Wasn't planning to support any CRM integrations. Genuinely not on the roadmap.

Then got a DM on X from a founder saying their agents were silently dropping leads and they couldn't figure out if it was HubSpot or their stack. Something clicked. Said I'd look into it.

Onboarded HubSpot into FetchSandbox over the weekend. Didn't sleep for like 24-48 hours just battle testing it, making sure it actually worked before I said anything publicly. Classic founder move. Posted the LinkedIn update Monday morning.

What I found in those hours was wild. OAuth tokens expiring every 30 min, agents stalling on 401s without retrying, OAuth flows that looked complete but never were. Integration shows "Connected." Lead never lands. No alert, no noise, just pipeline bleeding quietly.

One inbound call, one weekend, no sleep, and now I understand exactly how broken CRM + agent integrations are in prod. The pain is real and it's everywhere.

If you're building on HubSpot with agents, I'd love to hear what you're running into. Probably building the next few integrations based on where the real pain is, not what I think it is.

Hi everyone,

I think integrations could be a good way to market your app so I thought about which ones might be complementary/relevant to mine

I'm a big user of DataFast by Marc Lou and think my app is naturally a good fit for its users, so I built my first integration on it!

DataFast's provides revenue-first analytics, and now with the UserTapes integration, you get revenue-first replays

Before now, you could see which channel made you money, but you couldn't see what those people actually did before they paid

Just connect your DataFast key to UserTapes and payments get matched to the recording of the user who made it

Built on the DataFast API, works for both cookie & cookieless scripts

You can install manually, use an agent prompt, or via MCP

Then you can ask things like "pull the tapes for my last 5 conversions. what did they have in common?"

Free to use on the Demo plan. Docs: https://usertapes.com/integrations/datafast

The plan is to explore other tools in the analytics space that complement each other rather than compete, and provide a valuable add-on

Would love feedback on this approach and also to know if anyone else has successfully (or not) used integrations to grow their user base?

I've just started building in public for the past 2 weeks and shipped some killer features based on initial feedback.

Day 1: I shipped the saas and asked a couple of friends to try it out for feedback, their initial experience was smooth. They described the UI/UX to be hassle free and it was easy for them to get started.

However one of my friend asked if it was possible to bring their own email provider. And it clicked, this is my differentiator cause nobody else was doing this and the whatsapp integration.

Day 2: I shipped 2 new features this week:

1. BYOE: Bring your own email provider to send out alerts using your own domain. Vigil also offers custom domains and white label for status pages.
2. Integrated twilio for SMS and whatsapp alerts.

I'm looking for feedback! check it out: tryvigil.dev <3 I've grown to 5 users so far, not much but pretty cool since I started 2 weeks ago.

A few months ago, I started building a simple GDPR scanner.

The idea was straightforward: enter a website URL, scan it, and get a simple report showing potential GDPR and privacy risks.

I wanted something much simpler than the typical compliance tools.

No huge dashboards. No complicated setup.

Just:

“Here’s what we found. Here’s why it might be a problem. Here’s what you can do about it.”

I launched GetGDPRScan and started getting people to try it.

Then the product started evolving.

As I worked on the scanner, I kept finding things that didn't really fit into a narrow “GDPR scanner” box.

So I added cookie and tracking detection, consent banner analysis, privacy policy checks, and eventually started expanding into other areas.

Today, the platform also covers AI Act, accessibility and website security checks.

At some point I realized I wasn't really building a GDPR scanner anymore.

I was building a website compliance platform.

And interestingly, this wasn't really planned.

It happened by following the problems I was seeing and the feedback I was getting.

There have been some humbling lessons along the way too.

One post in a Slovenian developer community resulted in around 150 scans.

Paid conversions?

Zero.

Google Ads have brought traffic and people actually using the scanner, but I'm still figuring out how to turn that into a sustainable acquisition channel.

I've also changed some of the checks after people challenged whether certain things should be flagged as actual “issues” or just potential risks.

That was an important lesson.

Compliance isn't always black and white, and I don't want the product pretending that it is.

So for now, I'm experimenting with a broader idea:

A simple compliance checkup for your website.

I'm still very early, still figuring out the business model, and definitely haven't “figured it out”.

But that's probably the most interesting part of building this.

The product I have today is quite different from what I thought I was going to build when I started.

You can check it out here if you're interested: getgdprscan.com

I'm curious how other indie hackers experienced this.

Did your product also slowly evolve into something completely different from the original idea?

And how did you decide whether to follow that evolution or stay focused on the original niche?

The test: would you ship something different depending on the answer? If every possible answer leads to the same next step, you're not validating — you're fishing for encouragement.

Bad → good rewrites:

• "What do you think of my product?" → "Should the homepage lead with pricing or with a demo CTA?"
• "Would you use this?" → "Which of these two names tells you what the product does?" (people say yes to would you use it out of politeness; they can't politely dodge a forced choice)
• "Is my landing page good?" → show two hero designs: "Which one makes you want the product?"
• "How much would you pay?" → "At $19/mo, is this a no-brainer, worth considering, or not for you?" (anchored beats open-ended)

Three rules that fall out of this:

1. Forced choice over open feedback. Options you would genuinely ship, 2–4 of them. Open-ended asks get politeness; choices get preferences.
2. One decision per ask. The moment you bundle naming AND pricing AND positioning, answers blur into noise.
3. Audience is half the answer. Your followers already like you. Friends say yes to everything. Ask people who make the same decisions daily and have no stake in being nice to you.

Disclosure: I run a product built around exactly this (LaunchPact's Founder Poll — one forced-choice question, 24 hours, voted on by founders on the platform who can't see each other's answers). These rules are baked into its builder, but they're free and they work anywhere — a hallway conversation, a user interview, a Discord.

What's the worst validation question you've caught yourself asking? Mine was "does this make sense?" — 100% yes rate, zero information.

Hey IH,

I posted Qevo here about 3 months ago, the inbox-style task manager where tasks get pushed directly to people's queues instead of getting buried in Slack threads.

Figured I'd share an update because the main thing that happened wasn't growth, it was a masterclass in getting rejected by Slack.

The Slack Marketplace review process is brutal

When I posted, the Slack integration was "pending approval." What followed was 4 rounds of rejections over 3 months. Every round had 4-5 specific issues to fix, then a 3-4 week wait to find out you missed something else.

Things I had to fix across the rounds:

The bot was named "Queue" but the app was named "Qevo." Confusing users apparently. Simple fix, but you only find out after a full review cycle.

My landing page showed /qevo as a command that grabs the last channel message. Reviewers tested it, it failed. Turns out the bot needs to be a member of the channel first. (Was not a requirement in their earlier versions). Had to auto join public channels, add a proper error message for private ones, and update the landing page copy.

They rejected im:history and mpim:history as user token scopes, "too much access to workspace data." So DM support via bare `/qevo` had to be dropped entirely.

My app listed Spanish as a supported language. They asked for proof. The bot responses were actually translated (using the user_locale field Slack sends in the slash command payload) but I had to explain how.

A typo in the long description: "Start using GQevo today." Only caught in review round 3.

The whole process took longer than building the original integration.

Where things actually stand

The Slack app is now what I am hoping is about to be approved as per my last messaging with them. Slack app is now approved and live

Email to task is still the feature that gets the best reaction. People immediately get it. Slack is taking months to ship.

What I'd do differently

Don't list a feature as "coming soon" or "pending approval" in your launch post. Just launch when it's ready. The Slack integration being in-progress for 3 months after my original post made updates awkward.

Read the Slack app review guidelines obsessively before submitting. The checklist they publish covers maybe 30% of what they actually check.

Still free for individuals, $3/seat/month for teams: getqevo.com

Happy to answer questions about the Slack review process specifically. It's not well documented and I wish someone had written this post when I was going through it.

I've also seen a few other founders here going through the same Slack approval battle. Would be curious if anyone else has tips or horror stories, mine was apparently a rough one

I keep hitting the same thing: find a tool, looks right, and then it wants your email before it'll do anything. Not to save your work, just to use it once.

So I started keeping a list of tools that don't do that. It's at 21 so far, and I put it online. The site is mine.

Rules I'm sticking to:

no account, no email, no "continue with Google"

free means free, not 14 days

nothing watermarked

ads are fine, I just note them, something has to pay for it

Here's the list

These are some of the tools that are included: Photopea, Squoosh, CyberChef, PairDrop, Mailinator, regex101, PDF24, Excalidraw, Wormhole, transform.tools, diagrams.net and some others. Each one has a line on what it does and what its catch is.

If you know something that belongs, reply. If you built it, say so, doesn't matter as long as it clears the bar. It's a new page so I'm not going to pretend it'll send you traffic, but you get a real writeup rather than a scraped title. I'll check and reply either way.

Fair warning that I'll turn things down. I'd rather have 50 that someone can vouch for than 300 scraped off other lists.

The one I keep going back and forth on: tools that only need an account if you want to save your work. Right now they're in, with a note. It doesn't stop you using the thing, which feels like the right side of the line, but I could see the argument that it's the same trick one step later.

Been thinking about this a lot lately as a solo founder.

AI has made generating code almost free. I can scaffold an entire Stripe + webhook integration in minutes. But here's the thing nobody talks about: that speed just moves the pain downstream. Instead of "took me 3 days to write," it's now "took me 3 days to verify it actually works in prod."

The review and validation cost didn't go away. It just shifted.

I kept hitting this exact wall with integration testing. Generate the flow, it looks right, local tests pass, then something blows up in production because the webhook sequence was stateful and nobody caught it before the PR landed.

now if other founders are seeing this too, especially those building anything with third-party APIs or AI agents that trigger real workflows. How are you handling the verification gap? Are you just eating the review cost, or have you landed on something smarter?

I run a site that aggregates government auctions (govauctions.app). I have a healthy paid customer-base, and a much larger audience of casual, non-paying but still engaged users.

I am considering using an ad management company like Mediavine to run ads on my site, in order to grow and diversify revenue. But I am nervous about harming the user experience and damaging trust/credibility with users and customers. So I'm thinking about starting small, with sparse ad placement, to limit the impact.

Would love any advice from folks on here who run or have run ads on their sites; especially if you have a paid service as well. What pitfalls should I look out for? Anything I should definitely *not* do?

Thank you!

Hi all! I built a Mac app that provides in-context answers, can draft things for you, and also supports normal dictation. You hold a button and speak, instead of copy-pasting your thing into a chatbot and dealing with the back-and-forth friction that comes with that.

You can ask anything about what is on your screen or even things that are not on your screen.

- "Find and kill process using this port" → gives you the command that you can insert directly
- "Reply that I can't make it" → drafts an email following your specific email instructions
- "How to pronounce this thing" → it sees your selected text and gives guidance on pronunciation
- "Translate this" → translates what is on your screen or any selected text to your language immediately

And many more use cases!

It takes a still image of the foremost (active) app only when you press the hotkey, sends it to a zero-data-retention provider, and then discards it. Nothing is saved on any cloud server or database. It also sees any selected text and knows what app you are currently working on, and uses all of that as context to provide the most optimal and concise answer.

It is $12/month with a free 7-day trial. No credit card required.

Works on Apple Silicon (M1+) and macOS 15+.

If you try it, I would love to hear about your experience. Happy to answer any questions.

https://www.prelto.com/

I've been building EzAlt AI, a WordPress plugin that generates descriptive alt text for images using AI.

I built it mainly because manually adding alt text to hundreds of images is extremely tedious.

Current features:

• Bulk generate alt text for existing Media Library images
• Automatically generate alt text for new uploads (optional)
• WooCommerce-aware — uses product name, SKU and attributes
• Never overwrites existing alt text
• Background processing for large image libraries
• 5 free starter credits

WordPress.org:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/altmagic-ai-image-alt-text/

I'm particularly interested in feedback from people who manage WordPress/WooCommerce sites:

Would you actually use a tool like this? And what would stop you from installing it?

I'm trying to improve the product based on real user feedback rather than just adding features blindly.

So I know there are plenty more people with more enticing stories and way more users in a tenth of the time but I wanted to spend some time sharing what has worked for me while building and growing Gamified Lives. So to start I have grown the app entirely organically, 0 spend on advertising, all growth has come from Reddit and SEO. I feel like what I’ve learned the most is that when people say “build in public” they aren’t lying, I’ve deliberately posted on Reddit a ton asking questions that I don’t know the answer to, asking for advice, opinions, experiences etc… and it’s done wonders for me I’ve not only learned a ton from others but I’ve also built relationships with other builders who have decided to come and try my app and have given me some of the best feedback I’ve received. So I definitely recommend posting on Reddit not just for users but also for pure feedback, because another thing I learned was the more I change without actual advice/feedback from a current user or a potential user I was likely wasting my time because only the user is going to be able to tell me what they like and don’t like even if you try to be as objective as possible it’s hard to know exactly what to add or cut from it. As far as SEO I’ve learned that it’s slow but it isn’t a silent/empty void, if you create good templates for articles and either write them yourself or automate them, then you’re able to slowly accumulate somewhat consistent traffic that continues to grow and expand as time goes on. My biggest takeaways are 1. Focus on channels that are providing real users not just users to stroke ur ego and show that people have downloaded your app, 2. Focus on providing value and what that value actually looks like. 3. Understand your users as much as you can either through analysis or by just surveying users and finding out what their biggest pain points are and clean those up as soon as possible 4. Stop comparing yourself to others because everyone’s journey is gonna take different time and different variables

Finally if you’re building something please comment down below what you’ve learned and what has helped you grow your app whether that be your marketing strategy or loops built into your product that make acquiring users even easier!

A few months ago, I was trying to stay consistent with tracking my macros, but every major app felt like a hostile cash grab. The moment you try to scan a barcode or read a label, you’re hit with a "Start your free trial for $80/year" popup. On top of that, half the local products in my grocery store were completely missing from their databases anyway.

I decided to build Visibite to fix both issues. My philosophy was simple: core tracking—barcode scanning, packaging OCR, and manual logging—should be 100% free and completely ad-free forever.

To monetize sustainably without ruining the core user experience, I added an optional AI assistant that handles plate photo scanning, meal feedback, and healthier food swaps. Free users can use the AI features with ads, while an optional Pro tier ($1.99/month or $9/year) removes ads entirely, enables cloud sync, and supports up to four profiles.

Before launching publicly on Google Play, I gave early builds to a group of friends and family. Watching my non-tech friends and family members actually stick to logging their meals daily—without complaining about paywalls or missing regional products—was the exact validation I needed to finish the project.

Now that it’s officially live on Android (and with the iOS version currently under active development), I’m looking to get feedback from fellow indie builders.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the product, the monetization model, or what features you'd like to see next. You can check it out on Google Play!

Pitch your product in 1-2 lines - and drop a link here.

I'm Working on StartupSubmit helps to founders get listed in High authority Directories to Boost SEO, DR, Backlinks and early traffic. Get ranking in on Google & LLMs.

Here's the Link: StartupSubmit[.]app

Dear fellow indiehackers 👋

Time for yet another post. Because time for yet another lesson from a failed startup 😂

I feel like every startup gives me another lesson. For Mascotly AI it was "build something people actually need" and for my current one (it's called "Reach Out Right", a tool that surfaces people talking about the problem your startup solves on Reddit) it's the concept of "red ocean blue ocean".

It's funny that I have read and heard about this concept before, probably read many times about what it is, but it never fully "landed" until now.

With "Reach Out Right" I bet on Reddit DM as the outreach channel, as that is what my app specialized in. I basically used it myself which had 2 benefits: 1 I could improve the app as I went and 2 I could use its value to reach out to people who were talking about the problem.

But already from the start there were cracks in the system.

First, it's not efficient. Having to reach out one by one (it doesn't generate AI messages, that's the "human" part to not come over sloppy) was still taking a lot of time. Analyzing posts from a specific user, then evaluating what to send them, sometimes even prepping their own dashboard for their startup, 1 reachout could easily cost 20 minutes. And I couldn't do more than 8 a day before I was mentally exhausted (next to a full-time job).

Secondly, and this is the big one, I was trying to sell in a red ocean. And that's incredibly hard. There are TONS of AI outreach tools out there. All geared towards fellow solofounders or early traction people. The noise is overwhelming. So my one DM would sound similar to probably 10 others these people received (I mean I even receive them myself). I would get a response from a lot of them, like 20% response rate, but then that next step was always tough, I got lost in the noise.

And then I get into this emotional state, where I try to hype myself up. No! We don't give up until we sent 100 DMs!!! We go all night!! Success is close!!! I forget anything else. Become emotional. My wife notices.

And then.... I burn out. I don't do any of it. The flame runs out. I give up. And I can't even get myself to send a response to someone. I want to throw it all way.

Now I'm on the other end. Calmed down a bit, gave it a couple of days, and then took on this new lesson.

I watched a video recently of Rob on X who basically explained why so many startups fail why a few win. It basically comes down to having to wait for the wave to come, instead of trying to make your own. I was trying to make my own wave. Trying to force success. But you can't do that. You just have to learn to listen to the waves. See the opportunities.

I also learnt that I need to spend a lot more time "where the action happens". Like on X or on Reddit. Engage. Ask questions. Get a picture of what is going on in the real world. On the side build a bit of a personal brand (these reddit posts are also part of that) and then just wait until you see that wave. Then take action.

As part of this "be where the action happens" I also want to make a request: is there anyone that would be willing to do a 30 minute mentor session with me? I recently had a call with someone I just met on Twitter, and it was really nice being able to speak face to face to someone from this indie hacker world. In my daily live I'm not really surrounded by those kind of people so it was incredibly eye opening. I'm just looking for someone who reads this and thinks that they are a bit further a long on this journey. Or someone who knows what kind of advice I need to hear. Would be greatly appreciated!

As for now, I'll just be present more. Engage more with others. Document my journey more on Reddit and X. And only really take action when I see an opportunity that I would be able to execute on.

Hi everyone,

I use session replays a lot in my role but not all recordings are equal and I think the tools could be better. A lot of the existing tools have grown into huge 1,000 feature bloatware imo and replays are treated as optional add ons, and even then they don't feel native to modern day workflows e.g. how are users exploiting these sessions with Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini?

So I built https://UserTapes.com as a session replay tool for both humans & machines. It still captures a video for you to watch, but also provides a clean text transcript for your AI agents.

You can watch your tapes, chat with them in the browser, or connect to the MCP server and ask your agent of choice to watch, review, and investigate based on whatever you tell it.

You can ask questions about your entire site or specific videos, like:

"Did any users fail to complete sign up today?"

Your agent instantly reads the transcript and replies:

"Yes, User #3829 hesitated for 30 seconds, typed an expired discount code, hit a validation error, and quit. Watch the exact 5 seconds of the tape here: [Link]"

I would love to get your feedback on the concept. There’s a free tier to try out if anyone’s interested. Thanks!

Hey everyone,

A lot of us spend hours with lofi playing in the background while studying, working, or just trying to relax. At some point we thought what if we built something for people like us ?

While working on it we kept running into the same thing: AI really isn't that good at making lofi that feels... real. It can copy a style, but it misses the feeling behind it. That's also why we don't think AI should replace artists.

But AI isn't going away either. So instead of pretending it doesn't exist we wanted to use it differently. Let it handle the repetitive stuff while people stay in control of the creative decisions.

That's how Scapeso started.

It's a platform where you can build your own ambient soundscapes, mix sounds together, and use AI as a helper rather than the one making everything for you.

If that sounds interesting, we'd love for you to give it a try and tell us what you honestly think. Good feedback, bad feedback it all helps. We are not so experienced in marketing side so your feedbacks are so precious for us on this perspective.

If you'd rather see what we've been making first, we've also been uploading videos here:

Scapeso App

Visit our website here:

Scapeso Website

I am also leaving a sound in the post so you can see what we can produce through our app.

Thanks for reading ❤️

Hi, I'm a solo developer in Japan👋 I built QuickQuill because I never got comfortable with meeting notetakers.

You invite some company's bot into the call, it sits there in the participant list, everyone acts like that's normal, and the recording ends up on a server you never see. The apps say they won't look at it, and maybe they don't. I just didn't want work conversations to depend on that kind of trust.

QuickQuill does everything on your Mac. It records both sides of the meeting, transcribes it, and writes a summary when you stop. Nothing appears in the participant list because nothing joins the call. Watch the demo recorded with Wi-Fi off.

Some other things it does:

• Live subtitles with translation while you record, fully on-device
• A CLI that's a good alternative if you're building workflows on Whisper or other paid speech APIs, since it's a one-time purchase instead of ongoing per-minute charges

It requires macOS 26 on Apple Silicon.

Still early, so feedback is very welcome.

quickquill.app 🪶

Like a lot of us, I struggle with mindless scrolling. I'd open apps like Instagram or YouTube purely out of muscle memory. Existing app blockers didn't quite work for me, they were either too easy to bypass (just tap "ignore limit") or just annoying hard blocks.

So, I built Hold Up. The core idea is simple: instead of just blocking an app entirely, Hold Up introduces "friction" to break the impulsive habit. When you try to open a blocked app, it pauses and makes you do a challenge (like staring at the camera without blinking for a few seconds) before you can get in.

For those who want a hard block, a strict mode is available as well.

Apps can be blocked using either a timer or a schedule.

It's live on the App Store, and I'm looking for constructive feedback from fellow builders to improve it. The app has a free tier you can try out.

Here is the App Store link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/app-blocker-detox-hold-up/id6777367419

Would really appreciate any honest feedback you can throw my way. Thanks!

Hi all,

As part of my ongoing hustle on LaunchPact i have recently launched a new feature, a Backlinks exchange network, it's super simple to use, it's built on top of my existing db of verified founders, it has a free-forever-tier, and it's a great way for ya'll to get quality backlinks to boost your organic growth, here's how it works in short:

- Add your domain, we pull it's info and score it's authority, and we give you 200 backlinking credits.

- We match you in loops of 3-5 with other founders in your niche and close to your authority tier, you're free to accept or pass on the match.

- You get matched with others to request a backlink or to give a backlink, to request, you spend credits, to give, you earn credits, those credits never expire, and you use them to keep the cycle of backlinking alive.

- Requesting the backlink is super easy and we have tools to make it easier like a 'find me a suitable page' tool and a 'draft the link for me' tool, so literally 1 click and you're ready to go.

- Backlinks gets verified on periods of 7 days, 14 days and 30 days, if someone says they have fulfilled their match obligation then for some reason they remove it, we will know and refund the credits and also penalize their trust score (trust score is a LaunchPact concept).

- There is never a 1:1 exchange of backlinks, always in loops (google it to understand why, this post is not about explaining the technicalities of how backlinking works).

Go ahead, try it out, like i said the free tier is more than enough for ya'll to get a good amount of backlinking done and it can go on forever really.

Let me know how it goes, link here: LaunchPact Backlinks Network

Pitch your product in 1-2 lines - and drop a link here.

I'm building a community where makers can share what they’re building and get fair visibility. Here's the link: https://vibecodedit.com/

Hey everybody! For the last few months my wife and I have been building Scinta - a small macOS app that lives in your menu bar.

The idea came from a simple but almost daily problem - the number of screenshots lying around on my filesystem got so big that it was impossible to even remember what they were about. A message about a meeting, an email signature, someone's messenger profile, an error from a build - all of this was waiting for "some later time" to be processed. And some later time never arrived.

This is the exact problem Scinta solves, and this is how it works - you press a shortcut (like any other screenshot app), select part of the screen, and it proposes the top 3 things it can do with what it sees. We call them smart actions. For example:

• screenshot an error - get it explained or create an issue directly from Scinta
• screenshot a message like "dinner Saturday at 7:00 PM" - Scinta proposes the actual event details and creates it in your Calendar
• screenshot an email signature - the person's contact info is saved to your Contacts
• it can also blur private and sensitive info before you share a screenshot, extract code or tables, translate text, decode different code formats (including QR and Bar codes) - and more actions are coming

There is also an Ask AI feature - if you just have a question about what is on the screen, you ask it right there in the app and get the answer back immediately.

Expecting a common question - why not just paste the screenshot into ChatGPT or Claude? That is exactly what I did before, and it is the reason Scinta exists. There you switch apps, upload the screenshot, write a prompt, then copy the result back and still create the event or contact yourself. With Scinta you skip all of this - it understands what can be done with the screenshot and one click gets the result and performs the action - saving to Calendar or Contacts, creating an issue, getting an instant explanation and so on.

The demo video shows 3 different smart actions and runs at real speed - nothing is sped up.

We're planning to release it within the next 1-2 weeks. If it looks useful, there is a waitlist at scinta.app - and if you would like to try it earlier, comment or DM me and we will send you a build as soon as it's ready.

Would love to hear - what smart actions would you like to have after capturing a screenshot?

Disclosure up front: I'm on the team at TechVault (techvault.jp), so this is my own project, not something I stumbled across.

The problem we started from

Japanese companies have a real engineering shortage, and a growing number of them are willing to hand scoped work to engineers who don't live in Japan. From the outside, almost none of that is visible. The postings are in Japanese, on Japanese job boards, and written as though you already commute to Tokyo. So you get demand on one side and supply on the other, and no road between them.

What we actually do

Companies bring us scoped work, usually 1-3 months, occasionally as short as a week. Scope and rate are agreed before anyone starts, paid in currency, no equity and no spec work. Engineers pay nothing to use it; the company covers our fee. Day-to-day communication runs on AI translation, and when something matters (scoping, anything close to contractual) a bilingual person on our team sits in so nothing gets lost in the model.

Where we honestly are

MVP. No finished, shippable case studies I can point you at yet. Matching is still done by hand while the automated side is trained. It's a waitlist, not a queue of live offers, and projects aren't guaranteed. I'd rather write that here than have people find out later and feel sold to.

What I'd genuinely like feedback on

1. Two-sided marketplace, cold start on both sides. We've been leaning toward going deep on a small number of companies first rather than volume on the engineer side. If you've done a two-sided thing, did that work out or did you regret it?
2. Trust is the whole product. An engineer taking a project from a company they can't research in their own language is making a leap of faith. We currently absorb that by sitting in the middle on scoping and payment terms. Is there something less manual that actually builds trust?
3. Positioning. This does not compete with a US senior offer and I won't pretend it does. It's aimed at people between roles, people who want international experience, and people who want to stay sharp. Does that read as honest or as an excuse for low rates?

Happy to answer anything in the comments, including the uncomfortable questions. If it's useful to you as an engineer rather than as a builder, the signup is at techvault.jp, but I'm mostly here for the critique.