Esteban In Tech

If your SaaS requires too much effort to adopt and customers are leaving before seeing the value, building an FDE offer can be a great idea.

Your AI startup is cooked if you ignore this new business model (even YC is talking about it): “Forward-Deployed Engineer” It’s the idea of embedding an engineer from your team directly with the customer, to help integrate your solution into their real workflows. It’s not new, but it used to be reserved for big tech and enterprise contracts. Now we’re seeing it more and more, even in early-stage AI startups. The reason is simple: AI is transforming every industry, but adoption is messy, slow, and full of friction. Sometimes it means rewriting workflows, rethinking tooling, or refactoring how teams operate. And that’s the problem. Even if your AI startup solves a massive pain point, if the integration is too painful, users will churn before they see value.

As a software founder, what's more difficult? 1. Distribution (GTM) 2. Product engineering

3 reasons that kill early-stage software: 1. Your market doesn’t exist No matter how cool your idea is, if nobody needs it, it won’t survive. Talk to real users, understand their pain, and make sure your solution actually matters. 2. You’re building too many features Pick one core feature that solves a real, painful problem. Forget the “nice-to-haves” at first because complexity kills early momentum. 3. Your product doesn’t need to be perfect Stop polishing for months. Ship fast, gather feedback, iterate, and improve. Speed + focus + real market are the only ways to survive in the startup industry. What are other main reasons you could think of? I'll add to the list.

@aryanlabde Both are complex, but crucial. Many people seem to focus on distribution nowadays, but it's useless without a great product.

Unpopular opinion: Marketing is easy. Building is still complex.

@aryanlabde People mostly talk about distribution nowadays. Barriers to programming an app did lower, but this doesn’t necessarily mean building a great product. So both product and distribution matter.

What do you think matters more today? - product - distribution

@jonathan_wilke Supabase is very convenient

it’s 2026 and we're still arguing about auth. i’m curious what everyone is actually shipping with this year? ⚫️ better-auth (the current favorite) 🔵 clerk (the "i have a budget" choice) 🟡 auth.js (the classic) 🔴 supabase (the all-in-one)

@pcshipp I go with Vercel or Railway most of the time now

Hey devs I have backend, I need host which one should i choose? - vercel - render - netlify - railway - cloudflare - aws

@hunterjisaacson Perfection should be avoided at first. It’s more important to ship fast, learn, and improve.

Perfection is the enemy of progress So many people don’t ship their apps because it’s not perfect and ready for people to see You see imperfections because you imagine what the app WILL be Users only see it for what it is Keep it simple and deliver value in v1

@LoicBerthelot Amazing growth. Congrats.

How long it took to grow Dropmagic to… - $1K MRR → 5 days - $5K MRR → 30 days - $10K MRR → 60 days - $20K MRR → 100 days - $30K MRR → 122 days - $40K MRR → 140 days - $50K MRR → 173 days - $60K MRR → 205 days Let’s see if we can break $100K MRR by Day 300 🚀

@scaling_shields What services do you sell? Who do you target?

if i was broke and needed to make $10-30k/month in 2026 i would ignore this advice and do cold email instead not joking im 19 and pull $65k/month sending emails to strangers in my underwear while mfs are out here "thinking outside the box" and "finding untapped niches" the niche is right there bro its been right there since 2018 let me give you the exact play so you can stop crying on the timeline about "opportunities" STEP 1: BUY INBOXES LIKE A NORMAL PERSON go to instantly or smartlead buy 300 inboxes costs like $350/month total thats the whole "startup cost" everyone makes sound complicated if you cant afford $350 you have bigger problems and this tweet isnt for you STEP 2: SCRAPE LEADS FOR FREE apollo has a free tier linkedin sales nav free trial or just find a discord with leaked databases (there are hundreds) you now have infinite business owners to email cost: $0 STEP 3: WRITE THE MOST BASIC EMAIL POSSIBLE "hey [name], i help [industry] companies get more clients through cold email. want me to show you how it works?" thats literally it if you think you need "better copy" you are coping the guys actually making money have emails that would make copywriters physically ill STEP 4: SEND 6000 EMAILS A DAY AND SHUT UP not 200 not 500 6000 minimum most mfs send 50 emails and check their inbox 8 times before lunch then wonder why they booked zero calls the math: • 6000 emails/day • 0.1% book rate (this is low) • 6 calls booked daily • 25% close rate • 1.5 new clients per day at $2k/client thats $90k/month but that requires actually sending the emails instead of "researching niches" STEP 5: ANSWER THE PHONE LIKE YOURE NOT SCARED someone replies "sure tell me more" you call them you talk like a normal human you say "want me to set this up for you" they say yes or no thats sales bro its not complicated most people are terrified of phone calls in 2025 which is exactly why it works so well STEP 6: REPEAT UNTIL RICH theres no step 6 its just steps 4 and 5 forever i know so many mfs doing this exact play making $40-80k/month right now no ai no "untapped niche" no "thinking outside the box" just cold email and a phone this has been "the opportunity" for 8 years but it sounds too boring so people would rather spend 2026 "locking in" and "finding their thing" meanwhile some kid in ohio whos been sending 6000 emails a day will be at $100k/month by march doing the exact same boring shit

@tech_nurgaliyev @scaling_shields Instantly is affordable

@scaling_shields where to buy 300 inboxes for $350? I am buying on cheapinboxes, already bought 120, will add extra 250 inboxes

@AetherAurelia I don't like it

this is still insane

@lingodotdev That's why technical debt is a huge issue

Refactoring Code is a lot of fun. Meanwhile:

@fidexcode A because I want to know the percentage

Which one is a better user experience? A or B

@striver_79 Coding isn't the goal; building great and scalable systems and products is.

Coding was always the easiest part of the job, and AI has taken over much of it now. The tough part still stays with the human mind: - Designing the system end-to-end (tradeoffs, constraints, scale) - Breaking vague requirements into clear specs - Choosing the right abstractions, data models, and boundaries - Thinking through edge cases before users find them - Making it reliable: failures, retries, idempotency, fallbacks - Security + privacy by default - Observability: logs, metrics, tracing, alerts, SLOs - Performance + cost: what matters at P95/P99, what’s waste - End: “it works” isn’t the finish line Engineers build systems. You may have an argument, if you write a detailed prompt covering all of it, AI will be able to do it. As I said, coding is the easier part of the job once you know what you up-to.

@alexcooldev B2C is definitely on TikTok and IG

Don’t market your B2C mobile app on X, honest take from my own experience. When you go viral on X, most people aren’t discovering your app because they need it. They’re just curious about you and your numbers. That’s why those random 1-star reviews show up not because the app is bad, but because someone doesn’t like you. How I see platforms now: > X, LinkedIn → SaaS & B2B > TikTok, IG, Threads → B2C mobile apps > Reddit → works for everything, but the crowd is ruthless and bans are fast Different products. Different platforms.

@GordonGekko I hope you are right

Bitcoin is about to leave many shocked and sidelined. Are you ready?

@codewithpri Yes

Is MacBook Apple’s best product?

@oliverbrocato Agreed.

I’ll die on this hill: Even on vacation, you and your team should still check in periodically. 2 minutes. Quick peek at Slack. Quick scan of Gmail. Anything urgent? Handle it or route it. If you completely disappear, you simply don’t care. Tell me I’m wrong.