How has AI actually helped (or not helped) your startup journey?
Hey folks 👋
We’re living in the golden age of AI tools — from idea generation to design, marketing, customer support, dev workflows, and even fundraising decks.
But I’m super curious... how are YOU actually using AI in your business?
What’s genuinely worked for you?
What turned out to be overhyped?
Any specific tools you swear by — or ditched entirely?
And if you're building something yourself with AI, how's that journey been?
Would love to hear your story — wins, struggles, pivots, all of it.
Let’s make this a useful (and honest) thread for anyone building with AI in 2025 🚀
Drop your experiences 👇
Replies
We launched our AI tool ranking platform, @RankmyAI (Beta), today here on Product Hunt. We've been using AI extensively, from automatically generating tool descriptions and extracting features to classifying tools across categories.
We also rely on AI for content creation: insight articles, AI country reports, social media posts, and more. It’s amazing to see how much more productive we’ve become with AI compared to just three years ago.
That said, we also see how important it is to keep the human in the loop. We manually inspect AI-generated data, make corrections where needed, and continuously adjust our algorithms and workflows. All content generated with the help of AI starts with an idea from someone on our team (and a detailed outline/prompt). We remain the architects and we stay in control.
Dragula
@jesse_weltevreden
Insightful, after all AI is an extension of your team not a replacement.
What type of tools have worked out for you? Any tips?
Also all the best for your product launch. 🚀
minimalist phone: creating folders
Now, testing AI videos so it shrinks the time for production – instead of waiting 4 or 5 days for a UGC creator, we create something in less than day so we can run ads and test it right away :)
Dragula
@busmark_w_nika Woah, that's like almost 1/5th of the time. Which tool are you using?
minimalist phone: creating folders
@sarthology The tool is called "Mirage" :)
Dragula
@busmark_w_nika Good to know. *saved in the list
Hi Sarthak,
Thanks for starting this insightful thread! In my startup journey, AI has been a game-changer, especially in automating customer support and personalizing marketing campaigns. Tools like ChatGPT have helped draft content quickly and brainstorm ideas, saving tons of time. However, I found some AI design tools a bit overhyped—the results sometimes lack the nuance a human touch provides, so I still rely on designers for final tweaks.
One tool I swear by is Jasper for content generation; it’s surprisingly good at maintaining brand voice. On the flip side, some early-stage AI analytics platforms promised deep insights but ended up being too generic or complicated to integrate smoothly.
For those building AI-powered products, the biggest challenge has been managing user expectations around AI capabilities and ensuring data privacy. But overall, AI has accelerated many workflows and opened new creative possibilities.
Looking forward to hearing others’ experiences!
It gives the oportunity to my webapp to ba able to undestand concept from image (grocery receipt) and make it into a fromat (json format) that can be used