1752vc Founder Spotlight Vol. 12 and My Solo Build Checklist

I’m Ziwei Yu, and I build Today’s Mealow, a food picker, on my own. I work on it in the gaps around school, mostly at night. This month 1752vc included it in a Founder Spotlight issue of its newsletter, alongside other builders.

What is 1752vc’s VC Unfiltered newsletter?

VC Unfiltered is a newsletter that 1752vc, a venture capital firm, publishes on LinkedIn. Its Founder Spotlight issues each gather a group of builders, with a short description of what each one makes. Vol. 12 came out in October 2026 and included Today’s Mealow.

From the builder’s side, a spotlight like this is a short write-up in someone else’s words. That turned out to be useful. Seeing the product described by an outsider, in one line, showed me which part of it comes across.

What did the Founder Spotlight say about Today’s Mealow?

1752vc’s Founder Spotlight, Vol. 12, described Today’s Mealow as an app for the everyday problem of deciding what to eat. You answer a few questions, and a cat picks three dishes from real places near you, with free food wheels for when you’d rather spin.

That one line covers the product better than I usually manage. When the issue came out, I thanked 1752vc and said it was fun to share an issue with so many solo builders shipping on nights and weekends. I meant it.

For this post I played a builder on a late shift in downtown San Francisco: late night, a bit tired, bold, working late. The cat suggested a half roast chicken, BBQ ribs and carne asada tacos from places nearby. Three were enough, so I didn’t need “Show me others.” The run also checked the English version in a city outside China, which is item 5 on the checklist below. I’d take the tacos, the easiest to eat at a desk.

What’s on my checklist for shipping a small app on nights and weekends?

Ziwei Yu’s checklist for shipping Today’s Mealow on nights and weekends has six items. Solve one moment, and let the AI choose only from real data. Keep the answer short. Run the live app before every release and every post. Treat a second language as its own product. Offer a way out with no AI.

1. Solve one moment: hungry and can’t decide. Today’s Mealow doesn’t plan meals or track food. The food app guide covers the tools that do.
2. Let the AI choose only from real data. More on this one below.
3. Keep the answer short. Three dishes, each with a one-line reason. “Show me others” brings another three if none fits.
4. Run the live app before every release and every post. I look closely at what comes back, not only at the code.
5. Treat a second language as its own product. The English version needs its own checks. One of those checks caught dish names in the English version that still had Chinese in brackets after them.
6. Offer a way out with no AI. Some people would rather spin a wheel or try the random food generator than answer questions.

Working late and still haven’t eaten? Answer a few quick questions and the cat picks 3 dishes from real places near you.

Pick a late dinner

Why limit the AI to places the map found?

Limiting the AI in Today’s Mealow to places a map found was a scoping decision. It rules out invented restaurants and dishes from nowhere, so every pick is something you can walk to. The cost is that when the map finds nothing suitable nearby, the app has nothing to offer.

In the San Francisco run, the chicken, the ribs and the tacos each came from a place the map had already found, with the distance on the card. That’s the whole promise. I’d rather show “nothing found here” than a confident pick from a restaurant that doesn’t exist. A food picker people can’t trust is worse than none. The about page has the details.

How do I catch wrong dish photos before users do?

I catch wrong dish photos in Today’s Mealow by running the live app in a real city and checking every result card before a screenshot goes up. If a photo doesn’t match the dish name, I fix the matching rule first and run the app again.

The photo check finds something more often than I’d like. On the day of this post, one run showed vegetable spring rolls with a photo of sauced fried chicken, and another showed a lemon tart with a tiramisu photo. Both rules are fixed now. I found them by looking at the screen, which is why item 4 is on the list.