At 21, I was broke, with only a few dollars to my name.
Now at 42, I've had an exit and on to my next startup. Here's my story...
I grew up in a small town in Israel. And like many entrepreneurs, I was obsessed with many side hustles rather than school, which I almost didn't finish.
I eventually did graduate high school and decided to travel to "Find myself" with little to no luck.
At 21, after backpacking through Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina, I landed in San Jose. No plan and no money.
I worked as a mover, helping families get their belongings from point A to point B.
I felt like a failure.
And I knew it because I still remember calling anyone who might lend me enough cash to get to LA so I could crash on couches.
But that didn't work out. So I called my mother, and she brought me back to Israel.
It was pretty embarrassing.
Back home, I finished a degree in economics and management and took a job as an affiliate manager.
We did finance, dating, and gaming offers.
Gaming is a nice way to say online casinos.
And not to toot my own horn, but I was pretty damn good at driving traffic for them.
But in 2017, that company closed. So I knew it was time to do my own thing.
I already knew the affiliates and the advertisers, so I opened my own network with two partners.
So we we're cashflowing from the get-go.
At the peak, we were doing around 5,000 leads a day.
But I was caught in an ethical crossroads.
It was never fun being the "Online Casino Guy" at family functions. I knew I shouldn't be in this industry.
I told my business partner early on I couldn't do this for too long.
But it was hard to leave.
When you're good at something (and it's making good money), it's very hard to pull away from it.
So we brought in a CEO so I could step away from the operations.
Then, in 2021, I sold my share to my partners.
I felt rich for a minute but decided to burn cash on angel investing. I don't recommend it lol.
I was bad at picking, and I hated having zero impact on the companies I put money into.
I missed being an operator.
But then ChatGPT changed everything. I knew it was time to build again.
I wanted to solve a problem for GTM teams that I understood so well from my time as an affiliate marketer: finding high-intent buyers online.
I realized that LLMs would enable me to scan through 10's of thousands of posts online to find high-intent buyers who are looking for your exact solution.
So I started building Conversee.
So far, we've run pilots with a handful of 8 & 9 figure software companies, even while we are fully bootstrapped.
And when I'm not building Conversee, I'm hanging with my wife and little ones.
If you want to follow the journey, make sure to shoot me a connection request Yair Eyal

Hello Product Hunt,

I'm Dawit Teshome, Founder and CEO of Lucy AI.

Lucy AI deploys AI voice agents on real business phone lines. Our agents answer and make customer calls in more than 100 languages, including Amharic, Afaan Oromo and Tigrinya. They connect to company systems and hand calls to human teams when needed.

Since founding the company in 2019, we have grown to a team of 11 across Addis Ababa and Arlington, Virginia. Lucy has handled more than 10,000 calls in production, works with 18+ partners and clients, and is resold by white-label partners across Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

Within this team, I am mainly responsible for marketing related content.

Let me briefly introduce VoxMeta:

Engineered by Industrial Metrology, Built for Professional Creators.

VoxMeta is powered by Vision3D, a company with extensive expertise in 3D digitalization hardware and software technologies. VoxMeta empowers customers to advance toward higher precision, greater efficiency, and smarter solutions, pushing the boundaries of 3D scanning technology applications.

I'm Samina and I work as a Product Manager in Dublin. Like a lot of people, I kept losing evenings to my phone and social media. I'd open one up "for a second" and look up an hour later.

So I built Doom Saver, an Android app that notices when you've been scrolling too long and nudges you out, instead of blocking you out of the apps.

I'm launching on Product Hunt this Saturday, 10 October, and I'm excited and a bit nervous about it.

Outside of this, I love to "used to read and write".

I make small, fast games you can play with a friend. My first one is TBlock Duel, a free 1v1 block puzzle where both players get the same pieces: https://tzeeyhstudio.itch.io/tbl... . I would love to meet other makers, swap feedback and hear what you are building.

Hi everyone!

My name is Mark, and together with my team I m building PawChamp, a mobile app for iOS & Android. We re planning to try a Product Hunt launch in mid-October - timed with Adopt a Dog Month in the US. Alongside, we ll run social campaigns to promote shelter dog adoption.

But looking at all the diverse and beautiful AI-powered products launching these days, I feel humbled...
Is there still space here for a B2C product with pet parents as its core audience?

What PawChamp does:

Hi everyone! I'm Pavel. A frontend engineer and the solo maker behind Vibes'n'Feels.

This story started in 2006 with a question - could online reactions express more than a generic Like? Different versions, redesigns and long pauses later, that question eventually met photos and maps.

Vibes'n'Feels is an emotion map of moments and places. A Vibe brings together a fresh photo or short video, a place and a feeling. Each moment can be just for you, shared with friends for up to 3 days or visible to everyone on the map for up to 24 hours. Your own copy stays on your phone after sharing ends.
Introducing something this strange among many SaaS and AI tools feels a little awkward. I can explain how it works. Explaining why someone might want it is harder. Apparently twenty years of thinking about an idea does not automatically produce a good pitch.

Vibes'n'Feels Product Hunt launch is scheduled for October 13. I'd appreciate your thoughts on whether the idea makes sense when you first encounter it.
If you're in the mood for a longer read and epic storytelling (joking), I also wrote about the long journey on Medium
Have you built something that was difficult to fit into a product category? How did you explain it to people?

Hi everyone

I m an independent maker building small, practical web tools and experimenting with SEO, AI-assisted development, and lightweight online products.

My latest project is NickMint, a free gamertag and username generator for gamers. I built it to make it faster to come up with usable gaming names without going through endless random suggestions.

I m especially interested in learning more about product launches, user feedback, organic growth, and how other makers validate simple tools before spending too much time building them.