matthew kang

Hi, I'm new to X and looking to #connect with the #buildinpublic and tech communities. I’d love to meet folks in: 🚀 SaaS & Startups 📷 Web or Mobile Developer 🤖 Adtech people What are you guys working on right now?

@NotZainAgain yes indeed

All the smartest guys I know want their next company to be in adtech Lesson in that.

Full write-up: @Official_Adrop/founder-notes-1-we-thought-the-problem-was-traffic-we-were-completely-wrong-52331cdf92cf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">medium.com/@Official_Adro… #BIP #Adtech #adops #adsales #SaaS

1/ An ad inquiry lands in your inbox. Good news, right? Then you freeze. What price? Which placement? Where do creatives go? Who does the report and settlement? We watched publishers stall here over and over. 2/ At first, we were sure the problem was demand — publishers just couldn't find advertisers. We spent months on distribution and sales. We were solving the wrong problem. Advertisers were already in the inbox. The hard part was everything that came after. 3/ To run one ad you need an ad server, inventory to sell, measurement, and reporting. No bundle = the reply gets stuck. 4/ "Just build it?" In-house easily = 1+ year and hundreds of $. And devs don't know ads, so a PM has to sit in from day one. Outsourcing? Same cost + who maintains it. 5/ Even if you build it, ops eats you alive. One campaign = 60–100 emails. One person running ad ops for 6.5M traffic by hand. "The more tools we added, the more complex it got." 6/ Then the killer question: ops + sales headcount — does the math work? Revenue isn't guaranteed. So time meant for the core product leaks into ads. The reply becomes "later." 7/ So everyone lands on the same answer: AdMob/AdSense. One line of code. But sub-$1 CPM, no control, thin reporting, UX you can't fix. Not a choice — a default. 8/ The pattern: everyone carving the same wheel, in a slightly different shape, at huge cost. Looking back the answer feels obvious; at the time it wasn't. The real challenge was everything after someone said “we want to buy an ad.” That's what we're working on.

@AKirtesh Self-serve adtech. adrop.io/en

Founders & Indie Hackers 👇 It’s your time! Drop your SaaS and products below 👀

@usegrandsaas Self-serve adtech. adrop.io/en

Drop your SaaS 👋 List as many projects as you can 😜 #saas #project #BuildInPublic #apps

@JakeFleshner Self-serve adtech. adrop.io/en

Pitch me your company in 2 words Angel invested in 40+ companies and always looking for more

@robert_shaw 👇 Check it out adrop.io/en

@robert_shaw Building AdControl. Direct ad sales is still email + Google Sheets in 2026. 7 tools, 11 days from inquiry to ad live. We made it Stripe Checkout for ad placements. Now powering 100+ publishers in Korea — going global. #indiehackers #buildinpublic

SaaS/Startup founders What are you building currently? Show your amazing product below, join 100+ founders here every week. #indiehackers #buildinpublic

@jmmoran12 👀

How can ad publishers take back control from big tech and rebuild trust? It comes from creating the right "value exchange" - leveraging #firstparty data & the right #adtech bit.ly/3Cob017 #analytics #software #advertising #sellside

@ardent__dev drop our A.drop product!!! We help apps launch ad businesses without building infra from scratch 👀 Trying to make ads less painful for apps!! adrop.io

If you're a solo founder building right now drop your product below

Built this at A.drop. AdControl powers direct ad sales for 100+ publishers in Korea — opening it up globally. If you sell direct ads (or want to) and felt any of this — DM me. Comparing notes is the best part of doing this. Worst direct-sales-ops story below 👇

What every beehiiv / Substack / publisher thread eventually converges on: "I just want Stripe Checkout for ad placements." Advertiser picks a slot → pays → uploads creative → ad goes live → automated reporting. That's the whole product. Nobody has built it well.

Just spent an hour in r/beehiiv reading direct sponsorship threads. Same complaint, over and over, from newsletter creators making $1K to $50K/mo: "The revenue is real. The workflow is breaking me." Why direct ad sales is still email + spreadsheets in 2026 🧵