M S
@m
I'm a Desi Founder
- Drifting in Universe
- Bengaluru, India
1161
KarmaFeb 03, 2025
Member Since
In India’s startup conversation, investors and funding often take centre stage. The narrative is that an idea must be pitched, funded, and scaled at breakneck speed. In practice, most businesses don’t start and grow that way.
They use personal savings, customer payments, partnerships, and governm...
Paul Graham says one of the biggest mistakes startup founders make is trying to scale too soon. Instead, in the early days, you should focus on things that don’t scale, like the activities that may seem small or manual, but help you get those first users and keep them happy.
*You can't wait f...
It took just 19 days to add the last 100 signups. Thank you to everyone who signed up 💙
You need to bring something to the table too, to entice a tech cofounder. It can either be industry experience, marketing & sales skills, investment, or networking.
Then find the most compatible cofounder, and build something small with them at start. Then you can scale from there.
That's amazing man. Do feature your project on our spotlight, it will be up all week for voting.
See around you what minor problems or inconvenience you're facing everyday. Then see if people around you or online are also facing the same issue.
Check how frequently they face this issue, and validate it by checking if they would use the solution if it is available.
Then go build on that idea.
Many early founders jump into registering companies at ideation stage, without understanding the regulations or consequences.
Thank you for sharing these resource with us.
If the background image is a bit weird, ask to edit by changing the base color to white or black, whichever is better.
If you want a similar result for any logo, just upload an image in chatgpt and then paste the below code and press enter:
"style": "Jelly 3D Icon",
"object": "User-uploaded logo or emoji (e.g. Netflix N, Ghost, Spotify icon, etc.)",
"base": {
"shape": "Rounded square",
"material": "Soft translucent jelly-like material",
"color": "A strong contrasting color to icon (e.g. purple, green, blue)",
"lighting": "Inner glow and soft ambient shadows that gently fade outward"
},
"icon": {
"material": "Jelly/glassy translucent look, softly glowing from within",
"color": "Brighter tone or brand color, always with a jelly-glass texture",
"depth": "3D extruded with rounded edges and subtle bottom shadow",
"placement": "Centered with even padding inside base"
},
"render": {
"camera": "Front orthographic view with centered framing",
"lighting": "Studio-quality lighting with soft top-left highlight and directional drop shadow underneath icon",
"shadow": {
"style": "Soft diffused base shadow with slight blur",
"position": "Directly under icon, slightly offset down",
"opacity": 0.15,
"spread": "Medium, matching other icons in set"
},
"background": "Soft warm grey or pastel cream for consistency",
"dimensions": "1:1 square ratio, minimum 1024x1024",
"file_format": "PNG"
},
"style_notes": "Ensure consistent lighting and shadow softness across the set. Shadows should appear slightly beneath and behind the icon with soft blur — matching the Spotify, Camera, and Weather icon samples exactly. Avoid flat or harsh shadows. Emphasize clean separation between icon and base through shadow and depth."
}
Cool. This gradient makes it look like a little old design. Maybe try different gradients too.
The logo design itself is minimal and good.
Yeah it is kinda surprising that they couldn't materialize their existing userbase so well in the payment segment.
Playing field may be different based on the community outreach they have, but in the long run the quality of the startup only matters.
But they most probably aren't the target audience. The ones who are, are the potential future customers and have similar pain points.
It is actually advisable, so that you have steady funds in hand while you keep building your side project.
Test Comment\n\nMoney in the bank: Zeta, a Bengaluru-based provider of banking software, is now valued at $2 billion after raising $50 million from a strategic investor.\n\nQuantum notes: Google-backed Boston quantum startup QuEra secured $230 million in debt via a convertible note, at an undisclosed valuation that its CEO said “represented “a very substantial increase” compared to its previous round.\n\nForestation: Carbon removal startup Chestnut Carbon closed a $160 million Series B round of financing to turn old farms into forests.\n\nFirstname.ai: Australian health tech startup Harrison.ai raised a $112 million Series C round for its AI-enabled medical diagnostic software, Annalise.ai, which is focused on radiology, and Franklin.ai, which is focused on pathology.\n\nEasy bills: Only six months after raising $29 million, American startup Candid Health closed a $52.5 million Series C to simplify medical billing.\n\nManifest: Latent Labs, an AI biotech startup founded by a former research scientist at DeepMind, came out of stealth mode with $50 million in funding.\n\nCrystal ball: Israeli startup Voyantis scored $41 million to apply AI to helping companies figure out the lifetime value of their customers.\n\nThree times lucky? Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund is on track to close another $3 billion fund, according to sources. This will be the firm’s third growth fund.
Tinder hopes to reverse its ongoing decline in active users by turning to AI. In the coming quarter, the Match-owned dating app will roll out new AI-powered features for discovery and matching. The addition aims to offer fatigued singles an alternative to the “swipe” that defined the dating app in its earlier days and influenced an entire industry to adopt the gesture as the go-to standard.\n\n\nIn its Q4 earnings release, the company noted that the AI-curated recommendations would deliver more “personalized and engaging matches.” Match Group CFO Gary Swidler told investors on the Q4 earnings call that the AI-driven matching feature will give users “something other than swiping” as a way to meet.\n\n\nHowever, he clarified that AI matching would be a complement to swiping, not a replacement.\n\n\n“We want to see a significant number of people engage with that feature and give it a try … We also want to see improvement in quality matches,” Swidler said. “We want to see that product really deliver for people in terms of enhanced quality matches that will improve the perception of the product, which should help us drive user growth.”\n\n\nAlso mentioned on the call was another AI feature, the AI Photo Finder, which helps users pick out the best profile photos for their dating profiles. It launched last year.\n\n\nAI-powered additions come at a challenging time for Tinder and the dating app industry as a whole.\n\n\nOver time, young singles have grown tired of online dating, which they say no longer feels spontaneous and fun and instead seems more like work. Amid safety and privacy concerns, bad behavior from fellow dating app users, and a realization that these apps had presented an illusion of choice when, in reality, their potential for matches was more limited, consumers have been leaving Tinder and others behind.\n\n\nDuring the call, the company admitted that Tinder’s global user growth was still in decline.\n\n\nIn October, Tinder’s monthly active users (MAUs) were down 10% year over year, a number that only slightly increased to reach a 9% decline over the next two months.\n\n\nThe app then saw MAUs decline “about 8%” in January, which execs tried to spin as a positive signal.\n\n\nTinder’s direct revenue also missed the company’s internal guidance, coming in at $476 million, below the forecast range of $480-$485 million.\n\n\n“I’d love to see us get back to growth, but I think we have to take the baby steps first. We’ve got to roll out these product initiatives, see them drive improved user trends,” Swidler said of the new products, including the AI discovery and matching features. The company also plans to make its “Friends in Common” feature more broadly accessible.\n\n\nAs part of its attempt at course correction, Match Group named Zillow Group co-founder Spencer Rascoff as its new CEO.\n\n\nRascoff spoke bullishly on the potential for AI-powered online dating, saying that he thought that “this Cambrian explosion in AI is going to allow Match Group to have the same kind of business inflection that the shift from desktop to mobile created for our category and other categories around 10 years ago — when mobile exceeded desktop.”\n\n\nThat’s quite the bet.\n\n\nHe pointed to other consumer mobile apps like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat that benefited from AI features in terms of both engagement and retention, adding, “I see the same potential for us.”\n\n\nWhile Match execs may be optimistic, it’s clear that the dating app market is headed for change.\n\n\nBeyond Tinder’s declines, the company missed estimates in Q4 with earnings of 82 cents per share, below analyst expectations of 84 cents. While it delivered on revenues, bringing in $860 million in the quarter, above estimates, it also represented a 0.7% year-over-year decline. In its Q1 2025 guidance, the company said it planned for revenues of $820 million to $830 million, down 3 to 5% year-over-year, thanks to Tinder’s negative MAU trends.
This is a test comment written to check the compatibility of multi-text and numbers 12345 plus it will have multi lines too, so that we can see the spacing and readability ease on both desktop and mobile app. It will be helpful in understanding the UI and also some texts which have CAPS LOCK CONTINUOUSLY in the same paragraph.
Reddit and X do help a lot in early traction. Haven't tried linkedin though, seems too clunky.