Show HN: My bootstrapped startup for co-parents was just featured in WIRED
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This project started as a way to make co-parenting less painful for me — and it turned into real purpose. Still, I’m a super hard worker, and I think about that balance a lot: working to stay sane vs. working to avoid pain. Curious how others here think about that balance.
Interesting project.
Can you share a bit of the SEO aspect of your marketing?
Can you share a bit of the SEO aspect of your marketing?
I'm by no means an expert here, but search currently drives about 80% of our downloads.
Before the app was ready, I launched the website and started populating it with articles on various helpful topics for the coparenting/high-conflict niche. Many of these ideas just came from content I was already consuming. Long-tail terms have been strong drivers of traffic.
Several are now >10 for their search terms like "jade technique". I also used AI to generate several free resource offers, typically related to features that I have yet to release (like a spreadsheet-based custody calendar), so that I can start ranking on those terms, which has also become a big driver for our mailing list.
I've been using Squirrly for SEO (not recommended per se, but affordable), along with siteguru.co to track keyword ranking (highly recommended and affordable).
Before the app was ready, I launched the website and started populating it with articles on various helpful topics for the coparenting/high-conflict niche. Many of these ideas just came from content I was already consuming. Long-tail terms have been strong drivers of traffic.
Several are now >10 for their search terms like "jade technique". I also used AI to generate several free resource offers, typically related to features that I have yet to release (like a spreadsheet-based custody calendar), so that I can start ranking on those terms, which has also become a big driver for our mailing list.
I've been using Squirrly for SEO (not recommended per se, but affordable), along with siteguru.co to track keyword ranking (highly recommended and affordable).
URLs? (Of your site and of the Wired article)
The idea came from personal experience — a painful divorce and difficult co-parenting communication. Courts often tell co-parents to keep things business-like and child-focused, which sounds simple but is brutally hard in practice. I realized AI can sometimes do what humans can’t — remove emotion from the loop. It started as a simple theory — that AI could actually prevent emotional abuse in digital communication.
I’d taken a break from tech after years at Google (I was a PM there), but eventually brushed off the dusties and decided: I’ll build it myself.
THE STACK
Google Cloud + Firebase + Gemini (with some OpenAI functionality still in place). Front end: FlutterFlow. I bootstrapped everything — no funding, no team at first, just persistence, a supportive partner, and late nights after my kids were asleep. One upside of being a co-parent is suddenly a lot of kid-free time to think!
Early on, I knew I wanted an advisor with deep expertise in abuse recovery. During my own healing, Dr. Ramani Durvasula’s YouTube videos were life-changing, so she topped my “never-going-to-happen” list. I cold-emailed her — and to my surprise, she said yes.
Yesterday, WIRED featured our story: “Divorced? With Kids? And an Impossible Ex? There’s AI for That.” Side note: in the article, our leading competitor acknowledged using users’ personal correspondence for training data — which was… surprising.
It’s surreal seeing something that began with personal pain now helping others in such a profound way. I get emails every week from users saying the app has “literally changed their lives.” It’s incredibly gratifying.
I’m learning as I go — building in a space this sensitive has challenged me in many ways and shown just how deeply this kind of technology is needed.
When used with care and intention, AI can genuinely help marginalized communities — people navigating conflict, isolation, or trauma. I was “fortunate,” in a strange way, to have lived this pain firsthand; it helped me understand what needed to be built for my niche. AI has just as much potential to create harm or false information as it does to bring light to dark places — protecting victims and helping people find safety in their communication.
Happy to talk about any of these:
- Bootstrapping a consumer AI app solo
- Restarting life as an entrepreneur after kids, a divorce, and an eight-year hiatus
- Transitioning to being a full-time dad
- Growing a real subscriber base in a niche without a marketing budget — leveraging AI tools and SEO
- Building for a legally and emotionally complex community
- Using AI to protect against abuse — designing filters that help without over-censoring
- Breaking into a quasi-regulated industry where many assume court approval is required just to operate
- Or what it’s like designing tech for the most emotionally charged messages imaginable
AMA — happy to talk about the journey, the challenges, or anything else that resonates.