Some reports and industry estimates suggest that real inference cost can be 5 10x higher than what companies currently charge, depending on model size, context length, and infrastructure load.
So the market is not really stable yet. It s still in a growth phase, supported by subsidized pricing and scale. And usage is already massive.
Early on, we treated every user request like an urgent priority, only to realize later that custom features didn't even stop those users from churning. Building what people ask for instead of solving their actual root problem destroyed our focus and wasted months of dev time. If you run a small product team, what framework do you use to filter out isolated demands and keep your core vision intact?
Recently, I posted here about how Y Combinator launched a program that allows young people to study at a university while building a product.
Many young people today idolise the likes of Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and other dropouts who didn t finish college but made it big with a breakthrough idea.
My idea just got stolen. Now I understand where a scarcity mindset can begin. It s easy to say, There are enough opportunities for everyone, until something you shared in trust shows up in someone else s hands. I m the one who knows how much thought went into it. That s part of what makes it painful. And honestly? It makes me want to keep the next idea to myself. But you see, stealing an idea is one thing. Making it work the way the original owner envisioned is another. Someone can take the concept without understanding the thinking behind it: who it s for, why it matters, and the decisions needed to bring it to life. That doesn t make the theft okay. It reminds me that my contribution didn t end with having the idea. The lesson I m taking from this is to be more intentional about what I share, when I share it, and with whom. To document my work and set clearer boundaries. I can be careful without deciding that every room is unsafe. How do you protect your ideas without closing yourself off to collaboration? #CreativeOwnership #IdeaProtection #CreativeProcess #Collaboration
I always thought that the common answer to agent permissions is to let the agent act on anything you can undo and request only for crucial part. Sending a customer a messages usually would count as the thing you can't take back I guess.
I'm not sure that line holds for product decisions. In a past project, an agent just changed something that was easy to revert. But if we hadn't noticed, it could have set off a chain of follow-up actions that caused us big trouble under their own understanding. Another instance, when the AI agent marks a customer request as "planned." instead of Notice. It would be great if we found the issue early on, but if not, we might have missed this request
Meanwhile asking for approval with every changes would make things more secure, but when there are too many requests, I notice that people start approving without reading.
We recently checked our helpdesk logs and found that a single free user opened over 30 tickets in under a month asking for custom walkthroughs and direct setup help. After our engineers spent hours fixing their workflows, they straight up refused to upgrade to a $20/mo plan because they got everything for free. It made us realize we were running an unpaid agency. If you run a SaaS, do you cut off manual support for free users entirely, or just route them to slow email queues and docs?
We shipped our product a few weeks ago, and while my co-founders have their maker tags visible next to their profile names my account still looks completely standard.
I've double-checked my team settings and maker status, but nothing updates on the public profile.
Is there a hidden setting or a specific admin approval step I missed to get the badge to appear?
We recently put a simple email wall in front of our main tool to track returning users and stop abuse. On paper it makes total sense for product metrics, but communicating a downgrade to casual visitors is surprisingly brutal. Every draft announcement we wrote either sounded like PR spin or an apology for securing our own infrastructure.
For founders who transitioned from anonymous access to a mandatory free sign-up how did you frame the update to your audience?
