Hey everyone,

I've built my product around traditional SaaS pricing (monthly tiers), but I m starting to wonder if that model is getting outdated, especially with more AI-powered and compute-heavy tools entering the market.
That shift requires real architectural changes, instrumentation, metering, billing logic, and UI changes, not just pricing tweaks. It s something I m starting to seriously think about for my own product.

In particular, AI usage has real COGs (every prompt costs money), and I m seeing more platforms experimenting with usage-based models, or hybrids like SaaS base + usage + overage.

For those of you building AI or compute-intensive tools:

I came to exactly the same conclusion that real startup ideas often come from simple and boring problems. From my own experience: I spent three years on a startup that was supposed to revolutionize online education, but in the end it had 0 users. Now I ve just started solving a simple problem for home appliance repair technicians and immediately got my first paying users on a very rough MVP.

More and more companies are using a subscription model instead of a one-time payment for a product.

Duolingo, CapCut and the like are examples of subscription models (monthly or annual), while DaVinci Resolve, for example, has a lifetime license.

Building a team or want to join a startup?

Founders, teams, and startups drop a comment if you're hiring.

Every founder dreams of a big Product Hunt splash, top of the day, hundreds of upvotes, users flooding in. But here s what most don t realize: Product Hunt is not the place to validate your idea.

It s the place to amplify what s already working.

If you wait until launch day to show your product to the world, you ve already lost half the battle.

I keep seeing posts on LinkedIn like:

We built AI agents and fired our marketing/sales/HR teams.

In my opinion total bullsh*t.