Conquering the Fears of Online Presence 🎒
I'm Óscar, a founder-in-progress with an engineering background, a decade of software development experience, and a life-long passion for open-source software and helping people make the best out of their lives.
This, right now, is me throwing the bag over the fence; putting myself and my goals out here for a better chance of getting somewhere.
I'm working on building Railmap, a Service-as-a-Product oriented studio focused in delivering Agentic AI integrations through fixed-scope development sprints. Right now, I have nothing yet out there to promote my services.
By the end of this week, there'll be a website at https://railmap.systems with the offering and sprint-booking functionality. You can perfectly call me out if it isn't by then ;) it'd be a huge deal to me knowing that someone worried about it.
The reason for me to build Railmap is to have it as the income-making foundation for building products that empower people with healthy ambitions.
Leading the product backlog is Yaoki. The name comes from the japanese proverb "七転び八起き" (nanakorobi yaoki; fall seven times and stand up eight), which means that, regardless of what life throws at you, what matters it to get back up and keep going. The purpose of Yaoki is to serve as a cost-efficient executive coach (avg. hourly rate for an executive coach is about $350, which is prohibitely expensive to a lot of people, including me).
In the short-term (i.e. 2025 Q2 to me), my efforts will go into making Railmap a valuable, sustainable company. Sustainable enough to also launch Yaoki for the first time, and see for myself if it really is as useful as I believe, and helps people push towards their goals with confidence.
If I could (very selfishly) ask something from the people reading this, that'd be to share their impressions; whether you've found value in my message, or noticed there's something I could be doing better.
For those of you that also find having an online presence to be dreadful, know that I'm 100% supporting you, go for it. Share your stories with me, and rest assured that I know how big of an effort is to make yourself public.
As I'm finished redacting and about to submit, there's one more thing I've got to say - my fear and nervousness feel more like a thrill now.
Replies
Product Hunt
I'm excited for what you'll learn from putting these products out there, and happy that you took this step, the first of many!
initial thoughts:
1) I'm not sure I understand the whole service is a product trend. I'm a big believer that if it's a service, it should look like a service and be clearly a service.
2) I'm really intrigued by the Executive Coach app. I've benefited immensely from coaching, but also know it's cost-prohibitive for most people. The thing I'm most interested in is how you yourself are using it and what it's helping unlock for you!
@rajiv_ayyangar thanks for reading and commenting!
Regarding your thoughts:
My rationale behind offering development services as if they were products comes from the intention to emphasise that these services are standardized - they have strict requirements for scope and time, are formed around the concept of sprints, and include opinionated choices for a significant subset of the tech stack.
SaaS products are naturally perceived as deterministic, given that their pricing, capabilities, etc. are clearer to reason about, and unexpected, "all of a sudden" situations rarely occur.
Therefore, it's highly appealing to marketise services in Railmap as such, as a significant part of the value proposition comes from favoring transparency and reducing uncertainty over feature flexibility and choice.
Having said that, I totally get your point. There's a chance this approach could be more confusing than just following the beaten path. Not knowing whether this premise will hold actually motivates me to try and see for myself! And as soon as I can conclude otherwise, I'll pivot the offering approach immediately.
It's great to hear there's interest in this concept! There are probably two main things coaches provide that I personally find invaluable, especially for mental health and the social, intrinsic need for validation and being acknowledged we all need:
A good coach will reach out to you to keep track of your daily progress, your goals, and your mental state. And will motivate you to stand up and fight if you're struggling to keep going. Fitness coaches are especially keen on doing this.
Coaches are also there to listen what you're going through, especially when you need to share your frustration during overwhelming, difficult situations. And, with proper advice, they get clients to regain their confidence, feel empowered, and help manage any emotional crisis.
My current setup could hardly be considered a product, which is the reason I want to build Yaoki as the actual thing. Essentially, it works like this: I have a task scheduler connected to my calendar that identifies specific checkpoints throughout my day. At these predetermined times, an AI assistant (powered by an LLM) automatically initiates a conversation with me - checking in on my progress, offering support, and helping me stay accountable, much like a human coach would.
This prototype is already helping me tremendously. I can definitely notice the difference between days when I use it and days when I don't. Not only does it help me get things done, but it's also helping me maintain healthy habits and work/life boundaries.