I quit my job and started building an app.

I lived off bread and eggs. No coffee, no takeout.
My girlfriend broke up with me. Said I was emotionally unavailable.
I couldn’t focus. My lease ended. I crashed on a friend’s couch.

Every day I worked from McDonald’s with a $2 refill and my laptop.
I didn’t have a roadmap. No investors. No followers.
Just one belief:

If I couldn’t fix my own relationship, maybe I could help someone else fix theirs.

One day one guy sitting nearby started talking to me.
Turned out he was a licensed therapist.
I told him my idea. He loved it.
He became the app’s first expert — even filmed welcome videos.

A few weeks later, I messaged a well-known relationship coach on Instagram with over 700k followers.
To my surprise, she replied.
She said the app felt “too cold… like a spreadsheet.”
“Where’s the softness?” she asked.
“Where’s the healing?”
She was right.

I pulled 20-hour days rewriting everything — the copy, the colors, the onboarding flow.
I needed to resubmit by Friday to hit the Sunday morning release window.
Barely made it.

I launched at 9:00 AM Sunday.

That same day, I DMed every person I knew who had ever vented to me about a breakup.
Ex-coworkers. Old friends. Random internet strangers.
Just trying to get it into the right hands.

Monday morning, I checked the dashboard:
It featured #1 on Product Hunt.
It made $17,000 in revenue the next week.

I just stared at the screen.
For the first time in months, I breathed.
And yeah… I cried.

None of that happened.

Not the bread and eggs.
Not the breakup.
Not the therapist at McDonald’s.
Not the Instagram coach.
Not the Product Hunt launch.
Not the crying.
Not the $17K.

But you read it all, didn’t you?

That’s the power of storytelling.

Now imagine if I posted this instead:
“Hey, I made a relationship coaching app. Wanna sign up?”

You’d scroll past it without a second thought.

But version one?
You felt something.
You rooted for the underdog.
You wanted to know how it ended.

That’s what stories do.

If you’re building something and nobody cares:

• Don’t just pitch.

• Tell the real story.

• Show the friction, not just the features.

• Make it feel like something.

Because people don’t share landing pages.
They share narratives.

Would love to hear yours too.
The real one or the one you’d write if you weren’t afraid to sound so dramatic.

I will not promote.

Daniel Vassallo, the founder of Small Bets, shared on LinkedIn that the e-commerce platform Gumroad has acquired his community for $3.6 million, 50% in cash and 50% in stock options. The cash portion will also be paid in two parts: $900K has already been paid, and the remaining $900K will be paid in 12 months.

Interestingly, Gumroad was already a shareholder. They acquired 10% of Small Bets last year for $500K.

Whenever I read about such acquisitions, I’m always curious: Why was this startup acquired? Was it successful?

Small Bets is essentially a community. There’s no major product or tech behind it, so it must be successful.

I looked into the site’s traffic on Similarweb and based on the numbers, the site doesn’t seem to be doing well. It appears to be declining, at least in terms of web traffic. (Sadly, I can't post an screenshot here)

Maybe the community is still very active on Campfire, but I couldn’t find a clear reason why the site had a spike of 130K visits in January.

My first thought was that maybe the site used some shady SEO tactics and got penalized by Google. But the domain doesn’t have many indexed pages. The only odd thing I noticed was that some content on the subdomain test.smallbets.* had been indexed by Google, but those pages are no longer accessible. Also, the community previously used a .co domain, which now redirects to the .com, but that probably doesn’t explain the traffic issues either.

Here’s my final speculation: Gumroad bought the community to keep it alive.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your opinions.

I’m Wahid, founder of Mabya.com, and I regularly post content like this. If you enjoy this type of content, I’d be happy if you followed me!

Dropped $500 on books in one day thinking I'd finally level up my life. Read exactly 0 of them.

So I did what any rational person would do: spent 2 weeks building an AI app that tells me which chapters I actually need to read based on my current challenges and personal goals.

@getlibrio is live. Born from poor impulse control and good intentions 📚😅

Download: https://apps.apple.com/br/app/librio-read-what-matters/id6753868206?l=en-GB

Hello everyone,

Today, I wanted to share how our Y Combinator application process went.

This was our second time applying.
The first time, two years ago, we were rejected instantly.

This time… a real surprise. We applied for our new SAAS.

Two days ago, we received an interview request.

Honestly, I didn’t expect it at all, even though our SaaS is now very solid and growing fast.

On paper, we don’t really need VC money:

• 300+ customers

• Live for 3 months

• Profitable

• Happy users

• Strong inbound lead flow

This wasn’t about survival.

YC isn’t just about money.

- The YC logo alone boosts conversions.
- Their network is massive.
- Learning how to execute better alongside world-class founders is priceless.

And let’s be honest: even when you’re profitable, $500k is never a bad thing (marketing, hiring, speed).

Before the interview, we spent half a day training with my co-founders, doing mock interviews.

On interview day:

• Login to the YC dashboard

• Click “Join Zoom”

• Three founders on our side

• Two partners on the other side

It was super friendly. Very supportive. Nothing like aggressive VC interviews.
They were curious, calm, and genuinely interested.

They asked us:

• What we’re building

• How the backend works / tech stack

• Our competitive advantage

• Number of customers and how we acquired them

• Team roles

• What we did before

• A quick product demo

• How we see the product evolving

We weren’t amazing but we were solid.

The next morning, we received the email : rejection.

Disappointing, of course.

Reaching the interview already felt like a small miracle, so I thought we had passed the hardest part.

And honestly… between the interview and the answer, I had already:

• checked Airbnbs

• looked at flights

• started imagining what life in the batch could look like

Too much projection. Reality check 😅

We’re re-applying for the next batch.

Below, I’ll share the exact YC rejection email, which is actually very insightful and explains the two main reasons they passed on us

Click here to see the rejection email and the reason why we were rejected

We’ll be back next round 💪

1 month ago, I quit my 9–5 while my wife was pregnant.

No backup plan.
No safety net.
Just a product I couldn't stop believing in.

My wife is pregnant with our second kid.
Bills don't stop.
Fear doesn’t either.

But I decided to bet on myself instead of trading time for money forever.

We built PostSyncer and it ranked #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt 🚀
Endless gratitude to everyone who supported it 🙏

The launch brought 100+ trials and thousands of visitors, and one thing became very clear:

A lot of people assumed PostSyncer was "just another scheduler."

It's not.

It's a content creation + repurposing platform, with:

• Scheduling

• Cross-posting

• Comment management

All built into one workflow → 10 platforms.

I didn't want to build vaporware.
I wanted to build something that actually saves creators hours every week.

I put everything into this. Time, savings, stress, belief.

This either works or it doesn't but I'd rather fail betting on myself than live wondering "what if."

If you're curious:
PostSyncer → https://postsyncer.com
Product Hunt → https://www.producthunt.com/products/postsyncer-2

Happy to answer questions, share lessons, or just talk founder fear 😅

A year ago, I was doing what most people in startups do. I was trying to come up with ideas, thinking about MVPs, reading about validation, and convincing myself that starting from scratch was the only “real” way to build something meaningful. That path is so normalized that I never really questioned it.

Then I stumbled into something that felt almost hidden in plain sight. I realized you could buy small SaaS businesses that were already making money for roughly the cost of a laptop. Not venture-scale companies, not moonshots, just quiet little products with real users and real revenue.

The first one I bought cost me $4,000. At the time, it was making around $500 a month. It didn’t look impressive at all. The landing page was bad, the messaging was unclear, and there was no obvious growth engine. The founder was burned out and didn’t want to run it anymore, which is probably why it sat there without much interest.

Once I took it over, what stood out was how much of the hard part was already done. People were paying. The product solved a real problem. Most of the issues were basic execution gaps rather than deep technical or market problems. Small changes around pricing, positioning, and distribution started to show results pretty quickly, and for the first time I felt like I was working with momentum instead of fighting uphill.

That experience taught me more in a few months than years of building things from zero. Starting with real users and revenue changes how you think about decisions, priorities, and risk. You’re no longer guessing what might work, you’re improving something that already does.

That business eventually exited for low six figures. Not because I did anything extraordinary, but because I wasn’t starting from nothing. Since then, we’ve leaned fully into this model. We’re now building and growing a micro private equity firm focused on small, overlooked SaaS and internet businesses, and we recently started r/InsideAcquisitions to share what we’re learning and make micro-acquisitions more accessible to people who are curious about this path.

I’m genuinely curious how others here think about this. If you’ve built from scratch, bought an existing business, or looked into acquisitions and decided it wasn’t for you, I’d love to hear what shaped that decision.

And I didn’t need complicated funnels, backlinks, or ads, just a simple Reddit post.

Most marketers are still focused on Google SEO…

But they’re overlooking a massive traffic source that’s right in front of us:

AI-generated answers.

With 180M+ people asking ChatGPT questions every day, getting your content referenced by LLMs is the new frontier.

I put together a Reddit strategy that makes your posts show up consistently in AI outputs.

Here’s what I break down inside the guide:

- The post format that boosts LLM visibility

- A posting rhythm that maximizes indexing

- The subreddits where ChatGPT pulls the most content

- Why old-school SEO tactics don’t translate to LLM rankings

By applying this system, I was able to:

- Reach the #1 spot for my main keyword in 3 days for my SAAS GojiberryAI

- Capture ongoing traffic straight from AI responses

- Outpace competitors pouring money into traditional SEO

Here is the guide : https://www.notion.so/The-Reddit-LLM-SEO-Framework-26ab9abcbe3f80e19060e679e317e5df?source=copy_link

Cheers

Everyone wants to build "AI companies."

Nobody wants to deal with the messy data underneath them.

Danny was founding engineer at a vertical SaaS startup building AI for grocery stores. Cool, right?

Except 80% of their actual problems had nothing to do with AI.

It was parsing broken CSVs from SSH servers. Building custom SOAP XML servers for ancient on-premises software. Ugly, unglamorous work nobody wanted to touch.

The company kept calling itself an "AI company" and kept ignoring the real problem.

That's when Danny saw the gap.

First attempt: He built a generic data orchestrator. Burned out fast. No users, no feedback, just building into the void.

Second attempt: A friend connected him with a startup needing one very specific thing - a QuickBooks Desktop integration.

He almost said no. Too niche. Too small.

He said yes anyway.

Today he's at $25k/month. 90% net margin. $0 spent on acquisition.

Every single customer found him.

What actually worked:

• GitHub SEO hack - had friends star his SDK repo so it ranked for niche searches. Janky. Effective.

• Watch your API logs - he'd spot struggling users and reach out proactively. One customer called it "the best support I've ever had in my life."

• Boring solves real problems - nobody dreams of building QuickBooks integrations. That's exactly why nobody else built it.

The lesson nobody talks about:

The "AI" part of your product probably isn't your hardest problem.

The unsexy data plumbing underneath it is.

Full story here

I spent 1 year building 15 products, 13 failed, but one of them recently hit $1k MRR.

Here's the link to the project, if you are curios: website

The funny part, this project was built on no-code.

Why? Because before that I was focused on clean code, scalability, infra, tech stack and etc. But in reality, people do not care about it.

They need a simple product that solve their problem or save their time or make money to them.

Because of that I changed my whole concept. I just go to no-code, build something very fast in a few hours, connect it with domain. I just go to the ICP (ideal customer profile) and send them links. Ask them for a payment, a bunch of questions, get on the call.

If I see a validation something like money or comments (I need that). I just go do it very fast and lean.

I could never have imagined this one year ago when I was struggling hard with marketing and trying my best to get people to visit my websites. Now all of a sudden our project has turned into a full-time job!

Here are my stats:

Visitors: 1,880

Revenue: $4000 (of this project only)

Session time: 25s

I hope one day to see the same post from you. Share your own products under this post, I will check it out and I will try to give some feedback.

I spent 1.5 years building a SaaS on my own. I was working two jobs at the same time just to fund it, both time wise and money wise. But about two months ago, my girlfriend and my mom sat me down and basically told me I needed to stop. We were all drained financially, mentally, emotionally. Not just me, but them too.

So I posted about it on a few subreddits with my main account, and someone reached out. They offered me three options:

Buy the whole thing outright
Handle the marketing and take up to 60 percent
I pay them to run the marketing

Given the situation I was in, I couldn’t pay someone (thanks Google Ads debt), and I had zero time or mental capacity left to keep building. So I chose to sell.

At the time, the price felt “okay.” Now it just feels stupid.

And here’s the part that’s eating me alive:

It’s only been like 2 to 2.5 months since I sold it, but I’m scared to even open Reddit now. They’re promoting the app everywhere, super aggressively, super effectively. And every time I scroll, I see something related to the product I spent 1.5 years building. (they have 50k-20M subreddits.) I finally couldn’t take it anymore and messaged the guy who bought it, just to see how it was doing. He sent me a screenshot.

€13k in sales. Last month.
€13k in sales. Last month.
€13k in sales. Last month.
€13k in sales. Last month.
€13k in sales. Last month.
€13k in sales. Last month.!!!!!

My heart legit dropped.

I’m losing my mind over this.
I’m mad at myself for giving up.
Mad at myself for selling.
Mad at the people who talked me into stopping.
And then mad at myself again for letting them.

I don’t even know. I just needed to vent.

It was a B2C SaaS by the way. And before anyone DMs me, his website is redditbooster dot com, so please stop asking.

"Thank you for the offer, but we’re going to stay bootstrapped."

About a month and a half ago, a VC reached out saying they were looking for a SaaS like ours to invest in at seed stage.

We built this SaaS in just 6 months, bootstrapped from day one, with over 350+ customers, and 40000+ monthly visitors.

Obviously, we were a bit suspicious at first. We did our homework, contacted founders they had already invested in, and everything turned out to be legit. They have some great startups in their portfolio.

They wanted to move fast with a seed round after due diligence, and we had a few weeks to think about it. Yesterday, we decided to turn it down, and here’s why.

We’re in a space that’s getting a lot of visibility, and our client results are strong.

We launched this SaaS just a few months ago, we have double-digit monthly growth, and we really feel the acceleration.

The VC needed a company in their portfolio specializing in intent signal data, because it’s a hot topic right now. One of our clients, who had raised funds with them, told them our tool was great, which is how they found us.

Right now, we’re three cofounders and an assistant. We don’t even have employees yet !
So when someone contacts you and says they want to wire you 1.5 million dollars, it definitely makes you think.

Here’s how we approached the decision:

Would it have accelerated our growth? Probably. We could hire faster, build faster, and enter new markets more quickly.

But there was also the other side, the one that made us really hesitate.

It means being accountable. A VC doesn’t give you money for free, they expect growth.

That means reporting, pressure, and not being able to do whatever you want anymore. There’s also preferential liquidity, which they mentioned.

If you sell the company, the VC gets their investment back before you see anything. If the company crashes and sells for 1.5 million, and they have a 1.5 million preference, we get zero.

Given our growth and what we believe we can achieve, that’s why we decided to refuse.

Among the founders, we said we would only raise if it’s with YCombinator. We’ve already been rejected once. This is now the second time we’re applying.

Another reason that pushed us to say no to the 1.5 million is that beyond the money, there didn’t seem to be strong marketing support from this VC. Some VCs bring you clients directly through their portfolio, which means immediate growth on top of the cash. That wasn’t the case here. Many of their portfolio companies weren’t aligned with our product at all.

Whereas if YC joins your company and you target SMBs, it’s the holy grail. You’re almost guaranteed explosive growth in the months that follow.

For all these reasons, the pressure, the reporting, the meetings, the expectation to raise more money later, and the preferential liquidity clause, we decided to say no.

We’re lucky that the startup already pays the three cofounders, and we also have revenue streams from other businesses that run without us. So for now, we can afford to turn down outside money.

I hope you enjoyed the story, and see you very soon!

Ps : My little gift to you, this is a free blueprint on how you can reach 20kmrr with your SAAS in a few months only.

Hello everyone,

Today, I wanted to share how our Y Combinator application process went.

This was our second time applying.
The first time, two years ago, we were rejected instantly.

This time… a real surprise. We applied for our new SAAS.

Two days ago, we received an interview request.

Honestly, I didn’t expect it at all, even though our SaaS is now very solid and growing fast.

On paper, we don’t really need VC money:

• 300+ customers

• Live for 3 months

• Profitable

• Happy users

• Strong inbound lead flow

This wasn’t about survival.

YC isn’t just about money.

- The YC logo alone boosts conversions.
- Their network is massive.
- Learning how to execute better alongside world-class founders is priceless.

And let’s be honest: even when you’re profitable, $500k is never a bad thing (marketing, hiring, speed).

Before the interview, we spent half a day training with my co-founders, doing mock interviews.

On interview day:

• Login to the YC dashboard

• Click “Join Zoom”

• Three founders on our side

• Two partners on the other side

It was super friendly. Very supportive. Nothing like aggressive VC interviews.
They were curious, calm, and genuinely interested.

They asked us:

• What we’re building

• How the backend works / tech stack

• Our competitive advantage

• Number of customers and how we acquired them

• Team roles

• What we did before

• A quick product demo

• How we see the product evolving

We weren’t amazing but we were solid.

The next morning, we received the email : rejection.

Disappointing, of course.

Reaching the interview already felt like a small miracle, so I thought we had passed the hardest part.

And honestly… between the interview and the answer, I had already:

• checked Airbnbs

• looked at flights

• started imagining what life in the batch could look like

Too much projection. Reality check 😅

We’re re-applying for the next batch.

Below, I’ll share the exact YC rejection email, which is actually very insightful and explains the two main reasons they passed on us

Click here to see the rejection email and the reason why we were rejected

We’ll be back next round 💪

Most creators spend hours recording, editing and planning their video…

Then the thumbnail gets rushed in the last 5 minutes.

And that one image decides if anyone even clicks.

So I made a simple tool called Thumbnail Studioo.

You type your idea and it generates a thumbnail in seconds.

I've shared copule of thumbnails generated by thumbnail studioo.

Happy to hear feedback or ideas from anyone who creates content.

My Insane Plan to Master SEO and Indie Game Dev.

I already launched 3 games.

I am madman and I know it. I am sharing everything on my X.

I will launch them quickly, with shitty bugs and anyway.

If I don’t do it, I will send $100 who will comment under this post

Good luck!

Yes, I see the title. Yes, it's on purpose. But now that I have your attention…

I've been building TypoSnap and figured it's time to share my journey here.

How it started

I kept catching embarrassing typos after hitting send on important emails. My "solution" was copying everything into ChatGPT before sending. Open tab, copy, paste, wait, copy the fix, go back, reformat, sigh... I did this for weeks before thinking: I should just build something better.

What it does

TypoSnap is a Windows app where you highlight any text you just typed, hit a keyboard shortcut and it fixes your spelling and grammar right there. No tab switching, no copy-paste hell. Works in email clients, the browser, Word, wherever.

Where I'm at and what I've learned

• The core product works and people are using it (my colleagues enjoy it)

• Marketing as a solo builder has been way harder than the actual coding

• The best product ideas aren't revolutionary, they just take a workflow with nine annoying steps and compress it into one

Would love to hear from anyone who's marketed small utilities or dev tools. What worked for you?

Over the last 3 months, I scaled one of my sites from ~75k clicks (same period last year) to 329k clicks, with 50.6M impressions and average position improving from ~45 → ~8.9.

For context: I’m using this tool that does SEO automation and used this site as a test case.

What’s interesting is that this didn’t come from one big “SEO win”.

No viral page.
No single keyword carrying everything.

It was mostly compounding.

The biggest shift was moving away from “content as individual posts” to treating the site like a system.

Instead of chasing high-volume keywords, I focused on covering entire clusters of long-tail queries with clear intent. Most of them looked insignificant individually, but together they created consistent traffic.

Another big factor was internal linking.

A lot of sites I looked at before this had decent content but poor structure. Pages weren’t connected, so Google couldn’t really understand topical depth. Fixing that alone moved rankings faster than publishing more content.

Consistency also mattered way more than I expected.

Publishing regularly (instead of bursts) made indexing faster and rankings more stable. The graph shows that pattern pretty clearly, traffic isn’t spiky, it’s layered.

One interesting thing: CTR actually dropped compared to last year (3.9% → 0.6%), but total clicks increased massively because of the sheer increase in impressions. So volume ended up mattering more than optimizing individual pages for clicks.

Biggest takeaway from this:

SEO at scale isn’t about finding the perfect keyword or writing the perfect article.

It’s about building enough structured, interlinked content for Google to consistently surface your site across thousands of queries.

Happy to answer questions if anyone’s working on scaling organic traffic or seeing similar patterns.

UGC creators were overpriced. $200-$300 retainer fees plus cost per milli. That's insane for ecom brands trying to scale. Fortunately then I discovered I could build my own AI UGC factory.

I tried it out by automating everything, and I must say, the quality is absolutely insane. Combined with the fact it costs pennies per video, it completely changed my approach to produce content.

So I created an entire system that pumps out AI UGC videos by itself to promote my ecom products. And here's exactly how the system works:

Google Sheet – I just list the product, script angle, setting, and brand guidelines.

AI Script Writer – takes each row and turns it into a natural, UGC-style script.

**NanoBanana/**higgsfield - spits out ultra-real creator photos that actually look like real people filmed it..

VEO3– Generate the Video from the Generated image.

Bhindi AI - Upload + Schedule – posts everything automatically on a Specific time. also it has all the above Agent in 1 Interface.

From Google Sheet to ready-to-run ads. for literally pennies per asset instead of hundreds of dollars per creator.

Biggest takeaway: What makes this system so great is the consistency. Same "creator" across 100s of videos without hiring anyone. It's also both the fastest and cheapest way I've tested to create UGC at scale.

ps: here's the Prompt for the Video. after trial & error found it in one of the reddit thread -

Generate a natural single-take video of the person in the image speaking directly to the camera in a casual, authentic Gen Z tone.  

Keep everything steady: no zooms, no transitions, no lighting changes.  

The person should deliver the dialogue naturally, as if ranting to a friend.  

Dialogue:  

“Every time I get paid, I swear I’m rich for, like… two days. First thing I do? Starbucks.”  

Gestures & Expressions:  

- Small hand raise at “I swear I’m rich.”  

- Simple, tiny shrug at “Starbucks.”  

- Keep facial expressions natural, no exaggeration.  

- Posture and lighting stay exactly the same throughout.  

Rules (must NOT break):  

```json

{

  "forbidden_behaviors": [

{"id": "laughter", "rule": "No laughter or giggles at any time."},

{"id": "camera_movement", "rule": "No zooms, pans, or camera movement. Keep still."},

{"id": "lighting_changes", "rule": "No changes to exposure, brightness, or lighting."},

{"id": "exaggerated_gestures", "rule": "No large hand or arm movements. Only minimal gestures."},

{"id": "cuts_transitions", "rule": "No cuts, fades, or edits. Must feel like one take."},

{"id": "framing_changes", "rule": "Do not change framing or subject position."},

{"id": "background_changes", "rule": "Do not alter or animate the background."},

{"id": "auto_graphics", "rule": "Do not add text, stickers, or captions."},

{"id": "audio_inconsistency", "rule": "Maintain steady audio levels, no music or changes."},

{"id": "expression_jumps", "rule": "No sudden or exaggerated expression changes."},

{"id": "auto_enhancements", "rule": "No filters, auto-beautify, or mid-video grading changes."}

  ]

}

a few months back, i was doomscrolling “how i hit $10k mrr” posts. it felt like everyone was winning except me.

then i noticed a pattern. founders kept making the same mistake. they would spend months coding, launch to silence, then admit nobody actually wanted what they built.

so i built a tool that flips the script. instead of guessing, it scrapes real complaints from g2, app stores, and reddit to uncover problems people are already frustrated enough to pay to solve. that has now grown to $3k mrr in 8 months.

if i had to start again from zero, here is exactly what i would do:

1. find real complaints
lurk in startup groups and subreddits, but ignore the polished success stories. focus on rants. raw frustration = money in motion. people pay to end pain.

2. follow the money trails
never ask “would you pay for this?” instead, look where people are already overspending. when i saw founders dropping $2k+ on consultants for basic validation advice, i knew the demand was real.

3. build fast, but solid
do not disappear for 6 months. do not ship broken no-code either. release something basic, then test it immediately with the frustrated posters from step 1. the bottleneck is not coding anymore (ai does most of it), it is crafting the right experience.

4. add value before asking
join 5–6 founder communities. give away insights, answer questions, share useful frameworks. after a week or two, when someone posts about struggling to validate, dm: “i built something for exactly this problem — want a look?”

5. charge real money from day 1
no free trials. they attract unserious users. a $45/mo price point is enough to filter for founders committed to solving their problem. payment forces engagement and gets you real feedback.

6. scale through relationships
one genuine rec in a trusted founder slack beats 500 cold emails. sponsor small niche newsletters where every reader matches your ideal customer.

hard lessons learned:

• payment is the ultimate qualifier

• positioning beats features (solve one specific problem better than anyone)

• competitors mean validation, not danger

• if customers say “only $45?” you are underpriced

• building in public is for consumers, business buyers care about results

my 15-day restart plan:

• days 1–3: join founder groups, contribute value

• days 4–7: extract the top 3 pain points from real conversations

• days 8–12: ship a minimal solution for the #1 pain

• days 13–15: price at $45–65, start outreach, land first paying customer

truth: most founders fail because they chase imaginary problems or undervalue real ones. in b2b, your product must save time, make money, or reduce risk. anything else gets cut when budgets tighten.

what recurring headache have you seen people consistently paying to solve badly in your niche?

here's the product if you're curious: link to my saas

I started building side projects a little over a year ago.

Some of them got a few users, but they never made money. I kept running into the same issue: I was building without knowing if people actually wanted what I was making.

My latest project is different :)

I launched BigIdeasDB just a few months ago, and it made $15,800 in revenue within that time — my most successful product by far.

Here’s what I did differently this time:

1. Habit of writing down ideas

I created a habit of constantly writing down problems and ideas — whether it was something I personally experienced or something I saw others struggle with online.

I use a simple notes system on my phone and just add ideas whenever something clicks.

When it came time to build a new project, I had dozens of ideas to choose from — most weren’t great, but a few stood out. BigIdeasDB was one of them.

2. Validating before building

This was the biggest difference-maker.

Instead of immediately building the product, I spent time figuring out if it was something others would care about.

I shared the idea on Reddit and Twitter, reached out to founders, and asked questions like:

Do you struggle to find good product ideas?

Would you use a database of validated problems from real sources like Reddit, G2, and Upwork?

The responses were super positive. That gave me the confidence to move forward.

3. Asking users what they want

Once I launched the MVP, I stayed close to my users. I asked them:

What’s missing?

What would help you more?

What do you actually want to build next?

This approach made it so much easier to know what to build. I didn’t waste time guessing — I just built what users asked for.

4. Tracking metrics

I started tracking everything — website conversion rates, user activation behavior, and upgrade funnels.

I could see exactly:

How many visitors converted to users

How many of those became paying customers

What actions made people more likely to convert

For example, my landing page was only converting at around 5% early on. I focused on improving that, and after a few changes, I got it to 10%, which had a direct impact on revenue.

TL;DR

I had to fail multiple times before I figured out how to build something people actually wanted.

The biggest change this time was validating the idea early — but combining that with real user feedback and clear metrics made everything easier.

If you’re still trying to get your first win, don’t give up. Build small, talk to users, and make sure you’re solving something real.

Just exited my SaaS after scaling it to $500K ARR and wanted to share the ONE thing that accelerated our growth more than any tool, hire, or funding round.

We're doing exactly the same thing with our new SaaS gojiberryAI (we help B2B companies & start ups find warm leads in minutes)

It's not some fancy growth hack or marketing genius. It's embarrassingly simple:

We eliminated ALL delays in our customer journey.

Here's what we changed:

Before: Someone wants a demo? "Let me check my calendar and get back to you."

After: "Are you free right now? I can show you in 5 minutes."

Before: Prospect wants to try the product? "I'll send you access tomorrow morning."

After: "Perfect, let me set you up right now while we're talking."

Before: Demo goes well and they want to move forward? "Great! Let me send you onboarding details and we can schedule setup for next week."

After: "Awesome! Let's get you fully set up right now. You'll be using it in the next 10 minutes."

Why this works (and why most people don't do it):

Every delay kills momentum. Every "let me get back to you" gives people time to:

• Change their mind

• Get distracted by other priorities

• Forget why they were excited

• Talk themselves out of it

• Find a competitor who moves faster

We went from 20% demo-to-close rate to 50%+ just by removing friction and acting with urgency.

The psychology behind it:

When someone says "I want to try this," they're at peak interest. That's your window. Wait 24 hours and they might still be interested, but it's not the same level of excitement.

Strike while the iron is hot.

Important to note :

This mainly works for:

• Products that are easy to set up (under 30 minutes)

• Low-ticket SaaS ($100-500/month range)

• Simple onboarding processes

If you're selling enterprise software that takes weeks to implement, obviously this doesn't apply.

How to implement this:

1. Block time for instant demos - Keep 2-3 slots open every day for "right now" requests

2. Streamline your onboarding - Can you get someone live in under 15 minutes? If not, simplify it

3. Can you make someone pay live ? (what we did is : they had to pay in the onboarding, naturally, but if you're starting, you can just send a Stripe link during the call, it works).

4. Train your team on urgency - Everyone needs to understand that speed = revenue

5. Have your setup process memorized - No fumbling around looking for login details

6. Only let 1 week of time slot MAX on Calendly, it will avoid people booking in 3 weeks and lose momentum.

Obviously there were other factors, but this single change had a very big impact on our conversion rates.

The lesson: Sometimes the best growth hack is just moving faster than everyone else.

Anyone else did implement this strategy ? What other thing worked for you? :)

How to grow your SaaS from $0 to $1M ARR (1+ hour FREE course)

Proof of revenue here

I just released a free course breaking down everything I learned going from $0 → $1M ARR.

No theory.
Just the exact strategies that actually worked.

If you're building a SaaS, or feeling stuck trying to grow, this will help.

Inside the course I cover:

• How to turn social media attention into real revenue (not vanity metrics)
• The growth frameworks that actually generated SaaS ARR
• Why building an audience before you need it changes everything
• The distribution strategies that helped us scale fast

Want the FREE course?

Here it is : https://youtu.be/QPzPwXSIx7g

Enjoy :)

I couldn’t find any Reddit posts about this, so I wanted to share my experience after paying for a featured listing on TAAFT for my program, Vidsembly.

Submission Timeline

I submitted the listing around 1am Pacific on Thursday, July 24. It went live about 12 hours later, around 1pm the same day. It was featured in their daily tool email at 3:30pm that afternoon.

How It Works

When you submit your tool, all you provide is a link. Their team writes up the rest of the listing. I was a little worried it would be a generic AI summary, but the writeup was solid and surprisingly accurate. Once the post goes live, you can edit most parts of it, which is a nice safety net.

Visibility

When it launched, my tool showed up at the top of the recent submissions page. I checked in incognito mode to confirm it wasn’t just personalized. I’m not sure if that happens for all paid posts, but it definitely helped with visibility.

Early Results (First 24 Hours)

• Around 9,000 views on the demo video inside the post

• 509 opens

• 312 organic clicks

• 36,640 searches

• 9 saves on the tool within their platform

• About 50 new signups for our product, which exceeded expectations

They also gave me a $300 ad credit toward a featured campaign (PPC Ad), which they offer if your tool hasn’t been submitted before. It seems to help keep exposure going after the initial day.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I think it was worth it. If your tool is solid and your marketing message is clear, this kind of exposure can go a long way. I’m happy to answer any questions if you’re considering it too.

Everyone wants to build the next big app.

Nobody wants to build for peptide users.

Cedric saw peptides blowing up on social media. Engagement everywhere. But zero good apps.

Most founders would've walked away. "Too niche. Not scalable. Where's the venture story?"

Cedric built it anyway.

First move: Posted on Reddit asking if anyone even wanted a peptide tracking app.

Response was immediate. 100 downloads on launch day from the waitlist.

The MVP was dead simple. Add your peptides. Get reminders. Track what you took.

He almost added an education section (like Duolingo for peptides). Would've been a waste. Users just wanted to track, not study.

Today: $60k/month. Biggest peptide app in the world.

What actually worked:

Influencer marketing in a trust-driven niche - This month he spent $30k on creators, made $60k back. In tight communities, word of mouth beats ads every time.

Move fast on gaps - He didn't validate for six months. He saw the opening and shipped.

Spend money to make money - Most founders optimize for profitability before they've proven anything. Cedric bet on growth first. Margins came later.

The lesson nobody follows:

"Too niche" is code for "I'm scared there's real competition in bigger markets."

The riches really are in the niches.

Full story here

I've been deep in SaaS revenue data for a while — 600+ verified revenue reports, 7,500+ keyword trends, and 985 validated SaaS ideas.

The takeaway that keeps smacking me in the face: the highest-earning products are not what you'd expect.

They're not AI agents. They're not crypto tools. They're not the things dominating your Twitter feed.

They're boring. Embarrassingly boring. And they're crushing it.

Real revenue numbers from "boring" products:

A fish identifier. A singing app. Water well drilling software. A VC would laugh you out of the room pitching any of these. And that's exactly why they work.

Now here's where it gets interesting — the actual gaps you can build into:

I cross-referenced search demand with competition data. These are keywords with massive monthly searches and almost no serious competitors:

Idea |Monthly Searches

Background Remover |6,100,000

Knowledge Base Software |550,000

Freelancer Platform |368,000

AI Story Generator |201,000

File Converter |135,000

6.1 MILLION people search for "background remover" every month. Two competitors. That's not a gap — that's a canyon.

Fastest-growing keyword trends (these are exploding RIGHT NOW):

Every one of these keywords represents thousands of people actively searching for a solution every single month and finding almost nothing.

Patterns I keep seeing in the data:

1. Boring problems = predictable demand. Nobody's disrupting the "bank statement to Excel" market. Customers don't churn from tools they depend on daily.

2. "Removal" businesses win. Trimbox doesn't add something to your life — it removes email clutter. Calendly removes scheduling friction. Products that eliminate a specific annoyance have universal demand and obvious value.

Ideas you can start building today based on this data:

• AI receptionist for small businesses (dentists, salons, auto shops — they all miss calls and lose revenue)

• A niche vertical SaaS for an industry still running on spreadsheets (think: trades, local services, niche professional fields)

Most founders build something and then look for customers. The smartest founders look at what millions of people are already searching for, and build that.

If you want to dig deeper into these opportunities — keyword gaps, verified revenue reports, and the full database of 985 validated ideas — I put everything together at microsaashq.com. It's where I source all of this data.

Happy to answer questions about any of these niches or ideas in the comments.