Show HN: Sleek - AI mobile app mockup generator (our 3rd pivot, last shot)
sleek.designwe built sleek.design: you describe your app idea and it generates mobile mockups designs. it is possible to export them into html, react or figma. it is also possible to get a prompt that can be pasted into bolt and will generate the actual app starting from the design created.
this is our third huge pivot and honestly the last shot we're giving ourselves.
quick backstory: we're 3 bootstrapped builders. launched about a year ago with what's now on v1.reweb.so, basically a visual builder for nextjs/tailwind/shadcn. it went pretty viral and started growing, but we couldn't get past $2k MRR. everyone kept asking for "sync with codebase" but we'd built it json-first instead of code-first, so the source of truth wasn't the code itself but an internal json representation. this made sync basically impossible to build. everyone kept churning and we concluded it was probably better to move on.
next was landing.new: AI-generated landing pages from a description. we made a templating engine where AI would pick and mix premade blocks. launched it, got maybe 5 sales for less than $400. then sonnet 3.7 came out and could just build entire landing pages from a prompt, which made our whole templating engine feel worthless. we basically got demotivated and did no marketing at all.
then we went back to reweb (reweb.so), creating an infinite canvas to design components and pages, and iterate quick. got some customers but AI costs spiked hard and with free trials we earned almost nothing.
we now understood that we kept building top-down instead of understanding real user pain first. we were solving problems we thought existed, and couldn't define an ICP even after tons of user interviews. we are now aware that we kept going mainly because of sunk cost fallacy. reaching PMF seems increasingly like a mirage, even though we have done everything possible to build the best products we can and maintain consistently high quality.
we are running out of savings and, having had virtually no personal income due to low MRR, we have decided to give us two months, if we don't start seeing good numbers by the end of the year, we'll have to quit this.
so now we're niching down as much as possible: just mobile app mockups. got some weak signals in interviews and that's it. we have reduced the free trial to the bare minimum because otherwise the costs of AI would kill us immediately.
we have less than $5k left and we're going all in on marketing and paying for sponsored content on youtube/instagram/tiktok. we are also going to try some SEO, organic content, and so on.
i really hope this is the right time.
If this works better than base44.com which I haven't seen build backends and keeps breaking and keeps not understanding me, and better than rork.com that supposedly has a better backend but still feels a bit incapable in doing what it's told, then sleek.design could be a game changer.
I also wish it could build the app and let me use it, so I can see if it works, before it asks me to pay. Being asked to pay for something that I can't see if it works made me close my account and not want to use it again. Having to wait for 32 days for credits to reset is a non-starter.
In the end this app builder didn't give me what I want.
It also looks like it uses bolt.new instead of be something built by the OP.
OP stated it’s a design tool (mockup builder), don’t know why you guys are expecting more.