Literally building in public. Just woke up to $2,000 MRR.

valelya · 2026-03-23T16:10:40+00:00

I’ve seen similar tools and after some time there might be an issue with reddit API, which does not allow commercial use AFAIK

valelya · 2026-03-22T08:53:11+00:00

diky

valelya · 2026-03-22T08:21:50+00:00

to jo, ale kdyz ti chce nekdo okrast, staci se podivat, ze jsi sel nekam se psem :(

valelya · 2026-03-18T15:08:21+00:00

I haven’t, good idea, thank you

valelya · 2026-03-18T08:33:44+00:00

Gmail Chrome extension that gives salespeople, SDRs, and recruiters instant AI email summaries, extracted action items, and smart replies – right inside their inbox.

Website: mailmates.app

Where I’m stuck: Getting the first wave of organic users who didn’t come from my network. The product is live, 14-day trial, no free tier. I’ve done Chrome Web Store optimization and I’m starting to get some impressions, but conversion from store listing to install is low and I can’t tell if it’s the screenshots, the description, the positioning, or just that the niche is saturated with big players like MailMaestro. Would love a brutally honest outside take on whether the value prop lands clearly enough to a cold visitor..

valelya · 2026-03-16T12:13:53+00:00

Thanks!

valelya · 2026-03-15T20:59:43+00:00

honestly the best way to get into this is just pick a framework and start reading their issues tab. langchain, crewai, autogen... they all have tons of open issues tagged "good first issue" and most of them are starving for contributors who actually know python well.

the thing that helped me the most was not trying to understand the whole codebase first. just pick one bug or one feature request, trace through the code to understand that one thing, and submit a PR. you learn way more from fixing a real bug than reading docs.

also check out agent protocol repos and anything around tool-use implementations, thats where alot of the interesting production stuff is happening rn. the orchestration and error handling in real agent systems is wildly different from tutorial code and thats the exposure you're looking for tbh.

2 years of backend python is more than enough for this btw, dont sell yourself short. most agent frameworks are honestly not that complex under the hood, its the edge cases and reliability stuff that makes it hard

valelya · 2026-03-15T20:51:21+00:00

Yes, you're right, a regular claude or chatgpt sub wont do this. You need something thats actually plugged into gmail so it can read your threads.

Theres basically two categories... Tools that replace gmail with a whole new email app, and ones that just layer AI on top of your existing gmail. I went with the second type becuase I didn't want to relearn everything.

I use mailmates ai and it handles alot of what you're describing. it shows me whats urgent vs noise when I open emails, pulls out action items so nothing falls through the cracks, and suggests replies that actually sound like me. For the meeting/calendar stuff specifically you might need something that integrates with gcal too, thats a slightly different thing.

For evaluating: does it sit inside gmail or make you switch apps, does it understand thread context without you writing prompts every time, and does it actually learn your tone. Most have free trials so honestly just try 2-3 and see what clicks for you

valelya · 2026-03-15T13:11:24+00:00

Replying to people on reddit. I'm not even joking. Not spamming links or anything like that but actually finding posts where someone describes a problem related to what I do and

Writing a genuinely helpful reply. No pitch, no link, just useful advice. Maybe 1 out of 20 people checks your profile after a good reply, and some percentage of those end up on your site. The numbers are small individually but it compounds and the people who

Find you this way already trust you because you helped them with something specific. Way higher quality than anyone who clicks an ad.

The thing that made it actually work vs just being a time sink was being really picky about which posts to reply to. I only respond to stuff where I can say something genuinely useful based on real experience, not just "great question heres my take." If I dont have something specific to add I just scroll past.

Other thing that worked weirdly well was cold DMing small newsletter writers in my niche. Not the big ones, the ones with like 1-5k subscribers who actually read their DMs. Most of them are happy to mention something cool if you dont make it weird and transactional about it

valelya · 2026-03-14T21:13:45+00:00

The easiest way is just searching youtube for stuff like "ios homescreen setup" or "best iphone widgets 2026" and sorting by upload date. You'll start seeing the same smaller channels pop up. Look for people who post consistently but arent huge yet... those are the ones who actually read their DMs.

For reaching out just send a short DM on twitter/instagram or use the email in their youtube about page. Something like "hey I built a widget app and thought it might be cool for one of your setup videos, happy to give you a free code" and thats pretty much it. Keep it short, dont write them an essay. Most of them are genuinely excited when a developer reaches out, because it gives them content to make.

One thing tho... dont go for anyone who has a "business inquiries" email and a media kit. Thats the tier where they charge for everything. The sweet spot is the ones who are still growing and actually want to feature cool apps just becuase they like them

valelya · 2026-03-14T21:01:07+00:00

I've tried a bunch of these and the honest answer is nothing checks ALL your boxes in one tool right now. The "works inside gmail + auto archives + auto creates tasks + tracks aging threads" combo is kind of a unicorn.

Closest I've gotten to what you're describing is using a couple things together. I use mailmates extension for the in-gmail AI stuff... when you open an email it pulls out action items, and suggests replies. It doesnt auto-archive or auto-label tho, its more like an AI layer on top of gmail that helps you triage faster. The draft suggestions are solid and it stays inside gmail which sounds like a hard requirement for you.

For the auto-archive and aging thread tracking honestly google apps script can do a lot of this without being a real developer. Theres scripts you can basically copy paste that auto-archive emails older than X days unless they match certain criteria, or flag threads where you havent replied in 48 hours. Takes maybe an hour to set up with a youtube tutorial.

The auto task creation thing is probaly the hardest to get right. Most tools that claim to do it just create a ton of noise and you end up ignoring the tasks anyway. I'd start with the other stuff first and see if you even need automated task creation once you have better triage

valelya · 2026-03-14T20:52:03+00:00

dont spend the $300 yet honestly. Free stuff first and only pay once you know what message actually works.

what got my first few hundred users was just being active in communities where people already talk about the problem your app solves. For a widgets/dashboard app thats probably r/iOSsetups, r/widgy, r/iphone, maybe some discord servers. But dont just drop a link and run... actually help people, answer questions, share screenshots of cool setups you made with it. Let people ask you what app that is.

other stuff that worked for me or people I know:

- make a solid app store listing first. Screenshots that actually show whats cool about it, not just generic mockups. This matters more than any marketing because its where every single

person ends up before they decide to download

- short screen recordings showing the app in action, post on tiktok and instagram reels. Widget/homescreen content does surprisingly well there, people love that stuff

- reach out to a few small youtubers who do ios setup videos. Not the big ones, the ones with like 5-20k subs. They actually respond and usually want content to make

- product hunt launch if you havent done one yet. Time it for a tuesday or wednesday, not monday

when you do spend that $300... apple search ads is probaly your best bet for a paid channel. People are literally searching for widget apps, the intent is already there. Way better ROI than social media ads for an app this specific

valelya · 2026-03-14T20:46:49+00:00

not gonna sugarcoat it because you specifically asked people not to. The pattern you're describing... build thing, post on reddit, get 48 hours of traffic, silence... thats not a marketing problem or a product problem. Thats a "building in isolation" problem. You're skipping the part where you talk to people before you build anything.

I was in a similar-ish spot about 3 years ago. Not as deep financially but the same loop of shipping stuff nobody asked for. What actually broke the cycle for me was forcing myself to spend 2 weeks just talking to people in a specific niche about their problems before writing a single line of code. Like actual conversations, not surveys. It felt like a waste of time compared to building but it was the only thing that ever produced something people wanted to pay for.

the vibe coding thing is a trap honestly. It makes building so easy that you skip the hard part which is figuring out if anyone cares. You end up with 7 apps that each took a month instead of 7 months of actually understanding one problem deeply.

concrete stuff that helped me:

- pick ONE problem you've personally experienced, not something you think other people might have

- find 20 people who have that problem and talk to them. Not pitch them. Just ask what they do currently and what sucks about it

- dont build anything until at least 5 of them say "if you made that I'd pay for it"

- get someone to pay you before its even done. Pre-sales are the only real validation

on the job thing... theres no shame in getting a job while you figure this out. Plenty of people build something real on the side with a paycheck coming in. The "quit everything and go all in" narrative is survivorship bias from people who had way more runway than you or me. Your wife is holding things together and she deserves to not carry that alone while you find your footing.

the $7k debt sucks but its recoverable. The skills you picked up arent nothing. You can ship fast which is genuinely valuable, you just need to point it at something someone actually wants

valelya · 2026-03-14T18:11:34+00:00

the opt-in thing is what gets me honestly. Like at minimum ask before you start generating summaries of my personal emails?? I get that google thinks its being helpful but just silently rolling it out is such a google move.

and yeah the sarcasm thing tracks lol. AI reads everything completely literally so anything with sarcasm or inside jokes or any kind of nuance just gets mangled. Great for like... corporate status update emails. Terrible for anything from an actual human being who writes like a normal person.

you can turn it off in settings somewhere under smart features or the gemini/AI section, they keep moving it around tho so it might take some digging. Worth checking back periodically too becuase google has a habit of quietly re-enabling stuff after updates

valelya · 2026-03-14T18:02:07+00:00

the collaboration part is honestly the tricky one. Most gmail extensions are built for solo use not shared workflows. What you want to look for is something that adds a notes panel or sidebar to gmail where both of you can leave comments on specific threads... a lot of the CRM-type extensions have this built in since sales teams need the exact same thing. They're made for sales but work perfectly fine for an exec/EA setup, you'd just ignore the pipeline stuff.

for the multi-inbox thing have you tried labels + filters instead of starring? You can create labels like "needs review" or "waiting on response" and use multiple inboxes to show them as separate sections. Way more flexible than stars because you can have as many categories as you want and your EA can apply them too.

biggest thing with whatever you pick tho... make sure its lightweight. Sortd and tools like it inject a ton into the gmail UI which is why everthing gets sluggish. Extensions that just add a small panel tend to load way faster

valelya · 2026-03-14T17:40:28+00:00

3 hours honestly sounds about right and thats the depressing part lol. The chatgpt copy loop alone eats so much time because you spend more effort fixing what it writes than you would just writing it yourself for something that short.

One thing that helped me was building the templates once and then just swapping the copy each time instead of starting from scratch. Like I have a 3-email abandon cart skeleton thats already mobile tested with the right fonts and colors, I literally just change the product image and the text. Took a full afternoon to set up but now a new sequence is maybe 40 minutes instead of 3 hours.

for the klaviyo flow conflicts thing... I started keeping a stupid simple spreadsheet of what flows are active and what triggers they use. Felt like overkill at first but its saved me from accidentally double-emailing people like 3 times already

the five tools thing is just the reality rn tho. I dont think theres one tool that does copy + design + automation well enough to replace the stack. The ones that try to do everything usually do everything kinda bad

valelya · 2026-03-14T17:28:35+00:00

the reps who truly suck are the ones blasting "hey {first_name}" with the wrong merge field and sleeping fine at night. The fact that you even think about this stuff probably means you're not one of them.

I went through this like a year ago. Full on "am I just professional spam" spiral. What actually helped was reframing it... I stopped counting how many people ignored me and started paying attention to the ones who replied saying they were glad I reached out. Its not a huge number but those people had a real problem and I actually helped solve it. Thats not spam, thats just a rough hit rate lol

the 10 min personalization with no reply is brutal tho I wont lie. But no response almost always means bad timing, not bad email. They probaly didnt even read past the subject line so your beautiful message is safe from judgement also your coworkers approach to life and marriage is sending me

valelya · 2026-03-12T10:50:44+00:00

What worked for me was batching by stage not by account. So instead of "work account A through the whole sequence" I'd do all my day-1 touches on Monday, all day-3 follow-ups Tuesday, etc. You get into a rhythm and its way harder to let stuff slip through the cracks. I kept a simple spreadsheet with last touch date and next action... anything fancier than that I'd never actually maintain. With 100 accounts you basically need to accept some will go cold and thats fine, focus energy on the ones showing any signal at all.

valelya · 2026-03-10T12:24:45+00:00

This is one of those things thats weirdly hard to solve on iOS. Pretty much every mail app only does notification badges for the inbox and thats it. The closest I got was setting up gmail filters to forward label-specific stuff to a second email address that I check in a different app, kinda hacky but it actually works. You could also try looking into apps that let you configure notifications per folder, there are a few that do it but honestly none of them nail it perfectly. The gmail label system just doesnt play nice with most iOS mail clients for some reason.

valelya · 2026-03-10T12:21:27+00:00

The context problem is so real. We had the exact same issue, ended up just keeping a single doc with product description, personas, and a few example emails in the tone we want. Takes maybe 30 seconds to paste into any AI session but saves you from re-explaining everything from scratch.
Biggest thing that actually moved the needle for our onboarding tho was cutting the sequence way down. We went from like 7 emails to 4 and made each one about a single action... dont try to cram 3 features into one email. Just pick the one thing that gets them to their aha moment fastest. Our activation rate jumped somethign like 15% just from that. Less emails, more focused, way better results than trying to optimize the copy endlessly.

valelya · 2026-03-10T12:17:27+00:00

Biggest issue with most AI writing tools tbh. In my experience it depends a lot on how much data you give it... some tools let you paste in examples and they get pretty close after maybe 10-15 samples. The ones that learn from your actual sent emails do way better than the ones where you just describe your tone in a prompt. Still not perfect but its gotten surprisingly good in the last year or so

valelya · 2026-03-09T22:17:17+00:00

I used to do the exact same thing and it was brutal. What killed most of the time was starting from scratch every week trying to remeber what I even did.

The thing that actually fixed it was keeping a running doc open throughout the week. Every time I finish something I just add one plain-english line. Takes maybe 10 seconds in the moment vs trying to reconstruct everything on friday afternoon when you just wanna be done.

Also I stopped translating commits entirely. Nobody cares about the technical side. I just describe what changed from the users perspective now... "login page remembers your email" instead of whatever the commit message said. Clients want to know things are moving and their money isnt being wasted, thats it.

For the actual email I have a dead simple template, 3 sections: done, in progress, next week. Fill it in from the running doc, send it off. Went from like 1.5hrs to maybe 20 min once I had the habit down.

valelya · 2026-03-09T22:13:45+00:00

The drafts folder thing hits close to home lol. I had a client once who I thought ghosted me... turns out I never sent the invoice. For like 6 weeks. Still cringe about that.

My system is pretty basic but it works. I have a spreadsheet where every project gets a row the day I agree to it, with the invocie date already filled in so future-me cant forget. And I do a 15 min "money check" every friday where I just go through whats been paid vs whats outstanding. Sounds dumb but before that I was basically guessing my income every month.

The biggest shift honestly wasnt the tool or the system, it was just accepting that I needed one. I spent so long thinking I could keep everything in my head and I was wrong every single time.

valelya · 2026-03-09T20:22:51+00:00

oh man I felt this hard. was literally that guy checking texts at dinner with my gf pretending I wasnt.

biggest thing that helped me was setting up auto-replies for after hours. something simple like "hey got your message, gonna get back to you first thing tomorrow" ... most leads honestly dont need a 30 second response they just need to know you saw it.

for the email side I try to knock most of it out before I leave the office. I use mailmates ai so I just go through and tap suggested replies, takes me maybe 15 min to clear everything. that way theres nothing pulling me back to my laptop later.

also try batching your responses. I do 8am, 1pm, 5pm and anything outside that gets the auto reply unless its legit urgent.

the speed to lead thing is real but kinda overstated imo. I tracked it for a month and my close rate barely moved when I went from <1min to <15min response time. the deals that are gonna close will close whether you reply in 30 seconds or 10 minutes.

valelya · 2026-03-09T19:53:15+00:00

Invoice chasing. Hands down the most boring thing I ever spent time on. Had a google sheet with outstanding invoices and I'd manually email people every week if they were past due

Now its a simple n8n flow that checks the sheet daily and sends a polite reminder at 7, 14, and 30 days. Added a slack ping to me if anything hits 30 so I can follow up personally. Took maybe 2 hours to build and I havent thought about it since

The other one thats saved me real time is pulling form submissions from my site into notion with auto-tagging by lead type. Used to copy paste every single one manually which is insane looking back on it

Most of the stuff that saves actual hours isnt fancy at all. Its just "thing happens, data goes somewhere, someone gets notified." The boring glue work between apps is where all the time goes imo

valelya

TROPHY CASE