Over the past year I've noticed something unexpected. Building products with AI keeps getting easier.
Choosing which AI tools to use keeps getting harder.
Every day there are new models, coding assistants, design tools, agents, MCP servers, and productivity apps. I love seeing innovation, but I also wonder whether we're reaching a point where too much choice is slowing us down.
I pay a lot of attention to how a product handles me before I ever hand over a credit card. How generous is the free tier? Is the onboarding smooth, or does it make you feel like a nuisance for not upgrading immediately?
Some apps treat free accounts like a favor they are reluctantly doing for you, while others just let you use the tool and trust that you will pay if it provides value. I have walked away from solid apps simply because the free experience felt pushy, and I have stuck with limited tools just because they were respectful of my time.
Does the attitude of a free tier actually impact your choice, or do you only care about what a product offers after you pay?
In a time when big corporations are overpaying for their job offers just to steal the best talent from another big company, and in an era where everyone can build their own startup, there will always be room for people who prefer to join a team and work on something (in the future) big.
Every team I talk to has more feature requests than they can act on, and most of it doesn't come with clean data attached, just a support ticket or a Slack message from a customer. For those running product teams here, what's your actual process for turning scattered feedback into a prioritized roadmap? Curious whether people are doing this manually in spreadsheets, using a dedicated PM tool, or something else entirely.
After four long years of grinding, building, fundraising, and hiring, we decided to pivot. I wanted to write down my thought process and timeline because I wish I d seen more honest pivot stories when we were stuck. Not just we pivoted and everything was instantly great but the real version where we kept trying to make the original idea work for way too long because we already put so much into it.
I went through YC S20 (the first COVID batch) as a solo founder working on @Basedash. After YC, I did what you re supposed to do. I talked to users. I built product. I did founder-led sales. I hired a great team. It felt like progress because I was constantly busy and the product kept getting better.
