1,000 Users, Multi-Player AI, 100M Tokens & The Night Our AI Broke a Job Interview

Everything with Ting started here on Product Hunt, so feels only right to wrap the last four months.

It’s been mad. It's the only word I can use.

First time founders, new team, big idea, AI - I mean, that's all the fun ingredients.

So what does 'mad' actually mean though?

Let me try...

1. Less sleep.
2. More internal reward.
3. A new ability to sit at the tension of everything's going to go right or horribly wrong, at any moment.

When I share this with other founders, 3 really hits home. Even the ones flying from Seed to Series A right now, even some going to Series B in record time. They feel crippled with not making it. I say this out loud because I think it's good for other builders to read, it helped me to hear it.

What about Ting specifically?

We grew the team to 4.5 full-time (Ting is our 0.5) plus 2 part-time.

The brains of the operation are @marianaprazeres & the team. I learn from them every single day - Mariana blows my mind with AI knowledge.

We crossed 1,000+ users, with our core users booking around 20 meetings a month. That includes people from NBA, Nike, Diageo, Warner Music Group, Synthesia, TikTok and adidas. The last two I'm cheating a little because they are all likely my old co-workers, but the rest, super cool company to keep.

We’re sitting at ~80% reliability, which is a challenge for many reasons.

We’ve been doing multi-player AI since day one (now A16Z's big bet for 2026): AI that works with groups, outside the chat window, across email, text, WhatsApp etc.

“No links, no apps, just CC or text Ting” sounds simple. It's a great marketing tag line too. But it's not simple at all. It’s really hard.

One moment I won’t forget:
Walking into a restaurant at 8pm on a Friday night, Ting support inbox buzzing, to a message from a customer saying Ting had messed up a job interview for them.

That really sucked. When your product touches people’s real lives, reliability is not a KPI.

Meetings really matter to people. They’re relationships. That’s why we started in the first place. How you book your meetings send social signals to guests. It's an extension of us.

I'm beyond thankful to our investors, advisors and creators, many of them followed us even when Ting was an idea in a PDF. I'm also grateful to @Google for letting us run through 100M+ tokens so far... 🔥

Money and tokens are great (I mean, they're literally everything), but there's a special place in my heart for the users (and people in the PH community) who got in touch, offered time to talk and test Ting. I can't believe these people exist in the world.

I've written about it before but getting signal is not easy, it sounds like great advice to 'talk to your customers all the time' but like, they have a life, and you're just an app, so those rare gems who offer 15-60 mins on a call. Bananas.

This year stretched me. I’m learning how to evolve as a founder, be a better co-founder, and somehow become semi-competent at tax, payroll, pensions, pricing, and all the things I used to take for granted.

I've written quite a few learnings on PH in the last few months, but here's my biggest personal breakthrough insights:

• Focus on the user. You’ll hear a lot from media, VCs, friends, other founders, the internet. Useful perspectives, but the user is the only signal that really matters.

• Keep doors open. Assume something will fall through. Plan A, B, C, D, and E. Survival is optionality.

• Not every user is the right user. Don’t confuse interest with fit.

• Your first 1,000 users take all the bullets. Super-serve them. Over-communicate. Treat them like partners, not metrics for investors.

• Introduce yourself to founders past/present in your category. I've met all the 'big calendar apps' and 'time teams'; and it's probably been my favourite founder moment.

The team and I are going to take a short break over Christmas as we've been sprinting non stop and I believe that small reset will give us perspective and energy to hit next year even harder.

Next year look out for Ting x @OpenAI + more... 👽

Thanks for reading, following, upvoting, getting in touch and making our time on PH so welcoming.

Dan, Mariana, Ting + the team