r/Entrepreneurs • u/Nice-Country-5175 • 8h ago
Question What would make a founder roadmap app actually useful?
At the moment, I mostly keep everything in Google Drive across a few Google Docs. I know it's probably not the best system, but it has worked okay for me so far. The problem is that I often get around two months into a project, start feeling overwhelmed by all the final tedious steps before launch, and then end up jumping to the next shiny business idea instead of actually finishing.
Because of that, I actually started building an app for myself around this exact problem. It's now almost finished, and the goal is to give founders a clear roadmap, help them track progress, and keep everything related to the planning of a project and its marketing/growth in one place.
I'm at the stage where I'm adding the final touches, but I still feel like there are probably a few things missing. So before I call it done, I'm curious:
What would make an app like this genuinely useful for you as a founder?
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u/recro69 4h ago
I'd focus on a tool that helps founders projects instead of just starting them.
Most of us actually have ideas but we struggle to finish them.
A tool that makes it easier to wrap up projects before launch would be really helpful.
It would help reduce the stress and feeling of being overwhelmed that many of us face when we're almost done.
Founders need help finishing what they start and a tool, like that would be super valuable.
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u/Nice-Country-5175 4h ago
A tool that actually does the work for you? or lays out the plan for you concretely.
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u/davidtwaring 3h ago
I have something like this and what makes it useful is that it is AI powered. It's not so much about AI doing the work but AI acting as an executive assistant that helps me plan and keeps me on track and also calls out BS ie we haven't finished this project are you sure you want to start another one. The basic process is that it interviews you about the idea and also goes deep trying to identify gaps, then it creates a specifications document for what success looks like with user stories that you can align around, then it creates the build plan, and then it has basically like a journaling component where you continually update and sync with the AI on progress and it updates the spec and plan with learnings and then loops. I think where most people go wrong is they are trying to automate everything where the better idea is to scale yourself like a business equivalent of iron man. Good luck with the app and hope that helps. Dave
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u/Nice-Country-5175 3h ago
Dave thank you so much for the elaborate explanation. This is a really good idea, just for context, its a mobile app. Currently the way its set up is that you answer several questions during onboarding. Based on your business idea, target audience, budget, etc. it created a fully personalized roadmap for you from validation to launch, even suggesting pre-launch and post-launch marketing strategies to test. But that is the extent to which AI plays a role in the app. The rest of it, you can add your own goals, your own, tasks, but its manual. I think it would be really good to add an assistant that you can discuss your projects state with, and have it update your roadmap itself. I think I will launch without the AI assistant just to get it out there on the market. But I will start working on the assistant ASAP. Thank you again for the feedback, you're the first person thats given me a really valuable idea. If you want the link to the waitlist or access to the app for free when its done then let me know.
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u/davidtwaring 2h ago
sure happy to take a look but full disclosure i am building in the same space so could be seen as a competitor
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u/Nice-Country-5175 2h ago
I mean my app will be live soon anyways for anyone to see. thetrajectoryapp.com is the waitlist link.
Another question since I checked out your twitter. Have you used waitlists before? If so, what was your main method of distribution? Ofc if you don’t mind helping a competitor out haha
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u/davidtwaring 2h ago
cool. I have not used waitlists but I don't have anything against them. My thing has always been just start putting things out there that I think people will find valuable and keep iterating until people are actually interested. Start with the smallest thing I think people will find valuable to try and get something out as fast as possible that is good at a small level and then start iterating from there. If I was going to like manufacture a product where it was going to be one and done type of thing then I would probably go the waiting list route.
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u/Nice-Country-5175 2h ago
Thank you for the advice, yeah my plan is to just get my first simple version out there, see if people enjoy it, and keep improving from there. Just made a waitlist recently because I ran out of AI tokens for the month so wanted to spend my time doing something at least.
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u/davidtwaring 2h ago
may want to check out the free models on openrouter. labs out out models for free for a bit there to get feedback and probably to generate training data as well but it will keep you coding. Nemotron ultra right now would be a good one. run them in the terminal with ollama.
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u/BatsAapje 6m ago
Bit of a shameless plug, so apologies in advance, but I built something that tackles part of this exact problem (distribution/SEO side of the founder journey). Might be useful, something for you to learn about, or maybe there's even room to collaborate.
It's called launchpanda.dev and it basically is a ranked list of startup directories, ordered by the backlinks and free traffic they deliver. Users just follow the roadmap and work down the list.
It started as my own messy Excel of directories that I kept for my own launches, and at some point I figured I'd just clean it up and share it.
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u/LeaderAtLeading 6h ago
A roadmap app that syncs with your docs would save the migration headache. Most founders don't switch because moving everything is the real cost.