r/roastmystartup

Hey all, I'm currently building Lockn, an app that helps you do more and plan less. Rather than planning your whole week, you plan day by day with Lockn.

It incorporates over 10 different productivity methods and has some really cool features.

Its launching really really soon, I just wanted to get a rough sense if any of you would use it 😄

If there are any additional features you would like to see added do drop a comment below! or if there is anything you think you don't like feel free to let me know too!

thanks so much for reading!!

This sub gets the assignment better than most so I'll be direct.

The no-code movement solved half the problem. You can build almost anything now without knowing how to code, which is genuinely incredible and wasn't true five years ago. But there's still a gap that nobody talks about. Even with the best no-code tools you still have to know which tools to pick, how to connect them, how to write copy that converts, how to set up ad accounts, how to source products, how to structure a funnel. The learning curve didn't disappear, it just moved.

Most people in this sub know exactly what I mean. You've spent a weekend deep in Zapier trying to get two things to talk to each other that should just work. You've rebuilt your Webflow site three times because the first two didn't convert. You've watched your Notion dashboard get more elaborate while the actual business stayed the same size.

That's the gap Locus Founder closes.

You describe what you want to build. The AI handles everything else. It sources products directly from AliExpress and Alibaba (or sell YOUR OWN digital services, products, or content), builds a real storefront around them, writes conversion-optimized copy, then autonomously creates and runs ads on Google, Facebook and Instagram. No Zapier. No Webflow. No piecing together eight tools that half work. Just a running business.

If you don't have an idea yet it interviews you and figures out what makes sense for your situation.

We got into YCombinator this year and we're opening 100 free beta spots this week before public launch. Free to use, you keep everything you make.

For the people in this sub specifically, this isn't a replacement for no-code tools for people who love building. It's for everyone who wanted the outcome but never wanted to become a tools expert to get there. Big difference.

Beta form: https://forms.gle/nW7CGN1PNBHgqrBb8

Happy to answer anything about how it works under the hood.

I wanted to make new friends online and realized there's no real app for it. You either add people you already know, or roll the dice on random-stranger sites. So I spent the last year solo-building WeLynk: an app that figures out who you'd click with, gives you 15 minutes to decide, and has things to do together that aren't just chat.

The matching engine is the part I'm proudest of. It doesn't ask for interests, age preferences, or any profile questions, and it doesn't read your messages. It learns from what you actually do in the app: who you add, who you don't, which conversations you stay in past the timer. Each match is a 15-minute window. Add each other inside it, or you can't match again. In my own data so far, after 10 to 15 matches it gets dialed in, and from there roughly 1 in 5 matches turns into someone you end up talking to for 2+ hours.

There are also 10 multiplayer games I built, and I tried to make each one feel like its own thing instead of 10 reskins of the same template. Imposter is a noir ticket dispenser. Chalk is a literal chalkboard. Flare has a Japanese card-game aesthetic. There's also Snake for 8, red-light-green-light, a Would You Rather with player-written prompts, and a few more. Plus the usual chat stuff: 1:1 and group chats, voice and video calls, voice notes, GIFs, stickers.

Bot and spam filtering and age-segregated matching are in from day one. It's free. The only money thing is optional cosmetics (pfp frames, message textures, animated pfps) if you want yours to stand out.

Try it: iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/6758581880 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.welynk.app Web: https://welynk.com

Genuinely curious what you think about the 15-minute window. Too short, too long, about right? It's the part I'm still iterating on. Happy to AMA on the matching engine or anything else, will reply to everything.

I have shipped three SaaS projects. I have written exactly two blog posts.
Every Sunday I'd plan to write one, then either move on to the next project or forget the blog existed. SEO advice everywhere says "blog consistently." I never managed it.

So I built Blogr.

It's a GitHub App. Install on your repo, tell it about your site once — description, tone, audience, keywords you want to rank for, topics to avoid — pick a schedule. It commits MDX blog posts to your /content folder automatically. No CMS, no dashboard. Posts appear in your repo like a contributor pushed them.

Works with anything that reads MDX from a folder — Next.js, Astro, Remix. If your site's on Vercel, posts auto-deploy as soon as Blogr commits. The post is live without having to do anything.

Blogr.dev's own blog is written by Blogr — every post there was generated by the tool.
The output isn't generic AI slop — Blogr reads your existing posts to match voice, uses the keywords you specifically gave it, internal linking, and outputs proper MDX with frontmatter.

90-second demo: https://streamable.com/40b2ys

If you want to try before paying, the site has a free generation — drop in your site details and Blogr will write you a post on the spot. It's just a preview; nothing gets committed anywhere unless you connect a repo.

I spent the last month building this in the mornings before work. Launching cold today — no audience, no waitlist, no Twitter following — just see what happens. I'll be in the comments all day. If you'd actually use this, tell me. If you wouldn't, tell me why.

Hey everyone,

I built a lightweight, no-nonsense web utility to solve a daily formatting headache I kept running into:https://toolkittext.com

The Problem: Whenever I copy text between Google Docs, Notion, Slack, emails, or different platforms, it always brings along messy background formatting, weird line-breaks, or double-spacing that ruins the layout on the other end.

The Solution: I wanted something lightning-fast and distraction-free that did just one thing well. With this tool, you simply paste your text, click a button, and it instantly strips away all the background junk and normalizes the spacing, leaving you with 100% clean text ready to paste anywhere.

It’s completely free, has no ads, no sign-ups, and doesn't track anything.

Since it's in its early stage, I would love for you guys to test it out. I'm especially looking for feedback on:

1. UI/UX: Is the ultra-minimalist approach intuitive, or is it too bare-bones?
2. Features: Are there any specific text-cleaning options or "fix-buttons" you think are missing for your daily workflow?

Check it out at:https://toolkittext.com

Thanks in advance for your time and roasting! /Jacob

Hey everyone. Solo founder, bootstrapped, no funding.

What it does:

A restaurant uploads their existing menu (PDF or up to 10 photos) and the tool:

• Extracts every section, dish, description and price automatically
• Translates the entire menu into 50+ languages on the fly (cached per request, so it's instant for repeat visitors)
• Outputs a mobile-first menu with a universal QR code
• Handles the 13 EU-regulated allergens out of the box (Regulation 1169/2011 — required across the EU and a nightmare to maintain manually)
• Gives them a dashboard where they edit prices, hide dishes, swap themes from their phone

Whole import takes ~5 minutes. After that they run everything themselves.

Who it's for:

Cafés, food trucks, hotels & B&Bs, bars, small restaurants. Anywhere in the EU especially, because of the allergen requirement. I deliberately did NOT build it for chains — they have their own teams. The wedge is the independent owner whose current menu is a blurry PDF on a Google Drive link.

Pricing:

Free tier is actually free forever — unlimited menus, unlimited dishes, unlimited QR scans, allergens, one translation language, 15 prebuilt themes. No credit card.

Pro is €1.49–€6.95/month depending on country GDP (Spain pays less than Switzerland — felt fairer than flat pricing for a global product). Pro unlocks all 50+ languages, custom colors/fonts, and removes ads from the public menu.

Where I'm at:

Growing organic traffic, small but real number of Pro conversions. The free tier converts on its own once owners actually use it — the hard part is getting them to try in the first place. SEO and content are my main channels because cold outreach to restaurants is brutal and doesn't scale.

What I've learned:

• Restaurant owners don't care about "AI." They care: does it look good on a phone, can my cousin update it, and how do I get it in front of customers.
• I deliberately did NOT add AI-generated dish photos. Tested it, owners hated them — they look uncanny and tourists notice. Empty menu > fake-photo menu.
• Free tier as a top-of-funnel works. Most competitors gate the basics (QR code, multiple menus, allergens) behind a paywall. I don't. The bet is that owners who actually use it daily upgrade for translations and custom branding.
• "Translate your menu to 50+ languages" outperforms every other headline I've tested.
• Biggest competitor is the owner thinking their PDF is "fine."

What I'd love feedback on:

• Landing page: does the value prop land in the first 5 seconds? (topfood.app)
• Free-forever tier with no signup wall — am I leaving obvious money on the table, or is this the right wedge?
• GDP-tiered Pro pricing — gimmick or genuinely smart?
• Organic acquisition ideas for this niche beyond SEO/content? Local SEO is working but slow.
• Anything that screams "indie SaaS with no users yet" on the site that I'm blind to?

Be brutal. I can take it.

This is topfood.app.

Built this: PlanDish generates personalized weekly meal plans, builds your grocery list sorted by aisle, and shows cost per meal and weekly total.

Target user: anyone spending too much on food and not eating consistently well.

What I think is broken: Onboarding might be too long Not sure if I'm positioning as a meal planning app, a grocery savings app, or an organized eating system Freemium line might be in the wrong place

What I genuinely don't know: Is the value obvious in the first 30 seconds? Does the pricing feel fair?

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/plandish-meal-planner/id6761618664

Be brutal. I'd rather hear it here than figure it out from churn.

It's a free trial. What do you have to lose?

No credit card needed.

Test it. Grow your brand. Have fun! https://harkpost.com

I am 17 years old still in college, building this with any spare time I have. It is a discipline platform for traders who cant stop revenge trading. cleartradeapp.com

I built this purely from the fact that i had this exact problem.

I would appreciate brutal honest feedback, rather than me shipping this for months and missing out on something which could've been huge.

Hi everyone,

We’re building an early-stage AI app called Thimin (short for Thriving Minds), and honestly, I’m not fully convinced we’ve made something genuinely valuable yet.

The idea is pretty simple. It’s a voice-based AI you can talk to openly, without feeling judged.
Not a productivity tool, not a therapist replacement, just a space where you can think out loud, vent, and hopefully get some clarity.

A big reason behind this is that a lot of people don’t talk, not because they don’t need to, but because they don’t feel comfortable opening up to someone else. We thought maybe AI could help in that gap.

So we built an MVP.
Right now, it’s basically just talk, reflect, and see if it actually helps.

I don’t know if it truly works in a meaningful way yet, and don’t want to assume it does.

That’s why I’m here.

I’m looking for people who can actually use it, not to try it for 30 seconds, but have a conversation with it, and give some honest feedback in the comments.

I’d really love to know:

• Did it feel helpful or just gimmicky?
• Did you feel even slightly more clear after using it?
• At any point did it feel real or useful?
• What felt missing or frustrating?

If you’re open to trying it:

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app.thimin.prod&hl=en

Even if your feedback is blunt or harsh, that’s exactly what I need right now.

Just trying to figure out if this is something worth pushing forward or if we need to rethink it.

Really appreciate it 🙏

My dad went through the whole startup thing a few years back. Incubator funding, the works. I watched him do it mostly alone with no real playbook, just figuring it out as he went.

That always stayed with me.

When I started taking my own ideas seriously I realized there's genuinely nothing out there that just tells you what to do. Not in a course way, not in a tweet thread way. Like an actual system. You have an idea, cool, now what? Most people just sit on it forever because there's no next step that feels real.

So I built Grillr around that problem. You describe your idea, it interviews you about it, then spits out a full action plan broken into weeks and then days with actual deadlines. You do the work, submit it, the AI grades it and either moves you forward or sends you back. If you miss a deadline it starts blowing up your phone until you actually do something.

Kind of like if Y Combinator was a website and didn't require you to already be impressive to get in.

I genuinely don't know if people want this or if I just built something I personally needed. That's the honest reason I'm posting.

Even if you don't want to try it, just dropping your email at grillr.io takes 10 seconds and helps me figure out if there's real interest here. And if you want to actually poke around the app DM me and I'll send you an access code.

Quick context: every habit app I've used is basically a spreadsheet with anxiety attached. Miss a day, a number gets a little uglier. That's not punishment, that's bookkeeping.

So I made Melt. You stake money on a 30-day habit, and the money isn't sitting in a faceless escrow — it's being held hostage by a character. A smug little ice cube named Frost.

• Hit the habit → Frost melts a bit, releases your money back
• Miss the habit → Frost grows back, holds onto more of it
• You never actually lose the money — it's all yours either way. The only variable is how fast you get it back.
• Survive 30 clean days → Frost dies, you get everything immediately
• Miss a bunch → he drags the payout out over months, smirking the whole time

The bet underneath this is that humans care more about beating an opponent than hitting a number. A streak counter doesn't taunt you. Frost does.

Status: pre-launch, landing page live, collecting emails. App is built (Expo + RN, photo verification via Gemini, Clerk auth) but I'm deliberately not shipping it until I see if anyone actually wants this. The biggest gap left is the day-30 victory screen — the narrative payoff when Frost finally dies — which I'll prioritize if the signups justify it.

Landing page: https://getmeltz.com

What I'd love feedback on:

1. Does the "antagonist character" framing actually land, or is it too cute?
2. Would you stake money on yourself for 30 days?
3. Roast the landing page.

I'll be in the comments.

Today, we are coming out of closed beta and launching Sherlock.

We built this for the real problem we experienced:

• context keeps shifting throughout the day and you never fully know where you left off.
• You switch between tabs, apps, docs, meetings and by the end of the day you cant reconstruct what actually happened.
• So you open ChatGPT or Claude to get help but you have to manually explain everything from scratch. What you were working on, why, what you already tried. Every single time.
• Second brain setups with Obsidian and Claude are the same. They only know what you manually put in. So the burden is still on you.

Sherlock runs in the background on your Mac and learns from your screen.When you need a recap or want to pick up where you left off, you just ask. It already knows your context. No setup, no integrations. You just start working.

To share some of testaments from our beta users:

• One beta user said it feels like "a second brain running quietly." Another user said it's. having which is probably the best description we could've come up with ourselves lol.
• "It's like having Obsidian and Claude a baby"
• "I didn't realize how much context I was losing every day until this"

You can check it out at here. Would love your feedback/roasts/comments!

Hey everyone,

I'm a first time app developer and I just launched my first app on the App Store called Splytr and I wanted to share it here and get some genuine feedback.

The idea came from a really simple frustration, every time I'd go out to eat with friends splitting the bill was always so difficult because we always order different things or I don't drink but then I'd sometimes pitch in for them because we'd be too lazy to calculate it. Someone pulls out a calculator, someone forgets they didn't have the drinks, someone overpays by $12 and quietly resents it. You know the feeling.

So I built Splytr. Here's how it works:

1. Scan your receipt: you can either use the camera or upload a pic of the receipt
2. Add your group: type in who you're eating with
3. Assign items: tap each item to say who had it. Shared dishes split automatically
4. Send requests: one tap sends each person their exact amount via iMessage, WhatsApp, or whatever you use

Tax and tip are calculated and split fairly per person. One bill, one scan, everyone pays their fair share before you leave the table.

It's completely free and available on the App Store right now. I'd genuinely love your honest feedback. What works, what doesn't, what you'd want to see added, thoughts on the UI, anything would be greatly appreciated. I have thick skin so don't hold back. If you try it and like it, an App Store review would honestly make my day as a first time developer!

Here's the link for the app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/splytr/id6768890787

Thanks for reading!