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Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)

439 points david927 | 2 comments | 29 Jun 25 20:21 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

What are you working on? Any new ideas which you're thinking about?
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Sinthrill ◴[30 Jun 25 21:08 UTC] No.44427900[source]▶
Working on my startup: ProtoMatter

https://www.protomatter.ai/

Automating Clean-room plant propagation using robots

There are about 2-3+ Billion plants cloned in laboratory conditions per year which are all done by hand. I am in the process of trying to develop a MVP to automate this task while also getting customer conversations to get early adopters.

What I am struggling with is that I don't know if I should focus on developing the MVP which will cost 20k-40k & 4-6 months to develop or put in place a pilot program to get customers willing to buy the machine / pay up front before I start developing. Hardware startups are rough usually because their MVP takes so long to develop.

I am currently bootstrapping while I am pushing for more conversations trying to do both at once. I could personally finance the venture, but it seems like a poor move to just take on all the risk personally? I have am setting up conversations with a few VCs, but that is a month out.

I'm working on this full time at the moment. I have a couple people who I have talked to who could be co-founders but nothing has materialized yet. So I am just all over the place at this stage in the process.

I spoke to 4-5 potential customers and 2-3 of which are 'interested' in what I have but seem only interested in the 'validation' stage which only comes up after the huge personal investment on my end.

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1. bigthymer ◴[05 Jul 25 13:38 UTC] No.44472725[source]▶
I recommend doing the pilot program. Are you sure there are customers willing to sign up for it?
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2. Sinthrill ◴[05 Jul 25 23:43 UTC] No.44476446[source]▶
Customers want a solution, but without actual proof of customers willing to pay or do anything about it, how can you truly know? Because of companies awkward financing, the situation is very similar to:

- Assuming tractors don't exist - "Would people go through the effort to ship a tractor to their farm, learn how to use it, and either pay you to repair it or figure it out themselves ..while also paying you per field plowed."

Like, it seems like an obvious 'yes' but this is obviously my framing, not theirs, and maybe I am completely off base and what I am offering to them is truly a truck with a plow and not a tractor that they think will constantly get stuck in the mud.