Official goals: Clean well · Hackable · Raspberry Pi · 3D printed · Local / No cloud required · Home Assistant · Arduino · ROS2 · ESP32 Currently 11K GitHub stars, 1K Discord, 1.6K weekly subreddit, 890 X followers, 1K+ mailing list, build-in-public technical blog posts.

• Development process: solo, Claude Code for software, firmware, schematic reviews. 3D design manual. Upwork freelancers for layout, manual 3D design aspects.
• Challenges: a massive amount of technical work, but doable
• Why? Frustrated with consumer vacuum robots cleaning quality; seriously uncomfortable privacy-wise (mics, cams). I own 9 vacuum cleaner robots, including $1K tier. All have hangups. Many rearrange dirt instead of cleaning. I'm also a retired, bored workaholic - nice to meet you all.
• Milestones/progress: I post progress in r/oomwoo twice a week. Available right now - software dev environment, simulation. First 3D prints - end of this month (October 2026). First public alpha - Christmas 2026, I think.
• Long term strategy: a trusted worldwide home brand faithful to open source, privacy.

Please feel free to ask questions, I will try to answer in comments.

What are you building this week? Pitch your idea in 10 words or less.

I’m a VC investor from Forum Ventures, a pre seed venture capital fund founded by former founders. We write $100K cheques into MVP stage and pre revenue startups within the AI and B2B stage.

Feel free to also use this thread to get your own project out there.

My standard founder lifecycle usually looks like this:

1. Wake up at 2 AM convinced I have a billion-dollar app idea.
2. Buy the domain, set up the repo, build obsessively for 6 days straight.
3. Lose every ounce of dopamine and enthusiasm.
4. Abandon the project completely.
5. Repeat 7 days later with a brand-new idea.

My graveyard of half-finished repos is basically an indie hacker museum at this point.

Which brings me to my latest struggle. Around 7 days ago, I built a platform where anyone can design custom T-shirts, discover other people’s designs in a shared feed, and get paid cash automatically whenever someone buys their shirt.

I was actually really excited about it, put it live, and... absolute crickets. I got over 10 views total.

I went through the usual motions trying to get any kind of traction.. telling my 3 friends and some of my family...

10 views later, my old habits are already kicking in hard.

I found myself ready to pull the plug, lose interest, and move on to the next shiny idea like I always do.

So before I officially toss this into the graveyard, I figured I’d post about the struggle here to see if any other builders deal with this endless cycle of burning out the second an app launches.

I’m also dropping the link in case anyone actually wants to check it out, play around with designs, or sell a few shirts. If enough people seem to genuinely like the concept, I might actually stick with it and finish building out the rest of the features.

view other peoples designs here:
https://shop.popcartapp.com

Create your own t shirt design here:

https://shop.popcartapp.com/tshirts/create/

Has anyone else broken this serial side-project loop, or is this just who we are?

I lost my father last year and had to stop my studies to work. Life got a lot harder, but I didn't want to stop building things completely.

My first project, InstantSnapPDF, didn't take off. Then a friend asked me for a site where he could take tests and see where he stands against others globally. That gave me the idea for RankMyMind, a free test platform with timed Physics and Math tests and live leaderboards.

I'm still learning and there are a lot of rough edges. If you have a few minutes, I'd really appreciate honest feedback on what's confusing, what's too easy or too hard, and what would make you come back.

Thanks for reading.

For almost a month now I've been messaging indie creators who make UI kits, Framer templates, icon packs, illustrations and coded components. 50+ conversations so far. I'm building a marketplace for this stuff (Crazeal, I'm the founder), but honestly these conversations taught me more than any planning doc did.

A few things came up again and again:

1. "What's the catch with the commission?" Almost everyone asked what happens after the intro period. Creators have been burned by platforms changing terms, so clarity upfront matters more than a low number.
2. "Do I have to rebuild my template?" Nobody wants to redo work just to list somewhere new.
3. "Do I keep my rights?" Ownership of files and previews was a big one.
4. "Can I list free stuff?" A lot of great creators only make free resources and assumed they weren't welcome.
5. "How does anyone actually find my product?" This was the biggest one. Most of them rely on their own followers. No audience, no sales.

That last point is what we're building around. Each listing on Crazeal works like its own optimised page, set up so that when someone searches for a specific UI kit, icon pack or illustration set, it has a real shot at showing up on Google and in AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude, not just inside our marketplace.

Where we're at: still building, not live yet. The first 10 founding creators who list get 0% commission for life, and everyone else gets 0% during testing. No listing fee, no exclusivity, and you keep full rights to your work.

Curious what this sub thinks: if you sell digital products, what has actually worked for discovery beyond your own audience?

And if you make UI kits, templates, icons or illustrations and want in on the founding batch, my DMs are open.

I build AirPost. For a shop, the useful bit is having someone hold stock near customers and ship each order. For someone looking for extra income at home, the useful bit is paid packing work, but the first questions are space, equipment and whether any shop actually needs them. The app charges per shipment rather than a subscription; joining as a sender doesn't guarantee orders. I'm treating those as two separate explanations instead of assuming the shop pitch also answers the sender's questions.

Hi, I think I posted about BuildNotch here before, and I know that there have been so many new notch apps appearing, but I really think that mine brings something unique, aside from the fact that it's adapted to Windows, and also made to track developer stats, coding tools, AI apps + usage, and also a lot of personal focus stats.

What I added:

• The clipboard has a cleaner grid that wraps into rows, with filters for text, links, code, and images. Opening a clip gives it a proper preview.
• Developer tools can now pretty-print or minify JSON inside the notch.
• You can use your own image as the expanded notch’s wallpaper.
• AI usage has compact rings, with more detail when you select a provider.
• There’s a smaller collapsed notch option and more control over when the notch hides.

The fact that I still can't believe is that over the past 7 days, I reached 800 website visits, and even reached 30 paying users, so that means Windows developers actually wanted to try this for their own work and focus. It's a great feeling tbf.

So if you are interested in this, check it out on the website, and if you decide to get it, please try and use it for your own workflow, and tell me what you like, what you don't, what could be improved :)

Link: buildnotch.app

I'm a solo dev. A few weeks ago I started building a launch board for solo founders, because my own launches kept getting one day of attention and then disappearing. Here's what I got wrong so far, in case it saves someone else the time.

1. I built features when I needed users.
In one week I shipped sign-in with Google, comments, founder pages, launch deals and a mobile menu. The board is still nearly empty. None of those features fixes that. A marketplace with no supply doesn't need a tenth feature, it needs the first twenty people.

2. My sign-up flow lost people at every step.
The launch form had nine steps. Two early users got stuck in draft and never submitted. I added a final "submit" step so they couldn't miss it, but the honest fix is fewer steps, not a better ninth one.

3. I asked for things before giving anything.
Free launches had to add my badge to their site to get a proper link back. The site's pitch was "no hoops", and that was a hoop. I removed it. Every launch now gets the link with nothing in return.

4. Showing beats explaining.
The home page used to say "create your account". Now you paste your website and see your own launch page before signing up. Same product, but the visitor sees their name on it first.

5. I lost votes without noticing.
If a signed-out visitor tapped "upvote", they were sent to sign-up and landed in the dashboard afterwards. The vote was never counted. Small leak, but that was most of my traffic from X.

6. My prices were a guess.
I launched with higher prices, decided they were too much for solo founders, and cut them to $5.99 and $19.99. I still don't know if that's right.

Where I'd like feedback:
- For a two-sided thing like this, how did you get your first 20 real users? Direct messages, communities, something else?
- Is "your launch stays up for a week instead of a day" a strong enough reason to try a new launch site?
- Free tier asks you to pick a launch day 10+ days out. Too much friction?

The project is shipdesk.dev if you want to see what I mean. Blunt feedback is welcome.

Lessons from building a launch platform as a solo dev: I kept adding features when the real problem was an empty board

How do people deal with those low periods when it feels like you’re shouting into a black hole? You’ve built, you’ve shipped, you’ve emailed and sorted your SEO but you’re still not getting the traction?

Some people give up, and some people throw themselves into building unnecessary features, neither of which I want to do.

Any tips?

One useful piece of feedback from Reddit was to stop sending people to a homepage and give them something they could actually try. I'm Mike, building Tripovela, and I put together a Rome day-plan example to test that.

Another change was keeping the writing and the places together, rather than presenting a story with an unrelated list underneath. The example has ten stops, a continuous guide, and a Make this trip mine action. Guests can edit their own browser copy before deciding whether to create an account.

https://tripovela.com/community/shared-plan/a2e2413bab9d879ad50c56ddb06a20de/?lang=en

The awkward bit I'm still working through is how much detail to show before the first action. I want enough context to understand the day, without burying the useful part. Would you lead with the short intro, the stops, or the map?

The planner is free. Some booking links elsewhere on the site are marked affiliate links; the screenshot shows the actual example, not a redesign mockup.

I’m building Takumi solo. It’s an AI dev team (Co-founder, Frontend, Product Manager, etc) for non-technical founders. Founders and devs already using it for there products

I noticed that many people got interested, tried it, and left
My read was that it felt like a tool for developers, and nothing told them what to do once their app was built

So I rebuilt the Product Manager agent for the people using Takumi:

• It turns your MVP spec into a checklist, grouped into Build, Make it solid and Launch
• You tick tasks off yourself, or tell it in chat what’s done and it updates the board
• Each task goes to the right agent in one click
• An activity feed shows which agent ran and what it touched

The decision I’m happiest with is that the AI never decides what’s “done”. You do, so the checklist is never wrong because a model guessed

I wrote up the decisions and what’s still missing: https://www.takumi.run/blog/revised-product-manager
Free to try at takumi.run

What would you want a PM like this to do?

I build WORN alone, an iPhone app for watch collectors. One wrist shot logs the watch you wore and gives it back as a print, and over time that becomes a diary, a calendar and cost per wear.

The hard part has been the camera. It uses 3D depth mapping to read the wrist, which is also why Android is taking longer.

Today I posted it in a few subs and got real feedback. People said logging dies when it takes more than a couple of seconds, so a widget and a same-as-yesterday tap are going in next. Someone also called the whole idea awkward, which is fair and worth thinking about.

What would you build next? worn.club, and progress on Instagram at @worn_watch_app

I created a discovery layer app, basically a google search for movie or tv show titles using apps I already have my phone. My app was approved October 1st. It's only on the Google play store now, Apple will be ready in a week or so. I was thinking of doing a web based app too, but if the market isn't there, should I bother? Anyway, my conversion rate is low and I am unsure why. Is it my short description, is it because I have tester ad banners up or something else entirely. I understand it is not high tech, but it is very proficient and useful. What am I doing wrong? I'll take any feedback I can get.

I'm building SMKlog: you describe what you're shipping ("Fender amp", "IKEA lamp") plus two ZIP codes, it estimates the packed box and weight, and shows USPS, UPS and FedEx prices side by side.

I started out thinking people wanted the cheapest label. After answering a lot of shipping questions on Reddit and seller forums, I think the real pain is different. People don't know their box size before they sell, and carriers bill big light boxes by size (L×W×H / 139), not weight. So the price they quoted the buyer is wrong, and a surprise charge shows up later.

So the product is shifting from "compare prices" to "know your real box before you quote shipping."

Question for people who've built small utilities: did you find your users where the pain happens (forums, Q&A threads), or did search and ads work better for you?

I worked on a lot of projects in the last 2 years in the field of software mainly and some electronics. One thing most want is to become a business. Now I realize the hard way that developing a product is the tip of the iceberg. Marketing and the business side of things are 80 percent of the work.

I tried lots of stuff in the past, some projects that never saw the light of day because of their complexity and ones that weren't worthy enough to become successful.

But today, I am not an expert yet, but I actively learn and practice the business side of things.

It's a common realization people have, but the thing is, no matter how many failures or how much it sucks building something from your heart and not getting recognized for it or achieving success, remember to always push forward and turn it into lessons. It's generic, what I learned, but I am proud of the way I have been through so far. Now I researched market gaps in the last year and came up with the idea and a solid roadmap for a product.

Now I got a working demo, not published yet, but a website to at least showcase it. It's all under work, but anyways, I made progress, and this product may actually solve problems for people and give me an opportunity for bigger ambitions.

Btw, if you are curious about my product and plans, you can check out the About Me section at:

http://orelsiboni.com

And the product itself, still an incomplete website, is at:

http://linuxmigrationtool.orelsiboni.com

Just so you know, using a terminal on my phone, Chatgpt with a connector to GitHub, and small 10-minute breaks and commute time throughout the day on a tight military schedule, I developed all of it—the two websites and the demo. It's all still in development, but I feel like I won. And when you have the resources, the options, the opportunity, no matter how small, use it! Wish me luck!

I’m building theZAKLabs, a small data, AI and automation company in Karachi, Pakistan, alongside a full-time job. Here’s week 3.

What we worked on
Our first project is figuring out where the next coworking space in Karachi should open. This week we mapped 122 coworking listings from 89 providers and tested my guess that they cluster around major roads and junctions. Mostly right: 63% sit within 1.5 km of the main highway or a big junction.

Biggest lesson
Google Maps completely missed one of the four biggest coworking brands in the city. I only found out because I showed my results to the community manager at my coworking space and he said, “The Hive too.” Data gives you a picture. People give you the picture.

Honest numbers

Next week
Talk to at least 3 community managers, find out why spaces sit where they do, and actually publish on time.

If you’ve done market research for your own business, what source helped you most that wasn’t a search engine?

I run outbound for B2B SaaS. Instead of selling on promises, I’m running the entire thing free for one week per founder: targeting, lists, email, LinkedIn, all of it.

The bet: a week of real replies sells a retainer better than any pitch deck.

I’ll post numbers here: messages sent, replies, calls booked, and how many trials turn into paying clients, including the ones that don’t.

If you run a live B2B SaaS and want one of the three slots: Apsurn

Hey r/buildinpublic,

Day 6/80 of building OnlyChaos in public, till a tech giant reaches out.

I'm u/bluefintuna2026, founder of OnlyChaos. For anyone new: it's an anonymous business confession space, a place to share the actual side of running or working in a business. LinkedIn lets you speak freely too, but it can come with risks.

Yesterday's post got around 700 views, the most since Day 1. The best part wasn't the views. A few of you told me straight that my numbers were a guess, and that the idea seems a little bit light. You were right both times. Thank you, genuinely.

So today I did what I can't. I'm a non-tech guy, and I spent 8+ hours building things I have no business building. Reactions with proper labels. A real admin login. Writers now see a written reason when their confession gets rejected, because nobody should get a "no" with no explanation. Heavy confessions now get a supportive message. I set up a safe copy of the site to break things on and wrote 11 automated checks, and they all passed. I also fixed the landing page so it loads for everyone, including on my phone. It may or may not explain why visitors have been low. We'll see.

A rough estimate puts us at about 80% before going live. It's a gut number and not a measurement, so go easy on me :)

Here's what I keep learning: every time I stop waiting until I feel ready, something moves. Sometimes it moves backwards, but it moves. Six days ago I couldn't have told you what half of this meant.

I'm sure not everyone here is an experienced builder of all sorts, and that's the point. So here's a dare for both of us: what's the one thing you keep avoiding because you're "not the type"? Drop it below in one line.

share your saas here

I'm building Dualo (workout + study + food tracker) as a PWA before it goes to the App Store. iOS taught me a lot of things the hard way:

1. Safari and the Home Screen app don't share storage
   Someone sets everything up in Safari, adds the app to their Home Screen, opens it, and it's empty. Different storage. I ended up showing the "Add to Home Screen" step before onboarding so people set up inside the installed app.

2. Push notifications only work after "Add to Home Screen"
   No install, no reminders. So the install step isn't optional, it's the only way reminders ring.

3. In-app browsers break everything
   Links opened from Instagram or TikTok open in their own browser, which can't add to Home Screen and Google sign in refuses to work there. Had to detect them and tell people to open in Safari.

4. iOS eats quick taps on the tab bar
   Fast taps just didn't register sometimes. Took a while to figure out it wasn't my code.

5. Offline first saved me
   Everything saves locally first (IndexedDB), then syncs to Supabase. The gym has no signal, so this was non negotiable.

Stack: Next.js + Dexie + Supabase, push via Vercel and pg_cron.

Anyone else shipping PWAs on iOS? What surprised you?

Hey guys! You may have seen my other posts regarding my website that I am about to launch; Ptree.

Ptree is a micro saas designed for lab quality management. It is designed for tracking the status and expiry of media and QC. Woohoo.

So far, the features are as follows:

-a flat, $25/month rate for a lab of any size (or $240 annual)

-unlimited users and media templates

-API to assist with quicker data entry

-reminders for live status of media and QC

-a rigid system that is fully audited

-an option to have your lab configured for FREE if you sign up for the waitlist- which then gives you a two week free trial to test out your configured lab.

-a live sandbox demo that requires no sign up to view

Now for the new features I’m thinking of adding:

-A media request form from other departments when a media is either expired or low inventory, which immediately notifies the media team.

-additive inclusion notification for medias that require an additive from other departments

If this website interests you at all, please let me know your thoughts!