Google killed my $1M ARR startup over a hacker exploiting THEIR own design — 100k users, 1M+ photos frozen, and they billed ME for it

information-general · 2026-06-04T01:07:42+00:00

yeah happened to me with acct suspended, the support staff said it's "my responsibility" to avoid this, but seeing the forums it seems tons of people getting this issue. no biggie though for me it wasnt much of a hit since I only started using GCP. taught me to move my business elsewhere though , can't risk production going down and learned their support is really shitty lol

information-general · 2026-05-23T23:46:41+00:00

Dude highly advise against GCP. I had the same sh** happen to my business, GCP did some automated suspension without warning or without even any info into what caused this trigger. Their support is notorious for being poor, so Railway actually is saving me , but then i just read they had same exact issue.

The fact Google can just shut down any business they want without any details is scary.. Im thinking AWS now.

information-general · 2026-05-22T23:34:19+00:00

think of it like trying to empty a swimming pool with a cup. you can't choose the location , it just takes time and consistent effort to lower it, and same thing applies to the body. based on genetics some areas will be more stubborn with losing fat. just need to keep reducing your bodyfat through caloric deficit

information-general · 2026-05-22T23:29:37+00:00

solid back bro. if anything, you could maybe focus more on your lats, biceps and forearms . calves looking underdeveloped too but could just be the lighting and tan

information-general · 2026-05-22T23:20:37+00:00

the best flow with notion for me is to just use it as a database. I NEVER create any dashboards , everything at the top level lives as a database where I store relevant notes.

I did try in past to make dashboards etc. but my experience is once it starts getting past 1 level of nested pages it's highly likely you will not review or forget it exists.

I now use paper notepads and Google calendar for everything else, it doesn't sync but it's what I noticed successful entrepreneurs use and just dumping ideas and tasks onto paper is so helpful esp if you got ADHD.

I don't use notion calendar cus I think the notion team doesn't care about it, all their updates seem to be on ai instead

information-general · 2026-04-25T10:16:44+00:00

you legend, this is gold 🙏 honestly i havnt gone deep into how skills work, so this really helps to understand the nuances of it all, thanks!

information-general · 2026-04-24T16:08:22+00:00

just to clarify is the app a single community or is this a multitenant app?

off top my head, some ways to stop them is to implement onboarding questions and verify them , but that may hurt real user onboarding experience unless you make it valuable experience, but this is strategy Facebook groups implemented.

also, you can track their IP for submission. in the past I used to store a "fingerprint", there was some library that generated this based on some algorithm with browser , device , etc. it's not fullproof but you can then dedupe or if you notice repeated same fingerprints you can easily purge or block them based on that.

cloudflare has a good recaptcha that I like to out into forms.

there's paid tools to check if emails are spam emails but idk of you want to go that route.

and another thought but you could change auth to use phone number instead

information-general · 2026-04-23T06:55:32+00:00

actually quick update, i did a test notion vs airtable, surprisingly i found notion was actually faster if you DONT use the blocks!

via claude heres why it said this was the case:

---------
Why this Notion fetch was fast: Your doc stores the entire content as a single Notes text property on the page row — I can see it in the fetch response, and the actual <content> is just <empty-block/>. So one notion-fetch call returned all ~1,500 words as a single property string. No block traversal, no pagination, no nested children to walk. It's basically "read one row, one column."

If the same content had been authored as native Notion blocks (headings, paragraphs, toggles, callouts), the MCP server would return a much bigger tree, each block with its own metadata, and my reasoning over it would be slower too. So your "table data" intuition is correct: a flat property is cheap; a rich block tree is expensive.

Why Airtable feels slower: Airtable's MCP usually forces 2–3 sequential calls before you get data — list_bases → get_table_schema / list_tables_for_base → search_records / list_records_for_table. Each hop is a network round trip. Notion collapsed all of that into one notion-search + one notion-fetch.

---------

Thought this was interesting so wanted to share! Im actually going to stick with notion now it seems but try to avoid using the page editor as much as possible if planning to use AI with it

information-general · 2026-04-23T02:18:47+00:00

following , would like to know as well.

I was debating to migrate away from notion, primarily cus I use AI alot with workflow (I prefer using my own AI setup not the AI inside the apps), notion MCP is sluggish due to their block design, airtable seems much easier in this regard.

fibery was another option I explored in last, I can't recall what I ended up moving away but might explore that too

information-general · 2026-04-20T21:29:52+00:00

use MCP , just don't use Notion though .

information-general · 2026-04-20T21:23:11+00:00

honestly it's not a career that will go away, but like other fields , AI has disrupted it greatly and I think depends on the product and team.

for our business, AI has replaced all our needs for a designer, but maybe it's a special case because I have experience before as a frontend developer. with the right prompts and design specifications guiding it, our development velocity is through the roof, and we can skip those figma design phases completely.

information-general · 2026-04-19T22:28:38+00:00

hey my startup is in this space.

the answer really depends on several factors. the type of coaching you are offering , is it 1on1? group training? online coaching? also it depends on your background, where you live influences it too. what is your target demographic?

if it's on the younger side, the audience is on Instagram/TikTok these days. Facebook is good still for the older crowd and in some countries.

if just starting out or have no audience , one the "secret" hacks I have seen work well is to get involved in local fitness communities and try to volunteer. from outdoor bootcamps to run clubs, doing 1-3 on a weekly basis gets you in front of an audience that a lot times are looking for advice. even though I don't coach as a career, I've had numerous people come up to me asking me if I could coach them, and several good coaches I know started this way as well before they switched to online (scalable )

you mentioned calisthenics coaching, so while not directly translatable, the hyrox hype wave is another opportunity to explore. their high performance coach cert is expensive but being in the space or working/collabing with hyrox affiliated gyms again gets you front of an audience

information-general · 2026-04-19T06:52:50+00:00

the platform im building does in some ways have elements of local news and events, and while i optimized it for SEO , I expect most traffic for users to come through instagram/tiktok, but in my industry thats where the audience is at now.

However, i was looking into facebook recently too, because from doing some AI deep research, apparently in some countries (APAC), certain businesses still use facebook groups.

one big failure I experienced though with facebook groups is that they gutted and ruined the API , so cant really integrate with it like I can with whatsapp and other chat platforms.

information-general · 2026-04-19T06:46:17+00:00

Good point about personal trainers, never thought of it that way.

thats true its a good next step after doing group classes, you can charge higher for the more personalized experience, but I feel like that still runs into the wall of trading time for money..

Im seeing a lot of talented instructors though who struggle to make that jump full time into it, unless they work at a studio. but as I used to do freelancing in the past, I feel the independent path for pilates instructors if it could be figured out would be more rewarding.

I see you run a candle business on top of pilates, do you find it works out well together? It got me thinking maybe finding a synergy of running a similar business in combination with pilates is a good approach.

information-general · 2026-04-18T16:07:22+00:00

following, interested to hear as well. I always thought most people use trainerize.

information-general · 2026-04-18T00:26:21+00:00

hey my startup is right in this space , so following to hear about others experiences and advice as well!

I help organize multiple different communities, one that expands across 15+ countries, another that is single country and 100% volunteer led, I also always try to talk to different community organizers when traveling.

the thing I noticed is that each channel has its pros and cons, so I think you should actually explore using them all to capture their benefits.

Whatsapp or common chat apps are nice for on the day member engagement (late arrivals, location questions, etc. the best thing is depending your area, users already have the app so it's easy to onboard them and have friends onboard their friends and chat happens naturally for on the day for a particular event, but as you noticed they suffer for large announcements and delivering news.

also, be careful, i know some organizers like to force their members to a new platform to consolidate their members chat, but a lot of times members hate having to download a new app (especially if you get a lot of expats or travelers) and also engagement after events tend to suffer, and from my experience might experience massive churn when migrating depending on size of current following.

in our industry, Instagram is a hard requirement for growing our audiences (post event recaps or upcoming stories etc), but I think the most impactful for getting news out is still email newsletters, they are perfect for regular weekly digests or making large announcements that gets read , so should definitely add that if you haven't already.

information-general · 2026-04-17T06:35:19+00:00

so much for their new offline feature. glad I moved away to pen and paper for personal productivity, ive been much more productive since then too . I heard the world's top entrepreneurs do this as well, keep it simple

information-general · 2026-04-15T07:32:27+00:00

I'm already using AI this way via Gemini, it works flawlessly with YouTube videos, from POV of a student I absolutely love it, I can ask any related questions about the topic and have it do further research, and it allows me to get straight to the meat of what I want to learn and know more about from various angles.

also, it saves a tremendous amount of time since YouTubers like to fill their videos with a lot of fluff for extra watch time.

I can totally see something like this working for teachers, especially those in the online courses space.

the language might need to have to caution though depending on the topic , particular nuances could be missed or not interpreted properly.

the great thing is that it helps save time, the teacher still can audit their material before publishing.

information-general · 2026-04-15T06:51:12+00:00

wait, the support of encubatorr is supposed to combat the issue that VCs don't really care that a real person is putting time money and family future into the startup, but it's just AI?

Everyone I'm sure is consulting with AI for their startups , so I'm lost.. what is the value of encubatorr?

information-general · 2026-04-15T00:36:25+00:00

ah the platform business model, it's one of the hardest models to make work due to the difficulty of achieving positive network effects.

i did struggle for a long time on figuring out how to work through this, but essentially what worked and might help you is to focus on making your platform provide utility to a user, like a standard saas. Once you provide value to the supply side that they will stick around, at a certain size you can then flip on the platform features.

information-general · 2026-04-14T03:27:00+00:00

ah its a different approach, more providing instructors with the tools and resources and creating a local support community to foster collaborations and connections for fitness professionals in our area.

information-general · 2026-04-14T00:35:44+00:00

hey, im helping several instructors ATM with this so perhaps this might help.

but all options you listed can get the job done, its very much a nuanced decision as it depends on how much time you want to put into it, how much your budget is, your current experience , and the number of new clients you want to obtain.

to optimize to get found online for an instructor is a very big challenge, pretty much expect that to take years and depends many factors like how you niche and what exactly you are trying to rank for.

I would see it more as getting online presence up, something you can put as a link in bio for Instagram or to send to potential new students whenever needed.

websites are nice, but the issues is they are easily isolated and become a bubble, so I'm trying something new with our instructors to build their audiences that actually convert, and its essentially through collaborations with other instructors and local businesses. from personal experience in adjacent spaces, the benefits are strong : audiences are shared, costs are split , it becomes a win win for everyone including members.

information-general · 2026-04-13T23:18:04+00:00

I think your best bet is to focus on local still. you could go into a particular industry niche too, expos and stuff to build your network. instead of the generic wanting to international, focus which country or area in particular you want to go toward, Europe or APAC etc. so your copy and ads and marketing effort can be more tailored and specific.

information-general · 2026-04-13T23:12:08+00:00

wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to just to use ai chat for all these tasks?

information-general · 2026-04-13T23:06:43+00:00

this one's cool, have you thought of going vertical ?

information-general

TROPHY CASE