Building in Public: SaaS Launch Strategies & Content Ideas

Note from future Jacob (2026):

This startup failed. In fact, it never got off the ground beyond an idea. The reasons were many, but if anything it was an inspiring exercise in what not to do. So much focus on brand, on what it should mean, and no focus at all on what difference the product should make to the person that uses it. I can forgive myself for that. It was incredibly easy to be swept away by the great wave of possibility that was early AI at this point.

Now, in 2026, as I write this, things are quite different. Back then, we had a taste. Now, with the arrival of models like Anthropic's Claude Fable and OpenAI's GPT-5.6, those of us who can operate the harnesses can build beyond our wildest dreams.

Some of the ideas from this startup have survived, and even the brand name has lived to fight another day. Sayora is an AI receptionist for UK small businesses. When your hands are full and your phone goes to voicemail, who answers? Sayora can.

Read more about the product, and the story behind the name, at sayora.ai

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It's week 7 of 16:

Jacob Anderson (@itwasjacob) and Colin Gray (@colinmcgray), his day job boss, are talking about long-term vision planning and choosing a name.

Ryan has broken ground on building the first mini product under the brand, names are being chosen, things are getting real.

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In this episode:

Jacob's progress on Brand naming and Manifesto.

Ryan's progress on building an auth system and laying the foundations to work with an LLM.

UI can be built generatively.

Excitement for a future with AI.

Using a vector store for a hybrid memory model.

How Colin chose the names for The Podcast Host and Alitu.

Functional names are usually best (so watch us NOT do that!)

The power of storytelling.

The importance of sound symbolism.

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This podcast is made with Alitu:

Alitu was made to give indie creators a leg up. Podcasting is too time-consuming for most people, but Alitu let's you sit down to record, make some simple edits if you really want to, and just hit publish.

It'll clean up your audio and make you sound loud and clear, add the right metadata, deal with filetypes and export settings. You literally just press publish.

So if you're like me and feel like you've barely got enough time to work on your startup as it is, but really want to add podcasting to your content mix, then give it a shot.

It only costs $38 per month for your whole stack of podcasting tools, but if you use discount code "buildinpublic" when you upgrade and you'll get 15% off for 3 months.

Just visit https://alitu.com and start a free trial to get started.