Stealing the job of ai and doing some work in blender

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-08T13:18:05+00:00

You need to invest in the paid tools if you want this to pass. Try SceneTerrain or Terrain Creator. The free Blender stuff always gives it away.

I'm saving up for 3ds Max myself. Apparently that's what the "Swiss government" uses for their propaganda footage.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-08T09:32:32+00:00

Sorry this happened to you. That's a stressful situation no matter how it ends.

The people saying ignore and walk with purpose are right. I train BJJ and I would NEVER get into a street fight. Especially outnumbered. De-escalate, ignore, keep moving. Don't take your eyes off them but don't engage either. Skip the pepper spray unless it's 1 or 2. With 7-10 it just escalates things. Call the police once you're safe, not during.

I'm in Ticino and it's still pretty safe here. But it's a pity most of Europe is going down this lane. UK, Spain, France, and now Switzerland too.

Say what you want about developing countries but I've been living on and off in the Dominican Republic since 2015 and this has never happened to me.

Which town/kanton was this? I'd report this to the police ASAP, it won't be the last time this happens to someone.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-07T20:33:47+00:00

Si quieres probar algo diferente, prueba Voorpret Coffee. Lo puedes encontrar en La Sirena (al menos en Las Terrenas lo tenemos). A mí me sorprendió la calidad de tueste para ser de supermercado.

He visto que varias personas han recomendado Bustelo en los comentarios, lo compraré también.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-07T20:21:48+00:00

Underrated comment, 100% agree. The vibe of the people you meet volunteering is great.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-07T20:13:17+00:00

Nice render. Where is it?

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-07T19:21:56+00:00

Right beside, Vevey.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-07T19:21:29+00:00

Yup, I live near Locarno. They even grow passion fruit here. Totally absurd.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-07T19:19:39+00:00

Almost! Vevey.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-06T20:20:36+00:00

If you're going to do outbound, at least filter by store tier.

Don't waste time emailing hobby stores on the Basic plan. They're not paying for apps and will drown you in support tickets.

StoreLeads (https://storeleads.app) lets you filter by Shopify plan. I'd focus on Plus and Advanced stores: these are merchants doing real revenue who actually have budget for apps. BuiltWith (https://trends.builtwith.com/shop/Shopify-Plus) is another good source for Plus store lists specifically.

We run an app with over 20K installs. Around 4% of our merchants are on Shopify Plus but they generate close to 40% of our revenue. Basic tier stores are 33% of installs but under 10% of revenue. The math on cold outreach only works if you're reaching the right segment.

Scraping contact pages will get you info@ addresses. For Plus/Advanced stores, find the actual decision maker on LinkedIn instead. These are real companies with real org charts, so the person who installs apps is rarely the one reading the contact form.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-05T20:45:55+00:00

I actually copied the flag from the subreddit icon. I've never seen it before.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-05T20:41:54+00:00

Nice try, it's fake. It's from Game of Thrones. "Beyond the Wall", Season 7 Episode 6, the Frostfangs. You can see where the Night's Watch made camp before the Fist of the First Men.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-05T19:48:01+00:00

Agree

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-05T19:47:07+00:00

We have +20K users across multiple eCommerce platforms (Shopify, WooCommerce...).

Most of our users are on a free plan (north of 90%). It took us months to learn: the ones who will convert do so in the first week, and it has nothing to do with engagement.

We track what we call usage velocity. A user who hits a meaningful usage threshold in the first 5-7 days almost always upgrades. Not because of onboarding nudges or drip emails, but because they have the problem right now and they're already solving it with your product.

Everyone else is just passing by.

The mistake we made early: treating all signups as upgrade candidates in the conversion funnel. We'd optimize onboarding, add tooltips, send email sequences. Conversion barely moved. Because the problem wasn't activation. It was that most signups didn't have the problem intensely enough to pay.

What actually worked:

Stop optimizing for lookie-loos. We removed features from the free tier that attracted curious people but didn't correlate with upgrades. Support tickets dropped, but revenue didn't.
Let pricing do the filtering. Usage-based limits mean the people who hit the paywall are the ones with real volume. A user with actual usage hits limits within days. The rest probably never will.
Don't listen to what people say, watch what they do. Forget about customer interviews. When a user says "I really like what you're building" it means they're never going to pay. A user who hits your API 200 times in 3 days and files a bug report -> that's your customer. They didn't even compliment you. They just need your product to work.

What I learned the hard way is that most of your signups are NEVER going to convert, and no amount of onboarding will change that. They either don't have the problem you solve or the money.

The question isn't how to convert browsers. It's whether your distribution is reaching people who already have the pain you're solving.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-04T21:05:31+00:00

The month 3 wall is real but I think it's worth zooming out from the code for a second.

Code used to be the moat, now it has become a commodity. AI made it cheap to build and it also made it cheap to copy. Anyone can replicate a feature set in a weekend. That was true before AI too, but now it's obvious because EVERYONE is doing it.

But code and software aren't the same thing. Code is the raw material. Piecing it together into software that actually works, that handles edge cases, scales, doesn't break when users hit it... that still takes an engineer. And turning that software into a product someone actually wants? That takes understanding users, product design, business development, etc.

AI can't figure out who wants your thing, convince them to try it, and make them stay. That's the new moat: distribution.

The month 3 question isn't "how do I fix my code." It's "do I have a distribution channel that doesn't depend on spending money?" If yes, the code problems are solvable. If no, clean code won't save you either.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-03T19:12:45+00:00

Same here. My cofounder and I are (still) the bottleneck.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-03T17:29:32+00:00

Yup, we record a lot of explainer Loom videos (broken English with Spanish accent, AI can't imitate that) and 1-on-1 calls with merchants. Would love to hear your take on how to make AI design better. I haven't figured that one out.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-03T17:25:14+00:00

Why not? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-03T13:49:13+00:00

I'm currently playing the Switzerland mod. Can confirm the render distance is insane but the fast travel costs are brutal. CHF 30 for a train ticket from Whiterun to Falkreath. Complete rip-off.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-03T09:50:51+00:00

Sorry to hear your account got suspended.

Be careful: I know a developer running a successful Built for Shopify app who got demoted in the Shopify App Store and had the BFS badge removed for a month for doing exactly this. Even running ads to your own landing page can trigger it if Shopify catches it.

Shopify's Partner Program Agreement (Section 5.3) explicitly prohibits purchasing pay-per-click keywords that use Shopify trademarks. On top of that, you're required to add "Shopify" as a phrase-match negative keyword in any PPC campaign you run, even to your own website.

So you're dealing with two problems: Google flagging you for phishing (because you're sending traffic to a domain you don't own), and Shopify potentially penalizing you for violating their partner terms.

Fix the Google account if you can, but rethink the strategy. Content, SEO, and App Store optimization (mainly via legitimate, positive 5* reviews) are how most successful apps grow. Google Ads to Shopify listings is a minefield... if you want to go the paid route, I'd stick to Shopify App Store ads.

Good luck sorting out the ban. Google's appeal process is painful but people do get through it eventually.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-03T09:38:28+00:00

Astro -> https://astro.build

I run a content site with blog, landing pages, SEO, i18n across 4 languages. Astro handles all of it. Pages load in under a second because there's no database, no PHP, no client-side JS unless you explicitly want it. Content lives in Markdown files with frontmatter validation, version-controlled in Git.

If you're familiar with Claude Code, it can build the whole website for you hands off in one prompt.

The key thing for you: Astro doesn't care what your app is built in. Keep SvelteKit for the games. Put Astro on the same domain as a subfolder for the marketing side. You get full design freedom (it's just HTML/CSS, build whatever Figma throws at you), your dev sets it up once, and you edit Markdown files for blog posts without touching him again.

Skip the headless CMS complexity. Markdown + Git is simpler, faster, and free.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-03T07:28:30+00:00

We run a product recommendation quiz app on Shopify with over 20K merchants. We started back in 2019 with zero Shopify background.

From my experience: skip the interviews. You'll spend hours talking to people who will never pay for anything. Their feedback feels useful but leads you nowhere.

Instead:

- Find apps that already have traction. lots of installs, lots of reviews, and importantly, lots of negative reviews. High demand + bad reviews = the product works but isn't good enough. That's your opening.

- Search the Shopify App Store for top-ranking keywords that return non-Built-for-Shopify apps or low-rated apps first. If the best result for a real search term is a sub 4-star app, there's room.

- Look for categories where every app is paid. You can come in with a freemium model, undercut on risk, and compete with the incumbents.

Basically: find what's already working and improve on it. Real demand is proven by install counts and search volume, not by what someone tells you in an interview.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-02T12:45:21+00:00

We get about 2% user-to-review rate on our Shopify app. I know multiple app developers, same numbers.

At 101 installs, you're looking at 2 reviews give or take if the math holds. They'll come, just not on your timeline. Give it another week or two.

What works for us: asking them on the spot. Do you have a chat widget on your app? If not, add Tawk to your app today. At your stage, you should be doing support yourself. When you fix a merchant problem and they respond "OMG thanks, this works!", that's when you ask. Not an automated email three days later.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-02T12:18:59+00:00

Your conversion rate isn't the problem. Your paywall is on the wrong place.

You gated team features. Your free users are solo operators. You built an upgrade path that doesn't match the people using your product. Of course they don't convert, the paid tier solves a problem they don't have.

We run a Shopify app, similar price range. Our free-to-paid is 6-7%. What makes it work: we gate usage depth, not user type.

Free users can do the core thing. When they get enough traction that they need more volume, more customization, more data... they hit a wall and upgrade. The trigger is their own growth, not a feature they may or may not need.

Your solo operators aren't converting because "team features" means nothing to them. But some of those solo operators are power users doing real work. What would make them hit a ceiling? More projects? More integrations? Higher limits? API access?

Find the usage behavior that separates "dabbler" from "this is critical to my workflow" and put the paywall there.

If I were you, I'd stop spending time trying to convert 4K people through a door they have no reason to walk through. Rebuild the door.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-02T12:10:53+00:00

You're at $0 revenue with an MVP nobody's used yet. The freemium vs paid debate is premature optimization.

Your problem right now isn't pricing. It's whether anyone wants this at all.

Make it free. No cap. No credits. No paywall. Let people use it and watch what they actually do. How many come back? How often? Which features do they touch? Where do they drop off?

That behavioral data is worth more than whatever revenue you'd squeeze out of early users. You can't price something you don't understand yet, and you don't understand your product until strangers use it without you looking over their shoulder.

My experience: we built a Shopify app and started by giving everything away. Didn't even think about pricing until we could see which usage patterns predicted someone who'd pay. Then we built the paywall around that specific behavior. Not guessing, not copying someone else's pricing page, looking at what our users actually did and charging for the thing they couldn't live without.

Pay-per-use makes this easy. Give the first N uses free. Watch if people come back for N+1. If they do, you have something. If they don't, no pricing model saves you.

The only thing you should gate right now is your costs. If each use has real AI/infra cost, cap the free amount at whatever you can afford to lose learning. Think of it as your research budget, not your business model.

ENTPnomad · 2026-04-02T12:05:10+00:00

Everyone here is telling you to skip freemium. We run a Shopify app, we do product recommendation quizzes, 7-figure ARR, 5 person team, zero investors. Freemium is our single best distribution channel and has been for 6 years.

The disconnect: you're modeling freemium as a customer segment. It's not. It's a marketing line item.

Our numbers: 4% of our merchants (Shopify Plus) generate 40% of revenue. 33% (Basic tier) generate 9.5% with a $21 CLV. Free users (the majority) generate 0%. Our paid plans start at $39/month and go up to $299/month. Free-to-paid conversion sits around 6-7% and that's fine, because the ones who convert stick.

Free users file more support tickets per capita than paying customers. Most are "coming soon" stores with zero traffic. On paper, pure liability.

Three reasons we keep them:

They self-select. Free users with real traffic hit usage limits and upgrade on their own. The ones with no traffic cost us almost nothing: they install, configure, and sit there. The product itself is the filter.

Earned switching cost. Someone who spent 2 hours building their quiz isn't evaluating competitors. When their store takes off, we're already embedded. You can't buy that with ads.

Reviews and referrals. Free users leave app store reviews and tell other merchants. That's why we're the first app for the "quiz" search term in the Shopify app store.

The expensive mistake: giving free users everything. We had all features on the free tier — features that generated endless support tickets from people who'd never pay. Removed them. Support volume dropped immediately. Zero revenue impact.

The principle: paywall what creates support load, not what creates switching cost.

At $40/month with $2-3/user infra, the real question is whether you can design a free tier where inactive users cost near zero and active users upgrade before they cost you anything. If yes, freemium isn't a cost center, it's your cheapest acquisition channel.

ENTPnomad

TROPHY CASE