letX

First post here, so a proper introduction.

I'm building LetX (letx.app), a free collaborative LaTeX editor. The why is simple: academic writing is a team sport - thesis groups, lab reports, research papers - but the default tool, Overleaf, allows just one collaborator on its free plan. Student teams are exactly the people who can't afford paid seats.

So we built the tool we wished we had:

• Unlimited collaborators, projects, and compiles - genuinely free

• Real-time co-editing (same CRDT approach as Figma)

• Compiles in ~1 second, no queue

• 440+ templates - IEEE, ACM, theses, CVs

• Runs in the browser; imports your Overleaf project as a ZIP

Six months in: our first few hundred users, spread across 60+ universities in 20 countries, and we're part of NVIDIA Inception. The core stays free forever - unlimited collaboration is the whole point. Monetization comes later via Pro and an agentic AI LaTeX editor we're building ("Cursor, for papers").

The current challenge: distribution on a $0 budget. We're going all-in on content - SEO articles, dev.to, YouTube tutorials, Reddit - and I'll log what works right here.

If you've grown a free product against a beloved-but-paywalled incumbent, I'd genuinely love to hear what moved the needle for you. And if you write LaTeX: try LetX and tell me what breaks.