Dear Product Hunt community,

If you re reading this and you ve launched something - or you're close to launching - you are already incredibly special.

Hopefully this isn t your second Ting notification overload in a couple of days

We got top three launch for the day yesterday! We're so delighted and grateful. Thank you for upvotes, comments, good vibes and giving us the energy to keep pushing.

We said we d give Product Hunt something extra, but we didn't want to spam yesterday.

Hey all,

15 years ago I wrote an article about the rise of a more social web for Huff Post.

I wrote a list of all the things I learnt by becoming a first-time founder and leaving a role in big tech. It s more than I had when I started, so I hope it finds you at the right time:

Here we go:

• Getting going: Make sure you have a clear reason and those in your life are on same page. It is consuming!

• Unfair advantage: Founders aren t special, they just optimize to what makes them different (becomes important when raising too). It can be as simple as "worked in big company, saw firsthand the XXX problem"

• Getting started isn t easy: Make sure you consider the financial impact if leaving a job to get going Consider 12-18 months of no revenue or funding and if you can manage that

• Full-time or nothing: You can t do both a job and a startup. Investors won t back part-time conviction

• The pitch doc: Forces clarity, the problem, the customer, the market, and why you should solve it

• Raising money: Start with belief and momentum. An idea, a plan, and an MVP are enough to find your first backers

• Accelerators: Early programs like YC or Techstars can help refine your product and give you fuel to move faster. I have a longer list of Accelerators in case anyone needs it...?

• Foundations: Lock down your domain, name, trademarks, and structure early - future you will thank you

• Advisors: Find people who open doors and offer perspective, not control, ideally top % in their domain

• SaaS reality: You ll spend more on tools than you expect, it s part of building

• Building: Nothing s real until users touch it. Ship early, get feedback, iterate. It was extremely painful to hear users complain about our early bugs, but without that, we wouldn't be more reliable now...

• Co-founder: Pick someone with complementary skills and shared energy. You ll need each other

• Runway: Track every cost. I have a spreadsheet with every single one, also helps with tax reporting. Burn awareness is survival

• Energy: In a startup, you are the momentum. Working Saturday isn t working Saturday , it s pushing your dream forward

• Loved ones: Communicate early. The work will consume you; don t let it quietly consume them too

• Attention: Building is one thing. Getting noticed is harder. You ll code-switch between product, marketing, finance, and sanity

• What if you fail: Most startups do. But you ll come out sharper, braver, and more ready than ever

I put together a digest of the last few months building Ting - the good, the meh, and the lessons I can imagine me wanting to tell future founders so they can dodge the bruises and get to the good stuff quicker...

The good:
- Nearly 1,000 users - ~50% MoM growth with no ads.
- Added Outlook, Teams, Zoom + multi-calendar.
- Launched Memories, micro product moments when the AI remembers small details + you feel seen.
- Team is now 2 founders, 2 engineers, AI QA + day-one consultant. Oh, and a baby was born yesterday!
- Inbound pilots from a top 10 tech company, top 3 ad network, top 3 bank.
- Great investor convos at Web Summit + SF.

A four-hour flight with no Wi-Fi gave me the perfect excuse to reflect - and write about what life as an AI founder actually feels like. (It s also a decent cure for plane boredom)

TL;DR: Some days I can t imagine doing anything else. Other days I wonder what I m doing.

Dear PH community,

Next week marks six months of Ting - and it would feel wrong not to do something special here, where it all started.

One of the coolest parts of my job is getting a front-row seat to how @marianaprazeres thinks about AI.
Memory feels table stakes in AI right now. But for @Meet-Ting, it s not just a log of the past - it s a living system that shapes how people schedule, work, and want to spend their week.
It s not just logistics - it s patterns around energy, priorities, and relationships over time.

Here are a few things we learned while designing and testing agent memory in production:

There s a lot you end up thinking about as a startup founder.

Success, doom... and the question that connects those dots: