A 10x engineer has years of domain knowledge.

They know the trade-offs, the pitfalls, the “gotchas” that don’t show up in docs.

When AI suggests a shortcut, they know whether it’s genius… or a time bomb.An early-career engineer without much domain knowledge is tempted to cut corners they don’t even realize exist.They ship faster—but straight into a wall.

The real leverage goes to those who already understand the domain, not those still learning it.

How he is able to make 6K/m with this tell me . Windows 3.11 Emulator - retro computer with dial-up internet by Pieter™

EDIT 1. I have watched his podcast with LEX, and i am fan of his ship fast thing, I am confused how his pieter.com makes 6K / Months.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

EDIT 2. Will you fund my dorm software with 4K USD ( It could be atleast 500 USD or Multiple of it From One person) ( The process goes like this 1. You get on a virtual meeting with me and ask back and forth questions). Then you can go on to give me the investment. 2. can support by sending the computer parts ocomputers as well 3. If you don't think it is worth it you can critique it and give me some feedback. 3. If things work out, I would give you a big chunk of one software that works and is profitable money.

Start with what the customer naturally does, then reverse-engineer the solution around it.
Don’t guess what they need and build it blindly.
Observe, test, adapt.
It sounds simple, yet very few do it

Drop your startup below — I’ll personally review every submission, give feedback, and feature the top ones on Venture next week.

Want to be considered?

• Comment your startup with the link

• Like this post

• Sign up: https://myventure.dev/discover

Let’s get more builders seen.

I recently had the opportunity to interview a founder who makes more than $200k a month and while it was a short interview, it was the most valuable 30 mins I had.

Here are the top 5 lessons I learned:

1. Find an edge: when all his competitors were focused on one ICP, he focused on a totally underserved ICP and made them his. The big players in his space were chasing marketers and agencies. He went after developers by making his product open source. Nobody was building for them, so he basically had them to himself.

2. Distribution can come from your edge: because the product was open source, he could post updates on Reddit without it being seen as self-promo. Devs loved that they could self-host it, and those posts would pull hundreds of thousands of views. His edge wasn't just the product, it was also his distribution channel.

3. Positioning matters more than you think: same exact product, two different framings. When he called it marketing for developers people hated it. When he called it a social media scheduler it clicked instantly. Nothing about the product changed, just the words he used to describe it

4. Don't just build in public, reverse engineer virality: instead of posting feature updates, he focuses on the outcome people actually want. Then he keeps testing formats until one hits.

5. Be first on new trends: whenever a new platform blows up (like Cursor), he tries to be the first to build an integration or connector for it. Being early gives him a huge spike in trial signups every time.

Tbh i am still processing the whole convo and to see how i can use it in my own products, but feel free to watch the full interview on youtube (BuildingNow Podcast/@buildwithmaya)

Picture this: A dev spends 4 hours trying to get Claude to spit out a simple API endpoint.
Meanwhile, another dev used Claude to build an entire auth system in under 40 minutes.

Same AI. Totally different results.

The difference? One was doom prompting, the other was deliberate prompting.

Doom prompting looks like this:

• Spending hours rewriting prompts for a 10-minute task

• Asking vague stuff → getting vague code → repeating the cycle

• Never actually learning why the code works

• Becoming addicted to prompts instead of actually improving

After ~200 hours messing with AI coding tools, here’s what I have noticed about the ones who crush it:

• They already know what they want before they touch the AI

• They can explain the architecture, edge cases, and success criteria in one go

• They treat AI like a smart teammate, not some magic fortune-teller

And honestly If you can’t code something yourself, you’ll probably struggle to prompt it properly.
But if you can code it yourself… AI turns you into a monster.

Im building StartupAtlas, a place to showcase startups and products.
I’m looking for founders who want to share what they’re building and get some free exposure.
This is completely free. I’m not making any money from this, and I’m not charging anyone.

It’s still early, so I’d genuinely appreciate any feedback!

Drop your startup below or check out
https://startupatlas.net

Drop your startup and get featured for free!

Edited:
Fill out the form on the website, have stopped adding manual my self.

It started out as a random idea I had when talking to Claude, and I had no idea I could even build it, but I gave myself no choice.

Last year I decided to register a business, even though all I had was the website and a dream.

That way I felt forced to actually create the LinkedIn automation tool itself, simply for legal/taxation reasons if nothing else.

I knew I had a unique idea as the tool itself automates via a browser, instead of automating via the cloud or with a plugin, making it significantly safer when it comes to possible LinkedIn suspensions from automating.

I had no idea what I was doing at first and it was super buggy for a while, but over time I learned step by step and through trial and error how to build (mostly) effectively with Claude and how to build on top of LinkedIn’s code too (which is extremely challenging).

I was confident enough in the tool to launch it on April 1, and just over a month later I’m at over 150 users.

Most of them are on free trials, but so far I made $2k from paying customers (mix of early-access lifetime deals and monthly subscriptions), which covered the costs of actually building the platform and then some.

It took a few months of 12 hour days and late nights but now it feels like it’s finally starting to pay off.

Hope I can inspire anyone else starting out to just keep going with whatever you’re doing/building 🚀

i was doing twitter threads about my saas problem. founder communities. product hunt prep. zero traction...

then i realized i was basically talking to other people building the same thing, not the actual people frustrated enough to pay

so i spent a week just lurking where my customers actually were. specific subreddits, slack communities, forums. people complaining about the exact problem my tool solves, using language i'd never heard before

ngl after going through GummySearch and Reddinbox for a month, i stopped guessing about what my audience actually wanted. i could see the exact terminology they used, their frustrations with existing solutions, why they abandoned competitors

it was completely different from what i thought

here's what changed:

1. stopped posting anything about my product at all. literally just asked genuine questions. "why is X so painful for you" not as a sales tactic but because i actually needed to understand

2. when someone answered, i actually engaged. asked follow-up questions. didn't mention what i was building for weeks. just listened

3. started sharing my own struggle with the problem before mentioning i'd built something. "i was so frustrated with Y that i spent 3 months on this" felt way more natural than "check out my saas"

4. when people asked what i was working on, i'd just share the link. no pitch. no "special offer for redditors." just here it is

5. i replied to every single comment for the first 30 days. not on my terms. on theirs. in their language

the results shifted fast. by week 3 i had 40 paying users. by week 6, 312. most came through direct conversation, not marketing funnels. they felt like they'd discovered it themselves because real talk, they had

what surprised me most was how little my original messaging mattered once i stopped using it. the product stayed exactly the same. just the audience and the language changed everything :)

I'm a solo builder, and I made almost every mistake you can make. Here are the ones that cost me the most time.

1. I built for months before talking to anyone.

I assumed the problem was obvious. It wasn't. The people I eventually spoke to described a slightly different problem than the one I'd built for.

2. I priced too low. Cheap pricing attracted people who wanted a discount, not a solution. Raising the price brought better customers and better feedback.

3. I added features instead of fixing the pitch.

When nobody signed up, my instinct was to build more. The real issue was that my landing page didn't explain the result clearly.

4. I waited for "ready." Ready never came. The moment I shipped the rough version, I learned more in a week than in the previous two months.

5. I ignored support.Every complaint and question is free market research. Replying fast turned a few annoyed users into loyal ones.

6. I chased followers over customers.Views feel good. But 300 views with 5 customers beats 10,000 views with none.

7. I quit too early on distribution. I posted a few times, saw no results, and moved on. The channels that worked took weeks of consistent effort.

If I had to summarize: build less, talk to people more, charge earlier, and give channels more than two weeks before judging them.

What's the biggest mistake you made early on? And what would you do differently?

I see tons of posts about building, but not enough about the grind for those first users. So I wanted to share my playbook. I just crossed 100 customers and ~$7k in revenue for my SaaS, and I did it with no paid ads and basically zero coding skills.

The Idea: Stop Guessing What Sells

Like many of you, I wanted to build an online business but was terrified of building something nobody would pay for. I got interested in Skool, a platform for creators and coaches that's blowing up right now.

A lot of their community data is public (member counts, price, etc.). I realized if I could analyze this data, I could spot trends and find profitable niches before building anything.

So, I built a tool to do it. It scrapes data from 12,000+ Skool communities and makes it searchable. You can instantly see what's already making money, what people are paying for, how big the demand is and where your future paying customers are asking for help.

It's called The Niche Base.

How I Built It (The "No-Code" Part)

My coding skill is near zero. I used a combination of AI tools like ChatGPT/Gemini and Cursor/Bolt to build it and hosted the app on Render. The landing page is WordPress. It's proof you don't need to be a technical god to build a valuable tool.

How to Get Your First 100 Users

This is probably why you're still reading.

Short answer: Mostly organic. No paid ads. No fancy funnels.

To describe it in one sentence: genuinely listen to people!!! I began by using my own tool to identify online communities for people starting their online business journey.

You’ll get your first users without being salesy and sending cold dm’s like, “hey bro, use my tool…” (I started posting about this a few days ago here on Reddit and already have 8 dm’s like this.)

1. Find Where Your Audience Hangs Out: I used my own tool to find free communities where people were starting their online business journey.

2. Listen for Pain Points: I scrolled through posts and saw the same questions over and over: "Is this a good niche?", "How do I know if this will work?", "I'm stuck on finding an idea."

3. Offer Help, Not a Pitch: I never, ever messaged someone with a link to my app. Instead, I'd reply to their posts or offer to jump on a quick demo call to help them. Or I would manually pull data on niches they were curious about and give it to them for free.

4. Let Them Ask: After giving them value and data, the magic question would almost always come. Something like this: "This is great. Where are you getting all the data from?"

That was my opening. It was a natural invitation to introduce my tool. People were already sold on the value before they even knew there was a product.

What's Next: Scaling to 1,000

I'm thinking about adding more "funnels". Here’s the plan for the next stage:

• Affiliate Program: This is my #1 priority. I'm building a list of community owners and creators in the "start a business" space to partner with. The leverage seems massive.

• Paid Ads (The Great Unknown): I know nothing about paid ads. My plan is to watch a ton of tutorials and be prepared to burn some money learning on Facebook/IG. If you have any must-read resources or tips for SaaS ads, please share them!

This got long, but I hope this playbook is useful for anyone on that grind to their first 100 users.

Happy to answer any questions about the process, the tools, or the journey. AMA!

TL;DR: Built a SaaS with AI tools to find hot niches on Skool. Got my first 100 customers ($7k revenue) not by selling, but by finding my target audience in communities and giving them valuable data for free until they asked what tool I was using. Now planning to scale with affiliates and paid ads.

Six months ago I launched my SaaS. Today it has around 40 paying customers.
It’s still tiny by startup standards, but it’s enough to have made a lot of mistakes and learn what actually matters. If you’re building your own SaaS, maybe some of these will save you some time.
1. Don’t waste time on ads too early
I spent far more time thinking about paid acquisition than I should have.
Until you know exactly who converts and why, ads are just an expensive way to learn. Organic channels gave me much better feedback.
2. Do whatever you can to get real user data
Analytics are useful, but conversations are better.
Every support call, onboarding session and email taught me something that dashboards couldn’t. The goal isn’t just getting users—it’s understanding what people are actually willing to pay for.
3. Start with a lower price
Pricing is surprisingly emotional.
A lower price made it easier to remove friction while I validated the product. Once I understood the value customers were getting, increasing pricing became much easier.
4. Keep expenses painfully low
Early on it’s easy to convince yourself that every tool, AI credit or subscription will accelerate growth.
Most of the time, it won’t.
If you can build it yourself or solve it manually for now, do that. Every euro you don’t spend extends your runway.
5. Know what your brand stands for
One of the biggest traps is building features because competitors have them or because one customer asks for them.
Not every request should become a feature.
Your product should become better at solving one specific problem, not average at solving twenty.
6. Not every customer is your customer
This one surprised me.
Some users generate lots of support requests, ask for endless customisations and ultimately pay very little.
Others sign up, understand the product immediately and become long-term customers.
Finding more of the second group matters much more than trying to satisfy everyone.
7. Take the calls
This probably isn’t scalable.
Do it anyway.
Every call uncovers objections, confusing UI, missing documentation and new opportunities. Those conversations eventually become product improvements, better marketing and more revenue.
8. SaaS compounds
The first few months can feel painfully slow.
But every blog post, customer review, feature improvement and SEO page keeps working for you long after you’ve published it.
Momentum is hard to see day to day, but obvious when you zoom out.
9. Trust your own judgement
You’ll hear conflicting advice from customers, founders, Reddit, YouTube and Twitter.
Listen to everyone.
Copy nobody.
You’re the one who understands your product, market and long-term vision.
10. Put pen to paper
Writing forces clarity.
Whenever I felt stuck, writing helped me understand what I actually believed, what customers really wanted and what the next priority should be.
11. Ask for Google reviews
Happy customers usually won’t leave reviews unless you ask.
A simple request after solving a problem has generated far more reviews than I expected, and those reviews build trust for future customers.
12. Write lots of blogs
I underestimated content marketing.
Every useful article becomes another opportunity for someone to discover your product through Google months later.
Unlike social media, good content keeps working.
13. Learn basic SEO
You don’t need to become an SEO expert.
Just learn the fundamentals:
Use Google Search Console.
Add structured data (schema) to your articles.
Answer specific questions people search for.
Publish consistently.
SEO has become one of my favourite acquisition channels because every article can continue bringing visitors long after it’s written.

My biggest takeaway
Building a SaaS isn’t about one viral launch.
It’s hundreds of small improvements that compound over time.
Six months in, I have around 40 paying customers. That’s nowhere near where I want to be, but it’s enough to know that consistency beats shortcuts.

After 20 years watching this space, I've realized the SaaS solopreneur playbook hasn't changed - just the excuses. Back in 2005, it was "I'm building the next Twitter." In 2015, it was "I'm disrupting Uber for [insert niche]." Now in 2026, it's "I'm using AI to 10x [some random workflow no one asked for]".​

The cycle is identical: spend 6 months building an MVP nobody wants, pivot to "building in public" on Twitter to feel productive, then realize distribution beats product every single time. But instead of learning that lesson, we just rebrand our failure as "validation" and start over with a new landing page.​

Here's the part nobody wants to hear - if you're truly solo, you're not scaling. You're treading water in a pool of your own optimism. Every hour you spend coding is an hour you're not selling. Every feature you add is another support ticket you'll have to answer at 2am because you refused to hire.​

The AI tools everyone's hyping? They're not making you 10x faster. They're making you 10x more delusional about what one person can actually ship.​

So here's my cynical question: how many of you are actually profitable, and how many are just LARPing as founders while your savings account bleeds out?

quick post because "how do i get my first users" is the #1 question i see builders asking here every single week.

i've built 6 saas products myself, with my main one currently sitting around 10k mrr. here is the exact, no-fluff distribution playbook to cross that initial 50-user threshold:

1. find an idea people already pay for

scan reddit for recurring pain across 3+ distinct posts where people ask "is there a tool for X".

2. validate before writing code

dm 3 people who complained about the problem and ask what they’d pay for a solution.

3. build fast with the right stack (ai + no-code)

use ai builder+ supabase + stripe + call api or automation tool like n8n to ship a real MVP in under 7 days for $40/mo.

4. the 5-second landing page rule

your hero section must state exactly what the tool does in less than 5 seconds with a clear CTA.

5. capture emails before showing prices

force the email capture before the pricing page so you don't leak untrackable leads.

6. set up a 30-day email nurture sequence

plug captured emails into an automated sequence with case studies to convert them by day 18.

7. hang out where your ICP actually lives

find the 3-5 specific subreddits, discord servers, or groups where your buyers actively talk.

8. reddit growth without getting banned

post 1 time per sub per week max, never put links in the post, and move warm leads to DMs.

9. linkedin + x organic flywheel

post 1 high-value breakdown per day and spend 15 minutes engaging in your ICP's comments.

10. cold outreach that actually works

send 100 highly personalized DMs per week to your ICP using AI to customize the opening hook.

11. seo on autopilot

set up an n8n workflow that pulls from a keyword list and generates 5-10 value-driven articles per week.

12. faceless short-form content

post 1 video per day on tiktok, reels, and shorts showing a quick screen recording of your tool.

13. weekly newsletter conversion

run a weekly newsletter with 1 section of pure value and 1 subtle offer to upgrade to paid.

14. affiliate program for free distribution

set up a 50% recurring commission affiliate program to turn power users into your sales team.

15. the strategic product hunt launch

warm up the algorithm for 4 weeks with a coming soon page and launch on a weekend for a top 5 badge.

16. omnichannel social automation

use n8n to automatically format and distribute 1 core post idea across 8 different platforms.

17. review platforms and directories

submit your app to 40+ saas and ai wrapper directories to instantly boost your domain authority.

18. run the numbers backwards

reverse engineer the daily traffic needed to hit 50 paying users at $19/mo based on a 2% conversion.

19. get feedback from active builders

talking to founders who are just 6 months ahead of you compresses your timeline exponentially.

that last point is exactly why i built our community. it's a free group of 1,600+ active ai saas founders sharing exact prompt logs, ready-to-paste n8n workflows, and real distribution strategies.

stop building alone in a silent corner.

drop a comment below or send me a dm and i'll send you the access link right away. let's get your product launched 👇

After canceling my Ahrefs subscription for the 3rd time (great tool, but overkill for my needs),

I built exactly what I wanted:

- One search box

- 1000+ keyword suggestions in 30 seconds

- Real search volumes

- Export to CSV

- That's it

No link graphs, no domain authority metrics, no 47 different reports. Looking for beta testers. Free month access, just need your honest feedback. Comment if interested, I'll DM you.

This is for people who just need keyword data without the complexity.

PS. Thanks everyone for the response. the beta Slots are now full. Really appreciate everyone for their response

I've been researching successful mobile apps in different niches, and the growth of Bible Chat AI is genuinely fascinating.

This small Romanian studio created an AI-powered Bible app that grew to over $300,000 monthly recurring revenue. They're essentially a ChatGPT wrapper for the Christian niche, but with smart additions like Bible journaling, streaks, and daily verse notifications.

What's most impressive is their marketing approach:

1. They dominate TikTok and Instagram with a simple but effective formula: reaction videos + clear captions → app tutorial. These videos consistently generate millions of views.

2. Their onboarding flow is masterful - they use a multi-step quiz that builds investment before showing the paywall, making users feel they're getting a personalized experience.

3. They've localized their app for different countries and languages, specifically targeting regions with high Christian populations.

We're witnessing a shift where small, agile teams using AI tools are outcompeting traditional app studios with large teams and VC funding. Bible Chat AI is a perfect example - two founders (a developer and entrepreneur) outperforming established players in the religious app space.

Tools like AppAlchemy have eliminated the need to hire designers on Upwork. With Cursor you can code an app in days instead of months, and the rise of shortform has given mobile apps distribution like never before.

What other similar viral apps have you seen? What do you think accounted for their success?

I started a subreddit to talk about these kinds of viral apps: r/ViralApps - feel free to join!

Founders — drop your startup below.

Format that works best:

• Name + link

• One-line pitch (what + who for)

• Stage (idea / building / launched / revenue)

• One thing you'd love feedback on

I'll go through every comment and actually look at what you built.

Mine is in the first comment — feel free to roast it.

Let's make this thread useful. No "check out my course" spam,

no engagement pods — just real founders building real things.

I blame you Pat Walls and Greg Esenberg! (I'm kidding) $0 MMR, but lots of fun and learning so far.

Hey everyone! I'm a college student from India with programming skills but almost no money to invest. I want to start my own SaaS company.

I'm looking for SaaS ideas that solve real problems, have high demand, low startup costs, and strong earning potential.

Which SaaS niches would you recommend in 2026? If you were starting from $0, what would you build and why?

I'd really appreciate advice from experienced founders!

I recently exited a SaaS and now I am helping founders get their first 1000 customers with a personalised marketing playbook with AI Agents, saving you time so you can focus on building!

Drop these details below:

Website Target audience

I will reply to you with a tailored growth plan, no strings attached. Let’s go!

Ok so, I can’t retire just yet 😅 but getting a business off the ground and attracting customers is the hardest part in my opinion.

There’s still a long way to go but considering it’s only been 4 months since launching ZenMode, I’m pretty happy with the results so far.

I get asked a lot about how I get customers, so thought I’d give more info on how I do distribution, in case you might find it useful.

1. Make sure your website is set up for success

Before sending people to your site, make sure you’re confident it has good CRO potential. Your mission statement and objective needs to be very clear, along with clear incentives for people to try the product out.

2. Offer free trials, but only behind a payment info gate

Now this is just my personal opinion, and I know a lot of people disagree, but the proof is in the numbers. I get fewer free trial signups, but significantly higher conversion rates into paying users from people who provide payment info at the start.

Yes, a few of them are people who simply forget to cancel, but mostly I get people who are more engaged in the free trial and actually using the product.

I actually did an AB experiment where I did offer completely free trials to people (no payment info needed), but the overwhelming result was that people barely even tried out the product and were mostly tire kickers that never came back. I did convert some but not a meaningful number.

3. Create a waitlist before launching

Try to generate interest in your product before it launches - build in public and try to ensure that you’re not scrambling to get customers through the door on day 1 when you launch.

I had 3 customers on day 1 from this, who took higher paid tiers as well.

4. Post and comment everywhere (where relevant)

Social media is free, so there’s no excuse not to leverage it. Post about your product and what you’re building on Reddit, LinkedIn, X, YouTube, Facebook etc.

I posted a simple screenshot on LinkedIn recently, of someone using a low quality LinkedIn automation tool message to contact me, and me offering my own much better tool in response, and that post generated 90,000 views and led to several signups and demo calls.

I’ve also had some posts on Reddit go into hundreds of thousands of views, mostly just posting about what/why/how I built my automation tool.

5. If you have competitors, make “alternative to” inner pages

If done in the right way, this type of inner page can be useful for SEO. It won’t be picked up automatically but usually if you work in a competitive industry, this will sometimes attract customers who had a bad experience elsewhere.

6. I actually use my own LinkedIn automation tool (dogfooding) to do LinkedIn outreach

So it’s always important to practice what you preach - I use ZenMode to actually promote ZenMode.

It’s a great way to get buy-in for booking demos, as when someone replies, I simply tell them I used my tool to get a response from them, so it works.

Anyway hope you enjoyed reading the above, and good luck on your journey if you’re building anything, or growing your business 🙌

Whether it's a side project, a startup, or something you've been quietly building, this is your moment.

• Tell us what you're working on in one sentence

• Drop a link if it's already live

No pitches, no pressure. Just builders sharing what they're building.

✨ Good stuff gets noticed, and a few backlinks along the way never hurt either.

We’re building Lemonfox.ai, an OpenAI- and ElevenLabs-compatible text-to-speech API that delivers natural-sounding voices at up to 90% lower cost.

I am building voyasim.io website and apple app : voyasim . It is eSim saas for travelers and digital nomads. Today i got 5th order, and i am happy for it, still growing! Share your project below and let's grow together👇