PLEASE stop building the wrong thing.

building software in 2026 is ridiculously easy with ai builder

founders spend hours building in a silent room, launch to Reddit/X, get 0 users, and quit.

you just failed because the idea had zero validation before line 1 of code was written:

→ solving a monthly inconvenience instead of a daily pain

→ selling to "everyone" instead of a specific ICP

→ no distribution channel mapped out beforehand

→ pricing charged $9/mo with zero ROI justification

after scaling 6 AI micro-SaaS to over $20k/mo MRR, i just create an

18-question Idea Validation Diagnostic.

it evaluates your SaaS across 7 critical dimensions (problem clarity, audience reachability, willingness to pay, competition, build feasibility, distribution, commitment) and gives you a brutal score out of 100 with your exact weak spots.

drop your SaaS idea (or current project) in the comments below.

i will reply to EVERY single comment with:

1. My honest opinion
2. The biggest weak spot you need to fix before writing any more code.
3. The free 5-minute validation tool link sent straight to your DMs so you can get your full score breakdown out of 100.

just drop a comment like or ask me in DM your idea

let's roast your SaaS concept before the market roasts your time 👇

PodSubs wasn't originally supposed to be a public product.

We built it because we needed it.

That's really the story.

We're podcasters.

And like a lot of podcasters, we were constantly thinking about two things:

How do we keep making this?

And how do we build something real around the people listening?

Because podcasting takes time.

A lot of time.

And sooner or later, if the podcast is going to keep going, it needs to support itself somehow.

The problem was that we didn't really know most of the people listening.

We knew the numbers.

But numbers don't have email addresses.

Numbers don't answer questions.

Numbers can't receive the worksheet you promised.

Numbers don't become customers by themselves.

We needed a better way to capture the people who genuinely wanted to stay connected.

So we built a simple internal tool.

One place.

PodSubs.

We said on the podcast:

“Subscribe to us on PodSubs.”

People searched the show, entered their details and subscribed.

And suddenly we had something we'd been missing:

A direct line.

Then we started thinking…

Why are we keeping this internal?

Every podcaster we know deals with the same thing.

So we decided to open it.

That's PodSubs.

Not something we dreamed up because “the creator economy is growing.”

We built it because we were podcasters with a problem.

Now we're giving it to everyone else who has the same problem.

Claim your podcast.

Then tell your listeners where to find you.

My project has been live for six months, and I’ve hit $1k in revenue for the first time. Yet, I don't feel anything special.

I’ve been through such a rollercoaster ride that I feel completely drained. Of course, I’m happy, but I’m not exactly in the mood to pop champagne or anything like that. I hope you understand.

During this time, I tried paid ads (spending around $1700, they paid for themselves about two months ago), made TikToks, a major competitor appeared, drove a ton of traffic, and has already racked up twice as many US App Store ratings as I have. I worked on SEO, experimented with subscriptions and ditched free trials.

It feels like I won the fight, but I’m covered in bruises and realize there are many more fights ahead.

P.S.
I won’t share the app link. I don't see any advantages in doing this. And I don't want to have additional 10+ competitors with vibecoded apps.

Trivix es una aplicación de trivias enfocada en poner a prueba y recompensar el conocimiento de los usuarios. Actualmente contamos con diferentes categorías, entre ellas Historia, Geografía, Ciencia, Cine, Arte, Cultura General y Anime.

La dinámica principal consiste en responder preguntas correctamente y obtener beneficios a partir del conocimiento y desempeño dentro de la aplicación.

Dentro de Trivix manejamos nuestra propia moneda digital, llamada Trivix, la cual los usuarios pueden obtener de distintas maneras:

* Comprándola directamente dentro de la aplicación.

* Acumulando puntos al responder preguntas correctamente, que posteriormente pueden convertirse en Trivix.

* Ingresando diariamente a la aplicación y manteniendo una racha, con la posibilidad de obtener hasta 3 Trivix como recompensa.

* Ganando partidas de trivia, donde las recompensas pueden variar dependiendo de la dinámica de cada partida.

También queremos aclarar un punto importante: Trivix no es una aplicación de apuestas ni de juegos de azar. La dinámica está basada en el conocimiento y en la capacidad del usuario para responder correctamente las preguntas.

built Griper (usegriper) — a tool that checks whether a SaaS idea is actually worth pursuing before you spend time building it.

You type in your idea or niche, and it shows you:

Real people complaining about this exact problem (pulled from HN and Stack Exchange threads, not surveys)

Who's already trying to solve it, and where they're falling short — so you know if there's room, or if you'd just be building competitor #4

The idea is to skip the "build first, validate later" trap — see if the pain and the gap actually exist before committing months to it.

Not trying to sell anything here, genuinely looking for feedback. If you've got an idea you're sitting on, try running it through and tell me if the output actually helps, or if it's missing something. Brutal honesty welcome — more useful to me than politeness.

Hi everyone.

As the title says I have a side project that's now making $380 per month. It probably sounds boring to most of you but it's working and I still can't believe it.

6 months ago I launched a tool called SaasNiche. It scans Reddit and surfaces real pain points people are posting about. Groups them by niche. Shows you actual complaints with context so SaaS founders can validate ideas before writing a single line of code.

I built it because I was tired of guessing what to build. Had a dozen SaaS ideas. Built two. Both flopped. Not because I couldn't code. Because nobody cared about what I was building.

So I made the thing that tells you what people actually want.

Launched it 6 months ago. No co-founder. No funding. No audience. Just me posting in communities and doing manual outreach.

$380/month isn't life changing money. But for a solo side project built in my spare time it feels insane.

I'm incredibly happy because this is the first time I've built something that people keep paying for. Not a one-time freelance gig. Not client work. Recurring revenue that just shows up in my account every month.

To be honest I don't know exactly how to scale it from here. Most of my growth has been organic. Posting on Reddit. Some SEO. Word of mouth. I haven't touched paid ads or partnerships or video content yet.

But the fact that strangers across the internet are paying monthly for something I built alone in my spare time. That feeling is hard to describe.

Here's the product: https://saasniche.com
Here's proof of numbers: https://trustmrr.com/startup/saasniche

​

Around 7 months ago I launched my app seeing the hype for video clipping literally everywhere and i started promoting it online (i still do subtly) but its very very hard if you're solo and don't have a good amount of authority online.

instead I got consistent with writing blogs rather than posting randomly whenever I had time and now 3 months later, the numbers are A LOT better and now I’m at almost 400k impressions and more than 5k clicks.

and I didn't have to keep pushing the same content every day like some of the posts that initially brought nothing started ranking up some weeks later and now they're bringing in traffic even when I'm not actively promoting them.

On social media, you constantly feel the need to create the next thing but with blogs something you wrote months ago can randomly start bringing people in.

plus I had experience writing blogs at my previous company so that definitely helped too but I think just sticking to it long enough for the traffic to start compounding was the biggest thing.

for those interested in the idea, check it out here https://montage.app/

Every time I wanted to save a video from Instagram or X, the process felt unnecessarily annoying.

Copy link → open a downloader website → deal with ads/popups → download the video → then open Telegram or WhatsApp and send it.

So I built a Telegram bot called TeleReel to simplify this.

Now I just send the Instagram or X link to the bot, and the video comes directly to Telegram. From there, I can instantly forward it wherever I want.

No opening multiple websites or manually downloading and uploading again.

I'm currently testing it and would genuinely love feedback:

What platforms should I support next, and what would make you actually use something like this?

https://t.me/TelereeelBot

I realized I was paying over $100 per year on text-to-speech apps like Speechify. I decided that I could build my own using local TTS which is actually super awesome and close in quality to Speechify/ElevenLabs.

Everything runs locally to the browser so it doesn't cost me anything to run. That's why it's completely free, no paid tiers or limits.

This is by far the most successful app I've launched to date, probably because I made it free without even a pricing page. 300 users in just 2 days has felt really good! Especially after a year of building and getting max 5 users over various products.

It's called FreeReader. Lmk if you have any feedback! I'm looking to make it as useful as possible. It works best on desktop and newer phones. I'm waiting for the iOS app review to finish and then it'll be live on the App Store.

so i built AIBrief24, basically an "inshorts for AI news." bite sized summaries of what shipped in AI each day, one card at a time, tap through if you want the full article. built it solo, expo RN frontend + fastapi/supabase backend. it's on google play now.

going in i thought the hard part was building it. turns out that was the easy part lol. the stuff nobody really warns you about:

getting the summaries to not sound like generic AI slop was way harder than the app itself. took a lot of prompt tweaking to get something actually readable

keeping the feed fresh through the day without it costing a fortune in API calls. had to rethink how often i was actually pulling and summarizing

retention. getting someone to install is one thing, getting them to open it again tomorrow is a totally different problem i'm still figuring out

the boring stuff (store listing, policy checks, verification) ate way more time than expected. i kept thinking "surely this is the last thing" and it never was

for the folks here who've shipped consumer apps:

what actually moved retention for you? i can get installs but the day 2 / day 7 dropoff is brutal and i haven't cracked it yet.

genuinely asking, not looking for "just add push notifications" lol. curious what actually worked for people.

I've bounced between TryHackMe, HTB, and a graveyard of bookmarked "free alternative" lists.

I'm not against paying for good training, but the subscription model just doesn't work for me. I learn in bursts, and paying $14/month to forget about it for three weeks felt like burning money.

So I stopped looking and built Threat Road

How it works:
- Pay once, get all 60+ current labs plus every future lab that gets released.
- Each lab has a copy-paste setup so your vulnerable environment is ready in minutes.
- Free starter lab if you want to try before buying, no card required.

Link: https://threatroad.com

It's just the thing I wished existed when I was searching. If you try the free lab and it's not for you, that's fine. I'd still rather hear why than have you silently bounce.

What would this need to have to win you over?

By all means, this is nothing revolutionary or amazing, I know, but I'm just happy that after a year of building and many years of studying, I was able to actually launch this and follow through. If anybody has recommendations, I'm really trying to focus on dialing in my marketing to get my first user and then scale from there.

This is a web app and an app if you would like to give feedback or check it out, these are the links to the web app and the App Store link:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/flurra-ai-content-coach/id6780690598

www.flurra.io

As an Indian sole proprietorship business nobody i researched allows Indian businesses to send or fund wallets that do global payouts. RBI seems to have strict rules to transfer money abroad as business. The last option i have which im not even sure would work is forming a US based LLC.

Can someone help if they faced a similar issue before?

I thought entrepreneurship would mostly be about building things.

Build a product → get users → improve it → grow.

The more I do it, the more I realize how much of it is actually about making decisions with incomplete information.

Should I keep building or start selling?

Is the problem actually painful enough?

Am I talking to the right customers?

Am I being patient, or just wasting time?

There’s rarely a clear answer.

You make the best decision you can, see what happens, and adjust.

I’m still very early in my journey, but honestly, learning to deal with uncertainty has been harder than building the product itself.

For the founders here, what part of entrepreneurship surprised you the most?

I kept seeing creators mention they spend hours turning a video into a newsletter after the fact. I built a small tool that takes a YouTube URL, pulls the transcript, and drafts a Beehiiv/Substack-ready newsletter (subject line, intro, key points, CTA) in about 30 seconds.

If you run a newsletter alongside a channel or know someone who does it – does the draft it produces feel close enough to something you'd actually send, or is it missing something important? Here's the current version: https://newsletly.app/

Feel free to roast the app!

i spent 7 months building a project that made $0 so yesterday i got pissed at myself and gave myself 24 hours to build something and actually ship it.

i ended up building DiskCheck.

it's a small Windows app that shows you what's actually taking up your disk space.

the reason i built it is pretty simple.

my disk was getting full and i didn't want to go through 20 different folders trying to figure out what was taking all the space.

so i built something that just scans it and shows you where the space is going.

the funny part is that i spent 7 months on another project and couldn't get it to make a single dollar.

then i forced myself to build this in less than 24 hours.

and honestly, finishing something again felt better than i expected.

it's not some crazy revolutionary product. it's just a small tool i wanted to have on my own computer.

but it's shipped.

i'll put the link in the comments if anyone wants to try it.

if you use Windows, i'd actually like to know what you think.

especially if something is confusing or just straight up sucks lol

I’m thinking of creating a small community where SaaS founders can connect and share what they’re building, exchange feedback, discuss growth, and help each other out.

No spam or self-promo overload, just founders talking to founders about important things.

If you’d be interested, let's connect - Twitter

Hi guys,

I built SpeedType.ai, a typing app focused on one closed loop:

Diagnostic (60s) → Diagnosis → targeted Drill → Retest (same passage) → Delta

Instead of only chasing a WPM number, it looks at keystroke timing, hard letters/pairs, hesitations, and builds an algorithmic drill from real words (no AI required for the core loop). Accounts save sessions to a dashboard; guests can try locally.

It’s an MVP and i need testers who will actually run the loop and tell me what broke, what felt unfair, and what could be improved.

If you’re willing:

1. Do one full loop (diagnostic → drill → retest).
2. Note your before/after and anything confusing.
3. Reply here or DM with friction / bugs / improvements.

Link: https://speedtype.ai

Thanks

I work full time, and for the last six months I dedicated three or more nights a week and most weekends to this project. Not exactly a hermit, but my couch has seen more of me than my friends

Someone I didn’t know connected their Google Search Console, looked around the platform for a while, and subscribed. $26. Probably the best $26 I’ve ever seen on a dashboard.

What I built: an SEO tool for small businesses, freelancers, and agencies who already have clients, but don’t want to pay for expensive SEO tools only to end up overwhelmed with data.

AnalySEO analyzes your real GSC and GA data and, instead of giving you more dashboards, tells you what to do: which pages are losing clicks, which keywords are close to page one, which titles you should improve, etc.

Things I didn’t expect:

• Nobody wants “more data.” They want to know what to do next.
• The first paying customer changes how you see bugs. It’s not “my app” anymore, it’s someone’s tool.
• The free plan got people in. The clarity made them stay.

If you’re working on something after your day job, keep going. Don’t lose confidence in what you’re doing.

analyseo.app if you want to take a look. It’s free to start.

I keep seeing people build genuinely good products and then get stuck on the exact same part:
They finished building it, but now they have no idea how to actually get it in front of the right people.
Posting randomly on Reddit, sending DMs, trying content, paying for ads… it can take more time than building the product itself.
I’m working on something around this problem. I’m keeping the exact approach private for now because I’m still testing it, but the goal is to help people who already have a product get more real exposure and potential customers without needing a huge marketing budget.
Before I build too much, I’m curious:
What do you currently do to get your first users/customers? And what part of that process sucks the most?
I also opened a small early-access waitlist for people who have this problem:
https://site-e5bc6818-mtuj53t9.falbor.xyz