Himanshu Singh

Building AI Products 🚀 | |

[Himanshu Singh @himanshu_ns]

Blacksmith just became a unicorn running CI jobs.

Weekly jobs went from ~5M to 90M+ since January.

AI made writing code cheap. It did not make trusting code cheap.

The bottleneck moved from "can we build it?" to "can we prove it works?"

Tests are the new moat. #startups

[Himanshu Singh @himanshu_ns]

36% of startups founded on Carta in 2025 had a solo founder. Double the share of 10 years ago.

But among startups that closed a venture round, the most common team was two people (36% overall, 40% in SaaS).

AI made it easy to start alone.

Not easy to raise alone.

[Himanshu Singh @himanshu_ns]

this sounds legit. matching funds with mentorship and community is the real deal. finally, a program that gets it.

[Alex Araki @alexsaraki]

Announcing Ikigai Grants:

Microgrants give early-stage, bootstrapped talent capital. But that’s not enough.

I’ve watched too many grantees become perpetual microgrant chasers, wasting time applying to one $5k grant after another. Worse, most programs encourage this by funding the blanket “smart people doing cool things,” with no real conviction behind it.

I wouldn’t be here without patronage from @tylercowen & @jposhaughnessy. But looking back, the mentors & community were worth much more than the money.

So I built the program I always wished existed:
- $50k total, avg. $5k check
- Matched with mentors & community across @RenPhilanthropy , Fulcrum Science, and my personal network of founders, fund leads, investors & scientists.

Cohort 1 backs emerging talent in areas I believe are deeply underfunded and undervalued. Every application is reviewed by me.

Ikigai Grants is a program of @RenPhilanthropy, with support from Fulcrum Science. Advised by many wonderful friends & colleagues including: @AshleyNAbel @RaianyRomanni @NeuroStats Bonnie EJ Maven @idatin @ashleyz413 @JackScannell13

Apply by Nov 9th, 9a PST:
https://t.co/DRuI0yJtLY

[Himanshu Singh @himanshu_ns]

Most first-time founders wait for an idea, a cofounder and a demo before they apply.

The programs built for them assume you have none of that.

EF matches you with a cofounder. Z Fellows funds one week. Thiel funds you instead of college.

The bar is not readiness. It is intent.

[Himanshu Singh @himanshu_ns]

a16z speedrun closes Nov 1. YC W27 and EF Bangalore close Nov 2.

Even if you don't get in, write the application.

Explaining your problem, your user and why now in a few hundred words is the cheapest #startups validation there is.

If you can't write it, you can't sell it yet.

[Himanshu Singh @himanshu_ns]

Google your own startup's name.
As of late September, AI Overviews showed up on 82.9% of US branded searches (Ahrefs, 92.5M crawls). In July it was 61%.

Most of the time it sits in position one, above your own site.

Your homepage is no longer the first answer about you. #AEO

[Himanshu Singh @himanshu_ns]

Mach9 started in 2021 building surveying hardware.

Then they saw hardware wasn’t the bottleneck. The workflow was.

They pivoted to AI CAD software. Now: $34M Series A, nearly 100 beta customers.

The test was not “can we build it.” It was “is this where it hurts.” #startups

[Himanshu Singh @himanshu_ns]

4 builder competitions open right now with serious prize money:

- Meta AI Developer Hackathon: $1M pool, 10-day virtual build. Apply by Oct 25 (ET), capped at 20K builders

- PayPal AI Hackathon: $67.5K+ cash. Due Nov 12 (PT)

- Code for a Billion (Code for India): ₹18L pool, agentic AI for Bharat. Due Nov 15

- Meta VR Start Competition: $1M across 20 awards, hands-first VR apps. Due Nov 18

[Himanshu Singh @himanshu_ns]

A year-old AI lab just raised a $1B Series A at a reported $6B valuation.

Flapping Airplanes isn’t pitching bigger models. It’s pitching models that need far less data.

9 months ago: $180M seed at $1.5B.

AI has a second race now. Efficiency. And it’s priced like the main one.

[Himanshu Singh @himanshu_ns]

A good read: https://t.co/kVqEzmJNVh

[Himanshu Singh @himanshu_ns]

A bootstrapped health AI startup (Cydoc) shut down after 7 years(Feb. 2026). Its founder wrote one of the most honest postmortems I’ve read this year.

Almost every mistake in it is one engineers make by default.

Lessons for anyone building on the side ↓

[Himanshu Singh @himanshu_ns]

The patents and custom code protected nothing. She called the moat “more of a rain puddle.”

For engineer-founders: your code is not the moat. Distribution is.

I write about building startups alongside a full-time eng job. Follow if that’s your path too.

[Himanshu Singh @himanshu_ns]

Engineers validate an idea by building it.

Founders validate an idea by charging for it.

A paid pilot from 3 customers tells you more than 300 waitlist signups.

The first invoice is the real MVP. #buildinpublic

[Himanshu Singh @himanshu_ns]

Most startup credits expire in about 12 months.

So applying on day one, before you have users, is how you lose most of them.

Apply the week your infra bill starts to hurt.

Free credits are runway. Don't start the clock before you need to take off.

[Himanshu Singh @himanshu_ns]

And Jio Platforms opened India’s largest IPO today: ₹30,213 Cr, closes Oct 23.

Big listings bring liquidity back to the ecosystem, and that money eventually reaches early-stage founders.

I share startup news with a builder’s take every night. Follow along if that’s useful.

[Himanshu Singh @himanshu_ns]

4 Indian startup moves from today that say a lot about where builders should look:

AI services, AI simulation, a 4-month-old pre-seed, and India’s biggest IPO.

Quick breakdown ↓

[Himanshu Singh @himanshu_ns]

Onto raised a $1M pre-seed. Founded in June 2026, Bengaluru.

It tracks hotel prices after you book, even on other sites, and refunds the drop.

One sharp promise, a user can explain it in a sentence. That is enough for a pre-seed.