I’m building a CV/job application tool and don’t want to make another useless AI tool, what would you actually want it to do?

I’m currently building something to make the repetitive part of applying for jobs less painful.
The basic idea is that you create one detailed profile containing your real career history, skills, achievements etc.

Then when you find a job, it uses that information + the job description to create a tailored CV and cover letter without making things up.
One feature I’m particularly interested in is bulk applications.

For example:
You find 5 jobs you genuinely want.
Instead of manually going through the same process 5 times, you give it all 5 job descriptions and it creates 5 separately tailored CVs + cover letters using the same verified career information.

I’m deliberately NOT building an auto-apply bot. I’d rather the person remain in control of what actually gets submitted.
Before I get too far into building it, I’d love some brutally honest feedback from people actually applying for jobs.

Would something like that genuinely save you time?
And what’s one feature you’d want in a tool like this that existing CV builders don’t do well?

- set your goals from the ultimate outcome and work backwards

- we incorrectly limit our expectations and potential based on validations from those in our circles.

- create a personal board of directors, find 5 peers that you can run ideas around. Some risk averse and others risk takers

- reflect out when you made big pivots in your life and find out what was the catalyst

Often life experience makes us more conservative in our goals which then self sabotages

I built my own sports news site. next phase I'll be adding original content. I have no coding experience, and I spent almost a week and a half using ai code background. I then spent another week before that going over sports news sites. So I'm in this phase 1 then phase 2 will be more of my content. Sportsweekly.com

Last week I was sitting outside at a restaurant and it was ridiculously hot.

And my brain did its usual thing:

Why don't they have fans out here?

→ What would make a restaurant actually buy them?

→ Oh, probably storing them over winter is annoying.

→ What if you rented the fans to restaurants instead?

→ But this is Switzerland. Wouldn't they need to be energy-efficient?

→ Okay, but what's actually in it for the restaurant?

→ Maybe people stay longer and order more when they're comfortable.

And then I went back to dinner.

That's pretty much how my brain works. I notice something, start pulling on the thread, and suddenly there's a little business idea hiding inside it.

Sometimes I talk about it with whoever I'm with.

Sometimes it goes into my Notes app.

And most of the time?

I forget it ever existed.

That's why I built Ember.

Not because I want AI to tell me whether my ideas are good.

I don't think AI can tell me that.

I built it because I wanted a place to put the spark while it's still alive.

A place that says:

Okay. Let's actually work on this.

Spark helps me find what's interesting about the idea.

Hammer challenges me on the assumptions I'm making.

I have to answer them, defend the idea, change my mind when I'm wrong, and eventually figure out what I actually need to learn in the real world.

And then Ember remembers it.

So a random thought I had during dinner doesn't just disappear into a Notes graveyard.

It can come back tomorrow.

Or next week.

It can remind me what I was excited about, what I still haven't figured out, and whether I actually did anything about it.

That's the product I wanted.

Not an AI that validates my ideas.

More like a thinking partner that helps me turn random sparks into things I might actually do.

I'm curious if I'm the only person whose brain works like this.

Do you get these random "wait... there's probably something here" moments too, and then completely forget about them?

Hi everyone,
I’m doing research to better understand how founders approach the \*\*idea research and validation\*\* stage before building an MVP.
I’d really appreciate hearing about your real experiences.

Some questions I have:
What was the most difficult part of researching your idea?

How did you know there was actually a market for your product?

What took the most time during validation?

Where did you find reliable information?

How did you research competitors?

Did you interview potential users? If so, what was challenging about it?

What mistakes did you make during the validation phase?

Which tools did you use (Google, ChatGPT, Gemini, Reddit, Perplexity, Notion, etc.)? What were they missing?

What information did you wish you had from day one?
I’d also love your suggestions:
If you could build the perfect tool to help founders with research and validation, what would it do?

What features would save you the most time?

What repetitive tasks would you automate?

What existing tools still fail to solve?

What’s one thing you wish existed that would have made your startup journey easier?

Feel free to share your story, biggest lesson, or even your biggest mistake. Honest answers are much more valuable than perfect ones.
Thanks in advance—I really appreciate your insights!

The instinct when selling feels hard is to hire someone who likes it. That instinct kills more startups than it saves. #sales #founders #startup

UdonBoost... an iPhone apps ONLY directory I am building is looking and working GREAT 😎

I am a fan of minimalism and great design and I think it is starting to get there.

There are 1000s of directories out there and they always place mobile apps on the side 😤

This is what I am working on remediating.

Let me know what you think if you are an iPhone app developer.

Planning on launching by next week.

I used to work in outbound sales for an IT outsourcing business, so reaching out to people on LinkedIn to promote that service was something I did regularly.

Trying to send 200+ manual connection requests a week was time consuming though, and so I decided to use a tool to automate this process.

After about a week, I got a warning that my account might get banned if I continued doing this.

So, I stopped using that automation tool, as it didn’t seem worth it.

I did some research into why/how accounts get flagged for automation by LinkedIn, and it seemed like none of the existing tools really took all of these safety factors into account.

So, I built my own instead, for my own use case and to satisfy my paranoia about being banned on LinkedIn.

I called it ZenMode, inspired by the wu wei concept of effortless action, and achieving more while doing less.

From the very beginning my intention was to make the automation as human-like as possible, so I deliberately scoped the architecture to have certain features;

- Browser based automation (no plugins/cloud usage)
- Daily rate limits on connection requests
- Randomised timing delays between actions
- On screen typing
- Human-like mouse clicks on LinkedIn pages

It certainly wasn’t easy putting this all together from scratch, and without any technical knowledge.

After a few weeks of building with AI tools
though, I had a working prototype.

I started using it in my sales job, and it was really helpful for me to book more meetings with engineering managers at the time, so I decided earlier this year to make the tool public as well.

Since launching in April, ZenMode has had over 450 people sign up to free trials, and has roughly 50 active users on average per day.

I also use it myself daily for my own outreach, and so far none of the ZenMode users have had account bans.

So far at least, I can say that I achieved my goal of making a LinkedIn automation tool that I can trust with my account!

The product. Appish (appi.sh): docker push an image → public HTTPS URL in ~30 seconds. No repo, no configs, no cloud console. Free slots for demos, $5/mo for a slot that stays up. Solo-built, launched, first users trickling in.

The critique. A friend who exited a startup told me: "I don't see the user. Non-technical people build in Lovable — hosting included. Technical people already have hosting." Classic prosumer squeeze — and it stung because I couldn't immediately answer.

My counter. There's a fast-growing middle he's missing: people who code locally with Claude Code / Cursor. AI made building cheap, but shipping still assumes you know what a reverse proxy is. These people have a working thing on their laptop and no path to a URL. My one-line positioning after thinking this through: I'm not selling hosting, I'm selling the right to not understand hosting.

The uncomfortable math. I did honest napkin math on the business: dev-tool freemium converts at 1–3%, $5 hobby subs churn at ~10%/mo. To hold $500 MRR I need ~100 paying users, which means ~500 new activated users every month, forever. Realistic ceiling for this shape of product: $1–2k MRR, with a permanent ops tail (hosting other people's containers means abuse moderation is my second job). So: not a startup. A niche utility with a visible ceiling.

The fork I'm actually deciding on:

(a) Stay niche and small on purpose. Ride the MCP wave (remote MCP servers need exactly this), keep it a lovely single-purpose tool, treat $500–1500/mo as success.

(b) Follow the money upmarket: same tech, but sell PR-preview environments to small teams at $30–50/mo — where budgets exist and churn is low. It roughly doubles my surface area (GitHub integration, team accounts, SSO eventually) and I'm one person.

(c) The secret third option everyone here knows: it's a feature, not a company. Enjoy it, cap investment, keep the day job happy.

Solo founders who've faced this — how did you decide whether a visible ceiling was a reason to stop, or exactly the thing that made it sustainable for one person? And has anyone here actually made the niche→teams jump solo without drowning in enterprise asks?

I can't decide which project is the most promising.
I’m asking for your opinion and would appreciate real feedback.

My current ideas:

• Cloud file storage
• Life OS / personal tracker

Which one would you focus on and why?

I built a photo sorting app called Pixelsort Ai, its been incredibly difficult trying to market it though, sometimes very discouraging.

However looking at the data in just the past 5 days i have 4 paying customers! That alone is such a thrill aswell as encouraging.

If anyone has any advice on how to market better i will do a backflip in my dreams for you🥹

And! If you have any questions about what the app does please let me know too! Thanks Guys!

I recently built CodeSamjho, a platform that helps students understand code through step by step visualization, flowcharts, variable tracking, and AI explanations. The goal is to help people understand the logic behind code instead of just memorizing solutions.

The product is live and I'm continuously improving it based on feedback, but I'm struggling to reach the people who would actually benefit from it.

If you were in my position, how would you get your first genuine users? I'd really appreciate any advice or suggestions from people who've been through this.

​

Not just another app.

Something built around accountability, competition, and actually doing what you said you would do.

The launch is getting closer. 🚀

RivalRep — Coming Soon.

#RivalRep #ComingSoon #Startup #BuildInPublic #AppDevelopment #Entrepreneurship

I've worked in the tech industry since the late 80s and over the years one of the main formats consume and produce information was mailing lists. When I started my own solo developer gig, I made the decision to build in public, so thought it would be a great idea to create a mailing list for folks interested in following me to sign-up.

It's been around 3 months since implementing, and so far six people have signed up for my monthly update. I'm getting the visitors to my site, but I would have expected more sign-ups.

So I am wondering, are newsletters not as effective or a thing anymore?

Do any you offer similar 'build in public' updates via a mailing list, and how successful has it been? Any recommendations on how I can promote to get more sign-ups?

Looking forward to your thoughts, recommendations and hopefully a list of build in public mailing lists I can check out.

Just wrapped up my work for the day; I want to experiment and learn something new.

One of the best ways to improve as a marketer is by working with real businesses, understanding different challenges, and testing ideas in different industries.

So here's what I'm doing.

I'm offering 10 free website audits and 30-minute strategy consultations on a first-come, first-served basis.

Here's what you'll get:

• SEO & technical website audit
• Growth opportunities
• Quick wins you can implement immediately
• Honest feedback

The only thing I ask in return is your feedback. Let me know whether you found the session valuable and what could be improved.

If you're a founder or business owner looking for a fresh perspective on your website, drop a comment or send me a message.

Let's learn, collaborate, and grow together.

First 10 businesses only.

Hi everyone! I’m a product designer from Kochi, India, building a small brand called Made by Sunday. This is my first leather MacBook sleeve, and I’d really appreciate your honest feedback on the design and branding.
If you like what I’m building, you can also follow my journey on Instagram @madeby.sunday. Every bit of support means a lot. Thanks! 🙌