I built an AI founder tool and realized I was the customer all along

Last year, when I was 16, I built an AI project called Infinity System.

I spent months designing systems, features, memory architecture, onboarding flows, different AI personalities, and even created multiple contents and marketing too. Essentially everything I thought that would make it work.

There was just one problem.

I never talked to a customer.

Not once.

I convinced myself I was making progress because I was always building something. New features. Better prompts. More systems. More ideas.

But when I looked back, I realized I had almost no evidence that anyone actually needed what I was building.

That realization stuck with me.

A few months ago, I started building something new: Ashive.

This time, I wanted to focus on a different problem.

Not generating more ideas.

Not giving more advice.

But helping founders stay focused on reality.

Customer conversations.
Validation.
Learning.
The next action that actually matters.

Ironically, while building Ashive, I became the exact user I was targeting.

Over the last couple of weeks, I published around 25 pieces of content across Instagram and YouTube.

A few thousand views.

Very few users.

At first, that felt discouraging.

But then I realized something.

I was learning more from a handful of real interactions than from all the analytics combined.

Yesterday, someone from Indie Hackers tried Ashive and left thoughtful feedback. It wasn't praise. It wasn't a signup.

It was feedback.

And honestly, that felt like progress.

Because for the first time, reality was talking back.

I'm still very early. Ashive is still an MVP. Most days I'm building, testing, breaking things, and figuring it out as I go.

But compared to a year ago, there's one big difference:

I'm trying to spend less time building in isolation and more time learning from actual people.

Curious if anyone else has had a similar moment where they realized they were optimizing for building instead of learning.