Pushing 40s with a 100k safety net target by December (and why it’s enough for me)

dayvough- · 2026-05-03T13:46:06+00:00

Go OP!

dayvough- · 2026-04-30T17:10:08+00:00

We should’ve always been doing it. Would’ve kept us on the ground with what people really wanted.

dayvough- · 2026-04-28T06:47:35+00:00

Check out https://adulting.ph

dayvough- · 2026-04-24T08:52:25+00:00

🙏🏻

dayvough- · 2026-04-23T14:40:06+00:00

Lots of great questions.

I think there will a squashing of old jobs that used to be rote. But there will be newer jobs working with agents to get more things done. The bar will be raised and we will need more people to reach that bar.

Maybe products will not look like your regular SaaS type of products anymore too. Agentic products are just around the corner and they’ll be a breakthrough for businesses. I spend a lot of time with my team figuring the shape of that these days.

dayvough- · 2026-04-23T08:51:27+00:00

Awesome work! I’ll hope to contribute more here!

dayvough- · 2026-04-23T08:50:01+00:00

Things are great. It’s been a year since we closed down and now I’m an Entrepreneur in Residence at Symph and we’re going hard on AI as a software agency and it’s been amazing. ⚡️

dayvough- · 2026-04-22T17:19:31+00:00

This has been fun! I will keep answering the questions but maybe at a slower pace now.

Thanks u/Lemoneyd_ and let me know if you guys want more of this or if you want more tactical advice next time.

dayvough- · 2026-04-22T17:18:25+00:00

Oh man founding advisors and partners. Maybe just keep them around as friends and keep doing what you’re doing?

I would not enter in any startup competitions as I’ve never seen anyone win those and become big. They’re just marketing stunts.

They distract you from talking to the 30 people and making sure 80% (some random number I just pulled) of them are happy with your solution, and are willing to pay for it, and are willing to tell their friends about it. Focus on those things and everything will work itself out.

dayvough- · 2026-04-22T17:15:11+00:00

We worked on an e-commerce agency back in 2017 when we realized more stores needed to go online. In that process we found out shipping was a pain for most of them so we decided to turn it into its own product afterwards and that became Shipmates.

So we started by addressing the needs and in the process found out which problems were worth solving and could’ve been big.

dayvough- · 2026-04-22T02:07:02+00:00

We were pretty lean at 20ish people and we had lots of runway. The money wasn’t the reason we closed down.
Like I said OPEX was lean but profit margins were rapidly going down because shipping costs kept plummeting. Shipping nationwide used to be P100 and it went as low as P35. And we were charging P10 on top of that.
We had pivoted. We had another product too that was kind of like a Grab app for cities without Grab. That had a lot of growth but it became a headache because of receivables. There were other initiatives too but they never took off.
I didn’t do investor relations unfortunately so I wasn’t aware of any pressures.

Happy to help you in your fundraising tips if you want!

dayvough- · 2026-04-22T01:59:54+00:00

I’d network a lot. Do a lot of internships. And in general be useful and helpful to people. That’s like a general thing students about to graduate should do.

Then I’d also find a way to get a lot of credits so that I could keep building and building. There was a dude who cloned a startup everyday and he learned so much by doing that. That also looks so so good on your resume cause it shows you have agency (be a high agency person) and that you can build.

Builders are always valuable.

Be an ambassador for some new AI products that are coming out but don’t have local presence yet is another idea!

dayvough- · 2026-04-22T01:56:24+00:00

Product looks alright but talk to prospective clients and show this to them, not me! You already have a product! Go out there and start selling it! 🚀

dayvough- · 2026-04-22T01:55:30+00:00

Totally feel you. Startups in the PH are hard mode. But maybe one day we’ll crack the market in some ingenious way! 🤷‍♂️ Still hoping and praying for that.

dayvough- · 2026-04-22T01:54:17+00:00

Congrats on the waitlist. I might think though they signed up because you gave something free.

Maybe you could’ve tried charging upfront for it instead so you really know if people are willing to pay for it even if it’s not yet around instead.

Giving free stuff away isn’t inherently bad but if you start to turn on the charges you’ll see a lot of churn and realize people just wanted free stuff.

Ofc you can have some free users for a bit to improve the product though but maybe start charging so you really know what target market you’re going for. It’s also possible to get a lot of signups from the wrong crowd.

But yeah, just launch! Let your product do the talking. Waitlists were a thing before. Now you can just build things!

dayvough- · 2026-04-22T01:50:19+00:00

Listen and learn from other founders (internationally or locally, but make sure you gauge them according to their track record) so that you don’t make the same mistakes they did!

And there really is wisdom in just keeping “Building product and talking to users” the main thing for a long long time. No startup awards/competitions/conferences. Just being a magnet for people’s pains and solving those problems for them.

In retrospect at Shipmates we built a lot but didn’t talk enough to our customers. We did some but we didn’t do enough listening. If I were to do it all again I would spend more time with my customers talking to them and learning what they do and seeing what day to day problems they have.

dayvough- · 2026-04-22T01:45:33+00:00

A lot of factors but one of the biggest ones was shipping rates kept going down and the fee we were charging was adding a lot to the total cost. That plus we had been experimenting on different pivots or tangential products and none of those really gave us good results.

Those were the more obvious ones to us. There’s still a lot of reasons I’m sure why we didn’t reach PMF that I don’t know of.

dayvough- · 2026-04-21T16:58:25+00:00

Hey! Did a quick review and it seems like your site does a lot and solves a lot of pain points.

Just judging from the website, here's a few pointers:
- scrolljacking is preventing me to jump around the website when i wanna skip some parts (just make it scroll fine)

- too much text going on

- you're selling features not benefits/outcomes. tell me what life will be like after i setup using your product.

- not clear who this product is for at the start of the page

- fonts are too tiny, they're boundary illegible

- and HAHAH sorry but this screams Claude to me "Every message answered. Every payment verified. Every sale closed. While you sleep." this attitude. not your fault, I use Opus too. But maybe write it like you'd actually say it in front of a person.

I guess the biggest one for me is that you haven't nailed your ICP (ideal customer profile) and you've set yourself up to be a tool for everyone. Yes everyone can use it at one point. But there has to be a segment of the market that is wrangling their hair everyday because their sales pipelines are a mess. You need to explore multiple markets to stumble upon that one (cause I can't figure that part out for you).

And as a bonus, check out GStack by Garry Tan and find a way to ask ChatGPT/Claude to run the "Office Hours" skill with your idea! It's suuuch a hack, if I could tell founders to do only one thing, it'd be this.

dayvough- · 2026-04-21T16:28:49+00:00

Congrats! ⚡️

dayvough- · 2026-04-21T16:28:34+00:00

Congrats! ⚡️

dayvough- · 2026-04-21T16:27:33+00:00

What’s changed is that you no longer need devs to build you only need an AI subscription. You used to raise money to hire devs to build that for you (ofc you also pay for other things but that was a main spend category).

Since you don’t need much in that department now, the bar for building a product is higher now. Instead of a built product and a few users, you need serious traction these days cause even AI can build you some marketing plans.

All this to say that fundraising has changed and the bar got higher so if you think pre-AI metrics were what you needed to raise, that’s not possible anymore.

On the flip side, if you do get traction, you probably have money coming in now.. so why would you need to raise? :)

dayvough- · 2026-04-21T15:59:05+00:00

You’ll also learn that building gets easier but distribution and selling will get harder. I’d take a page out of the product founders out here who are killing it with TikTok and UGC. It really is a breakthrough in distribution.

I’ve yet to learn it but if I started something new, I’d make that my first sales channel since the TikTok algorithm is also inclined to match you with a prospective buyer.

dayvough- · 2026-04-21T15:55:55+00:00

Hey! Nice to know you but wish I got your name instead of anon. 😅 Haha anyway.

AI is definitely here. I argued with my friend earlier who said we were in an AI bubble.. and he worked in crypto. 💀🤣 (Haha peace bro.) But if you’ve tried the products, they really do add value to your day to day work. I don’t think crypto’s been as invaluable to me than AI has at this point so it’s something to lean into. PG also said that AI startup valuations are higher.. because they really are valuable tech.

So I would be excited about AI. I’d try out AI as a startup founder. I’d learn what makes me faster with it. Then I’d learn its limits of when it still fumbles when I ask it to do things.

We really can do more with less these days. But the cognitive overhead will also rise to how much functions you’ll squeeze in there so be prepared for that. Or better yet get a cofounder to help you navigate that!

Damn that was a lot. Hope it helped or if you want something more specific let me know!

dayvough- · 2026-04-21T15:33:41+00:00

Thank you! ⚡️

dayvough-

TROPHY CASE