... ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini recommends you when someone asks for the best tools in your category. Build a list of 30 50 prompts your potential customers might actually use. For example: What's the best [category] tool for startups? [Competitor A] vs

... Most co-founder advice is about finding the right person. Almost none of it is about what happens after you find them. The conversation we did not have early enough was about what happens when we disagree and neither of us is willing to move. Not the small stuff. The big stuff: whether to raise money, whether to pivot, whether to sell, whether to fire someone. We had assumed we would figure it out when it happened. When it happened ...

... harder parts of product design for me isn t choosing between a good and bad option. It s choosing between two reasonable options when there isn t enough data to tell you which one is better. User feedback helps. Analytics help. Testing helps. But sometimes the decision needs to be made before you have enough

... figures things out with whatever tools happen to be lying around. Indie hackers build SaaS tools, browser extensions, newsletters, templates, mobile apps, APIs, and oddly specific marketplaces that serve exactly one type of customer very well. Some make enough for a weekend dinner. Some replace their salaries. A few build something big enough

... stage SaaS product, I have found that AI makes it surprisingly easy to turn an idea into a working feature but, deciding whether it is the right feature to build is much harder. At our stage, we rarely have enough usage data to be certain and we usually have to combine a handful of customer conversations, early usage pattern and our own judgment. When the signal is unclear, we try to build the smallest usable version first and learn from ... ... other early-stage founders, what gives you enough

... uphill. The confusing part is that the service itself can still be useful. People may like the work. The problem may be real. You may even get occasional customers. But that doesn t automatically mean the market is big enough, urgent enough

... design the UI/UX yourself when building solo? Or do you think bringing in a designer (even for a few key screens) is worth it? And if you re using AI for design, do you feel it s enough to get you to a good product experience? Would love to hear how other makers approach it. Comment from Adana Marukhyan(@adana): @anmol_rerato  Great formula: AI + design rules . I can definitely see how that could work at a certain stage ... ... does this step even exist?" Those questions are worth gold. Comment from Burak Urhan(@burakurhan): I shipped my first product with zero design thinking and paid the price in churn. AI tools are incredible for getting to "good enough

... single Compatible badge looks convenient on a game mod listing, but it rarely explains enough. Compatibility can depend on the game build, operating system, mod loader, required dependencies, other installed modifications, and even the state of an existing save. Two players may use the same game version and still get different results because their setups are not identical. Consider a mod reported to work with game version 1.4. After version 1.6 is released, leaving the badge unchanged could imply that ...

... have this problem to try the early version and tell us where the idea works and where it doesn't. If you've tried it, we'd especially love to hear: What would make you trust a tool enough to let it become your personal memory layer? And what would you absolutely NOT want it to remember? [MemShift website ...

... been thinking a lot about something I suspect many founders here have struggled with: How do you know when you re solving a genuinely painful problem versus simply building something people think is interesting? The problem we ve been focused on is founder attention overload . As founders, we can have information coming from everywhere: emails, customers, leads, meetings, follow-ups, opportunities, tasks, and decisions. The challenge isn t necessarily getting more information. It s knowing what actually deserves your attention ... ... require action instead of making them dig through everything themselves. But we re at the stage where I m questioning our assumptions, and I d value perspectives from other founders and makers here. Is attention overload actually a painful enough

... suddenly lose access to all AI. But what happens if , one day, access to the leading American models is restricted more broadly? We would still have European models, open-source systems we can operate ourselves, and Chinese alternatives. But there is no guarantee that another major power would never make the same decision to protect its own strategic advantage. AI is no longer just another software category. It is becoming infrastructure. It will shape education, healthcare, national security, research ... ... world are American, and Europe should continue working closely with the United States. But cooperation and dependency are not the same thing. Technological sovereignty does not mean refusing to use foreign technology. It means having a real alternative

... timestamp can tell you when something happened. It doesn't always tell you why. That's not usually a problem with traditional software. If a user updates a record or changes a setting, the event itself is often enough. With AI agents, the situation feels a little different because the outcome is often the result of multiple decisions happening along the way. Imagine an agent researching information, selecting a tool, retrieving data, generating a recommendation, and then triggering an action ...

... guesses. Comment from Ayden Lim(@aydenlimdev): @busmark_w_nika  Hahah! Alright, will do so, thanks! Comment from Ayden Lim(@aydenlimdev): I think as long as the product is clear and functional enough that people can actually get value from it, I'd say that's good enough

... worker. For UI testing, a remote headed browser is not just a convenience. It changes the debugging loop. Instead of asking "what did the script think happened?", you can ask "what did the user actually see?" ### Harness Code vs Local Agent Harness Another important decision is where the agent capability should come from. One option is to build the entire reasoning layer yourself: call an LLM API directly, manage prompts, retries, tool calls, screenshots, JSON parsing, and safety rules. That ... ... gives maximum control, but it also means the test harness becomes an AI platform project. The alternative

... launched outreach. 18 became paying customers. So yeah, top of funnel looked pretty decent. But the real lesson was not how do we get people to sign up? It was: how do we get founders to trust the product enough to actually press send on fundraising emails? That is a much harder problem. For context, Causo helps early-stage founders find relevant investors and run cold fundraising outreach without manually building lists, writing everything from scratch, or duct-taping ... ... Some were probably just curious. Some likely realized they were not ready to raise. That changed how we think about the product. The hard part is not only find me investors. The hard part is helping founders feel confident enough

... those who aren't a perfect fit or don't even realize they need the product yet. Polished demos and slick UI might not answer "what problem," but they do lower the barrier for discovery. They make people curious enough to stick around and ask the question in the first place. So maybe it's not either/or. A clear problem statement helps converts; a strong demo helps reach. Both matter, just at different moments. Comment from Venkat A(@venkat ... ... exactly the right swap! It's the same trap in enterprise IT and in most launches here, just dressed differently (feature list vs

... openness creates accountability, builds audience, attracts early users who care about the product before it launches. For a lot of builders, it worked exactly like that. Then it became a content strategy. What Happened to Build-in-Public When enough people saw that building in public could attract an audience, the practice shifted. Instead of genuine transparency, it became a formula. Day 1: announce the idea. Week 2: post an update. Week 6: excited to share the launch. Week ... ... follow along" threads. LinkedIn feeds drowned in announcements. Product Hunt posts disappear within hours because everyone is launching and nobody is genuinely discovering. The build-in-public movement, at scale, created a specific kind of noise. Everyone broadcasting. Not enough

... syzy   The blurred active-requests idea is smart, it's basically showing proof of liquidity without giving away the thing people are paying to unlock. I am curious on how far you blur it though, enough to tease but not enough

... wrong. Regulation matters. Safety matters. Privacy matters. Trust matters. These are European strengths, and we should not throw them away. But sometimes it feels like Europe tries to administrate the future before it has built enough of it. That is the problem. While the US and China are producing many of the companies, models, infrastructure, and platforms that shape the market, Europe is often trying to catch up through rules, committees, and frameworks. Yes, we have promising companies. Mistral ... ... with an unreasonable plan might actually be worth backing. I haven t had the chance to visit the US yet, but it is definitely one of my goals. Europe should not copy everything blindly. But we should be honest enough

... both content and   product work.   2. Google Search Console I basically live in it. For anything SEO, it's the only honest source of truth   about what's actually happening vs. what I assume is happening.   3. Ahrefs keyword and competitor

... three levels is the sweet spot for a reason most people miss: declared criticality only works if declaring is cheap enough that you actually do it. A ten-option config is technically more precise and practically gets skipped, so you're back to inference by neglect. Normal / important / release-blocking is few enough

... surabhi_minocha): @busmark_w_nika  Fair point The startup budget spreadsheet never seems to include the cost of changing your mind 17 times before lunch. Comment from Surabhi Minocha(@surabhi_minocha): One angle I don t see discussed enough, AI has reduced the cost of building dramatically, but increased the cost of conviction. When everyone can ship quickly, the real advantage becomes taste, positioning, distribution, and knowing what s actually worth building in the first place. Comment from Alex ... ... than people expect, but the minimum distribution budget is higher than people expect. You can build a software product very cheaply now. The expensive part is learning whether anyone cares, getting in front of the right users, and surviving enough

... situation as worth pausing on before your conscious mind catches up. Whether that's precisely what's happening when you hesitate before sending a file that's a stretch to claim definitively. But the behavior matches: you've seen enough news about data breaches, you've heard enough

... reading Nika's thread here about free vs paid features. Really made me think. Link: https://www.producthunt.com/p/ge... ( shout-out to @busmark_w_nika ! ) She talks about giving generalized advice for free, but charging for specific, tailored help. That's a good framework. But most product owners figure this out after they build, not before. That's backwards. Your free tier should be designed before you write a single line of code. Because it's not just a marketing tool ... ... still feels useful? Not the full product. Not the enterprise version. The smallest thing that makes someone say "oh, I get it now." For us, that was tracking one LLM (ChatGPT), 5 keywords, and generating 2 articles per month. Enough

... founder can open doors but the product still has to deliver once people walk through them. Comment from Eli - Artexia Tecnologia(@eli_artexia): My take: unless you're already someone with strong market credibility and genuinely confident enough in what you're building to put your name on the line for it building product-first makes more sense. If the product doesn't land the way you expected, you're not just iterating on the product anymore, you're also ... ... June 17th, and I now realize I should have started the LinkedIn presence 3 months earlier. So somewhere in between is probably the sweet spot. Comment from Esde.site(@esde): I d go with a hybrid approach. Build the product enough