HN user

ryanckulp

170 karma

founder of TRMNL.com. Fomo.com (acquired), former YC alum growth guy.

Posts47
Comments129
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trmnl.com 2mo ago

Show HN: Vibe Coding a $20k /Year Enterprise Logistics Platform

ryanckulp
33pts7
trmnl.com 4mo ago

Show HN: Making an 1800mah e-ink device last up to 6 months

ryanckulp
9pts0
usetrmnl.com 1y ago

Show HN: Open-source e-ink dashboard (firmware and server)

ryanckulp
2pts0
usetrmnl.com 1y ago

Show HN: Trmnl, a hackable e-ink dashboard that helps you stay focused

ryanckulp
21pts16
www.ryanckulp.com 2y ago

HustleWing.com is a scam so I hacked it.

ryanckulp
18pts4
gitpaywall.com 3y ago

Show HN: Git Paywall, a marketing tool for source code

ryanckulp
2pts1
mergefreeze.com 4y ago

Show HN: Merge Freeze v2.0 – easily block branches on GitHub PRs

ryanckulp
1pts1
nftsalesbot.xyz 4y ago

Show HN: NFT Sales Bot – sell something on OpenSea, ping 1000s of apps

ryanckulp
1pts1
www.ryanckulp.com 6y ago

Why I’m Leaving San Francisco: Meta study

ryanckulp
100pts93
honestmarketer.com 7y ago

Show HN: Honestmarketer.com, where ethical marketers learn to sell

ryanckulp
2pts2
www.ryanckulp.com 7y ago

How I beat an online scammer and made $2,100 in the process

ryanckulp
16pts10
www.ryanckulp.com 7y ago

Show HN: Your Spot in the Startup Caste System

ryanckulp
1pts1
docs.google.com 7y ago

Show HN: Spreadsheet of 1,847 stolen online courses and how to fix it

ryanckulp
1pts2
fomo.com 7y ago

A pledge for businesses not offering Cyber Monday deals

ryanckulp
1pts0
blog.fomo.com 8y ago

Show HN: The new home of Fomo.com

ryanckulp
1pts0
www.ryanckulp.com 8y ago

I'm Quitting Indie Hackers

ryanckulp
2pts0
www.youtube.com 8y ago

Live streaming a new SaaS product

ryanckulp
1pts1
blog.usefomo.com 9y ago

When Engineers are Marketers

ryanckulp
6pts0
blog.usefomo.com 9y ago

False Advertising

ryanckulp
1pts0
www.groupies.io 9y ago

Show HN: Groupies – SMS newsletters for indie artists

ryanckulp
3pts1
friendly-csv.herokuapp.com 9y ago

Show HN: Friendly CSV, open-source merge variable sanitizer for outbound sales

ryanckulp
2pts1
blog.usefomo.com 9y ago

How we acquired a grew a startup to $30k MRR in 90 days

ryanckulp
2pts2
product-hunt-upvotes.herokuapp.com 9y ago

Show HN: Product Hunt – download a list of users who upvoted a product

ryanckulp
4pts1
www.freelancedebt.com 10y ago

Show HN: Freelance Debt, zero-risk debt collection for freelancers

ryanckulp
16pts9
www.pushupmetrics.com 10y ago

Show HN: PushupMetrics, gamified personal fitness dashboard

ryanckulp
2pts2
blog.infrared5.com 10y ago

How to Build Periscope in 10 Minutes

ryanckulp
1pts0
docs.google.com 10y ago

Show HN: Rails Scaffolding in Google Sheets

ryanckulp
2pts0
medium.com 10y ago

What is an A Player?

ryanckulp
1pts0
getmyspaceback.com 10y ago

Show HN: Bring Myspace Back

ryanckulp
1pts2
medium.com 10y ago

Everybody is a programmer

ryanckulp
1pts3

i founded TRMNL and didn't try AI myself until ~2 months ago. i'd rather shut down down and open source everything (per our Unbrickable Pledge) than become "just another AI company."

the AI Agent exists to empower less technical folks to turn their vision into reality, and we're proud of what's possible with it. meanwhile our top community developers continue to hand craft beautiful, useful plugins for everyone to install, LLM free.

what do you think it should be called? for ~$15 optional one time bucks people get 24/7 access to the entire engineering team, me, prioritized feature dev, and can earn monthly payouts from our Creator Fund. we don’t charge a subscription, obviously i’m partial but this model has serves us well. and most of the developer edition fee goes right back to the community via bounties, perks, etc.

you can import ~700 plugins from core to Terminus (Hanami build) or the Laravel build in 1 click. maybe you came on board before that was a reality. we and the community have been rapidly developing multiple self hosted servers with all kinds of features and in different frameworks for comfort. in no marketing materials have we ever claimed that OSS clients were the same as the main web app. in fact that’s why we offer a BYOD license for the web app only. we’ve invested hundreds of thousands into open source so that people can get the TRMNL experience without paying us a penny.

Introducing TRMNL X 12 months ago

oh interesting. i suppose we (or you) could be a plugin that parses epub/* formats and thus, a button click on device would fetch the next screen. double-click can already be set to go in reverse. but the full feedback loop takes a few seconds, not instant like an e-reader.

ok back up - you claimed we used fake data. obviously you are referring to "John bought X, Y mins ago" notifications. the actual product.

for our homepage counter, this is not customers. this is notification count. with thousands of connected websites, each showing multiple notifications per page load, we quick racked up billions of notifications shown.

running `select count(*) from events` on every landing page load is untenable. instead, every N period we'd check on our avg daily notification count, then update the landing page JS to give users a sense of scale. this number was perpetually under-reporting our actual metrics.

for metrics that actually matter, like signups, customers etc, we created an Open API and read from those metrics on various landing pages: https://fomo.com/open https://docs.fomo.com/reference/fomo-open

and for the core product notifications, "John bought X, Y mins ago" we only allowed data from native integrations. if we saw someone pinging webhooks to us with fake data, we deleted their account. if someone asked for a CSV upload feature, we deleted their account. i cannot say the same for our competitors, who welcomed these use cases with open arms.

bottom line - you're a hater. you don't like Fomo (fine), so you're trying to sabotage the sale of another, completely unrelated product. think about where this bitterness comes from and do better next time.

jumping in to defend myself (thanks f5bot). you are not a serious person.

1. i'm very proud of Fomo. for 6 years we fought against fake data. i said "no" to many lucrative opportunities that were not ethical. our vision was "to given entrepreneurs the credit they deserve," and our mission was "to help consumers make better buying decisions online." your comment is libelous. [1, 2]

2. as of yesterday, all 11 of my courses are free. i've helped over 10,000 people learn to code and learn to sell. [3]

3. on the side i do a bit of pen-testing. i help stop* scammers, and i help non technical folks protect their brand. that's why Bubble added me to their home pages and dozens of cash bounties have been sent my way. [4, 5, 6]

[1] https://blog.fomo.com/having-a-vision-works/ [2] https://blog.fomo.com/introducing-honest-marketer/ [3] https://x.com/ryanckulp/status/1907099032616378815 [4] https://www.ryanckulp.com/hustlewing-is-a-scam-so-i-hacked-i... [5] https://bubble.io/security_acknowledgements [6] https://bubblesecurity.gumroad.com/l/unhackable-101

i hear you. only the black case is soft touch, other cases are not. white is currently most popular, ~60% of sales. black 35%, translucent 5%.

open to it. perhaps granting an escrow service readonly permission to web server box (not DB) would suffice, as then it could all be pulled down, versus closed source on GH?

i'm new to this but we do want to demonstrate sincerity and put our $ where our mouth is.

handling image generation on-board the PCB is a pretty heavy task, so we think the server-side delegation is clever + easier to extend.

you don't need to host per se, however. you can deploy one of our BYOS options on a local network and let your device(s) ping 192.168/api/display. just about zero config required, just docker up and input your local network domain into the FW > captive portal UI during setup.