GTM

Hot take: 90% of AI startups are building features, not companies. Better question: If OpenAI, Google, or Anthropic can ship your entire product as a feature tomorrow, what exactly are you building that will survive?

Power and data centers take years to build. The agentic applications that will run on them change in weeks. If you're building AI infrastructure right now, you're making a multi-year bet against a demand curve nobody has finished writing. Most founders only plan for one side of that mismatch.

First reply: Every week, one more lesson like this straight to your inbox. Free: keithnewman.substack.com/subscribe

I'm building OpenVals with a mission to make AI evaluation, validation, and assurance accessible to developers and enterprises.

My vision is to make measurable AI trust a standard engineering practice.
We’ve shared our work on GitHub, and I’d value your support and technical feedback.
⭐ Star | ⑂ Fork | Contribute
github.com/vishwanathakuthota/openvals

Hello fellow founders! 👋

I'd like to share another project we're building within TGPU Digital Ecosystem: TGPU Academy.

I'm Muhammad Mamduh Saffin, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

I've been developing a digital classroom ecosystem focused on making education technology simpler for teachers, learners and families.

The problem we're trying to solve

Many small education centres need practical tools to manage classes, learning materials, attendance, homework and student progress.

But they don't necessarily need a complicated or expensive learning management system.

We're exploring a more focused approach.

TGPU Academy is being designed around:

• Teacher-managed classroom workflows
• Structured lessons and learning progress
• Online class scheduling
• Homework and feedback
• Student and guardian access controls
• Mobile-friendly experiences
• Privacy-conscious classroom management

Our initial focus is Islamic education, Arabic learning and Quran learning communities.

Current stage

We're progressing through private development and controlled pilot preparation.

We're not publicly launching the complete classroom system yet. Teacher acceptance, educational quality, access controls and real-user testing remain important requirements.

My specific ask to the Lounge community:

I'm looking to connect with:

1. 2–3 educators or education centres interested in exploring a small private classroom pilot.
2. EdTech founders who have experience validating learning platforms with real teachers.
3. Potential education or technology partners interested in accessible, low-cost classroom solutions.

One question I'd especially appreciate your thoughts on:

If you were validating a new education platform, what would you test first to determine whether teachers genuinely find it useful?

I'd love to learn from your experiences and explore meaningful collaborations.

TGPU Academy:
TGPU Academy

TGPU Digital Ecosystem:
tgpu.my

Looking forward to exchanging ideas!

#EdTech #Education #ProductValidation #Startups

Five desks are now together in one app. Sports, AI, politics, entertainment and betting are ready to rock. It’s another step in building useful tools around my journalism experience and AI-assisted development. This is something that I have wanted to get done for a period of time. Now? It's here.

The app is free to download directly, with installation instructions here:
gsrnetwork.io/app?source=lounge-ai
The GSR Network app is for those interested in AI news as well as those interested in sports news, business news, political news, and entertainment news. It is not solely built for journalists, to be clear. So, give it a spin.

Hi friends
Meet HPSILab — quantitative finance built for AI agents.
HPSILab is an AI-native quantitative finance platform built for AI agents and developers.
With HPSILab, you can:
📈 Analyze global stocks with quantitative models
📊 Explore options flow and implied volatility
🎲 Run Monte Carlo simulations and risk analysis
🤖 Integrate financial intelligence via MCP, Python SDK, and APIs
📄 Generate structured research reports automatically
Market coverage: US · Japan · Hong Kong · China A-shares · Singapore
Get Started
🌐 Platform: hpsilab.com/register?invite=QZ9A8KPG
🤖 Claude Directory: claude.ai/directory/hpsilab
🐍 Python SDK / MCP: pypi.org/project/hpsilab-mcp/
```bash
pip install -U hpsilab-mcp
```
Explore HPSILab, try it in your AI workflows, and let us know what you think. Feedback and collaboration are always welcome!

Less time searching. More time understanding.
For research purposes only. Not investment advice.

Hi everyone, I’m Haiyun, founder of HPSILab, a live AI-native financial intelligence platform providing real-time market data, APIs, a Python SDK, and MCP integration.

🌐 Website: hpsilab.com/
🤖 Claude Directory: claude.ai/directory/hpsilab

I’m looking for a business-focused co-founder to lead go-to-market, sales, partnerships, and distribution, while I focus on product development and technology.

I’m also open to strategic partnerships, investment, and potential acquisition opportunities.
Beyond HPSILab, I enjoy turning promising ideas into real products through AI, full-stack development, APIs, and automation.

If you have strong business development, sales, or distribution experience and want to build something together, I’d love to connect.

Hi fellow founders!

I'm Muhammad Mamduh Saffin, founder of TGPU Digital Ecosystem and TGPU Gulf Advisory in Malaysia.

I'm currently building GCC Match, an early-stage platform designed to help businesses discover and connect with potential partners between Malaysia and the GCC.

Our biggest challenge now isn't building more features. It's validating demand and attracting genuine business users.

I'd love to learn from founders who have built B2B marketplaces, matching platforms, or cross-border business networks.

Three questions:

1. How did you find your first 10 genuine business users?
2. What worked best for building trust between buyers and suppliers?
3. Would you recommend starting with manual qualification and introductions before scaling automation?

I'm also looking to connect with 2–3 UAE-based founders or business operators who would be open to providing feedback or exploring a small pilot collaboration.

Our platform: match.tgpugulf.com

I'd genuinely appreciate your insights and would be happy to exchange perspectives on the Malaysia–GCC market.

Thank you!

Thanks to a suggestion from Ryan Allis, I have created the GSR Network Weekly Roundup. This is free, covers all six GSR Network newsrooms. The roundup will come out Tuesdays at 9 a.m. Central. Besides the GSR Network Weekly Roundup, you'll also occasionally hear directly from me about journalism and GSR's progress.

Sign up right here -- gsr-network-news.beehiiv.com/subscribe
This is another step forward in the GSR Network world. I'm excited about it and look forward to providing you all with the top headlines and information in every roundup.

When founders ask me where to start with SEO, my answer is almost always the same: not new content, not links to the homepage, but the pages Google already shows on page two.

The check: in Search Console open Performance, set the last 3 months, turn on Average position and switch to the Pages tab. Sort by impressions and look for pages with real impressions and an average position somewhere between 8 and 30. Google already considers them relevant, they just are not visible yet, so a small push moves clicks more than anything else you could do this week.

Before you touch them, take two kinds of pages out of the list. A page that is not in Google's index will not be helped by links or rewrites until the indexing problem is fixed. And if two of your URLs show up for the same query, they compete with each other, so merge or differentiate them first.

For what is left, the order I use: a title that matches the query people actually type, a fresher update of the content, internal links from your strongest pages, and only then external links. Write down the position and clicks for each page on the day you start, and compare the same 28-day window a month later. Without that before and after, it is very hard to tell what worked.

We automated this scan in SEO Radar because I kept doing it by hand for every site, but the manual version above works fine for a small site.

Question for the room: have you tried pushing page-two pages, and what moved them most for you?

Hello everyone. I've bootstrapped backbonehq.io/ an enterprise-grade platform for SaaS startups.

It's a very different model to all the other lightweight SaaS alternatives out there - Backbone means clients own the code, the data and the hosting. They get an end-to-end SaaS development platform in about 15 minutes, and AWS production deployment in about a day. With significant focus on security, scale and compliance.

I would like to get in touch with anyone who has significant exposure to startups, accelerators, tech funds etc. Backbone is not just massive engineering leverage - it significantly de-risks launch, scale, due diligence etc. and allows teams to spend runway and focus on product differentiation - not engineering foundations.

Thanks for listening! Andrew

A polished landing page can tell you what an app promises. A business owner also needs evidence that it works.

BizAppsMarket (BAM) is a work in progress I am building around that problem: a marketplace for small-business software with a review process covering eight areas and human sign-off before listing.

The public site explains the proposed approach and accepts founding-developer applications. The buyer catalog is planned to open once the first apps pass. Its sample listings and reports are illustrations, not proof of an established marketplace.

I would value two perspectives: owners choosing software, and independent builders prepared to have their work reviewed. What should the report show? What would make the process useful and fair?

I am happy to discuss the workflow and use your feedback to shape it while it is still being built.

See the project: bizappsmarket.brainit.site/
Skool community: skool.com/codedungeon-1002
My demos and tutorials: youtube.com/@BrainITConsulting

Ask an AI assistant a question your customers ask before buying. Does it mention your business, your competitors, or neither?

I built Lighthouse to track those questions over time, compare a brand with up to three competitors, and turn the findings into a content playbook. The current product covers ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI Overview.

I am looking for marketers, PR practitioners, agencies and business owners willing to test a real brand with a small set of buyer questions. I want to learn whether the evidence leads to a useful next decision. The product uses prepaid scan credits; there is no promise of a particular ranking.

Try it: lighthouse.dreamforgeworld.com/
Two-minute explainer: youtu.be/fgcaqcteQcg
More demos: youtube.com/@BrainITConsulting
Learning community: skool.com/codedungeon-1002

What buyer question would you want to track first, and what result would actually change your marketing plan?

Following Ryan's advice, here's a specific ask.

I'm looking for a few small-business owners and marketing or PR practitioners to try MuseRig with one real marketing brief: a product photo set or a short ad for your business or a client. No coding background needed.

I'd like you to test the journey from your website or existing photos to the brief, creative plan and exact quote. If you choose to generate, tell me whether the result is accurate, on-brand and useful enough to publish, and where you got stuck.

In return, I'll help you shape the brief and walk through the workflow, and you'll have direct input into what I improve. Planning is free; generation uses credits and only runs after you approve the price.

I'm especially keen to hear from people running shops, service businesses or small brands who don't have a marketing team. Marketing practitioners can help shape the process as design partners.

Interested? Reply or DM me with what your business does and one thing you need to promote.

muserig.com

Emile

Hey Lounge! I'm Rajae from Morocco — Branding & Digital Design Studio 🇲🇦 I help founders build premium brands that raise money. From Logo to Pitch Deck to Full Visual Identity. Scan my QR to chat on WhatsApp — 3x faster delivery! dynaittech.ma
📧 dynatech.ma@gmail.com / IG: dynaittech.ma

The new site I built for AA Windows has gotten 7 bookings since it went live, and Atom Designs got paid $1,000 for it. It's my first real result, and these are the things I think made it work:

One niche. Ryan Allis told me to stop pitching everyone and focus on local home service businesses like window washers, power washers, and roofers. I took that advice, and now I know who I'm building for and what the site has to do: get customers to book.

A real customer first. AA Windows gave me something to build and something to show. It's on my site now as proof of concept, and it taught me more than months of planning.

Building with AI. I use Claude Code and Codex to build faster than I could alone, so a one-person team can ship real sites.

What's not working: finding my next customers. I have the proof and the niche, but I don't have a repeatable way to get in front of the next home service business.

Where I'd love your advice:

If you've sold to local service businesses, how did you land customers #2 through #5?

What's the best way to reach owners who are busy on job sites and don't answer cold emails?

If you run a local service business or you've done this before, I'd really appreciate your take.

While building the AI traffic view in SEO Radar, I noticed how easy these visits are to miss. Visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini sit in GA4 as ordinary referrals, mixed in with everything else, so unless you go looking, you never see them.

The check: in GA4 open Reports, Acquisition, Traffic acquisition, switch the dimension to Session source and filter for chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com and copilot.microsoft.com. Then add Landing page as a secondary dimension. That second step is the useful one, because it shows which of your pages AI assistants actually send people to.

Two caveats. Part of AI traffic arrives with no referrer at all and lands in Direct, so treat the number as a floor, not the total. And the landing pages are often not the ones you would guess: pages that answer one narrow question plainly, like a comparison, a pricing explanation or a free tool, tend to be easier for an assistant to cite than a long brand page.

Once you know which pages get those visits, the next move is boring: make them clearer, keep them updated, and link to them from the rest of your site.

Question for the room: have you checked this yet, and which of your pages surprised you?

AI companies building in music hit the same wall: the product works, but artists, labels and rights holders need a reason to trust it. Someone has to walk into those rooms and come out with partnerships.

That’s what I’ve done for 15+ years. I opened seven cross-border partnerships across the US, Mexico and Colombia, priced in USD, and founded and ran Panacea Studio with a four-person team and 50+ clients. I’m a voting member of the Recording Academy and Latin Recording Academy. I designed Provenance as Substrate (pinned on my profile), open infrastructure that signs credit into audio. And I ship with Claude Code, so I can talk to your engineers as easily as to a label.

I’m looking to join as a founding team member: partnerships, BD or product. Available from November. NYC, Nashville, Austin or remote.

If that’s a gap on your team, reply here or find me on LinkedIn.

Hey everyone, I’m Alex, the 17 year old founder of AI-Atlas.

A bit about me: I want to become an AI researcher. I’ve been building ML projects for almost 2 years, and earlier this year I won a gold medal at the International Conference of Young Scientists 2026, with a bio-ML project. Doing research that young taught me something frustrating: the work is what matters, but almost nobody looks at it. Applications, scholarships and internships ask for grades, titles, degrees and CVs, and a CV can’t show whether you’ve actually trained a model, shipped an agent or built a pipeline that works.

Why I built AI-Atlas: I wanted a way for anyone, whether a student, a self-taught builder or someone without a famous school on their CV, to prove what they can do with evidence instead of claims.

What I’m building: AI-Atlas (getaiatlas.com) reads your public GitHub and maps what you’ve actually built in AI. Each project is assessed, you get an Atlas Score and level, and there’s a live leaderboard by country. Paid users get a personal roadmap and a prediction of where their work is heading. A resume says what you claim; your Atlas shows what you’ve built.

What’s working: Small developer communities. Traffic from DevHunt and the Hugging Face Discord converts at about 45% from scan to claimed profile. In the first weeks, 94 developers were mapped and 25 verified builders from 10 countries joined the leaderboard. We launch on Product Hunt this Friday (Oct 30).

One thing I need: Intros to people who hire or train AI engineers, such as bootcamps, AI-education platforms and technical recruiters. I want to learn whether a verified “proof of work” score is something they’d use or pay for.

If you code, scan your GitHub and tell me where the score feels wrong. That’s the most useful feedback I can get. And if you’ve built something in research or AI yourself, I’d love to hear about it :)🙌

Whether you code or not, I’d love to connect. Say hi below or DM me!

A pattern we keep seeing while building SEO Radar at PromoPilot: founders want to push the page they care most about, but the page that pays back is usually a different one.

How we pick pages now, straight from Search Console data. First, drop every page that is not indexed or is canonicalised to another URL. Links do not fix that, so those pages get removed from the plan and get an indexing fix instead. Second, if two of your own pages rank for the same query, merge or interlink them before pushing anything. Third, look for pages already sitting at positions 8 to 30 with real impressions. Those are the ones where a small push moves clicks, because Google already thinks they are relevant.

Then measure before and after per page, not per site: position, clicks, index status. Our results are honestly mixed, some pages barely move. One that did: an ad network client saw impressions up 3.2x and clicks up 36% over 28 days after we worked on pages picked this way.

Question for the room: how do you decide which page to promote first? Gut feeling, revenue per page, or Search Console data?