Azam Rahman

Attention as a Public Good

2026-05-11T00:00:00+00:00

Here's an interesting chat I had about what the future attention economy should look like. I asked it to come up with a hard question for modernity. Overall I like the direction we went, this creates tons of ideas in me for how to create an an AI that helps curate all information you receive, for you. </div>

What Top Interior Designers Do Differently on Instagram

2025-11-04T00:00:00+00:00

I spent the weekend running competitive benchmarks for Mixplate's interior design vertical, and the data turned my assumptions upside down. The picture-perfect portfolio posts most designers lead with are probably the wrong bet if you care about engagement and inbound leads.

Did I just get validated

2025-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

This is just a stream of consciousness kind of post. Completely hand written dw no ai. I'll do a proper writeup in the future but i just need to write this down cuz it just happened and WOOHOO!

I woke up one morning and scrolled on ig, and I saw something: a post by one of my foundational users. And..it looked like it was based off an idea my product gave them. I couldn't believe it. This is a brand that hasn't been posting much, has been missing their strategic targets. Meeting after meeting, they had request after request and I did everything to try to build them something.

And I almost gave up because first it was "they wanted a strategic tool", then it was "they wanted a campaign planner tool", then it was "they wanted step by step content instructions to replicate", then it was "they need a reminder system to keep them accountable".

It was thing after thing. And at each step i was like "Am i really completing this vertical properly or am I just getting scope creeped"

But they started posting again, I was shocked, and my user reached out and we had a call:

After re-assessing the strategic position explained by my report, he realised that he needed to take initiative and get his business back on track </li>
I asked him if something changed? He said "No, I just woke up". He arranged a meeting with his social media staffmember, and sat down with her for 2 hours and got the whole posting plan and post ideas all done. </li>
Then came the watershed question: "Were my ideas helpful?" And he said YES. He named specific idea after specific idea that MY product gave them, ideas which they had never done before and would not have thought up by themselves. </li>
They were doing ideas which MATCHED the strategic report's recommendations: post more reels content, be more human centric. They were doing it </li>
They TOOK the posting frequency alarm raised by my report and set a hard kpi of 3 posts per week </li>
And the best part, I can SEE they are getting results. I saw the posts, they are getting the likes, they are getting the engagement. </li>
They USED my product and IT IS WORKING for them </li> </ul>
I took this to AI and man, when claude 4.5 goes from "This is NOT a validation win" and "You are procrastinating, get this done NOW" to:

I knew I might have actually achieved something special. I checked the other AIs if they'd corroboate and guess what:


Woohoo! What a feeling!

What Top Chiropractors Do Differently on Instagram

2025-09-30T00:00:00+00:00

So I'm building a Marketing AI, and I spend a lot of time analyzing what separates successful brands on social media from those who struggle to see results.

A commenter on a previous post asked me to look into chiropractors, so I got curious.

I pointed my analysis engine at some of the top-performing chiropractor accounts on Instagram to see if I could identify any data-backed trends or best practices specific to your niche. The results were pretty interesting and I wanted to share them online!

Building 30% of Value in 6 Months, and the Other 70% in 3 Days

2025-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

I went into two critical validation meetings in 48 hours with what I thought was my core product: a powerful AI strategic analysis engine. I was proud of the data, the insights, the "what." This thing was complicated: scraping social media profile data, calculating performance data, variances, ratios, applying heuristics to identify insights.

My hypothesis was simple: "Will busy founders and SMB owners pay for a data-driven report that gives them strategic clarity?"

The feedback was that while strategic analysis helped them achieve some clarity, full "direction" still required actually proposing the concrete steps to take. It was about a deeper, more painful problem I had completely underestimated: the blank page problem.

I thought I was selling a map. My users wanted "turn left, walk 100m then turn right" level of direction, but still wanted it to be ingrained in the strategic direction my insights gave.

The Soft-Sell Playbook: How Top Coaches Build Trust Before They Ask for the Sale

2025-09-21T00:00:00+00:00

Hard-selling works—but only when your audience already trusts you. Top coaches and solo creators don’t just “post value” and then drop a buy link. They run a Soft‑Sell Dominant strategy: most of their promotional content is designed to overcome objections, demonstrate expertise, and build trust around the core offer. When the Hard‑Sell finally appears, it lands harder and converts better.

The 'Conversion' Trap: How Asking a Question Can Outperform Asking for the Sale

2025-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

Most founders default to direct CTAs like "DM me" or "Click the link in bio." Useful? Yes. Optimal for sustainable growth? Not always. In our analysis of coaching and consulting accounts, simple question-led CTAs consistently drove higher immediate engagement—earning reach today that converts better tomorrow.

Spotted on Indiehackers

2025-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

Found this funny, someone used ChatGPT to make a post about their new startup, and someone else complimented them with ChatGPT, and OP replied again with ChatGPT.

The Journey Thus Far

2025-09-18T00:00:00+00:00

The First Bet: An App to Help</h2>
Back in early 2024, my mission was simple: help small businesses with their marketing. In a country like brunei there are so many people trying to start side businesses, doing freelance work, or starting up an ecommerce store, but because marketing isn't their forte they were struggling to be consistent...
So, I built a mobile app. It had AI-powered content generation, a post scheduler, and an AI chat assistant for ideation, and the features I thought a small business would need to "do" their marketing more efficiently. Leading a team of 2 developers and 1 designer, After months of work, it launched on the App Store</a> and Google Play</a>.

The Whispers of a Pivot</h2>
Then came the feedback. I talked to users, friends, and mentors. A consistent theme emerged: the app helped with the how of marketing—how to schedule a post, how to write a caption—but their real, burning pain wasn't the how. It was the what and the why.

"What should I actually be posting this week?"
"Why is my competitor growing faster than me?"
"I'm posting consistently, but is any of this actually working?" </blockquote>
It turns out that these strategic questions were the greatest reason for the lack of clarity in many businessowners
The New Bet: From Tool to AI Strategist</h2>
I decided to evolve Mixplate from a simple "AI social media tool" into an "AI Marketing Strategist & Analyst."
The new mission is not just to help you do marketing, but to give you the strategic direction to do the right marketing. The core is a data engine that analyzes your performance against direct competitors and surfaces a single, non-obvious, deeply actionable insight every week. It’s designed to be the AI strategist you can’t afford to hire—telling you exactly where the biggest opportunity is and what to do about it.
It’s a data product, delivered in a simple, beautiful report. Early feedback from the first pilot users has been electrifying.
Why I'm Building This in Public</h2>
I've decided to share this journey—the wins and the messy middle—for a few key reasons:

Accountability: Putting goals and progress out in the open creates a powerful forcing function. It’s a promise to myself, my users, and my followers that I will keep moving forward.</li>
The Feedback Loop: The smartest people I know aren't on my payroll; they're on the internet. By sharing what I'm building, I open myself up to feedback, critiques, and ideas that will make the product better.</li>
To Find My People: The founder journey can be lonely. Building in public connects me with other builders, makers, and potential customers who resonate with this mission. If this story sounds familiar, I'd love to hear from you.</li> </ul>
Closing</h2>
Life's full of unknowns, maybe what I'm building today will be something completely different tomorrow. But the end goal stays the same: building something to empower founder-led brands everywhere.

Hello, world

2025-09-17T00:00:00+00:00

Hi, I’m starting my blog using Zola and the Duckquill theme. This post is just a quick “hello” and a smoke test that everything is wired correctly.