# Valentin Bora > Makes sure your email lands in the inbox - Canonical URL: https://indie.md/people/vali/ - Products: doesmyemail.work (https://doesmyemail.work), Dr. Ursula (https://drursula.ro) ## Bio Builder of doesmyemail.work, a free, no-signup tool that tells you in plain English whether your email reaches the inbox or the spam folder. It scans SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and MX records and offers a real send-a-test-email check, turning an invisible and expensive problem (mail silently going to spam) into a thirty-second diagnosis. Treats the free tool as the top of a funnel rather than the whole business. Also builds Dr. Ursula, a React Native psychology and personal-development app for the psychotherapist Dr. Ursula Sandner, where he is testing short-form video for awareness and gentle push notifications to turn free listeners into paying subscribers. ## Journeys - [doesmyemail.work: A Free Tool as the Top of the Funnel](https://indie.md/journeys/vali-doesmyemail/): How a thirty-second email diagnosis becomes a lead magnet, and the same move grows a psychology app ## Events - [Indie TM #10: Four Builds and the Reach Problem](https://indie.md/events/indie-tm-10-timisoara-june-2026/): 2026-06-10 - [Indie TM #9: Six Demos and a BYOK Debate](https://indie.md/events/indie-tm-9-timisoara-may-2026/): 2026-05-28 ## Advice ### Translate an invisible technical problem into plain English doesmyemail.work could have reported "SPF: softfail, DKIM: none" like every other tool and helped no one. Instead it says "does your domain say yes, I sent this." Turning opaque jargon into a sentence a non-expert understands is not decoration, it is the product, because the user's real problem is that they cannot tell what is wrong. When your tool surfaces a technical diagnosis, spend the effort to say it in the user's language. The translation is often worth more than the diagnosis itself. Source: https://indie.md/advice/translate-jargon-into-plain-english/ ### For a free tool, the answer screen is the whole product A free, no-signup tool has exactly one moment that matters: the screen where the user gets their result. Everything before it is setup and everything after it is upsell, but that one screen is where the user decides whether the tool was worth their time. For doesmyemail.work, the diagnosis screen is the product. Pour disproportionate care into that single moment (speed, clarity, zero friction) because a lead magnet that fumbles its activation screen never gets to the lead part. Source: https://indie.md/advice/obsess-over-the-activation-screen/ ### Never make a mobile user switch apps and come back doesmyemail.work asked mobile users to copy an address, switch to their mail app, paste, and send, and that hand-off is exactly where people abandoned the flow. The fix was a single mailto link that pre-fills everything, turning four steps into one tap. Every time you ask a user to leave your app, do something elsewhere, and return, you are betting they make it back, and on mobile many do not. Collapse cross-app hand-offs into one action wherever you can. The smoothest flow is the one that never leaves the screen. Source: https://indie.md/advice/remove-the-app-handoff/ ### Reuse one top-of-funnel playbook across products Valentin runs the same move twice: a free diagnostic tool fronts a business email product, and free short-form video fronts a consumer psychology app. Both start with something genuinely useful and free that earns attention, then attach the paid layer behind it. A distribution playbook that works is not single-use; once you have one that reliably earns attention, it transfers across very different products. Find your repeatable top-of-funnel motion, then apply it again instead of reinventing distribution for every launch. Source: https://indie.md/advice/one-playbook-many-products/ ### Share real numbers; honesty earns trust and feedback Valentin will tell you Dr. Ursula has about 50 paying users on top of roughly 620 free ones, the exact ratio most founders hide. Sharing real numbers, including the ones that are not impressive yet, earns a kind of trust and a quality of feedback that polished vanity metrics never will. People can only help you with the real situation, and an audience that watches you build honestly becomes the audience that roots for you. Round numbers up in your head, not on the slide. Source: https://indie.md/advice/share-the-real-numbers/ ### Use short-form video for awareness, not conversion Short-form video is the cheapest reach available right now, but it is a top-of-funnel instrument, not a checkout. Valentin's shorts for Dr. Ursula earn real awareness, putting the app in front of people who would never type its name into a search box, and that is exactly the job to ask of them. The mistake is expecting a fifteen-second clip to close a sale; its purpose is to make a stranger aware the thing exists, then hand them to a funnel that does the converting. Measure shorts on reach and new awareness, not on direct installs, and build the step that turns that awareness into a user separately. Match the metric to the stage and the channel stops looking like it is underperforming. Source: https://indie.md/advice/short-form-video-for-awareness/ ### Repackage your content as push notifications that respect attention A push notification is usually an interruption, which is why people mute them; Valentin inverts that. He takes short written insights drawn from the app's own social content and sends them as notifications that sit quietly on the lock screen, a sentence or two to be read whenever the user is ready, not a demand for attention right now. That reframes the notification from a nag into a small gift, and it doubles as a retention loop that pulls people back into a content app without burning the goodwill that aggressive notifications destroy. The principle: the value has to be in the notification itself, not in the tap it is trying to extract. If the user would be glad to have read it even without opening the app, you have a retention channel; if not, you have an unsubscribe waiting to happen. Source: https://indie.md/advice/content-as-gentle-push-notifications/ ### Ship a free tool as the top of your funnel A narrow, free, no-signup tool that solves one frequently-Googled problem is not charity, it is a lead magnet. The whole email-deliverability category (mail-tester, GlockApps, Warmy) gives away the check because running it is itself an admission of a problem the same vendor sells the fix for: it self-qualifies warm prospects and ranks for high-intent queries like "does my email go to spam." The indie sequence is to ship the magnet first, let it accumulate search traffic and word of mouth, and only then bolt on the paid layer (monitoring, a plugin, a done-for-you fix). The catch the room raised: a magnet only works if activation is effortless, so the single most important screen is the one where the user gets their answer. Source: https://indie.md/advice/free-tool-as-top-of-funnel/