Pikitup
15kpeople a month, and growing across Switzerland
- 1,000+ free items live on the map
A live map of free stuff across Switzerland. Neighbours post what they’re giving away, you go and pick it up.
pikitup.chDavid Novotny
Idea to traction
The loop I run on every product, from a real problem to people paying for the fix. AI does the typing; choosing the problem, the product and the channel is on me.
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A1
Real problem
Start where people already feel the pain: a lost pet, a sofa nobody wants to haul, a birthday that needs an entertainer by Saturday. Demand first, code second.
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A2
Ship in days
The smallest version that solves it, live in days instead of quarters. Then I watch what people actually do and cut everything they don’t use.
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A3
Make it run
Payments, marketplaces and automation that work without me. PawAlarm turns a checkout into a live ad campaign on its own, around the clock.
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A4
AI as the team
Agents write the code, the copy and the pipelines; I make the calls. That’s how I run four products at the pace of a whole team.
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A5
Get the users
Distribution is part of the build: SEO engines and paid acquisition from day one. It’s how Pikitup reached 15k people a month.
Products people use
PawAlarm
20paid ad campaigns launched for pet owners, every day
- 1,200+ pets back home
- 4.8★ from 247 Google reviews
When a pet goes missing, PawAlarm puts the alert in front of thousands of neighbours around the spot, live within the hour. Running in 17 countries.
pawalarm.comYombu
250customers a month matched with freelance entertainers
- 100+ five-star Google reviews
- 12 US cities
Kids’ party entertainers in the US, booked with one inquiry. Parents pick from vetted, confirmed-available pros within about two hours.
yombu.comNokoro
- New in beta, free to start
A voice-first assistant for macOS. Hold ⌥⌘ and ask: it sees your screen, answers out loud and points to exactly where to click.
nokoro.appExperience
Engineer by trade, product builder by instinct. Ten years of shipping for the web, from first landing pages in Zürich to products tens of thousands of people use every month.
Work
- 2022 – now Supertext formerly Textshuttle Senior Frontend EngineerExperimentation stack, a 100+ component design system and an SEO engine behind ~70% organic growth. Zürich
- 2021 – 2022 Bazinga Web Developer60+ geo-targeted landing pages for the US market, plus payments and booking automation. Zürich
- 2020 Capture Media Web Developer & DesignerLanding pages and animated HTML5 campaigns for marketing clients. Zürich
- 2019 – 2020 CodeJIKA Web Developer InternImproved the in-browser code editor and wrote web-app course material. Johannesburg
Education
- 2017 – 2020 SAE Institute Web & Application Development Zürich
Before code
I’ve worked across a bunch of markets: on the road, with a paintbrush, in kitchens and behind the bar. Serving real customers is where my product sense comes from.
- Driver
- Painter
- Courier
- Pizzaiolo
- Chef
- Bartender