... first COVID batch) as a solo founder working on @Basedash . After YC, I did what you re supposed to do. I talked to users. I built product. I did founder-led sales. I hired a great team. It felt like progress because I was constantly busy and the product kept getting better. But then the graph didn t move. Here s what our MRR chart looked like over the first four years: Looking back at this chart is pretty embarrassing ... ... zoom out and the KPIs are basically flat. Over time, we got better at converting effort into revenue. Near the end, we sort of figured out how to grow, but it didn t feel like a machine. It felt

... never thought I would ever be able to say this. As a kid, I liked C++ and built a small voting software for my school elections. I learnt some basic HTML, but CSS felt overwhelming. I went to a seminar where someone made a "fish swimming in a pond" artwork live on stage using Java (I think). And I was fascinated by it. I bought a book to learn Java, but it was so thick that I never got around ... ... opening it. Turns out, I was better at animation & graphic design, so my career took a different path. And I had to say goodbye to coding. I felt

... because I couldn't see a future in it. I looked for any Analytical Chemists I could find in the country, but couldn't find any. Plus, we are an agriculture-based economy. So what was the point? It felt like time-wasting. Broke, desperate, I started doing iWriter content gigs. I had never written before, but I always felt

... curious how people here think about a calmer, signal-first feed in practice. If you ve tried Trace already: What felt immediately useful? What felt

... most users don t want charts and dashboards. So instead of complex analytics, the app focused on: Journaling history Self-assessment checkpoints A sense of narrative over time Users could look back and see how their thoughts evolved, which felt more meaningful than numbers. This approach aligned well with users who wanted reflection, not performance metrics. User Personas That Actually Shaped Decisions Two personas influenced the design heavily. Aiden Startup Founder (42, Toronto) Aiden is busy, mentally overloaded, and constantly ... ... reason he used the app at all. Sofia Executive Coach (35, Mexico City) Sofia needed a simple tool she could recommend to clients. Her priorities: Simplicity Clarity Easy reflection prompts She avoided apps that felt

... people! Just launched our product, and would really know what you think of it, and what should be working on? If you try it for 60 seconds: what felt fastest, and what felt

... Product Hunt! I m the maker of Sage I built Sage after realizing something uncomfortable: Most productivity tools worked But they made me feel worse using them. Timers felt aggressive. Streaks felt

... transformation of a prompt into a necessity. In the first week, the app notification felt like a chore. By the third week, the absence of the check-in felt

... been talking to users, trying to understand their pain points and asking them if they would be open to trying out our tool. I received a mix of replies: - some were excited and wanted to try it out. - some felt the problem wasn't that intense for them and didn't need a tool to fix it. - some liked the idea but didn't push for adopting the tool in the org. and after all this, we had 0 users ... ... used to share few recordings on mail and then we used to setup the analyzer for them. >> we reduced that by making it self serve web-app. - since we started with just a QnA slack bot, users felt

... Retour The hardest part wasn t building it was knowing what users actually felt Post As a builder, I underestimated how messy user feedback gets once real people start using your product. Not because users don t care but because feedback shows up everywhere : Slack DMs Random emails One-off messages after meetings By the way comments that never get written down The real problem for me wasn t collecting feedback it was losing context, urgency, and patterns ... ... time I reviewed things, the emotion was gone and decisions felt

... conversation going. 2) Ask for feedback beats ask for upvotes . We avoided any upvote asks and focused on: Can you sanity-check this? , What would you change? , What would stop you from trying it for 7 days? . It felt more aligned with the community and led to better discussions. 3) Have a response plan before you launch. The best momentum came from being present early and consistently replying. Even short replies worked if they were specific. 4) Weekend launches ... ... interesting. Quieter traffic, but also less competition. It felt

... multiple people. (Can you imagine?!) I started using Canva to make my own custom card images and uploaded them to card sites that allowed me to use their platform for signatures and delivery. I loved how the recipients felt! They gasped, they laughed and they showed the card to others. What a way to make someone's day! How could I go back to sending generic cards again? Creating custom cards for each recipient was very time consuming. I needed ... ... create perfectly tailored cards easy and beautiful so every person felt

... promotion. None of my network even knew I was launching that day. I simply wanted to see if anyone out there cared about this small idea of animated companions on the desktop. It somehow ranked seventh, and that moment felt like a huge breath of relief. It made me feel that maybe this project actually has a place in the world. Every sprite is drawn frame by frame by real artists. Nothing is automated or generated. The image I shared ... ... create Noti Cham for him, named after his pet. We updated the colours, the odd eyes, and even added her favourite snack, a Japanese dried fish. It took two weeks because every frame had to be redrawn, but it felt

... they didn t know they already had. This is exactly why Norte exists turning your wallet s hidden perks into something actually useful. If you tried Norte this week I d love your feedback on onboarding and clarity: What felt confusing? What felt

... about uLuup . Its name comes from you loop Let me explain the first reason behind this article: Last week, I completed 16 out of 18 days of a cycle. Seeing the progress made me genuinely happy. I finally felt like I reached a point where I could share this. Reaching around 160 users in the last 28 days also encouraged me. I want to share my experiences and what I ve learned soon on YouTube . I released my app four ... ... past, I never imagined I could manage all of these at the same time. But in this cycle, I studied a language, exercised, and built a water-drinking habit. By the end, I reached 54% consistency , and I felt

... waitlist. But we threw it on Product Hunt anyway. Somehow, we got 300 sign-ups. Weird, right? Here's the thing - we didn't take it seriously. We were still running another startup at the time, and this felt like a fun side project. No monetization. Just experimenting. August 2023: The Moment Everything Shifted That first startup eventually failed. And when it did, we decided to revive the idea of MindPal and build something real. By then, RAG had gotten ... ... configure the behavior, the instructions, the entire personality of their AI to work exactly the way they wanted? We called them "AI agents" without any idea this term would blow up later. We just liked how it sounded. It felt

... focus first on studios (crew builds) or individual creators (micro-gigs)? I ll be here all day sharing behind-the-scenes and shipping 1 change this week based on this thread. Try it: showbizy.ai tell me one thing that felt slow and one thing that felt

... Here s what we ve been working on 1 The problem Freelancers spend hours sending cold emails, following up manually, and trying to keep track of conversations. It s time-consuming. It s boring. And it kills motivation. We felt that too. 2 The idea What if you could automate everything about client outreach from first message to follow-up in just a few clicks? That s how Next Client was born. A French-made SaaS inspired by OneShot ... ... demo video for launch. In 3 days, Next Client goes live If you re curious, follow along we ll share early access soon. 6 Final note We built this because we needed it ourselves. If you ve ever felt

... physical products. I worked on the Apple Vision Pro, I invented a robotic basketball trainer for Hoopfit, and I created analog tools at Noble Crafters. But every time I applied to YC, I heard back no. Eleven YC rejections felt like enough. Besides, I had recently started a job at Amazon, where I liked the people and the work. And I had already learned a lot about businesses by starting them (and failing many times). My guiding principle ... ... life worth living. Getting into YC was just one step, not the entire staircase. Ironically, I think it s exactly that kind of non-attachment that helped me finally get in with number twelve. Here s what felt

... launched @Lumi.new on Product Hunt last week ended the day at #5 of the day. Not the #1 you often see here, but for us as a small indie team, it felt like a big win. Here s what we learned along the way: 1. No top hunter ? Still possible. We didn t have a top hunter submit our product. As a result, the first hours were really quiet. Visibility was low and it felt

... most defining project before @Guitar Wiz was GtrLib Chords. As a guitarist, I was always searching for a complete chord reference that could show me every voicing of a chord across the fretboard, with audio previews. Nothing I found felt complete, so I built one: GtrLib Chords. It struck a chord (pun intended!) with teachers, students, and pros who were all looking for the same thing I was. GtrLib Chords found its place with serious learners and musicians ... ... always felt

... getting really frustrated with the subscription fatigue that comes with using tools like Restream, Streamyard, etc. Paying $30, $50, or even more every single month just to unlock basic features like removing branding or adding more destinations felt unsustainable. It felt

... spend, my wife and I kept seeing the same thing again and again: Small business owners, coaches, and creators getting burned by agencies Or wasting $$$ boosting posts with no results, Or giving up completely because Meta Business Manager felt like trying to solve a Rubik s cube blindfolded. We knew something had to change. So we built Authoritie , a DIY ad platform designed for founders, not marketers. Take any Instagram post you ve already made Follow a 4 simple prompts ... ... that actually convert. We just launched live to the public and we d love for you to check it out: https://authoritie.io SPECIAL PROMOTION DURING LAUNCH: Get your first month free with code: PHFREEMONTH If you ve ever felt

... tech posts and videos, I found myself constantly struggling to understand some of the concepts in the content I was consuming. When I didn t get something, I d re-watch videos or re-read posts, but that process felt time-consuming and often overwhelming. I also didn t want to sit at my PC, copying and pasting links from YouTube or Reddit into a tool just to get summaries. It felt

... actually got this crazy idea to work. It was a pair of headphones that you put on, and when you silently speak, it would convert your brain signals into a voice that sounds exactly like you. It literally felt like magic. The Hard Truth About Hardware But that was the problem. As soon as we had it working, we hooked it up to ChatGPT, Siri, and Alexa. The results weren t great. Because the stuff in your mind is extremely ... ... that, we weren't even a consumer software company. By January, we were seeing long posts on LinkedIn and X about how the product had changed people s lives. We also saw ~20% of our users convert to paid (vs