May Askarzadeh

@yklnss maybe change the name to glowupmaxxing app

Should i make a looksmaxxing app?

i almost killed my app because i thought nobody wanted it. 4 months later vix was doing $30k mrr, which is still insane to say because at the time i was convinced the app was the problem. it wasn’t. i just didn’t know that yet. last year i was working part-time at a drugstore while building vix. every shift drained me in that very specific retail way where you’re tired before you even clock in. but i kept doing it because i had this annoying belief that the app was going to get me out. then september came and i launched my first slideshow campaign. it made $57. i remember looking at the number like… be so fr. i had spent months building this thing in the scraps of time i had, just for this? that was the first time i actually felt stupid. like maybe i should stop being delusional and just apply for internships like a normal person. after that i didn’t really quit. i just stopped caring the same. i fell back into the routine. then mid november came and i made the dumbest smart decision of my life. $3k/mo for 3 ai tiktok accounts. which is a crazy sentence because the app had literally made $57 lol. i remember staring at the number like girl how am i supposed to pay $3k/mo when this thing is not even paying for itself. but that was also the whole problem. it wasn’t paying for itself because nobody was seeing it. so instead of spending another month tweaking the app, i paid for distribution. by mid-december, vix was at $5k mrr. but the moment i remember most was before the number even felt real. i was at work at 6:30pm on a thursday, checking my phone between tasks, and one video had hit 10k views. then i checked again. 50k. then the comments started coming in from girls asking what the app was, where to find it, if it was real. and that was the first time it hit me in a way i actually felt. maybe i didn’t build something nobody wanted. maybe nobody had seen it in a way that made them care. vix wasn’t dead. my distribution was.

@toriluoo that’s literally the point lol. ai ugc lets you take a hook that already works and distribute it faster, cheaper, and across more faces

views ≠ installs. people watch ai ugc for the novelty. not for your product. and every viral ai ugc is still copying a human ugc blueprint. human > ai. always.

@hthieblot sometimes the plan is literally just not quitting that day lol

One of the hardest parts of being a startup founder: You wake up exhausted, stressed, full of doubt. Then you put on a smile and pretend: – The company’s fine – You have a plan – You’re not breaking down Your team, customers, and investors all count on you. It’s lonely.

@alexwtlf 100% agree. and people are still arguing if ai creators work because they don’t want to accept what’s already happening on the feed lol

AI influencers are complete bullshit and deceptive. Ok. You’d rather pay a real UGC creator $300 to fake excitement for a product… instead of paying an AI influencer $3 to do the exact same thing. AI videos on TikTok and Instagram already get millions of views. Nobody complains. Human psychology works like this: people care about the content, not whether the face is real. By 2030, every company will have an army of AI influencers and nobody will care that it’s AI. My 13 AI influencers are already promoting brands. Working 24/7. Never tired. Never ghosting. But you can keep criticizing “synthetic fake garbage” and miss this opportunity

@danielhangan_ this is comparing good human ugc to bad ai ugc imo.this ai accounts beat human ugc constantly. 643k vs 903 views says it all

977k vs 18K views. Real Human vs AI. same product. same hook. same format. real skin beat perfect AI by 50x. AI Slop is cheap but also 50x less effective. would you choose 50x fewer views to save on production costs?

@Tobby_scraper broad feels safer until you realize nobody knows why they should care

Unpopular opinion: your app doesn't need more features. It needs a sharper problem statement. "Productivity app" → nobody searches for this "Focus timer for people who hate timers" → someone does The riches are in the niches. But only if your positioning is specific enough to reach them. Rewrite your App Store title today. Make it embarrassingly specific.

@anulagarwal the app idea doesn’t need to be genius. it just needs to be easy to understand, fun to share, and have a distribution angle people don’t see yet.

you are all overthinking your app ideas. this developer made a snail-app in the form of a game and it is going VIRAL on socials. if the snail crawls and catches the cursor mouse on your desktop, game over. get distracted for a few minutes and ta-da: Snail wins!

@reezus wifi + a laptop really changed the whole meaning of freedom lol

Getting an MBA while running a profitable startup is the most unhinged thing I’ve ever done. My classmates are fighting for $200K consulting jobs like that’s freedom. I made $27K in the last 30 days from my apartment in sweatpants, and I’m literally writing this on vacation. Then I go to class and listen to people debate “New Venture Finance” case studies about businesses making less money than my app. It’s comedy.

@colekosco2 this was the lesson for me too. the app was never the hardest part. getting the right audience to care was

I still don’t know how to code I know distribution In 2026, that’d the edge

@MrTimRiggins ya, i have 7 iphones automated. one for each account

@maebuildz do you run this on multiple phones?

i ran human ugc vs ai girls for 3 months and it wasn't even close. the ai girls were cheaper, faster, posted more, converted better. no paid ads. no boosting. tiktok is a lottery and i have 7 ai girls printing tickets 20x a day on US tiktok. from toronto lol people still call this "content." it's distribution.

@paraschopra painfully real lol i kept tweaking the app when the real issue was getting it in front of the right audience

All vibecoders eventually realize that the difficulty was never in building the product; rather it was in acquiring users.

@DanielSmidstrup yeah lol i miss spending 3 hours fixing a stupid bug just to realize i forgot one comma

Are you willing to go back to coding without AI?

@alexcooldev painfully real lol i thought some accounts were dead and then they just needed to chill for 2 days and act normal again

All of my phones are not shadowbanned. When I get 0 views, I just stop posting for 2–3 days, continue scrolling and liking like a normal TikTok user, switch the content, and then post again and it’s okay. 🥴

@mal_shaik painfully real lol i thought i needed a better product. turns out i needed a better way to get the right girls to see it

stages of grief for technical founders doing marketing: 1. denial ("the product sells itself") 2. anger ("why won't anyone sign up") 3. bargaining ("maybe if i post on HN one more time") 4. depression ("i'm mass dming at 3am") 5. acceptance ("distribution is the job")

@CiprianiRanieri ship the ugly version, find the distribution channel, then build around what the market actually reacts to.

You can give a first-time founder just one piece of advice. What is it?

@Sherifdeenolat2 i’d ask a different question. not “is this idea unique?” more like “can i package, market and distribute this better than the 20 people already doing it?”

Founders, how do I find a unique business idea?

@loganstakeley organic revenuecat notifications hit different, you know the machine worked while you were sleeping lol

Feels good to wake up to this

@Sherifdeenolat2 all distribution. i’d rather add 3-4 more accounts and flood test hooks organically before giving meta my money lol

Founders, If you had a $5-10k/month marketing budget, where would you actually put it today?

@vaaselene organic marketing on volume. most people post once and wait. you have to post until you're slightly embarrassed by yourself.

builders who hit $1k MRR this year: what got you over the line? > viral post > organic marketing > referral > paid ads > build in public