I got tired of the internet,everything felt off.
Every platform has one goal to get our attention. And we humans are easy to distract. we come for one thing and stay for another, pulled along by feeds designed to never let us go. It stopped feeling like a place to think
I wanted a noise-free internet. A place where you don't have to worry about what you're watching, or what's being shown to someone you love. Somewhere even a kid could be, and you wouldn't have to think twice about it.
So I stopped looking for that place and started building it.
"The internet optimises for attention. I wanted to build something that optimises for for ourselves"
People ask me why I don't raise funding. I've had the conversations, every investor wanted the same thing: scale, monetisation, an exit. Those aren't bad goals. They're just incompatible with what MindsNet is trying to be.
Every startup falls for the same trap. Take the money, chase the growth, drift from the purpose. Uber set out to fix broken transportation now it's the same exploitative system it replaced, just with an app. Meta was supposed to connect people now it optimises for outrage because outrage keeps you scrolling. The story is always the same: the mission becomes the pitch deck, and the pitch deck becomes the product.
So I said no. And I'll keep saying no.
"Business lives but purpose dies
Here's exactly what it costs to keep MindsNet running no estimates, no rounding up. These numbers are based on 1,000 daily active users with around 100 people online at the same time. Not theoretical projections. Real infrastructure, sized for real usage.
Infrastructure · 1,000 users · ~100 active at once
Right now I'm funding this myself through other projects I run profitably. MindsNet costs nothing extra on top of what I already carry.
If this grows and I hope it does, costs will scale with it. At that point I'd rely on donations to keep it alive rather than ads or a paywall.
I just want you to know what Mindsnet actually costs.” . its free and you're not the product
MindsNet is free because the people who need it most are often the ones least able to pay for it. Students. Curious people early in their intellectual life. Researchers without institutional budgets.
Putting money between them and the platform would change what MindsNet is.
So I won't. MindsNet will stay free. Not free until we grow, not free with a catch. Just free.
