How many AI tools do you know, but can’t actually use?
I realized I was stuck in AI FOMO. Bought multiple courses. Knew every tool by name. Hadn’t built a single working automation. So I stopped and asked one question: "What repetitive task can I hand off to AI today?" Not after another course. Not after “learning more.” Today. That shift mattered. Most of us can list Cursor, Claude, n8n, Make, ChatGPT, MidJourney. Very few can show one real...
YC RFS 2026: here’s the breakdown that actually matters
A lot of people read YC RFS Spring 2026 as a trend list. It’s not. It’s a signal of where work inside companies is quietly breaking. Here’s how this shows up in real teams: Product teams YC references @Cursor , but the opportunity isn’t coding faster. It’s helping PMs synthesize interviews, metrics, and feedback to decide what to build next. Finance and hedge funds Firms like Renaissance,...
Why is defining relevance still the hardest part of building AI features?
As more teams build AI agents, search, and personalized feeds, one problem keeps surfacing. Not generation. Not model quality. It’s retrieval and ranking. Deciding what information should show up and in what order. Most teams solve this by stitching together systems. Vector search for meaning. Keyword search for precision. Custom logic for business rules. Over time, relevance logic spreads...
Can Product Hunt actually bring in customers after launch day?
It did for us. 3 customers came to @Flexprice last week. No ads, no cold DMs. Just conversations. Most people treat Product Hunt as a one-day spike. I treat it like a community of builders. We launched Flexprice last year and learned (the hard way) what works here and what doesn’t. So now I keep it simple: – I support makers launching on Product Hunt for free – I give honest product feedback as...
Why do so many outbound efforts stall even when the ICP looks “correct” on paper?
We kept hearing “get your ICP right.” But what we learned is that who you reach out to first matters just as much as who eventually decides. In most companies, there isn’t one ICP. There’s a sequence. Someone experiences the problem daily. Someone else prioritizes it. Another person signs off on it. If you jump straight to the top, you often lack context. If you stay too low, momentum dies....
When did we forget to celebrate before we connect?
Watched a launch yesterday. By morning, the founder's DMs were full of pitches from other builders. No questions about the product. Just "here's what I'm working on." Look, networking is part of this. We all need it. But we're skipping a step. Launch day used to mean something. Try the product. Ask real questions. Then connect. Now we've optimized so hard for efficiency that we skip straight to...
Why does Cursor keep winning on Product Hunt?
I looked into a few of their launches and what stood out wasn’t a secret hack. It was how little they tried to launch. Their tagline isn’t hype. It’s literal. “Write, edit, and chat about your code with AI.” No buzzwords. No promises. Just what it does. The pattern is simple: A few real product screenshots, nothing decorative A short first comment, often just “What do you think?” Momentum built...
Is using AI for literature reviews unethical, or are we asking the wrong question?
This debate often gets framed as “Should researchers use AI for literature reviews?” I think the real question is different. Is it ethical to spend hundreds of researcher hours on mechanical work when that time could be spent advancing actual knowledge? Think about a researcher spending an entire weekend searching papers, skimming irrelevant abstracts, copying citations, and fixing references....
Does outbound actually work anymore, or are we all just blasting emails and hoping something sticks?
What’s worked for us looks very different from spray-and-pray. We’ve learned that outbound works when it’s intentional at every step. A few things that made the biggest difference for us: • Getting the ICP really right. Sometimes the first outreach isn’t to the buyer, but to someone who can open the door. • Personalization isn’t optional. Company context, role, recent updates. Generic gets...