11 ms·

Show HN: I’m 16 years old and working on my first startup, a study app

82 points by WilliamCranna 1y ago

As a student with a lot of notes I had a problem with studying fast for tests. So I created Notiv an AI study app that analyzes your notes and prepares you for test.

dankwizard 1y ago
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.
- RandomDistort 1y ago
  To add to this, if you use Zoho's free plan this can cost you literally nothing.
  - minraws 1y ago
    As a abuser of Zoho Free plan, I concur.
  - WilliamCranna 1y ago
    I never heard of it, thanks. I never thought people would be so thrown off by a temporary personal email.
- Grimblewald 1y ago
  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.
  - hnlmorg 1y ago
    …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.
    - uoaei 1y ago
      FUD
      - hnlmorg 1y ago
        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.
        WilliamCranna 1y ago
        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.
    - Grimblewald 1y ago
      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.
  - WilliamCranna 1y ago
    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 .
bananapub 1y ago
Man is the future of our industry grim as fuck.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
rvz 1y ago
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/ https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20620578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20620578
- sergiomattei 1y ago
  This! Great work and keep going :)
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  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!
yapyap 1y ago
[dead]
barlog 1y ago
Confirmation mail is incorrect (supabase auth).
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  I’ll check this out
Grimblewald 1y ago
[flagged]
- soneca 1y ago
  I wouldn’t say scam, but definitely low effort vibe-coded product
  - WilliamCranna 1y ago
    :)
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  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.
  - Grimblewald 1y ago
    There's "formatted weird" and then there's artifacts i've only ever seen in ai generated images.
thinkingemote 1y ago
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+16 https://hn.algolia.com/?q=i%27m+17 https://hn.algolia.com/?q=i%27m+17
- _pdp_ 1y ago
  It is obviously a clickbait thing and it works.
  - trustsafe 1y ago
    [dead]
- carlos-menezes 1y ago
  It's obvious clickbait.
jameswhitford 1y ago
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?
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  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.
  - jameswhitford 1y ago
    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.
    - WilliamCranna 1y ago
      Your right, I’ll make this change, thanks.
hilti 1y ago
Maybe some inspiration from Germany: Linda Büscher did the same while graduating. Press coverage at Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.de/gruenderszene/business/20-jaehrige-entwickelt-waehrend-des-abitur-eine-notiz-app-fuer-schueler-und-studenten/ https://www.businessinsider.de/gruenderszene/business/20-jae... Her product https://www.bulletpoint.app/ https://www.bulletpoint.app/
- ta12653421 1y ago
  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 :)
  - nopinsight 1y ago
    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.
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  I’ve never checked that out. It seems cool, thanks for pointing that out.
smokel 1y ago
[flagged]
- exe34 1y ago
  > (indirectly) boast about their entrepreneurial skills Are you referring to the actual post? What age would it be appropriate to post one's creations would you say? Or is it the "I'm 16-" prefix? But I can't work out where the narcissism comes in.
  - smokel 1y ago
    It is indeed the title that trips me up. When I was their age, we would call similar efforts "play", and we certainly didn't pretend to be the next Bill Gates. I'm not saying that one or the other approach is objectively better, I was merely sharing my personal opinion on the matter, so that perhaps someone can learn from that data point, or to offer some comfort to those who frequent Hacker News for the critical thinking rather than the money-making news. (Apart from the title, the website with legal matter suggest a focus on things that I certainly do not associate favorably with a "hacker".)
    - exe34 1y ago
      I think there's always been entrepreneurial kids - back in my days they bought a 6 pack of pepsi and sold them individually at a markup. Today the hustling is done by making apps and websites. Where do you get the "next Bill Gates" part from? I can only see a run-of-the-mill "professional" website, of which there are countless on the web nowadays. The product itself seems to be something that the OP wanted for himself and managed to turn into something others can use. I seriously doubt its utility myself, but I don't see how this makes him "pretend to be the next Bill Gates"?
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  Entrepreneurial skills? I didn’t mean to come off this way, just made a quick post showing what I’m working on. Thanks for the feedback.
exe34 1y ago
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.
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  Thank you. I’m hoping I can improve in this idea.
Bengalilol 1y ago
Did you develop the AI? Are you sharing any data with external partners? I wish you all the best with your initiative!
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  It’s GPT o3, the ai does not learn from the information at all. Thanks for the kind words :)
henning 1y ago
The user images look AI-generated, based on e.g. the fingers in https://www.notiv.app/lovable-uploads/9224843e-e523-4691-951f-10304d600616.png 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?
- kavouras 1y ago
  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.
  - smokel 1y ago
    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.
- jofzar 1y ago
  It's a stock photo most likely https://vocal.media/families/this-is-not-your-way-story https://vocal.media/families/this-is-not-your-way-story
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  None of the images are fake, most of them are from a free licensing site. And the Conner photo is my friend.
somethingsome 1y ago
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!
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  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.
docdeek 1y ago
> 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?
- ethan_smith 1y ago
  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.
  - WilliamCranna 1y ago
    When connecting an api they don’t save or learn anything from the upload. It’s just transferred temporarily.
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  The information gets sent to openAI but they don’t save or learn anything from the upload. They make this claim.
ferngodfather 1y ago
> 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.
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  Thanks! I’ve always had this problem too so I thought I’d make an app.
pfannkuchen 1y ago
“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.
- minraws 1y ago
  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
- jen729w 1y ago
  It sounds like the sort of thing you'd say if you were asked to give your mate a review of their product.
  - WilliamCranna 1y ago
    This is exactly what happened. Only guy I knew that graduated, thought I’d ask for his photo and a quote.
- jofzar 1y ago
  Yep it's 100% AI, the format of the homepage is exactly what you get when you ask for a homepage from ai
  - WilliamCranna 1y ago
    Or I saw Marc Lou and his format and got some idea from him.
    - Grimblewald 1y ago
      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.
bryanhogan 1y ago
Isn't this just quickly generated by Lovable? The user has no background, and I couldn't find any info on the creator itself.
- typesarecool 1y ago
  Yeah, 99% sure
typesarecool 1y ago
The sign up verification email points you to localhost https://llrnghrthzeonfuakaew.supabase.co/auth/v1/verify?token=27794eea17afed78de8d783698b3fd67bea1a1b4bdbb2ef1fb7844b6&type=signup&redirect_to=http://localhost:3000 https://llrnghrthzeonfuakaew.supabase.co/auth/v1/verify?toke... Hahahaha, I can't believe I found the meme in the wild!
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  First time making an app lol. Thanks for letting me know.
  - typesarecool 1y ago
    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 :)
    - WilliamCranna 1y ago
      Thank you
- XCSme 1y ago
  It passed the "vibe" check locally.
dotancohen 1y ago
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.
- mathgeek 1y ago
  > Why is every app a startup now? Because VC money doesn't invest in apps, and it's trendy.
- jbverschoor 1y ago
  Produp. Product looking for market fit
dan_voronov 1y ago
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!
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  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.
mieses 1y ago
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.
- rainonmoon 1y ago
  Fortunately there's no risk of that happening here.
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  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.
UnreachableCode 1y ago
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
- seba_dos1 1y ago
  Another reason not to share such an irrelevant thing as your age unless specifically asked to.
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  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.
Johanx64 1y ago
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.
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  Especially now in the stages I should be giving them immediate free access. I’ll do that, thanks :)
rich_sasha 1y ago
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.
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  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.
jofzar 1y ago
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.
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  Photo of my friend graduating? I don’t know how to make a less AI looking photo then that lol
pech0rin 1y ago
Fake reviews and fake pictures makes me never want to use your app.
kuberwastaken 1y ago
AI Generated Website, Almost No information on the creator, Fake Testimonial... Yeah, no
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  Fair enough, I’ll update my HN profile. I just thought I’d quickly make a post.
matt3210 1y ago
What if they’re really a large group of businessmen and investors pretending to be a 16 year old?
- typesarecool 1y ago
  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!)
  - mnky9800n 1y ago
    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.
    - Grimblewald 1y ago
      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.
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  I’m 16 you can see me on Twitter @willcranna
  - seba_dos1 1y ago
    And I was 9 when I made my first applications, but it wouldn't be valuable to tout that while sharing them either.
Ylpertnodi 1y ago
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?
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  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.
thatspartan 1y ago
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.
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  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!
darajava 1y ago
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.
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  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.
hombre_fatal 1y ago
[flagged]
- dang 1y ago
  Please don't post like this in general and certainly not to someone's Show HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
  - hombre_fatal 1y ago
    True. Shame on me. Sorry OP.
crakhamster01 1y ago
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!
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  Shoot thanks for letting me know. I’ll fix that now!
browningstreet 1y ago
I’ve never triggered a HN hug of death. Congrats!
WilliamCranna 1y ago
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.
Ambitious_9410 1y ago
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.
dotcoma 1y ago
Having trouble confirming my email address...

82 points by WilliamCranna 1y ago

As a student with a lot of notes I had a problem with studying fast for tests. So I created Notiv an AI study app that analyzes your notes and prepares you for test.

dankwizard 1y ago

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.

RandomDistort 1y ago
To add to this, if you use Zoho's free plan this can cost you literally nothing.
- minraws 1y ago
  As a abuser of Zoho Free plan, I concur.
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  I never heard of it, thanks. I never thought people would be so thrown off by a temporary personal email.
Grimblewald 1y ago
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.
- hnlmorg 1y ago
  …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.
  - uoaei 1y ago
    FUD
    - hnlmorg 1y ago
      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.
      - WilliamCranna 1y ago
        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.
  - Grimblewald 1y ago
    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.
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  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 .

bananapub 1y ago

Man is the future of our industry grim as fuck.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

rvz 1y ago

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/ https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20620578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20620578

sergiomattei 1y ago
This! Great work and keep going :)
WilliamCranna 1y ago
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!

yapyap 1y ago

[dead]

barlog 1y ago

Confirmation mail is incorrect (supabase auth).

WilliamCranna 1y ago
I’ll check this out

Grimblewald 1y ago

[flagged]

soneca 1y ago
I wouldn’t say scam, but definitely low effort vibe-coded product
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  :)
WilliamCranna 1y ago
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.
- Grimblewald 1y ago
  There's "formatted weird" and then there's artifacts i've only ever seen in ai generated images.

thinkingemote 1y ago

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+16 https://hn.algolia.com/?q=i%27m+17 https://hn.algolia.com/?q=i%27m+17

_pdp_ 1y ago
It is obviously a clickbait thing and it works.
- trustsafe 1y ago
  [dead]
carlos-menezes 1y ago
It's obvious clickbait.

jameswhitford 1y ago

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?

WilliamCranna 1y ago
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.
- jameswhitford 1y ago
  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.
  - WilliamCranna 1y ago
    Your right, I’ll make this change, thanks.

hilti 1y ago

Maybe some inspiration from Germany: Linda Büscher did the same while graduating. Press coverage at Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.de/gruenderszene/business/20-jaehrige-entwickelt-waehrend-des-abitur-eine-notiz-app-fuer-schueler-und-studenten/ https://www.businessinsider.de/gruenderszene/business/20-jae... Her product https://www.bulletpoint.app/ https://www.bulletpoint.app/

ta12653421 1y ago
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 :)
- nopinsight 1y ago
  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.
WilliamCranna 1y ago
I’ve never checked that out. It seems cool, thanks for pointing that out.

smokel 1y ago

[flagged]

exe34 1y ago
> (indirectly) boast about their entrepreneurial skills Are you referring to the actual post? What age would it be appropriate to post one's creations would you say? Or is it the "I'm 16-" prefix? But I can't work out where the narcissism comes in.
- smokel 1y ago
  It is indeed the title that trips me up. When I was their age, we would call similar efforts "play", and we certainly didn't pretend to be the next Bill Gates. I'm not saying that one or the other approach is objectively better, I was merely sharing my personal opinion on the matter, so that perhaps someone can learn from that data point, or to offer some comfort to those who frequent Hacker News for the critical thinking rather than the money-making news. (Apart from the title, the website with legal matter suggest a focus on things that I certainly do not associate favorably with a "hacker".)
  - exe34 1y ago
    I think there's always been entrepreneurial kids - back in my days they bought a 6 pack of pepsi and sold them individually at a markup. Today the hustling is done by making apps and websites. Where do you get the "next Bill Gates" part from? I can only see a run-of-the-mill "professional" website, of which there are countless on the web nowadays. The product itself seems to be something that the OP wanted for himself and managed to turn into something others can use. I seriously doubt its utility myself, but I don't see how this makes him "pretend to be the next Bill Gates"?
WilliamCranna 1y ago
Entrepreneurial skills? I didn’t mean to come off this way, just made a quick post showing what I’m working on. Thanks for the feedback.

exe34 1y ago

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.

WilliamCranna 1y ago
Thank you. I’m hoping I can improve in this idea.

Bengalilol 1y ago

Did you develop the AI? Are you sharing any data with external partners? I wish you all the best with your initiative!

WilliamCranna 1y ago
It’s GPT o3, the ai does not learn from the information at all. Thanks for the kind words :)

henning 1y ago

The user images look AI-generated, based on e.g. the fingers in https://www.notiv.app/lovable-uploads/9224843e-e523-4691-951f-10304d600616.png 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?

kavouras 1y ago
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.
- smokel 1y ago
  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.
jofzar 1y ago
It's a stock photo most likely https://vocal.media/families/this-is-not-your-way-story https://vocal.media/families/this-is-not-your-way-story
WilliamCranna 1y ago
None of the images are fake, most of them are from a free licensing site. And the Conner photo is my friend.

somethingsome 1y ago

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!

WilliamCranna 1y ago
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.

docdeek 1y ago

> 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?

ethan_smith 1y ago
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.
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  When connecting an api they don’t save or learn anything from the upload. It’s just transferred temporarily.
WilliamCranna 1y ago
The information gets sent to openAI but they don’t save or learn anything from the upload. They make this claim.

ferngodfather 1y ago

> 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.

WilliamCranna 1y ago
Thanks! I’ve always had this problem too so I thought I’d make an app.

pfannkuchen 1y ago

“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.

minraws 1y ago
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
jen729w 1y ago
It sounds like the sort of thing you'd say if you were asked to give your mate a review of their product.
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  This is exactly what happened. Only guy I knew that graduated, thought I’d ask for his photo and a quote.
jofzar 1y ago
Yep it's 100% AI, the format of the homepage is exactly what you get when you ask for a homepage from ai
- WilliamCranna 1y ago
  Or I saw Marc Lou and his format and got some idea from him.
  - Grimblewald 1y ago
    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.

bryanhogan 1y ago

Isn't this just quickly generated by Lovable? The user has no background, and I couldn't find any info on the creator itself.

typesarecool 1y ago
Yeah, 99% sure

typesarecool 1y ago

The sign up verification email points you to localhost https://llrnghrthzeonfuakaew.supabase.co/auth/v1/verify?token=27794eea17afed78de8d783698b3fd67bea1a1b4bdbb2ef1fb7844b6&type=signup&redirect_to=http://localhost:3000 https://llrnghrthzeonfuakaew.supabase.co/auth/v1/verify?toke... Hahahaha, I can't believe I found the meme in the wild!

WilliamCranna 1y ago
First time making an app lol. Thanks for letting me know.
- typesarecool 1y ago
  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 :)
  - WilliamCranna 1y ago
    Thank you
XCSme 1y ago
It passed the "vibe" check locally.

dotancohen 1y ago

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.

mathgeek 1y ago
> Why is every app a startup now? Because VC money doesn't invest in apps, and it's trendy.
jbverschoor 1y ago
Produp. Product looking for market fit

dan_voronov 1y ago

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!

WilliamCranna 1y ago
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.

mieses 1y ago

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.

rainonmoon 1y ago
Fortunately there's no risk of that happening here.
WilliamCranna 1y ago
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.

UnreachableCode 1y ago

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

seba_dos1 1y ago
Another reason not to share such an irrelevant thing as your age unless specifically asked to.
WilliamCranna 1y ago
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.

Johanx64 1y ago

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.

WilliamCranna 1y ago
Especially now in the stages I should be giving them immediate free access. I’ll do that, thanks :)

rich_sasha 1y ago

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.

WilliamCranna 1y ago
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.

jofzar 1y ago

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.

WilliamCranna 1y ago
Photo of my friend graduating? I don’t know how to make a less AI looking photo then that lol

pech0rin 1y ago

Fake reviews and fake pictures makes me never want to use your app.

kuberwastaken 1y ago

AI Generated Website, Almost No information on the creator, Fake Testimonial... Yeah, no

WilliamCranna 1y ago
Fair enough, I’ll update my HN profile. I just thought I’d quickly make a post.

matt3210 1y ago

What if they’re really a large group of businessmen and investors pretending to be a 16 year old?

typesarecool 1y ago
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!)
- mnky9800n 1y ago
  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.
  - Grimblewald 1y ago
    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.
WilliamCranna 1y ago
I’m 16 you can see me on Twitter @willcranna
- seba_dos1 1y ago
  And I was 9 when I made my first applications, but it wouldn't be valuable to tout that while sharing them either.

Ylpertnodi 1y ago

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?

WilliamCranna 1y ago
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.

thatspartan 1y ago

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.

WilliamCranna 1y ago
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!

darajava 1y ago

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.

WilliamCranna 1y ago
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.

hombre_fatal 1y ago

[flagged]

dang 1y ago
Please don't post like this in general and certainly not to someone's Show HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
- hombre_fatal 1y ago
  True. Shame on me. Sorry OP.

crakhamster01 1y ago

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!

WilliamCranna 1y ago
Shoot thanks for letting me know. I’ll fix that now!

browningstreet 1y ago

I’ve never triggered a HN hug of death. Congrats!

WilliamCranna 1y ago

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.

Ambitious_9410 1y ago

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.

dotcoma 1y ago

Having trouble confirming my email address...