I'm a former 57-year-old construction site manager. I built an Email Decision OS because I couldn't afford to miss another deal.
Hey IH,
I'm not a developer. I'm not a founder with a CS degree or a YC background.
I manage construction sites in Korea. Tile floors, concrete, scaffolding. That's my day job.
But before this — I spent 8 years in IT sales. Software distribution. Technical sales. 30 emails a day, back when email was how deals got done.
Miss 3 days? Buried under 100. Important ones gone. Price sheets changed. Deals missed.
That pain never left me.
The long way around
After IT, I drifted for 10 years. Construction work found me in 2012 — started as a day laborer in Jeonju. Learned tile. Moved up. Became a site manager.
No savings. Retirement age creeping up. I needed a side income that didn't require me to be 30.
In 2025, I met AI. Not in a conference room. On a construction site in Yeosu, on my phone, between shifts.
I started learning. Slowly. Then faster.
And I kept coming back to the same problem: email is still broken for busy people.
What I built
Slash it is an Email Decision OS — delivered via Telegram bot.
Every morning, you type /start. The AI pre-reads your Gmail and classifies every email into:
🔴 Handle Now
🟡 Check Today
⚪ FYI
For the urgent ones, it drafts a reply. You tap Approve. Done.
No inbox. No reading. Just judgment.
Where I am now
- ✅ Product live and working
- ✅ Founder 100 spots open ($39/mo locked forever)
- ⏳ Payment processing in review (Paddle)
- ⏳ Looking for 100 genuine founding users
I'm not looking for hype. I'm looking for people who actually drown in email and want out.
If that's you — or if you know someone like that — I'd love your feedback.
🔗 https://ai-basket.vercel.app/slash-en
One last thing
I'm 57. Most people my age are winding down.
I'm just getting started.
One problem I understand deeply. One product that solves it. Built between construction sites and late nights.
If that resonates — come find me.
"This hit close to home. I'm also building as a
non-developer in Korea — NDT engineer by day,
solo app builder at night. 62 days in, just shipped
my first real product today. Your story is the kind
that makes this journey feel less lonely.
Rooting for you."
62 days and first product shipped —
that's the real milestone. Congrats!
Non-developer builders in Korea, both of us.
Less lonely indeed.
Rooting for you too. 🙏 반가워요~
Hi Min Chul Choi,
First of all as a senior developer I find it great that you are still at it at the age of 57. I wouldn't say congrats, because I know people who have retired as developers at the age of 73, so there is still some years to go.
I looked your product, and straight of the bat I can see this being useful in sales. You might have some competition from CRM systems though. I got some ideas for you..
The name "Slashit". No offense, and this is highly subjective off course, but I dont recognize the functionality in the name. I did some research for you and found a catchy name that might be better and that is available as an .io, .ai and .tech domain. What about mailservant.ai - wouldn't that draw attention?
The integration. Again very subjective so bear with me - I've never used Telegram, and I don't know anybody of my friends who use it either (I'm located in western Europe). What about integrating this functionality as a Chrome Extension instead? Everybody uses Chrome these days.
Anyways, good luck with your product, I hope you are successful.
Thank you for the kind words.
On the name — Slash it stays.
Slash = cut through the noise. That's the whole product.
On Telegram — 1 billion monthly active users worldwide.
No app install. No learning curve. Just /start.
The constraint is the feature.
Chrome extension is an interesting direction for later.
The strongest thing you have is not the Telegram bot, it is that you lived the exact pain. You lost deals because an email got buried. Most founders build for a problem they read about, you built for one that cost you money. Lead with that story everywhere, not with "Email Decision OS." The abstract name hides the part that actually sells.
The real insight here is that you kill the inbox instead of organizing it. "Stop opening your email" is a sharper promise than "classify your email." Worth testing that messaging.
For your first 100, skip generic founder channels and go where a missed email costs real money: sales reps, recruiters, brokers, agency owners. One saved deal dwarfs $39, so the pitch writes itself. I started in IT sales doing 30 emails a day, so this one hit home. Rooting for you.
That framing is sharp — "stop opening your email"
is exactly what Slash it does.
Gmail organizes. Slash it decides.
🔴 Handle Now
🟡 Check Today
⚪ FYI
Draft reply ready. One tap to send.
That's the decision layer Gmail doesn't have.
Not abstract. That's the whole product.
Thanks for pushing on this — genuinely useful.
This story is strong because the product is not coming from theory. It comes from a real missed-deal pain.
The part I’d be careful with is the category wording.
“Email Decision OS” sounds smart, but the buyer may not wake up wanting an OS. They wake up afraid of missing the one email that costs them money, a client, or a deadline.
That is probably the sharper founding-user angle: not inbox productivity, but deal-protection for busy people who cannot afford to read everything.
Happy to put the tighter first-100-user angle in writing if useful. I think Slash it needs a very specific buyer frame before you push too hard for founding users.
This reframe hit hard.
"Deal protection" is exactly what Slash it does —
but I've been calling it wrong.
The person who needs this isn't looking for
an OS or productivity tool.
They're the one who missed a client email
buried under 100 others and lost the deal.
That's the exact pain I built this from.
Would love to hear your tighter first-100-user angle.
What buyer frame would you put around this?
That buyer-frame question is exactly the part I would not answer casually in a comment.
If Slash it gets framed as inbox productivity, you’ll attract people who like cleaner email. If it gets framed around deal protection, the first 100 users should come from a much narrower pain.
Send me your email and I’ll write the tighter first-100-user angle properly instead of crowding the thread.
Appreciate the offer.
I'd rather keep the conversation here in the open —
others on IH might benefit from it too.
What's the tighter frame in your view?
Fair.
The short public answer is: I would not chase “people who want better email.”
That market is too broad.
The real decision is which missed-email pain is expensive enough that someone changes behavior now, not later.
That is the part I’d be careful with before pushing for the first 100 users, because the wrong buyer frame can make Slash it look useful but not urgent.
I can write the proper first-100-user angle if you want it. Publicly, I’d just say: don’t position this as email organization. Position it around preventing expensive misses.
Appreciate the public answer.
You're right.
The target is narrow — owners drowning in email
with no assistant and no margin for missed deals.
That's who I'm building for.
Exactly. That’s the frame I’d stick with.
If the first 100 users are owners where one buried email can cost real money, Slash it has a much clearer reason to exist.
I’d avoid broad inbox/productivity language from here and keep the story tied to preventing expensive misses.