Honestly, I thought the hard part was building the product.
It wasn't.
I launched GST Maker a free GST invoice generator for Indian freelancers about a month ago. Here's what actually went wrong after launch, because nobody really talks about this part.
1. I focused too much on the product, not enough on distribution
Everyone is talking about AI agents, but building a demo and deploying them in production are two very different things.
While building an AI agent orchestration platform, I expected prompting to be the hard part. Surprisingly, it wasn't. The biggest challenge has been making agents reliable enough to trust without constant human supervision.
For us, that meant experimenting with builder/tester agent pairs instead of relying on a single agent to verify its own work.
I've found myself struggling with my own sleep quality lately. Despite aiming for a full 7-8 hours each night, I often find it challenging to fall asleep or stay asleep, leading to grogginess and lack of focus during the day. I would greatly appreciate hearing your tips and strategies for improving sleep. What routines or habits have you found effective for promoting restful sleep? Have any particular changes to your bedroom environment made a significant difference? Or perhaps there are specific relaxation techniques, products, or apps that you ve integrated into your nightly routine which you d recommend? Your advice could be incredibly beneficial not just for me but for anyone else experiencing similar issues. Let's share our collective wisdom and help each other achieve that blissful, rejuvenating slumber we all deserve!
Seeing big tech companies secure whole power plants for AI compute is a reminder that running these large models takes serious resources.
It made me rethink the common assumption that model costs will infinitely drop over time.
I started adding a column in my metrics sheet to track exact AI costs per user interaction. Turns out one fancy background feature was burning through tokens without adding real value to the user experience.
Are you actively monitoring token costs per feature in your app or relying on price drops to keep your margins safe?
Two months and 100 users can mean very different things. I doubt YC cares much about the number alone. The stronger signals are how quickly you built, whether users return without being chased, how deeply they use the product, and what you have learned that others have missed.
If you were evaluating such a startup, what would matter most: retention, weekly growth, founder insight, speed of execution, or evidence that users genuinely need the product? Where would the bar be highest?
