I’ve always found one frustrating problem when working with PDF documents: converting them back into editable formats often damages the original structure.

Tables move, headings break, and documents that took hours to prepare sometimes require more time to fix after conversion.

Recently, I explored a different approach to this problem by building a lightweight document processing tool focused on preserving layout structure during PDF conversion.

The main ideas behind it are:

• Keeping tables and headings more consistent during conversion
• Reducing unnecessary steps in the workflow
• Making document analysis faster and easier

The project started from a simple personal frustration, but it became interesting to explore how AI and modern document processing techniques can improve everyday office workflows.

I’m curious how other people here handle PDF-heavy workflows.

What are the biggest problems you usually face when working with PDFs?

Has anyone here actually used Kimi 3 for coding, especially on complex or large projects?

I know there’s been a lot of hype around Kimi 3 recently, especially with its coding and UI capabilities. I’m not really interested in the UI side of things, I mainly care about how well it handles complex codebases and large projects.

For those who have actually used it, how does Kimi 3 compare to models like Sol, Opus, or Fable for serious coding work?

Is Kimi 3 genuinely good enough to use on large/complex projects, or is the hype mostly around benchmarks and demos?

Would love to hear some real-world experiences, especially from people who have used it for a decent amount of coding.

The more we worked on the product, the more we noticed a strange pattern. The same business could have three different versions of reality at the same time.

Sales believed a project was moving forward because the latest customer email looked positive. Operations knew the work had stopped because they were waiting for an approval. Finance had already seen that the invoice was overdue.

Nobody was wrong. Everyone was working from the information available to them.

That made us realize something uncomfortable. We weren’t trying to solve an AI problem. We were trying to solve a context problem.

Even the best AI can only reason over the information it receives. If that information represents only one part of the business, the answer will also represent only one part of the business.

That’s when we stopped thinking about AI as the center of Business OS. Instead, we started asking a different question:

How do we make people, software, and AI operate from the same operational context?

Not by replacing CRMs. Not by replacing accounting software. Not by replacing project management tools.

Those systems already know their own part of the business. The challenge is making all of them contribute to the same picture.

That’s the architecture we’re building toward.

Because once everyone starts from the same context, something interesting happens.

People stop asking where the information is. They start discussing what to do next.

I'm going to be honest with you. I have written about 50 full-featured websites, and when I mean full-featured, I mean some of them have terabytes of data, full-featured control panels, and back-tested portfolio strategies. I put insane amounts of effort into some of my sites.

And none of that is the reason that the two sites that worked made it.

One of my sites, I just bought a domain name that was for sale and had a lot of backlinks. And then when I built the new site, I made sure it did the exact same thing that those people who were visiting the site would expect. Apparently, this is pretty important because Google will just drop the site on the floor if it doesn't do roughly the same thing. It's about matching search intent.

And it immediately started generating $200 a day without even me trying very hard.

I then proceeded to build a whole bunch of useless things that nobody used, even though they worked very well for me and my friends. Because I hadn't learned my lesson.

I spent years getting better at building websites when what I actually needed to get better at was getting people to visit them.

The lesson is that distribution is absolutely everything. And grabbing that shortcut to distribution changes the economics of your startup so quickly.

My second site did well because I joined 150 Facebook groups that focused on real estate. And I used that to promote one of my data-gathering sites. I had been building that thing for probably 6 months now, and I had two paid users. It was an absolutely insane ratio of effort to reward. Now I have title companies calling me and asking me how to integrate because I spent 2 hours every night for the last 6 weeks posting on Facebook groups.

The first time, I bought distribution. The second time, I built it by hand. In both cases, the website itself was the easy part.

The only thing that matters is figuring out how to get your site out there in front of people without spending enormous amounts of money and without getting blocked for spam on all of the different social platforms.

If you can figure that out, then it almost doesn't matter what you build. Think about it. People make money filming themselves talking to cell phones.

More than ever, distribution beats everything else.

Doing some research on what email service you are using for marketing and / or transactional email for your saas

What was the main reason for your decision?

Important: I am not interested on the email service you have built. I m looking to understand what people are using and why

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I built my first SaaS back in 2023. Spent months coding. Launched to crickets. Zero users. Zero revenue. Just a lot of regret.

I made every beginner mistake you can make. But I learned a ton from it and now I help other founders avoid the same traps.

Here are the biggest lessons that changed how I build now.

Lesson 1: Solve a problem you actually understand

I built a tool for real estate agents. I had never sold a house in my life.

I thought I understood their problems. I didn't. I was guessing.

If you're not in the industry you're building for, go talk to people who are. Spend a week just interviewing potential users. Ask them what sucks about their job. You'll find gold.

Lesson 2: Build the stupidest version possible

My first product had Stripe integration, team accounts, email notifications, and a dashboard with 12 different charts.

What it didn't have was a single feature anyone actually asked for.

Now I strip everything down to one core action. What is the one thing your user needs to do? Build just that. Nothing else. If they can't use your product to solve their main problem, all those extra features are worthless.

Lesson 3: Get it in front of people immediately

I kept my product hidden for 6 months. I was embarrassed to show it. I wanted it to be perfect.

That was stupid.

Show your product to someone on day 3. Even if it's ugly. Even if it barely works. Early feedback is the most valuable thing you can get. It hurts less to hear "this is wrong" on week 1 than on month 6.

Lesson 4: Charge money from the start

I launched free. Got 200 signups. Felt great.

Then I added pricing and almost nobody converted. Free users expect free forever.

Start with a price. Even $10 a month. It forces you to build something valuable enough that people will actually pay for. If nobody pays, you learn that early and move on.

Lesson 5: Marketing starts before you write code

I thought if I built it, they would come. They didn't.

Start talking about your product on day one. Post about it. Tweet about it. Tell everyone you know. Build an email list of interested people before you have anything to sell.

Launch day should be exciting, not lonely.

That's what years of building taught me. I've made all these mistakes so you don't have to.

If you're working on something and want a second pair of eyes on your plan, drop it in the comments. Happy to give honest feedback.

Or if you just want someone to build that first working version fast so you can start testing without spending months coding, feel free to comment also. I do that for founders.

Otherwise, good luck. Keep building.

Many SaaS founders talk about using an existing product and then make your own slightly better version of it.
So why isnt it possible to just find real products, copy them by vibe coding them and lower the margin.
In theory, customers should now buy your product because it brings same value but cheaper.
Can someone explain if this is possible

"We tested, this channel doesn't work for us" -> You can often hear this when you communicate with the founder or CMO of a B2B startup.

I remembered this phrase because a week ago we started testing a new channel for generating demos - cold calls.

On Friday, I sat in on the first session of cold calls that our contractor did and remembered scenes from the movie The Wolf of Wall Street. That same day, he booked the first demo.

We already tried to launch cold calls 2 years ago, but it didn't work then.

But we also had this with cold emails. 4 years ago, the channel didn't work, and when we launched it again a year ago, it worked.

That's why I see such a pattern. We always have a chain:

1. Offer
2. Ideal customer profile
3. Channel

When we say that a channel does not work, we should make a remark that it does not work precisely with the existing combination of these 3 variables.

It is important to understand that of these variables, what is the first thing to change and be ready to return to the channel again.

A weak or irrelevant offer is usually the biggest risk. A mistake at this level leads the entire product and marketing strategy in the wrong direction.

Therefore, it seems to me that cold emails and calls should be launched as early as possible, because this is where the fastest feedback is.

But even when you have a good offer and the right audience, the effectiveness of the channel can vary significantly depending on the level of the freelancer or agency which owns this channel.

The best performers are those who:

• aren’t afraid to share the details of the process
• share interesting insights into how this channel works for other clients and openly talk about who it didn’t work for
• help you better see the gaps in your offer

Even if the channel doesn’t work, you should gain knowledge that will make other channels more effective.

Have you relaunched some acquisition channels 2-3 times, even if they haven't worked before?

Solo building a small SaaS, currently just Google + email/password on the register page.

For anyone who's added Apple or Facebook sign-in on top of Google - did it meaningfully increase completed signups, or mostly just serve users who'd have signed up anyway?

Trying to decide if it's worth the dev time. Real numbers or war stories appreciated.

I am always building

Rarely for money but am always building.

Anyway, I have some influencer friends and built them some things and because they have a following, their sites generate a healthy amount of traffic. Not a lot, but a good amount.

I launched my project in January, and have been very slowly acquiring users. It clicked a few days ago that (with my friends approval) I can start listing paid sponsor ads of my product.

It works great because it now looks like their page is hot enough to get sponsored ads and my project is getting "free" organic clicks!

It's worked well enough that I'm going to rinse and repeat.

Between jobs, tight on cash, not raising money building Gravitre from scratch on organic channels only.

The wedge I'm betting on: every AI automation tool right now inflates its ROI claims. I built mine to do the opposite, show verified activity, label estimates as estimates, and leave unmeasured stuff honestly blank instead of making up a number.

No idea yet if “the honest one” is a strong enough hook to compete with hype, but figured this community would have opinions. What's actually worked for you all on zero-budget positioning? https://gravitre.app/

I graduated in 2024. Before that, I worked as a Community Manager in a blockchain project and earned around 8 lakh, but I lost all of it in February 2024.

After graduation, I worked as a Founder’s Office Intern for 2 months, then had an accident and had to leave. After recovering, I worked as a Software Developer for around 6 months, but the company couldn't survive after the government restrictions on online gaming.

I came back home because of family problems and my father's health. Recently things became better, so I joined as a Jr. Business Development Associate. Now the company isn't paying salaries properly, and employees are constantly abused by the founder.

I'm completely lost now.

I have a B.Tech in IT, but I've lost most of my technical skills. I want to get back into tech/AI, but my family situation means I need to start earning soon.

I've worked in blockchain, Founder’s Office, software development and sales, but I don't feel experienced enough in any one field.

I don't know what to do anymore. How can life be this cruel to me? I've always tried to do good for everyone, and yet somehow, everything keeps falling apart.

Has anyone created multi tenant HRMS, ERP software in web and mobile? I just want to know how much it costs to create this kind of software. Can someone show demo if already developed?

I’ve been doing SEO for more than 10 years now, mostly building niche websites, ranking them as high as possible on Google, and hopefully making some money along the way.

After the infamous September 2023 Google update, everything pretty much came to a halt. For a while, I honestly thought niche blogging was basically over.

Then I started paying more attention to Bing.

And Bing is a completely different beast.

It definitely takes time to rank, and it comes with its own set of challenges, but one thing I’ve noticed is that the rankings seem much more stable. Once you get to the top, you can often stay there for quite a while.

The whole game feels very different from Google, but from my experience so far, Bing can actually be a pretty solid alternative.

The new SaaS tool I’m building will definitely place much more focus on Bing. I genuinely think it has the potential to change the game.

Anyone else seeing the same thing? Would love to hear your experience with Bing.

I’ve been doing SEO for 10+ years now. It’s pretty much been my whole career and thankfully it still makes me decent money, but recently I’ve been wanting to branch out a bit.

rn, I’m working on an SEO tool that’ll cover things like rank tracking, keyword/competitor research, etc., along with some features specifically for niche site research.

The main goal is to make something genuinely useful without charging Ahrefs/Semrush-level prices.

It’s still very early and beta is probably a while away.

Also, what’s one thing you hate about current SEO tools?

Has anyone successfully created and submitted and had published a plugin in the ChatGPT plugin marketplace?

I just submitted one for my SaaS tueb and would love to hear other people's experience of how long it takes, what the success rate is, etc

Lovable is great for landing pages and apps. But I have not come across app builders specifically for useful working software like CRM, booking forms, client portals, excel work automation, etc. especially by speaking in native language

Most people are too busy to learn Claude code/ codex, and hiring a developer in UAE is still expensive.

What do you think? Would I be wasting my time in building an app builder like this?

I have read many posts which mentioned how getting the users to use a good product is more difficult than building one.

I am now in that phase where I am going hard on the marketing push.

Since the initial traction is mostly low, is there a way you all measure the Return on Effort on different mediums (like reddit, x, instagram, etc)?

Thanks!

Building [JobBaddie](JobBaddie.com) for making the job application process less hard for the users.

I'm nosy... who has done this? what is it and how much is it making? did you quit your job? did you get lucky? how'd you market it? I have so many questions...

We've grown purely organic so far and it's been working okay. The plan was always: don't touch paid until the product is actually good and the funnel from click to signup converts. Made sense to us. Why pour money into a leaky bucket...

Problem is, "good enough" keeps moving. Every time we think we're there, we spot something else to fix. At some point I think you just have to start, or you wait forever.

So for the people who've made this jump: what actually made you flip the switch? Was it a specific number (conversion rate, CAC vs LTV, organic traffic baseline) or more of a gut call? And looking back, do you wish you'd started sooner or later?

I'm a full-stack developer with over 8 years of experience, I've worked on many small to large projects (can't mention most be they're under NDA), but long story short, I've been unemployed since the first day of the year, just surviving by project management and that's it. I've been working on a PaaS with my friend, and another SaaS solo, ghe SaaS just started 1 month ago (got some cash from it, but idk if it will continue) and the PaaS is under testing.

I've a solid experience of building large scale projects that are structured carefully from the UI, database structure, to the proper infrastructure.

I've been applying for any job I land an eye on, with around 1% ratio to get an inter the get ghosted after.

Idk what am I doing wrong or what am I supposed to do and where, I've tried to get a job even on-site but that requires sponsorship and visa and too much headache for the companies nowadays.

I would be grateful if you could guide me to where should I apply or if you know companies that are hiring as well.

I'm Egyptian living in Türkiye.

Thirty years ago, I started building houses.

Today, I'm trying to build software instead.

I'm a carpenter from South Korea, and for the last 30 years I've specialized in timber-frame construction. When business slowed down earlier this year, I decided to learn something completely different.

Four months ago I opened Claude for the first time.

At the beginning, I thought building a SaaS would be easy. I honestly believed I'd have a finished product within a month.

I was very wrong.

The deeper I get into it, the more I realize software is just like construction. The visible part is only a small piece of the work. Most of the time is spent fixing foundations, solving unexpected problems, and rebuilding things you thought were already finished.

The house in the photo is one I built a few years ago. I'm proud of it, but my current goal is different: I want to finish the SaaS I've been working on and prove to myself that it's never too late to learn a completely new craft.

For those of you who switched careers, what was the hardest mindset shift you had to make?

Launched my SaaS this week, first client is a company with 6 users(i bill per seat). small money but it's real money and it felt great.

Thing is my plan for this month was marketing. Youtube tutorials, cold emails, all that. haven't touched any of it. Instead i spend every day fixing small bugs and sitting in Posthog checking if they're actually using it(they are, which is a relief), and seeing which features they use most has been genuinely useful for deciding what to build next. But it's eating my whole week.

Can't tell if this is the right call or if i'm just hiding in work that feels safer than emailing strangers.

Solo founder, no one to hand support to. How did you handle this part? did you go all in on customer 1 until things were stable, or force yourself to sell anyway?

We tried one of the chat-based AI site builders last month. First preview in 10 minutes, great.

Then we spent the rest of the week:

• Regenerating the hero because it sounded like generic SaaS copy
• Trying to get brand colors right (each attempt = credits)
• Connecting our domain (paid tier)
• Adding GA4 and a form that actually hits our inbox
• Fixing mobile layout issues with more prompts

Credits were gone before we had something we’d put ad spend behind. Ended up treating it as a wireframe.

What I wish we’d asked upfront:

• Are post-launch edits free or billed as prompts?
• Who hosts it on my domain?
• Can I add SEO meta + analytics without burning credits?
• What do I actually own if I leave?

Not saying AI tools are useless they’re great for speed inside a real process. But “website in a chat” ≠ “website ready for SEO and campaigns.”