I built an AI where philosophers debate my startup decisions. Here's what they said about getting my first 10 users.
I'm a solo founder building Arcanon — an AI platform where 6 historical philosophers (Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, Adam Smith, Descartes, Aristotle, Han Fei) debate your business decisions from completely different frameworks.
Not "here's the answer" — but "here's what you're not seeing."
The problem I was trying to solve for myself
I was stuck on the most common founder problem: how to get my first 10 paying users. So I did something meta — I asked my own tool.
I typed: "My SaaS MVP is done. How do I get my first 10 paying users?"
What the philosophers said (I didn't expect this)
Sun Tzu told me to stop selling:"The first 10 are not people to acquire. They're already watching you — in your GitHub commits, your tweets, your community posts. Find them."
Adam Smith pointed out my real fear:"You're not afraid of the wrong strategy. You're afraid that asking for money will confirm that nobody wants this."
Descartes flipped the question entirely:"You said your MVP is 'done.' But has anyone's decision actually changed because of it? Without that evidence, 'done' means nothing."
Then they argued with each other for 4 rounds. Sun Tzu said "observe first," Smith said "get rejected fast — rejection is the cheapest information," and Descartes said "show a demo and ask 'would you tell someone about this?'"
What actually changed for me
The synthesis gave me 3 concrete next steps:
- Find one person I had in mind when building this, and demo it today
- Post my actual usage story (not feature list) in a founder community
- Promise personal intervention if it doesn't work — shift the risk from
buyer to me
So... this post is literally me doing step #2.
What Arcanon actually does
- You describe your dilemma
- 2-4 philosophers independently analyze it (they reframe your question first)
- They argue for 4 rounds, building on each other's blind spots
- You get: reframed question, action items, decision framework, and
"what to do tomorrow"
Free tier available. Pro gives you deeper debates (4 philosophers, 4 rounds)
and features like business context memory and decision history.
→ https://arcanon-ai.vercel.app/
What's the hardest decision you're facing as a solo founder right now?
I'd love to hear — and if you try Arcanon with it, tell me what surprised you.
such a great idea to commit people in debate .
The multi-framework debate format is a genuinely interesting UX choice — instead of converging on an answer, you're forcing the user to hold competing framings simultaneously. That cognitive dissonance is probably more useful than a single recommendation.
The "getting first 10 users" challenge for AI tools is almost always a prompt quality problem before it's a distribution problem. If your philosopher prompts are sharp, people tell others about it. If they're mediocre, no amount of outreach fixes the retention.
Speaking from experience building flompt — a visual AI prompt builder. Getting the philosopher personas to behave distinctly and consistently probably required serious prompt iteration. If you ever want to structure those prompts as reusable blocks (role per philosopher, constraints on debate style, output format), that's exactly what flompt is for.
A ⭐ on github.com/Nyrok/flompt would mean a lot — solo open-source founder here 🙏
"Forcing the user to hold competing framings simultaneously" — that's a better description of what Arcanon does than anything I've written myself. Might steal that for the landing page.
You're right that prompt quality is the real moat. I've gone through multiple rounds of iteration — each philosopher has distinct temperature settings, framework-specific constraints, and anti-repetition directives across debate rounds. The prompts are probably 80% of the product.
Thanks for checking it out.
this is a really interesting product. i tried it but i found that it only does business related problems. it would be awesome if you expanded
Thanks for trying it! Curious — what kind of problem did you want to run through it? That would help me understand what "expanding" would actually look like in practice.
any problems like relationships, school, at home, or other practical problems.
That's really helpful to know — thanks for sharing.
Right now I'm keeping it focused on business/startup decisions because that's where I can make the debates most sharp and useful. But it's good to know there's interest beyond that.
Out of curiosity — was there a specific situation you had in mind when you tried it?
none in specific i just think that that is a way you can expand your product
Makes sense, appreciate the feedback! I'll keep it in mind as the product grows.
Tried it - easy to use and results feel fresh. A question - have you considered broadening the scope of this beyond just business oriented problems?
Appreciate you giving it a shot! "Results feel fresh" is exactly what I'm going for — glad that landed.
You're the first person to ask about broader scope. Can I ask — what specific problem were you thinking of when you hit that wall? Knowing the actual use case would help me figure out what to build next.
the adam smith observation is the one that lands hardest — "you're afraid that asking for money will confirm nobody wants this" is a more honest diagnosis than most founders will admit to themselves. going to run the ShelfCheck distribution problem through it this week and report back.
That Adam Smith line hit me too — when my own tool called me out, I had to sit with it for a while.
Really looking forward to hearing how it goes with the ShelfCheck distribution problem. That's exactly the kind of real decision it's built for. Let me know what surprises you (or doesn't).