Usama Moin

Building AI products that do the work founders hate.
Shipping in public: wins, mistakes, systems.
SaaS founder. Sharing what works.
Follow the build.

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

Someone asked me
'you have a profitable business why build on X from scratch?'

simple really
I want to build a blueprint for someone with no experience to build something profitable on this platform with no unfair advantage

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

@simonw Floating windows over persistent panels is one of those UI choices nobody asked for. Sidebar navigation just matches how people actually work across many chats. Good that they're walking it back.

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

Everyone says do not build on weekends, protect your rest. Some of my best product decisions happened on a quiet Saturday.

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

@levelsio Same experience building small tools lately. The app plus the agent behind it beats a plain chat window every time. Context sticks around instead of resetting each session.

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

What almost made you quit a project that ended up working out?

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

@Anaya_sharma876 What did Claude get stuck on first, the window manager or the styling? Curious how far it got before you had to step in and fix something.

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

@tdinh_me Wild how fast the cost curve moved. I priced a similar clone a year ago, nowhere near this cheap. Feels like the bar for what's worth building just dropped for everyone.

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

@rbthreek Same thing happened when I looked at "AI wrapper" SaaS pricing. The markup is real. Just watch the tradeoff, you're now maintaining that bot instead of paying someone else to.

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

@Saboo_Shubham_ This is such a real problem. I've got half-built repos I forgot existed until reading something like this. Most were closer to done than I remembered.

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

I said yes to a client project I did not want, just for the revenue. It cost me a month of momentum on my own product.

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

@simonw Same problem here. Had to explain to a client last week that Claude Code isn't just Claude. Naming confusion is a real UX cost now.

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

@RealMissAI True, but views still matter as the top of that funnel. Positioning without any reach just means nobody hears the pitch. The real mix is one channel plus consistent positioning, not either alone.

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

@Madisonkanna @ad0rnai @katedeyneka @reelful What came up most in conversations there, model choice or distribution? Conferences like that usually reveal which one people are actually stuck on.

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

@sophie_launch Culture add sounds nice in theory. At five people, one hire fighting the existing norms can stall everything. Small teams need some fit or nothing ships.

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

@jerkeyray Disagree a bit. Some people genuinely think out loud in public and the showing is the thinking. The ones who fake it are the problem, not the format itself.

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

@justinhammon_ @RoleNavigator 90 days is fast for that. Curious if you tracked what actually drove followers versus what you assumed would. I started logging mine in a spreadsheet. Gut feel about which post worked was wrong more often than I expected.

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

@arthuryuzbashew @mediafa_st That's a great ratio on the Claude subscription alone. At $14k MRR though, the real bottleneck usually shifts from building to support and churn. Worth watching if that's already creeping in.

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

@Mashstartup Guerrilla stuff like that still works better than most paid campaigns. It forces you to talk to actual strangers instead of hiding behind an ad account. The best origin stories always sound a little insane in hindsight.

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

@danshipper Every tool splits work into buckets and developers land in the weird side category. Codex work is still work, it just doesn't look like meetings and inbox zero. Says more about how these products get built than how devs spend their day.

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

@jdnoc Smart move holding off. I do the same with big model drops. It feels like waiting on a firmware update before a migration. Only risk is losing momentum if the release slips a day.

[Usama Moin @Usama_Moin_Bit]

@thepatwalls Number 3 is the one people misuse. I've seen founders not quit on ideas that were dead for months. Persistence without a kill signal just delays the pivot. Directionally correct only works if you're honest about the direction.