nowfound

AI · alternatives · 2026

IB

24 alternatives to I Built a Paul Graham AI Advisor for Founders and Hackers

Hey, just wanted to share with you guys and app that I built and deployed in a day with Lovable. So, as a founder I always wanted to have an advisor but my budget would always be less, then on the other hand hand I had Paul's essays on Startup Advice, which I never read because I was busy building stuff. Hence, I built this product which comes into a sweet spot of both at the same time being more reasonable and capable than the alternative. ps: it's running on a reasoning model and tbh I've been able to gather pretty good insights from it. Note to PG: If you're seeing this. I'm your big fan.…

This is an AI advisor trained on Paul Graham's essays about startups, designed for founders and hackers who want experienced guidance but lack the budget for traditional advisors. Built quickly using Lovable, it runs… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

  1. 1IL

    Hey HN. This is a weekend project of mine. It's an idea I had after seeing so many comments here about the lack of available .com names for startups. As PG once said: "Take a luxury and make it into a commodity"[1]. So, I decided I'd try turning name consulting from something only large corporations could afford to something anyone could. I hope you'll take me up on it :) If you'd like to see a few examples of my work, just check out the links in the footer. Thanks for your attention. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html

    2011 · startupgods.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2WU

    hey y'all -- can you please tell us if our job search tool sucks? :D we built it using an investor platform called Harmonic.ai to gather startup data, then contextualize it so that job seekers could find out about the most exciting startups hiring first (like if they just raised, growing headcount fast, have an ex-unicorn founder, etc). pretty sure we're the first platform doing anything like this. anyway, let me know what you think. really excited to launch this thing soon! getting feedback from the hn community first is really fun :)

    2022 · joinmaasive.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3MS

    For years, I have struggled to understand my cash flow and save for the future. In addition to that, my wife has many credit cards and accounts that complicate matters. I am building a tool that connects all our accounts, helps us create a budget, and tracks and adjusts expenses on the fly. I am also sprinkling some AI magic on it for financial suggestions. I am looking for feedback on the implementation. More importantly, I am looking for more beta testers to improve the product.

    2023 · financemadelovely.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Hey HN, I’m 14 and I’ve been obsessed with startups for a while. I noticed one big problem: most of us (especially first-time founders) waste months building something that nobody wants. So I built Startup Solve — an AI-powered platform that helps you stress-test your startup ideas before you write a single line of code. It includes six tools: ~ AI Co-Founder → brainstorms with you like a smart partner. ~ Startup Oracle → pressure-tests your idea and asks the brutal questions VCs would. ~ Funding Predictor → gives an estimate of whether your idea could raise funding. ~ Idea Incubator → helps…

    2025 · startup-solve.lovable.app · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Chat with Paul Graham's essays

    2025 · talk-to-paul.vercel.app · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    I am working on this because I am always afraid of building things that people don't actually want. I let agents role-play analysis the idea, quote and debate with each other. Still working on the output quality, every feedback is priceless. Pls try it out!

    Jan 2026 · idea-council.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    Howdy friends. I've been a zero to one product manager for 12 plus years and along the way I kept borrowing pieces from different discovery frameworks until I had a methodology of my own, one that actually raises the odds of an idea succeeding. This does not replace user interviews obviously, but it leads you in the right direction. Looking forward for your feedback

    Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    For the last few months I have been analysing Peter Lynch’s books on stock picking and doing prompt engineering to check if AI could create useful stock analyses. To my surprise it started making reports that allow me to understand companies much faster with well cited sources. I hope you find it interesting and useful :) Perter Lynch’s books I analyzed: Learn to earn, One up on Wall Street, Beating the street

    Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9IV

    Hey my name is Ivo and I'm a developer and a startup entusiast. My girlfriend was out of the coutry for the weekend and I decided to do something cool like building a startup. I've done a few startups over the years but that's the first I actually released, I would love to hear your feedback on it.

    2024 · craftlynow.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10IA

    I was working on validating some of my own project ideas. While trying to find how to validate my idea, I realized the process itself could be turned into a tool. A few late nights later, I had something that takes any startup idea, fetches discussions, summarizes sentiment, and gives a quick “validation score.” It’s very rough, but it works, and it’s already making me rethink a few of my own ideas. It's still a work in progress. I don't actually know what I'm doing, but I know it's worth it. Honest feedback welcomed! Live demo here: https://validationly.com/

    2025 · validationly.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11IM

    Hey HN! Thank you for all the support and feedback on my original submission 2 months ago. I've been improving the backend using a MCTS/AlphaZero approach and it's currently producing much better results. My long term goal is to allow users to manage multiple projects, deployed autonomously, both from scratch and by making continual updates all prompted with natural language. The cost of each project has been lowered to $9 as performance with smaller models has improved (I migrated from Claude-3-Opus to gemini-1.5-flash). Thanks for checking it out!

    2024 · saas-quick.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12LS

    We built this using investor tools. I really wanted to know which startups to work for. Are we on the right track? PS - there's a paywall but if you want to explore more, just DM me your email and I'll give you free access in our db!

    2023 · usemassive.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13UI

    We built this database using the same software investors use to discover startups. My friends and I really wanted to know which startups to work for. Are we on the right track? PS - there's a paywall but if you want to explore more, just DM me your email and I'll send you a free access code! Thank you so much.

    2023 · usemassive.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    As a programmer and entrepreneur, Paul Graham's essays have inspired many in the tech community. I grew up reading his essays frequently. Previously, I would use Google and perform a site search with keywords to find Paul Graham's thoughts on a topic. With the launch of GPT-3 and vector search capabilities, I have created an app that makes it easier to find specific insights and perspectives from Paul Graham's essays. The app indexes and categorizes each essay, providing a streamlined way for users to access and understand Graham's thoughts on programming, startups, and innovation. Do try it…

    2023 · cookup.ai · its alternatives →

  15. 15IP

    Hey hackers, Like many of you, I'm always trying to optimize my productivity, and I have tried a lot of apps out there to do so. I didn't find the exact one that I could use, so I built one for myself. Check it out and let me know if you have any thoughts!

    2024 · focusmax.io · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Hey HN, After GPT-3 created waves in the tech industry, a lot of AI tools were emerging and with that, some AI website builders But the results seemed way too generic to us. It felt like the developers were rushing to catch the wave instead of building a proper tool We took our time, did months of RnD and finally came up with something better than what others in the market are doing. It’s got better design output. While it’s still in beta, I wanted to show HN what we did. Will appreciate the feedback when you guys try it out. Here is the link to signup for the beta:…

    2024 · dorik.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Hey Hacker News, I'm the maker of Kopage, a free & self-hosted Website Builder. While working on new, cool features (AI, of course), it would be great to hear some HN feedback :) Thanks, Simon

    2024 · kopage.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18IM

    Hi, As part of dog fooding my own platform, Strmr.com - I decided to try to do remote online consulting for 5$ per session (mostly one hour slots). I'm hoping this can be an interesting experiment as I'm hoping to get a wider view of what kind of problems the industry is dealing with, as well as expand my network, possibly with like minded founders. Strmr.com is a platform for online professional services. It allows creating groups of providers to organize together. If you think this is of interest for you - please reach out through the contact form - I'm looking for more founders to join me…

    2020 · its alternatives →

  19. 19IH

    Hey there, While searching for my next role as a PM in Blockchain + AI, I started building an AI-powered notetaker called MindNote: https://www.mindnote.online. The idea is simple: you input your thoughts, and AI helps you complete or modify them. If you decide to test it, try using the prompt: Keep this text and…"(add budget, complete list, organize alphabetically, add their translation, etc.). The first big release is all about modifying your notes with AI prompts. The next big step? Capturing thoughts directly from the mind using brain-to-text technology. There is a 3 days free…

    2025 · its alternatives →

  20. 201R

    I wanted to find a product idea to build. "Build things people want," right? So I thought, why not literally find people saying what they want? I wrote a script to collect thousands of Reddit posts where people are looking for a solution or complaining about a problem. Then I used GPT to filter out the noise and score each one based on how viable the idea seemed. Threw together a simple search interface so anyone can explore them. I was planning to build a more advanced paid version of this, but figured I'd share the raw version first to see if it's actually useful to anyone.

    Nov 2025 · search.reddit-business-ideas.workers.dev · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    I've been experimenting with ways to increase AI adoption for non-technical people. Basically, all companies are pushing for AI because it's all over the news and they feel left behind but most people have no clue where to start. I think 90% of people (ie non coders) are sufficiently well served by using cowork instead of claude code or something similar. If we can get people from sales, customer support, marketing, etc to collaborate with skills and cowork to form a company brain, I think it's gold. So I think there's opportunity for the community to share skills that work well for 1000s of…

    Jun 2026 · claudinho.xyz · its alternatives →

  22. 22MF

    Promptly is my first SaaS Project. I built it because I wanted to refine my dev skills and also to have a central place to store my prompts for GPT, Midjourney, and other AI platform and systems. Would love some feedback on the website itself, as well as advice on how I should go about the marketing

    2023 · promptly.host · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    So I've been obsessed with a weird question for the past 6 months, what happens to SEO when everyone starts asking ChatGPT for recommendations instead of Googling? The answer, apparently, is chaos. And maybe opportunity? I built FirstClick because I noticed something strange. My previous startup was getting zero traffic from AI assistants, but our competitor (objectively worse product, sorry not sorry) was getting mentioned by Claude and Perplexity constantly. It drove me crazy. So I reverse engineered why. Turns out there's a whole new game being played and most founders don't even know it…

    Dec 2025 · firstclick.so · its alternatives →

  24. 24IW

    I'm an ML engineer. I know how AI works, the limitations, the hype. And I was still drowning. Couldn't stick to goals. Couldn't stay consistent. Productivity apps became digital clutter. Therapy waitlists were 3 months out. Friends were tired of my complaints. So at 2am I started building: zropi.com What shocked me was it actually worked. It felt human. Last week I mentioned a tough client call. Didn't set a reminder. Two days later it voice messaged me: "Hey, how'd that call go? You seemed stressed." When does technology ever do that? What makes it feel alive: It doesn't reply instantly.…

    Jan 2026 · its alternatives →

Also compare

Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →