Profile picture of Jean-Yves Delmotte
Jean-Yves Delmotte
$38k MRR. $0 raised. 0 employees. • Co-founder @ BuddiesHR.com • 5x SaaS Founder • YC alum • Aspiring Marathon Runner
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September 9, 2025
3000. That's the number of days I've been building with Fabien. We started in 2017 with an automation bot for Instagram. It exploded — $60,000 MRR at the peak. But then Instagram changed its rules. Overnight, we had to shut it down. In 2019, we built the TikTok version. It grew fast, hitting $15,000 MRR. Same story: platform restrictions forced us to stop, even though the demand was insane. From 2019 to 2020, we shipped like crazy — but without any methodology. We were just building and praying something would work. It didn't. What changed? In 2020, we launched Tokfluence, but this time we applied “The Mom Test.” We validated before building, talked to users first, and made sure the problem was real. Since then, we've achieved a >50% success rate on what we launched. In 2021, we built PaletteHQ. YC accepted us, we raised $6M, hired 15 people, and learned how brutal running a venture-backed company really is. We went through highs and lows. It was tough. But it shaped us. In 2023, we started BuddiesHR. What began as a single Slack app turned into a full suite of 7. Today, thousands of teams use it every day!!! We're bootstrapped, profitable, and growing fast: $38,000 MRR and counting. 3000 days in, here's what I've learned: ↳ Even when something works, external forces can kill it — so control your own destiny. (avoid platform risk) ↳ Methodology beats luck. Since we started validating, our odds of success skyrocketed. ↳ The right co-founder is everything. Without trust, you don't survive. It hasn't been easy. There were failures, pivots, and nights where quitting felt easier. But 3000 days later, I'm still excited to wake up and build with Fab. And the best part? We're just getting started. ---------- 👋 Hey, I'm J.Y! I'm the co-founder of BuddiesHR, the #1 suite of Slack apps.  Using Slack? Give it a try, it's a no-brainer. I post 2x a week (sometimes more) about my journey and share what I've learned along the way.  Follow me for more content like this 👆
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43 Likes
September 9, 2025
Discussion about this post
Profile picture of Fabien Pinel
Fabien Pinel
$38k+ MRR. 0 employees. $0 raised • Co-founder @BuddiesHR • 6x SaaS founder • YC alumni
1 day ago
3004 🫶
Profile picture of Oliver Diamond
Oliver Diamond
⚡ Building the inquiry tool for event teams
4 days ago
that's <3
Profile picture of Stan Girard
Stan Girard
CEO @ Quivr (YC W24) | 10k+ CS Audited | Automating CX Safely
4 days ago
I loved working on InstaPy at the time. Maybe you used it. It was my first step into open-source
“Vibe coding” is absolute sh*t. I don’t care what the Twitter threads say. I don’t care how cool that Notion-esque “collab with AI” demo looks. In real life? It’s a train wreck. Let me paint you the masterpiece: You finally hack one dumb feature into place. It barely works. It’s fragile, like Jenga at move 27. So naturally, you think, “Cool, let’s build feature two.” This is where the bomb detonates. Touch literally anything and feature one falls apart. You debug for hours, fix one thing, and now feature two is broken. Smash them together and your codebase is a landfill of duplication, hacks, and accidental copy-paste genius. And we’re not even talking about code quality. Or structure. Or actually understanding what it’s building behind your back. Survive that? You get spaghetti code that looks like it was written by four drunk interns and a golden retriever. GenAI gurus still act like it’s magic. Wrong. Quick check: Would you drive a car if you knew the self-driving software was vibe coded? Would you store your life savings in a bank with vibe-coded backend? Would you get on a plane if you learned “well, the AI did its best with autopilot, but wow, those first two buttons work great”? No. Nobody with survival instincts would. Here’s the reality, today: ↳ Vibe coding ≠ productivity. It's a slot machine. ↳ One feature “working” is pure luck. ↳ Add another? Enjoy the chaos. ↳ Your codebase becomes a museum of bugs and TODOs. Want code with integrity? Consistency? Something actual developers can ship, maintain, and scale? Forget it. Maybe one day these tools can take your napkin doodle and ship Stripe-level systems. Right now? It’s brute force, constant rollback, and praying nothing explodes when you add a second button. That’s why, at BuddiesHR, we still build the hard way. The proper way. Actual engineering discipline. Shipping features that stay shipped. No magic shortcuts. No AI hallucinations. Founders: stop deluding yourselves. You want one “Auto-GPT”-built feature? Maybe. A product? Not this decade. Stay sharp. Write real code. Ship things that last. Or strap in for the vibe-coded rollercoaster. Good luck getting off alive. ---------- 👋 Hey, I'm J.Y! I'm the co-founder of BuddiesHR, the #1 Employee Engagement Software that lives in Slack. I post 1x a day about my journey and share what I've learned along the way. Follow me for more content like this 👆 P.S. I'm writing a no-BS B2B SaaS playbook with everything I've learned. Want a free copy? Click “Visit my website” to sign up.
249 comments
May 26, 2025
VC funding is silently killing startups. Not because venture capital is toxic. Not because founders can't close rounds. But because raising money has replaced solving real problems as the North Star. TechCrunch headlines hype us up daily: ↳ "Startup secures $2M to revolutionize paper clips" ↳ "$5M seed raised to build Netflix for hamsters" Suddenly founders aren't chasing product-market fit. They're chasing term sheets, investor validations, and vanity headlines. Here's exactly what happens next: 1/ Startups pitch investors more than they talk to users. 2/ Teams design slides rather than solve critical pain points. 3/ Companies spend against money they haven't truly earned—burning runway and trust simultaneously. But here's the raw truth no one admits: ↳ Millions raised ≠ product validation. ↳ Buzz doesn't pay salaries. ↳ Most VC-backed startups still implode spectacularly. ↳ Secretly, overfunded founders envy ruthless, profitable bootstrappers. I know exactly WTF I’m saying — because I have "been there, done that": ↳ Got into YC. ↳ Raised a $6M seed. ↳ Lived that TechCrunch dopamine hit. But guess what? Raising doesn’t protect your startup from implosion. It speeds it up. Today, with BuddiesHR, I’m clean as ever: ↳ Bootstrapped. ↳ Profitable at $30K MRR. ↳ Lean. Free. Focused. No toxic cap tables. No investor breathing down my neck. No more chasing vanity metrics like a trained monkey. Founders: Solve real f*cking problems. Stack real revenue. Own every inch of your company. Because raising money isn't the real game. Survival, profitability, and freedom are. Stay lean. Stay focus. Stay bootstrapped. _________________ Enjoyed this post? Drop it a like (👍) — or I'll take it personally. (And follow J.Y for more content like this)
177 comments
April 18, 2025
FanDuel: acquired for $465M. Now worth $20B. Founders got... NOTHING (lol) If you think "that won’t happen to me," you’re not paying attention. Tech Twitter pumps you full of unicorn dreams. VCs sell you “partnership.” But here’s how it really plays out: Founders build a beast. 9-figure revenue, market heat, timing so perfect you can smell the gold rush. But somewhere between all those “raising our next round” PR blasts, they surrender control. Board flips. Investors pile on $550M+ in liquidation preferences. Suddenly, “drag-along rights” means they can unload the whole company… founders be damned. That’s exactly how FanDuel’s founders ended up owning zero from a $465M acquisition. The investors walked with the winnings. The people who built it walked away empty, watching their creation soar to $20B while lawyers fight over the crumbs. You think this is rare? That’s cute. Every month another founder show up, eyes wide, cap table bleeding, shocked that the board cashed out and left them holding air. Here’s the game: ↳ You never really own your company once you lose the board. ↳ Preferences > passion, every single time. ↳ If the people writing checks want out, you’re a passenger, not the driver. At BuddiesHR, we chose our path early. No mystery terms. No board filled with strangers. No upside casino. Founders: Don’t become another FanDuel headline. 1/ Learn the f*cking math. $465M can = $0 for you. 2/ Control your board until it hurts. 3/ You’re not building for a press release — you’re building for freedom. Real game = survive, grow, own your f*cking outcome. _________________ Enjoyed this post? Drop it a like (👍) — or I'll take it personally. (And follow J.Y for more content like this)
88 comments
May 13, 2025