Dani Pralea

bought 5 domains for one product.

syd.ac - for url shortening and link in bio
sydium.com - the main one
sydium.io - because .io is mandatory apparently
sydium.net - in case someone squats it
thesydium.com - I don't even remember why

do I need an intervention

The nitty-gritty recovery

5 months of non-stop building. zero days off.

yesterday I got called for a "quick" 4x4 recovery. turned into 8 hours in the mud and snow.

sometimes the break you need finds you.

70% of building an AI content tool is telling AI what NOT to do. Built a 170-phrase ban list, blocked emoji bullet lists entirely, 3 commits fixing skeleton hands. The bar isn't "does it work?" It's "would you be embarrassed?"

Anyone else building AI tools and finding the same ratio? #buildinpublic

Building an AI content tool but added "anti-slop rules" — if my AI writes "Ever wondered..." or "game-changer" it gets rejected.

Most AI features are easy to build. Making them not embarrassing is the hard part.

good call on linkedin - forgot those still feed into topic pages. twitter niche tech is the one place I still see them work too. maybe the answer is platform-specific, not kill it entirely

fair point - bluesky is the exception right now. discovery here still feels more hashtag-driven than algorithmic. might need to keep it as an option

Removed hashtag generation from my AI content tool.

Hot take: hashtags are mostly useless now. Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn - all use content understanding for discovery, not hashtag matching.

Yet creators still stuff 30 hashtags in every post. Am I wrong?

#buildinpublic

Day 21 of building Sydium.

New landing page is live.

Before: 9 feature cards, 8 platform logos, 28 "additional features"

After: 3 outcomes, 1 demo, 1 CTA

Removed 80% of the content.

The page feels empty to me.
But I built it for users, not for me.

Will report back with conversion data.

Day 20 of building in public

Rewrote the landing page from scratch.

The scary part: removing fake testimonials and vanity metrics.

Now it's persona-based (Creator vs Agency) with real numbers only.

Honest marketing > manufactured trust.

#buildinpublic

Day 19 of building in public

Found a sneaky bug: scheduled Reels were publishing as regular photos 🙃

The post type wasn't mapping correctly to Instagram's API. Fixed.

Also squashed a bunch of auth race conditions and reliability bugs.

#buildinpublic

built a time tracker that doesn't feel like a time tracker.

- slack bot logs your hours automatically
- AI writes your time entry descriptions
- invoices generate themselves

2 years of building this thing quietly. finally talking about it.

wyndscape.com

Day 17 of building in public

32 commits. One mission: get AI Autopilot ready for beta.

It generates social posts based on your brand voice, queues them for review, and posts on your schedule.

Today: polished the queue UI, added notifications, fixed 10+ edge cases.

#buildinpublic

Day 16 of building in public

Shipped AI Autopilot this week.

You set the goals, brand voice, and topics.
AI generates content, schedules posts, and optimizes based on performance.

Also this week:
→ Sales CRM for tracking prospects
→ White-label client portals
→ YouTube competitor tracking

Week 2 of building Sydium in public.

What happened:

✅ Shipped:
- Referral program
- Landing page redesign
- Comparison Pages

📚 Learned:
- Agencies want outcomes, not features
- Cold email at my stage = waste of time
- Building in public > building in private

Day 13 of building Sydium.

Cold emailing agencies: 200 sent, 3 demos, 0 sales.

What went wrong:

1. Wrong market (Romania )
2. Wrong approach
3. Wrong positioning

Pivoting to:
- Global market
- Self-serve
- Outcome-focused

Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing to find the right thing.

if you're bad at writing your own bio (same), i made a thing

pick platform + role + tone → get 3 bio variations that fit the character limit

been using it for my own profiles tbh

sydium.com/free-tools/bio-generator

#buildinpublic

Day 12 of building Sydium.

Shipped: Referral program.

"Invite a friend → Get 500 tokens"
"Your friend → Gets 200 bonus tokens"

Why tokens instead of discounts?

Discounts feel like you're losing money.
Tokens feel like you're gaining power.

Psychology matters more than math in growth.

free AI hashtag generator that actually categorizes results

enter your topic + platform → get hashtags sorted by:
- high volume (reach)
- medium (balance)
- niche (targeted)

first generation is free, no email

sydium.com/free-tools/hashtag-generator

#buildinpublic

Unpopular opinion: Most AI content tools make your content worse.

Here's why:

Generic AI = Generic content = Invisible in the feed

Feed it your best posts. Let it learn your:
- Word choices
- Sentence patterns
- Emoji style
- Hook structures

Then it sounds like you, not a robot.

made a free "best time to post" calculator

pick your platforms → see a heatmap of when engagement peaks by hour and day

built it because i got tired of googling the same thing every week

no account needed

sydium.com/free-tools/best-time-to-post

#buildinpublic

Day 10 of building Sydium.

15 years of coding trained me to solve problems with code.
Not with conversations.

So I built marketing that doesn't require me to sell:
- Product that markets itself (viral loops)
- Content that demos for me (YouTube)
- Communities where I help, not pitch

built a free character counter for social media

paste your caption → see if it fits instagram, tiktok, linkedin, twitter, youtube, facebook, pinterest, threads - all at once

green = good
yellow = getting long
red = over limit

sydium.com/free-tools/character-counter

#buildinpublic

Day 9 of building Sydium.

15 years as a programmer taught me to add features.

Building a business is teaching me to hide them.

Counterintuitive:
- More features ≠ More sales
- More features = More confusion
- More features = Longer sales cycle

The best products feel simple, even when they're not

Day 8 of building Sydium.

Feedback from agencies was right:
"Your app is too bloated."

They didn't mean delete features.
They meant: stop SHOWING all the features.

Lesson: What you build ≠ What you market.

Currently redesigning the landing page to show 3 outcomes instead of 30 features.

Day 7 building Sydium in public

shipped 4 new automation triggers:
→ story mentions
→ DM keywords
→ first engagement (new followers/first interaction)
→ lead stage changes (auto-message when someone goes from cold to warm)

automations are becoming actually useful now

#BuildInPublic

Thanks! Started as an iOS dev myself (12+ years), so always cool to connect with fellow SwiftUI devs. KeepHer sounds fun - good luck with it!

Day 6 of building Sydium in public 🎬

Just shipped AI video generation - from text prompts AND images.

Generate videos, browse your library, download or delete. All in one place.

None of my competitors offer this. It's a genuine differentiator and I'm super proud of it.

#buildinpublic

Day 5 of building in public

Sydium now auto-selects vertical videos for Reels & TikTok.

Small UX win — the app should just know what format you need.

18 commits today: responsive fixes, TikTok fixes, E2E tests.

#buildinpublic