Uptrends.ai

Answer: launching a product people wont pay for

We are pivoting Uptrends, here's the story

1. We launched as a B2C product for retail investors. Grew to 20,000 users in 3 months. Sounds great, right?

2. Plot twist: Almost no one was paying. Classic "cool to have" but not "need to have" situation.

3. The few paying users? Mostly finance pros. So we dug deeper.

4. Interviewed a dozen of these pros. Their feedback was unanimous: "We need ONE email that summarizes EXACTLY what we need to know. Nothing else."

5. We quickly mocked up a customizable, AI-generated news report based on their input.

6. Here's the crazy part: They paid us upfront. Before we wrote a single line of code. 🤯

7. Fast forward 6 weeks: We're making 2.5x more revenue and spending 5x less. Still can't believe it.

Biggest takeaway: Your initial idea is just a guess. Your customers have the answers. Talk to them, really listen, and be ready to change everything.
It's scary as hell to pivot, but when it clicks, it really clicks.
Any other founders out there make a big pivot? How'd it go? Still processing everything over here!

Just hit a major milestone with Uptrends and had to share. Here's our growth story so far:

→ Launched our MVP 4 months ago. Started with a waitlist of a few hundred people from → Twitter and local startup events.
→ Growth strategy? Hustle.

We went all-in on organic channels:

1. Daily posting on Twitter and LinkedIn
2. Weekly newsletter on Substack
3. Building a community on Discord

4 months in: 20,000 signups.
→ This traction helped us raise a friends/family/angel round. Game changer.
→ Used the funds to hire our first full-time dev and actually get a marketing budget.
→ Expanded our product: Added alerts and email notifications for major market events.
→ New growth channels: Google Ads and influencer marketing. These really accelerated things.

The journey's been intense. Lots of late nights, constant iteration, and more than a few moments of doubt.

But seeing thousands of people use something we built? Absolutely surreal.
To my fellow founders: What was your first big growth milestone? How did you celebrate?

We spent 6 months building the first version of Uptrends. Here's the honest truth about the process:

1. We had NO clue what we were doing. Zero experience in development, marketing, or design.
2. Bootstrapped with $10k of our savings. Felt like a fortune then, ran out quick.
3. Hired a junior dev from AngelList to build the frontend. I "designed" it in PowerPoint (yes, really).
4. The product? A simple table of trending stocks in online news. Click to see sentiment over time. That's it.
5. Could we have done it faster? Absolutely. Today, it'd probably take an afternoon with the right tools.

Biggest lesson: We overbuilt. Should've launched something way simpler, way sooner.
But you know what? We did it. From no-clue to a real product. And that feeling when the first few hundred people signed up? Unbeatable.

To the founders out there: Your first version will be rough. Launch it anyway. You'll learn more in a week of real users than in months of building.
What was your first MVP like? Any similar experiences?

Startup Lesson #1: Your best ideas often come from solving your own problems
Just had a realization about coming up with startup ideas that I wish I knew years ago. Here's the breakdown:

Look at your past projects/hobbies/day jobs. What were the biggest obstacles that got in the way of success? If you could waive a magic wand to solve them, what would that look like?

Identify the core problem those tools would solve, and ask if others might have the same problem.

For me in college, we built an algo to trade stocks/crypto based on social media sentiment. Core problem? Markets are inefficient, online chatter sways prices. Information overload in financial markets.

Now we're exploring turning this into a product for retail investors. Something simple: a way to identify trending stocks and get notified about only the most major events affecting your portfolio.

Key questions we're asking:

• How many investors dislike reading the news / emails / online chatter?
• How many of them are actively searching for tools to get info more efficiently?
• What unique approach can we bring to solving this?

Remember: Ideas are cheap, execution is key. But starting with a problem you've personally experienced gives you a huge advantage in understanding the market.
Any other founders here start by solving their own problems? What insights did you gain?