Introduction
Meet Thomas
Thomas had already lived a full career as a materials engineer. He'd spent 23 years at a major car company in Germany - comfortable, stable, but ultimately suffocating.
But the corporate world was suffocating him. He needed the freedom to build something that mattered.
So he quit.
The pressure was real: Thomas had maybe a year, possibly two. That was his runway.
When he left his corporate job in July, he started chasing a text expander app that worked cross-platform.
He personally struggled with keeping text snippets synced across his devices. It was annoying… So he figured others must have the same problem.
He'd already taken my React Native Mastery course and the technical stuff wasn't the issue.
The issue was everything else.
Why Thomas joined
Thomas understood something important: isolation kills startups.
"I have so many ideas," he said. "Getting started in the right direction... it's like you want to go on vacation and you have to select which beach or which city to visit."
Paradox of choice. Too many options, no clear path forward.
What Thomas needed was someone to tell him: "Stop. This idea isn't it. Let's find something better."
The Incubator gave him direct pushback when his ideas weren't working, weekly accountability to keep moving forward, and a community of founders in the same boat.
The 10-week timeline forced a decision: ship something real, or keep researching forever.
The problem: too many ideas, not enough users
When Thomas joined the Incubator, he'd just finished building his landing page for the text expander idea. He'd analyzed competitors like TextExpander, which supposedly made $6-8 million annually.
But when we searched App Store keywords together, terms like "text expand" or "snippet sync"… We found almost nothing.
He was trying to build something Apple already gave people for free.
"That's what makes me worry," I told him. "You're going to build something very nicely from a technical perspective and struggle finding users."
"Do you have any other ideas?" I asked.
He did.
How we went from text snippets to Change Happens
Man… I was strict.
But sometimes you just can’t sugarcoat. We only have 10 weeks.
And we cannot make them go to waste.
First call about the text expander, I was direct: "I'm not sure if there is demand for these kind of things."
We talked about other ideas.
He'd been thinking about web monitoring. He needed a way to keep up with changes in the AI world:
- New model releases.
- New features.
- New opportunities.
He'd discovered Perplexity's search API. For just $5, you could get tokens for a thousand requests. It was cheap, fast, and could return structured data.
We talked through use cases. Tracking AI model changelogs. Monitoring security breaches. Finding new research papers. Watching for concert tour announcements.
The idea wasn't perfect. But it was better.
"I love it, to be honest," I told him. "I really love it."
Thomas moved fast. Within a week, he had a landing page for "Change Happens."
The Hardest Part: Finding Users
Around week 3, Thomas launched Change Happens. The product worked. You could configure custom prompts and get daily digests.
But nobody was signing up.
"Well, marketing is hard," Thomas said, his voice heavy.
He'd posted on Reddit, X, Indie Hackers. He'd prepared blog posts about finding SaaS ideas based on AI changelogs.
"How many signups?" I asked.
"I'm getting more visitors when I market actively. But no signups or paying users."
There it was. Thomas could build. He could ship. But he couldn't get people to care.
What advice did Adam Lyttle give to Thomas
We brought in Adam Lyttle for a coffee chat with the cohort. Thomas showed him Change Happens.
Adam's first question: who would actually use this?
If it's a Swiss Army knife that does everything, people get lost trying to figure out what it means for their specific situation.
He pulled up PodScan.fm as an example. It does one thing, scans podcasts for product mentions.
Thomas asked the question eating at him: "How do I know when it's time to move on to another app idea?"
Adam was direct: "If you're charging for it and no one's using it, the use case hasn't worked out. Finding that use case is key."
Adam suggested:
- removing the paywall
- get feedback
- find the one use case that clicks.
There is always a way.
The marketing mountain
Thomas tried everything.
He worried people were ignoring him because he was posting too often.
I pushed back.
His goal was to find the audience - filtering people out wasn't the problem. The problem was talking too generally about what Change Happens could do.
The real issue: Thomas was caught between being a German engineer who wanted everything perfect and being a startup founder who needed to move fast.
"For me, it feels like standing on the marketplace and asking for money," he admitted.
I told him about going to the gym at 6 AM for a year.
Never wanting to go, but showing up anyway.
Startups are the same - you believe in the process and do it every single day, even when you don't want to, even when you don't see results.
What Thomas learned
By the end of the Incubator, Thomas had shipped Change Happens. It was live. But he'd learned:
1. Building is easy. Finding users is the real work. Before: 70% time building, 30% marketing Now: Understanding it should be flipped
2. Technical complexity doesn't equal value. "The hardest part is not building applications. The hardest part is distribution."
3. The Swiss Army knife problem. Change Happens could do anything - which meant it was for everyone, which really meant it was for no one.
4. Accept uncertainty and enjoy the experiments. When I asked for his main takeaway: "Enjoy doing experiments and accept uncertainty."
Not "find THE perfect idea," but "try 10 things and see what sticks."
Where Thomas is now
Thomas is still working on Change Happens.
He learned his first product doesn't have to be his last.
The goal isn't picking the perfect idea on day one.
It's learning the full cycle so the next one goes faster.
"My next application is going to be 10 times faster," he said.
That's the real win: the skill of launching, understanding this is a long game.
If you’re interested joining Incubator - Apply here.
