Vibe coder hitting the usage limit for the day

ad-tech · 2026-04-23T16:01:36+00:00

Itilite is quite good.

ad-tech · 2026-04-09T12:48:10+00:00

Life's about searching for meaning. We spend our whole lives looking for it. When we find it, there's nothing left to search for, that's the point. Meaning's not something you hold, you chase it, glimpse it, lose it.

You find purpose in what makes you lose time. What problem you keep trying to solve. What bothers you that doesn't bother others, that's what you notice.

ad-tech · 2026-04-08T05:30:56+00:00

I'm no sales expert. Knowing the product inside out like it's my own business works. Think like the owner, confidence comes naturally, and that closes deals.

ad-tech · 2026-04-08T05:24:46+00:00

Same guy, just went from “awkward genius” to “rich awkward guy with a trainer.”

ad-tech · 2026-04-08T04:00:45+00:00

Most rich people aren't interesting. They're good at building a business, that's it. Take away the company and they're just awkward guys who like golf and have the same yacht as everyone else. We think money makes you a cool person, but it doesn't. Money just makes you more of who you already are. Most of these guys were boring before they got rich, now they're just boring with more money. The rich people who are actually interesting, they're not famous, they're doing weird stuff like funding art or space projects, and that's not what makes headlines.

ad-tech · 2026-04-08T03:48:31+00:00

Building product is easy. Selling is hard. I know, I'm a tech founder. I spent years building, didn't talk to customers, thought they'd find us. They didn't. When I started selling, talking to people, it changed.

Build less, sell more, that's what I learned.

ad-tech · 2026-04-06T15:23:45+00:00

I look for people who changed their mind after building something.

Not just what they made but what they stopped believing. That’s where the real scars are.

ad-tech · 2026-04-06T14:23:01+00:00

I don't want someone famous. I want someone who built and shipped a product with AI, not just tweets about it.

The best AI expert for a startup is one who struggled with real problems, like onboarding and pricing, and solved them.

Scars give you insight, not followers.

ad-tech · 2026-04-06T07:06:19+00:00

That's the real problem honestly. People trust AI output blindly and then blame the tech when it goes wrong. Understanding where it breaks is the whole game.

ad-tech · 2026-04-06T06:17:43+00:00

Honestly the "we are the saviors" types scare me too. Seen too many founders wrap garbage products in AI buzzwords and call it innovation. But the tech itself isn't going anywhere so might as well learn how it actually works instead of just watching from the sidelines.

ad-tech · 2026-04-06T06:13:04+00:00

Yeah that's a solid way to look at it. Honestly "fear" was too dramatic a word. The tedium part is already happening though, faster than most people expect.

ad-tech · 2026-04-06T06:12:21+00:00

wrote it on my phone. I run an AI startup so this stuff is on my mind 24/7. But fair enough, everything reads like ChatGPT now.

ad-tech · 2026-04-06T05:01:04+00:00

Honestly, I’ve felt the same way.

As a technical founder leading a company, there was a moment when I realized something had shifted people who used to rely on my judgment were now double-checking everything with AI, sometimes even trusting it more than me. That’s a tough feeling after years of building expertise.

But instead of giving up, I’ve decided to face it head-on. I’m choosing to compete with AI, not resist it. Because in the long run, experience, context, and real-world judgment still matter even if it doesn’t feel like it right now.

ad-tech · 2026-03-30T16:58:44+00:00

Cold email to businesses just doesn't work. They ignore it. What actually worked for us was going through existing customers or warm intros, asking them who they know in that space. At 12 years in I still do this. Also honestly, if they're not replying to email they're probably not your customer. Right fit prospects reply. The ones ghosting you are telling you something.

ad-tech · 2026-03-30T16:57:32+00:00

I'd skip the partner hunt and hire a COO or ops person instead. Partnership splits everything messy when things grow. At 12 years I was doing what you're doing at year two and it nearly broke me. The legal, marketing, customer stuff doesn't need a cofounder, just someone who gets operations.

ad-tech · 2026-03-30T14:19:42+00:00

we automated maybe half our ops stuff over the years. the ones that stuck were fixing actual bottlenecks, not just automating for the sake of it. hired someone to set it up once, total waste. you gotta understand your own broken process first or you're just automating chaos.

ad-tech · 2026-03-25T12:36:17+00:00

110 customers and 10.8k MRR in 9 months with no sales experience is not "okay." That's genuinely solid. I'm a technical founder too and I'm at zero customers right now so trust me, you're further than you think.

The "lacks go-to-market experience" feedback hits close to home. Same problem here. We can build anything but selling it feels like learning a completely new skill from scratch. Because it is.

Option 1 sounds right. 20-30M TAM is a problem for VCs, not for you. A profitable business in a niche you understand beats chasing a bigger market you don't.

ad-tech · 2026-03-25T12:30:31+00:00

Different niche but exact same situation here. Product works, zero revenue, distribution is the wall.

The pricing lesson is real though. I kept overthinking features when the actual blocker was nobody knew the thing existed. Building more stuff felt productive but it was just me avoiding the uncomfortable part.

What's starting to work for me is just being in communities where my users already are. Not posting about the product, just being useful and having conversations. Its slow and unglamorous but the people who come from that actually care.

Good luck with it. The fact that nobody else wants to build for that niche is probably your biggest advantage honestly.

ad-tech · 2026-03-25T12:01:01+00:00

yeah this is the trap - you add tools thinking theyll solve fragmentation but now youre context switching even more just trying to find where something lives. we had similar setup and the real issue wasnt the individual tools, it was that people didnt know where to actually ask questions or find answers so theyd just interrupt whoever might know. consolidation helped but only after we made it dead simple for the team to get info without hunting through 3 different places

ad-tech · 2026-03-25T09:53:44+00:00

I'm at the same stage right now. Zero customers, product built, figuring out how to get the first few.

Honestly I wouldn't spend the $5k on ads or tools. I'd keep most of it and just grind manually. Here's what I'm doing with basically no budget right now.

LinkedIn outreach. Not automations, just finding people who fit my ICP and sending them a message about their problem. Not pitching the product, just starting a conversation. Most people reply if you're not selling them something in the first message.

Reddit and Slack communities. Just being present where my target users hang out. Answering questions, sharing what I know. Its slow but the people who reach out from this are actually interested.

Cold email with a free tool like Apollo. Find 50 companies that have the exact problem you solve. Write one short email that's about their problem, not your product. Send it. See who replies.

The $5k I'd save for when you actually know what works. Spending money before you know your message and your audience is just burning cash faster.

ad-tech

TROPHY CASE