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laurentiurad 4 days ago

I built and run several SaaS platforms:

- https://dave-bot.com -> a full-stack AI platform where you can generate videos, images, music, code, 3d objects with frontier Gen AI models.

- https://headsnap.io -> a platform that you can generate images of yourself based on 4 selfies.

- https://quantiq.live -> a service providing financial and historical data for stocks, as well as government trades.

- https://aivestor.tech -> an AI agent that picks small/midcap stocks and trades them using Alpaca API. It uses Reddit, news, polymarket, Google Trends and many other data sources to take investment decisions.

- @Polyglot_lingua_bot -> a voice-enabled Telegram-based bot that can help you learn new languages.

- https://select.supply -> a directory of carefully-curated and well-crafted products.

All of those allowed me to quit my day job and live a comfortable and flexible life. I still invest time in maintenance and adding new features, but I love coding, marketing and everything that comes with promoting and selling a SaaS (and I also have a serious addiction for Stripe notifications).

On top of that, I developed my own software agency where I help clients build and scale software (https://bitheap.ch).

rahulmax 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Headsnap is such a scammy and/or crappy website. I paid to purchase credits for $5, tried to train a model to generate a headshot. Nothing. It just refreshes and comes back with nothing. Will not recommend.

laurentiurad 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

When did you do it? The minimum package is $8. If you did this in the past, why didn't you reach out for support? I get more than 100 customers per day and rarely have issues.

laurentiurad 4 days ago | parent [-]

ah now I see you generated your pics 8 minutes ago. You can now see them on your account page. I have a clear disclaimer that says it can take up to 30 mins to generate the photos and that you will get an email once the photos are ready.

Sammi 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

You probably need to add some visual indicator that the generation is ongoing. A progress bar is ideal, but those can be hard to feed with real data.

laurentiurad 4 days ago | parent [-]

Thanks! I wanted to implement something like that, but it's difficult to predict the progress since it's depending on how many requests are being handled in that exact moment, but it never got past 25 minutes, not even during peak hours. I am thinking of adding a modal saying that you can close the page and you will get notified over email when the photo generation is ready (the email part is already there).

ChromaticPanic 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Doesn't have to be accurate. Just always set it to 30mins if it will never go past that. Most people will be pleased it finished sooner.

reed1234 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe a queue then?

laurentiurad 4 days ago | parent [-]

I am not sure if this is a problem that should prompt an architecture change of that caliber. I use a distributed network of GPU-machines and each request is handled sequential. If all machines are busy, then the request goes into a queue already and is being picked up by the first machine that becomes available.

Also, the user got the pictures after just a few minutes and there is a clear disclaimer, and an email is being sent to the user once the pics are ready. On top of that, I have no complaints from other users about it. It's clear to me that the intent of the user was to cause some reputation harm, which I think didn't work. I also got an email from a person with the same first name (not sure if it's the same person tho) that they offer UX services for Headsnap.

pjc50 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Thirty minutes? Polaroid film could do it in five.

laurentiurad 4 days ago | parent [-]

30 pictures? I doubt that

ben_w 4 days ago | parent [-]

Polaroid paralellises well.

laurentiurad 4 days ago | parent [-]

anyway it's just a disclaimer. It never took more than 25 minutes and the fastest generation was 3 minutes for >30 pics.

dustypotato 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

you can just do it with nano banana for 1/100 the price

laurentiurad 4 days ago | parent [-]

You won't get consistency between pics with nano banana. I tried using it in Headsnap and the results weren't as good. Faces change drastically between pics. Also the cost per pic with nano banana is 0.24 per pic, x 30 pictures that I generate for a pack, you would pay $7 (with big quality issues).

marziply 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I find both of your stock apps (API and investment) quite interesting but both websites are eerily absent of any information outside of their respective purposes. Both websites are clean and the designs are nice but struggle on mobile it seems (I'm on Android, Brave browser, horizontal scroll seems to be buggy). I wish there was additional information outside of just what they do - I'd like to know more about the developer that created them, goals/ambitions for the future, that kind of thing. Right now, the investment app looks like a scam from an outside perspective. One page, limited information, nothing personal about it. How can I trust such a website with my hard earned cash? I think an improvement would be to have additional pages on who you are, why I should trust you, and what exactly I might get in return for my subscription. It's also probably important to make it clear that you cannot promise any long term profits from this app and that it is almost akin to gambling so users should be prepared to lose money.

laurentiurad 4 days ago | parent [-]

thanks a lot for the feedback! That's a really good point!

When it comes to QuantiQ, I thought about targeting businesses. I already have 2 major clients and had plenty of demos with others. Usually they are not interested when taking a decision about reading pages on the website. Most of them are concentrated on finding out how you manage incidents, security policy, how do you handle improvement suggestions, SDLC, velocity etc. They anyway do their due diligence when it comes to the founder. But I totally understand your point. For B2C this is really important.

Already fixing the mobile navigation and adding some pages with more info about me.

vintagedave 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Do you delete the uploaded photos after you've finished processing? The privacy policy does not make this clear.

https://headsnap.io/privacy

Alternately that their presence doesn't grant any rights for other use would be a good clause which I didn't spot.

laurentiurad 4 days ago | parent [-]

I remove the photos only if requested by the user. The photos are removed immediately, as well as the account if that is requested too. I definitely do not use the pics for retraining or any other purpose, but just to serve them on the individual overview page of the user.

eXpl0it3r 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What's your source and/or quality of the financial data? How much do you cover? What data fields do you provide?

laurentiurad 4 days ago | parent [-]

I fetch those from 10-Q forms through an internal scraper I built. The response is quite big, you can check it out here: https://www.quantiq.live/docs

akudha 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Nice! Makes me wonder how many other businesses are possible to build, on top of govt data.

infecto 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Honestly looks like a scam and your description of it makes it even sound more like one. Most of those fields you return in that docs page have nothing to do with k or qs and are equity pricing data you are buying from another third party.

Not a knock just being honest as it looks like you just don’t know so maybe this helps. Here is an example of a real company that scrapes k/q docs.

https://sec-api.io/docs

laurentiurad 4 days ago | parent [-]

Question was about financials. The service is not only limited to q forms, obviously. Historical data or government trades are not available there. So you want me to share with the Internet all my data sources just to prove you it's not a scam?

You seem to be trying to promote a service and throw weird accusations that the service looks like a scam without even trying it, which is shameful tbh.

infecto 4 days ago | parent [-]

Again no disrespect, it’s blunt honesty. I am not promoting anything. I live in the US and work at the intersection of finance and software. Your site has quite literally zero details on it. It’s a bunch of fluff on the landing page. Why would anyone signup without any information about what they are signing up for. Your response to a question about sourcing it’s odd. You only mention 10qs which you built a scraper for but the docs you linked to don’t really have much in the way of 10q data. Some surface metadata but none of the guts of a 10q. Most of the data you linked to is market data that you would have to be sourcing through a third party. It’s just an odd response for someone like me who works in the industry that you mention 10q but none of the data is really what I would consider 10q data.

Wish you luck but don’t take honest opinions from someone who buys significant amounts of financial data as someone trying to promote a service. Just linking someone I would consider a competitor to yours in the Edgar space.

The question is about financials and nothing you linked to is about financials.

laurentiurad 4 days ago | parent [-]

No disrespect but still accuse someone of a scam, right?

I specified clearly in the description of this service that I deliver financials, historical or congress/senate trades. I think it's obvious for someone working in finance that the last two cannot be fetched from quarter or annual forms. Things like revenue, eps, ebitda, pre/post earning moves (those use last, open prices too), are strongly-related to 10Q though.

I really don't care whether you like the landing page or not. I have two B2B clients for this API and 0% churn so far, which is the best metric I need to track right now. I will stop responding to this thread since I don't think it's productive for any of us.

infecto 4 days ago | parent [-]

Again only honest feedback. As someone who would be a potential client your site looks like a scam. Good luck!

aembleton 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I get 404 when I look for pricing of headsnap - https://headsnap.io/pricing

laurentiurad 4 days ago | parent [-]

thanks a lot for the heads up! That menu shouldn't be available for users that are not logged in. I just pushed a change to hide it. You can check the prices at the bottom of the landing page, before I add a dedicated page for unauthenticated users.

LE: I just added the pricing page for unauthenticated users too.

mft_ 4 days ago | parent [-]

Well-meaning feedback: on the front page, there's a pricing section lower down, which only mentions credits and doesn't give a price; the click-though goes to a login screen.

I found this so instantly frustrating that I rage-closed the page and came here to moan!

Reading the comments, I don't believe you're looking to implement a dark pattern and not show the price, but that's what seems to be happening currently.

Now I see the main pricing page, it's worth pointing out that the categories and prices there don't match with those on the front page: 'starter' with 30 headshots vs. 'novice' with 35; 'basic' with 60 headshots vs. 'proficient' with 70, etc.

laurentiurad 4 days ago | parent [-]

thanks a lot! Will update on the main page so it matches with the actual pricing tiers.

LE: done :D

buggy7 4 days ago | parent [-]

Hey, I was looking to try this out but I was getting a 404 on the signup page. Just a heads up.

laurentiurad 4 days ago | parent [-]

Thanks for that! I just checked and it seems to be working. Can you maybe try again?

buggy7 4 days ago | parent [-]

Looks to be working now, thanks.

davenci 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Do you think it will become more difficult to make money on such services due to AI getting better and better at coding? Like, wouldn’t that make it easier for people to create competing services?

Or do you think this effect is counteracted with AI also opening up for new opportunities for creating services that would not otherwise be feasible pre AI?

laurentiurad 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I agree that development has become easier and the barrier for entry is generally lower due to AI. However, without distribution it's still pretty much impossible to get clients. You also need to have some engineering background since AI cannot solve everything for you.

Important to mention, IMHO not many people are willing to sacrifice their time and energy to start something that doesn't have a clear path to profitability.

davenci 4 days ago | parent [-]

That makes sense. And I guess distribution/marketing is an ever moving target in which those being the most clever and willing to put in the time and energy wins regardless of AI getting better?

Like, say AI makes distribution and marketing easier, now it’s easier for everyone, but they still compete for the same clients. So while your signal is getting stronger, so is the noise (the signal of all the other competitors). So those who put in the hours and smartness to «invent» a more clever marketing strategy are the ones able to break through the noise and reach the clients?

In other words, distribution/marketing is the bottleneck and the target is ever moving?

laurentiurad 4 days ago | parent [-]

Exactly, and currently I'd say that AI is not too helpful with distribution/marketing. I still do copyrighting myself as with AI it really feels impersonal and "artificial". By distribution I also refer to social media following and users that trust you to test/buy your product. IMHO this is still the most challenging part to solve, as it takes a lot of time to improve your social media presence to reach a state where it's guaranteed that you will have customers from the moment of the launch of your product.

whatamidoingyo 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

That headshot project looks completely AI generated. The landing page is a full-fledged AI template.

laurentiurad 3 days ago | parent [-]

You mean the frontend? What makes it entirely AI-generated in your view? Even if it were, would that be a problem for you or you're just envious?

whatamidoingyo a day ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, the frontend looked AI generated. I see that you redesigned some of it, though. It looks much better. I didn't mean to insult you with my comment. I shouldn't have said that; I apologize.

a day ago | parent | prev [-]
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pplonski86 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wow! how do you make marketing for so many projects?

laurentiurad 4 days ago | parent [-]

It's the most difficult part. In my experience paid ads do not work very well so I am not relying too much on those. I usually use social media with UGC videos created either by me or by content creators. I also reach out on Instagram, even dating apps, to users and pay them to use/promote a product.

Recently I started to use n8n automation to post on Twitter/LinkedIn, however I tend to keep those posts short since they are created with LLM's and do not seem authentic.

As for the SEO part, I usually upload search console extracts into Perplexity deep research and ask for actions on how to improve ranking for different keywords.

nationaloil 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

really inspiring! Any tips on how you manage incidents and customer queries?

laurentiurad 4 days ago | parent [-]

thanks! Most of these projects are hosted on Vercel, and I am extensively using their observability solution to get alerts when something unexpected happens. After some time you get to fix everything and you'll spend less time firefighting.

For customer queries, I usually respond myself. However when I am not available, I have a small team of freelancers that help me just with that. I played with LLMs for responding to questions, but it just didn't work out for me.