You have to allow people start using the app without creating accounts. Any accounts at all to try it out.
The first thing I learn about this app on the landing page - is that it's going to be a business and what it's pricing plans are.
This is before me being SOLD on the damn thing to begin with.
So the order the app introduces itself is:
1. Pricing (it's a SAAS)
2. Asks to create an account.
3. The user here closes the tab somewhere here, unless they apriori know they want whatever it is you're offering. Or they have been sold this from word of mouth.
The order it should be in:
1. Oh, wow, this is cool. I like this, this is exactly what I need. So lets create an account to save the things I've already created here while playing around.
2. As you create account, introduce user to pricing plans and extras you get from a paid account.
She appears to be a very good product developer. However, unless the hypothetical VC knows more about their upcoming plan, it doesn't look like a fundable business with a strong moat and the potential to become a unicorn or larger business.
It's amazing to see someone at 16 already capable of creating a project like this, seriously, you're so talented! Keep it up, you’ve got a long way to go.
For the last few months I've been using notebooklm.google.com.
I can't see anything better from this site/ author...is there something I'm missing? Tried youtube to see it in action...nothing.
On a privacy note, item 4 of the privacy link states: You can request deletion of your data by contacting us at [email address].
So if, in the future, something happens...what then? Seems like a lot of info [for me] to give out, but no future, cast iron, guarantees.
What if something happens to williamcranna2008@gmail.com?
Do you mean if I stop working on this project? The only info being stored is your email. All notes and uploads aren’t stored anywhere and when you delete a note they are gone forever. Ai doesn’t store them either as they only see the info temporarily.
The user images look AI-generated, based on e.g. the fingers in https://www.notiv.app/lovable-uploads/9224843e-e523-4691-951... I think this is inherently dishonest because it's made to look like they're real users. Is the image and testimonial from "Conner" on the Features page also fake?
I thought "toi la mot con Lua" was French for "You, the word with Lua!", the well-known, but not to me, scripting bible.
Turns out I misread the Unicode, and it is actually "Tôi Là Một Con Lừa", which is Vietnamese for "I am a donkey", which probably makes it suitable reading material for yours truly.
you seem smart. why waste your life on this superficial startup nonsense? you still have time to change directions and work towards something important. it's hard to change directions after you've made startup money.
That's cute 30 pages a month for 5 bucks, you may be interested in ab testing depending on the study level of the students, university usually requires way more pages per month, but 15 bucks to get unlimited seems too high imo.
(and unlimited may generate for you too high costs ;))
I managed to sign up to the free version (by altering the URL to not point to localhost) and I uploaded a sample computer science exam paper. That's as far as I got though - its status is "Pending" (No idea what that means). There's a button with a play icon saying "Select" (No idea what that should do, it does nothing). The "Smart study assistant" doesn't work. I'd suggest fixing the functionality first, and then doing an audit on all the buttons in your main interface and login flow and removing as many buttons as you possibly can. Seems like it could be a good idea.
Thanks for the input, the flow goes from upload, to select the image you want to generate, then selecting the action you want to complete, then the note generates and show up in the saved materials section.
If you're using OpenAI or similar services to analyze notes, they typically retain data for model improvement, which contradicts your "never shared" claim unless you've negotiated special terms or implemented a proxy architecture that anonymizes content.
There appears to be a pattern of posts where "I'm 16 / 17 etc" as a prefix gets the hits. And rightly so!
It's very good that young people are engaged. It's encouraging for us grey beards interested in the future of technology and a healthy action for us old people to encourage younger people.
As my beard gets greyer so my pattern recognition library of samples gets bigger and it has recognised a "I'm 16" prefix to popular HN submissions!
I assume all these "I am 16" type posts are just ways to help market, unless the account exists for some time before the Show HN with clear evidence they are in high school (I have seen many younger people talk about high school internships, for example - if they then have a Show HN I will believe it!)
Even if they are 16 years old it's hard to imagine someone didn't at some point tell them to leverage the fact they are 16 years old. I don't know any teenager that wants to be seen as a teenager. They all want to be seen as an adult.
Right? Most teenagers would go through great lengths to assume an identity in their 20's at least. They spend their entire life thus far with age being a factor robbing them of credibility. Why now would they advertise what throughout life has been a thorn in thorn in their backside? Something they will have associated with a lack of perceived professionalism. Something associated with not being taken seriously.
to me the whole thing reeks of marketing ghouls. This reeks of a group of talentless marketing ghouls trying to launch an unoriginal vibecoded product but absuing our heartstrings.
Your "journey" as far as i can tell is just your marketing journey. Youve just joined two months ago, and show nothing much beyond marketing posts or requests for help with marketing.
not selling me on not being a bunch of old dudes using a kids image to sell a unsafe and poor quality product.
if you genuinly are a kid, i'd recommend not using your age as a selling factor. Thats something someone would do to appeal to other kids, but rarely to sell to a serious crowd. It would at best tug at heart strings and get attention but thats will work once, maybe twice. I'd make sure i have a really good product before i waste those free and easy marketing chances.
you're selling the 16 year old angle on HN, where 20 years old and younger represents about 2% of the demographic. You're getting an unusually high level of negative responses in comments as well, so I am curious, did you buy 'upvotes' for your post to boost it? I can't imagine such a disconnect between upvotes and comments arising from controversy, since the project isn't controversial, just unremarkable and somewhat amateur.
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To answer your question: Personally? I don't think so. When I was 16 I was aware of how little I knew, and knew that by virtue of units life lived vs units experience possible to have gained, there was likely little to nothing I knew sufficiently enough about to be relied on over most adults, with the exception of, at the time, tech. Then, this was only true given how niche it was, so niche most folks did not yet even have a computer or even internet access. If it was common place for folks to access, even that would not have been true. So for that reason, I saw no reason, it shouldn't also be true for my peers. For that reason I would give low weighting to whatever peers offered. For example, that one friend who claimed to have all the answers when it came to girls/women, why would you treat them as anything other than full of shit? Or that friend who might claim to know more on a topic than our teacher. While plausible in some domains, it is extremely unlikely in general like the know-it-all would have claimed and required a higher burden of proof than they could provide. That being said, this humility came from having constant reinforcement that my assumptions were overly simplistic, or outright wrong. This reinforcement tempered an otherwise self-indulgent world view and sense of self. I have to wonder how things like sycophantic AI influence this aspect of natural human development. Terrible ideas reinforced as world changing and awesome, ideas lacking in depth or nuance left not only unchallenged but outright reinforced and celebrated.
So, do I think kids would trust another kid to develop a worthwhile tool? Not in my generation, but perhaps kids in your cohort have a different attitude. They are inheriting a world on the brink of collapse due to mismanagement and are largely guided by sycophantic AI, and I have no illusion that this would breed a level of resentment and disregard for what older generations have to say / offer. You'd know better what kids your age would like and how they'd respond than I do by virtue of lived experience and my lack of insight on that demographic's wants/needs/perception of things, but if what was true for my cohort is true for yours, it would not help you sell your product.
I mean I got good feedback and only improved my app from this post, and got in contact with cool people. I’ll call it a win :). We can agree to disagree, your point is valid. And no I didn’t even know you could buy upvotes, I think the only people commenting are because I said I’m 16.
Congratulations on launching William. There's quite a bit of criticism here that'll help you refine your app I think. I'm working on a something similar and already learning from the discussion here around user experience and privacy. All the best.
I appreciate it! It’s bound to happen when it’s my first time launching an app. All criticism is good criticism, only up from here. Thanks for the comment!
Thanks, definitely had a few laughs when scrolling through the comments this morning. I’m happy you like my idea, and I hope to only improve upon it from here.
If you're actually 16, this is really nice and you are way ahead for your age, congrats :) You got a little stick here because some people have used this claim falsely for marketing and are actually not 16.
Because near everything about this appears to be a low effort scam. The gmail is to add to the "authenticity" of the scammer being 16, because this way they can add a presumed birthyear, wheras with domain email it would make no sense. Proof is in that the address williamcranna@gmail.com is avaliable, which would be the first thing a reasonable person would have tried, before adding the year like a dickhead.
Nah, I don't buy it. Theyre good enough at higher level skills / comprehension that such enormous failures in more foundational skills makes no sense.
the website advertises a product that makes use of web infrastructure signficantly more complex/sophisticated than webmail tied to your domain. It's a zero effort zero cost addon for most hosting services these days.
so either this whole thing is a LLM project, and the 16 year old just has their name and reputation as a biological human of young age propping up / hyping the llm based product, or its a scam.
bottom line. It's either unremarkable or untrustworthy, likely both.
> Nah, I don't buy it. Theyre good enough at higher level skills / comprehension that such enormous failures in more foundational skills makes no sense
It wouldn’t make sense for a scammer to make those mistakes either. So you’re not proving anything nefarious by pointing out those mistakes. All you’re proving is mistakes have been made.
You might be surprised to learn this, but people makes a lot of mistakes at the start of their career. And 16 is very early on.
I suspect there might have been some “vibe coding” going on, but that’s the worst criticism I’m willing to make. And even if I’m correct here, everyone has to start somewhere. I grew up with massive printed books, others on here learned from Stack Overflow. Vibe coding is only a problem if you don’t learn from it too.
I've already pointed out why a scammer might make this mistake - adding credibility to the "im 16" angle. lets take the HN account, created 9 days ago. No "2008" or anything of the sort. Only in the prominantly displayed email. Only to help support the lie that helps gain attention. It reeks.
It reeks of the marketing tactic along the lines of "my brother is autistic, here's my subpar contribution of "their" work to a subreddit dedicated to artisinal skills" and watch the karma roll on in for them, only to check their comment history and it being a clear case of karma whoring via lies.
this smells the same.
now, if i am wrong and its just a vibe coding thing, then the "im 16" part plays no role, it would be impressive if the 16 year old did this in a responsible way, but anyone can vibe code their way to such a product woth zero real skill or effort, making the "im 16" point lose the context underwhich it would be pertinent information.
Llm's have changed our world in many ways, this being one of them. Imagine someone asks some agentic llm framework a research question, and a series of unrelated tangents later this agentic framework solves a nobel prize worthy problem. Should the human get that prize? Of course not, it would otherwise recognize skills/brightness in a human who doesnt actually posses it.
If this isnt just a scam, then this would be no different.
last example. If someone posted, "im 16, here is my art portfolio" and its all AI generated content, would you care? Would it demand the same response as if this was a gallery of high quality and beautiful work, painted by hand? Of course not.
I do appreciate that your post is genuinely trying to come from a good place, but I can’t say I agree with any of it.
By that I don’t just mean the analysis of this specific submission but also your tangent points about AI. People have used tools to enable creativity for the entirety of human history. The definition of what tools are acceptable and which are cheating is a subjective one and often defined by the age of the person (ie what was the norm when you were in your 20s).
I’ve seen the same debates time and time again. Whether it’s Ableton vs vinyl (DJs), search engines vs directory listings (research), internet vs books (research), VSTi’s vs instruments (musicians), automatic vs manual shift (cars), Photoshop vs traditional photography effects, CGI vs animatronics (movies), I could go on and on.
Even dumb things like a central payment till in restaurants (eg McDonalds) was heavily criticised in the UK when it was new because the “correct” way to serve food was via table service…or so people over a certain age believed.
Most people hate change. I know because I’m old myself and have seen enough change first hand and how people react to it. But change doesn’t make a compelling argument for why this 16 year old shouldn’t be helped in their endeavours to build an app. Nor is it proof that this individual isn’t who they claim to be.
I also appreciate where you're coming from and it's likely we wont agree, due to a difference in fundamental values (neither being better imo, just different), but i value the discourse and world view broadening that conversations like this offer no less. So let me preface this with the fact i value your input and think your point is not just valid, but true if i allow myself to evaluate all this under a different value system.
that being said, even if i shift my values in this way, one problem remains - the nature of creativity.
so, under this value system tool use is irrelevant, if it makes creativity easier cool, doesnt diminish it non.
so lets evaluate this purely on a novelty / creativity angle.
marketing wise: tactic / style taken from a youtuber they reference in their twitter account
product: idea contributes jothing novel to a saturated space of ai learning tolls
tool use: tools used, and the way they were used, is about as basic as it gets
insight: no real novel or interesting insights into tool use, or the problem being solved
wholisitc interpretation: all together, what appears novel in all this, is applying a particular marketing strategty to hn, one that is usually aimed at children. This raises a few interesting questions about shifting demogrpahics on hn among other things, but this post is interesting in a meta way, not a direct way.
as an example, writing text like this, in a digital way, is not special anymore, by anyones reakoning - and yet if you apply this skill creatively, be it a story or poetry or solving a novel problem etc. Then that comment still has creative merit, even if the skills underlying it are no longer noteworthy. The same is true here, the skills underlying what was done are no longer noteworthy, and so we must evaluate on content alone. The content is derivative. So it stands on nothing.
You're right I have no coding skill. But testing out Lovable and bringing my idea to reality made me realize this is something I want to learn so I've already began taking a course learning how to code softwares of my own.
People should't be "scared" of these LLM's it's just a tool that shows coding to a wider audience.
That's a really positive outcome, one I am personally supportive of. Learning to code is a rewarding journey.
Now, while I am not scared of LLM's, I am scared for users who use them inappropriately.
I use LLM's extensively, and so I am intimately familiar with the dangers they pose to the uninitiated. I would HEAVILY caution against relying on LLM's until you can read and understand the code your asking LLM's to write comfortably.
Personally, I would recommend you first learn to code in a language of interest, then use LLM's to automate the stuff that has become second nature. The stuff you can pump out mindlessly. This takes the burden of monotonous tasks of your hands, and you have the expertise to check the LLM output for glaring issues. It's still not fully automated but it's much faster if you can write something complex, critical, or sensitive, while the LLM churns out boiler plate and routine chunks. You then comeback later and proof read the LLM output.
Trusting AI code you yourself don't understand is a recipe for disaster. You claim your users data will be private, but then have to rely on AI jank to keep this data safe, if it is even safe. It might just throw everything into publicly accessible folders. What happens when you promise safety, but don't actually provide any. What happens when a users data is then stolen? Who does the court hold accountable? you? the LLM you blindly trusted?
Appreciate it, I didn’t expect this post to get as much attention as it did, this is just a small idea I had. I didn’t think an email yet was necessary.
It might be more productive to explain how this scam works instead of dismissing my counter argument with an incorrectly used meme.
I really don’t see how a learning app for students who also frequent HN is a valuable enough demographic to target. And ironically, the red flags identified would be mistakes a scammer would know not to make.
Everything about this submission can be easily explained by inexperience but it’s a lot harder to explain why it’s scam.
You could apply Occam’s Razor here and reasonably say that this being an inexperienced 16 year old is the hypothesis with the fewer assumptions.
The reason I have is even less believable, lol. I made my personal email when I was 7 so I just made it that. If you don’t believe me check out my Twitter @willcranna .
“I've always struggled to make sense of my notes and figure out what to study. Notiv gave me a clear plan and helped me actually retain the material. Bringing my GPA up by 0.9 points in just one semester.”
This sounds kind of fake, like a character playing a customer saying good things about your product.
look, you seem like might really just be a genuine kid, genuinely trying. Stay away from youtubers like mark lou, they're grifters. A rule of thumb I'm sure near all here will agree with me on is that "get rich quick" content creators have plagued every human medium from speech to books to the internet, and they have never, EVER, been right.
They make their money from fooling others. Stick to educational channels. Learn to code. Learn a valuable skill you can take pride in. Mark lou and the like will at best teach you to grift, and learning to grift is not the way to a good life. You clearly have a knack for tech, but know if it's easy, then something is almost surely wrong. Anything that would be easy to exploit becomes incredibly competitive, making it hard. There are no easy wins in life, beyond those you were born to.
This is the best comment here! I made this app not with making money in mind, but knowing I want an obtainable skill that I can leverage with applying to schools/jobs. I’m not here to make money quick, I want to build something with meaning, and I don’t think that’s possible with someone’s first app. This is the first step in learning to reach my meaningful idea.
I'd say the hardest bit about running a business is not running the business. It's everything else - admin, figuring out what you actually want to do, reaching customers, retaining customers etc.
But also that's the bit you have lots of time to figure out. Focus on the bits you enjoy and try to learn as much as you can (unless you are really desperate for cash out of this, in which case focus on all that!). You can figure out the boring bits later.
Thanks, I’m working on making the ui better for flash cards and tests right now. Appreciate your feedback. This post was all I needed for some user feedback to know that I need to work on next.
It's a serious question. Is the focus studying fast for tests (quoted from OP)? Or running a business? If the real goal were studying, the app could be banged out quickly and you could get back to studying. The business is a time sink - which at this stage OP would have presumably discovered - he's already out here spending time promoting it.
Thanks for checking out my app, even if you showed support or really hated it, all feeback is needed.
Lot's of people were questioning my credibility on wether I was 16 or not and many other things, if this is such a concern to you I post on Twitter @willcranna where there's a demo video of my product.
Once again thank you, and I hope to post here again. Hopefully next time majority enjoy the product, lol.
The idea is very good, it's just annoying that the current (i made ai startup) trend is to vibe generate something that is a wrapper for other AI models and already ask for $15 for it. Do you even realize how much work has been done in OpenAI to ask us for $20 a month? How many engineers and scientific articles?
From my point of view, for this not to be a scam:
1 - there should first be a video presentation of the program's operation with all functions, not a website with a bunch of promises and a PAY button
2 - You should definitely write your FIRST startup without any AI generation at all!
You have to allow people start using the app without creating accounts. Any accounts at all to try it out.
The first thing I learn about this app on the landing page - is that it's going to be a business and what it's pricing plans are.
This is before me being SOLD on the damn thing to begin with.
So the order the app introduces itself is:
1. Pricing (it's a SAAS)
2. Asks to create an account.
3. The user here closes the tab somewhere here, unless they apriori know they want whatever it is you're offering. Or they have been sold this from word of mouth.
The order it should be in:
1. Oh, wow, this is cool. I like this, this is exactly what I need. So lets create an account to save the things I've already created here while playing around.
2. As you create account, introduce user to pricing plans and extras you get from a paid account.
Especially now in the stages I should be giving them immediate free access. I’ll do that, thanks :)
Maybe some inspiration from Germany: Linda Büscher did the same while graduating. Press coverage at Business Insider
https://www.businessinsider.de/gruenderszene/business/20-jae...
Her product https://www.bulletpoint.app/
local here, thanks for pointing out on that! looks like she made a super super decent job, and this at her age - wow!
If i would be a VC, i would spend only 5 min on the product and hand them 500k without any discussion :)
She appears to be a very good product developer. However, unless the hypothetical VC knows more about their upcoming plan, it doesn't look like a fundable business with a strong moat and the potential to become a unicorn or larger business.
I’ve never checked that out. It seems cool, thanks for pointing that out.
It's amazing to see someone at 16 already capable of creating a project like this, seriously, you're so talented! Keep it up, you’ve got a long way to go.
Did you develop the AI? Are you sharing any data with external partners?
I wish you all the best with your initiative!
It’s GPT o3, the ai does not learn from the information at all. Thanks for the kind words :)
For the last few months I've been using notebooklm.google.com.
I can't see anything better from this site/ author...is there something I'm missing? Tried youtube to see it in action...nothing.
On a privacy note, item 4 of the privacy link states: You can request deletion of your data by contacting us at [email address].
So if, in the future, something happens...what then? Seems like a lot of info [for me] to give out, but no future, cast iron, guarantees. What if something happens to williamcranna2008@gmail.com?
Do you mean if I stop working on this project? The only info being stored is your email. All notes and uploads aren’t stored anywhere and when you delete a note they are gone forever. Ai doesn’t store them either as they only see the info temporarily.
The user images look AI-generated, based on e.g. the fingers in https://www.notiv.app/lovable-uploads/9224843e-e523-4691-951... I think this is inherently dishonest because it's made to look like they're real users. Is the image and testimonial from "Conner" on the Features page also fake?
It's a stock photo most likely
https://vocal.media/families/this-is-not-your-way-story
None of the images are fake, most of them are from a free licensing site. And the Conner photo is my friend.
I don't see any signs of AI in the image, also the book in his hands is a real book, usually AI messes up those kind of things.
I thought "toi la mot con Lua" was French for "You, the word with Lua!", the well-known, but not to me, scripting bible.
Turns out I misread the Unicode, and it is actually "Tôi Là Một Con Lừa", which is Vietnamese for "I am a donkey", which probably makes it suitable reading material for yours truly.
you seem smart. why waste your life on this superficial startup nonsense? you still have time to change directions and work towards something important. it's hard to change directions after you've made startup money.
Fortunately there's no risk of that happening here.
It’s my first real product at 16? Should I be making the next billion dollar corp? I’m just figuring things out before going to uni.
How are you keeping data private as stated in your FAQs? Is the data not shared with an AI company in order to generate all the smart features?
It’s shared with OCR, and gpt o3 but they don’t save any of the information and the ai doesn’t learn from previous uploads.
Okay that checks out. I would suggest removing the claim that your user's data is never shared from your FAQ:
Is my data private? Yes. Your uploads are secure, never shared, and can be deleted anytime.
Your right, I’ll make this change, thanks.
Having trouble confirming my email address...
That's cute 30 pages a month for 5 bucks, you may be interested in ab testing depending on the study level of the students, university usually requires way more pages per month, but 15 bucks to get unlimited seems too high imo.
(and unlimited may generate for you too high costs ;))
Otherwise seems nice, will test, good luck!
It’s capped at 1000 just in case. Then a prompt comes up to email me. Yeah I’ll test out the price a little 10-20$ is a good range to try.
I managed to sign up to the free version (by altering the URL to not point to localhost) and I uploaded a sample computer science exam paper. That's as far as I got though - its status is "Pending" (No idea what that means). There's a button with a play icon saying "Select" (No idea what that should do, it does nothing). The "Smart study assistant" doesn't work. I'd suggest fixing the functionality first, and then doing an audit on all the buttons in your main interface and login flow and removing as many buttons as you possibly can. Seems like it could be a good idea.
Thanks for the input, the flow goes from upload, to select the image you want to generate, then selecting the action you want to complete, then the note generates and show up in the saved materials section.
> Your uploads are secure, never shared, and can be deleted anytime.
How are you analyzing and marking up the notes? Assuming it is with a partner/third-party AI, isn't this sharing my data with (for example) OpenAI?
If you're using OpenAI or similar services to analyze notes, they typically retain data for model improvement, which contradicts your "never shared" claim unless you've negotiated special terms or implemented a proxy architecture that anonymizes content.
When connecting an api they don’t save or learn anything from the upload. It’s just transferred temporarily.
The information gets sent to openAI but they don’t save or learn anything from the upload. They make this claim.
Great job and good luck.
There's still time left to apply to YC's 2025 summer batch: [0] You have 48 hours left until applications close on May 13th.
Who knows, maybe you could achieve fast growth like Scale AI (YC S16) [1] did.
All you have to do is to keep building.
[0] https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20620578
This! Great work and keep going :)
lol I don’t think my idea is that revolutionary. Maybe I make something good enough for the YC in the future. I’m happy you like my product!
There appears to be a pattern of posts where "I'm 16 / 17 etc" as a prefix gets the hits. And rightly so!
It's very good that young people are engaged. It's encouraging for us grey beards interested in the future of technology and a healthy action for us old people to encourage younger people.
As my beard gets greyer so my pattern recognition library of samples gets bigger and it has recognised a "I'm 16" prefix to popular HN submissions!
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=i%27m+16 https://hn.algolia.com/?q=i%27m+17
It is obviously a clickbait thing and it works.
What if they’re really a large group of businessmen and investors pretending to be a 16 year old?
I assume all these "I am 16" type posts are just ways to help market, unless the account exists for some time before the Show HN with clear evidence they are in high school (I have seen many younger people talk about high school internships, for example - if they then have a Show HN I will believe it!)
Even if they are 16 years old it's hard to imagine someone didn't at some point tell them to leverage the fact they are 16 years old. I don't know any teenager that wants to be seen as a teenager. They all want to be seen as an adult.
Right? Most teenagers would go through great lengths to assume an identity in their 20's at least. They spend their entire life thus far with age being a factor robbing them of credibility. Why now would they advertise what throughout life has been a thorn in thorn in their backside? Something they will have associated with a lack of perceived professionalism. Something associated with not being taken seriously.
to me the whole thing reeks of marketing ghouls. This reeks of a group of talentless marketing ghouls trying to launch an unoriginal vibecoded product but absuing our heartstrings.
I’m not, you can see my journey on Twitter @willcranna
Your "journey" as far as i can tell is just your marketing journey. Youve just joined two months ago, and show nothing much beyond marketing posts or requests for help with marketing.
not selling me on not being a bunch of old dudes using a kids image to sell a unsafe and poor quality product.
if you genuinly are a kid, i'd recommend not using your age as a selling factor. Thats something someone would do to appeal to other kids, but rarely to sell to a serious crowd. It would at best tug at heart strings and get attention but thats will work once, maybe twice. I'd make sure i have a really good product before i waste those free and easy marketing chances.
If i'm selling to students (kids) would they not be more interested in an app made for them by someone like them?
you're selling the 16 year old angle on HN, where 20 years old and younger represents about 2% of the demographic. You're getting an unusually high level of negative responses in comments as well, so I am curious, did you buy 'upvotes' for your post to boost it? I can't imagine such a disconnect between upvotes and comments arising from controversy, since the project isn't controversial, just unremarkable and somewhat amateur.
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To answer your question: Personally? I don't think so. When I was 16 I was aware of how little I knew, and knew that by virtue of units life lived vs units experience possible to have gained, there was likely little to nothing I knew sufficiently enough about to be relied on over most adults, with the exception of, at the time, tech. Then, this was only true given how niche it was, so niche most folks did not yet even have a computer or even internet access. If it was common place for folks to access, even that would not have been true. So for that reason, I saw no reason, it shouldn't also be true for my peers. For that reason I would give low weighting to whatever peers offered. For example, that one friend who claimed to have all the answers when it came to girls/women, why would you treat them as anything other than full of shit? Or that friend who might claim to know more on a topic than our teacher. While plausible in some domains, it is extremely unlikely in general like the know-it-all would have claimed and required a higher burden of proof than they could provide. That being said, this humility came from having constant reinforcement that my assumptions were overly simplistic, or outright wrong. This reinforcement tempered an otherwise self-indulgent world view and sense of self. I have to wonder how things like sycophantic AI influence this aspect of natural human development. Terrible ideas reinforced as world changing and awesome, ideas lacking in depth or nuance left not only unchallenged but outright reinforced and celebrated.
So, do I think kids would trust another kid to develop a worthwhile tool? Not in my generation, but perhaps kids in your cohort have a different attitude. They are inheriting a world on the brink of collapse due to mismanagement and are largely guided by sycophantic AI, and I have no illusion that this would breed a level of resentment and disregard for what older generations have to say / offer. You'd know better what kids your age would like and how they'd respond than I do by virtue of lived experience and my lack of insight on that demographic's wants/needs/perception of things, but if what was true for my cohort is true for yours, it would not help you sell your product.
I mean I got good feedback and only improved my app from this post, and got in contact with cool people. I’ll call it a win :). We can agree to disagree, your point is valid. And no I didn’t even know you could buy upvotes, I think the only people commenting are because I said I’m 16.
I’m 16 you can see me on Twitter @willcranna
And I was 9 when I made my first applications, but it wouldn't be valuable to tout that while sharing them either.
Haven't had a chance to try the app, just pointing out that navigation links for "features" and "pricing" from the legal/privacy screens don't work.
Will try to give the actual app a shot later, but best of luck regardless!
Shoot thanks for letting me know. I’ll fix that now!
Congratulations on launching William. There's quite a bit of criticism here that'll help you refine your app I think. I'm working on a something similar and already learning from the discussion here around user experience and privacy. All the best.
I appreciate it! It’s bound to happen when it’s my first time launching an app. All criticism is good criticism, only up from here. Thanks for the comment!
Damn, he shares his age and suddenly all of the comments are like my first junior job’s worst nightmare.
Kudos, William, for putting this app together. Keep a thick skin when reading and acting on the comments and you’ll have a sweet project on your hands
Thanks, definitely had a few laughs when scrolling through the comments this morning. I’m happy you like my idea, and I hope to only improve upon it from here.
Another reason not to share such an irrelevant thing as your age unless specifically asked to.
The sign up verification email points you to localhost
https://llrnghrthzeonfuakaew.supabase.co/auth/v1/verify?toke...
Hahahaha, I can't believe I found the meme in the wild!
It passed the "vibe" check locally.
First time making an app lol. Thanks for letting me know.
If you're actually 16, this is really nice and you are way ahead for your age, congrats :) You got a little stick here because some people have used this claim falsely for marketing and are actually not 16.
If you are, keep going - you will smash it :)
Thank you
I love the amount of effort spent on avoiding studying! I used to make and update timetables and revision plans. This is next level!
Congrats on launching though, this is an amazing achievement and the dedication/skill set will take you far.
Thank you. I’m hoping I can improve in this idea.
> Convert your notes into quizzes, flashcards to fully prepare for upcoming tests.
Haven't used it but that's pretty cool!! This is something I struggle with as many of my topics don't have free/cheap practice tests.
Thanks! I’ve always had this problem too so I thought I’d make an app.
I’ve never triggered a HN hug of death. Congrats!
I'm 95% certain your testimonial is AI generated, and if it's not you need to get another one.
You shouldn't also use the same image for the testimonial as the first image in your xyz users are using app.
Photo of my friend graduating? I don’t know how to make a less AI looking photo then that lol
You have a domain, why not get a domain email? Seeing a firstname.lastname [at] gmail loses the professional feeling the website is giving off.
To add to this, if you use Zoho's free plan this can cost you literally nothing.
I never heard of it, thanks. I never thought people would be so thrown off by a temporary personal email.
As a abuser of Zoho Free plan, I concur.
Because near everything about this appears to be a low effort scam. The gmail is to add to the "authenticity" of the scammer being 16, because this way they can add a presumed birthyear, wheras with domain email it would make no sense. Proof is in that the address williamcranna@gmail.com is avaliable, which would be the first thing a reasonable person would have tried, before adding the year like a dickhead.
…or they could genuinely be 16 and thus have no experience in how to do this professionally.
I’m sure when you were 16 you might have made the same mistakes too.
Nah, I don't buy it. Theyre good enough at higher level skills / comprehension that such enormous failures in more foundational skills makes no sense.
the website advertises a product that makes use of web infrastructure signficantly more complex/sophisticated than webmail tied to your domain. It's a zero effort zero cost addon for most hosting services these days.
so either this whole thing is a LLM project, and the 16 year old just has their name and reputation as a biological human of young age propping up / hyping the llm based product, or its a scam.
bottom line. It's either unremarkable or untrustworthy, likely both.
> Nah, I don't buy it. Theyre good enough at higher level skills / comprehension that such enormous failures in more foundational skills makes no sense
It wouldn’t make sense for a scammer to make those mistakes either. So you’re not proving anything nefarious by pointing out those mistakes. All you’re proving is mistakes have been made.
You might be surprised to learn this, but people makes a lot of mistakes at the start of their career. And 16 is very early on.
I suspect there might have been some “vibe coding” going on, but that’s the worst criticism I’m willing to make. And even if I’m correct here, everyone has to start somewhere. I grew up with massive printed books, others on here learned from Stack Overflow. Vibe coding is only a problem if you don’t learn from it too.
I've already pointed out why a scammer might make this mistake - adding credibility to the "im 16" angle. lets take the HN account, created 9 days ago. No "2008" or anything of the sort. Only in the prominantly displayed email. Only to help support the lie that helps gain attention. It reeks.
It reeks of the marketing tactic along the lines of "my brother is autistic, here's my subpar contribution of "their" work to a subreddit dedicated to artisinal skills" and watch the karma roll on in for them, only to check their comment history and it being a clear case of karma whoring via lies.
this smells the same.
now, if i am wrong and its just a vibe coding thing, then the "im 16" part plays no role, it would be impressive if the 16 year old did this in a responsible way, but anyone can vibe code their way to such a product woth zero real skill or effort, making the "im 16" point lose the context underwhich it would be pertinent information.
Llm's have changed our world in many ways, this being one of them. Imagine someone asks some agentic llm framework a research question, and a series of unrelated tangents later this agentic framework solves a nobel prize worthy problem. Should the human get that prize? Of course not, it would otherwise recognize skills/brightness in a human who doesnt actually posses it.
If this isnt just a scam, then this would be no different.
last example. If someone posted, "im 16, here is my art portfolio" and its all AI generated content, would you care? Would it demand the same response as if this was a gallery of high quality and beautiful work, painted by hand? Of course not.
I do appreciate that your post is genuinely trying to come from a good place, but I can’t say I agree with any of it.
By that I don’t just mean the analysis of this specific submission but also your tangent points about AI. People have used tools to enable creativity for the entirety of human history. The definition of what tools are acceptable and which are cheating is a subjective one and often defined by the age of the person (ie what was the norm when you were in your 20s).
I’ve seen the same debates time and time again. Whether it’s Ableton vs vinyl (DJs), search engines vs directory listings (research), internet vs books (research), VSTi’s vs instruments (musicians), automatic vs manual shift (cars), Photoshop vs traditional photography effects, CGI vs animatronics (movies), I could go on and on.
Even dumb things like a central payment till in restaurants (eg McDonalds) was heavily criticised in the UK when it was new because the “correct” way to serve food was via table service…or so people over a certain age believed.
Most people hate change. I know because I’m old myself and have seen enough change first hand and how people react to it. But change doesn’t make a compelling argument for why this 16 year old shouldn’t be helped in their endeavours to build an app. Nor is it proof that this individual isn’t who they claim to be.
I also appreciate where you're coming from and it's likely we wont agree, due to a difference in fundamental values (neither being better imo, just different), but i value the discourse and world view broadening that conversations like this offer no less. So let me preface this with the fact i value your input and think your point is not just valid, but true if i allow myself to evaluate all this under a different value system.
that being said, even if i shift my values in this way, one problem remains - the nature of creativity.
so, under this value system tool use is irrelevant, if it makes creativity easier cool, doesnt diminish it non.
so lets evaluate this purely on a novelty / creativity angle.
marketing wise: tactic / style taken from a youtuber they reference in their twitter account
product: idea contributes jothing novel to a saturated space of ai learning tolls
tool use: tools used, and the way they were used, is about as basic as it gets
insight: no real novel or interesting insights into tool use, or the problem being solved
wholisitc interpretation: all together, what appears novel in all this, is applying a particular marketing strategty to hn, one that is usually aimed at children. This raises a few interesting questions about shifting demogrpahics on hn among other things, but this post is interesting in a meta way, not a direct way.
as an example, writing text like this, in a digital way, is not special anymore, by anyones reakoning - and yet if you apply this skill creatively, be it a story or poetry or solving a novel problem etc. Then that comment still has creative merit, even if the skills underlying it are no longer noteworthy. The same is true here, the skills underlying what was done are no longer noteworthy, and so we must evaluate on content alone. The content is derivative. So it stands on nothing.
When viewed from the context of looking for novel submissions on HN, I can definitely sympathise with your point of view here.
I do also appreciate the patience and time you’ve taken to share your perspective too.
You're right I have no coding skill. But testing out Lovable and bringing my idea to reality made me realize this is something I want to learn so I've already began taking a course learning how to code softwares of my own.
People should't be "scared" of these LLM's it's just a tool that shows coding to a wider audience.
That's a really positive outcome, one I am personally supportive of. Learning to code is a rewarding journey.
Now, while I am not scared of LLM's, I am scared for users who use them inappropriately.
I use LLM's extensively, and so I am intimately familiar with the dangers they pose to the uninitiated. I would HEAVILY caution against relying on LLM's until you can read and understand the code your asking LLM's to write comfortably.
Personally, I would recommend you first learn to code in a language of interest, then use LLM's to automate the stuff that has become second nature. The stuff you can pump out mindlessly. This takes the burden of monotonous tasks of your hands, and you have the expertise to check the LLM output for glaring issues. It's still not fully automated but it's much faster if you can write something complex, critical, or sensitive, while the LLM churns out boiler plate and routine chunks. You then comeback later and proof read the LLM output.
Trusting AI code you yourself don't understand is a recipe for disaster. You claim your users data will be private, but then have to rely on AI jank to keep this data safe, if it is even safe. It might just throw everything into publicly accessible folders. What happens when you promise safety, but don't actually provide any. What happens when a users data is then stolen? Who does the court hold accountable? you? the LLM you blindly trusted?
I honestly didn’t know it was free, I assumed you had to pay Google.
I’m pretty sure you do have to pay Google. But do take a look regardless. I could be wrong
Appreciate it, I didn’t expect this post to get as much attention as it did, this is just a small idea I had. I didn’t think an email yet was necessary.
FUD
It might be more productive to explain how this scam works instead of dismissing my counter argument with an incorrectly used meme.
I really don’t see how a learning app for students who also frequent HN is a valuable enough demographic to target. And ironically, the red flags identified would be mistakes a scammer would know not to make.
Everything about this submission can be easily explained by inexperience but it’s a lot harder to explain why it’s scam.
You could apply Occam’s Razor here and reasonably say that this being an inexperienced 16 year old is the hypothesis with the fewer assumptions.
Thanks for commenting this. This is my first ever app and thought why not get some input from HN. Didn’t expect people to take it this way.
The reason I have is even less believable, lol. I made my personal email when I was 7 so I just made it that. If you don’t believe me check out my Twitter @willcranna .
“I've always struggled to make sense of my notes and figure out what to study. Notiv gave me a clear plan and helped me actually retain the material. Bringing my GPA up by 0.9 points in just one semester.”
This sounds kind of fake, like a character playing a customer saying good things about your product.
It sounds like the sort of thing you'd say if you were asked to give your mate a review of their product.
This is exactly what happened. Only guy I knew that graduated, thought I’d ask for his photo and a quote.
Sound AI to me tbh... But not sure. If it's actually a 16 y/o then they might just be using AI for better grammar and writing.
Only God knows how much I needed better grammar when I was 16. Tbh I still do.. LoL
Yep it's 100% AI, the format of the homepage is exactly what you get when you ask for a homepage from ai
Or I saw Marc Lou and his format and got some idea from him.
look, you seem like might really just be a genuine kid, genuinely trying. Stay away from youtubers like mark lou, they're grifters. A rule of thumb I'm sure near all here will agree with me on is that "get rich quick" content creators have plagued every human medium from speech to books to the internet, and they have never, EVER, been right.
They make their money from fooling others. Stick to educational channels. Learn to code. Learn a valuable skill you can take pride in. Mark lou and the like will at best teach you to grift, and learning to grift is not the way to a good life. You clearly have a knack for tech, but know if it's easy, then something is almost surely wrong. Anything that would be easy to exploit becomes incredibly competitive, making it hard. There are no easy wins in life, beyond those you were born to.
This is the best comment here! I made this app not with making money in mind, but knowing I want an obtainable skill that I can leverage with applying to schools/jobs. I’m not here to make money quick, I want to build something with meaning, and I don’t think that’s possible with someone’s first app. This is the first step in learning to reach my meaningful idea.
Well done! Keep going :)
I'd say the hardest bit about running a business is not running the business. It's everything else - admin, figuring out what you actually want to do, reaching customers, retaining customers etc.
But also that's the bit you have lots of time to figure out. Focus on the bits you enjoy and try to learn as much as you can (unless you are really desperate for cash out of this, in which case focus on all that!). You can figure out the boring bits later.
Thanks, I’m working on making the ui better for flash cards and tests right now. Appreciate your feedback. This post was all I needed for some user feedback to know that I need to work on next.
Confirmation mail is incorrect (supabase auth).
I’ll check this out
Why is every app a startup now?
It's a serious question. Is the focus studying fast for tests (quoted from OP)? Or running a business? If the real goal were studying, the app could be banged out quickly and you could get back to studying. The business is a time sink - which at this stage OP would have presumably discovered - he's already out here spending time promoting it.
> Why is every app a startup now?
Because VC money doesn't invest in apps, and it's trendy.
Produp. Product looking for market fit
Man is the future of our industry grim as fuck.
Thanks for checking out my app, even if you showed support or really hated it, all feeback is needed.
Lot's of people were questioning my credibility on wether I was 16 or not and many other things, if this is such a concern to you I post on Twitter @willcranna where there's a demo video of my product.
Once again thank you, and I hope to post here again. Hopefully next time majority enjoy the product, lol.
The idea is very good, it's just annoying that the current (i made ai startup) trend is to vibe generate something that is a wrapper for other AI models and already ask for $15 for it. Do you even realize how much work has been done in OpenAI to ask us for $20 a month? How many engineers and scientific articles?
From my point of view, for this not to be a scam: 1 - there should first be a video presentation of the program's operation with all functions, not a website with a bunch of promises and a PAY button 2 - You should definitely write your FIRST startup without any AI generation at all!
If you make a free account you’ll see it’s not a scam. I do agree a demo video would be a good idea.
AI Generated Website, Almost No information on the creator, Fake Testimonial...
Yeah, no
Fair enough, I’ll update my HN profile. I just thought I’d quickly make a post.
Isn't this just quickly generated by Lovable?
The user has no background, and I couldn't find any info on the creator itself.
Yeah, 99% sure
Fake reviews and fake pictures makes me never want to use your app.
[flagged]
I wouldn’t say scam, but definitely low effort vibe-coded product
:)
Images were formatted weird they aren’t ai generated. Thats my personal email as I just started my app and don’t want to open a business one yet.
There's "formatted weird" and then there's artifacts i've only ever seen in ai generated images.