... developers, agencies and consultants before creating a prototype. It worked. It wasn t yet delightful, but it worked. Because we had vibe-coded it, every change broke something else. We had to rebuild. A lot. April I speculatively pitched a16z Speedrun. We reached the final interview and were told we d hear back about a $1 million investment. Imagine how crazy that felt. May We planned a three-week fundraising window and filled 75% of the round. Then a major ... ... made the right decision. For the business, I m less sure. A VC is incentivised to get you to the next round and bring their VC network. A potentially pivotal decision in hindsight. June I went full-time. a16z

... easy to buy is the same property as being cheap and easy to cancel, and at consumer price points that property dominates everything else you do. One genuine counterweight, because the pessimistic read isn't automatically the correct one. a16z's growth team looked at retention across hundreds of AI companies and argued the problem is partly measurement, not durability. A large share of early churn is "AI tourists" people who pay $20 to satisfy curiosity and were never going ...

... before my last two launches I wasted weeks building before checking who else was in the space. don t be me. here s the 30-min competitor check I do now, all free tools: 1. search PH archives (5 min) search your keywords on Product Hunt. sort by launch date. note how the top 5 positioned themselves the gaps in their taglines are your opening. 2. check who s actually alive (10 min) a launch from 2023 means nothing ... ... startup is dead. quick signals: are they hiring? shipped anything in the last 6 months? active changelog? I use exploreyc.com for this (free db of 8,600+ YC / a16z

... allow links in comment replies. Comment from Lavakumar E(@productrambler): Here is my list that gets dropped in my inbox. I focus on the Product/Sales/GTM side of things. Lenny's Newsletter Marketing Brew Guillermo Flor from Product Market Fit a16z Meng Li from AI Disruption Tom's Marketing Ideas Jakob Nielsen UXRoundup Comment from Stephanie Tang(@stephanie_t0317): Great question. A few newsletters I ve found valuable: Business / Strategy Stratechery (Ben Thompson) excellent analysis of tech companies, business models ...

... from Omri Ben-Shoham(@omri_ben_shoham1): honestly my move is usually just typing the idea into PH search plus a quick GPT sanity check, both feel incomplete because keyword search misses anything phrased differently and GPT just hallucinates competitors half the time. semantic search over an actual startup dataset sounds like the right fix rather than a workaround. one question - does ExploreYC only index companies that made it into a YC batch, or does it also catch stuff that ... ... come across many influencer discovery tools people are building and some are even crazier than I think. However, as @hosseinyazdi said here in the comments, it doesn't stop me from building my tool. In fact, I use the competitors

... from Konstantin Borimechkov(@konstantimb): @sheik_born  we can add that yes! Comment from Konstantin Borimechkov(@konstantimb): @rehan_aslam6 some people have sent me already built stuff around it yes Comment from Konstantin Borimechkov(@konstantimb): @maya_boothman already adding a16z in, couple more would be good also of course Comment from Konstantin Borimechkov(@konstantimb): @galdayan of course.. but who doesn t like looking at numbers and is in the tech startup world haha Comment from Aleksander Brousseau(@aleksander_brousseau ... ... from vmonome(@taskrelayhq): This is a fun rabbit hole the repeat-founder pattern (Vogt, Kan, Conrad) is the interesting part, way more than the leaderboard itself. Would love to see it sliced by 'founders who've had one exit vs

... their data with AI) Comment from Anastasiia(@alieksia): I'd prefer to work for myself, but if I have to pick someone else's company that would be top VC - Andreessen Horowitz Comment from Todd Merrill(@todd_merrill): @alieksia a16z would be fun Comment from Levi Mitchell(@levi_mitchell1): Kind of telling that three out of four picks in this thread are AI companies now, would've been a totally different list two years ago. Comment from Ghost Kitty(@ghost ...

... a16z published a piece last week arguing that everything at work is being recorded, and that companies who build AI on top of that context layer will win. Compelling thesis. But it mostly frames recordings as a memory and retrieval problem. I think the more interesting question is what people are actually doing with them beyond transcripts, summaries, and action items. I've seen teams use recordings for onboarding, async decision reviews, even as a source of truth when things ... ... happening in practice. A few things I'd love to discuss with the community: How are you using recordings beyond just capturing notes? Have recordings changed how your team makes decisions or shares context? And the part the a16z

... discipline-building streak. Analytics & Insights Subscription Bleed: Identify recurring consumer subscriptions and SaaS sprawl to instantly spot hidden "ghost spend." Capital Waste: Tracks the compounding costs of daily habits, showing the massive lost investment opportunity over time. Wants vs. Needs: Built-in categorization naturally aligned with the 50/30/20 financial framework. User Experience & Tools Dual-Theme Bridge: Dark Mode (Obsidian) for a sleek terminal aesthetic, and Light Mode (Mint Green) for an approachable feel. Client-Side Calculators: Privacy-preserving ... ... goal streamline the application process for students, job seekers, researchers, and of course Founders. What we shipped for launch: Question Archive hundreds of programs catalogued across accelerators, grants, grad schools, and jobs. Every question scored by significance. Answer Bank VS

... Product Hunt community, I m Artin, founder of SUN. Ask me anything about how we got into a16z Speedrun, the product, fundraising, team building, or our Product Hunt launch. Happy to chat and share what s worked (and what didn t). Comment from Artin Bogdanov(@artinbogdanov): @kevin_mcdonagh1  can you elaborate on your question? Comment from Artin Bogdanov(@artinbogdanov): @sai_tharun_kakirala   Hey, appreciate it man, great questions. 1. Build vs

... deals because the story wasn't landing. So I switched sides. DECKO builds pitch decks and sales materials for founders. We've worked with 300+ startups and the companies we've worked with have raised $1.2B+ from Sequoia, a16z, Accel, and others. If you're raising or need materials that actually close, we'd love to help. getdecko.com ...

... they could put their Stripe link here https://trustmrr.com/ ... after that, we would see the real Flex :D Comment from Nika(@busmark_w_nika): @wei_yan4  But it is a difference to announce it when it is true vs when it is not true :D Comment from Nika(@busmark_w_nika): @ojas_j  some people believed that, but until it is verified by the 3rd party, it's probably something that is not worth believing in. Comment from ... ... because what if the product really has potential but they are ki*lling it by lying and hiding the truth? There's no way to trust such a company. Comment from Nika(@busmark_w_nika): @nikhilshahane  Yeah, but a16z

... dominate elsewhere while remaining niche in the States? What do you predict for this market in the US in the coming years? Comment from Felicite Moorman(@felicitemoorman): You KNOW I've been thinking about this! Lol! I re-read a16z's article from Oct that benchmarked the Top 100 GenAI startups are paying for! Including PH darling Loveable, of course! Not a16z

... likely my old co-workers, but the rest, super cool company to keep. We re sitting at ~80% reliability, which is a challenge for many reasons. We ve been doing multi-player AI since day one (now A16Z's big bet for 2026): AI that works with groups, outside the chat window, across email, text, WhatsApp etc. No links, no apps, just CC or text Ting sounds simple. It's a great marketing tag line ...

... straw that broke the camels back' online...). Well, I learned the hard way and wrote a piece about it. I must have hit the algo as a few days later I got a really helpful template from an a16z VC on LinkedIn. I've copied and pasted it below. My framework is more conceptual to help with the contents, but the VC one is turnkey and hopefully you can begin to use from tomorrow. Good luck! Dan -- Know Your Audience ... ... everything. If you re selling luxury in a downturn, you re not reading the room. Here s what a great cold pitch looks like for me right now: Hey Dan, saw you founded Meet-Ting. I assume your biggest competitor

... good writer at a mediocre publication beats a mediocre writer at The Times. What made you go with FT over something like WSJ or Bloomberg?" Comment from Mohammed Maaz(@mohammed_maaz3): Great picks, Nika. I d add HBR and a16z s Future blog both offer a strategic lens for anyone in SaaS or marketing. I still follow TechCrunch for launches, but pair it with Stratechery for depth and analysis. Comment from Nika(@busmark_w_nika): @stephane_paillard ...

... Full report from @olivia_moore @mha1 & @seema_amble : Horizontal apps have a slight lead over vertical (60% of the ...

... thinking about building and growing at the same time - so I wrote a longer piece about it. Feels like the timing is right: one of my favourite VCs wrote about about attention as the last scarce resource , A16Z is talking about momentum as a moat , and the Cluely team keeps hammering on the art of love/hate posts on X to earn attention . There s also that YC line (I think it was YC...) I love: startups really just need ...

... mutlusakar): Hey! I don t mean to be spammy, just thought this might be relevant to your discussion. We built an AI tool that gives quick feedback on pitch decks, kind of like a mock review from YC or a16z If you re working on one, might be helpful: https://www.inodash.com/ai-pitch... would love to hear what you think! Comment from Shamikh Mehdi(@shamikh_mehdi): @richard_b_bautista  What are you working on? Comment from Manu Goel(@manu_goel2 ...

... thousands of articles. I changed. Now i just read 4 weekly newsletters that deliver everything that i need to know. Thats all the information i need. - Techcrunch startups newsletter - The AI Rundown weekly - Product Hunt weekly summary - a16z crypto And a bunch of podcasts and youtube. Probably podcasts are the thing that killed articles. Comment from Karan Arora (@gamifykaran): Pocket has been my favorite read-it-later app for saving articles, stories, and videos to read later. I m really ... ... going to miss how easy and dependable it has been. I have shared the best 5 pocket alternatives

... would you LOVE to get a check from? Comment below, and maybe we can make something happen with the magic of Product Hunt! Comment from Rajiv Ayyangar(@rajiv_ayyangar): We had a dream roster of angels + YC + A16Z for my last company, @Tandem so I'll try to highlight a few. Side note: Remember that "investor-market fit" != product-market fit Founder-angels: Active founders were some of the most tactically helpful people on our cap table. Yes, they ...

... stop building businesses that need funding...they should generate revenue by helping customers. Comment from Tasos V(@cryptosymposium): @busmark_w_nika  Oh definitely. In the US, founders who live in SV/Cali , they leave their house and they meet a16z investors when they throw their trash. In Europe, we see ugly track drivers when we throw our trash away....lol haha ...

... whether you can build it. He was right. Our first launch - internal to YC - wasn t great. But we learned, refined our positioning, simplified our product, and our Product Hunt launch went viral / led to a outsized seed from a16z. Launching sooner than we wanted was life-changing advice. Launch on Product Hunt. Launch on HN. Keep launching and iterating. Don t stress too much about the ranking. Even if you don t get #1, the feedback and engagement from ...

... Hello! I'm Julien Smith, co-founder and CEO at Practice, a platform that allows coaches to run the entire scope of their business in one place, from scheduling to invoicing. We re backed by Andrew Chen at a16z, Tony Robbins, Austin Rief, Brian Norgard, Greg Isenberg, Josh Buckley, Lenny Rachitsky, Emily Kramer, Nikita Bier, Shrug Capital, Sahil Bloom and a lot of other great angels. Previously, I co-founded Breather, which raised over $150m ...

... Gagan Biyani, co-founder and CEO at Maven, a platform for cohort-based courses (CBCs). Backed by a16z and First Round, Maven empowers creators to monetize their expertise by teaching their audience via live and asynchronous video. In just one year, Maven has dozens of creators making over $10k and many who have made over $100k. Previously, I co-founded Udemy, a platform for video-based courses or MOOCs. With over 500 million course enrollments, Udemy was the first major ...