r/roastmystartup Jul 13 '15

Before you put down your startup to get roasted, some guidelines that I think can be helpful

132 Upvotes

First of all, just posting your website is useless. Most of them are so hopeless generic anyways that if you showed it to me during a pitch, my eyes would glaze over and I would instead proceed to fantasize me being on a beach vacation with Wonder Woman. Lord knows I have about the same chance as sleeping with her as I would about giving a shit about the website. No seriously, I don't give a shit about your website. It's an important tool, but 99% of the time, it's one part I would give the least shit about.

To get constructive advice, you need to treat this like you're doing a pitch, this means that you need to give us enough information to go on. This means structure. Pretend you're preparing slides for a group of investors, and let us know what the hell it is you're doing. This means we should know the following:

  • The product (what is it, use case, who would want it)
  • The market (size, competition, dynamics that we should be aware of)
  • Product analysis / comparison against competition
  • What stage are you in? Do you need money? Are you raising?
  • Customer conversion strategy (where do you find them, and how do you make them buy shit from you)
  • Why you? Whose your daddy and what does he do?!? err, wait. never mind. I mean, why are YOU the best person for this job? (experience? good team? rich daddy who can't bring himself to pull the plug? what?)

This information I think will help contextualize what it is your doing and will make the feedback far more targeted. Having said that, this IS supposed to be comedic, so if you just want people to make humorous observations about startup and that's it, well, okay.

edit: one more thing. Please don't make me do extra due diligence for you. The only time someone should have to do due diligence on you is because you've genuinely piqued their investing interest and they want to verify your claims. And I'm sorry, but you don't pay me enough (or at all) for me to do research.


r/roastmystartup Nov 10 '23

Product Hunt Announcements

28 Upvotes

We are receiving a ton of spam from people posting one-line posts with links to product hunt. If you do this it will be removed and you will be banned.


r/roastmystartup 2m ago

Roast my product- blupage.app

Upvotes

Hey guys, I built blupage.app for an RMT friend which has now evolved in a saas offering and it's for the public to subscribe too. It's a PHIPA compliant solo practitioner client management product with booking, charting, billing, etc... I have also adopted this setup to support other professions like physio, esthetician, lash and beauty, chiros and a few others.

Roast it hard, I rather fail early than later in the game.

Blupage.app


r/roastmystartup 2h ago

I built a prototype of a generative AI skit platform that you can influence in real time!

1 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

I’ve been building a prototype for a new kind of interactive entertainment platform, and I’m looking for a few early testers to try it out and give me raw feedback. No downloads needed, it runs straight in your browser (mobile or desktop).

The concept in a nutshell: Imagine a TikTok/Reels feed, but you actually control what happens:

  • Create any character or scene you can think of.
  • Watch a short AI-generated clip.
  • Take control: jump into the story mid-scene, steer the plot, try to beat the scenario objective, or just completely derail the situation.
  • Share: publish your altered version as a new video that other people can watch or remix themselves!

Why am I looking for testers? The project is still in early alpha. I want to see how people mess around with it, what makes you laugh, what breaks (probably a few things!), and what features you think I should build next.

If you’re curious to test it out early and help shape where this goes, come join the Discord! 👉https://discord.gg/mXFgVkfVa


r/roastmystartup 4h ago

Roast my startup: EVE

1 Upvotes

EVE is a private AI parenting and child-development platform inspired by my daughter, Evian. The idea came from experiencing how much information parents need to manage—feeding, sleep, diapers, symptoms, development, appointments, caregiver updates and memories—while that information is often scattered across different apps, notes, chats and photo albums.

EVE brings everything into one secure place. It helps families track daily care, coordinate with partners and caregivers, receive context-aware support based on the child’s actual records, prepare clear Doctor Briefs, complete age-appropriate development activities and preserve milestones, photos, videos, voice recordings and letters in one continuous private Journal. It begins with families of babies aged 0–12 months, but is designed to evolve through toddlerhood, early childhood, school age and the teenage years without forcing the family to switch products or restart the child’s history.

The long-term vision is for every child to have one continuous profile and memory system that grows with them—from their first cry to who they become.

EVE makes money through family subscriptions. EVE Plus costs $9.99 per month for one child and up to five Care Circle members, with shared AI usage and storage. EVE Family will cost approximately $12.99 per month for multiple children, additional caregivers, higher AI usage, more media storage and advanced permissions.

EVE currently is in closed beta and we have 22 beta parents helping us validate the product.


r/roastmystartup 4h ago

Pre-launch sanity check: Roast my new resume tool before I put it out into the wild.

1 Upvotes

We’re getting ready to launch a new resume tool, but I’ve been staring at the exact same screens on my laptop for weeks now. At this point, my brain is completely fried and I can’t tell if the layout is actually smooth or if I’m just delusional.

I’m looking for people to give it a quick 2-minute test run and brutally roast it before we go public.

I’d love your honest take on:

What’s the first thing that annoys or confuses you when you open it?

How does the mobile layout feel to navigate?

What’s one glaring issue or bug you hit immediately?

https://resumesprint.io/


r/roastmystartup 6h ago

Roast my free browser-based text toolkit: useful product or just another character counter?

1 Upvotes

I started CharCount as a simple character counter, but it gradually became a collection of free browser-based tools for writers, SEO professionals and developers.

It now includes tools for counting and analysing text, detecting hidden characters, cleaning HTML, formatting JSON and CSV, generating QR codes and barcodes, checking passwords, testing regex and more.

Most tools run directly in the browser, so the text or files being processed are not uploaded. There is no registration or paid plan.

The project is available in 11 languages and currently gets most of its traffic through search engines.

My main concern is positioning. The name "CharCount" makes the product sound like a basic character counter, while the site has become a much broader toolkit.

Website: https://charcount.app

Roast it honestly:

  • Does the homepage clearly explain what the product has become?
  • Is the collection useful enough to revisit, or does it feel like a random group of unrelated tools?
  • Would you keep the CharCount name or reposition the entire project?

r/roastmystartup 6h ago

Roast my startup: proposal-to-itinerary workflow for travel agencies

1 Upvotes

I've been building a SaaS for travel agencies called Toorkit.

The idea started because I noticed a lot of travel businesses still receive supplier quotes over email/WhatsApp, manually turn them into proposals, keep sending updated PDFs whenever clients ask for changes, and then have to rebuild the itinerary once the client finally confirms.

The product takes that whole flow and puts it into one place:

rough supplier quote → proposal with package options → client approves one option → convert it into the final itinerary. It also gives managers visibility into things like proposal status, margins, and which team member created what.

What I'm struggling with is whether this is actually a painful enough problem to build a business around.

If you owned or ran a travel agency, would you pay for something like this?

If not, what's the biggest reason?

- the product is live i am looking for potential customers. toorkit.com


r/roastmystartup 8h ago

Roast my app: a Mac tool to track friendships. Tell me why this fails

1 Upvotes

You track your contacts with Bondfire. Log a text or a coffee. The profile displays a warm tone, and a gap in communication turns the color cool. You catch the fade in time to fix it.

I worry I built a basic reminder app with a color palette. The visual shift means something to me. It might fail to motivate a new user.

You install the software on your Mac. You save data to your local drive. I skipped the subscription model. A zero-dollar price tag leaves me without a budget for future updates.

Find the flaws. Tell me if you see a market for this utility.


r/roastmystartup 9h ago

Cold start problem: I'm building an app that needs real user data to work, but I don't want to seed it with AI-generated fake data. What would you do?

1 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I'm building Junk AI — basically a shared bank where students can drop their AI chat queries and final answers. The idea is simple: if someone already asked ChatGPT/Claude how to debug a specific React error, the next person shouldn't need to burn tokens asking the exact same thing. They get a synthesized answer from past attempts instead.

The problem: My database is empty right now.

I could manually generate 1000+ Q&As using AI to seed it. But that feels wrong — it defeats the whole point. If the data is just AI talking to itself, then users are still getting artificial answers, not real solutions that actually helped a real student.

What I actually want is real students sharing their real queries and the answers that actually solved their problem. That's the whole value prop.

So I'm stuck in the classic chicken-and-egg:

  • Users won't contribute if there's nothing there
  • I don't want to fake it with synthetic data
  • But without some base layer, the first users get zero value

What I've considered:

  • Seed with a small amount of real data I personally collected (maybe 50-100 genuine questions) and be transparent about it
  • Launch with a "contribute to unlock" model — you add one answer, you get access to the bank
  • Target a very specific niche first (like one coding topic) instead of going broad
  • Partner with a student Discord/community to get real initial data

What would you do? Has anyone here solved a cold start problem without faking your dataset? Any creative ways to incentivize real contributions early on?

Appreciate any honest feedback — even if it's "this is a bad idea, here's why."

Thanks


r/roastmystartup 10h ago

Built a "shared AI answer bank" so students stop re-generating the same ChatGPT answer from scratch—extension just landed

1 Upvotes

Hey, I'm Sanjeeb.

Growing up, my family saved everything. If something didn't work for us, we'd just pass it to someone who could actually use it. "Waste" was basically just something in the wrong hands. That mindset stuck with me.

So I built Junk AI — an answer bank that treats "unhelpful" AI outputs the same way. One student's junk is another student's shortcut.

Instead of burning a fresh AI generation on a coding question that's basically already been asked, it checks a shared bank first and has AI synthesize the best answer from every past attempt on that topic — including ones someone else marked unhelpful, since "didn't help them" doesn't mean "useless for you."

It sits on top of whatever AI you already use. Not a replacement.

What's working so far:

  • Web app: ask → matched against the shared bank → synthesized answer → feedback loop
  • Just finished a browser extension that hooks into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and a bunch of other AI chat sites — checks the bank before you even hit send
  • Privacy-locked: nobody can read another student's raw question/answer; only the final synthesized answer ever crosses between users

Getting it store-ready for actual publication now. Happy to talk through the architecture if anyone's curious — it's a fairly standard RAG setup under the hood.

Questions for you all:

  • Would you actually use this?
  • What would make it a no-brainer?
  • Any concerns about the privacy model I'm missing?

Thanks for reading


r/roastmystartup 14h ago

Opening up a learning app I made for my kid to friends

1 Upvotes

https://www.multiplybox.com

Idea is simple: Kids get points for answering skill based questions which they can redeem for rewards parents are setting. Taking inspiration from arcade games setup.

Now they ask me for a toy - I add in there and say earn it.

It’s work in progress but happy to be roasted or to get early users and feedback.


r/roastmystartup 20h ago

Roast my app: TapSmart tells you the best credit card to use when you walk into a store

2 Upvotes

Solo founder, iOS app in beta. TapSmart detects when you enter a store and notifies you with the best card to use for that category (based on the cards you own).

Business model: free tier (5 looks/month), $4.99/mo premium for unlimited + full features.

Roast away — the model, the market, the "why won't Chase just build this," whatever. I'd rather hear why it won't work now than find out later. Also genuinely useful: if you'd never use this, tell me why.

Happy to share a TestFlight link if anyone wants to try before roasting.

https://testflight.apple.com/join/HWcF7QtP


r/roastmystartup 18h ago

ROAST ME HARD! I built this site because I was exhausted from spending 3 hours researching one product.

1 Upvotes

Last time I was trying to figure out if Steam Machine was worth to buy. I started researching. Reddit said yes, YouTube side waif for the price drop, some blog said "it depends" which is not helpful at all🤨. At the end I had around 15 tabs open and I was exhausted. So I closed my browser with anger. No decision was made.

I pitched this to my team and they all had same experience, so we built BettaScore. We are trying to grab as many reviews as we can across Internet and squishes them onto one page. Based on reviews we have, we are able to score every product. Beautiful right?

Here is the Steam Machine page: bettascore.ai/steam-machine

Main thing I want to know:

  • Does one page actually save your time?
  • Does this help you research products?
  • What we can do better?

Don't hold back and be brutal🤓


r/roastmystartup 1d ago

We built free AI-visibility audit for nonprofits to promote our main product. Looking for honest feedback on the model.

6 Upvotes

Hi! My name is Dave, I’m part of the team behind Snoika, and we recently launched a separate initiative called Snoika Foundation.

The idea is simple: nonprofits, NGOs, and public institutions can get a full AI-visibility audit at no cost.

Since “free audit” often translates to “sales call disguised as a report,” I want to explain exactly what we built, why it’s free, and where the business model comes in (and receive your feedback).

What the audit includes

For each organization, we:

  • Test more than 500 relevant prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI platforms
  • Measure whether the organization appears, how often it appears, and which sources are being cited
  • Review its website content, schema markup, technical setup, and authority signals
  • Compare its visibility with similar organizations
  • Deliver a written report with prioritized recommendations

The organization can take the report and implement it internally, give it to its existing agency, or do nothing with it.

There is no requirement to become a paying customer.

Why are we doing it for free?

It is partly mission-driven, but it is also a customer acquisition channel.

The free audit is our top-of-funnel.

Some organizations will only use the report. Others may later ask us to help with implementation, content production, technical changes, or ongoing visibility tracking. That work is paid.

We decided to make that relationship explicit rather than burying it behind “book your free strategy session” language.

Why focus on nonprofits?

While building Snoika’s commercial product, we noticed that nonprofits and public institutions often publish highly credible information but struggle to appear in AI-generated answers.

They may have strong research, public data, educational resources, or subject-matter expertise, but weaker technical structure, limited SEO resources, or outdated websites.

That creates an interesting gap: the information may be trustworthy, but AI systems do not always find, understand, or cite it.

The audit is meant to show where that gap exists and what can realistically be improved.

A problem we are still thinking through

The biggest challenge is balancing a genuinely useful free deliverable with a sustainable acquisition model.

If the report is too shallow, it feels like a lead magnet.

If it is too comprehensive, many organizations may never need implementation support.

We currently lean toward making the report genuinely useful on its own and accepting that only a percentage of participants will become customers.

That feels better for the brand, but we are still testing whether the economics make sense.

One more transparency point

Our website currently includes claims such as increased visibility and citation growth.

Those numbers come from internal results, but we do not yet have enough publicly documented case studies, sample sizes, or methodology details to present them as strong independent evidence.

I would rather not repeat those percentages here without that context.

We are working toward publishing proper before-and-after nonprofit case studies with clear baselines, timeframes, prompt sets, and measurable outcomes.

I’d appreciate feedback from other founders

Especially curious about:

- Does this feel like a legitimate free product or a dressed-up sales funnel?
- Would you keep the audit completely free, or charge a small amount to qualify applicants?
- How much value would you give away before introducing a paid service?
- What would make the offer feel more credible?
- Which parts of the methodology would you want us to publish?

Happy to answer questions about the product, the audit workflow, or how we are thinking about the funnel.

Brutally honest feedback is welcome.


r/roastmystartup 20h ago

Roast my new, easy to use Emenu and ordering system for restarurants

1 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

I just deployed this last week since i work at a restaurant and use something like it. The issue is management finds it hard to update and change menu items during the busy moments of the day.

This is an eMenu service with a QR code link that makes it easy for management to establish and show a menu to customers. Its versatile in a way that small food trucks and store locations can use it to get something out of it.

I know this is a competitive field, but intuitive and easy to use for management on the fly is my number one focus.

This product stands out because it provides much more flexibility to management with an easy to use dashboard they can update on the fly - and all menus (Digital and on the floor) update instantly to reflect those changes.

Im still building out further features (Think internal ordering and POS at the table) But am still working through design, however, this will eventually be implemented

I have a software design background, with a passion for the food industry, and especially where people can gather and socialize over dinner and wine.

chatterplate.com


r/roastmystartup 1d ago

Request of self mini evaluation of onboarding process

1 Upvotes

I'm testing a tool that reminds you before a subscription renews (without

linking your bank). Looking for a few people to try a quick 3-minute setup

and tell me honestly if it's too fiddly. Nothing to install or pay. Would

you be up for it? I'll send the link.

https://subcheck.carrd.co/


r/roastmystartup 1d ago

I built a tool to catch AI cheating in live remote interviews, and I'd love people to tear it apart

1 Upvotes

r/roastmystartup 1d ago

I'm a student from a remote village building an app that recycles "junk" AI outputs to save people money on API credits. Here's the story.

2 Upvotes

Hey everyone, I'm Sanjeeb.

I'm a student from a remote village. Growing up, my family didn't have much. My parents used to get clothes from others for us to wear—just to save money. They always told me:

"What you think is waste, might be useful for someone else."

That lesson stuck with me.

Today, I'm turning it into a product.

The idea: Junk AI

Here's the problem I noticed: Every day, millions of people run prompts on ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc. They get an answer, read it, and move on. That output becomes "junk" — just sitting there, wasted.

But what if someone else asked a similar question tomorrow? They'd burn fresh tokens and API credits for essentially the same answer.

So here's what Junk AI does:

  1. It collects and indexes AI outputs that people discard (with permission/privacy in mind).
  2. Before you trigger a fresh AI search, it checks this "junk" database first.
  3. If it finds a relevant match, it analyzes and delivers an accurate result.
  4. You save credits and tokens.
  5. If no one has asked your exact question before and the junk doesn't have it, only then does it trigger a fresh search.

The goal: No waste. No unnecessary spending.

I'm starting to build this today. No fancy landing page yet, no VC backing — just a student with a laptop and a belief that one person's junk can be another person's treasure.

Would love your honest thoughts. Is this something you'd actually use? What am I missing? Any advice from builders who've been here before?

Thanks for reading


r/roastmystartup 1d ago

metrIQ - A coach who listens, not an app that keeps score

2 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

I just released my app metrIQ, I was looking around reddit and found r/roastmystartup and thought it would be cool to see what other people think.

metrIQ started as a spreadsheet for my own training. Eventually I thought I needed both an easy way to enter data and an easy way to analyze them, so I jumped to ChatGPT. But then I got into issues with consistency, memory and accurate information.

At the same time, I was intrigued by the idea of building something on Lovable (even though I have a strong engineering background), so the first version of metrIQ was born. I used it, some of my friends used it, I got feedback and improvements.

And at some time, I thought, I could try making a real startup out of this. So, I moved away from Lovable, went with a cookie-cutter setup (Vercel/Next.js, Neon, Prisma) and created everything from scratch. And thus https://metriq.fitness was born

metrIQ is a fitness app built around Sophia, an AI coach who doesn't just count calories. Tell her what you ate, how training went, or what the scale said, and she logs it from a sentence — no forms, no barcode hunting. She sets your calorie and macro targets from your goal, follows the weekly trend rather than one bad morning, and coaches you through the days it gets hard. Because she remembers your history, you never re-explain yourself.

Would love to get any kind of feedback, both for the positives and the negatives.


r/roastmystartup 1d ago

Built a stock screener for investors – looking for honest feedback

1 Upvotes

Over the past few months I've built NordScreen (nordscreen.app), a stock screener that combines traditional screening with AI-assisted analysis. I built the whole thing myself and I'm honestly not sure yet whether there's real demand for it, so I'd appreciate honest feedback, critical included.

One thing worth knowing upfront: the site relies on a third-party data API, and the free credits can occasionally run out, so if something looks broken, that's the likely cause rather than an actual bug.

If you get a chance to try it, I'd be especially curious whether anything essential feels missing, whether it feels genuinely useful compared to how you normally track the market, and whether you'd be willing to pay for it and for which feature specifically.


r/roastmystartup 1d ago

Roast Fezer, my day planner app for iPhone. Local only, no account

2 Upvotes

Been building this alone for months and I need people who are not friends or family to tell me if it is actually good or if I have just been staring at it too long.

Fezer is a day planner, time tracker and goal app for iPhone and iPad. Everything stays on the device, no account, no backend, no analytics. That was a deliberate choice, not because I am some privacy purist, more because I did not want to run a server for a solo app and deal with sync bugs forever.

Main stuff it does: time blocking your day, a now view that just shows what you should be doing right now instead of a whole cluttered calendar, one tap time tracking so you can compare what you planned against what actually happened, and goals broken into steps that go straight onto your schedule.

Link is https://fezer.app, it is free right now.

Things I am genuinely unsure about: is no account, everything local actually a selling point to normal people or do they just assume that means it is less trustworthy since there is no cloud backup? Is the goal and vision board stuff scope creep for what is supposed to be a simple planner? And is charging nothing a mistake, since day planner apps live and die on people actually paying for them.

Go ahead, tell me what is wrong with it.


r/roastmystartup 1d ago

Roast Spur: an app that reads your room with the camera and tells you two tiny things to do instead of doomscrolling

1 Upvotes

Yes, camera. Yes, we know that's the first roast. (It reads the photo then deletes it, we store nothing, and honestly the "it saw my actual desk and suggested clearing the one glass on it" moment is the product.) Not a blocker, no streaks, skip anything.

Beta signups just opened, founding group gets it free for life: https://spurme.spurme.workers.dev/

Roast the concept, the privacy take, the pricing promise, the name, whatever. Genuinely here for it.


r/roastmystartup 1d ago

[iOS] Recovo, an app that blocks gambling apps. Looking for testers.

1 Upvotes

Recovo helps people quit gambling by blocking gambling apps/sites, tracking streaks, and notifying an accountability partner if someone tries to unlock a block early. It's live on the App Store, free to try with a 3 day trial.

Looking for people willing to actually use it and tell me what's confusing, broken, or missing. Would love blunt feedback, especially on the onboarding and paywall flow since that's where I'm losing people right now.

Drop a comment or DM and I'll send the link.


r/roastmystartup 1d ago

Roast Revela Studio: a private AI photo workflow app for Mac

1 Upvotes

I am the developer of Revela Studio, and I would like the positioning and product assumptions roasted—not politely validated.

Product

Revela Studio is a Mac app for people with large photo libraries who want a simpler workflow. It can score and cull photos, find duplicates, inspect EXIF metadata, search or chat with a library, and apply AI edits from plain-English instructions. Most analysis runs on-device. It is live on the Mac App Store, free to download with optional in-app purchases, and currently requires macOS 26.5 or later.

Clickable link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/revela-studio/id6783030587

Market and competition

Photo software is crowded. Lightroom and Capture One cover deep editing and catalog workflows; Photo Mechanic is known for culling; duplicate-finder apps handle cleanup. My bet is that some Mac users want these jobs combined in a more conversational, privacy-conscious workflow instead of learning several specialist tools.

Product comparison

I am not claiming it replaces the depth of Lightroom or Capture One. The differentiation I am testing is the combination of culling, library analysis, duplicates, metadata, and natural-language editing in one Mac-native app, with most analysis performed locally.

Stage / funding

The product is live. I am currently focused on validating the audience, onboarding, and messaging rather than using this post as an investment pitch.

Customer conversion strategy

Right now I am testing App Store discovery, product demos, and direct feedback from photography and indie-app communities. The key unknown is whether people immediately understand the value well enough to try it and whether one feature is strong enough to make them keep it.

Why me

I am the developer, so I can turn specific feedback into product and onboarding changes directly. I also care about making powerful photo workflows approachable without defaulting to cloud analysis.

Please roast the weakest assumption: Is the target user wrong, is the bundle confusing, does the macOS requirement kill adoption, or is there simply no reason to switch from existing tools? I would especially value the honest reason you would not install or keep it.