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Mona Truong

4mo ago

Updating your mindset is just like updating a product

There s one thing we re really good at as builders:
we constantly try to improve our work and our product every single day. But an honest question I often ask myself is: do we put the same effort into updating ourselves?

At Murror, we re a small team of around five people.
For me, it s important not only to improve the product, but to continuously update my mindset, skills, and learnings and share them openly with the team.

I try to communicate everything I learn, ask questions, and clarify problems as much as possible, so the product we re building becomes better, clearer, and more convincing for our users.

To do that, I try to practice a few things consistently:

Mona Truong

1mo ago

Why most AI products feel the same and what it actually takes to feel different

I have been thinking about this a lot lately: why do so many AI products feel interchangeable?

You open one, you open another. Different logo, different color scheme, same experience. A text box. A chat interface. Some version of "ask me anything." The wrapper changes but the feeling does not.

Mona Truong

2mo ago

Your first 50 users will teach you more than your last 5,000 lines of code

When we started building Murror, we did what most technical founders do: we disappeared into code for months.

We built an emotion analysis engine. We refined our NLP pipeline. We designed beautiful dashboards. We were so proud of what we had made.

Mona Truong

3mo ago

Telling your own story is just as important as telling the story of your product.

When I first started, I believed that as long as I built a great product, it would naturally become popular. But as I zoomed out, I realized the market is incredibly competitive. Having a good product alone isn t enough to truly convince users.

That s when I began building my presence on social media creating content about myself, sharing my journey, and talking about the product I m building. I ve come to see this as a very effective way to build trust and spark genuine interest not only in what I make, but also in who I am as a founder.

Mona Truong

2mo ago

What actually gets a product to the top of Product Hunt?

The market has never been this crowded. AI has made it possible to go from idea to shipped product in days which means Product Hunt is now flooded with launches every single week. More products, more noise, more competition for the same front page.

So I've been thinking about this a lot: what actually separates the products that make it to the top from the ones that quietly disappear by noon?

From where I sit as a builder, here's what I genuinely believe matters:

Mona Truong

2mo ago

The feature your users love most probably isn't the one you spent the most time building

When we were building Murror, we spent months perfecting our AI emotion analysis engine. Deep NLP pipelines, sentiment layers, the whole thing. We were so proud of it.

Then we launched, and you know what users kept telling us they loved? The simple daily check-in prompt. A single question that asks "How are you feeling right now?" before showing them anything else.

Mona Truong

2mo ago

What have you been able to build with AI as a non-technical person?

Before AI, I always thought I would NEVER learn how to code. I genuinely admired technical people, watching them code felt like watching magic. I remember wishing that maybe one day, I could do something like that too.

I ve never had any formal education in programming, and I had zero experience building apps. But with AI, I was able to start from just an idea and slowly figure things out on my own experimenting, setting things up, and eventually creating my first interface that I could actually interact with.

It honestly felt magical. It made me realize how fast the world is changing. Coding is no longer something completely out of reach. AI is making it possible for people like me to turn ideas in our heads into real, tangible drafts for the first time.

Mona Truong

4mo ago

🌿 How did you welcome the first day of 2026?

Happy New Year, everyone. How did you spend the first day of 2026?

For me, the first day of a new year feels like the opening step of a long journey. So instead of rushing into productivity, I chose to begin 2026 by taking care of both my body and my inner world.

Here s how my Day One looked:

An early morning run, pushed myself 1km further to reach 7km
Wrote down all my goals for the year, both personal and professional
Repotted my flowering plant into a new pot
Cooked a nutritious meal for myself with Stranger Things series
Started reading a new book
Cleaned and reset my living space

Mona Truong

2mo ago

Content created by you or decided by AI, which one is higher quality?

While building a product, I ve also been trying to run content on social media to bring in more traffic. I experimented with creating AI-generated characters and producing UGC-style videos around them.

During this process, I realized something interesting: there are hundreds of tools that can generate virtual characters and UGC-style videos. But what actually makes a video engaging isn t the tool - it s the authenticity of the person creating the content.

Mona Truong

3mo ago

What helps you become a CEO? Start by asking questions.

In the past, my thoughts were often stuck in small, daily things like:
Is there any drama on Facebook today?
Did anyone like my story?
Did my crush drop any hints?
Is anyone asking me out today?
Does my best friend have new stories to tell me?

Looking back, I can t help but laugh at myself. None of these thoughts really helped me grow, yet they always gave me that emotional, butterfly-in-the-stomach feeling.

Everything started to change when I entered a phase of I don t even know who I am.
And that s when I began searching for real answers.