What's the one thing you hate doing as a founder/builder (but still have to)?
What’s that one task you always end up doing but really wish you didn’t have to?
For me, it’s the scrappy stuff like cold outreach or chasing feedback (and getting no reply). It's essential, but always pulls me away from deeper work.
What about you?
What's your annoying-but-necessary task.
How do you deal with it? Got any creative ways to make it bearable or even fun? 😅
Replies
Just took a look through my task tracker from the past quarter (I've delegated a lot of this):
online profile management (testimonial updates, info updates, etc.
ad creative creation (I either do SUPER simple ads, or pay someone to make them)
lead follow up
market research (whatever that means)
How I handle it
Delegation is a big one
Using chatgpt to suggest ways to automate/reduce time spent on these tasks
Task batching
Sucking it up and doing it lol
Posting marketing content in the early days always results in little feedback. But you have to stick with it that way until changes occur.
Reading email, following up, managing my own time and tasks.
I got a VA to help me
Ainee
To be honest, as a developer, self-promotion is something I'm not good at and a bit afraid of. Trying to connect with strangers and asking others to use or help promote my products has always been quite challenging for me.
@eric_jin01 Hi Eric — really appreciate your honesty about self-promotion. It’s something many builders quietly struggle with. I’m Nadia Opoku, Product Listing Director at Probe AI, Inc., and I’d love to learn more about your product journey. If you’re open to it, I’d be happy to chat or help spotlight your work in a low-pressure way. Connect with me on LinkedIn. Looking forward to hearing from you. You can reply here to engage with me.
Having to be patient... I guess the social media world made us used to instant gratification, and then, in the founders journey, things move very very slowly at the beginning.
@dg_ Absolutely and I agree. That patience gap between social media pace and the founder’s journey are so real. I’m Nadia Opoku, Product Listing Director at Probe AI, Inc. Would love to hear more about what you’re building and how you’re navigating the early stretch. How do I find you on LinkedIn, so we talk more if that is ok with you? I have shared my Link on this post page just in case you want to reach out.
Product Hunt
Reading my email
@steveb haha, I second this.
I don't hate it, but I don't enjoy it the most. :D
It's social media for me. I'm now getting some support, but before that, I was really lost :D
@laura_cornely Hi Laura, I really felt that! Social media can be overwhelming, especially when you’re trying to build and be seen. I’m Nadia Opoku, Product Listing Director at Probe AI, Inc. I’d love to hear more about your product journey sometime. You’ve come a long way! You can connect we me on LinkedIn too. Looking for forward to hearing from you. Please, I have shared my link in the comments for this post.
It has also been Cold outreach and follow ups. I tried automating it, but when you are in the initial phases its really hard to do it, because you dont know whats working and whats not.
Other would be creating Linkedin posts, I love doing it, but when I don't see good number of impressions and comments, it then drops the motivation.
@nischal_kanishk Whoa, you really on to something, I hear you. Cold outreach in the early phase can feel like guessing with your eyes closed. And yes, putting effort into posts and getting crickets in return really messes with motivation. I’m Nadia Opoku, Product Listing Director at Probe AI, Inc. Would love to hear more about your journey and what you’re building! Would you like me to reach out on LinkedIn?
@nadia_opoku Surely Nadia!
minimalist phone: creating folders
There are still some administrative (bureaucracy) around some stuff. And maybe it is just my aversion from the secondary school :D
👋🏾 Hi AI builders and founders — I’m Nadia Opoku, Product Listing Director at Probe AI, Inc.
We’re mapping out the life cycles of upcoming AI products, and I’m especially interested in how founders are navigating pre-launch to post-launch. If you're building something and launching soon, I’d love to learn more about your journey — what’s working, what’s not, and what insights you’ve gathered along the way.
Drop a comment or DM me — let’s connect! https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadia-opoku/ Thank you.
What I dislike the most, yet often have to do, is informing users about the delay in our release. While this might sound like a niche issue, it’s quite common for us given the uncertainties in our development progress.
Kalyxa
Cold outreach and endless follow-ups for me too. It’s like spinning plates, but I try to turn it into a quick game—set timers, celebrate small wins when someone replies. Helps keep it from dragging.
Nadia got more engagement on this thread than Nina herself 🤣
I'm doing it for the first time. So, I don't like figuring out the best vendor/tool based on my use case. As I need to explore multiple and land on one. I've exhaustively used chat gpt, but it still just shows the popular things not the more correct for my use case.