How I built an AI trade compliance platform in 3 months with $1,000 and zero investors

Hey Product Hunt! 👋

I'm Tega, solo founder of HSCodeLookup —

and I want to share the honest story of

how this product came to life.

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THE PROBLEM I KEPT SEEING 🔍

Living in Lagos, I kept watching small

business owners get destroyed by unexpected

duty charges at the border.

Wrong HS codes. Overpaid duties.

Shipments held. Brokers unreachable.

The WCO estimates 30-40% of SME shipments

contain classification errors.

For a business doing $100,000 in imports

annually — that's up to $4,000 overpaid

every single year.

Enterprise companies have compliance teams

for this.

Small importers had nothing.

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THE BUILD 🛠️

I am not a developer.

I built the entire product using AI tools —

Lovable and Claude — as my engineering team.

No technical co-founder.

No external developers.

No investors.

Just $1,000 and 3 months of relentless work.

What I shipped:

→ AI HS code classification from a product photo

→ Real-time tariff change alerts

→ Automated customs document generation

→ Free compliance audit scanning existing invoices

→ Live tariff ticker showing global rate changes

→ Duty savings calculator

→ Tariff risk score per HS code

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THE LAUNCH MOMENT 🚀

I thought I was building for African importers.

Within 24 hours of first outreach I had

visitors from the USA, Serbia, Malaysia,

and Hungary — all going straight to the

free compliance audit page.

That changed everything.

The problem is not African.

The problem is global.

Every small importer in every country is

navigating the same broken, inaccessible

compliance system designed for experts

not for them.

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WHERE WE ARE TODAY 📊

✅ Live product at hscode-decoder-buddy.lovable.app

✅ International traction from week one

✅ Zero paid marketing

✅ YC application submitted

✅ Pre-seed round of $100k in progress

✅ Two products — HSCodeLookup and FraudGuard AI

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THE ASK 🙏

Try the free compliance audit.

Upload your invoices and see exactly

what you've overpaid in import duties.

Free. No credit card. 60 seconds.

🔗 hscode-decoder-buddy.lovable.app/free-audit

And if you know anyone who imports or

exports anything — share this with them.

You might save them thousands. 💰

Happy to answer any questions below 👇

— Tega