I am not a designer but i used figma a lot for website projects. It is good but it took sooooooo long to load the files... even though I downloaded a desktop, still very slow.. anybody met with the same issue?
I do not work for Cluely. I am just impressed by what they've done, which is controversial but impressive.
I'm also impressed by how fast this team grows and generates revenue ($7M ARR now and $ 15M seed funding by A16Z, but rejected by Y Combinator. Aha, another drama), and, of course, by some of the bold statements they made.
Interestingly, though controversial, their user base never stops growing. Their product charges only $20 a month, but they got $7M ARR, which roughly means they got 350K users. Amazing.
This is a broad but really important question, and I feel for your situation. I've interviewed and spoken with quite a few early-stage founders this year, and many of them share similar struggles — the first year or two of a startup can be brutal, especially without a solid network or domain expertise.
From what you’ve written, I wonder if you’re approaching the problem from the wrong direction. Rather than asking "How can I make money without a network or VC backing?" maybe the more useful question is:
- Who exactly are my users?
- What painful, urgent problems do they have?
If that’s unclear, it doesn’t matter how technically great your product is or whether it’s built with AI or rocket science — it likely won’t stick.
Most users don’t care how fancy your tech is; they care if it makes their life easier, saves them time, or HELP THEM MAKE MONEY. If you can't pinpoint that user pain and address it clearly, even pivoting to another domain might lead to the same frustration.
One founder I spoke with recently built a job search platform. The space is totally dominated by big names like LinkedIn and Indeed, but their insight was super niche: they focused on foreign job seekers who needed H1B sponsorship. That tight focus helped them grow fast, even without VC money or big marketing budgets. It wasn’t a flashy idea — just solving a specific, urgent pain for a specific group.
Marketing is another area that often gets overlooked by technical founders. Maybe try strategies like: content marketing, Product Hunt launches, engaging with communities, even open-sourcing parts of your stack because it helps with visibility and credibility. Open source can definitely help attract users — but it still needs a strong value prop and ideally some paid tier or enterprise offering to make it sustainable.
One more insight: some of the best early adopters for AI tools right now are… other AI teams. They understand the value and are quicker to pay for solid infrastructure or automation tools. If you’re thinking of building “software for software,” maybe that’s a niche to explore more intentionally.
You're obviously capable builders. If you're going to give it one more shot, I'd say zoom in hard on the problem and the user. Get out of “build mode” and into “discovery mode” for a bit. Try talking to 10, 20, 50 people in a space where you think you can help. It might open up clearer paths than trying to guess from the outside.
Hope this helps, and best of luck — respect for sticking it out this long.
I think a lot of people are feeling this, not just engineers. Engineering already has a high entry bar, and now with AI moving so fast, it’s honestly overwhelming. Feels like there's no way to avoid it—we either embrace it, actively or passively, whether we like it or not.
Personally, I think this whole shift might actually be better for young people early in their careers. They can change direction more easily, and in a weird way, AI kind of puts everyone back at the starting line. Stuff that used to take years to master, you can now learn—or get help with—in minutes. I’ve had interns solve problems way faster and smarter than me just because they knew how to use AI tools better. That’s been a real wake-up call.
I’m doing my best to treat AI as a teammate. It really does help with productivity. But the world never stop changing, and that’s exhausting sometimes. I try to keep learning, keep practicing, and keep adapting. And yeah, if I ever lose my job because of AI... ok, fine, I’ll have to change and try getting another, maybe different job. Easy to say, harder to do—but that mindset at least helps me not spiral.
I recently became an active user of some AI note-taking tools, and I've noticed that they are really great. As long as I set up the account, they send a robot to the meeting and write down almost everything, especially when there are people from different backgrounds and ACCENTS! God, they saved my life a thousand times, I would say. And reading summaries or even transcripts are so much more efficient than attending the meeting in person.
Hi thanks for asking. Either meaning is ok for me. Actually, I was thinking about topics about computer science, programming technology or just technology when I wrote this question here. I used the word"hacking" just because we are at Hacker News. Do you recommend any other sites/communities related to above topics? Thanks