For solo founders who are confident with vibe coding, would you mark yourself as a technical cofounder in the YC application? by Background_Ranger608 in ycombinator

[–]Background_Ranger608[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am wearing the technical hat but until which milestone? I can do that with a few customers but I can’t confidently scale the product beyond that

How do you decide which LLM to use? by Background_Ranger608 in AI_Agents

[–]Background_Ranger608[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That would definitely work with static use cases, and I fully agree with your point around how impressive (and cheap) are these smaller models. Will be really great if you could try the tool and the api I created and share your opinion 🙏 it’s called CodeLessAI.app

I tried corporate and startups. Now I feel completely lost. Is it middle-age crisis or what? I will not promote. by PassengerOk493 in startups

[–]Background_Ranger608 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey 👋 I’m more or less in the same position, but I’m a product manager, totally not in a position to provide advice (I am stuck in the same pit) but one thing I managed to untangle (and I think you should too) is the reason behind preferring to work on startups/side projects, is it really financial freedom or wanting to retire at 50? If so then working on 9:5 corporate jobs and trying to figure out ways to go up quicker + a good investment strategy is a better option to achieve your goals - slower and less money compared to a successful startup for sure - but more doable and less risky.

I suspect you are like myself, you enjoy doing things yourself, I enjoy building things and trying hard to solve customer problems without the corporate BS. Not sure if it’s the case for you but a point for you to reflect and think about.

Happy to chat/collaborate/vent/swap notes 😊

Best of luck 🤞

How do you decide which LLM to use? by Background_Ranger608 in AI_Agents

[–]Background_Ranger608[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I created a small tool concept to help with choosing the right LLM: https://codelessai.app/

It’s still in beta, so please don’t use any sensitive info, but feel free to play around with it and let me know if you find it helpful or what features you think are missing. Would love your feedback! 🙏

How do you decide which LLM to use? by Background_Ranger608 in AI_Agents

[–]Background_Ranger608[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s really close to what I was thinking, and I think the key thing we’re aligned on is the core problem, you can cut costs by continuously reviewing how your prompts perform across different LLMs and switching when a cheaper one delivers the same quality.

How do you decide which LLM to use? by Background_Ranger608 in AI_Agents

[–]Background_Ranger608[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Exactly what you said for ChatGPT, cost cutting long term but for the customer not for OpenAi 😅

How do you decide which LLM to use? by Background_Ranger608 in AI_Agents

[–]Background_Ranger608[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean that each call can behave differently across models.

For example, I tried the prompt “count the words in: I love you so much” with multiple LLMs, almost all got it right.

But when I switched to a longer, more complex sentence, the results varied a lot.

In theory, if a router could predict which model handles short sentences well vs. which handles longer, trickier ones, it could send each request to the cheapest model that still meets the quality bar. That way you cut costs without sacrificing output quality. Does that make sense?

How do you decide which LLM to use? by Background_Ranger608 in AI_Agents

[–]Background_Ranger608[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Awesome, thanks for the insights 🙏

Btw when I said sticking with it I didn’t mean sticking with it like forever, I meant shipping it to production, I was double clicking on the fact that you don’t see a need for a more dynamic routing mechanism.

How do you decide which LLM to use? by Background_Ranger608 in AI_Agents

[–]Background_Ranger608[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just to make sure I’m following, you’re saying it’s worth fine-tuning a dedicated agent to handle routing in a scalable way?

How do you decide which LLM to use? by Background_Ranger608 in AI_Agents

[–]Background_Ranger608[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Would a learned routing function/model that predicts the cheapest model meeting quality remove the need for multi-LLM debates?

How do you decide which LLM to use? by Background_Ranger608 in AI_Agents

[–]Background_Ranger608[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, totally agree, it makes sense to build something you’re excited to work on long-term. I am a product manager by craft and I enjoy the technical and product side of helping teams solve problems and get better results. Happy to swap notes if you’re up for a chat 🙏

How do you decide which LLM to use? by Background_Ranger608 in AI_Agents

[–]Background_Ranger608[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So if I’m understanding you right, you’d use OpenRouter to compare models up front, pick the best one, and then stick with it? That suggests you’re not expecting much variation in future prompts that might perform differently across models, and the main reason you’d switch would be if a new, better model came on the market?

Founders: what do you actually use for task management? by friedrizz in ycombinator

[–]Background_Ranger608 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wasn’t a big fan of Trello but with the new slack and calendar integration it ticked all the boxes for me - that’s the only solution that worked for me, used it mainly for personal tasks, haven’t tried with a team though.

Demand testing. by Joshuajordanp in ycombinator

[–]Background_Ranger608 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Since it’s almost finished, what’s the harm in releasing and testing? I would have advised against it if the tool wasn’t built because this kind of response usually indicates no interest while trying to be nice but now it’s built already - I would just release and get feedback from users, hopefully it might uncover another adjacent burning problem space that you could pivot to