As a student with a lot of notes I had a problem with studying fast for tests. So I created Notiv an AI study app that analyzes your notes and prepares you for test.
Because near everything about this appears to be a low effort scam. The gmail is to add to the "authenticity" of the scammer being 16, because this way they can add a presumed birthyear, wheras with domain email it would make no sense. Proof is in that the address williamcranna@gmail.com is avaliable, which would be the first thing a reasonable person would have tried, before adding the year like a dickhead.
It might be more productive to explain how this scam works instead of dismissing my counter argument with an incorrectly used meme.
I really don’t see how a learning app for students who also frequent HN is a valuable enough demographic to target. And ironically, the red flags identified would be mistakes a scammer would know not to make.
Everything about this submission can be easily explained by inexperience but it’s a lot harder to explain why it’s scam.
You could apply Occam’s Razor here and reasonably say that this being an inexperienced 16 year old is the hypothesis with the fewer assumptions.
Nah, I don't buy it. Theyre good enough at higher level skills / comprehension that such enormous failures in more foundational skills makes no sense.
the website advertises a product that makes use of web infrastructure signficantly more complex/sophisticated than webmail tied to your domain. It's a zero effort zero cost addon for most hosting services these days.
so either this whole thing is a LLM project, and the 16 year old just has their name and reputation as a biological human of young age propping up / hyping the llm based product, or its a scam.
bottom line. It's either unremarkable or untrustworthy, likely both.
> Nah, I don't buy it. Theyre good enough at higher level skills / comprehension that such enormous failures in more foundational skills makes no sense
It wouldn’t make sense for a scammer to make those mistakes either. So you’re not proving anything nefarious by pointing out those mistakes. All you’re proving is mistakes have been made.
You might be surprised to learn this, but people makes a lot of mistakes at the start of their career. And 16 is very early on.
I suspect there might have been some “vibe coding” going on, but that’s the worst criticism I’m willing to make. And even if I’m correct here, everyone has to start somewhere. I grew up with massive printed books, others on here learned from Stack Overflow. Vibe coding is only a problem if you don’t learn from it too.
I've already pointed out why a scammer might make this mistake - adding credibility to the "im 16" angle. lets take the HN account, created 9 days ago. No "2008" or anything of the sort. Only in the prominantly displayed email. Only to help support the lie that helps gain attention. It reeks.
It reeks of the marketing tactic along the lines of "my brother is autistic, here's my subpar contribution of "their" work to a subreddit dedicated to artisinal skills" and watch the karma roll on in for them, only to check their comment history and it being a clear case of karma whoring via lies.
this smells the same.
now, if i am wrong and its just a vibe coding thing, then the "im 16" part plays no role, it would be impressive if the 16 year old did this in a responsible way, but anyone can vibe code their way to such a product woth zero real skill or effort, making the "im 16" point lose the context underwhich it would be pertinent information.
Llm's have changed our world in many ways, this being one of them. Imagine someone asks some agentic llm framework a research question, and a series of unrelated tangents later this agentic framework solves a nobel prize worthy problem. Should the human get that prize? Of course not, it would otherwise recognize skills/brightness in a human who doesnt actually posses it.
If this isnt just a scam, then this would be no different.
last example. If someone posted, "im 16, here is my art portfolio" and its all AI generated content, would you care? Would it demand the same response as if this was a gallery of high quality and beautiful work, painted by hand? Of course not.
I do appreciate that your post is genuinely trying to come from a good place, but I can’t say I agree with any of it.
By that I don’t just mean the analysis of this specific submission but also your tangent points about AI. People have used tools to enable creativity for the entirety of human history. The definition of what tools are acceptable and which are cheating is a subjective one and often defined by the age of the person (ie what was the norm when you were in your 20s).
I’ve seen the same debates time and time again. Whether it’s Ableton vs vinyl (DJs), search engines vs directory listings (research), internet vs books (research), VSTi’s vs instruments (musicians), automatic vs manual shift (cars), Photoshop vs traditional photography effects, CGI vs animatronics (movies), I could go on and on.
Even dumb things like a central payment till in restaurants (eg McDonalds) was heavily criticised in the UK when it was new because the “correct” way to serve food was via table service…or so people over a certain age believed.
Most people hate change. I know because I’m old myself and have seen enough change first hand and how people react to it. But change doesn’t make a compelling argument for why this 16 year old shouldn’t be helped in their endeavours to build an app. Nor is it proof that this individual isn’t who they claim to be.
I also appreciate where you're coming from and it's likely we wont agree, due to a difference in fundamental values (neither being better imo, just different), but i value the discourse and world view broadening that conversations like this offer no less. So let me preface this with the fact i value your input and think your point is not just valid, but true if i allow myself to evaluate all this under a different value system.
that being said, even if i shift my values in this way, one problem remains - the nature of creativity.
so, under this value system tool use is irrelevant, if it makes creativity easier cool, doesnt diminish it non.
so lets evaluate this purely on a novelty / creativity angle.
marketing wise: tactic / style taken from a youtuber they reference in their twitter account
product: idea contributes jothing novel to a saturated space of ai learning tolls
tool use: tools used, and the way they were used, is about as basic as it gets
insight: no real novel or interesting insights into tool use, or the problem being solved
wholisitc interpretation: all together, what appears novel in all this, is applying a particular marketing strategty to hn, one that is usually aimed at children. This raises a few interesting questions about shifting demogrpahics on hn among other things, but this post is interesting in a meta way, not a direct way.
as an example, writing text like this, in a digital way, is not special anymore, by anyones reakoning - and yet if you apply this skill creatively, be it a story or poetry or solving a novel problem etc. Then that comment still has creative merit, even if the skills underlying it are no longer noteworthy. The same is true here, the skills underlying what was done are no longer noteworthy, and so we must evaluate on content alone. The content is derivative. So it stands on nothing.
You're right I have no coding skill. But testing out Lovable and bringing my idea to reality made me realize this is something I want to learn so I've already began taking a course learning how to code softwares of my own.
People should't be "scared" of these LLM's it's just a tool that shows coding to a wider audience.
That's a really positive outcome, one I am personally supportive of. Learning to code is a rewarding journey.
Now, while I am not scared of LLM's, I am scared for users who use them inappropriately.
I use LLM's extensively, and so I am intimately familiar with the dangers they pose to the uninitiated. I would HEAVILY caution against relying on LLM's until you can read and understand the code your asking LLM's to write comfortably.
Personally, I would recommend you first learn to code in a language of interest, then use LLM's to automate the stuff that has become second nature. The stuff you can pump out mindlessly. This takes the burden of monotonous tasks of your hands, and you have the expertise to check the LLM output for glaring issues. It's still not fully automated but it's much faster if you can write something complex, critical, or sensitive, while the LLM churns out boiler plate and routine chunks. You then comeback later and proof read the LLM output.
Trusting AI code you yourself don't understand is a recipe for disaster. You claim your users data will be private, but then have to rely on AI jank to keep this data safe, if it is even safe. It might just throw everything into publicly accessible folders. What happens when you promise safety, but don't actually provide any. What happens when a users data is then stolen? Who does the court hold accountable? you? the LLM you blindly trusted?
Appreciate it, I didn’t expect this post to get as much attention as it did, this is just a small idea I had. I didn’t think an email yet was necessary.
The reason I have is even less believable, lol. I made my personal email when I was 7 so I just made it that. If you don’t believe me check out my Twitter @willcranna .
There appears to be a pattern of posts where "I'm 16 / 17 etc" as a prefix gets the hits. And rightly so!
It's very good that young people are engaged. It's encouraging for us grey beards interested in the future of technology and a healthy action for us old people to encourage younger people.
As my beard gets greyer so my pattern recognition library of samples gets bigger and it has recognised a "I'm 16" prefix to popular HN submissions!
She appears to be a very good product developer. However, unless the hypothetical VC knows more about their upcoming plan, it doesn't look like a fundable business with a strong moat and the potential to become a unicorn or larger business.
> (indirectly) boast about their entrepreneurial skills
Are you referring to the actual post? What age would it be appropriate to post one's creations would you say? Or is it the "I'm 16-" prefix? But I can't work out where the narcissism comes in.
It is indeed the title that trips me up. When I was their age, we would call similar efforts "play", and we certainly didn't pretend to be the next Bill Gates.
I'm not saying that one or the other approach is objectively better, I was merely sharing my personal opinion on the matter, so that perhaps someone can learn from that data point, or to offer some comfort to those who frequent Hacker News for the critical thinking rather than the money-making news.
(Apart from the title, the website with legal matter suggest a focus on things that I certainly do not associate favorably with a "hacker".)
I think there's always been entrepreneurial kids - back in my days they bought a 6 pack of pepsi and sold them individually at a markup. Today the hustling is done by making apps and websites.
Where do you get the "next Bill Gates" part from? I can only see a run-of-the-mill "professional" website, of which there are countless on the web nowadays. The product itself seems to be something that the OP wanted for himself and managed to turn into something others can use. I seriously doubt its utility myself, but I don't see how this makes him "pretend to be the next Bill Gates"?
Thank you for taking the time to respond to so many comments.
Note that my remark is more about my own semi-philosophical thoughts on the value of entrepreneurship, and not so much about your particular effort. Perhaps I should've made that more clear. And perhaps I should've posted it to Meta Hacker News, if there were such a place.
Should society motivate people to invest in learning technology, or to organize businesses, both just for the sake of it? I personally prefer the former over the latter, but I can see that both (as well as abstaining from either) have their pluses and minuses.
> Should society motivate people to invest in learning technology, or to organize businesses, both just for the sake of it? I personally prefer the former over the latter, but I can see that both (as well as abstaining from either) have their pluses and minuses.
I can almost agree with you - I'm more on the former side myself. I only work enough to afford food, shelter and some surplus for studying. But I don't see the problem with somebody with more business acumen using the journey to get somewhere. You can both enjoy the hunt and the barbecue. You don't have to pick one.
The user images look AI-generated, based on e.g. the fingers in https://www.notiv.app/lovable-uploads/9224843e-e523-4691-951... I think this is inherently dishonest because it's made to look like they're real users. Is the image and testimonial from "Conner" on the Features page also fake?
I thought "toi la mot con Lua" was French for "You, the word with Lua!", the well-known, but not to me, scripting bible.
Turns out I misread the Unicode, and it is actually "Tôi Là Một Con Lừa", which is Vietnamese for "I am a donkey", which probably makes it suitable reading material for yours truly.
That's cute 30 pages a month for 5 bucks, you may be interested in ab testing depending on the study level of the students, university usually requires way more pages per month, but 15 bucks to get unlimited seems too high imo.
(and unlimited may generate for you too high costs ;))
If you're using OpenAI or similar services to analyze notes, they typically retain data for model improvement, which contradicts your "never shared" claim unless you've negotiated special terms or implemented a proxy architecture that anonymizes content.
“I've always struggled to make sense of my notes and figure out what to study. Notiv gave me a clear plan and helped me actually retain the material. Bringing my GPA up by 0.9 points in just one semester.”
This sounds kind of fake, like a character playing a customer saying good things about your product.
look, you seem like might really just be a genuine kid, genuinely trying. Stay away from youtubers like mark lou, they're grifters. A rule of thumb I'm sure near all here will agree with me on is that "get rich quick" content creators have plagued every human medium from speech to books to the internet, and they have never, EVER, been right.
They make their money from fooling others. Stick to educational channels. Learn to code. Learn a valuable skill you can take pride in. Mark lou and the like will at best teach you to grift, and learning to grift is not the way to a good life. You clearly have a knack for tech, but know if it's easy, then something is almost surely wrong. Anything that would be easy to exploit becomes incredibly competitive, making it hard. There are no easy wins in life, beyond those you were born to.
This is the best comment here! I made this app not with making money in mind, but knowing I want an obtainable skill that I can leverage with applying to schools/jobs. I’m not here to make money quick, I want to build something with meaning, and I don’t think that’s possible with someone’s first app. This is the first step in learning to reach my meaningful idea.
If you're actually 16, this is really nice and you are way ahead for your age, congrats :) You got a little stick here because some people have used this claim falsely for marketing and are actually not 16.
It's a serious question. Is the focus studying fast for tests (quoted from OP)? Or running a business? If the real goal were studying, the app could be banged out quickly and you could get back to studying. The business is a time sink - which at this stage OP would have presumably discovered - he's already out here spending time promoting it.
The idea is very good, it's just annoying that the current (i made ai startup) trend is to vibe generate something that is a wrapper for other AI models and already ask for $15 for it. Do you even realize how much work has been done in OpenAI to ask us for $20 a month? How many engineers and scientific articles?
From my point of view, for this not to be a scam:
1 - there should first be a video presentation of the program's operation with all functions, not a website with a bunch of promises and a PAY button
2 - You should definitely write your FIRST startup without any AI generation at all!
you seem smart. why waste your life on this superficial startup nonsense? you still have time to change directions and work towards something important. it's hard to change directions after you've made startup money.
Thanks, definitely had a few laughs when scrolling through the comments this morning. I’m happy you like my idea, and I hope to only improve upon it from here.
You have to allow people start using the app without creating accounts. Any accounts at all to try it out.
The first thing I learn about this app on the landing page - is that it's going to be a business and what it's pricing plans are.
This is before me being SOLD on the damn thing to begin with.
So the order the app introduces itself is:
1. Pricing (it's a SAAS)
2. Asks to create an account.
3. The user here closes the tab somewhere here, unless they apriori know they want whatever it is you're offering. Or they have been sold this from word of mouth.
The order it should be in:
1. Oh, wow, this is cool. I like this, this is exactly what I need. So lets create an account to save the things I've already created here while playing around.
2. As you create account, introduce user to pricing plans and extras you get from a paid account.
I'd say the hardest bit about running a business is not running the business. It's everything else - admin, figuring out what you actually want to do, reaching customers, retaining customers etc.
But also that's the bit you have lots of time to figure out. Focus on the bits you enjoy and try to learn as much as you can (unless you are really desperate for cash out of this, in which case focus on all that!). You can figure out the boring bits later.
Thanks, I’m working on making the ui better for flash cards and tests right now. Appreciate your feedback. This post was all I needed for some user feedback to know that I need to work on next.
131 comments
[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 177 ms ] threadThere's still time left to apply to YC's 2025 summer batch: [0] You have 48 hours left until applications close on May 13th.
Who knows, maybe you could achieve fast growth like Scale AI (YC S16) [1] did.
All you have to do is to keep building.
[0] https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20620578
I’m sure when you were 16 you might have made the same mistakes too.
I really don’t see how a learning app for students who also frequent HN is a valuable enough demographic to target. And ironically, the red flags identified would be mistakes a scammer would know not to make.
Everything about this submission can be easily explained by inexperience but it’s a lot harder to explain why it’s scam.
You could apply Occam’s Razor here and reasonably say that this being an inexperienced 16 year old is the hypothesis with the fewer assumptions.
the website advertises a product that makes use of web infrastructure signficantly more complex/sophisticated than webmail tied to your domain. It's a zero effort zero cost addon for most hosting services these days.
so either this whole thing is a LLM project, and the 16 year old just has their name and reputation as a biological human of young age propping up / hyping the llm based product, or its a scam.
bottom line. It's either unremarkable or untrustworthy, likely both.
It wouldn’t make sense for a scammer to make those mistakes either. So you’re not proving anything nefarious by pointing out those mistakes. All you’re proving is mistakes have been made.
You might be surprised to learn this, but people makes a lot of mistakes at the start of their career. And 16 is very early on.
I suspect there might have been some “vibe coding” going on, but that’s the worst criticism I’m willing to make. And even if I’m correct here, everyone has to start somewhere. I grew up with massive printed books, others on here learned from Stack Overflow. Vibe coding is only a problem if you don’t learn from it too.
It reeks of the marketing tactic along the lines of "my brother is autistic, here's my subpar contribution of "their" work to a subreddit dedicated to artisinal skills" and watch the karma roll on in for them, only to check their comment history and it being a clear case of karma whoring via lies.
this smells the same.
now, if i am wrong and its just a vibe coding thing, then the "im 16" part plays no role, it would be impressive if the 16 year old did this in a responsible way, but anyone can vibe code their way to such a product woth zero real skill or effort, making the "im 16" point lose the context underwhich it would be pertinent information.
Llm's have changed our world in many ways, this being one of them. Imagine someone asks some agentic llm framework a research question, and a series of unrelated tangents later this agentic framework solves a nobel prize worthy problem. Should the human get that prize? Of course not, it would otherwise recognize skills/brightness in a human who doesnt actually posses it.
If this isnt just a scam, then this would be no different.
last example. If someone posted, "im 16, here is my art portfolio" and its all AI generated content, would you care? Would it demand the same response as if this was a gallery of high quality and beautiful work, painted by hand? Of course not.
By that I don’t just mean the analysis of this specific submission but also your tangent points about AI. People have used tools to enable creativity for the entirety of human history. The definition of what tools are acceptable and which are cheating is a subjective one and often defined by the age of the person (ie what was the norm when you were in your 20s).
I’ve seen the same debates time and time again. Whether it’s Ableton vs vinyl (DJs), search engines vs directory listings (research), internet vs books (research), VSTi’s vs instruments (musicians), automatic vs manual shift (cars), Photoshop vs traditional photography effects, CGI vs animatronics (movies), I could go on and on.
Even dumb things like a central payment till in restaurants (eg McDonalds) was heavily criticised in the UK when it was new because the “correct” way to serve food was via table service…or so people over a certain age believed.
Most people hate change. I know because I’m old myself and have seen enough change first hand and how people react to it. But change doesn’t make a compelling argument for why this 16 year old shouldn’t be helped in their endeavours to build an app. Nor is it proof that this individual isn’t who they claim to be.
that being said, even if i shift my values in this way, one problem remains - the nature of creativity.
so, under this value system tool use is irrelevant, if it makes creativity easier cool, doesnt diminish it non.
so lets evaluate this purely on a novelty / creativity angle.
marketing wise: tactic / style taken from a youtuber they reference in their twitter account
product: idea contributes jothing novel to a saturated space of ai learning tolls
tool use: tools used, and the way they were used, is about as basic as it gets
insight: no real novel or interesting insights into tool use, or the problem being solved
wholisitc interpretation: all together, what appears novel in all this, is applying a particular marketing strategty to hn, one that is usually aimed at children. This raises a few interesting questions about shifting demogrpahics on hn among other things, but this post is interesting in a meta way, not a direct way.
as an example, writing text like this, in a digital way, is not special anymore, by anyones reakoning - and yet if you apply this skill creatively, be it a story or poetry or solving a novel problem etc. Then that comment still has creative merit, even if the skills underlying it are no longer noteworthy. The same is true here, the skills underlying what was done are no longer noteworthy, and so we must evaluate on content alone. The content is derivative. So it stands on nothing.
I do also appreciate the patience and time you’ve taken to share your perspective too.
People should't be "scared" of these LLM's it's just a tool that shows coding to a wider audience.
Now, while I am not scared of LLM's, I am scared for users who use them inappropriately.
I use LLM's extensively, and so I am intimately familiar with the dangers they pose to the uninitiated. I would HEAVILY caution against relying on LLM's until you can read and understand the code your asking LLM's to write comfortably.
Personally, I would recommend you first learn to code in a language of interest, then use LLM's to automate the stuff that has become second nature. The stuff you can pump out mindlessly. This takes the burden of monotonous tasks of your hands, and you have the expertise to check the LLM output for glaring issues. It's still not fully automated but it's much faster if you can write something complex, critical, or sensitive, while the LLM churns out boiler plate and routine chunks. You then comeback later and proof read the LLM output.
Trusting AI code you yourself don't understand is a recipe for disaster. You claim your users data will be private, but then have to rely on AI jank to keep this data safe, if it is even safe. It might just throw everything into publicly accessible folders. What happens when you promise safety, but don't actually provide any. What happens when a users data is then stolen? Who does the court hold accountable? you? the LLM you blindly trusted?
It's very good that young people are engaged. It's encouraging for us grey beards interested in the future of technology and a healthy action for us old people to encourage younger people.
As my beard gets greyer so my pattern recognition library of samples gets bigger and it has recognised a "I'm 16" prefix to popular HN submissions!
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=i%27m+16 https://hn.algolia.com/?q=i%27m+17
Is my data private? Yes. Your uploads are secure, never shared, and can be deleted anytime.
https://www.businessinsider.de/gruenderszene/business/20-jae...
Her product https://www.bulletpoint.app/
If i would be a VC, i would spend only 5 min on the product and hand them 500k without any discussion :)
Are you referring to the actual post? What age would it be appropriate to post one's creations would you say? Or is it the "I'm 16-" prefix? But I can't work out where the narcissism comes in.
I'm not saying that one or the other approach is objectively better, I was merely sharing my personal opinion on the matter, so that perhaps someone can learn from that data point, or to offer some comfort to those who frequent Hacker News for the critical thinking rather than the money-making news.
(Apart from the title, the website with legal matter suggest a focus on things that I certainly do not associate favorably with a "hacker".)
Where do you get the "next Bill Gates" part from? I can only see a run-of-the-mill "professional" website, of which there are countless on the web nowadays. The product itself seems to be something that the OP wanted for himself and managed to turn into something others can use. I seriously doubt its utility myself, but I don't see how this makes him "pretend to be the next Bill Gates"?
Note that my remark is more about my own semi-philosophical thoughts on the value of entrepreneurship, and not so much about your particular effort. Perhaps I should've made that more clear. And perhaps I should've posted it to Meta Hacker News, if there were such a place.
Should society motivate people to invest in learning technology, or to organize businesses, both just for the sake of it? I personally prefer the former over the latter, but I can see that both (as well as abstaining from either) have their pluses and minuses.
I can almost agree with you - I'm more on the former side myself. I only work enough to afford food, shelter and some surplus for studying. But I don't see the problem with somebody with more business acumen using the journey to get somewhere. You can both enjoy the hunt and the barbecue. You don't have to pick one.
Congrats on launching though, this is an amazing achievement and the dedication/skill set will take you far.
I wish you all the best with your initiative!
Turns out I misread the Unicode, and it is actually "Tôi Là Một Con Lừa", which is Vietnamese for "I am a donkey", which probably makes it suitable reading material for yours truly.
https://vocal.media/families/this-is-not-your-way-story
(and unlimited may generate for you too high costs ;))
Otherwise seems nice, will test, good luck!
How are you analyzing and marking up the notes? Assuming it is with a partner/third-party AI, isn't this sharing my data with (for example) OpenAI?
Haven't used it but that's pretty cool!! This is something I struggle with as many of my topics don't have free/cheap practice tests.
This sounds kind of fake, like a character playing a customer saying good things about your product.
Only God knows how much I needed better grammar when I was 16. Tbh I still do.. LoL
They make their money from fooling others. Stick to educational channels. Learn to code. Learn a valuable skill you can take pride in. Mark lou and the like will at best teach you to grift, and learning to grift is not the way to a good life. You clearly have a knack for tech, but know if it's easy, then something is almost surely wrong. Anything that would be easy to exploit becomes incredibly competitive, making it hard. There are no easy wins in life, beyond those you were born to.
The user has no background, and I couldn't find any info on the creator itself.
https://llrnghrthzeonfuakaew.supabase.co/auth/v1/verify?toke...
Hahahaha, I can't believe I found the meme in the wild!
If you are, keep going - you will smash it :)
It's a serious question. Is the focus studying fast for tests (quoted from OP)? Or running a business? If the real goal were studying, the app could be banged out quickly and you could get back to studying. The business is a time sink - which at this stage OP would have presumably discovered - he's already out here spending time promoting it.
Because VC money doesn't invest in apps, and it's trendy.
From my point of view, for this not to be a scam: 1 - there should first be a video presentation of the program's operation with all functions, not a website with a bunch of promises and a PAY button 2 - You should definitely write your FIRST startup without any AI generation at all!
Kudos, William, for putting this app together. Keep a thick skin when reading and acting on the comments and you’ll have a sweet project on your hands
The first thing I learn about this app on the landing page - is that it's going to be a business and what it's pricing plans are.
This is before me being SOLD on the damn thing to begin with.
So the order the app introduces itself is:
1. Pricing (it's a SAAS)
2. Asks to create an account.
3. The user here closes the tab somewhere here, unless they apriori know they want whatever it is you're offering. Or they have been sold this from word of mouth.
The order it should be in:
1. Oh, wow, this is cool. I like this, this is exactly what I need. So lets create an account to save the things I've already created here while playing around.
2. As you create account, introduce user to pricing plans and extras you get from a paid account.
I'd say the hardest bit about running a business is not running the business. It's everything else - admin, figuring out what you actually want to do, reaching customers, retaining customers etc.
But also that's the bit you have lots of time to figure out. Focus on the bits you enjoy and try to learn as much as you can (unless you are really desperate for cash out of this, in which case focus on all that!). You can figure out the boring bits later.