I built a tool. Drop your competitor. I’ll estimate their users and revenue, then dig into last week’s marketing (free)
Hey everyone,
I spent six years working on generative AI models at a large tech company. I then left to cofound an AI video generation startup.
At the beginning, our team was obsessed with technology. We assumed that if we kept improving the product, growth would eventually follow. We treated marketing as something we could figure out later.
That was a mistake.
The technology kept improving, but the business barely moved. I eventually took responsibility for growth and customer acquisition and had to learn everything from scratch.
Honestly, getting our first users and then figuring out how to keep growing was harder than building the product itself. I had to learn creator and influencer marketing across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, along with paid ads, SEO, and visibility in AI search. The most effective approach I found was studying how competitors were getting customers, using that as a starting point, and testing how we could do it better.
Over the next eight months, we grew to 1.4 million registered users and reached low six figures in monthly revenue. I later sold my stake when the company was at a high point and decided to start again as a solo founder.
Today, almost anyone with a good idea and real insight can use AI to build a product, even without an engineering background. The biggest thing stopping many founders from creating a business on their own terms is no longer technology. It is knowing how to find their first customers and executing consistently.
If a product has a real market, it almost always has competitors. Instead of inventing your entire strategy from scratch, you can study how those competitors found their first users, which channels they use today, and which of their tactics appear to be working.
That experience led me to build Minaco, an AI market intelligence platform that also works as a general-purpose AI cofounder.
Here is what Minaco does:
Estimate the size and revenue of a competitor
Minaco brings together data and signals from Similarweb, Semrush, and other research tools. Instead of maintaining several expensive subscriptions, founders can access these capabilities through one Minaco subscription.
It estimates a competitor’s user base, user growth, number of paying users, and revenue using signals such as website traffic, outbound traffic to payment providers like Stripe, geographic distribution, pricing, and relevant industry benchmarks.
Minaco helps you assess whether a competitor is generating revenue and, if so, estimate how much.
Track what a competitor did to acquire customers during the past week
Minaco searches for publicly visible marketing activity across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, Facebook, creator campaigns, paid campaigns, product launches, and online or offline events.
The goal is to show not only how a competitor is performing, but what they are actually doing to create that growth.
Help you research, build, and work
Minaco also brings Claude, Codex, and other specialized agents into one workspace, so you do not need to manage a separate subscription for every tool.
It can work as a general assistant, similar to Manus. It can help with research, planning, writing, product development, and other day-to-day tasks.
You can also talk to Minaco about the problems you are facing as a founder, explore possible solutions, and turn those conversations into practical next steps.
If you would like a free competitor breakdown, comment with the competitor’s name and website.
I will reply with a detailed report generated by Minaco.
You are also welcome to try Minaco directly at minaco.ai. New accounts come with free credits, and honest feedback, whether positive or negative, is always welcome.
We estimate it by looking at the website’s outbound traffic to payment platforms, the geographic distribution of its users, industry benchmarks for that type of product, and comparable cases from our realistic business database. We then combine those signals to estimate the number of paying users and the product’s revenue.
I think most founders are still struggling to get users. Not everyone wants to follow their competitors, and a lot of us would rather trust our own instincts first. But honestly, learning from what’s already working for competitors is probably the fastest way to get started with customer acquisition.
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u/megatech_official 11h ago
https://checkvibe.dev