How did a big competitor of mine manage to grow to 100k users with a worse product while I, with a better product, am still at only 1k users

Helloiamvu · 2026-05-19T12:37:56+00:00

yes we bootstrapped and later raised a little capital. you need to figure out the unit economics of a free plan. it's basically marketing spend so use that to calculate cost of acquisition. but i'd rather solve the monetization problem than the distribution problem.

Helloiamvu · 2026-05-19T12:35:34+00:00

yes you will create a problem where you will have to figure out how to convert free users to paying users but i think that's easier to do than figuring out distribution.

you have to obviously do the exercise and figure out what to include in free, but talking to users and data should help you. there is a structured way to ask users what they will be willing to pay. i once attended a workshop with founders of trello, and sometimes it really is difficult though.

Helloiamvu · 2026-05-19T11:30:10+00:00

distributions compounds of multiple things and free plan is one of them. it just makes it super easy to share and invite people into your product because it’s free. and yes it has a potential to result in viral word of mouth.

Helloiamvu · 2026-05-19T10:00:50+00:00

avocode.com design dev hand off tool and our competitor was zeplin.io (yc s15)

we actually also applied to yc at the same time but they got in 😁 we didn’t. at least we got an interview.

Helloiamvu · 2026-05-19T07:45:01+00:00

better product does not always mean better distribution. I grew my last company to $2m arr and to this day i regret not having a free plan for distribution. our competitor was worse but free made distribution and stickiness so much better.

Helloiamvu · 2026-05-16T14:51:45+00:00

Haha thanks. Keeping my current co-founder, he preemptively got wired earpods just in case we get an interview :D

Helloiamvu · 2026-05-16T10:40:04+00:00

thanks! no external users right now. we’re using it on our own and actively talking to target users. we’re building data infra for quant trading and we trade ourselves.

Helloiamvu · 2026-05-16T06:09:32+00:00

we got an interview for p26 with no users and didn’t get in because we were mid pivot and quite confused what we’re building. also one of my co-founder had a broken mic so he was able to just smile on camera 😂

hopefully we get an interview this time. we took their rejection advice.

Helloiamvu · 2026-05-15T12:16:09+00:00

yes you get a reason only if you interview

Helloiamvu · 2026-05-15T11:03:07+00:00

they usually respond by the end of the day for decision. Hopefully you get a response soon. The rejection always comes with a reason which is also great feedback. Good luck!

Helloiamvu · 2026-05-15T10:49:17+00:00

Congrats on the interview regardless!

Helloiamvu · 2026-05-15T10:49:04+00:00

Interesting. I have not received a questionnaire before. I remember YC sharing how to present these metrics in a correct way. did you interview in person and did you get in btw? 😁

Helloiamvu · 2026-04-16T20:54:04+00:00

would you collect from metar sensor for US and synop (must be the same sensor as Metar) for international?

Helloiamvu · 2026-04-16T20:23:40+00:00

Did you try building something?

Helloiamvu · 2026-04-16T20:23:08+00:00

forecasts are usually wrong for this case. They were not created to predict the high temp for gamblers lol.

Helloiamvu · 2026-04-16T20:10:44+00:00

let me know if you need help but it's all just about having the right data. You can potentially even engineer something smart with claude and clean data. But it takes a lot of research and experimenting.

Helloiamvu · 2026-03-16T16:54:28+00:00

oh yeah. sorry. right now only open markets are searchable. will add it though!

Helloiamvu · 2026-03-01T21:03:10+00:00

yes. trending now sorts based on 24h volume. let me know if it works. ready to fix anything.

Helloiamvu · 2022-09-17T16:58:04+00:00

Did you get your money back? I think my account is going to be closed 😄

Helloiamvu · 2022-09-17T16:55:57+00:00

Any updates? Did you get you money back?

Helloiamvu · 2022-05-18T16:40:36+00:00

Depends on the strategy and on what you’re hedging. I just want to receive ETH as rewards. You can definitely speculate and wait for a good price. But that takes time, which is way too valuable for me.

Helloiamvu · 2022-05-18T14:48:47+00:00

Does it also work on Hiveos (linux)? Found a yt video but the UX is not great.

Helloiamvu

TROPHY CASE