12 startups in 12 months

date

Jan 31, 2025

slug

12-startups-in-12-months

status

Published

🌸Season One

✅January: YourAIScroll.com

YourAIScroll is all-in-one AI chat manager.

Export and Manage AI Conversation History – Optimize your search and review experience with support for popular AI models (such as Deepseek, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Poe, and more).

Browser Extension

First commit on Dec 22, 2024.

MVP version is completed on Jan 19, 2025.

Zhengyang Hou on Twitter / X

This is the AI products that are currently supported and will be supported soon. Do you have any favorite AI products among them?😜#youraiscroll #buildinpublic pic.twitter.com/m7QluYHnaB— Zhengyang Hou (@Jenqyanghou) January 23, 2025

https://x.com/Jenqyanghou/status/1882272882824544290

Product Launch on X on Feb 10, 2025.

Zhengyang Hou on Twitter / X

🎉I have developed a browser extension that allows you to export AI conversations💬, helping you save important or noteworthy dialogues offline🛜. It supports downloading in 📖Markdown, JSON, and plain text formats, as well as one-click copying in Markdown format. It perfectly… pic.twitter.com/OQNSpfmXgg— Zhengyang Hou (@Jenqyanghou) February 10, 2025

https://x.com/Jenqyanghou/status/1888939956418297930

50 users reached on Feb 15, 2025.

200 users reached on Mar 1, 2025.

Landing Page

First commit on Jan 9, 2025.

Initial version is completed on Jan 26, 2025.

Zhengyang Hou on Twitter / X

I developed a landing page for my browser plugin, starting with prototyping in v0, then designing and developing it step by step using Figma and Windsurf. Here's the final version 👉https://t.co/Rrb3kWesXeThe MVP version of the extension has been submitted for review in the… pic.twitter.com/lNu0dkoHab— Zhengyang Hou (@Jenqyanghou) January 26, 2025

https://x.com/Jenqyanghou/status/1883458244418609187

SEO on Feb 13, 2025.

❌February: REDnote.cool

~~Your Guide to Xiaohongshu Success.~~

~~A tool for~~ ~~TT refugees~~.

Landing Page

~~Milestone~~

~~The "Coming Soon" webpage went live in four hours on Jan 15, 2025.~~

~~Requirement research and product incubation in Februray.~~

Reasons for failure: Initially, this project was set up just to chase trends, but after extensive research on Reddit, no worthwhile demand was identified. Although some tools could be developed, such as a tool to help foreigners choose Chinese names or a web-based Xiaohongshu translation tool, these needs were merely minor itches, not pain points, and couldn’t provide paid value. In the future, some of these user itches might be turned into hackathon projects, but the goal of "12 startups in 12 months" is to create profitable projects. Additionally, last month’s project took up too much time, so it ended in failure.

失败原因：起初这个项目只是为了追赶热点而设立的，但是在reddit上调研许久都没有发现值得去做的需求点，尽管可以做一些工具例如：帮助外国人起中文名字的工具、网页版小红书翻译工具。但这些需求只是一些痒点，并不是痛点，提供不了付费价值。后续可能会把一些用户痒点作为黑客松项目来实现，但是12 startups in 12 months希望的是做一些可盈利的项目再加上一月的项目占用了太多的时间，因此这个月的项目以失败告终。

March: DevLaunch

Dev copilot from 0 to 1.

❤️Some feelings

Recording some of my thoughts and feelings during the development process.

Having many ideas is easy, but turning an idea into a truly great product is not. (Mar 3, 2025)

As an entrepreneur, one should lean more toward sales rather than technology, and especially avoid becoming obsessed with technology. Since I only started dabbling in UI/UX after embarking on entrepreneurship, my "OCD" self, who considers my aesthetic sense to be excellent, often gets hung up on certain components of the product and website, resulting in extremely slow progress. This is highly detrimental to entrepreneurship. Instead, energy should be focused on product functionality and promotion—f**k the UI, as long as it’s usable. First, get the product functionality right; once you have users, then refine the UI/UX. This will improve user retention and increase organic sharing rates. (Mar 26, 2025)

作为创业者应该更偏向于销售而不是技术，尤其是不应该迷恋技术，由于我是创业才开始接触到UI/UX，“强迫症”的我自认为审美很好，总是纠结于产品和网站的某些组件，导致进度十分缓慢。这对于创业是非常不利的，应该把精力放到产品功能和宣传，去他妈的UI，能用就行。先把产品功能做好，有了用户，UI/UX再做好，才会让用户粘性更好，自发传播率更高。