPT Atlas, its own browser for macOS that bakes the model right into every tab. You can highlight text to summarize or rewrite it, chat alongside any site, and keep the AI open in a split view while you browse.
It even remembers what you ve been doing over time, though that s already raising privacy flags.
What s interesting is that Atlas doesn t feel like a new product it just feels like ChatGPT trying to absorb the browser itself.
LOTS going on. Google just turned a core part of our product into a feature - which is always fun - BUT, we saw it coming when they added it to Workspace not long ago. Inevitable, really, importance of keeping an eye on the market. The wave of AI scheduling assistants is as validating as it is like white-water rafting...!
I've recently seen more cities that are growing teams and building offices that seem to be growing rapidly? SF seems like it's one of many hubs that have been growing in the recent years. I'm trying to see which cities people are looking into and where people think will be the next startup hub? I've seen mixed opinions on cities like New York and Toronto but would love to hear what other people think as well!
The past few months, I ve been deep in the weeds building my product. A few choices, some risky, some intuitive, completely changed the direction of the project.
One that stands out: launching before I felt ready. Terrifying at the time, but the flood of real feedback saved me months of guessing.
After my AI startup (trieve) got acquired, I returned to an old idea: building a better Patreon for content creators making serial content like long running comics, shows, or books. The domain patron.com was perfect, but it was owned by World Media as an investment. Instead of assuming it was impossible, I cold emailed the owner Gary Millin through LinkedIn and regular outreach.
As Makers, we're constantly juggling product builds, user feedback, marketing, and bug fixes. Time seems to vanish in an instant. Over the past year, I ve found that sometimes it's not a grand strategy or overhaul that makes the difference, but rather one game-changing tool that quietly handles the busywork.
For me, a standout has been Fathom, an AI-powered tool that transcribes meetings and automatically delivers highlight summaries. No more scrambling for bullets during calls, no more post-call backlog. It s saved me hours each week. In fact, users combining tools like Fathom, ChatGPT, Asana, and Zapier have reported reclaiming 20+ hours per week by streamlining writing, research, and task automation.
No matter what you're building, investors new favorite question: "What stops OpenAI from doing this?"
For @Migma AI: we operate on the software layer while OpenAI provides the foundation models. they re pushing toward AGI, not building specialized vertical products. email requires deep integrations, brand learning, cross-client rendering, and a compiler we built in-house. OpenAI won t spend years perfecting how 40+ email clients render html but that s exactly our edge. Look at how they acquired @Windsurf for billions: instead of building vertical products themselves, they buy proven software players. we re in that category. Now tell me: what stops OpenAI and giants from doing what you're doing?
Yes, we had this talk on Product Hunt countless times, about whether Apple is behind in AI.
Apple is in early talks with Google to potentially use Gemini AI to power a revamped version of Siri, as part of efforts to catch up in generative AI. They have been considering Anthropic s Claude and OpenAI s ChatGPT + testing their own models.
I m a PM, and I ve been prototyping more and more in Lovable/V0 lately it s quickly becoming my default sketchpad for product ideas. One challenge I keep running into when sharing with stakeholders: how to present different variations of the same prototype. It feels like today s vibecoding tools don t yet have the equivalent of feature flags, a simple way to toggle between ideas within one prototype. I m curious how others approach this. Do you fork? Keep multiple versions and restore as needed? Or is there another workflow I should try?
