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My PM wife was drowning in spreadsheet hell, so I spent 5 months building her a lifeline.

I’m Aminul (you might know me as @aialvi or just “that guy who tweets raw #buildinpublic posts at 3 a.m.”).

This is my third project as an engineer-turned-founder. But this one is personal.

I watched my wife (a Product Manager) live in spreadsheet hell. Customers emailed, tweeted, Slacked, filled forms, and left Intercom notes. All asking for the same 5 things in 47 different ways. She'd spend half her week just merging duplicates and trying to figure out what actually mattered.

I saw her wasting time and getting frustrated, so I decided to fix it.

Every existing feedback tool she tried fixed exactly one problem but created two new ones:

  • Canny: Beautiful roadmaps, but no decent widget.
  • Savio / Hellonext: Great deduplication, but no real prioritization frameworks.
  • Notion + Tally + Airtable: Free, but she aged 5 years trying to maintain that Frankenstein setup.

So in July 2025, I said screw it. I’m building the one tool that does everything we actually need. Nothing more, nothing less.

The "non-sexy" requirements list I started with (still pinned above my desk):

  1. One embeddable widget: Feedback button + live chat + changelog + help center.
  2. Automatic deduplication: AI that actually detects duplicates so she doesn't have to.
  3. Two-way sync: Works with the tools engineers live in (Slack, GitHub, Jira, Linear).
  4. Baked-in Prioritization: RICE, Kano, WSJF (no more spreadsheets).
  5. Lazy-proof Changelogs: AI that writes customer-facing updates from commit messages.

That’s it. No user profiles, no gamification, no “social feed.” Just the stuff that removes pain.

Timeline & Money Spent

  • Jul 2025: Validated the idea by manually doing the job for 6 beta customers.
  • Aug 2025: Built the MVP while keeping the beta alive.
  • Sep 2025: First test users onboarded (all from X & word of mouth).
  • Oct 2025: Quit freelancing completely to go all in.
  • Nov 2025 (Today): Launching the MVP to the public.

The Stack (in case you’re curious)

  • Next.js 15 + Tailwind
  • Laravel
  • Postmark for emails
  • Paddle for payments
  • OpenAI for deduplication + changelog generation
  • Vercel + Cloudflare

What actually worked for growth

  • Shipping in public every single week (even when it was embarrassing).
  • Giving beta users personal attention and perks.
  • Writing raw “here’s what broke today” threads. People love the mess.

What’s next

  • Public API and dev docs (coming in 30 days).
  • Zapier integrations.
  • Maybe hire my first employee in 2026 (terrifying thought).

If you’re a founder or PM drowning in feedback chaos, come try FeatureShark.

The first 50 Indie Hackers who sign up with code INDIE50 get 50% off forever (no catch).

Link in first comment 👇

And if you’re building something right now, keep shipping. The mess is normal. The only thing that actually matters is that you don’t stop.

P.S. Yes, I still write changelogs at 2 a.m. sometimes… but now AI does 90% of the work and I just drink coffee and click “publish.”

on November 26, 2025
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    Try FeatureShark here: http://featureshark.com

    💡 Use code INDIE50 at checkout for 50% off — forever.

    Only for the first 50 indie hackers.

    Let me know what breaks. I’m still fixing things at 2 a.m. 😅

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