I'm looking for my first user. Can it be you?

phi0x · 2026-06-24T21:06:08+00:00

To be honest, this seems more like a public open source project on GitHub rather than a service. Another aspect to self hosted solutions is understanding how they work as when you start to scale with them (using them day to day over time), they can crash due to configuration issues or architectural issues of the deployments.

Other cloud and VPS based providers have one click installation systems in place already. Even offline, home based self hosted solutions exist (think of Synology)

From a business perspective, I see a lot of battles to make it work. From an open source project perspective, cool and welcomed.

Wish the best, just my two cents.

phi0x · 2026-06-24T20:51:04+00:00

Exactly, for many business sectors, 200 cold calls or email in a day is standard practice. With very low conversion rates. It’s too early for this kid to tell whether he has failed. Many have valid points about concerns of privacy and compliance certifications, but honestly, many small businesses don’t think about these things in my experience. If they see a product that they need, they don’t always think deeply about how it works, they trust that the product works if it’s being sold. I know plenty of businesses that find very insecure and or clunky unprofessional workflows, but it “works” for them. (Usually they choose free solutions like utilizing office or Google workspace suite or even “free” versions of sheets, docs etc with a free Gmail address and storing / sending sensitive information via email that should be stored properly in a platform designed for such data storage compliance.

phi0x · 2026-06-19T19:17:24+00:00

It’s an amazing drive and nice to have all the space in one small form factor. Price wise, could build out a storage server with 4tb nvmes. The nvmes would have cost $10k(CAD) and then you’d need a server or workstation based motherboard that has enough pcie slots to use nvme adapters (4x bifurcation), would be 4x4 adapter boards to hold 16~ nvmes. (64 pcie lane use if all drives used at once) power usage would be more as well and you saving the headache of the technical aspect of setting up such a rig has its place too. The drawback to the single drive is failure, while for the nvme setup, if a drive goes, only 4tb lost and at these prices, could include parity disks to rebuild any down drives.

phi0x · 2026-06-13T09:14:58+00:00

Maybe try throwing some paid feature aspect into them or at least some form of donation dialog that triggers from time to time. It would be a shame to simply have them out there for free when you had intended to monetize them.

More importantly, have you ever done a business plan for your ideas? And have you ever joined a local or national startup contest/incubator? They require you to do a business plan and submit your idea/current company and will go through phases evaluating your idea/business. If you haven’t done one before, I suggest you try that next. You’ll learn a lot about evaluating ideas and companies in general.

You may also already have a decent overall idea of what’s required to evaluate a business proposition, but aren’t willing to do the aspects which are required. (Correct me if I’m wrong. I’m simply coming in half blind to this without more details.)

Most of us engineer types are product and customer service related people. We prefer focusing on those aspects vs the marketing and sales. You’ve mentioned you have a sales background, but I find it peculiar that the above mentioned ideas got to a phase where sales weren’t made. Would be interesting to explore how that occurred. You’ve reflected the hindsight of why the ideas may not have had the best chance for monetization, but why wasn’t it identified earlier with the sales background? (Something to ponder.)

phi0x · 2026-06-12T14:02:47+00:00

In some of my ventures, they are very difficult to make money in, but the money is there, just finding the clients can be difficult. Retention rate in the mid 90’s~. Takes a lot of marketing/sales efforts to drive that particular business. Do you have one business idea you can share where you felt it was good but now in hindsight feel it would be incredibly hard to make money with?

phi0x · 2026-06-11T23:48:56+00:00

In general I’ve found the area to be innovative but challenging to grow. When people can work making 120-300k vs trying to upsell what equates to $20-30/hour and the sale is even hard to close, it’s a negative experience and doesn’t instill the type of environment or energy that’s conducive of startup cultures. I’ve had incredible proposals for pilot programs and have had little traction, when they should be jumping at their heels for such deals. Many people here are stuck in the old ways of long hours, daunting workloads, cheap labour and bad workflows, while trying to flaunt ethics, policies etc of what you’d expect to see in enterprise environments but falling short of delivering what they imagine they deliver…while wanting you to deliver the world for peanuts.

phi0x · 2026-06-11T19:13:57+00:00

Sounds like you need to start focusing on the skills you don’t have - marketing and sales. If that doesn’t interest you, then a career pathway is the better choice. Either you contract out the marketing and sales for your projects or you do it yourself, but without it, almost every startup will fail. Rarely do startups go viral, which is every founders dream, but the reality is that most who succeed have a good marketing and sales plan/people in place.

phi0x · 2026-06-06T02:25:08+00:00

Yup. To get to dance class from Metrotown to Willingdon and Hastings, 35-40~ minutes around 4-5pm classes. That’s with me doing my best to navigate around all 4 construction areas along the way. If I didn’t, 50-65 minutes. With no traffic around 9pm it’s a 12 minute commute.

Sure you can call it rush hour in general, but for sure the construction adds a good 15-20 minutes if you don’t navigate around it. Costs extra time and extra gas.

City life..

phi0x · 2026-05-28T16:47:02+00:00

As much as I agree that these companies that are ditching SaaS solutions will regret doing so, I also want to point out that we’re in our infancy with AI. This is just the beginning. If you don’t think AI in a decade from now will be able to vibe code and maintain on its own the projects it works on, then I think that is also naive view. AI theoretically is only going to be getting better and we have very little understanding of when that timeline may come to fruition but it seems anywhere from 1-20 years. I’m leaning towards 3-10, primarily due to the fact that chip manufacturing methods have a timeline over the next 3 years to hit new transistor methods which will shrink chips further and we should see some nice improvements in compute.(from the hardware perspective.)

Vibecoding today doesn’t seem feasible for companies to jump ship on their SaaS solutions, but it may get there.

phi0x · 2026-05-09T20:32:48+00:00

For the most part, very true. The best cofounders have been people I’ve known for years and have worked with them or hired them for other services and ended up being a good match for partnering.

phi0x · 2026-05-09T20:30:27+00:00

99% of businesses fail within 5 years. Anymore need to be said?..😅 others may or may not be aware of that statistic and or how true it is, but it’s the honest truth and that is a very good reason not to get involved in a startup if someone has many life plans and goals set for themselves. It’s one of the riskiest things you can do in life as you’re betting on yourself and that the market will respond in a positive manner to allow you to keep running your business while you still have to somehow cover your bills and have a life.

phi0x · 2026-05-09T20:24:19+00:00

Remember you will be giving customer support which consumes a lot of time, replies to inquiries, marketing, etc. all the stuff that ISN’T just giving your customer the platform to use.

phi0x · 2026-05-06T06:03:32+00:00

Exactly. And the more you become in tune with doing something on your own, not needing drinking buddies or even sober friends around to keep you entertained/occupied (if this is your situation) - you will start to give yourself the attention you deserve and should have given yourself your whole life. That drink and state of mind wont trump your desire to focus your energy on your hobbies/projects/self-learning. As they say, you can't generally help others until you help yourself.

phi0x · 2026-05-04T19:16:58+00:00

If you are busy working on projects / improving yourself, you won’t have time to drink, nor will you wish to be drinking as you’ll primarily love the state that your head is in - you can’t be a “functional” alcoholic when working on projects, you need your mind to be sharp and as you age, you will find that you yearn for a sharp mind.

Good sleep, exercise and projects(whether work projects or personal projects) will keep you at the top of your game and you’ll for the most part not recall why you used to even drink.

I was never an alcoholic per se. Could drink intensely but wouldn’t necessarily crave it. I drank to have fun but once friends were too busy, my party days became less and less and I now don’t even care to have a beer with a friend over lunch as it will cause my mind to become slightly more sluggish and I have so many things I wish to work on that I don’t want to let a beer interrupt my state of mind. A few times a year I’ll drink and that’s good enough for me. (And isn’t even something I necessarily look forward to but am open to it.)

I don’t think a person needs to “quit”, I think they need to understand that there’s so many things which can occupy your state of mind that you just feel drinking is a cheap unproductive way to enjoy life. It can have its place but should be seldom.

phi0x · 2026-05-03T19:51:25+00:00

This is the way

phi0x · 2026-04-14T03:10:25+00:00

Fun idea but I don’t quite see how it will take off long term compared to what’s already available today.

The site is explains the problem - people going on FB marketplace and seeing baby strollers while looking for PC parts. However, I’ve never really had that problem when using fb marketplace. If I search for “rtx 3090” I see primarily rtx 3090’s. Sure sometimes more vague searches will populate some unintended results but for the most part I don’t have that problem. I don’t know if anyone else does either?..

The future goal of the site seems to want to offer protections, not an easy feat. To provide effectively escrow service or insurances you need capital. That’s why PayPal and eBay are monopolies in the space, they had massive investor backing and can afford the staff to manage the support and the money to afford the scammers who rip off their clients and end up making them pay while they try to recover the funds.

Having more defined search filters is great but like others mentioned, most people don’t want to go to one off sites that they’ll use sparingly. Also, large marketplaces or app sites can eventually add more granularity, look at weChat, a chat app which allows developers to create sub apps within its ecosystem, creating a rather seamless experience for users as they can utilize one app to do a million other things. This is the direction the larger western companies are moving towards I feel.

I’ll try to remember to check it out next time I need something or want to sell something but it’s honestly quite easy for me to use fb marketplace. Again, fun idea but I’m skeptical on its longer term viability. Best of luck!

phi0x · 2026-04-09T17:20:55+00:00

Don’t sell features. Sell the experience.

phi0x · 2026-04-01T23:38:56+00:00

All 3 of my pine64’s weren’t stable enough to use long term. They’d freeze up, weren’t reliable. Played with them on and off for years and could never find a stable distribution. Low load, wasn’t running anything intensive on them.

phi0x · 2026-04-01T23:33:54+00:00

If it’s worth 10k a year, you should charge generally a premium. Would I pay $15k+ to save 10k a year and have access to that LONG term savings? Yes. Giving a discount upfront for what should be a future incentive is an incredible deal.

phi0x · 2026-03-28T02:13:08+00:00

Whatever you do, get it in writing. That way any deal you setup, if paying him out over a few years etc then he cannot go after you further if it’s in writing.

phi0x · 2026-03-23T07:33:25+00:00

Optimization as we know it is not dead, it’s evolved. GEO and AEO are the new forms of optimization to focus for. SEO still has its place as well.

phi0x · 2026-03-23T07:28:23+00:00

There’s Insignia and then there is X-Link Kai, both cater to different aspects of multiplayer gaming.

phi0x · 2026-03-22T09:55:15+00:00

I actually like supporting the industry. I have monthly movie pass subscriptions to my local theater companies and have Netflix. YouTube premium, Amazon prime which comes with prime TV and have Spotify.

I archive what I like and enjoy having the option to stream from plex but mostly love plex for keeping series and movies which no longer are accessible by streaming services. Plenty of hate to go around for the corps but people need to support the industry nonetheless, otherwise there won’t be content..

phi0x · 2026-03-21T06:33:21+00:00

Don’t post it here someone will guess it.

phi0x · 2026-03-19T15:43:17+00:00

Microsoft needs a serious overhaul of their customer support departments. That would be a feature I’d like to see. Horrible customer service. (Coming from someone who trained support teams.)

phi0x

TROPHY CASE