# Watchdog

Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/watchdog/ · added 2026-11-06 · updated 2026-11-06

**In short.** Watchdog (AI moderation bot for Discord, Telegram, WhatsApp and Reddit communities that removes spam, scams and trolls and answers members' questions, United States): US$444 a month, 2025. Evidence grade D: reported, not verified. Team: 1 founder, Ben Katz, a New York software engineer; no employees named in any source. Launched April 2024; still running.

AI moderation bot for Discord, Telegram, WhatsApp and Reddit communities that removes spam, scams and trolls and answers members' questions · United States · AI-native · solo founder · still running · group: Customer support agents

- Outcome: US$444 a month, 2025 (evidence grade of the headline number: D; headline in US dollars: 5328)
- Launch: April 2024; months from launch to the outcome: 15
- Team: 1 founder, Ben Katz, a New York software engineer; no employees named in any source
- Outside funding: None found; the IndieMakerList profile calls it bootstrapped
- Main factor: Pain the founder had himself
- Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 1, copyable pattern 3, capital needed 1
- Tags: AI-native, Solo founder, Bootstrapped, Running, B2B, Community moderation

Links:

- Visit watchdog.chat: https://watchdog.chat/
- Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/products/watchdog-4

**The product.** A bot that the owner of a Discord server, Telegram group, WhatsApp group or subreddit adds as an administrator. Every message from a member goes to an AI model, which checks it against rules that the owner writes in plain English, such as "No discussions of US politics". The bot then deletes the message, mutes, kicks or bans the sender, or alerts the owner. It can also answer members' questions from the owner's website content and send a weekly summary of the chat. The pricing page lists plans by the number of messages checked per month.

**Why it worked.** The founder ran a game server whose chat was flooded by scammers and trolls at night, and he says on the home page that this cut its revenue by 90%. Keyword filters such as Discord's own AutoMod block single words; an AI model can judge whole classes of messages from one sentence of rule text. The founder said in 2025 that the business made about US$444 a month, a small but real result for one engineer's side business.

Evidence grades: A = disclosed by a public company, a filing or a payment processor, or verified by one; B = two or more independent reports agree, or a journalist confirmed it; C = a founder claim that no one else verified; D = reported, not verified: one founder claim or a third-party estimate with no second source; E = no revenue figure found, so the headline is a non-money fact and the other facts carry their own grades; calc = computed on this page from graded facts.

## Summary

Watchdog is an AI content moderator, a program that reads what members post in an online community and removes posts that break the community's rules. It works as a bot, a program that joins a chat group under its own account, like a member with administrator rights. Each new message goes to a large language model, a program trained on large amounts of text that can follow an instruction written in normal language, which decides whether the message breaks one of the owner's rules. Its terms of service say the messages are processed by OpenAI.

Ben Katz, a software engineer in New York, built it after scammers took over the chat of a game server that he had run since 2022. The first archived copy of the site, from 9 April 2024, sold it for Discord only at a launch price. It was launched on Product Hunt on 4 May 2024 and now covers Telegram, WhatsApp, Reddit and the Crisp chat service. The directory IndieMakerList lists US$444 a month of recurring revenue reported by the founder for 2025, taken from his Indie Hackers profile.

That figure is the only money figure found, it is dated only to a year, and it rests on one self-reported profile, so this is a grade D story. No payment-processor profile was found. The page also shows earlier companies that built software for online communities and failed.

## Pricing

Watchdog prices read on the home page on 6 November 2026 (grade C); the monthly prices are calculated from the yearly prices and the page's offer of 2 months free

| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Launch | 24 | 29 | 10,000 messages a month, unlimited communities, 5 custom rules per community |
| Scale | 49 | 59 | 100,000 messages a month, unlimited communities, 10 custom rules per community |
| Enterprise | from 416 |  | billed yearly at US$4,990; unlimited messages and rules; sold through a booked call |

The page shows yearly billing: Launch US$290 a year (shown as US$24 a month, with US$59 struck through) and Scale US$590 a year (shown as US$49 a month, with US$99 struck through). The page says "2 months free on all yearly plans" and "Plans starting at $29/month", so the monthly prices are taken as the yearly price divided by 10: US$29 and US$59. Every plan has a 14-day free trial. Messages from administrators do not count against the limit, and extra credits can be bought.

## How much revenue does Watchdog make? The numbers, graded

A one-founder AI moderation bot, launched in April 2024, with one self-reported revenue figure of about US$444 a month in 2025

| Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly recurring revenue, 2025 | US$444 a month | D | IndieMakerList: "Ben Katz reports $444 MRR as of 2025", self-reported, "source: indiehackers.com". The same page also calls it an "undated figure". The maker profile says the Indie Hackers profile lists Watchdog "at around $444 MRR". Indie Hackers was not opened (its robots.txt blocks this agent). | [1, 2] |
| Yearly run rate from that figure | US$5,328 a year | calc | Calculated: US$444 times 12. | [1] |
| Paying customers implied | about 15 to 18 on the Launch plan | calc | Calculated: US$444 divided by US$29 (monthly) or by about US$24.17 (yearly, US$290 divided by 12). Only an illustration: the plan mix is not published. | [1, 4] |
| Founder | Ben Katz, New York, United States | C | The home page says "I'm Ben, the founder of this app" and "Made by @ben_makes_stuff". IndieMakerList says he is a former staff software engineer at DoorDash (not verified elsewhere). | [4, 2] |
| Company | Mockernut Ventures LLC dba Watchdog | C | Footer of the home page and the terms of service, which are governed by New York law. | [4, 8] |
| First archived site | 9 April 2024, Discord only, US$19 launch price | C | Wayback Machine copy: "Get Watchdog: $69 $19", "$50 off for the first 50 customers", "If you have a Discord community, you're covered." | [6] |
| Product Hunt launch | 4 May 2024, 40 points, no reviews | C | Product Hunt page data (createdAt 2024-05-04). The maker comment tells the game-server story. | [7] |
| Platforms today | Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp, Reddit, Crisp | C | Home page, November 2026. The FAQ also names X communities and leaves out WhatsApp. | [4] |
| AI model provider | OpenAI | C | Terms of service (effective 1 November 2025): messages "are processed by OpenAI to evaluate rule violations". The privacy policy (effective 11 June 2026) says the same. | [8, 9] |
| Payment processor | Stripe | C | Privacy policy and Stripe checkout links on the pricing section. | [9, 4] |
| Outside funding | none found | D | IndieMakerList calls Watchdog "a bootstrapped SaaS". No funding round was found. | [2] |
| Other products of the founder | flightschools.fyi, the Hackayork meetup, Unblock Domains (closed) | D | IndieMakerList: Unblock Domains was shut down in 2025 "after a year with no revenue". | [2] |
| Time from launch to the revenue figure | about 15 months | calc | Calculated: April 2024 to July 2025, the middle of the year to which the figure is dated. | [6, 1] |

How to read this table: a grade D value rests on one directory entry that repeats a founder's self-reported figure, with no second source. A grade C value is read on the company's own pages or on Product Hunt. A "calc" value was computed on this page from the rows above it. No value is grade A or B.

## When did Watchdog launch, and how did it grow? Timeline

From a game server overrun by scammers to a moderation bot for five platforms, in about two and a half years. Each entry carries its grade.

- **2022** (grade C [4, 7]): The founder starts a game server and community for a survival game, by his own account on the home page and Product Hunt.
- **2023** (grade C [4, 7]): The server has more than 30 players online and a chat with hundreds of members. Scammers arrive at night, and he says revenue fell by 90%.
- **9 April 2024** (grade C [6]): First archived copy of watchdog.chat: a Discord moderation bot sold at a US$19 launch price for the first 50 customers.
- **4 May 2024** (grade C [7]): Launch on Product Hunt, 40 points.
- **2025** (grade D [1, 2]): The founder's Indie Hackers profile, as quoted by IndieMakerList, lists about US$444 a month of recurring revenue. He shuts down a second product, Unblock Domains.
- **November 2026** (grade C [4]): The site sells three subscription plans and covers Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp, Reddit and Crisp, with a content moderation API and an affiliate program.

## Why did Watchdog work?

### Rules in plain English

A keyword filter needs every bad word typed in, and misses new scams. Here the owner writes one sentence per rule and the AI model judges each message against it. The dashboard runs test messages against the rule text, so the owner can see what a rule catches before it acts.

### Safe defaults and an alert-only mode

New rules start with "alert and delete message". The FAQ tells owners to test a new rule with alerts only, and to keep an appeal channel for wrong bans. This addresses the main risk of AI moderation: false positives, which means removing messages that broke no rule.

### Admins are free

Messages from administrators are not sent to the model and do not count against the plan's message limit. The plan limits follow the main cost, which is one model call per member message.

### Founder's own pain

The product came from the founder's own game server. The story on the home page and on Product Hunt is the sales pitch: a community owner who is asleep when scammers arrive.

## How it was built

These details come from the company's own pages. They are grade C.

- Each platform gets its own bot account. The owner adds it to the server or group and gives it the rights to delete messages and ban members.
- Each member message goes to an OpenAI model for the rule check, by the terms of service and the privacy policy. Messages that break a rule are stored for the owner's report.
- Moderation covers text, images and voice messages, in many languages, and converts decorative Unicode letters back to normal text before the check.
- The question-answering feature imports the owner's website content and learns from the owner's replies when it does not know an answer.
- The marketing site is built with Astro, by its page source, and payments go through Stripe checkout links.
- A blog, free tools (a community guidelines generator, a token counter, a Unicode translator) and pages for each platform bring search traffic, and an affiliate program pays partners.

Sources: [4, 5, 8, 9]

## Who tried this before Watchdog, and why did they fail?

Three companies in our database of failed startups built software for online communities and failed. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.

The failed startups come from our database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade.

### Insoshi (2008 to 2011; funding US$20K; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Build-your-own social network software for niche communities.
- Why it died: It could not stand apart from Facebook and LinkedIn, which kept adding features, and it had little money.
- Record: 

### Convore (2011 to 2014; funding US$200K; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Real-time group chat rooms on any topic.
- Why it died: It offered little more than forums already did, and Slack took the market for group chat.
- Record: 

### Yahoo Groups (1998 to 2013; funding US$0; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Mailing lists and group pages for any community.
- Why it died: It did not change while Facebook, Reddit and mobile apps gave communities better places to meet.
- Record: 

## What changed

The three predecessors tried to be the place where a community lives, and lost to larger platforms. Watchdog does not compete with Discord, Telegram or Reddit. It sells one job, moderation, to owners who already chose one of those platforms.

The second change is the large language model. Moderation used to mean human moderators or keyword lists. A model call per message is cheap enough that a solo founder can sell rule checks in plain English by the message, and the pricing page lists plans by message volume for that reason.

## Can one person copy Watchdog now?

**Verdict: Yes, with low barriers on both sides.**

One engineer built it with an off-the-shelf model and the public bot interfaces of the chat platforms. The same low barrier means competitors can copy it, and the platforms can build the feature in, as Discord did with AutoMod.

1. Start from a moderation problem in a community you run yourself.
2. Let owners write rules as sentences, and give them a test bench and an alert-only mode before the bot acts.
3. Price by the number of messages checked, since each message is one model call.
4. Add the platforms where your customers already are, one at a time, with a landing page for each.

**What is still open.** Moderation for platforms with weak built-in tools, and for specific risks such as impersonators who message members directly.

## What could go wrong for Watchdog?

- **What is not verified.** The only money figure, about US$444 a month of recurring revenue, comes from the directory IndieMakerList (profile last checked 8 October 2026), which says the founder self-reported it on his Indie Hackers profile. IndieMakerList dates it "as of 2025" on one line and calls it an "undated figure" on another. Indie Hackers could not be opened, because its robots.txt blocks this agent, and no payment-processor profile (for example on TrustMRR) was found. A reader could look for a TrustMRR page, a founder post with a dated figure, or a later interview.
- **How the WhatsApp bot joins groups.** The WhatsApp page says to "Add Watchdog to your WhatsApp group and grant it Admin permissions by long pressing on its name". The pages read do not say whether this uses an official WhatsApp business interface or a normal WhatsApp account run by software; WhatsApp's terms limit automated use of normal accounts. The FAQ's list of supported communities names Crisp, Discord, Telegram, Reddit and X, and not WhatsApp.
- **Trust signals on the home page.** One testimonial is signed only "Victor R.". Another is from the founder of a crypto meme community. The "Trusted by amazing customers" logos include flightschools.fyi, which is the founder's own product, and none of the logos link to a case study. The "Featured on" badges are AI tool directories.
- **Dependence on one model provider.** The terms of service and the privacy policy both say that every checked message is processed by OpenAI. A price change, policy change or outage at OpenAI would reach every customer. Members' messages also leave the community for a third party, which some owners will not accept.
- **Competition.** No other story on this site sells community moderation, so there is no comparison here. The product's own FAQ compares it with Discord AutoMod, which Discord gives away free, and any platform could add AI rules of its own.
- **Wrong bans.** The FAQ says that "false positives including accidental bans have a chance of happening" and recommends alert-only testing and an appeals process. An AI model can remove messages that broke no rule.

## Sources

1. IndieMakerList: How Much Does Watchdog Make? $444/mo (2026) — https://indiemakerlist.com/revenue/watchdog/ (grade D). Read in full on 6 November 2026. A directory page that repeats the founder's self-reported figure from Indie Hackers; profile last checked 8 October 2026.
2. IndieMakerList: Ben Katz (@ben_makes_stuff), Creator of Watchdog — https://indiemakerlist.com/p/ben-katz/ (grade D). Read in full. Source for the founder's background, his other products and the bootstrapped status.
3. IndieMakerList: Watchdog product page — https://indiemakerlist.com/products/watchdog/ (grade D). Read in full. Same directory; gives the launch year 2024 and repeats the revenue figure.
4. Watchdog home page and pricing, read 6 November 2026 — https://watchdog.chat/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the product, the founder's story, the prices, the FAQ, the testimonials and the company name.
5. Watchdog: AI content moderator for WhatsApp — https://watchdog.chat/ai-content-moderator-for-whatsapp/ (grade C). Read the section on adding the bot to a WhatsApp group.
6. Wayback Machine copy of watchdog.chat, 9 April 2024 — http://web.archive.org/web/20240409070030/https://watchdog.chat/ (grade C). Read in full. The first archived copy; source for the Discord-only start and the launch price.
7. Product Hunt: Watchdog — https://www.producthunt.com/products/watchdog-4?launch=watchdog-4 (grade C). Read in full. Source for the launch date, the points and the maker's comment.
8. Watchdog terms of service, effective 1 November 2025 — https://watchdog.chat/legal/terms-of-service/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the company name, New York law and the use of OpenAI.
9. Watchdog privacy policy, effective 11 June 2026 — https://watchdog.chat/legal/privacy-policy/ (grade C). Read the sections on data sharing. Source for OpenAI and Stripe as processors.
10. Database of failed startups, local export — /method/#dead (grade C). Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.

Contact: aiolum@livyden.com. Run Watchdog? Send corrections or a verified figure to aiolum@livyden.com (subject: Correction: Watchdog).