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Insane AI

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Insane AI operates as an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered fitness training app.

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WTF Does This Company Do? is a website tool that helps with writing for landing pages. It uses a special AI called GPT-3, made by OpenAI, to help users come

WTF does this company do? - Insane AI Tools

Insai | 2,544 followers on LinkedIn. A non-invasive brain-computer interface to augment human cognition and treat neurological disorders. | A non-invasive brain-computer interface to augment human cognition and treat neurological disorders.

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Just keep in mind that the site is run by a company called RECON Labs, and they don&#x27;t allow you to use their models to produce actual commercial products.

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1 Mrd. Mitglieder | Die Plattform für Ihre berufliche Identität. Bauen Sie Ihr berufliches Netzwerk auf und bleiben Sie informiert. Finden Sie nützliche Informationen, Insider-Einblicke und Karrierechancen.

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Information on valuation, funding, cap tables, investors, and executives for Insai. Use the PitchBook Platform to explore the full profile.

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The Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) is a non-profit, nonpartisan 501(c)(6) professional organization based in Arlington, Virginia for the public and private sector members of the United States Intelligence Community. INSA was founded in 1979 as the Security Affairs Support ...

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Founded in the year 2019 · Developer of a wearable headband for improving cognition

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Find out if Insai is the right fit for your future career! Explore jobs, salary, equity, and funding information. Read about work-life balance, perks, benefits, and the company culture!

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Insai (company). Insai is a tech startup from Denmark developing a wearable neuroimaging device with AI capabilities to tailor neuromodulation and neurofeedback to each user.

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INSAI LTD - Free company information from Companies House including registered office address, filing history, accounts, annual return, officers, charges, business activity

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See what employees say it&#x27;s like to work at INSAI. Salaries, reviews, and more - all posted by employees working at INSAI.

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At Insai, we are aspiring to solve neurological disorders with brain-computer interface technology. We are developing a medical headband for neurorehabilitation. It’s a wearable device powered with ...

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Learning AI If You Suck at Math - Part Eight - The Musician in the Machine

Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 by Various, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . THE ST. LAWRENCE HOSPITAL FOR THE INSANE. here THE ST. LAWRENCE HOSPITAL FOR THE INSANE. The St. Lawrence State Hospital at Ogdensburg, N.Y., is a center of public, professional, philanthropic, and legislative interest. Though projected in advance of the adoption of the system of State care for the insane, it was opened at a time to make it come under close observation in relation to the question of State care, and the friends of this departure from the inefficient, often almost barbarous provisions of county house confinement could have no better example to point the excellence of their theories than this new and progressively planned State hospital. The members of the State Lunacy Commission and Miss Schuyler and her colleagues of the State Charities Aid Society, who fought the State care bills through the Legislature this winter and in 1890, would be repaid for all of their trouble by contrasting the condition of the inmates of the St. Lawrence State Hospital with the state they were in under their former custodians, the county officers of the northern New York counties. At the best, even when these officials realized the responsibility of their charge and were actuated by humane impulses, the county houses offered no chance of remedial treatment. Custody and maintenance, the former mainly a reliance on force, the later often of scant provision, were the sum total of what was deemed necessary for the lunatics. In their new environment they find everything as different in accommodations and treatment as the word hospital in the title of the institution is different in sound and significance from the hope-dispelling, soul-chilling names of "asylum," "mad house," and "bedlam" formerly given to all retreats for the mentally afflicted. They find, and it is an encouraging feature of the plan that so many of them quickly see and appreciate it, that they are considered as sufferers from disease and not from demoniacal possession. The remarkable range of classification provided for, the adaptability of construction to the different classifications, the reliance on occupation, the dependence on treatment, and the subordination of the custodial feature, except where a wise conservatism demands its retention, are apparent alike to inmates and visitors. This hospital is complete as to plans, and as to the power plant, drainage, and subway construction necessary for the 1,500 patients, that the legislature has provided for in its law establishing the institution. Buildings are already finished and occupied that accommodate 200 inmates, and the contractors have nearly finished part of the central group that will bring that number up to nearly 1,300. The appropriation asked for this year by the managers will be scaled down considerably by Mr. McClelland, the very economical chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the Democratic Assembly. But, unless he has miscalculated, there will be money enough to carry on the work of construction to advantage for the year. An appropriation sufficient to complete the buildings at once was thought by many to be the wisest economy, but big figures in an appropriation bill have very little chance this year. The bill establishing the State Hospital district and providing for the building of the institution fixed the per capita cost of construction, including the purchase of land, at $1,150, and the plans have been made on that basis for 1,500 patients. But if the needs of the district should require it, the capacity could be increased by an almost indefinite extension of the system of outlying colony groups at a very small per capita cost, as the central group is by far the most expensive in construction. The administration group in part, and one outlying group, with the general kitchen, bakery, workshop, laundry, employes' dwelling house, power house, and pumping station, are already erected, and have added a feature of architectural beauty to Point Airy. This point, of itself of picturesque and romantic beauty, juts into the St. Lawrence River at the head of the Galoup Rapids, three miles below Ogdensburg. It is a part of the hospital farm of 950 acres, which includes woodland, meadow, farm land, and a market garden tract of the $100 an acre grade. The location of the institution in these particulars and in reference to salubrity, sewerage facilities and abundance and excellence of water supply, is wonderfully advantageous. In planning the hospital Dr. P.M. Wise, who has since become its medical superintendent, aimed to take the utmost advantage of the scenic and hygienic capabilities of the site, and to improve on all previous combinations of the two general divisions of a mixed asylum—a hospital department for the concentration of professional treatment, and a maintenance department for the separate care of the chronic insane. He was anxious to secure as much as possible of the compactness and ease of administration of the linear plan of construction, with wings on either side of the executive building of long corridors occupied as day rooms, with sleeping rooms opening out of them on both sides. But he wanted to avoid the depressing influence of this monotonous structure, as the better results of variety and increased opportunities of subdivision and classification are well recognized. He was not, however, prepared to accept wholly that abrupt departure from the linear plan known as the "cottage plan," which in some institutions has been carried to the extreme of erecting a detached building for every ward. The climate of St. Lawrence county forbade this. Her winters are as vigorous as those of her Canadian neighbors, even as her people are almost as ebullient in their politics as the vigorous warring liberals and conservatives across the river. And there are features of the linear plan that can only be left out of our asylum structure at the expense of efficiency. Other rules that he formulated from his experience were that a building for the insane should never exceed two stories in height; that fire proof construction and at least two stairways from the upper floors should be provided; that day rooms should be on the first and sleeping rooms on the second floor; that all buildings for the insane who suffer from sluggish and enfeebled circulation of the blood should be capable of being warmed to 70° in the coldest weather; that ample cubic space and ventilation should be provided; and that, as far as possible, without too great increase of the cost of maintenance or sacrificing essential provisions for treatment and necessary restraint, asylums should aim to reproduce the conditions of domestic life. State Architect Isaac G. Perry planned the St. Lawrence State Hospital buildings on ideas suggested by medical experience, with a breadth of comprehension and a technical skill in combining adaptability, utility, and beauty that have accomplished wonders. The buildings are satisfactory in every particular to every one who has seen them, and even the most casual observer is impressed with the effect of beauty. This was accomplished without elaboration of material, expressive carving or finish. The ornamentation is purely structural and is obtained by a handling of the materials of construction which also yielded the largest promise of strength and durability. The central hospital group, of which an idea is given in the cut, now consists of five buildings. The picture shows three, the center one and two of the flanking cottages on one side. They are matched on the other side. The central or administration building is a three story structure of Gouverneur marble, and, like all of the stone used, a native St. Lawrence county stone. The marble's bluish gray is relieved by sparkling crystallizations, and its unwrought blocks are handled with an ornamental effect in the piers, lintels, and arches, and well set off by a simple high-pitched slate roof, with terra-cotta hiprolls, crestings, and finials. The open porches are both ornamental and useful, taking the place of piazzas. The tower is embellished with a terra-cotta frieze. All accommodations for an executive staff for the 1,500 patients may be provided in this building. Behind it on the south is a one story building whose ground plan is the segment of a circle. It contains sun rooms, medical offices, general library, laboratory and dispensary, and the corridor connecting the reception cottages, one for women, on one side, and one for men on the other, with the administration building. As this one story structure is 171 feet by 41, the buildings known as cottages of the central group are more than nominally separated. All the advantages of segregation and congregation are combined. The reception cottages are of pale red Potsdam sandstone. Their simple construction is pleasing. The ground plan is in the form of a cross; the angles of the projections being flanked by heavy piers between which are recessed circular bays carried up to the attic and arched over in the gables. The cross plan affords abundant light to all the rooms, and as much of the irregular outline as possible is utilized with piazzas. With still another recourse to the combination corridor plan, the observation cottages are joined to the reception cottages on each side. The other utilization of the corridor in this case is for conservatories. The observation cottages are irregular in plan and vary from each other and from the other buildings in the group. Unwrought native bluestone is the building material. These cottages contain a preponderance of single rooms, the purpose being to keep patients separate until their classification is decided upon. The buildings planned but not yet constructed of the central group include two cottages for convalescents and two one-story retreats for noisy and disturbed patients. In both cases the plans are the most complete and progressive ever made. In the first the degree of construction is reduced to the minimum. Convalescents are to have freedom from the irritations of hospital life that often retard recovery. Great reliance is placed upon that important element in treatment, the rousing of a hopeful feeling in the mind of the patient. The retreat wards, with accommodations in each wing for eighteen patients, show in this particular how little the old method of strict confinement is to be employed in the new institution. That proportion of the total insane population of 1,500 is regarded as all that it is necessary to sequester to prevent the disturbance of the rest. Hollow walls, sleeping room windows opening into small areas, and corridor space between the several divisions are features which make the per capita cost of the construction comparatively large for these two cottages, but which, it is believed, will prove to be wise ones. All of these buildings are as complete from a hospital standpoint as can possibly be devised. Outer walls wind and moisture proof, and inner walls of brick, with an absolutely protected air space between, insure strength and warmth. An interior wall finish of the hardest and most non-absorbent materials known for such uses is a valuable hygienic provision, and both safety and salubrity are further conserved by an absence of any hollow spaces between floors and ceilings, or in stud partitions. No vermin retreats, no harbors for rodents, no channels for flame exist. Heating is accomplished by indirect radiation with the steam supply from the power house, but there are many open fireplaces to add to the complete stack and flue system of ventilation. Attached to the central group and completed are the kitchen building, the laundry building and a dwelling house for employes, which are so disposed in the rear of the group as to make a courtyard of value for the resort of patients, as the main buildings protect and shelter it. These buildings are ample for their work when the institution's full capacity is attained. The kitchen building is a particularly interesting one. All of the cooking is to be done there, and a system of subways, with tracks on which food cars are run, connects it with all of the groups. An idea of the magnitude of kitchen plans for such an institution may be got from one single fact. The pantry is a lofty room, 20x32 feet. The calculation that 80 per cent. of the insane of the district would be in the chronic stages of the disease explains the provision in detached cottage groups for this proportion of the patients. A great proportion of these are feeble and helpless, requiring constant attendance night and day, but attendance that can be given cheaply and efficiently in associate day rooms, dining rooms and large dormitories. Detached group No. 1, which is completed, is an infirmary group for patients of both sexes of this class. It is chiefly one story in height, and the plan permits an abundance of sunlight and air for every room. Detached group No. 2 is intended for 185 men of the chronic insane class, who require more than ordinary care and observation. Detached group No. 3 is composed of two-story buildings for 322 women. It has several large work-shops. Occupation is one of the main reliances of the planners of the institution as a part of the treatment there. Detached group No. 4 is designed for both men and women, and will accommodate 150. A wholly different classification is here provided for, the actively industrious classes being intended for this group. Those who are able to do outdoor work, and for whom some diverting employment will be beneficial in making them contented and physically healthy, will live here. There is complete separation of day rooms, but the two sexes will dine together in an associate hall. An amusement hall to harmonize with the central group, and to be built adjacent to it, is planned, and will be built this year if the appropriation will permit. It is a valuable and necessary adjunct to the other provisions for the care of a population of 1,500. Accommodations for entertainments, chapel exercises, dancing and a bathing establishment are included in the plans in a way that gives great results with great economy of construction. Probably the feature in the scheme of the St. Lawrence State Hospital of the greatest popular and professional interest is Dr. Wise's plan to have there an Americanized and improved Gheel. The original Gheel in Belgium is a colony where for many years lunatics have been sent for domiciliary care. Its inhabitants, mostly of the peasant class, have grown accustomed to the presence and care of patients with disordered minds. The system is the outgrowth of a superstition founded in the presumed miraculous cure of a lunatic whose reason was restored by the shock of the sight of the killing of a beautiful girl by her pursuing father, whose fury had been roused by her choice of a husband. A monument to this unfortunate graces Gheel, and as St. Dymphna she is supposed to be in benign control of the lunatic-sheltering colony. Some of the features of the Gheel system of care are also distinctively known as the Scotch system. There the placing of patients in family care is common. Massachusetts has also adopted it to a considerable extent. But there are many objections to family care in isolated domiciles, as practiced in Massachusetts. Special medical attention and official visits are made expensive and inconvenient. Dr. Wise plans to get all the advantages of such a mode of life for patients whose condition retrogrades under institutional influence. Not the least of these advantages is that of economy in relieving the State from the per capita cost of construction for at least one-fourth of the insane of the district. He would utilize the families in the settlement which always grows up in the vicinity of a large hospital. It is composed of the households of employes, many of which are the result of marriages among the attendants and employes. On Point Airy, by the use of the buildings that were on the different plots bought by the State to make up the hospital farm, such a settlement can be easily made up. Its inhabitants would pay rent to the State. They would be particularly fit and proper persons to board and care for patients whose condition was suitable for that sort of a life, and the patients could have many privileges and benefits not possible in the hospital. Point Airy's little Gheel on such a plan would be a most interesting and valuable extension of the beneficent rule of St. Dymphna. The St. Lawrence State Hospital was built and is operated under the supervision of a board of managers, whose fidelity to it is described as phenomenal by the people of Ogdensburg. The members of the executive committee, Chairman William L. Proctor, Secretary A.E. Smith, John Hannan and George Hall, especially Mr. Proctor and Mr. Smith, have given as much time and attention to it as most men would to a matter in which they had a business interest. The result has been a performance of contract obligations in which the State got its money's worth. The people of Ogdensburg, too, have taken a great interest in the institution. Such men as Mayor Edgar A. Newell, ex-Collector of the Port of New York Daniel Magone, Postmaster A.A. Smith, Assemblyman George R. Malby, and his predecessor, Gen. N.M. Curtis, who was the legislative father of the hospital scheme; Frank Tallman and Amasa Thornton take as much pride in the institution that the State has set down at the gates of their city as they do in their cherished and admired city hall, which combines a tidy little opera house with the quarters necessary for all public and department uses. The executive staff of the hospital consists of Dr. P.M. Wise, medical superintendent; Dr. J. Montgomery Mosher, assistant: Dr. J.A. Barnette and Steward W.C. Hall.— . N.Y. Sun About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Various (2004). Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11649/pg11649-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

THE ST. LAWRENCE HOSPITAL FOR THE INSANE

Christian Science by Mark Twain, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . CHAPTER V here CHAPTER V Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now. Those of us who are not in the asylum, and not demonstrably due there, are nevertheless, no doubt, insane in one or two particulars. I think we must admit this; but I think that we are otherwise healthy-minded. I think that when we all see one thing alike, it is evidence that, as regards that one thing, our minds are perfectly sound. Now there are really several things which we do all see alike; things which we all accept, and about which we do not dispute. For instance, we who are outside of the asylum all agree that water seeks its level; that the sun gives light and heat; that fire consumes; that fog is damp; that six times six are thirty-six, that two from ten leaves eight; that eight and seven are fifteen. These are, perhaps, the only things we are agreed about; but, although they are so few, they are of inestimable value, because they make an infallible standard of sanity. Whosoever accepts them him we know to be substantially sane; sufficiently sane; in the working essentials, sane. Whoever disputes a single one of them him we know to be wholly insane, and qualified for the asylum. Very well, the man who disputes none of them we concede to be entitled to go at large. But that is concession enough. We cannot go any further than that; for we know that in all matters of mere opinion that same man is insane—just as insane as we are; just as insane as Shakespeare was. We know exactly where to put our finger upon his insanity: it is where his opinion differs from ours. That is a simple rule, and easy to remember. When I, a thoughtful and unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious matters. When a thoughtful and unblessed Mohammedan examines the Westminster Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I am spiritually insane. I cannot prove to him that he is insane, because you never can prove anything to a lunatic—for that is a part of his insanity and the evidence of it. He cannot prove to me that I am insane, for my mind has the same defect that afflicts his. All Democrats are insane, but not one of them knows it; none but the Republicans and Mugwumps know it. All the Republicans are insane, but only the Democrats and Mugwumps can perceive it. The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane. When I look around me, I am often troubled to see how many people are mad. To mention only a few: The Atheist, The Theosophists, The Infidel, The Swedenborgians, The Agnostic, The Shakers, The Baptist, The Millerites, The Methodist, The Mormons, The Christian Scientist, The Laurence Oliphant Harrisites, The Catholic, and the 115 Christian sects, the Presbyterian excepted, The Grand Lama's people, The Monarchists, The Imperialists, The 72 Mohammedan sects, The Democrats, The Republicans (but not the Mugwumps), The Buddhist, The Blavatsky-Buddhist, The Mind-Curists, The Faith-Curists, The Nationalist, The Mental Scientists, The Confucian, The Spiritualist, The Allopaths, The 2000 East Indian sects, The Homeopaths, The Electropaths, The Peculiar People, The— But there's no end to the list; there are millions of them! And all insane; each in his own way; insane as to his pet fad or opinion, but otherwise sane and rational. This should move us to be charitable towards one another's lunacies. I recognize that in his special belief the Christian Scientist is insane, because he does not believe as I do; but I hail him as my mate and fellow, because I am as insane as he insane from his point of view, and his point of view is as authoritative as mine and worth as much. That is to say, worth a brass farthing. Upon a great religious or political question, the opinion of the dullest head in the world is worth the same as the opinion of the brightest head in the world—a brass farthing. How do we arrive at this? It is simple. The affirmative opinion of a stupid man is neutralized by the negative opinion of his stupid neighbor no decision is reached; the affirmative opinion of the intellectual giant Gladstone is neutralized by the negative opinion of the intellectual giant Newman—no decision is reached. Opinions that prove nothing are, of course, without value any but a dead person knows that much. This obliges us to admit the truth of the unpalatable proposition just mentioned above—that, in disputed matters political and religious, one man's opinion is worth no more than his peer's, and hence it followers that no man's opinion possesses any real value. It is a humbling thought, but there is no way to get around it: all opinions upon these great subjects are brass-farthing opinions. It is a mere plain, simple fact—as clear and as certain as that eight and seven make fifteen. And by it we recognize that we are all insane, as concerns those matters. If we were sane, we should all see a political or religious doctrine alike; there would be no dispute: it would be a case of eight and seven—just as it is in heaven, where all are sane and none insane. There there is but one religion, one belief; the harmony is perfect; there is never a discordant note. Under protection of these preliminaries, I suppose I may now repeat without offence that the Christian Scientist is insane. I mean him no discourtesy, and I am not charging—nor even imagining—that he is insaner than the rest of the human race. I think he is more picturesquely insane than some of us. At the same time, I am quite sure that in one important and splendid particular he is much saner than is the vast bulk of the race. Why is he insane? I told you before: it is because his opinions are not ours. I know of no other reason, and I do not need any other; it is the only way we have of discovering insanity when it is not violent. It is merely the picturesqueness of his insanity that makes it more interesting than my kind or yours. For instance, consider his “little book”; the “little book” exposed in the sky eighteen centuries ago by the flaming angel of the Apocalypse, and handed down in our day to Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, of New Hampshire, and translated by her, word for word, into English (with help of a polisher), and now published and distributed in hundreds of editions by her at a clear profit per volume, above cost, of seven hundred per cent.!—a profit which distinctly belongs to the angel of the Apocalypse, and let him collect it if he can; a “little book” which the C.S. very frequently calls by just that name, and always enclosed in quotation-marks to keep its high origin exultantly in mind; a “little book” which “explains” and reconstructs and new-paints and decorates the Bible, and puts a mansard roof on it and a lightning-rod and all the other modern improvements; a “little book” which for the present affects to travel in yoke with the Bible and be friendly to it, and within half a century will hitch the Bible in the rear and thenceforth travel tandem, itself in the lead, in the coming great march of Christian Scientism through the Protestant dominions of the planet. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Mark Twain (2004). Christian Science. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3187/pg3187-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

Let us consider that we are all partially insane

Have you noticed that a significant number of DeFi projects are offering insanely high annual percentage yields (APY)? This looks very attractive to investors, especially retail investors, who are at the most risk. There are DeFi protocols that have been built using the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus protocol offering eye-watering returns to their investors in return for them staking their native tokens. But, as most of us know, sometimes by getting burnt ourselves, if something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. The issue is that some projects are nothing more than cash grab schemes. at Cointelegraph gives the example of YieldZard, a project positioning itself as a DeFi innovation-focused company with an auto-staking protocol, which claims to offer a fixed APY of 918,757% to its clients. Who finds that believable? All you would need to invest is $1000 to gain a return of $9,187,570! And YieldZard isn’t the only project offering fast and high payouts. Shiraz Jagati Assessing An APY How can you as an investor assess the sustainability of projects like this? Here is some advice from Kia Mosayeri, product manager at Balancer Labs — a DeFi automated market-making protocol. “Sophisticated investors will want to look for the source of the yield, its sustainability and capacity. A yield that is driven from sound economical value, such as interest paid for borrowing capital or percentage fees paid for trading, would be rather more sustainable and scalable than yield that comes from arbitrary token emissions.” Ran Hammer, vice president of business development for public blockchain infrastructure at Orbs, pointed to the fact that DeFi offers another major innovation to the crypto ecosystem: the ability to earn yields on what is more or less passive holding. But as he says, not all yields are equal by design because some yields are rooted in “real” revenue, while others are the result of high emissions based on Ponzi-like tokenomics. Understand The Source Of The ‘Yield’ Ultimately, it is very important for investors to understand where the yield is coming from. For example, transaction fees in exchange for computing power, trading fees on liquidity, a premium for options or insurance and interest on loans are all “real yields.” Whereas those that are based on token inflation may turn out to be less sustainable, as there is no real economic value funding these rewards. So, if you see a dazzling APY offered, you should consider all of the above, as well as the fact that most returns are paid in cryptocurrencies, and since most cryptocurrencies are volatile, (just look at the market this week!) the assets lent to earn such unrealistic APYs can decrease in value over time, leading to major losses. This article was first published here

Don't Be Fooled By Insanely High APYs?

At , we use (specifically Aurora Serverless) for most of our primary database needs. Our application query patterns are mostly small transactions that touch a few rows – a typical scenario that PostgreSQL handles without breaking a sweat. Spacelift PostgreSQL We also use Datadog as a monitoring solution. Their agent has a handy feature to create metrics based on periodically executed SQL queries, allowing us to build smart and highly contextual monitors and alerts. Occasionally, such queries might be slow and dominate the processing time of the database. After hooking up Datadog Database monitoring, we identified a lot of slow queries and moved most of them to a separate Redshift cluster. There they execute once per day on a periodic snapshot of the database. However, a number of these queries need to happen at a more frequent interval as they can detect alertable conditions. We couldn’t move these queries to Redshift because of the staleness of the data there. Aurora Serverless also doesn’t support read replicas to offload analytical queries to them, so no luck there either. Thus, we had to optimize, add indices, optimize, and again optimize until we cut the database usage of these metric-creating queries by 1-2 orders of magnitude. This article will show you one such optimization story, which is interesting because both the before and after query plans will look somewhat ridiculous (in terms of cost). Moreover, it shows how PostgreSQL row count estimation can go very wrong. In this case, domain knowledge will help us trick PostgreSQL into a different query plan which will be waaay faster, without adding any additional indices. Concepts Spacelift is a CI/CD platform specializing in . Users create Runs (executions of, i.e., Terraform) which will be executed on Worker Pools. There is a public shared Worker Pool managed by Spacelift and private Worker Pools that users can host for themselves. Infrastructure as Code Each Run belongs to a Stack, which can be thought of as a single environment, managing a bunch of infrastructure resources. If you know Terraform or CloudFormation, a single Stack maps to a single Terraform state file or a CloudFormation root stack, respectively. A Run can have one of many types: Tracked, Proposed, and others. That type determines what the overall workflow will look like. The Query The query is supposed to notify us when the public Worker Pool cannot handle demand – user Runs are waiting too long to be handled by a Worker. SELECT COUNT(*)                                                                  as "count",
       COALESCE(MAX(EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM age(now(), runs.created_at)))::bigint, 0) AS "max_age"
FROM runs
  JOIN stacks ON runs.stack_id = stacks.id
  JOIN worker_pools ON worker_pools.id = stacks.worker_pool_id
  JOIN accounts ON stacks.account_id = accounts.id
WHERE worker_pools.is_public = true
  AND runs.type IN (1, 4)
  AND runs.state = 1
  AND runs.worker_id IS NULL
  AND accounts.max_public_parallelism / 2 > (SELECT COUNT(*)
                                             FROM accounts accounts_other
                                               JOIN stacks stacks_other ON accounts_other.id = stacks_other.account_id
                                               JOIN runs runs_other ON stacks_other.id = runs_other.stack_id
                                             WHERE accounts_other.id = accounts.id
                                               AND (stacks_other.worker_pool_id IS NULL OR
                                                    stacks_other.worker_pool_id = worker_pools.id)
                                               AND runs_other.worker_id IS NOT NULL) That’s a big query! What’s happening here? We’re interested in the number of Runs (as well as the age of the oldest one) which are of the Proposed or Testing type (can be scheduled right away – other Run types require exclusiveness), are in the Queued state (which means they’re not yet being processed) and don’t have a Worker attached to them (are still waiting for one). We only want Runs on Accounts that are far from their parallelism limit to reduce the number of false positives caused by users being correctly limited. So for each Run, we count the number of active Runs on its account and check if it’s under 50% of the parallelism limit, and only then do we count this Run as properly pending. Unfortunately, that query lasts 20 seconds and consumes 50% of our database’s processing time. That’s pretty bad. Let’s optimize! Let’s take a look at the query plan. I’ll be using to visualize query plans. To get the query plan, I’m executing it prefixed with EXPLAIN (FORMAT JSON, ANALYZE) … so we can also see information about the query’s actual execution (ANALYZE). https://explain.dalibo.com What can we see here? On the left side, we’re joining Worker Pools with Stacks. We also calculate the number of active Runs for each Account using the SubPlan. We do a three-way hash join on the (Worker Pool, Stack) tuples, the Accounts, and the SubPlan results based on the Account ID. Then we loop over all those triples and get the pending Runs for each, finally counting all the pending Runs found. The SubPlan goes over all Stacks in an Account, and for each Stack gets the active Runs for it (the ones where worker_id is not NULL). Let’s look at the time distribution of the plan nodes. We can see that the most expensive part of this query is the which looks for Runs whose worker_id is not NULL, so let’s take a closer look at that part of the query plan. Bitmap Index Scan For each Stack in the SubPlan, we look for active Runs on it. How do we do that? We scan the runs_worker_id index for storage pages containing Runs with a non-empty worker_id and the run_stack_id index for the pages containing Runs for the current Stack. Then we these together – we only want pages present in both of these scans. Finally, we scan the actual Runs from the pages and only take the ones that satisfy the predicates (pages found by the index may contain both relevant and irrelevant Runs). AND In a different tab of the left Index Scan, we can see the root of the problem. We made 531358 loops over this, we expected to scan 120 mil Runs over the whole processing of the query here, but we scanned 800 mils. That’s much more. and But later in the Heap Scan of the ed pages, we see a gross overestimation. AND We expected to scan 2 mil rows but scanned 42 overall, which means no Runs were executing on most Stacks at this instant. Overall, it’s mostly this subquery being very expensive: SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM accounts accounts_other
  JOIN stacks stacks_other ON accounts_other.id = stacks_other.account_id
  JOIN runs runs_other ON stacks_other.id = runs_other.stack_id
WHERE accounts_other.id = accounts.id
  AND (stacks_other.worker_pool_id IS NULL OR
       stacks_other.worker_pool_id = worker_pools.id)
  AND runs_other.worker_id IS NOT NULL Now comes the domain knowledge. Is there something we know the optimizer seems not to…? Yes! Only a minuscule part of the Runs in the database are active at any given time. Most Stacks stay dormant most of the time. Whenever a user makes a commit, only the affected Stacks will execute Runs. There will obviously be Stacks that are constantly in use, but most won’t. Moreover, intensive users will usually use private Worker Pools. The public shared Worker Pool is predominantly utilized by smaller users, so that’s another reason for not seeing many Runs here. Right now, we’re iterating over all existing Stacks attached to the public worker pool and getting relevant Runs for each. How about we flipped that? We know there are at most as many active Runs as there are public Workers – orders of magnitude fewer than there are Stacks. Overall active Runs (not just the ones on the public Worker Pool) are also way less numerous, at most as many as there are Workers overall (and since the number of private Workers is the main dimension we currently base our Enterprise tier pricing on, query processing time being linearly correlated with the number of Workers is OK). Thus, we could get all active Runs and filter to just those whose Stack uses the public Worker Pool. The only problem is, we’re working with a fairly opaque query optimizer, and PostgreSQL doesn’t have any way to give hints to it – like forcing a join strategy. So we’ll have to do that differently. We’ll create a query that scans the active Runs and then uses another subquery to filter them to just the ones related to a relevant Stack. Then we’ll have to hope the query is opaque enough for Postgres not to get too clever with it. SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM runs runs_other
WHERE (SELECT COUNT(*)
      FROM stacks
      WHERE stacks.id = runs_other.stack_id
        AND stacks.account_id = accounts.id
        AND stacks.worker_pool_id = worker_pools.id) > 0
 AND runs_other.worker_id IS NOT NULL This query does exactly what we described. Scan active Runs, filter to just those with more than 0 Stacks in the current account and connected to the public Worker Pool. There would be either 1 or 0 such Stacks for each Run. Executing this query, we That’s a improvement. What does the query plan say? (apologies for the long vertical picture) get down to 100ms instead of the original 20s. vast Exactly what we wanted! It scans active Runs, and for each of them, checks (using a primary key index lookup – fast!) whether the Stack it belongs to is relevant. That’s it! The whole optimized query now looks like this: SELECT COUNT(*)                                                                  as "count",
       COALESCE(MAX(EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM age(now(), runs.created_at)))::bigint, 0) AS "max_age"
FROM runs
  JOIN stacks ON runs.stack_id = stacks.id
  JOIN worker_pools ON worker_pools.id = stacks.worker_pool_id
  JOIN accounts ON stacks.account_id = accounts.id
WHERE worker_pools.is_public = true
  AND runs.type IN (1, 4)
  AND runs.state = 1
  AND runs.worker_id IS NULL
  AND accounts.max_public_parallelism / 2 > (SELECT COUNT(*)
                                             FROM runs runs_other
                                             WHERE (SELECT COUNT(*)
                                                    FROM stacks
                                                    WHERE stacks.id = runs_other.stack_id
                                                      AND stacks.account_id = accounts.id
                                                      AND stacks.worker_pool_id = worker_pools.id) > 0
                                               AND runs_other.worker_id IS NOT NULL) Summary Thanks for reading! The moral of this story is that query plans aren’t that hard to interpret with the right tools. Using your domain knowledge, you can rewrite your queries to achieve substantial performance boosts without adding unnecessary indices or denormalizing the data model. First Published here

Finessing Postgres into an Insane 200x Faster Query Plan

Back in 1996 Jamiroquai, an English funk and jazz band from London released a song titled “Virtual Insanity”. Today, after Facebook’s (Meta) recent Metaverse announcement, this song seems more relevant than ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeTFAiYbR9o From the lyrics: There will always be cause for concern, as expressed by this band so many years ago when technology steps into “virtual” and not “real” reality territory. Elon Musk recently mentioned that “he doesn’t get Virtual Reality” because as children we were always told not to sit too close to a TV (or any screen), and now we will be placing our mobile phone into a VR headset right on top of our eyes? Of course, he does have a point in relation to the hardware in question, but it will always depend on the user profile and what it is being used for (from gaming to a VR-enabled e-shop: more on that below). But Elon Musk’s concern is elsewhere as he has cofounded which hopes to start implanting its brain chips directly into human brains this year. But that is another story. Is it all “virtual insanity”? Before an attempt at an answer, let’s get some Metaverse 101 definitions out of the way. Futures made of virtual insanity now Always seem to be governed by this love we have For useless, twisting our new technology Oh, now there is no sound, for we all live underground Neural Link What is the/a Metaverse? In his 1992 science fiction novel “Snow Crash” author Neal Stephenson first coined the term “Metaverse” in which lifelike Avatars (an icon or figure representing a particular person) interacted in realistic 3D environments. Very simply, a Metaverse is: ·a shared, interactive, intelligent, and immersive virtual world · built with Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools · implemented as an online software platform There are more than one “Metaverses” and various Metaverse “flavors”. For example, there is the Meta (Facebook) metaverse (Horizon Home and Horizon Work Rooms), and other approaches from companies like Niantic (Pokémon Go) who is building a Metaverse where AR images are overlaid onto the real world, as opposed to a separate virtual reality experience on top of the real world. Most probably, a handful of Metaverses will prevail, just like with today’s social networks where Facebook is personal, Twitter is business and Pinterest is concept-based. Then there is the Open Metaverse where proposes an open-source Metaverse Operating System, a completely decentralized set of tools and technologies operating through standards and APIs rather than a proprietary platform. In all cases many new tools and technologies will emerge including in relation to Computer Graphics, XR = (VR + AR + MR=mixed reality), payment gateways, NLP, ML, Compute (workload), and many more. Outlier Ventures What Can You Do in the Metaverse? Among other things, it will be possible to carry out activities such as: · attending virtual concerts · traveling · shopping · going to the movies · trying on clothes · 3D vs 2D work video calls · gaming Blockchain can provide digital proof of ownership for assets in the Metaverse, providing a robust and highly secure method for establishing proof of ownership and digital identity. Very simply, Blockchain is: · a system of recording information · a digital log of transactions that is duplicated and distributed across the entire network of computer systems on the blockchain · impossible to hack or cheat Within the context of Blockchain, “Tokens” are a key concept, available in different forms and used for a variety of reasons. Very simply, a Token is: · any digital asset that is stored securely on the Blockchain · an example is a given cryptocurrency · tokens represent anything from ownership of a song or artwork to a software license A special type of token is a Non-Fungible Token (NFT). Fungible means replaceable, so it is apparent that an NFT is a unique and non-interchangeable token. In the Metaverses, Blockchain overall and NFTs in particular guarantee the uniqueness and authenticity of virtual assets, but can also provide an ideal representation of ownership of physical assets. The latter is significant in relation to the road ahead. Ownership is not limited to any single Metaverse platform. NFTs might be anything from a song, to an avatar’s clothing to digital art, to an AI/ML learning model. They can be continuously traded and possibly gain in value with each trade. Now let’s go back to the “virtual insanity” theme. Doing Business and Proof of Ownership in the Metaverse What is Blockchain? What is a Token? Retail and the Metaverse Just a few days ago Nike Inc acquired , a startup founded in January 2020 that makes sneakers: but they are digital and available only on the Metaverse. Has Nike gone crazy? No, Nike wants to make sure that every Avatar in the Metaverse is wearing digital Nike shoes. Rather than waiting to see what their competitors will be doing, they have understood the underlying dynamics and have opted to move quickly and decisively. But it is not only Nike. Gamers these days might run into Avatars wearing Gucci handbags or glasses. Gucci entered the Metaverse by providing a limited Gucci collection for a popular online gaming platform, so “exploring” their future customer base (Gen Z born 1990+ to 2010). A couple of months ago rapper Snoop Dogg announced that he bought land in the blockchain-based virtual metaverse “The Sandbox” in order to create his digital mansion. Want to own a house near Snoop’s? Earlier this month The Sandbox held a “Snoopverse Land Sale” to allow buyers to acquire “land” next to the famous hip hop star. The price? $450K in Ethereum. Additionally, the famed rapper’s ‘Snoopverse’ also began selling early access passes which include access to NFT artworks. RTFKT Real Estate and the Metaverse Metaverse Adoption: Big Tech Given the importance of Facebook and following all the related publicity, most non-tech people I know are scratching their heads probably thinking that they have finally gotten too old to keep up with all this technology. But as Facebook stumbles into the Metaverse, it may have triggered a VR tsunami. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, has now become the standard-bearer of the metaverse. Facebook’s vision for the Metaverse can be summarized as follows: · Creating a feeling of presence Facebook · Owning Avatar(s) to represent ourselves. What is an Avatar? A 3D representation of yourself instead of a picture. You can have many Avatars designed by different creators: one for work, one for gaming, and so on. · Creating a virtual home space (FB Horizon Home) where you can put up pictures, videos, digital products, or even a home office. You can invite people over or teleport somewhere else. · Attending virtual workspaces (Horizon Work) (i.e. 3D zoom calls) · Teleporting to a room, concert, or a game: replaces todays URL link · Instead of typing use gestures · Devices like TV’s won’t be needed anymore · VR Messenger calls · Horizon marketplace — create and share 3D digital items Microsoft recently announced , an Azure-based Mixed Reality platform. Envision meeting people from all over the world using 3D Avatar holograms through different devices like HoloLens 2, any VR headset, smartphones, tablets, and PCs. Apple is really a hardware business with services built on top so this is an important Metaverse head start. Reportedly to be released at the end of this year and given that Apple is pretty good with hardware, the Apple VR Headset will be more compact and lightweight and could make Apple the real Metaverse leader. Many other companies are already developing and/or using Metaverse technology including: · Sony PlayStation: VR helmets · Epic Games (Fortnite) · Alibaba: Ali Metaverse · Tik-Tok · Zara (Zepeto) Indirectly, AI will drive many metaverse features, including hyper-personalization, automatic language translation, image-video recognition, and much more. But more directly, AI will be used to create “virtual characters”. Think of inviting an intelligent assistant to your 3D meeting. Startups like Inworld aim to provide a solid framework for developers to build virtual characters that can respond in natural language, perceive the environment and offer meaningful interactions for users. And the potential is endless: virtual movie actors? Another application could be a 3D highly immersive combination of a book and a movie, implemented as a sharable, intelligent knowledge object. You wouldn’t just read or view it, you would step into it. As an NFT, this (I)ntelligent (M)ovie (B)ook object (IMB — just coined a new term!) would be hyper-personalized to present and behave differently to different users (i.e. children, adults, male, female, and so on). A digital twin is a virtual 3D model of a physical object or process and in fact, is a fundamental Metaverse building block. Streamlining design, improving efficiency through better energy and structural modeling, creating lab twins or even human digital twins, the benefits are clear. These models can be used to test various machines and systems, facilitating the detection of possible failures before they reach the physical world while improving efficiency, reliability, flexibility, and overall, creating better products. Some companies are now offering this technology as a (Platform as a service). Digital modeling can be used to create entire environments like buildings, factories, farms, energy networks, railways, stadiums, or even a whole city. You finally ticked “Kenya Safari” off your bucket list, but you really want to share your experience with your friends and family. Instead of uploading videos or pictures and waiting for the FB “like” tsunami, there is a way for them to join you through a VR headset, online and in real-time. With you, they would be watching what you are seeing in 3D (but it would be the definition of “so close and yet so far”). The same goes for concerts, the Soccer World Cup Final, the Super Bowl, and so on. Additionally, there are now quite a few AI-powered image recognition mobile travel apps offering on-screen information about what the camera is aimed at, like places of interest, museums, galleries, landmarks, parks, coffee shops, train stations, and any other sight in the view of the traveler. You get it. Using MS MESH (mentioned above) picture avatars of medical students gathered around a human body hologram learning by examination of what is inside. With your VR Headset, sitting on a high-end massage chair, how about escaping to a holiday island and feeling the heat of the sun along with a light breeze? is a US-based company that provides virtual reality experiences in various flavors like “Heavenly Garden“, “Sauna“ and “Desert Spa“ among more. AR-enabled edge device mobile apps can assess your exercises or yoga poses and provide valuable training and related insights. Once you get to mainstream Metaverses, you can see from the list above that the potential is huge for all verticals. For those decision-makers that consider this too farfetched to spend time and resources on, beware of some of the most unfortunate anti-prophetic statements. February 1995, Newsweek, Clifford Stoll: May 2007, Microsoft, Steve Ballmer: On a different vertical: October 1929: Bernard Baruch: Microsoft MESH Apple The AI-Powered Metaverse The Metaverse’s Potential Use Cases Manufacturing Industry PaaS Travel Industry Porn Industry Healthcare Industry Wellness Industry Esqapes Immersive Relaxation Fitness and Yoga Conclusion “The truth is in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works. How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we will soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure” “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance” “The main purpose of the stock market is to make fools of as many men as possible.” Takeaway It will be some time yet until your Virtual Reality website surpasses in sales your conventional website, but in the meantime, the Metaverse will serve as a good business activity niche. At this point, it must be seen as a place to experiment, collaborate and explore rather than to aggressively market, but in all cases do not ignore it, it is on the way. Update Jan 23: Just a few days after writing this article, Microsoft made a bolder move into the Metaverse: Founder Fortuitapps: Building the NFT 3D version of this article Mircosoft acquires Activision for $68.7Billion About the Author Nicolas Fekos Also published here.

Is the Metaverse Virtual Insanity or a Virtual Gold Mine?

From the "Alexa" spree to mops that self-clean your home, lights that sync up with music, and smart security, the offer for smart home gadgets has been growing steadily. Not only do they make our daily lives easier, but they also look cool. Who wouldn't want a bot that answers our every command? In this slogging thread, the HN team discusses the next big thing in smart home gadgets and what new technology they'd like to see available for purchase. This g thread by Mónica Freitas, Limarc Ambalina, Ellen Stevens and Jack Boreham occurred in slogging's official #technology channel, and has been edited for readability. Sloggin Mónica Freitas Oct 13, 2021, 11:18 AM There are dozens of smart home gadgets nowadays, some more useful than others, but the demand keeps growing. What do you think will be the next mainstream home gadget that'll drive every "adult" excited? Limarc Ambalina Oct 14, 2021, 2:16 PM So I just got a Roomba and believe the hype… it is worth it. I can control it with my Alexa device so I can just say “Alexa tell [name of roomba] to start cleaning” or “Alexa tell Roomba to go home”. It’s so awesome 😂 2 Limarc Ambalina Oct 14, 2021, 2:16 PM You don’t know the amount of dust that collects on your floor until you have a Roomba to pick it all up 😄 Mónica Freitas Oct 14, 2021, 3:12 PM That one I get! It saves you tons of time, and you have your own little bot to command! Every kid's dream 😂 Which invention do you think we'll have next? A gadget that gives us our clothes cleaned, dried, and ready to wear? An outfit picker as we'd see in the 90s movies? A self-cleaning garbage can? Limarc Ambalina Oct 14, 2021, 3:52 PM I think an important one that I’d like to see is a security bot. There’s already a company gaining traction called Knightscope and I’d like to see similar bots or at least AI smart security cameras I could put outside my homes. Limarc Ambalina Oct 14, 2021, 3:52 PM But to be honest a bot would be better. Criminals are used to seeing cameras but a little guard bot at your front and back door is a stronger deterrent. Mónica Freitas Oct 15, 2021, 10:37 AM Limarc Ambalina I looked Knightscope up, and I can see how it can be a great bot for surveillance, though I'm not sure it can have a more protective role in a household. How does it deter criminals? If it had a taser function, it could be beneficial for many people, even businesses, but it could also be considered a liability in case of malfunction. Jack Boreham what do you think? What will be the next big home gadget? Limarc Ambalina Oct 15, 2021, 4:56 PM Even just the presence itself Mónica. A camera is one thing, a bot that moves around and can react to your presence is a much bigger deterrent than a camera. Limarc Ambalina Oct 15, 2021, 4:57 PM But I think the main uses of these bots are to guard the area and alert the police or security guards immediately when they see intruders. Mónica Freitas Oct 18, 2021, 9:53 AM I can see how having a bot that automatically detects intruders and alerts authorities can be beneficial. I'd be interesting to see a study on how criminality levels are affected by the presence of bots in high crime areas.  I've found this article measuring the pros and cons of home security bots and a few of the options available on the market: It appears that this is a growing market as there's already quite the offer available on home security bots: https://www.covesmart.com/blog/home-security-robot-can-robots-protect-your-home/ https://top-10-drones.com/5-top-home-security-robots/ Mónica Freitas Oct 25, 2021, 2:01 PM Jack Boreham, Ellen Stevens, Amy Shah. How about you? What do you think will be the next big thing on smart home gadgets? Ellen Stevens Oct 25, 2021, 8:43 PM Delivery drones for all. 💚 1 Ellen Stevens Oct 25, 2021, 8:44 PM Probably personal humanoid robots as previously mentioned, but that's still a ways away. Ellen Stevens Oct 25, 2021, 8:45 PM A system like Alexa that is further incorporated with home systems. But I'm way too paranoid to ever get anything like that. Jack Boreham Oct 26, 2021, 7:39 AM Mónica Freitas, yeah, all of the above. Ideally, something where you can use your phone to control your house, such as the lights, heating, etc., all from a click of a button. I know there is some stuff like that on the market, but not an all-encompassing app. Obviously. I want humanoid robots, oh and holographic stuff, similar to the Star Wars Jedi Council. 😂 Mónica Freitas Oct 26, 2021, 1:14 PM Ellen Stevens DELIVERY DRONES! YES! That'd be amazing! No longer having to wait on the mailman or lost packages because of address mix-ups. Still, some would discuss hacking to discourage this - stolen property could scare some people off. Mónica Freitas Oct 26, 2021, 1:15 PM Ellen Stevens, To be honest, humanoid bots kinda scare me, but I'd love to have an Alexa. It'd be a huge time saver. And it's your personal butler, ahah! Mónica Freitas Oct 26, 2021, 1:19 PM Jack Boreham You got me on holographic. Image a room where you could enter, choose the "world" you wish to enter and have it brought to you through holograms? It'd be similar to VR but without needing to have anything attached to yourself. It's probably a bit far-fetched for today's reality, but I wish it to be true. Limarc Ambalina Oct 26, 2021, 1:51 PM I don't know if you could call it a home gadget, but I'm sure drones will be here in the next 10 years. Amazon will be using them for sure as soon as legislation allows it. Limarc Ambalina Oct 26, 2021, 1:51 PM Jack Boreham Amazon Alexa is almost that all-encompassing app but it's kinda scary to let one company control your entire house, lol. Mónica Freitas Oct 27, 2021, 9:36 AM Limarc Ambalina I'm sure Amazon is on top of that, but it will be years until we have a considerable number of countries giving a green flag to that. Which countries do you see it get implemented first? Limarc Ambalina Oct 27, 2021, 10:05 AM Most likely the United States! They’ve had decently loose laws around AI and self-driving cars. I assume that looseness will follow drone regulations. Mónica Freitas Oct 27, 2021, 10:29 AM Limarc Ambalina Agree! If not in every state, some are going to accept it in a heartbeat.

What Will be the Next Home Gadget to Drive Every Adult Insane?

Dynamic pricing algorithms on Amazon aren’t just about supply and demand After hovering at around $10 consistently, the price of a five-pound bag of Nishiki medium grain rice shot up to $30 on Amazon.com in March and hit a peak of $59.99 at 9 p.m. on Saturday, March 21, according to the Amazon price tracker Keepa. As of Friday, April 24, the bag of rice was priced at around $20. Some prices have shifted wildly since COVID-19 hit the U.S. Prices on Amazon have been volatile since the outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States. By the end of March, Keepa’s data revealed, an eight-pack of Barilla spaghetti, whose price normally hovers around $10, shot up to $49.25. The cost of an eight-pack of Skippy Superchunk Peanut Butter nearly quadrupled, from $12.52 to $45. COVID-19 has made the public more aware of price fluctuations on basics like toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and dried goods, as demand for those products surged beyond expectations. But limited inventory is not the only reason that the price of pasta (or toilet paper, peanut butter, and rice) is shifting so drastically on Amazon. Experts say the fluctuations on Amazon are often a result of the algorithms sellers use to optimize their sales. How Does Dynamic Pricing Work? Dynamic pricing (or algorithmic pricing) relies on algorithms that can synthesize lots of information about the marketplace and then change the price of something based on what’s happening hour to hour or even minute to minute. Dynamic pricing is already common for items like plane tickets and hotel rooms. As the supply gets smaller or if there’s more demand — a big conference is going to be in town that weekend, for example — then prices go up. If demand goes down because, say, a pandemic has stopped people from traveling, . then prices drop But dynamic pricing isn’t quite that simple on Amazon because of its Buy Box. When shoppers click the “Buy Now” or “Add to Cart” button, they are selecting a specific vendor. There’s usually an option to consider other vendors, but most users — — make their purchase through the Buy Box. To determine who “wins” the box, Amazon uses its own algorithm, which it does not reveal to the public but which observers say includes . “The Buy Box depends on fulfillment speed, channel, your reviews and rating, availability within a certain period of time,” Victor Rosenman, CEO of Feedvisor, a company that creates algorithms for Amazon sellers, said in an interview. by some estimates 80 percent more than price Amazon does provide use dynamic pricing on the Amazon marketplace. Sellers can set pricing rules based on the Buy Box or on the lowest price for that item, and they can change those rules of their competitors. There are also independent companies like Feedvisor and Sellery that create pricing algorithms for Amazon third-party sellers. tools that help sellers based on the fulfillment channels In 2016, researchers at Northeastern University of more than 16,000 of the most popular items on Amazon and collected information about the top sellers for those products, including their ratings. While sellers who use traditional pricing methods rarely change prices, this study found that the more than 500 sellers who do use dynamic pricing would change their prices tens or even hundreds of times every day as they wrestled for the Buy Box. Those sellers were more likely to win the Buy Box and to earn revenue. tracked the prices Can Dynamic Pricing Benefit Consumers? Dynamic pricing can facilitate more competition by accurately reflecting the market and lowering prices for consumers. American Airlines to compete with budget carriers. “There’s no doubt consumers benefited from that,” says John Morgan, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, who studies pricing in online markets. Those new, lower prices made air travel a possibility for many more people. started using dynamic pricing in the 1980s One study found that nonprofits like orchestras could use dynamic pricing to . Prices may drop depending on the location of the seat, the program, or what night of the week the performance is scheduled, causing an increase in ticket sales. improve their revenue and also improve attendance The authors of the study found similar results in . If a team isn’t doing well, or is playing a less popular opponent, their research suggests that dropping prices can help the team by incentivizing fans to fill seats that would otherwise be vacant. dynamic pricing at major league baseball games “Dynamic pricing, not gouging, is a natural way to go and should be more rule than exception,” said Peter Fader, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business, who was one of the authors of the studies. Can Dynamic Pricing Hurt Consumers? One big worry about dynamic pricing is that it could be used for or that it could accidentally lead to price fixing when vendors set their algorithms with similar goals. One study even found that artificial intelligence and may even be better at doing so than humans. intentional collusion and price fixing pricing systems learn how to collude Another problem is that algorithms can push against each other, especially in competitive marketplaces like Amazon. In the Northeastern study, researchers found that some sellers configure their algorithms to always set prices just slightly above the price of their competition. But if two algorithms are designed, each to set the price just above the other, that can spiral out of control. In one instance two competing algorithms . drove the price of a science textbook up to $24 million That’s an extreme example and one that could easily be avoided by setting a price maximum in the algorithm. But even with price caps, dynamic pricing can force prices up. “This could very well be happening in ways that are not so obvious,” said Christo Wilson, a computer science professor at Northeastern who cowrote the 2016 study of dynamic pricing on Amazon. He gives the example of a bottle of Purell, now suddenly a hot commodity. “When the Purell is $20 instead of $10, are you sure that’s because there’s not enough stock? Or is that because everyone’s price algorithm is set to float up, and they all have just hit their ceiling?” Amazon says it’s working hard on preventing price gouging and reports . “Sellers set their own product prices in our store and we have policies to help ensure sellers are pricing their products competitively,” an Amazon spokesperson told The Markup in an email. “We actively monitor our store and remove offers that violate our policies. We have implemented additional measures to keep prices low and our global teams are working 24/7 to monitor prices in our store.” having removed nearly 4,000 accounts from the marketplace But the site is still seeing huge price increases. Amazon listed a case of Amy’s Organic Minestrone soup, for example, at its normal, pre-pandemic price of $38 on Tuesday, April 14. But by midday on Wednesday, Amazon was sold out, and the only remaining offer was from a third-party seller charging $60 for the case. High prices aren’t the only concern. Dynamic pricing can also easily slide into predatory pricing, where vendors use extremely low prices to undercut their competition. In “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” legal scholar Lina Khan to drive others out of the market, creating a monopoly. “The current framework in antitrust — specifically its pegging competition to “consumer welfare,” defined as short-term price effects — is unequipped to capture the architecture of market power in the modern economy,” writes Khan. argues that Amazon uses rock-bottom prices How Can I Make Sure I’m Paying a Reasonable Price? During the COVID-19 pandemic, some countries have decided to regulate their markets. to avoid price gouging. The , allowing supermarkets to set prices on essential items. France set price controls for hand sanitizer United Kingdom relaxed collusion laws Consumers themselves can use browser extensions like and to track prices on Amazon and set limits that will alert them when the price falls to an acceptable level. But just like couponing, Wilson says, price-tracking apps favor consumers who have the time and the wherewithal to comparison shop and wait for a good deal — a strategy that’s not very practical when you’re staring at an empty pantry or using up that last roll of toilet paper. Camelcamelcamel Keepa Credits Originally published as " Why Am I Paying $60 for That Bag of Rice on Amazon.com? " with the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.

Why Are Prices On Amazon So Insanely Volatile?

Our DeFi-powered collectibles game needed a Layer 2 solution. Here’s why we chose Polygon (formerly Matic Network). When we launched our eco-governance token on Ethereum in September, it was the peak of the first DeFi season. Prices were rising, degens were aping, and morale was peaking. But under the ebullient surface, a storm was brewing… Gas prices had spiked to levels not seen since 2017 and the famous CryptoKitties launch. Smaller players, unable to afford the expensive transactions, were being pushed to the sidelines as large holders cashed in on all the latest yield farming opportunities. Developers, seeing their users fleeing the maelstrom, began to seriously consider whether developing on Ethereum was productive anymore. Out of the confusion emerged a Discord server, aptly named “The Great Migration” (TGM). Managed strictly by the admins, only developers could join and see the chat. A furious debate ensued, as arcane terms like “rollups”, “validators” and “sharding” were tossed around. The server quickly grew to include channels for every scaling solution under the sun: Ethereum 2, Avalanche, Cosmos, Flow Blockchain, Polygon/Matic, NEAR, OMG Network, Polkadot, Skale, Solana, Starkware, xDAI, Rollups, and many more. The conversation frothed, as A-List developers of almost every Ethereum dApp out there chimed in on their favorite potential scaling solutions. And then…as quickly as it had started, the conversation died off. October came, and gas fees dropped back to earth. Developers collectively sighed in relief as their average transaction fees returned to under $50, and went back to doing what they do best: heads-down, #buidling the future. In just four months, however, the gas fees would skyrocket again, bringing the problem back. Ask Matic Anything (AMA) Out of all the projects discussed on the TGM server during the DeFi boom’s first wave, notably, only one showed up to do an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session. On September 17, Sandeep Nailwal of Polygon (which was called Matic Network at the time) was invited to join the hallowed ranks of TGM. Branded with a green “Project” Role (as opposed to the orange “Builder” role), Sandeep did not have access to the larger chat. He was invited for one specific purpose — to answer rigorous questions about how his project can solve the issue of scalability. What is Polygon? (Formerly known as Matic Network) Polygon offers a Layer-2 (L2) scaling solution that achieves scale by utilizing sidechains for off-chain computation while ensuring asset security using the Plasma framework and a decentralized network of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) validators — although the project plans to become a full-blown L2 aggregator that supports other L2 solutions such as Optimistic Rollups (OR), zkRollups (ZKR), and Validium. Polygon is fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), meaning users from Ethereum can easily transfer their assets to Polygon, and developers can deploy existing Solidity contracts without any major changes. During the AMA, Sandeep answered many important questions from the community, pertaining to security, developer experience, and roadmap. These answers, combined with our previous research and interactions with the team, convinced us that Polygon (then known as Matic) was a perfect fit for Aavegotchi. Fast forward a few months to December. Gas was relatively cheap, the market was sideways, and we at Aavegotchi were actively preparing to launch. Our original plan was to launch Aavegotchi collectibles on Ethereum and then allow users to transfer them to L2 to play the game. We scheduled the launch for January 4th, informed our media partners, and sprinted towards the finishing line. Launch D(el)ay As soon as the new year came, the crypto markets turned hectic again. The bull was back, and with it, the extremely high transaction fees seen in September. January 4th arrived, and our Discord was filled with a panicked, frenetic energy. Some members were excited about the launch despite the high gas fees, while others likened it to “setting sail in the middle of a hurricane.” An impromptu Discord reaction vote revealed the truth: 75% of our users supported delaying the launch and aborting our previous “Launch, then Pivot” plan. Instead, they supported launching directly onto L2. Many members asked us, “Why Matic? Why not xDAI, or Flow, or (any other L2 solution)? We had done a lot of research to come to this conclusion, but none of it had been previously disclosed publicly. So here are the six reasons why we chose Matic/Polygon. Reason 1: Sufficient Decentralization Unlike many NFT projects, Aavegotchi NFTs contain real financial value, distinct from the speculative value of the NFT itself. Each Aavegotchi is staked with interest-bearing “aTokens” generated from Aave’s lending pool on Ethereum, that are 1:1 convertible for underlying tokens such as DAI, USDT, LINK, and AAVE. Since we had to ensure the security of our players’ funds, our primary consideration when selecting the L2 home for Aavegotchi was sufficient security and decentralization of the network. Polygon has made great strides in terms of gradual decentralization. There are currently around 90 validators staking MATIC (Polygon’s native asset) to secure the network, most of which are run by community projects with significant funds staked. Validators require a ⅔ majority consensus to validate transactions and create checkpoints on Mainnet. Polygon uses a dual strategy of Proof-of-Stake at the checkpointing layer and Block Producers at the block producer layer to achieve faster blocktimes. It also ensures a high degree of decentralization by achieving finality on the main chains via the checkpoints and fraud-proof mechanisms. Reason 2: EVM-Compatibility One of our criteria for picking a viable L2 option is that it must be compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and the contracts that run on it. Most L2 solutions do not fit this criteria. Some solutions have created their own languages, or require rewriting into languages like Rust. The only L2 scaling solutions that offer EVM-compatibility are Polygon, xDAI, and Optimistic Virtual Machine (OVM). So that narrowed it down, a lot. Reason 3: Production readiness Aavegotchi was ready to launch yesterday. Delaying our launch to wait for a solution like OVM or ETH Phase 2 to come fully online would hurt community morale and weaken our momentum. The world needs DeFi-backed pixel avatars NOW, even if they don’t know it yet. So in the end, like the majority of crypto projects looking to have the best of both worlds by enjoying Ethereum’s huge network effect, while avoiding the network congestion, we were left with two options: xDAI and Polygon. Polygon and xDAI are both viable competitors for the throne of “EVM-compatible sidechain”. Like siblings, they sometimes squabble and bicker, but at the end of the day, they are family and they share the same goal of helping to scale Ethereum. We did thorough research on both protocols, but in the end decided that Polygon met our needs better, for the following reasons. Reason 4: Growing network effect The total volume locked (TVL) on Polygon is growing quickly. As of publishing, it has already reached , compared to xDAI’s $16 million. High gas costs are forcing projects on Ethereum to seriously consider migrating to L2, and as Polygon’s network effect grows, the incentive to migrate to Polygon will become ever stronger. $200+ million Reason 5: Great Developer Ecosystem Polygon’s mechanism for bridging is extremely flexible. Recently, Aavegotchi Core Summoner bridged Aave’s interest-bearing aTokens onto Matic/Polygon via a special customized that allows them to retain their interest while on L2. It’s incredibly easy for existing protocols to begin moving their assets onto L2. Nick Mudge bridge More and more developer tools such Chainlink are also launching on Polygon, giving existing Ethereum developers powerful building blocks in the new gasless environment. Reason 6: Interoperability with other NFT projects Polygon has a growing list of NFT dApps launched or planning to launch soon. A full list can be seen on , but some of our favorites are: Decentraland, Somnium Space, Zed Run, Terra Virtua, and Niftex. Notably, the NFT market OpenSea . their website is launching on Polygon as well At this point, we hear about new NFT projects moving to Polygon almost daily. One of the overarching goals of Aavegotchi is to enable interoperability with other NFTs, so it is important that Aavegotchi exist in a growing ecosystem. Similarly, Polygon’s team has a strong focus on blockchain gaming and NFTs. LFG! (Let’s Forge Greatness!) Our community is very satisfied with our decision to launch on Polygon and is eagerly awaiting the game to launch. In fact, our users barely noticed the transition due to the familiar experience: the process of bridging tokens from Ethereum to Matic/Polygon is intuitive and as user-friendly as it gets, while infrastructure solutions like Quickswap DEX provided liquidity mining incentives to attract our users to their platform. There is one difference that truly catches the eye, however: the transactions are virtually free and much faster. The Great Migration is just beginning, and it’s impossible to say what the ecosystem will look like in five years, but we believe in Polygon’s ambitious mission to ultimately make Ethereum “a full-fledged, powerful multi-chain system”. We are extremely excited to launch Aavegotchi’s DeFi-backed crypto avatars on their network on March 2 at 10am EST / 11pm SGT. Also published on: https://aavegotchi.medium.com/why-aavegotchi-chose-polygon-356238977fb2

6 Reasons Why Our DeFi x NFT Game Chose to Run on Polygon, Dodging Insane ETH Fees

SaaS businesses (particularly ones for technical users) sometimes have to deal with a vocal outcry that their product “is just a wrapper around” something. The implication is that ‘a wrapper’ is inherently not valuable, and it’s impossible to build a great business around such a product. This logic is a product of lazy thinking and myopia; ‘wrappers’ can be insanely valuable. Here are a few examples that come to mind: Dropbox is “just rsync” Heroku is “just Linux containers on AWS” Netlify is “just static hosting and a CDN” Retool is “just MS Access reinvented for the web” IFTTT is “just cron + APIs” These statements are lazy thinking--they have elements of truth in them, but they aren’t complete. . This magic sometimes goes by names like “it just works” or “consumerized experience.” The thread that runs through the different monikers is that it accomplishes an otherwise painful¹ task quickly and delights the user. People are willing to pay for magic Technical users want to be delighted, too, even if the interaction layer may not be a GUI. It might be a CLI, fantastic docs, or a clean API (or likely all of the above). So, if you can take something painful and move the interaction layer, the value proposition of the underlying tools grows. Big cloud providers will likely offer a comparable service, . Why? and a meaningful subset of users are willing to pay for the premium experience. but these aren’t often existential threats to the best-in-class original Because the interaction layer matters A few condensed observations about this ‘interaction layer’: people want a ‘sensible defaults’ way of doing things … an opinionated way of starting out UI/UX matters a lot (this includes docs and CLI) rarely, the core value prop isn’t already being accomplished crudely by huge companies modern open-source companies that are successful have to nail this in ways their predecessors didn’t² consumerization of everything — i.e., how little of $PLUMBING can I get away with knowing? there are a meaningful number of technical users who can do something, but don’t want to waste otherwise valuable time doing so One could argue that the term for this is just ‘user experience,’ but that doesn’t seem quite right to me. Because it’s not about an experience of the underlying tool or process, it’s about creating an entirely new tool by ‘wrapping’ some of the original components. [1]: pain usually equates to a measure of complexity, monotony, or slowness [2]: I suspect this is because we now have such a good base of open-source software that much of the opportunity is with higher-level products. Decades ago, the popular OSS products were things like operating systems, programming languages, and language-adjacent tools like compilers. Then, higher-level abstractions started moving open-source: webservers, web frameworks, e-commerce platforms, content management systems. The trendline is higher, and the interaction layer matters more the higher you go Originally published at https://www.tclauson.com on July 27, 2020.

Startup Wrappers Can Be Insanely Valuable

For Entrepreneurs, Endurance is more Important than Intellect 

Left Curve

বাম বক্ররেখা

Linkskurve

Curva izquierda

Courbe gauche

बायां वक्र

左カーブ

왼쪽 곡선

Curva Esquerda

Левая кривая

Sol Eğri

Đường cong trái

左弯道

From X to the Online World As I landed on X December last year, I encountered a dynamic community of entrepreneurs sharing content, exchanging insights, narrating their experiences, and marketing their products. The sheer volume of activities made it challenging to stay abreast of everyone's endeavors and the content they shared. Unlocking X’s Potential Viewed through the lens of an independent entrepreneur, the platform offers the distinct advantage of a rich learning environment. Despite the varying degrees of relevance in the shared content, a noteworthy aspect is the "Give vs. Ask" ethos, expounded upon in the insightful piece titled "Promoting on Reddit (or Anywhere) By Giving Before Asking," penned by Bill Prin. Here, the act of entrepreneurs sharing their learnings, data, or product statistics represents a 'Give,’ while the promotion of their product is an 'Ask'’ The true value of time spent on X hinges on the prevalence of 'Give' content. But, the reality is that the recurrence of similar ideas dilutes the impact of the platform. The Double-Edged Sword of X If this is the benefit of X, the downside is that you become one among many entrepreneurs. If you want people to notice your stuff, you have to do a lot of giving and always be honest. I don't mind being honest and giving, but the thing is, it takes up a lot of time. Marc Louvion said in one of the promotional videos that he spends 5 hours a day on X. I’m pretty sure this can be a valid approximation, and I don’t want to spend that much time on X. I decided to add a website tracker extension on Google Chrome and Firefox. This tool aims to provide insights into my time spent on browsers, helping me make informed decisions to maximize my productivity. Strategic Spots for Startup Promotion In this X journey, I stumbled upon this tweet: Guess what? Some entrepreneurs out there are selling lists of places to promote your startup. I did some detective work on Google and found a bunch of websites sharing these lists. Check out the ones I looked into: 500+ Places to Promote Your Startup


75+ Places to Promote Your Startup for Free


Top 20 Sites to Submit Your Startup to Promote It in 2024


Top 14 Sites to Promote Your Startup


89 Places to Promote Your Startup My goal throughout this journey was to amplify the reach of my projects without breaking the bank. While paid promotion options exist, I decided to steer clear, considering my budget constraints. These lists I found have a mix of everything—some duplicates, some websites that aren't around anymore, and some with dark patterns like making you fill out a bunch of info and then springing a surprise payment on you. I spent quite a few hours sorting through all of this to figure out which websites let you submit your startup. I hope that I can save some time for folks who want to get their app out there. I've even included the ones that want you to pay for a speedy listing or make you wait for months before they showcase your startup. Here's the list: https://alternativeto.net/ https://apprater.net/ https://appsumo.com/ https://awesomeindie.com/ https://betalist.com/ https://crazyaboutstartups.com/ https://ctrlalt.cc/ https://fazier.com/ https://feedmystartup.com/ https://financesonline.com/ https://launched.io/ https://lazyhunt.com/ https://microlaunch.net/ https://owwly.com/ https://peerlist.io/ https://pitchwall.co/ https://portal.10words.io/ https://sell.g2.com/create-a-profile https://startupbase.io/ https://startupbuffer.com/ https://startupinspire.com/ https://startupstash.com/ https://wellfound.com/ https://www.affordhunt.com/ https://www.allstartups.info/ https://www.betabound.com/ https://www.betafy.co/ https://www.crunchbase.com/ https://www.f6s.com/ https://www.feedough.com/ https://www.gartner.com/en/digital-markets/basic-listing https://www.indiehackers.com/ https://www.insanelycooltools.com/ https://www.launchingnext.com/ https://www.producthunt.com/ https://www.saasprojects.com/ https://www.sideprojectors.com/#/ https://www.slant.co/ https://www.startupranking.com/ https://www.startups.fyi/ https://www.trustpilot.com/ https://www.uneed.best/ Those lists also include Reddits, but heads up, all links posted on Reddit are "no follow" (here is a perfect article on why this is important). But since Bill Prin had a good experience starting to promote on Reddit, I'm thinking of giving it a shot sometime soon. Here's the list of reddits: r/advancedentrepreneur r/advertising r/alphaandbetausers r/announcements r/AskMarketing r/Business_Ideas r/Businessideas r/coupons r/CrazyIdeas r/digitalnomad r/Emailmarketing r/Entrepreneur r/EntrepreneurRideAlong r/growinpublic r/growmybusiness r/GrowthHacking r/ideas r/indiebiz r/indiehackers r/InternetIsBeautiful r/Lightbulb r/MadeThis r/marketing r/microsaas r/NicheWebsites r/Plugyourproduct r/ProductHunters r/programming r/projects r/roastmystartup r/SaaS r/sales r/SideProject r/smallbusiness r/socialmedia r/startup r/startups r/startups_promotion r/sweatystartup r/webmarketing There are also Facebook groups and communities, but for now, as I decided to stay away from Facebook, there's no plan to check those out for now. Tracking Success with Bonetflix Implementing this strategy, I've promoted my project, Bonetflix, on all these platforms. In a past issue, I shared some metrics about it, and I expect these numbers to evolve in the following weeks. Stay tuned to witness positive transformations in this journey. Thanks for reading David's Indie Hacker Journey! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Also published here. From X to the Online World As I landed on X December last year, I encountered a dynamic community of entrepreneurs sharing content, exchanging insights, narrating their experiences, and marketing their products. The sheer volume of activities made it challenging to stay abreast of everyone's endeavors and the content they shared. Unlocking X’s Potential Viewed through the lens of an independent entrepreneur, the platform offers the distinct advantage of a rich learning environment. Despite the varying degrees of relevance in the shared content, a noteworthy aspect is the "Give vs. Ask" ethos, expounded upon in the insightful piece titled "Promoting on Reddit (or Anywhere) By Giving Before Asking," penned by Bill Prin . Here, the act of entrepreneurs sharing their learnings, data, or product statistics represents a 'Give,’ while the promotion of their product is an 'Ask'’ The true value of time spent on X hinges on the prevalence of 'Give' content. But, the reality is that the recurrence of similar ideas dilutes the impact of the platform. "Promoting on Reddit (or Anywhere) By Giving Before Asking," Bill Prin The Double-Edged Sword of X If this is the benefit of X, the downside is that you become one among many entrepreneurs. If you want people to notice your stuff, you have to do a lot of giving and always be honest. I don't mind being honest and giving, but the thing is, it takes up a lot of time. Marc Louvion said in one of the promotional videos that he spends 5 hours a day on X. Marc Louvion I’m pretty sure this can be a valid approximation, and I don’t want to spend that much time on X. I decided to add a website tracker extension on Google Chrome and Firefox. This tool aims to provide insights into my time spent on browsers, helping me make informed decisions to maximize my productivity. Strategic Spots for Startup Promotion In this X journey, I stumbled upon this tweet: Guess what? Some entrepreneurs out there are selling lists of places to promote your startup. I did some detective work on Google and found a bunch of websites sharing these lists. Check out the ones I looked into: 500+ Places to Promote Your Startup 75+ Places to Promote Your Startup for Free Top 20 Sites to Submit Your Startup to Promote It in 2024 Top 14 Sites to Promote Your Startup 89 Places to Promote Your Startup 500+ Places to Promote Your Startup 500+ Places to Promote Your Startup 500+ Places to Promote Your Startup 75+ Places to Promote Your Startup for Free 75+ Places to Promote Your Startup for Free 75+ Places to Promote Your Startup for Free Top 20 Sites to Submit Your Startup to Promote It in 2024 Top 20 Sites to Submit Your Startup to Promote It in 2024 Top 20 Sites to Submit Your Startup to Promote It in 2024 Top 14 Sites to Promote Your Startup Top 14 Sites to Promote Your Startup Top 14 Sites to Promote Your Startup 89 Places to Promote Your Startup 89 Places to Promote Your Startup 89 Places to Promote Your Startup My goal throughout this journey was to amplify the reach of my projects without breaking the bank. While paid promotion options exist, I decided to steer clear, considering my budget constraints. These lists I found have a mix of everything—some duplicates, some websites that aren't around anymore, and some with dark patterns like making you fill out a bunch of info and then springing a surprise payment on you. I spent quite a few hours sorting through all of this to figure out which websites let you submit your startup. I hope that I can save some time for folks who want to get their app out there. I've even included the ones that want you to pay for a speedy listing or make you wait for months before they showcase your startup. Here's the list: https://alternativeto.net/ https://alternativeto.net/ https://apprater.net/ https://apprater.net/ https://appsumo.com/ https://appsumo.com/ https://awesomeindie.com/ https://awesomeindie.com/ https://betalist.com/ https://betalist.com/ https://crazyaboutstartups.com/ https://crazyaboutstartups.com/ https://ctrlalt.cc/ https://ctrlalt.cc/ https://fazier.com/ https://fazier.com/ https://feedmystartup.com/ https://feedmystartup.com/ https://financesonline.com/ https://financesonline.com/ https://launched.io/ https://launched.io/ https://lazyhunt.com/ https://lazyhunt.com/ https://microlaunch.net/ https://microlaunch.net/ https://owwly.com/ https://owwly.com/ https://peerlist.io/ https://peerlist.io/ https://pitchwall.co/ https://pitchwall.co/ https://portal.10words.io/ https://portal.10words.io/ https://sell.g2.com/create-a-profile https://sell.g2.com/create-a-profile https://startupbase.io/ https://startupbase.io/ https://startupbuffer.com/ https://startupbuffer.com/ https://startupinspire.com/ https://startupinspire.com/ https://startupstash.com/ https://startupstash.com/ https://wellfound.com/ https://wellfound.com/ https://www.affordhunt.com/ https://www.affordhunt.com/ https://www.allstartups.info/ https://www.allstartups.info/ https://www.betabound.com/ https://www.betabound.com/ https://www.betafy.co/ https://www.betafy.co/ https://www.crunchbase.com/ https://www.crunchbase.com/ https://www.f6s.com/ https://www.f6s.com/ https://www.feedough.com/ https://www.feedough.com/ https://www.gartner.com/en/digital-markets/basic-listing https://www.gartner.com/en/digital-markets/basic-listing https://www.indiehackers.com/ https://www.indiehackers.com/ https://www.insanelycooltools.com/ https://www.insanelycooltools.com/ https://www.launchingnext.com/ https://www.launchingnext.com/ https://www.producthunt.com/ https://www.producthunt.com/ https://www.saasprojects.com/ https://www.saasprojects.com/ https://www.sideprojectors.com/#/ https://www.sideprojectors.com/#/ https://www.slant.co/ https://www.slant.co/ https://www.startupranking.com/ https://www.startupranking.com/ https://www.startups.fyi/ https://www.startups.fyi/ https://www.trustpilot.com/ https://www.trustpilot.com/ https://www.uneed.best/ https://www.uneed.best/ Those lists also include Reddits, but heads up, all links posted on Reddit are "no follow" ( here is a perfect article on why this is important). But since Bill Prin had a good experience starting to promote on Reddit, I'm thinking of giving it a shot sometime soon. Here's the list of reddits: here Bill Prin r/advancedentrepreneur r/advancedentrepreneur r/advertising r/advertising r/alphaandbetausers r/alphaandbetausers r/announcements r/announcements r/AskMarketing r/AskMarketing r/Business_Ideas r/Business_Ideas r/Businessideas r/Businessideas r/coupons r/coupons r/CrazyIdeas r/CrazyIdeas r/digitalnomad r/digitalnomad r/Emailmarketing r/Emailmarketing r/Entrepreneur r/Entrepreneur r/EntrepreneurRideAlong r/EntrepreneurRideAlong r/growinpublic r/growinpublic r/growmybusiness r/growmybusiness r/GrowthHacking r/GrowthHacking r/ideas r/ideas r/indiebiz r/indiebiz r/indiehackers r/indiehackers r/InternetIsBeautiful r/InternetIsBeautiful r/Lightbulb r/Lightbulb r/MadeThis r/MadeThis r/marketing r/marketing r/microsaas r/microsaas r/NicheWebsites r/NicheWebsites r/Plugyourproduct r/Plugyourproduct r/ProductHunters r/ProductHunters r/programming r/programming r/projects r/projects r/roastmystartup r/roastmystartup r/SaaS r/SaaS r/sales r/sales r/SideProject r/SideProject r/smallbusiness r/smallbusiness r/socialmedia r/socialmedia r/startup r/startup r/startups r/startups r/startups_promotion r/startups_promotion r/sweatystartup r/sweatystartup r/webmarketing r/webmarketing There are also Facebook groups and communities, but for now, as I decided to stay away from Facebook, there's no plan to check those out for now. Tracking Success with Bonetflix Implementing this strategy, I've promoted my project, Bonetflix, on all these platforms. In a past issue , I shared some metrics about it, and I expect these numbers to evolve in the following weeks. Stay tuned to witness positive transformations in this journey. In a past issue Thanks for reading David's Indie Hacker Journey! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Also published here. Also published here . here

Online Spaces Where Your Startup Could Thrive

Introduction Late in 2023, I was considering writing an article about Acorn Labs' work simplifying Kubernetes containers. I even started it and wrote a few paragraphs, but then I got busy with other things. At the time, I was going to revisit it in February 2024, they made a couple of announcements; one was for Rubra, and the other was more of a personal project by one of the co-founders, Darren Shepherd, called GPTScript. This project was so exciting that a month later, Acorn announced they were changing their company focus to GPTScript (not sure what would happen to Rubra). I’ve been following all the developments on this project, closer than I typically do, because I find it absolutely amazing as enablement technology. It reminds me of the philosophy behind a product I worked with back in the 80s and 90s called MPEX from VESOFT, written by Eugen Volokh. What Darren has done with GPTScript is kind of hard to wrap your head around at first, especially for a programmer. I haven’t spent enough time with it yet to fully understand all the implications, but I have a lot of thoughts about it. In this article, I’ll walk through some basic introductions and examples and give you some thoughts about where you could take it. Getting Started I worked off the docs and various videos and examples; I gave this a go on my Windows 11 laptop. Let’s get this sucker installed: winget install gptscript-ai.gptscript
$env:OPENAI_API_KEY = 'your-api-key' The docs suggest running a “hello world” example at this point, but that isn’t very interesting, so let’s try the “bob” example. Also, note that there are many built-in examples you can get a list of by issuing the gptscript—-list-tools command and an online ‘examples’ directory. What does “bob.gpt” look like? This presents us with some obvious questions, like what this all means and how a value of ‘How are you doing?’ ended up in the ‘question’ argument. GPTScript operates around the notion of tools where a tool is described in a GPT file. Each file can be made up of more than one named tool, separated by three dashes. Borrowing from the docs, Tool parameters are key-value pairs defined at the beginning of a tool block before any instructional text. They are specified in the format key: value. The parser recognizes the following keys (case-insensitive and spaces are ignored): A tool starts with a preamble that defines the tool's name, description, args, available tools, and additional parameters. The preamble is followed by the tool's body, which contains the instructions for the tool. Comments in the preamble are lines starting with # and are ignored by the parser. Comments are not really encouraged as the text is typically more useful in the description, argument descriptions, or instructions. I’m still not sure why Bob was giving a default value for the argument. It would change if I gave it an argument, so that was a bit of a mystery. I decided to try the samples-readme.gpt script, which looks like this: Reading this, I understood that it would give me a summary of each gpt file in the examples directory. When I first tried it without an argument, it failed to find any input, so I tried with an example file as an argument, and it worked. Then I tried it with their larger example script for hacker-news-headlines, and instead, it did what I thought it should have done the first time. It created a readme.md file in the examples directory with a summary of each example. I’ve seen people in the community starting to generate some very cool tools that are being added to the GPTScript tools web page. I had a little bit of mixed results with my tests. Most things worked as expected, but I had a few things that didn’t, and I didn’t have the opportunity to dig deeper. That said, this is clearly powerful, and it is just scratching the surface. Summary As a lifelong programmer, this feels weird; it involves doing things in ways that seem like something is missing. This makes GPTScript fascinating and scary as if black magic is involved somehow. The natural language and loose feel of it take a little getting used to, but as you think about it, you start to realize how amazing this can be as an enablement technology. One of the first things that came to mind, but I didn’t test, was could this be used to drive OpenFoam? OpenFoam is open-source CFD software that is rather notorious for how difficult it is to use, which is why I never learned how to use it. What if I could just describe what I wanted to do with it, and it worked? Imagine doing this with any software with an API you could talk to. My mind starts to explode thinking about it. Acorn has created an online “tools” catalog that you can utilize, and they are iterating at an insane pace. This is really exciting. Check out my other What the Heck is… articles at the links below: What The Heck Is DuckDB?
What the Heck Is Malloy?
What the Heck is PRQL?
What the Heck is GlareDB?
What the Heck is SeaTunnel?
What the Heck is LanceDB?
What the heck is SDF?
What the Heck is Paimon?
What the Heck is Proton?
What the Heck is PuppyGraph? Introduction Introduction Late in 2023, I was considering writing an article about Acorn Labs ' work simplifying Kubernetes containers. I even started it and wrote a few paragraphs, but then I got busy with other things. At the time, I was going to revisit it in February 2024, they made a couple of announcements; one was for Rubra, and the other was more of a personal project by one of the co-founders, Darren Shepherd , called GPTScript . Acorn Labs Acorn Labs Darren Shepherd Darren Shepherd GPTScript GPTScript This project was so exciting that a month later, Acorn announced they were changing their company focus to GPTScript (not sure what would happen to Rubra). announced announced I’ve been following all the developments on this project, closer than I typically do, because I find it absolutely amazing as enablement technology. It reminds me of the philosophy behind a product I worked with back in the 80s and 90s called MPEX from VESOFT, written by Eugen Volokh. What Darren has done with GPTScript is kind of hard to wrap your head around at first, especially for a programmer. I haven’t spent enough time with it yet to fully understand all the implications, but I have a lot of thoughts about it. In this article, I’ll walk through some basic introductions and examples and give you some thoughts about where you could take it. Getting Started I worked off the docs and various videos and examples; I gave this a go on my Windows 11 laptop. Let’s get this sucker installed: docs docs winget install gptscript-ai.gptscript
$env:OPENAI_API_KEY = 'your-api-key' winget install gptscript-ai.gptscript
$env:OPENAI_API_KEY = 'your-api-key' The docs suggest running a “hello world” example at this point, but that isn’t very interesting, so let’s try the “bob” example. Also, note that there are many built-in examples you can get a list of by issuing the gptscript—-list-tools command and an online ‘ examples ’ directory. examples examples What does “bob.gpt” look like? This presents us with some obvious questions, like what this all means and how a value of ‘How are you doing?’ ended up in the ‘question’ argument. GPTScript operates around the notion of tools where a tool is described in a GPT file. Each file can be made up of more than one named tool, separated by three dashes. tools Borrowing from the docs, Tool parameters are key-value pairs defined at the beginning of a tool block before any instructional text. They are specified in the format key: value. The parser recognizes the following keys (case-insensitive and spaces are ignored): Tool parameters are key-value pairs defined at the beginning of a tool block before any instructional text. They are specified in the format key: value. The parser recognizes the following keys (case-insensitive and spaces are ignored): A tool starts with a preamble that defines the tool's name, description, args, available tools, and additional parameters. The preamble is followed by the tool's body, which contains the instructions for the tool. Comments in the preamble are lines starting with # and are ignored by the parser. Comments are not really encouraged as the text is typically more useful in the description, argument descriptions, or instructions. A tool starts with a preamble that defines the tool's name, description, args, available tools, and additional parameters. The preamble is followed by the tool's body, which contains the instructions for the tool. Comments in the preamble are lines starting with # and are ignored by the parser. Comments are not really encouraged as the text is typically more useful in the description, argument descriptions, or instructions. I’m still not sure why Bob was giving a default value for the argument. It would change if I gave it an argument, so that was a bit of a mystery. I decided to try the samples-readme.gpt script, which looks like this: Bob samples-readme.gpt Reading this, I understood that it would give me a summary of each gpt file in the examples directory. When I first tried it without an argument, it failed to find any input, so I tried with an example file as an argument, and it worked. Then I tried it with their larger example script for hacker-news-headlines , and instead, it did what I thought it should have done the first time. It created a readme.md file in the examples directory with a summary of each example. hacker-news-headlines readme.md I’ve seen people in the community starting to generate some very cool tools that are being added to the GPTScript tools web page. I had a little bit of mixed results with my tests. Most things worked as expected, but I had a few things that didn’t, and I didn’t have the opportunity to dig deeper. That said, this is clearly powerful, and it is just scratching the surface. Summary As a lifelong programmer, this feels weird; it involves doing things in ways that seem like something is missing. This makes GPTScript fascinating and scary as if black magic is involved somehow. The natural language and loose feel of it take a little getting used to, but as you think about it, you start to realize how amazing this can be as an enablement technology. One of the first things that came to mind, but I didn’t test, was could this be used to drive OpenFoam ? OpenFoam is open-source CFD software that is rather notorious for how difficult it is to use, which is why I never learned how to use it. What if I could just describe what I wanted to do with it, and it worked? Imagine doing this with any software with an API you could talk to. OpenFoam OpenFoam My mind starts to explode thinking about it. Acorn has created an online “ tools ” catalog that you can utilize, and they are iterating at an insane pace. This is really exciting. tools tools Check out my other What the Heck is… articles at the links below: What The Heck Is DuckDB? What the Heck Is Malloy? What the Heck is PRQL? What the Heck is GlareDB? What the Heck is SeaTunnel? What the Heck is LanceDB? What the heck is SDF? What the Heck is Paimon? What the Heck is Proton? What the Heck is PuppyGraph? What The Heck Is DuckDB? What The Heck Is DuckDB? What the Heck Is Malloy? What the Heck Is Malloy? What the Heck is PRQL? What the Heck is PRQL? What the Heck is GlareDB? What the Heck is GlareDB? What the Heck is SeaTunnel? What the Heck is SeaTunnel? What the Heck is LanceDB? What the Heck is LanceDB? What the heck is SDF? What the heck is SDF? What the Heck is Paimon? What the Heck is Paimon? What the Heck is Proton? What the Heck is Proton? What the Heck is PuppyGraph? What the Heck is PuppyGraph?

What the Heck Is GPTScript?

HEPT MOVES ON

What are ZK Proofs and How are They the Future of Verifiability

AI has taken over social media. you have a tool that can dig deep into audience insights, predict the next big content hit, craft posts and visuals on its own, spot consumer trends, and decode public sentiment. Picture this: There is no doubt to say that AI is the backbone of every social media platform out there. It doesn't only help in analyzing what content pops up in your feed, but also cleaning up comments for a better browsing experience, and suggesting new content and friends you might enjoy. But, it poses a challenge for marketers, finding that spot where content appeals to both humans and AI algorithms. When it comes to what “The Algorithm" wants, we're left guessing. And, All too often, we switch from cheap tricks to increased engagement without creating any lasting value for our audiences. Interestingly, AI can lead to more genuine marketing on social media. It helps us understand the vast amount of data from social media platforms. This way, we can create content that truly matters to our audience. AI analyzes posts, comments, and interactions to let us provide what people want and address their interests better. Plus, AI saves a lot of time and money by automating and scaling these processes. That's why top social media marketers are using AI to: Automate repetitive tasks, saving time and money. Expand social media strategies across different platforms. Create posts and campaigns based on data that actually works. You can do this too, no matter your budget or company size. The rest of this post shows you how. How AI is Being Used in Social Media So how exactly can you use artificial intelligence to take your social media marketing game to a whole new level? Let's look at some of the best ways to do this. AI-Powered Content Curation One of the most challenging aspects of social media marketing is coming up with fresh content ideas that can drive engagement for your brand. Instead of copying your competitors or throwing a bunch of content ideas at the wall and hoping one sticks, AI analyzes your data and creates targeted messages based on what your audience has liked in the past. This way, you can be sure that the content you share will resonate with your social media audience and get the reaction you want. AI also helps in improving the quality of your content in terms of tone and grammar. Note: AI-enabled tools even analyze your social media data and determine which keywords, images, hashtags, and colors have a stronger impact on your audience based on past results. In addition, AI-powered content curation tools automatically create social media posts using a URL or information you provide that suits your brand voice. These tools also share the posts on different social platforms. Did you know that Elon Musk says xAI will open-source Grok this week? Automation of Social Network Management Your business is likely on more than one social media platform. And, while consistently publishing quality content, keeping up with the latest trends/updates on every platform can be quite a hassle. However, with the help of AI-powered social media management tools, it is easy to grow your influence and connect with your audience. These tools also plan out your social media posts in advance, track all your profiles, and generate appropriate responses for consumers after analyzing their messages. In simple form, AI will not only plan your campaigns. but also fill content gaps and keep your followers engaged with your brand voice. This tool can recycle content you've previously published, such as blog posts or infographics, and turn them into upload-ready social media posts with hashtags and relevant links. Advertising Campaigns on Social Networks How to get ahead of your competitors and get the most out of advertising on social networks? Several companies are using paid advertising on social media. If you aim to stand out and increase your campaign's impact, it's time to start creating better, smarter ads. AI-powered tools like Sprinklr help you create compelling, personalized social media ads and monitor and optimize your campaigns to maximize ROAS. Such tools offer recommendations to help your campaigns perform better. From comparing ad performance to planning out strategies, AI reduces your overall advertising costs. The copywriting AI tool analyzes your brand language and creates social media ad copy that will increase engagement and conversions for your business. Ensure that your social media ad copy matches your landing page to maintain consistency and communicate with users. Personalization Using Chatbots More followers and clients mean more money, but it also means more time spent serving them. Luckily for you, highly effective customer support and personalized audience experiences are some of the benefits that help your brand grow with the help of artificial intelligence. Hiring enough customer service staff to provide 24/7 customer support may not be feasible. Investing in AI-powered chatbots will respond to audience messages immediately, regardless of the time of day. You can even combine chatbots with your existing live chat software to provide your audience with 24/7 customer service support. With the help of machine learning, your AI chatbots will be able to provide relevant answers to various problems, questions, or queries that your audience may have. Such tools allow you to deliver engaging, seamless, and personalized customer experiences using bots across a variety of social media platforms. Competitor Analysis and Social Listening It's not enough to just know who your competitors are. If you want to get an advantage over them, you need to analyze their social media strategies, find out their weaknesses, and determine what they think. The manually searching and analyzing competitor pages can take weeks or months of grueling work., And, if you succeed in your analysis, there is a high probability that it will contain errors. But with the help of AI, you can easily track your competitors and analyze their social media strategies, reach, engagement rates, conversion rates, brand sentiment, and more. Various AI-powered competitive analysis tools monitor your competitors' social marketing efforts, from user interactions to posts and campaigns. It helps in knowing which parts require a more effective marketing strategy to achieve success. Artificial intelligence tools track mentions of your business, as well as specific hashtags and keywords related to you on social media. Analyzing this information will help you determine whether the public opinion of your brand is negative, positive, or neutral. You will be able to identify potential problems before they become more serious. Emerging AI Technologies in Social Media AI is about to take social media on a futuristic ride. We're not just talking about minor upgrades here - AI is changing the way we scroll, post, and consume content online. Different technologies like synthetic media, AI-created content, and virtual influencers are expanding the limits of what we can do online. Let's take a look at what insanely innovative experiences are coming next… Deepfakes You've probably seen those mind-bending "deepfake" videos going viral where celebrities or politicians seem to be saying and doing things they never actually did. Now creators can create stunningly realistic footage that pushes the boundaries of imagination thanks to artificial intelligence. Deepfakes also open up a world of exciting opportunities for creative self-expression and next-level storytelling through synthetic media. As the technology continues evolving, we'll see deepfakes enabling Hollywood-level visual effects that bring our wildest visions to life. Virtual Influencers This one's unquestionably innovative - companies are using AI to generate incredibly human-looking virtual influencers to advertise products on social media. We're talking lifelike computer avatars with their names, personalities, and millions of followers! Now, imagine the creative potential here. Brands can craft highly engaging, endlessly customizable digital personas to connect with audiences in new ways. Virtual influencers offer limitless brand ambassadorship and storytelling opportunities. AI Content CreatorsImagine telling an AI to whip up your next social media caption, graphic, or video ad...and having it generate something cleverly crafted in seconds. Using large language models and other AI tools, brands can augment human creativity. For content creators, this AI assistance will prove to be an amazing productivity multiplier and source of innovative inspiration. While not replacing humans, AI can elevate our creative visions to new heights while saving tons of time. Feed Personalization Of course, the biggest AI impact on social is automated feed curation. It further deeply understands our preferences to serve up a perfectly personalized experience tailored to each user's interests. This allows for a more rewarding, endlessly engaging social media journey of discovery and relevance. While some worry about filtered bubbles, smarter AI will also ensure we're exposed to a balanced variety of perspectives selected just for us. Conclusion There's no doubt to say that AI is completely changing the world of social media as we know it. From automated content creation to hyper-personalized feeds to wildly realistic synthetic media, this technology is rapidly transforming how we connect, share, and experience online. Artificial intelligence (AI) is making it easier for social media platforms to sort through vast amounts of data. It helps them spot the latest trends, understand what users like, block harmful content, and do much more. AI has a promising future in this space because it makes things better for users and helps brands cater to them more effectively. In social media marketing, AI is crucial because it allows companies to track how well they're doing and pinpoint potential customers.

How AI is Shaping the Future of Social Media

I started in 2004, made an exit, fundraised many times, 2 top accelerators, and failed a lot. Pivoted to run profitable HoldCo with $2M ARR & 20 products. 7 steps I repeat in every product: Setup>Idea>Build>Grow>Monetize>Hire>Scale. 1. Setup Get an easy main job that covers your bills. No need for heroism. I had a side-paid job for the first 5 years, and it helped me stay in the game. There is a 99% chance your first try will fail, as well as the second and third. Having a day job helps to get up and try again. Those YouTube stories of 18-year-old dudes getting rich overnight are total bullsh*t. It takes many years. Be prepared, both mentally and financially. 2.1. Idea. Training Camp. It's very difficult to come up with good ideas at the beginning. My first idea was a game for coders where they code their bot and send it to fight. The second idea was a virtual reality room for team meetings. Both ideas failed miserably because I had no idea what I was doing. Which means you should not expect yourself to come up with good ideas. Your first 10 ideas will be crap. That's okay. If you ever played sports, your first 10 tries are awkward; you play it as if you're a toddler making first steps. Why would you expect it to be different in business? So, your first 5-10 ideas are for you to practice and learn the startup craft. 2.2. Idea. Real World. Eventually, your ideas will get better and better. Today, to come up with an idea I do this: Look carefully at my own routine. Is there anything I can do to get 10x more productive on a specific task? Not just 2x, but 10x, because remember: all vitamins fail; you must build a painkiller. A remarkably useful product. For example, I noticed that every time I launch a new product, it has zero domain rating, which means I'll get no SEO traffic even if I made many good blog articles. So, I build listingBott to solve this. Before listingbott, I'd spend days browsing the internet for directories and websites to list my new URL on. Literally days. Now, it takes me 1 minute. I launched it in Jan, and it scored over $20k in revenue since all the other busy founders loved this too. I have 30 more products I wanna build to take every routine task from hours/days to minutes. You can do the same. Watch your own work. See what takes time and can be improved if you've built a tool for it. Build it for yourself, iterate, and once you're happy - share it with others. See what people complain or ask about on social media. I literally checked my feed now and saw these requests: "I only check domain ratings and backlinks on Ahrefs, but I pay for the full product, are there any alternatives that are simpler and cheaper..". This post had comments from people supporting the idea. Save the post, build the tool, and once you build it, send it to the post author and all commentators. Clone existing tools for a new audience. For example, one of my products is Unicorn Platform (website builder). I target indie makers mostly. But I also have clients from other niches, for example, Churches. If you make a "Website builder for churches" it may be more appealing to them than my generic website builder. This can be applied to literally every product out there. Find a product, and make a clone for a very narrow niche. When I say "clone" it doesn't mean you need to redo the whole thing. Most likely the audience cares only about 10% of the generic product. Which is great because you can build this really quickly. 3. Build. I Build Everything With NoCode First. I know how to code; I did it for 20 years. But I still go with NoCode first. It's just faster. Most coders think that coding is faster, but this is simply an overestimation. No coder on earth can correctly estimate the time it will take to build a product. You will guess "It'll take me 7 days." But in reality, some things will go wrong, and the last 10% will take forever and here you are, 2 months later still fighting with bugs. Devs who built successful startups know this, but devs who have never done it are going to say I'm wrong. Okay. Try boilerplates if NoCode isn't helpful because your product is very custom. Again, most devs think it's below their pride to use boilerplates, but the world has changed and the quality of boilerplates these days is insanely good; I made a list on . If none of the options fit, you can hire a freelancer. But here is a thing: never go for hourly pay. You'll 100% end up paying a lot more than the estimate. nextjsstarter.com Because in all of human history, there wasn't a case yet where the estimate and reality matched. It always takes way more time to build software than it was estimated. Find them on Upwork, X, or mvpwizards.com 4. Grow. If You Have No Skills, Go for Paid Growth. sponsor newsletters from relevant influencers sponsor directories sponsor social media influencer posts Social Media. This method is great if you have a generic talent for social media attention. From what I've seen, people who didn't do well with their personal accounts, can't do well with business promotion on social media either. My advice: if you run your install/TikTok for years but it has only your friends and family and few likes, it means this isn't for you; don't waste your time doing it for business. Blogging. The long-form content is about storytelling. If you're good at it, go for it. How to know if you're good at it? Just see your personal life again. When you meet your friends, are you the one telling the stories, or you're the one listening to stories? Can you make people laugh easily? If yes, then this is yours; invest heavily into this for your business topics. Find relevant platforms, Reddit, blogs, long-form on social media, etc. SEO. This is a less creative job. For SEO content, you just need to create useful content. Useful content isn't the same as creative content. It has no job of entertaining and capturing attention. The key goal of SEO content is to be helpful to the person searching for an answer on Google. Identify common questions your audience asks and create content that answers these questions. Or use tools like SEObot to get help with this job. Cold Outreach. This isn't my favorite method, but I know that it works. You can collect emails doing promotions and outreach. The conversion is low, so make sure you've got enough emails. You can run social media promos or ads to collect emails. Lead Magnets and Side Projects. This is the most fun way of working on growth. You build little tools, for example, we have uigenerator[.]org, which is a super simple tool; it's free, and it gets really good organic traffic every day. It drives lots of clicks to the Unicorn Platform. All directories I launched also serve as a side project to drive traffic to the Unicorn Platform. I'm kinda lucky those directories ended up going viral and making their own revenues, but my initial goal was to drive traffic to Unicorn and it worked. Directories. I do this all the time. If I have a website builder, I build a directory of website builders where I pin mine to the top. The directories get organic traffic and a large chunk of it is channeled to my website builder. This can be done for literally any project. It won't always work out. You need to get organic traffic for your directory in the first place. But it turns out it's not that difficult. 5. Monetize. For my first idea, I didn't charge users at the start. Since those ideas were really bad, charging users from the start would mean having zero users at all. Today, I always do this: I sell LifeTime deals first. It helps me validate the demand. Also, those who bought LTDs aren't so pushy compared to those who pay monthly. So, the LTD users are very helpful and nice. I start selling monthly plans only when I see the product is stable and solid. For tools where I can get free users but can't get paid users, I go for affiliate links, sponsors, and ads. If there is good traffic, you can make a very good income just by doing these 3 and keeping your product completely free for end users. 6. Hire. Once I see a product taking off, I hire people in. I hire a support agent for about $300-$700. The support agent also helps out with testing and all other manual tasks. The next hire is a developer. I usually hire junior developers. They are cheap and I can mentor them to love my product and have the same dev culture as me. Experience devs have always been a disaster for me. I won't dig into details, but I've failed this at least 20 times. Now, I only hire juniors and it's just great. Obviously, I hire talented juniors, those who have little coding skills, but high IQ, are optimistic, understand design, and can be self-driven. In East Europe, you can hire junior devs for $2000. My final setup is that the support agent is doing everything repetitively. The coder is doing the coding, and I do all the marketing and product-guy jobs. I never managed to hire good marketers. I think good marketers run their own businesses. So, I'd not recommend hiring them; I'd recommend doing this yourself. 7. Scale. Most companies brag about their headcount. I just talked to a friend. He was bragging about having 250 people on the team. Yesterday, he called me to ask for advice. They lost many clients, and their margins are negative. I said: Bro, you should have 25 people instead of 250. Don't scale humans; scale the productivity. In my projects, I have very few people. I don't think there is a more productive organization on earth than the one I'm running now. We have over 100,000 users on b2b and millions of users on b2b2c. I always try to actually remove humans from the loop by automating their tasks using software and AI. I'd recommend the same. Keep the team as small as possible. If you're below $20k MRR, have 3 persons max. When 50k MRR, go up to 5 persons. When 100k, then 8 people. Scale the output, not the headcount. The headcount scaling is a VC-funded startup fetish. As a bootstrapped founder, focus on margins, unit economy, and profits at all times. For example, is growing at an exponential rate, with more than 10k new users every month, and the team is: Me + JuniorDev + 2 part-time Support agents. Unicorn Platform The End Follow me on X for daily posts Also published here

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