Sniff: Built for Freelancers Who Need Signal, Not Scroll
In today’s freelance economy, opportunities are everywhere – but finding the right one often feels like looking for an oasis in a desert of noise. Telegram threads, LinkedIn posts, Reddit threads – each promises leads, but delivers endless scrolling, cold DMs, and wasted hours.
Sniff was created to change that.
Founded by freelancers Mubeen and Yaseen, Sniff is an AI-powered search engine for discovering real freelance opportunities hidden across social platforms. Instead of spending hours digging through irrelevant posts, freelancers using Sniff get curated, context-rich leads, filtered by relevance and intent.
This isn’t just another aggregator. Sniff is a camel startup – built to last, with deep focus, financial discipline, and a relentless commitment to solving one real-world problem well.
What Sparked Sniff: From Missed Leads to AI-Powered Focus
Before Sniff, both Mubeen and Yaseen worked as independent freelancers. While their networks grew, one issue became constant: the discovery process was broken.
“We were both spending hours in Telegram groups, Twitter threads, and Slack channels,” Mubeen says. “Opportunities were there – but buried under hellos, emojis, and spam.”
The inefficiency wasn’t just annoying. It cost them money.
So they built a small internal tool: an AI filter that scanned Telegram messages and pulled out only potential job posts. It worked. So well, in fact, that when Yaseen posted a simple Canva demo to LinkedIn, they received over 100 inbound emails from people asking, “Where can I get this?”
They hadn’t even started building the product yet.
The Camel Startup Way: Built for Survival Before Scale
Sniff didn’t begin with a pitch deck or seed funding. It began with a side hustle, long nights, and strategic constraint.
Mubeen was based in Dubai, working a 9–5 job to cover rent and living expenses. Every evening, she’d meet Yaseen in a café to design the product roadmap. The budget? Personal savings and sweat equity.
“We couldn’t afford to build fast and fail. We had to build smart and survive,” she recalls.
That camel mindset- long-term resilience over short-term hype – became central to Sniff’s DNA.
What Sniff Solves (and How)
The freelance world runs on connections, but freelancers waste hours every day chasing them – manually. Sniff changes that by automating the discovery process with AI.
Here’s how it works:
It’s built for real freelancers – solopreneurs, consultants, agency owners – who can’t afford to miss chances because they’re buried in group chats.
Biggest Challenge: Time, Energy, and Earning Trust
Building Sniff wasn’t just technically demanding – it was emotionally and financially exhausting.
“We had to keep our freelance clients to survive,” Mubeen explains. “But they drained our time and energy.”
Eventually, the founders made a bold decision: fire their clients to buy back their time.
But raising investment wasn’t straightforward either. Many investors hesitated when they heard Mubeen still had a full-time job. They questioned her commitment – without understanding the financial reality of being a bootstrapped founder in Dubai.
This is why camel startups matter: they don’t chase funding – they earn it through discipline and results.
Milestones That Matter: From Café Tables to Global Users
Sniff’s progress is marked not by vanity metrics, but by deeply meaningful wins:
“When we saw signups from people using their Microsoft work emails, we knew we were onto something,” Mubeen says.
Coming from non-Ivy League backgrounds, the founders found unexpected validation in the global reach and caliber of their users. If top-tier professionals were using Sniff, the platform clearly solved a universal problem.
Lessons Learned: Focus Is a Superpower
In the early days, the founders wanted to solve everything: job alerts, CRM, outreach automation, lead scoring, you name it. But trying to do everything meant doing nothing well.
“Our real pivot was psychological,” Yaseen says. “We stopped thinking like a software team, and started thinking like our users.”
By constantly talking to users and focusing narrowly on the discovery layer, Sniff honed its product into something specific, useful, and irreplaceable.
Advice for Founders: Don’t Build First – Listen First
When asked what they wish they knew earlier, both founders say the same thing:
Start with conversations, not code.
Sniff only gained traction after they deeply validated their assumptions through user interviews, cold messages, and online feedback.
The Impact Sniff Hopes to Make
Freelancers today are drowning in noise and uncertainty. Sniff wants to be the go-to tool for digital workers trying to find real opportunities in real time -without wasting hours scrolling.
“If we help just one person land their next gig faster and with less stress,” says Mubeen, “that’s already success.”
But their bigger vision? To transform opportunity discovery from a guessing game into a strategic, data-informed process – accessible to freelancers everywhere.
Final Thoughts: Sniff Isn’t a Product – It’s a Movement
Sniff is more than an AI tool. It’s a movement for freelancers who are tired of chasing opportunity manually. It’s a quiet rebellion against noisy groups, cold emails, and missed chances.
Like a true camel startup, Sniff is built for long-term survival – not short-term exits. It’s carefully crafted, grounded in lived experience, and driven by the belief that the future of work should be easier, smarter, and more human.
If you’re a freelancer, solo founder, or remote worker tired of noise and ready for signal, Sniff is your oasis.
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