Who inspired you to start your own startup?
A few days ago, @busmark_w_nika Nika asked a great question here: has there been a launch that inspired you to take your own launch to the next level?
It got me thinking about something slightly different. Not just specific launches on Product Hunt, but the founders themselves.
Is there a specific entrepreneur, indie hacker, or startup founder who genuinely made you believe you could build something of your own?
For me, I was always drawn to what Tibo and JK Molina were doing with TweetHunter. The way they built in public, iterated fast, and turned a simple idea into a real business was hard to ignore. And sell it really quick. At the same time, Marc Lou and Pieter Levels have been constants on X for a long time. Both proving in very different ways that a solo founder with the right distribution can go incredibly far.
So I'm curious:
Who was the founder or builder that first made you think "I could do this too"?
Was it a specific moment: a tweet, a launch, a revenue milestone they shared publicly?
And do you still follow them today?
Replies
Back in 2017, I worked as a happiness hero, essentially a support and sales role for a SaaS company. That experience opened my eyes to the power of SaaS, its revenue potential, the scale of users it serves, and how efficiently it operates. It inspired me to build my own SaaS product.
After two years there, I was motivated by the founder's journey and launched my own SaaS in a completely different niche. Through that process, I realized I definitely could build SaaS and I enjoyed it. But what I enjoyed even more was marketing it. That's why I pivoted to consulting for SaaS companies, focusing on growth and distribution.
Building that product taught me something crucial. I enjoy marketing far more than building. That's why today, I specialize in distributing... the part that genuinely excites me, not the development side.
Scarlett.
@rohanrecommends Oh wow, I didn’t know that’s how your story in the SaaS world started, Rohan. That’s actually pretty interesting.
I feel the same way, I enjoy distribution more than building. Especially in 2026, I think it’s become relatively easy to build a product. But distributing it definitely hasn’t become easier. If anything, it’s harder now, because there are so many more competitors that probably wouldn’t have existed before AI.
That’s why I’m curious: how did your experience as a happiness hero push you toward starting your own SaaS? Was there a specific moment when you decided to do it? Or maybe a colleague or founder around you inspired you to start? Or was there a competing product you wanted to build your own version of?
What's interesting is how each generation of builders seems to have different role models. Ten years ago it was venture backed founders; now it's solo founders and indie hackers.
Scarlett.
@craig_bennett1 haha absolutely
10-15 years ago Steve Jobs and Elon Musk were the top names for everyone.
NINA
Honestly, the people who inspired me most weren't famous founders.
They were ordinary people who were just one or two steps ahead of me. Someone launching their first product, getting their first paying customer, sharing their first $100 online.
Billion-dollar founders make entrepreneurship look possible in theory. People who are slightly ahead of you make it feel possible in practice.
Scarlett.
@varun1jan Oh yeah, there’s definitely that thing where the closer someone’s situation is to yours, the easier it is to feel inspired by them.
Sometimes billionaires sound like they’re from a completely different world. It’s hard to learn something from them that you can actually apply to your own situation. They’re just too far ahead.
Dirac
For me, I grow up in an asian household in New Zealand (and still am)
And so many people around me were just tunnel-visioned into grades and sh*t. I was afraid of what a meaningless life that would lead.
I think my beginning inspiration is Roy Lee, but nowadays he's just kinda fallen off...
Scarlett.
@peterz_shu Oh yeah, for sure! School is important, but when it comes to entrepreneurship, I don’t think it’s the key to success.
Roy Lee, the founder of Cluely? Or did you mean someone else?
Dirac
@byalexai Yeah I meant the founder of Cluely
For me it was Pieter Levels. Seeing one person ship multiple profitable products with no team made "I could do this too" feel real instead of delusional. It wasn't a single moment, more like watching him build in public over time until the idea sank in. Still follow him today.
Scarlett.
@builder_eden Oh yeah. It’s incredible how he’s still able to engage his audience so many years later.
Which of his lessons has been the most useful for you? Or is there something you’ve done by following his example?
@byalexai Mostly the "launch fast, in public, and let the market tell you" mindset. Honestly the habit change mattered more than any single product.
Scarlett.
@builder_eden
Oh, yes! This is actually quite important. Many founders spend years building without showing anything publicly. And that’s a big mistake because they don’t get any feedback. And feedback is incredibly valuable, especially in the early stages.
And in the last 2–3 years, what useful things have you learned from him?
It was a mix of my work experience with a personal pain what made me build something.
I worked for a couple of fast growing startups, I was close to the founders and saw them grow their product. That gave me a sense on what it means to build something. I was hired as a creative, but I spent enough time with the engineer team building features it removed the concerns of being a non technical founders.
Then I kept having the same pain point over a year and saw people around me dealing with the same. That's what made me built Norte. I wanted to solve something me and others around me was suffering from.
Scarlett.
@norteapp Amazing story Jose! But aside from the founder and the team around you, was there any well-known person who inspired you?
Or was it more about the people you knew personally: the ones you could learn from directly and see how they think and make decisions in real life?
@byalexai no well-known person inspired me. It was all related to lived experiences.
Great question! While I admire many of the builders mentioned here, my real "I can do this" moment wasn't inspired by a specific founder it was sparked by a real-world emergency.
After a friend’s website was defaced, I wanted to give him a secure way to access his admin panel without the hassle of setting up a full VPN.
Scarlett.
@zapimir wow! But what did you do to happen your journey? I mean after this moment.
I come from a family of small business owners, so growing up I always had the inspiration. I also grew up reading stories about Ralph Lauren starting his company by selling ties in a drawer inside the Empire State Building. Later, it was looking at figures like Jamie Dimon and how he completely transformed banks after a falling out at Citi bank, eventually leading to the behemoth growth of JP Morgan under his helm.
Scarlett.
@milescward Oh, coming from an entrepreneurial family is such a big advantage. It definitely helps a lot on the journey. Having that kind of example in your own family is incredibly valuable.
Was there a specific moment when you decided you wanted to become one too?
For me it wasn't a founder at first, it was a moment. Reading that a tiny Anthropic team built something worth tens of millions with a handful of people. That broke something open in my head. If that few people can make that dent, the old "you need a big team and years" excuse falls apart.
The founder who actually shaped how I want to do it is James Clear, oddly. Not a SaaS guy. But he wrote from real experience, shared the failures, broke things into simple systems, and only posted what he'd actually tested on himself. That's the bar for me. Earn the claim before you make it.
And Hormozi for the bluntness. He just says the thing. No 5 paragraphs of throat-clearing before the point.
I came from years of paid ads, not from building. So I didn't grow up watching indie hackers. The shift for me was realizing AI finally made it possible to build the tool I always wished existed instead of just buying ads with the broken ones. The inspiration was less a person, more the timing finally being real.
Still follow Clear. Still re-read Hormozi when I'm overcomplicating something, which is often.
For me it was not a founder I followed online. It was my CEO at the company I worked at for 4 years.
I genuinely respected how he built the company, the hustle it took to get it where it was. But I often found myself thinking I would have done things differently on certain decisions. No bitterness, just a growing conviction that I wanted to make my own calls.
The real gift of those 4 years was finding my cofounders there. We figured out pretty quickly we worked well together. At some point the question stopped being "should we try?" and became "why are we waiting?".
The motivation was never really "let's build the next big thing". More like: let's do this together, it might crash and burn, but we'll learn a lot, have fun, and finally know what it feels like to own every decision we make.
Still following how the company is doing from afar, rooting for them. But yeah, that felt worth doing.