Most platforms treat founders as data. We're trying something uncomfortably human.
I'm a full-stack developer at SoftRankings.
Our co-founder Ayush Shakya said something this week that I haven't stopped thinking about. He wrote that after a founder lists on SoftRankings, he has almost no relationship with them. He knows their stage. He knows their category. He can see the impressions and the clicks. But they don't actually talk.
That's the gap he's trying to close. And I want to say why it matters from where I sit.
If you want to join the founder community, request an invite here: formsout.app/form/founder-email-collection-for-slack
I can tell you exactly how many pre-seed founders clicked through to a specific analytics tool last Tuesday. I can see which stage cohorts spend the longest time on a listing page. I know the geographic spread of impressions, the click patterns, the drop-off points.
What I can't see: whether any of it actually helped someone make a better decision.
That's the gap that's been sitting with me since we launched.
What the Slack actually is.
Our co-founder Ayush Shakya is opening a small, private Slack for founders listed on SoftRankings. Invited founders only, starting under 50 people. No weekly standups. No content calendar. Just a place where founders at similar stages can ask each other the questions that don't have clean answers yet.
Is this the right CRM at 8 people? When did you actually outgrow Notion? What broke first when you hit 20 customers?
Ayush put it well in his post: the most useful thing SoftRankings could be isn't a better directory. It's the place where early-stage founders help each other figure out their stack. The Slack is that bet made small and honest.
Why I care about this as an engineer.
Every feature I scope for SoftRankings is a guess about what founders need next. A good guess, based on real data, but still a guess.
A direct channel to the founders actually using the platform turns that into a conversation. That's not a small thing. It changes what I build and how I prioritize it.
Most tools are built for users. The feedback loop runs through metrics and support tickets. What we're trying, deliberately small, no promises about what it becomes, is to build alongside the founders on the platform.
That's a different kind of engineering problem. And honestly, a more interesting one.
If you've listed on SoftRankings, request a Slack invite here: formsout.app/form/founder-email-collection-for-slack
Haven't listed yet? Free, 24-hour review, no credit card: softrankings.com/submit
This resonates. Metrics can tell you what founders are doing, but not always why they’re doing it or whether the product actually helped them.
I think that direct feedback loop becomes even more important as a product grows. A founder community can turn analytics from “what happened?” into “why did this happen?” — and that can completely change what you build next.
The gap between seeing founder activity in analytics and actually talking to those founders is pretty striking. Curious what conversations emerge once the Slack gets going.
we cover major topics:
The founder-to-founder conversations are the part I’d be most interested in seeing play out. What kinds of pain points are founders bringing up so far?