The eChai Feed · Startups · Tech · Culture

Startups, tech and culture, worth your time.

The launches, threads, talks and long reads we think every founder should see, curated by eChai.

From the web
4 days ago
When anyone can clone your app, what's left to sell?

Pieter Levels on a founder exchange about AI, cloning, and where the money in software is going.

@levelsio @levelsio

Incredible interaction here between @_mattwelter and @pedrotech_ showing exactly what's going on

No judgement on both btw, just interesting to observe:

Matt complains how he improved his product 10x but revenue is down by 1/3rd. Shouldn't it go up if you make the product better? The thing is every competitor also made their product 10x better using AI. So AI raised the baseline quality of everyone's apps (easier to make great apps) and increased competition (easier to enter the market)

But then one of his customers @pedrotech_ replies how he loved the app so much he decided to vibecode his own version for himself "so he didn't have to pay"

This exactly shows:
- everyone thinks they're improving their app but everyone is improving the same amount with AI (but not many realizing), it's like a race but everyone gets nitro now without realizing everyone else has nitro too
- barrier to entry is gone, anyone can just clone an app and enter as a competitor
- personal software is here, as he just cloned an existing app to not have to pay for it anymore
- he then only pays for API tokens for LLM or image models to the model hosters and model owners

So you went from a business chain of
- customer > app > ai model provider

To
- customer > ai model provider

The app layer is possibly getting removed!

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#AI #Founders
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From the web
4 days ago
Praneet Dutta leaves DeepMind to launch Pomo

Praneet Dutta left Google DeepMind to launch Pomo, an AI marketing teammate that watches your market and tells you the next move, from insight to execution. A founder story and a look at AI reaching deeper into go to market.

Praneet Dutta @praneetdutta

I quit @GoogleDeepMind to build a marketing team that never stops working. Today, we're launching @HelloPomo. Your marketing, from insight to execution, unified. Pomo watches everything happening across your market, tells you exactly what to do next.

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#AI #Founders #Stories
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From the web
4 days ago
Bolna launches Agent Studio for voice AI agents

Bolna is on Product Hunt with Agent Studio, a builder for shipping production voice AI agents. If you are adding voice to your product, it is a clean look at how the tooling is maturing.

Maitreya Wagh @maitreya_wagh

FDEs coffee breaks, up. NPS, up. Enterprise agents shipped, up. Turns out @bolna_dev Agent Studio does the heavy lifting, and it does it quite well! Live on Product Hunt today.

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#AI #Tools
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From the web
4 days ago
Aidan: a realtime computer-using AI, $45M raised

Aidan calls itself the first computer-using AI built for realtime conversation, already running customer interactions at Notion and Decagon, backed by $45M from Sequoia and 8VC. A marker for where voice and computer-use agents are heading.

Nim Ravid @Nim_Ravid1

Introducing Aidan, your newest AI employee. Aidan is the first computer-using AI built for realtime conversation. We've raised $45M from @sequoia and @8VC to bring Aidan to the world. @NotionHQ and @DecagonAI already use Aidan to run customer interactions.

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#AI #Funding
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From the web
4 days ago
blueprint.io: Lovable for hardware, now with CAD generation

blueprint.io pitches itself as Lovable for hardware, now generating CAD so physical products can move as fast as software ideas. Worth a look if you build hardware or want to see how far AI is reaching into design.

Sajeel Purewal @Sajeel_Purewal

Lovable for hardware is here. Introducing blueprint.io, now with CAD generation. Hardware finally moves as fast as your ideas.

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#AI #Tools #DeepTech
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Jatin Chaudhary
Jatin Chaudhary about 2 months ago
Naval and Nivi: The AI Industrial Revolution with Guillermo Rauch, Blake Scholl, Max Hodak

Naval and Nivi sit down with Guillermo Rauch (Vercel), Blake Scholl (Boom Supersonic), and Max Hodak (Science) on AI as the next industrial revolution. The conversation covers software factories and waste tokens, vibe coding hardware (Blake's turbine blade), the regulatory frontier (why China's FDA is beating ours), and the autonomous company (what it means when your job becomes training the agent). Worth watching for how three founders building in very different stacks converge on the same questions.

Jatin Chaudhary
Jatin Chaudhary about 2 months ago
Nikunj Kothari built Nock: a Claude Code skill that pitches like him

Nikunj Kothari (partner at FPV Ventures) used Claude Code to build Nock, a personal skill grounded in his real conversations. He pulled 200+ founder pitch notes captured by Granola, narrowed to ~53 with the strongest debate, layered in his essays on the kind of founders he loves, then iterated against 5-10 real decks until the output matched what he'd actually ask in the room. Founders raising can try it at nikunjk.com/nock; VCs who want their own can build at nikunjk.com/buildnock.

Nikunj Kothari built Nock: a Claude Code skill that pitches like him
Jatin Chaudhary
Jatin Chaudhary about 2 months ago
Can Tech Legends Find the Liar? Mafia with Founders Fund

Founders Fund gathered Sam Altman, Palmer Luckey, Bryan Johnson, Dylan Field, Moxie Marlinspike, Tim Urban, Ryan Petersen, Liv Boeree, Cyan Banister, Trae Stephens, Josie Zayner, and Michael Solana for an evening of Mafia, the murder-mystery parlor game. Players are secretly assigned roles and must use deception and debate to eliminate the opposing team before they are outnumbered. Worth watching for how some of the sharpest people in tech read each other under pressure.

Jatin Chaudhary
Jatin Chaudhary about 2 months ago
How eChai Built a Global Startup Community from Ahmedabad

Jatin Chaudhary on the Magenta Insights podcast, telling the story of eChai's journey from casual chai meetups in Ahmedabad in 2009 to a global network across Bengaluru, Mumbai, Singapore, London, and San Francisco. The conversation covers community-led growth, why impact matters more than numbers, the economics of running a community platform, and what most communities get wrong about sustaining engagement.

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