Muhammad Umar

I'll be in SF next week for Startup Grind. Looking to meet founders and FAANG engineers who are actually building. If you're around, shoot me a DM :)

I just FIRED a $100K client who said "but another vendor is cheaper." The moment a client says 'another vendor quoted lower,' I stand up and end the meeting. CLIENT: Your competitor can do this for 50% less. ME: Then I recommend you work with them. We're not a good fit. This isn't arrogance. It's survival. After 7 years of discounting for clients who played the pricing game, we discovered: Projects where we discounted had: -  3.2X more scope creep -  2.7X longer delivery times -  82% less profitability for US -  58% less ROI for THEM When a vendor slashes prices to win your business, they're making ONE guarantee: They'll find ways to make up that margin elsewhere. Either by: -  Assigning junior staff -  Rushing deliverables -  Nickel-and-diming change requests -  Deprioritizing your work We used to play this game ourselves—until we calculated that discounted projects cost us $127,000 in a single year. I used to think it was my job to educate these founders. To explain our process. To justify our rates. Now? I stand up and end the meeting the MOMENT they mention another vendor's lower price. Not because I'm arrogant. Because I've watched this movie 37 times, and it ALWAYS ends the same way: 1. They hire the cheaper vendor 2. The project falls apart 3. The founder runs out of runway 4. The startup dies How a founder selects vendors is how they'll build their entire company.

STOP asking customers what they want. It's DESTROYING your startup. Your customer conversations are completely WORTHLESS. You think you're gathering insights. You're actually collecting LIES. Not because customers are dishonest. Because they don't know what they actually need. Most founders ask: What features do you want? Would you use this? How much would you pay? These questions get you GARBAGE data. Every. Single. Time. Your customers aren't product designers. They aren't visionaries. They're people with problems they can't solve. Next time you talk to customers, ONLY ask these 5 questions: 1. Show me exactly how you solve this problem today. 2. What's the worst part of this process? 3. How many hours per week does this waste? 4. What have you already tried that failed? 5. If this problem disappeared, what would that mean for you? STOP collecting feature requests. START mining for pain points. Most founders build what customers SAY they want. Successful founders solve problems customers SHOW they have. Are your customer conversations building your product roadmap or destroying it? PS: We build MVP which solve customer problems not wishlist.

STOP READING about startups. START BUILDING one. 97% of "wantrepreneurs" NEVER take action. They die with their ideas still inside them. The best way to learn how to start a startup is to TRY and start it. You may not be successful, but you'll learn faster if you just DO IT. - Paul Graham Every BILLION-DOLLAR founder started when they were "NOT READY": • Sam Altman (OpenAI) dropped out of Stanford after 2 years • Brian Chesky (Airbnb) was a designer with no business experience • Whitney Wolfe Herd (Bumble) started at 25 with zero tech background • Patrick Collision (Stripe) was 19 and knew nothing about payments • Sara Blakely (Spanx) was selling fax machines before creating her product The truth about founder education: → Building a MEDIOCRE product teaches you 10X more than reading about PERFECT products → Getting 10 REAL customers gives you more insight than 100 customer personas → One FAILED launch provides more education than a $60K MBA program → A single REAL investor rejection contains more feedback than 50 pitch workshops The secret that no one tells you: Your competition isn't smarter than you. They haven't read more books than you. They don't have some magical startup gene. They simply TOOK ACTION while you're still PLANNING. I've worked with 50+ founders in the last 8 years. The ONLY difference between the successful ones and the failures? The successful ones STARTED BEFORE THEY FELT READY. Most people have spent YEARS saying "I'll start tomorrow." But real founders make TODAY day one. Comment "DAY ONE" if today is when you finally begin. P.S. Don't have technical co-founders? Still start TODAY. We help non-technical founders start TODAY instead of "someday."

The silent killer of startups isn't BAD ideas. It's too many GOOD ideas. Brian Chesky (Airbnb CEO) explains why most growth stage startups fail. Let me explain: Most founders operate from a simple assumption: More good ideas = better product = more success Chesky discovered the opposite is true: More good ideas = divided focus = guaranteed mediocrity Every time you add a "good idea" to your roadmap, you're not adding—you're dividing. Dividing your team's: -  Time -  Focus -  Resources -  Clarity -  Excellence This creates the "startup death spiral" I've seen kill countless companies: 1. You have 5 good ideas 2. You pursue all 5 simultaneously 3. Each gets 20% of your resources 4. All 5 end up mediocre 5. Your product feels unfocused and "meh" 6. Users don't get excited about "meh" 7. Growth stalls 8. You add MORE features to fix it 9. Each now gets 10% of resources 10. Death spiral continues This isn't theoretical. It's mathematical. With 10 priorities: -  Each gets 10% of your resources -  Each gets 10% of your attention -  Each has a 10% chance of excellence With ONE priority: -  It gets 100% of your resources -  It gets 100% of your attention -  It has a 100% chance of excellence Chesky's solution? "We eliminate good ideas to focus on great execution of ONE idea." This is why early Airbnb: -  Focused on homes only (no hotels) -  Launched in just a few cities -  Had limited features -  Said NO to countless good opportunities This approach is psychologically painful. Every "no" feels like leaving money on the table. Every "no" triggers fear of missing out. Every "no" risks being wrong. But Chesky understood: The cost of saying "yes" is always higher. When you say "yes" to everything, you default to building nothing remarkable. Look at your roadmap right now. If you had to delete everything except ONE initiative, what would remain? That's your answer. Everything else is holding you back.

STOP hiring full-time DevOps. STOP building in-house. STOP paying monthly retainers. Here's the approach #1. THE ARCHITECT SPRINT (3-5 days) • Hire a $200+/hr Expert AWS Solutions Architect • Pay them to design an AUTOMATED infrastructure • Have them document everything obsessively • THIS IS WHERE 90% OF YOUR INFRASTRUCTURE VALUE LIVES #2. THE BUILDER WEEK (5-7 days) • Hire a $50-75/hr BUILDER to implement the architect's exact specs • No creative decisions, pure implementation • Rigorous testing and documentation • Never mix architects with builders (different skillsets) #3. THE MAINTENANCE TRAP (avoid at all costs) • REFUSE monthly retainers • Set up AWS Lambda functions for 98% of maintenance tasks • Create CloudWatch alerts that trigger automated fixes • Only pay for expertise when something actually breaks One AWS partner told me: "We never tell clients this, but the ideal AWS setup should be 'set and forget' with maybe 4-6 hours of expert time quarterly." Here's the exact script I now use when hiring AWS talent: "I need a serverless-first, automation-heavy AWS architecture designed in 3 days that will run with zero human intervention for 3+ months. After your design is complete, I'll hire a separate person to implement it. Your design must include CloudFormation templates, automated scaling policies, and self-healing capabilities." Stop treating cloud infrastructure like it needs constant attention. The best infrastructure is the one you forget exists.

Your engineers will HATE this post. But it just might save your company. Your engineers are committing startup SUICIDE and you're paying them to do it. A founder I meet "We have 4 months of runway left and our product is nowhere near ready." I reviewed their GitHub and found something terrifying: Their best engineers had spent 6 weeks building INTERNAL TOOLS that no customer would ever see: • Admin dashboards • Support ticket workflows I opened Retool during our call and rebuilt their 80% admin system in 45 minutes. The founder went silent, then whispered: "We've burned $32,000 on something that costs $49 a month?" This is the silent killer that's draining your runway: Engineers LOVE building internal tools because: • Clean slate with no customer complaints • They control the entire experience • They can experiment with new tech • No one measures the ROI Meanwhile, your core product—the ONLY thing that generates revenue—sits gathering dust. "We perfected tools for our team while our customers got nothing." The math is brutal: • 6 weeks of engineering time = ~$35,000 • Retool + templates for a year = ~$1,200 • Delayed market entry = DEATH Every day your engineers spend on internal tools is a day closer to running out of money. I've helped startups recover from this exact mistake: 1. Freeze all internal tool development IMMEDIATELY 2. Use Retool for admin interfaces ($49/mo) 3. Use Metabase for analytics ($85/mo) 4. Buy templates for everything else ($79 one-time) 5. Focus 100% of engineering on customer-facing features If your engineers are building beautiful dashboards while your product roadmap falls behind, you're watching your startup die in slow motion. Your engineers will HATE this post. But it just might save your company. FOUNDERS: What percentage of your engineering time went to internal tools last month? Comment below. The answers might shock you. That is why at @softaims_ we build revenue-generating features first for startups. We know your runway depends on it.

We replaced a restaurant's entire order staff with AI last month. No app. No website updates. Just WhatsApp/Sms and our custom AI engine. Their revenue jumped 1.3x in a month. Initial call: THEM: "We want a mobile app for ordering. Everyone has one." US: "Your customers don't want another app they'll delete in 3 days." THEM: "But our competitors..." US: "Let's meet your customers where they already are." We built their entire ordering system into WhatsApp/Sms instead. Now customers just text: "I want a pepperoni pizza with extra cheese and a Coke" The AI: -  Interprets the order -  Processes payment using stored cards -  Sends to kitchen -  Updates loyalty points -  Remembers preferences for next time No app download. No account creation. No friction. The CEO called yesterday: "You know why I like you more than random dev shops? They just build what I ask for without questioning - they use no brain." This is why we say: "We hire people who think like CEOs and execute like CTOs." Three questions I wish more founders would ask dev shops: 1. When was the last time you told a client their idea wouldn't work? 2. What percentage of your projects actually achieve the business outcomes they were meant to? 3. Can your team name my top 3 competitors and explain how they make money?

I just found 17 bugs in 90 seconds on an app that cost £180,000 and 18 months to build. A founder just showed me his app after burning £180,000 and 18 MONTHS of development.- It crashed when I opened it. 2.6 stars on the App Store. 8 team members. ZERO paying customers. "I don't know where all the money went," he told me. I do. Your founder friends won't tell you this. Your developers definitely won't. But I will: Building two separate apps (iOS + Android) is burning money. This founder built EVERYTHING twice. Every feature, every fix, every update - paid for TWICE. "We need the proper development process" is the most expensive lie in startups. This founder had FIVE handoffs before a line of code was written: Founder → Designer → CTO → Project Manager → Developer His part-time CTO became a £100,000 bottleneck. Every decision, every pull request, every API change sat waiting for days while the meter ran on 8 salaries. He spent 90% of his capital on development before getting a SINGLE paying customer. The remaining £20K won't even buy enough ads to validate if people want this product. The most painful part? I downloaded his app and found 17 obvious bugs in 90 seconds. His users found them too — hence the 2.6 star rating. The pattern I've seen in 31 founders who failed: 1. Non-technical founder starts with big vision 2. Hires too many developers too early 3. Part Time CTO becomes bottleneck for decisions 4. Development drags on for months with no launch 5. Finally launches buggy product that users hate 6. Runs out of money before finding product-market fit We could have built a better MVP for £40K and spent the remaining £150K on marketing to find ACTUAL users. Now he's trying to raise another £190K just to fix what should have worked the first time. Here's what no one else will tell you: Your first version should be embarrassingly simple. That's not a bug, it's a FEATURE. Your roadmap is worthless until real users validate it. The market punishes perfection and rewards speed. If your MVP costs more than £50K or takes longer than 90 days, you're building the wrong product. What's the most wasteful development spend you've seen?

We analyse 11 startups that RAISED pre-seed FUNDING in 2024. The MVPs that raised the MOST money had the LEAST code. Here's the exact "No-Code to Pre Seed" method our clients are using: 1. The "5-5-5 Validator" -  Build 5 landing pages (different value props) -  Run 5 days of minimal ad spend ($50/day) -  Take the top 5 converters to customer calls 2. The "Demo Hack" -  Create a Figma prototype of ONLY your core value prop -  Record 3 actual customer reactions (unedited) -  Show these videos to investors BEFORE your demo 3. The "Fake Door Framework" -  Build your pricing page FIRST -  Add "Buy Now" buttons that lead to waitlist signup -  Bring these conversion metrics to investor pitches When founder told investors: "I'm raising to build what these 183 people already tried to buy." You are giving investors no brainier offer Most technical founders do the opposite: -  Perfect code, no customers -  Elegant architecture, no validation -  Complete feature set, no evidence of demand Investors fund proof of demand, not proof of engineering skill. Need help implementing this approach? Comment "MVP"

Tech Founders for you The market doesn't give a sh*t about your microservices. Your customers don't care about your Kubernetes cluster. Your investors aren't impressed by your "clean architecture". They care about one thing: SHIPPING. FEATURES. THAT. MAKE. MONEY.

Learn to avoid feature creep.

Tired of seeing everyone get rich with AI apps? Every month someone's launching a new viral AI app and making bank. Meanwhile, you're stuck watching from the sidelines. Most of these money-making apps are just ChatGPT wrappers. While you're grinding 80+ hours a week, these app creators are making money in their sleep. But here's the good news - you can do it too. Here's how to cash in on the trend: 1/ Don't build from scratch. Build on top of what's already working. 2/ Find winning ideas (look on acquire[.]com, ycombinator[.]com, & sensortower[.]com for inspiration) 3/ Wrap it in a slick, user-friendly interface (use @lovable, @boltdotnew or @bubble for no-code/low-code solutions or hire offshore devs from @softaims_ at a fraction of the cost) 4/ Go all-in on distribution (most apps fail because no one sees them) Truth is, most successful AI apps aren't doing anything new. They're just better positioned and distributed. Remember: Execution > Originality We've helped many founders build their AI apps. What's stopping you? While you're reading this, someone else is building their app.

For 7 years I've built 53+ MVPs for startups. Today I'm burning the entire playbook. The term "MVP" is dead. We now build MSPs. Minimum Sellable Products. A founder showed me his dev quotes: $64K for an app that would take 6 months to build. We delivered his MSP for $9,400. In 22 days. He signed his first paying customer 48 hours later. The difference? We threw out everything - No backend (just Supabase) - No custom design (Tailwind components only) - No authentication system (magic links via email) - No billing system (manual payment links) MVPs are about building products. MSPs are about making sales. Here's the MSP framework: 1. Find ONE painful problem 2. Solve it with proven tech stacks 3. Strip away everything else 4. Get someone to pay for it immediately That's why 90% of our MSPs cost under $10K. Most dev shops sell development hours. We sell speed to revenue. Traditional dev shops hate this message. It threatens their business model. But I'm tired of watching founders waste runway on over-engineered products. What's the ONE core function your users would pay for today? That's your MSP. Everything else can wait.

In 2011, a tiny YC startup called Wufoo was acquired for $35 million. They had raised only $118,000 in funding. Their return to investors? 29,000%. While everyone else was following the "raise millions and burn cash" playbook. Wufoo's three founders built a company that defied startup logic: -  10 employees total -  No office (everyone remote) -  Profitable within 9 months -  500,000+ users at acquisition -  Support Response time of 7-12 MINUTES The secret? They made their ENGINEERS do CUSTOMER SUPPORT. Every Wufoo engineer, including the founders, spent one FULL day every week doing customer support. - The engineers initially hated it. - The investors thought it was insane. But here's what happened: → Engineers fixed bugs immediately after answering the same question 3 times, engineers would stop everything and fix the root cause. → Engineers built features users actually needed (not what looked good in demos) → They redesigned their documentation ONCE and support tickets dropped 30% THE NEXT DAY → When users struggled with a feature, developers would simplify it instead of explaining it Simply put: Engineers who talk to customers build different products. They optimize for user experience, not technical elegance. The lesson from Wufoo's $35M exit isn't complicated. Remove the barriers between the people who build the product and the people who use it. Want to build something people love? DM me I can help you.

Here’s how you can use famous AI tools to deploy your products faster: 1) Use Perplexity AI for research. 2) Use ChatGPT to turn that research into a clear plan. 3) Use v0 .dev to design your product 4) Use Cursor to write the code. 5) Use Claude to fix bugs. All of this? Costs about $100/month.

Real value for real users. MVP is not just a bare minimum app. It’s about creating something that people truly want. MVP means Minimum Viable Product. The key word is viable. If no one uses it, it’s not viable. Start SMALL but focus on what matters. User #1 is more important than feature #20. The only test that counts is if anyone cares enough to come back. Build something users want. Listen to their needs. Don’t waste time on what no one cares about. The goal is to create value. Ask yourself if your product solves a real problem. Quick thoughts on building a successful MVP: - Identify user needs. Are you solving a real issue? - Focus on core features. What do users really want? - Test early and often. Are people coming back? Whatever you do, make sure you are creating something that matters. That’s the only way to succeed.

We analyzed the tech stacks of 17 successful AI startups that raised $120M+ in 2024. This is what ACTUALLY correlates with fundraising success: 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗱: • Next.js dominated (13/17 startups) • Tailwind CSS for styling (11/17) • 4 used ShadCN UI components • 3 used Chakra UI • TypeScript was universal 𝗕𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗲𝗻𝗱: • Python with FastAPI (8/17) • Node.js with Express (6/17) • 3 used Go for performance-critical microservices • PostgreSQL was the primary database (10/17) • Most used a combination of SQL + vector DBs (Pinecone/Weaviate) 𝗗𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗼𝘆𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: • 11/17 deployed on AWS • 5 chose Vercel + AWS combination • CI/CD with GitHub Actions (14/17) • Docker was universal, Kubernetes was rare (only 3/17) • 13/17 used serverless for at least part of their stack 𝗔𝗜 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: • 14/17 used OpenAI APIs as primary models • 5 used Anthropic's Claude for specific features • 6 fine-tuned models on their own data • Only 2 deployed their own open-source LLMs Most interestingly, the data showed ZERO correlation between technology sophistication and funding success. What DID correlate? • Time to initial user feedback (strongest correlation) • Weekly deployment frequency • Time from idea to revenue Our client who raised $500K built on: • FastAPI backend with PostgreSQL + pgvector • Next.js frontend with Tailwind • LangChain for AI orchestration • OpenAI API with fine-tuned RAG • Vercel for frontend, AWS Lambda for backend Build cost: $25K Time to market: 6 weeks What they DIDN'T waste time on: • Complex microservices architecture • Training custom foundation models • Custom UI frameworks • Premature optimization for scale TAKEAWAY: The founders who raised successfully concentrated engineering hours on their core AI differentiation, not rebuilding infrastructure that already exists. What's your experience with early-stage AI stacks? Have you seen similar patterns?

Only 18% of first-time founders succeed. Let that sink in. After working with hundreds of founders, I’ve noticed 7 key differences in that elite 18%: 1/ They launch fast. The 18% ship MVPs in 2-3 months, gather real customer feedback, and iterate quickly. They don’t wait for perfection. 2/ They know their numbers. From Day 1, they obsess over CAC, LTV, margins, and burn rate - not just growth at all costs. 3/ They ship early. The successful founders embrace imperfections. Early adopters forgive mistakes, and real usage data beats assumptions 4/ They stay lean. The 18% hire only when necessary. Until then, they outsource and use contractors to keep burn rates low. 5/ They manage runway wisely. They raise money before they need it and keep 18-24 months of runway to avoid desperation. 6/ They prioritize customer development. The successful founders talk to 100+ customers before writing a single line of code. They listen, learn, and adjust. 7/ They find the right partners. They know complementary skills and emotional support are crucial. Solo founders struggle 3x more. Success isn’t about having the best product. It’s about execution, learning quickly, and avoiding these common mistakes. Are you doing the work the other 82% aren’t willing to do?