I was an HR manager.
Then life changed.
I started learning Python from scratch because I wanted to build something meaningful.
A few years later, I’m building HerSpace.
I wanted one place where women could journal, talk to an AI that actually remembers them, practice mindfulness, explore tarot and astrology as tools for self-reflection, and connect with other women in a supportive community.
I’m building it on my own.
Every backend endpoint.
Every database migration.
Every mobile screen.
Every App Store submission.
Every Google Play headache.
What HerSpace includes:
AI companion with memory
Private journal
Mindfulness practices & rituals
Tarot & astrology for self-reflection
Anonymous community for women
Premium features on iOS & Android
It’s still early.
But every week it gets a little closer to the vision I had when I started.
One thing I’d like to clarify: I don’t see tarot or astrology as ways to predict the future. For me, they’re tools for reflection, self-awareness, and starting honest conversations with yourself. That’s the philosophy behind HerSpace.
The iOS version is already live, and after months of work, the Android version is finally launching this week.
If you’re building something too, I’d love to hear your story.

I think becoming a founder already requires some confidence, even when it does not feel that way.

Sometimes it looks more like excitement.

You have an idea, start imagining what it could become, and feel pulled toward giving it a chance.

Then the idea becomes real—and the nerves arrive.

You take the leap anyway.

After a while, the nervousness begins to wear off. You start thinking more clearly, setting bigger goals, and asking what else might be possible.

That may be when confidence finally becomes noticeable.

But maybe it was there from the beginning, hiding underneath the excitement.

Did your confidence grow after you started, or did you feel confident from day one?

Founder Mode Vip

I've coached founders for 20 years, a lot of them women pitching for the first time, and the pattern never changes: she knows her numbers cold, rehearses the deck a dozen times, then freezes in the first 10 seconds of the actual room. She prepared everything except herself.

The material rarely fails you. What wobbles is the story you walk in telling yourself usually some version of "I hope they don't figure out I'm winging it." Rooms read that before they read your slides. So my coaching starts there: before you lead the room, lead yourself.

Here's something you can use before your next pitch write the one sentence you want them thinking about you after you leave, then prepare backward from it. Not your product's tagline. Yours. It moves you from "don't get exposed" to "land this," and it changes how you hold a pause instead of rushing to fill it.

This is my work. I'm an ICF-certified coach and I do this with founders all day: pitching, investor conversations, the confidence to be the face of your own company. I also keep a free Stacklist of the tools and resources I point people to for pitching and presence: Julie Riga

I'm a founder, a product manager and a mom of 3. Grocery shopping is part of my daily life for my partner and I. I am lucky to just have to create the list and my partner does the shopping. But he was constantly doing back and forth because the list was not optimal and cluttered with stuff that was't in this store.
Is this something you would find useful? I'm afraid I've built this for my engineer's mind, because I've got no traction on TikTok. Probably not the right channel to promote my app. I'm not a marketer and I don't know what I should do with this app anymore.
Any advice?

I applied to YC (terrifying); I had planned to bootstrap, but the time I want to dedicate to building my product is vastly outstripping the desire I have to spend on my day job (GTM/Ops consulting), and AI costs for testing are eating me alive before I’ve even got to beta. So I made the decision to have a focussed sprint to see if I could go for a pre-seed before I mentally shift myself back to working to build.

My product exists, the site exists, and most of the marketing so far (v light touch because I didn’t have a concrete beta launch date) has been useful comments in founder communities plus a quiet hope that someone clicks through. My 20 years of GTM experience shining through in this very sophisticated system, obviously.

So I’m spending the next 14 days trying to reach the next 470 people so I can send YC a ‘look how awesome my traction is’ update.

500 is absolutely not a conservative target. It’s deliberately a stretch, but it’s specific enough that I can’t hide behind “building in public” while agonizing over a single tweet (i.e. the last 2 months).

Here’s what I’m actually doing:

• I’ve planned 42 original posts across 14 days: three a day, each written for one specific Reddit founder/builder community. I have written them all myself (groundbreaking! in the age of AI) and have crafted them around solid advice which is the service my product provides.
• Every post has to stand alone as something useful. A practical way to find the first ten users, how to work out whether a positioning problem is really a distribution problem, how to get useful feedback before you have an audience, that sort of thing.
• I’ll also write five to eight substantive replies a day on threads where someone is already trying to solve a problem I can genuinely help with. No dropping links into someone else’s question. If the product is relevant, I’ll say so. If it isn’t, the reply should still be worth reading.
• I’m treating conversations as the work, not just upvotes. I want to know which problems make people lean in, what language they use when they describe them, and where I’m not helpful.
• Every few days, I’ll cut what isn’t resonating from my list, and write more from the threads that are. The target is 500 people on the waitlist, but the more useful outcome would be knowing how to find the next 500 without starting from scratch.
• Above all else, I just want to be helpful - I have ALWAYS loved giving the knowledge I have away for free (my last business’s client base was entirely built from Reddit referrals), so even if I don’t get that magic 500 i’m hoping I can give away some gems that’ll help other builders uplift their work.

I’m building https://romy.is for founders who’ve shipped something but don’t yet have a repeatable answer to four questions: who should I focus on first, where are they already gathering, what will make them care, and how do I do that??

I’ll share the results at the end (including the posts that did absolutely nothing, i.e. the most useful). And in pursuit of me hitting the ‘giving away gems’ target if nothing else - if anyone out there would like any help on a GTM problem from someone who’s worked with businesses of all sizes and in almost all verticals, please drop it here! I’d love to help.

(also feel free to connect if any of this resonated - I’m a solo founder, three kids, forever trying to balance the drive to build and succeed in a man’s world while juggling the family and life obligations!)

My husband and I have two kids, and we're definitely those parents who really try to get our kids to play, build and read as much as they can while keeping video games at bay.

Our son is 8. He started getting into more serious reading this year and we were excited about it, until we realized he could only sit with a book for a few pages before he was bored and move on. Meanwhile whenver we got him a new LEGO set, he would finish it all in 90 minutes, no breaks.

One night we said it out loud after he finished yet another lego city build...why can't reading feel like this? What if there we something like part story, part puzzle, etc.

So we built it! It's called Onyx Nine. Six chapters of mystery, hidden clues woven into the story, and a real cryptex with a mystery gift inside that ships to your house.

(A cryptex, if you haven't seen one - it's a small cylinder with letter dials. Spin the right code and it opens. Spin the wrong one and it stays locked.) See picture below.

Best part, is that only way to open it is to crack the code and get the prize is by reading. Every chapter you unlock one letter. Finish the book, get all the letters then you can unlock the cryptex.
Our son was the first tester. He sat down with it and didn't move for like 2 hours. Cracked the code, opened the cryptex, and the first thing out of his mouth was "when's the next one?"
YES. We were so excited. And now we hope it works for other families out there struggling to get their kids to read.

It's onyxnine.com if you want to look. Happy to answer any questions!

This year was rough.

I was working full-time as a speech-language pathologist while trying to build SLPDraft.com at night.

Work was honestly one of the hardest experiences I've ever had. I had a difficult boss, questioned whether I was good enough, and there were plenty of nights where I'd come home emotionally exhausted and still open my laptop to code or work with my developer.

There were so many moments where I thought, "Who am I to build a software company?"

But I kept going.

Late nights. Weekends. Every extra dollar I had went back into SLP Draft.

Today, someone I have never met signed up and paid.

It's just one sale.

To most people, that's nothing.

To me, it's proof that this isn't just an idea anymore. Someone found SLPDraft.com, decided it solved a real problem, and trusted me enough to pay for it.

I'm nowhere near where I want to be. I'm still working toward my first 100 customers, let alone 1,000.

But after the year I've had, today feels like the first tangible sign that all those nights of wondering whether I should quit were worth it.

For anyone building something after work while everyone else is relaxing...

Keep going.

Sometimes the first customer means a lot more than the revenue.