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Saas
77 tweets
This weekend, a Medium article called "I Reverse-Engineered 200 AI Startups. 146 Are Selling You Repackaged ChatGPT and Claude with New UI" made it to the front page of Hacker News. The author found that out of 200 AI startups, "73% are running third-party APIs with extra steps." The author also found that at least one company was putting a 1000x markup on model API costs. We discuss at length:
Today, Ramp raised another $300M at a $32B valuation. In the past year our revenue has doubled to over $1B, growing 10x faster than the median public SaaS. We all know money talks — we're teaching it to think. Getting big no longer means getting slow.
We're looking for a Head of Content at @typefully Think @leerob for Cursor or @peduarte for Raycast – someone who deeply gets product, growth, and what makes a product company stand out. Ideally already creating great content using Typefully. I know this person is out there, but how do I find them? Please materialize yourself in my replies
We're releasing a visual agent & workflow builder Fully open source Built on http://useworkflow.dev Outputs "𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚔𝚏𝚕𝚘𝚠" code Supports AI "text to workflow" Powered by @aisdk & AI Elements Sample integrations (@resend, @linear, @slack) Clone & ship your own product, or embed AI workflow building capabilities into existing ones. Demo: http://workflow-builder.dev Deploy: http://vercel.com/templates/ai/workflow-builder…
if you're a founder read this most companies can get to $1M ARR with only two channels the channels you should pick from are - paid ads - cold email - cold DMs - yt influencer marketing + affiliate the channels you should not pick from are - SEO - email newsletter - organic social - video podcast why you need revenue tomorrow, list one makes that happen list two makes revenue happen in the future, they are long term investments that pay off 12 months from now this is the most common mistake i see founders make the framework to think about this with is how you think about personal finance when you're young, 80% of resources go to surviving and 20% to investment when you're old, 80% goes to investment and 20% to surviving apply this same idea to your young company gl hf
Next up… Slide Decks! Turn your sources into a detailed deck for reading OR a set of presentation-ready slides. They are fully customizable, so you can tailor them to any audience, level, and style. Officially rolling out to Pro users now (free users in the coming weeks)!
Upload a meeting transcript to NotebookLM and get it to turn it into a slide deck using Nano Banana Pro. Absolutely insane.
Bad ideas vs good ideas Habit tracker Gut health tracker to help people fix their health issues Todo list Auto generated checklists for lawyers from a client file Link in bio Productized service to build websites for churches Directory of tools for indie hackers Directory of in-home hairdressers sorted by city The best CRM ever Browser extension to automatically create an entry to the biggest CRM on the market from a LinkedIn profile, an X account, an email etc Social media scheduler Content planner with AI creation for Vtubers Super AI chatbots AI assistant trained on Shopify documentation for e-commerce support teams Pomodoro timer Time tracking app that auto generates invoices for freelance translators Job board for devs Reverse job board for godo developers All of those are 100% random ideas, but they’re all niched, with a specific target, easy distribution, and an existing market. Coaching sessions starts at $300/h
This man dropped out of a no-name college in India to be a software engineer and by 33, worked his way up to being CEO of a $100M+ company in New York. Here's the never-before-shared incredibly inspirational story of Ershad Kunnakkadan: > be middle class kid in random state school in Kerala, India > get really into computers > senior hands you Ubuntu 8.04 CD, whole new world > starts contributing to SMC (a malayalam computing group) > gets into blogging cause SMC seniors are into it > go to no-name small private college in Kerala > spend more time in terminals than classrooms > shell scripting contests, Linux admin, security, virus cleaning, bots, paper presentations > doesnt see a point to college exams > drops out after 2nd year, promises family "I will earn a degree somehow" > lands internship at small software co > grows into being an architect > found security bugs in Github and Prezi > reads "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" and the "The Google Story", dreamt of being in the US one day > does Google Summer of Code > earns a degree remotely from Bharathiar University > gets remote job at BigBinary > moves back to Kochi to be near family > involved in local free software circles and workshops, events, meetups > building a quiet dense body of work over loud personal brand > gets introduced to Gumroad as a consultant first > joins Gumroad as a senior engineer > gets married > moves to Abu Dhabi to be closer to wife's family > does the boring crucial stuff - scalability, security, payouts, infra > grows to being a staff software engineer at Gumroad > support millions of users and $1B+ in creator earnings > just focusses on self-improvement > never once thinks about promotion > moves to New York City on an O-1 visa > Gumroad looking for a new CEO > board looks around and its clear who is best fit for the job > become CEO of a $100M+ gmv business I just love the story of Ershad. No brands, no pedigree, no MBA, no loudness. When I asked him the quality that got him here, he said "reliability". A truly kind, quiet and generous person. Who loves computers. Dropping out when you're rich is trendy in America, but to see someone Indian drop out and work their way up into the top role is pure inspiration. Don't worry if you don't have all the accolades and ornaments you see in people who achieve your dreams. Be a good person, and be reliable.
JUST IN: Report shows OpenAI needs to raise at least $207 billion by 2030 to stay in business, but they will still be losing money if they do so.
I remember when I was stuck with MongoDB, and 100M analytics events in the entire database made everything super slow, even with indexes. Now DataFast processes ~150M events per month, and my new database TinyBird loads analytics in seconds. I hate changing my tech stack, but boy, I'm happy with this one.
Engineers have Cursor. Writers have ChatGPT. FINALLY there’s an AI platform for marketers. Introducing Mopac Software.
Vibe Coding Will Kill SaaS: " In a year or two; you'll get to a place where a lot of the current organizational tools that companies are using, you could build your own version. It would make so much more sense to you as a buyer. The code will be yours, the data will be us. You'll be able to adapt it, to your needs. There's no one size fits all. There's no like feature bloat." Do you think vibe coding will kill a lot of the SaaS market in this way @dharmesh @nicolasosharp @zackkanter @carlrivera?
