What if Harry Potter Had an Instagram?

Big news: we finally launched our page on Product Hunt. 🥁 Drumroll… we got a grand total of 2 subscribers from it. Yep. But plot twist: the CEO of Product Hunt replied to one of our posts, which is pretty damn cool.

Substack still feels like a ghost town, but it’s week four and we’re still showing up. A few folks even tried out one of our featured tools and gave feedback, which honestly made our day.

Now for this week’s idea. It hit me while I was deep in a Lord of the Rings binge. Tolkien built this insanely rich world you can get lost in, and it made me think. With AI, we could actually bring those worlds to life.

What if Middle-earth had Instagram?
What if you could broadcast the Quidditch World Cup?

FictionFeed is a social app where AI generates posts, stories, and reels as if they’re coming from your favorite fictional characters. Scroll through Sauron’s battle updates, Gandalf’s cryptic texts, or Marvel multiverse memes all in one immersive feed.

It’s doomscrolling… but with dragons. 🐉

This week’s featured product:
Brand.dev is the API that gives your app instant access to logos, colors, and brand assets from any company.
Here’s the pitch: "What if your product could onboard users with full brand flair in a single API call?"

Want to be featured? Fill out the form on ideatbd.com

This week’s template:
A one-pager on how to ask better questions. Super useful if you’re building in public or asking for feedback. We explain why most questions go ignored, share a formula that actually works, and give real before-and-after examples.

✨Click here✨

If you’re into this, forward it to a friend. We’re trying to grow this thing so we can create max impact.

Let’s keep building weird, useful, fun stuff 💥

Steal This Idea: Social Media for Fantasy Worlds 🧙‍♂️

Social media for the worlds you wish were real

❗ Problem

Fandom lovers crave immersion, but most fan experiences are limited to passive content (books, shows, or endless Reddit threads). There’s no interactive, scrollable way to live inside fictional worlds. Social media, meanwhile, is filled with doomscrolling and recycled takes, not magic, memes, or messages from Middle-earth.

✅ Solution

FictionFeed: A social network built for fantasy universes.
Scroll through an AI-generated feed of updates, stories, and posts authored by characters from your favorite worlds - Middle-earth, Hogwarts, Westeros, and beyond. It’s like Instagram meets fan fiction meets immersive roleplay.

⚙️ How It Works

• Users select a universe (LOTR, Harry Potter, GoT, Marvel, etc.)

• AI generates a dynamic feed in the tone and lore of that world

• Content includes:
  → Status updates, letters, journal entries
  → Stories from characters (like Elrond or Tyrion)
  → Battle dispatches, prophecies, dark rumors
  → Fandom memes, magical “ads,” wizard duels

• Toggle between character perspectives (e.g., Frodo vs. Sauron)

• React, remix, or write replies as a fan

🎯 Target Users

• Fandom communities (LOTR, Harry Potter, Marvel, etc.)

• Fantasy & sci-fi readers

• Gamers and RPG players

• Creatives and worldbuilders

• People seeking a fun, escapist social feed

💸 Monetization

• Universe Unlocks: Pay to access new worlds or rare character POVs

• Premium Fan Fiction Slots: Let users submit their own AI-aided canon-aligned posts

• Merch Integrations: Link to fandom merch, books, or tickets

• Community Tipping: Upvote or tip the best fan-made posts

• Pro Accounts: For creators remixing worlds or building mini-communities

From the Community

In this section, we feature entrepreneurs building cool products. We share what they’re working on, get feedback from you - the community - and eventually, as the newsletter grows, help them find early users, collaborators, or even investors. We meant it when we said we’re here to promote real collaboration

Brand.dev - The fastest way to get a company’s brand kit

Ever wish your app could just know a company’s logo, colors, and vibe with one simple call?

Say hi to Brand.dev - the brand API built for software builders, by a software builder.

Created by Yahia Bakour, Brand.dev takes the pain out of manual brand asset collection. Just pass in a company domain (like stripe.com) and boom - you get:

• ✅ Logos & header images

• 🎨 Brand colors & fonts

• 🧠 Slogans & descriptions

• 🏷 Industry info

• 🔗 Social links

• 📈 Public stock data (if available)

As founder Yahia Bakour puts it:

No more googling for logos. No more mismatched colors. Just clean, consistent brand data for your project.

What we’ve done so far

In this section, we share newsletter metrics, strategies we’re testing, and the tools/platforms we’ve discovered while building this newsletter and community from scratch.

• Going hard on product hunt, still is the undefeated champion when it comes to community building, feels like it’s the right fit for what we’re trying to do.

• Got our first round of feedback that we can now share with the founder, for the previous product we highlighted - lifetoon 

• 12 followers on X a MASSIVE upgrade from last weeks 7 followers, you know this is a long game right?

• Substack doesn’t feel like the right direction, deleting our account, and moving towards what’s working ( Product hunt, X(we think))

• Posting on Monday instead of Saturday because we were Kayaking and falling of bicycles, it’s about being consistent and giving ourselves space to chill, that’s the life we’re trying to build, same goes for our community.

Money spent

• 11$ from the domain purchase

• 7$ for the X premium subscription

• Spent our salary (10$) on a failed X post promotion campaign :(

Our not-so-secret strategy list

1. Product hunt 

   Is still getting us the most organic reach, it’s fantastic to see how aligned the community is with what we want to build and share. Sorry for the pixilated notification icon, just an indicator of how much engagement we’re getting, oh and the CEO of product hunt followed us as well!

2. X
   Doubled our followers from last week, tried promoting a post, didn’t work, we’re now understanding that X is a long game, post consistently, engage with your community and surrender to the universe.

3. Woah 
   So this happened, we’re getting organic feedback for the products we’re featuring, exactly the direction we wanted, imagine this in the 100s or the thousand’s, insights that could potentially shape future versions of these products, that…that would be the dream.
   

4. AI 
   We’re so good at what we do, people think it’s AI, hope that answered your question 😉 

   Here’s a cleaner version of your sentence, keeping it in your casual tone:

   Jk. The draft of the newsletter is written by us, not AI. We pick and choose what sections need to be refined (for example: steal this idea) and what sections don’t use AI at all (like our strategies). Sections like from the community come straight from our founders - we take what they share and make sure it’s highlighted in the best possible way. Some of our images are AI-generated.

   

5. Ideas are Flowing

   We (me and my co-founder) are doing everything in our god-given life to figure out the answer to life’s most challenging question: How do we get more subscribers on beehiv? what’s next for us? cryptic billboards, pamphlets in midtown manhattan, shirts with qr codes (yuck, but gotta do what we gotta do). we’re thinking, and we’ll make it happen. got some strategies that can help?

Want to be featured here?
Whether you’re looking for feedback, a collaborator, or just want to show what you’re building, reply to this email or fill the form below and tell us what you’re up to.

Feel free to drop:

• Any startup ideas you’ve had

• Stuff you’re building and want feedback on (we’ll feature it in the newsletter)

• Questions you want the community to weigh in on

• Or just general thoughts on the newsletter and how we can make it better

Fin.