NonBioS
The AI Software Dev with its own Computer
Two updates at NonBioS that we've been wanting to ship for a while - and a signal of where we're headed.
We've nearly doubled credits across all plans. This was made possible by infrastructure improvements we've been rapidly shipping, and it's not a one-time thing. Continuously expanding credits on every plan is now a directional commitment at NonBioS - we're investing heavily in our infrastructure so we can keep passing those gains directly to users. More headroom, more often.
One thing to note on models: nonbios-1.143 is now the default, labeled as the Premium Coding Agent. It's more powerful but consumes credits faster. If you want more mileage out of your credits, switch to the Standard Coding Agent (nonbios-1.137) when starting a new chat.
Second - and this one felt overdue - we've shipped Daily Credits. Running out of plan credits before your billing cycle renewed used to mean hitting a wall. That never felt right. You shouldn't lose momentum on a project just because you're between cycles.
So now every plan, including Free, falls back to a daily credit allotment that resets every 24 hours. When your plan credits run out, you keep going at a steady pace until your cycle renews or you top up. No lockouts, no surprises.
Taken together, these changes reflect a new way of thinking at NonBioS: you should always be able to build.
Full details at nonbios.ai/pricing - would love to hear your thoughts.
We had an email list running into thousands of users and a set of very passionate supporters, which we thought would do the job for us. Sadly, ProductHunt works a little differently and we learned it the hard way.
Some context
We did not launch on ProductHunt immediately after going public, as we were already getting users from other sources. When we did launch, we had been running for close to 6 months, with a few thousand users on the platform and a few hundred paying, passionate supporters. We thought we could rely on them to carry our ProductHunt launch. But things did not really work as planned.
How we prepared
We spent about 2 days fixing up the launch page: the video, images, and writeups including the founder comments. Once we were happy with it, we scheduled the launch for the following Monday. We shared the launch in advance with our community on Discord, LinkedIn, Twitter and some WhatsApp groups. We also spent some time interacting with other launches that week to get a feel for how ProductHunt works. We looked set for the Monday launch.
The PH mechanics you need to know
ProductHunt now mandates a 4 hour window during which votes are not visible. After that window opens, only the top 20 launches are visible on the home page. In our experience, all the launches which make it into the top 20 after the 4 hour window continue to gather upvotes because they are the only ones visible. If you do not make it into the top 20, your launch is mostly dead in the water.
If you look at the upvote counts on any given day, there is a huge step difference between the 20th and 21st position. 20th place might have 80 upvotes. 21st might have 20. That gap is created entirely by the mechanics of the launch page, not by the quality of the product.
What went wrong
When we launched, we sent an email blast to all our users, offered free coupons on our paid plans as part of the launch, and shared across LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp and Discord. We also got a small group of our most passionate supporters to share their honest experience on ProductHunt, and we were really counting on them.
Once the 4 hours were up, we landed at 24th position with only around 20 upvotes. None of the comments from our most passionate users were showing up. Confused, we emailed ProductHunt but got routed to a clanker. We eventually found out what had happened: ProductHunt marks all activity from new accounts as spam. All the support from our most passionate users was silently discarded because they were new to the platform.
To be fair, this is understandable from ProductHunt's perspective. Launches probably attract a lot of gaming and spam, and the easiest way to filter it out is to discount activity from new accounts. But this directly contradicts what ProductHunt itself encourages you to do, which is to rally your community behind your launch.
We ended the day at 24th position with barely a blip in our traffic. So that was that.
What we would do differently
The hard truth is that your best users are mostly wasted on ProductHunt. The intersection of existing ProductHunt users and your own user base will be very close to zero. So mobilising your community for a PH launch is largely a waste of everyone's time.
The only thing that actually works is getting users who are already active on ProductHunt to support your launch. The best way to do this is to spend a couple of weeks following other launches, commenting and upvoting, and building genuine relationships with other makers. So that when you launch, they can support you back. You only need around 20 to 30 active ProductHunt users in your corner. If you make it into the top 20 after the first 4 hours, you will most likely stay there and keep getting exposure.
The one other thing we would do differently is put more effort into the launch assets, particularly the video. We probably underinvested there because we were counting on our users to carry the launch. That was a mistake.
The bigger lesson
ProductHunt is ultimately a platform game, not a community game. The painful irony is that your most loyal users, the ones who genuinely love your product, are the least useful people you can bring to a PH launch, simply because they are not part of the PH ecosystem. For ProductHunt, spend a few weeks becoming a genuine participant on the platform before you launch. It is a smaller and more specific ask than mobilising your entire user base, and it actually works.
Happy to answer any questions. Our ProductHunt page is at https://www.producthunt.com/products/nonbios-ai for context.
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This is a sharp breakdown, especially the point that Product Hunt is more of a platform game than a community game.
The painful part is that most founders think their existing users are the launch asset, but on Product Hunt the real asset is active PH-native support before the 4-hour visibility window. Your loyal users may love the product, but if the platform discounts them, they cannot create the early ranking signal.
The bigger lesson I’d pull from this is that PH should probably be treated less like a launch day and more like a 2-week distribution campaign with three layers:
active PH maker relationships before launch
stronger launch assets that explain the product fast
post-launch follow-up to convert the small traffic bump into users anywayThe underused angle now is probably a recovery campaign. You already have the honest case study, the learning, and a real product with paying users. I’d turn that into a second distribution push outside PH instead of letting the launch result define the momentum.
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What stood out for us was that there is a huge disconnect on how PH expects you to support the launch and what actually works.
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Exactly. A lot of founders treat PH like “bring our users and post once,” but the platform rewards a very specific kind of early activity.
The useful move now is probably not to over-analyze the launch itself. It is to use the failed/underwhelming result as material for a recovery push.
You already have the honest lesson, the mismatch, and the product context. That can become a stronger post-launch distribution angle than the launch page itself.
Happy to put a compact recovery plan together if useful: what to post next, where to push it, and how to turn the PH learning into another user-acquisition attempt.
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1 Comment
Nishant, "you should always be able to build" is a better brand line than anything on your homepage, and it means something for NonBioS that it does not mean for any other tool in this space. For a copilot, running out of credits just stops the suggestions. For an autonomous agent that runs long builds on its own machine, running out mid-task means the worker abandons the job halfway, on its own server. So Daily Credits is not billing generosity, it is continuity of an autonomous employee that does not get sent home in the middle of a deploy. That is the framing: you did not just remove a paywall, you kept the agent from quitting mid-build. Say it that way and a pricing update becomes proof of your actual positioning.
One strategic caution, said as a friend. "Continuously expanding credits" is generous and users will love it, but credit generosity is a fight on infrastructure cost, and that is the one field where funded players can outspend you. Your moat is not more credits, it is that the agent finishes and ships on its own computer, which none of them do. So let the credits serve the moat rather than become the story: the reason to give more headroom is that an autonomous worker needs uninterrupted runway, not that you are cheaper. Cheaper is a race. Uninterrupted autonomy is a category.
One concrete flag and a question. Defaulting new chats to the Premium 1.143 that "consumes credits faster" and then telling people to switch down to Standard for mileage sits a little against "always be able to build," because you are defaulting users toward the wall you just removed. For this brand, Standard as the default with Premium as the deliberate opt-in might fit the promise better. And the question the whole post turns on: when a user drops to daily-credit pace mid-build, does the agent keep working at the slower pace, or does it pause until reset? Steady pace is continuity. Pause is just a softer wall, and the difference is the entire promise.