r/Entrepreneurship

Hi everyone,

I'm currently building an inventory tracking system for a local business in my area. The problem is that it's quite frustrating, he has low budget, and he just wants it thinking of it as "something cool to have". And honestly it's like I'm not getting paid at all for the work.

I wanted to see if it's really something that's worth the effort.

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I wanted to know if there really is a big market for such systems and it's worth the effort while not getting paid, or should I just focus on making systems for other problems.

If there are any people over here with enough knowledge, I'd love to listen to their advice.

i am really frustrated. I need to talk about this. now i have been having a lot of problem with phone verification. I want to know if I am one who thinks this is a problem. Is phone verification really need for every sign up?

I get why phone verification is there. Why is it still a problem in 2026? I just want to try a tool but now I have to give out my phone number every time. It is getting really old. This is especially true for apps that do not even need that much security.

It look like we are all used to phone verification by now. Should we be used to it? Is there not a way to check who the users are without needing a phone number all the time?

I feel the way about phone verification. Is checking a phone number something you do all the time now? We should be looking for a way to do phone verification. Do we really have to check a phone number every time we sign up for something?

Not talking about automation tools. Just the pair where you find yourself doing the same copy-paste move ten times a day because they don't talk to each other.

Mine is Notion and Gmail. Every single time.

My business is doing well but the money fluctuates. I’m fortunate enough where I only really need to be customer facing on the weekends and can do the other business functions whenever.

How do employers view people like us? I only want the money when working for other people(insurance would be nice too) and have always had “passion” issues in the past. I work well but have never been a good culture fit because my heart isn’t in the work and I don’t spend any extra time in the office if I don’t have to. Owning a business has been great and somewhat profitable but I’m not at the stage where it covers all my bills all the time. I unfortunately need outside income… for now.

How do I word my resume? How do employers feel about me being my own reference?

Early stage founders,

If you're raising and tired of cold emails that go nowhere, this might be worth your time.

Send us a short pitch, 2-3 min video pitch and your deck and we'll get it in front of 11 angel investors we are currently working with. You’ll have a real chance of getting an investment!

We’re soon launching a platform connecting early-stage founders and investors. While building, we want to stay close to our customers and start making impact.

So if you’re looking to raise it’s a no brainer.

My partner and I have about $100k that we would love to invest in a business. We have money invested in stocks, crypto and a rental property. We would love to start our own business (if we can think of what?) or we would like to invest in someone else's business venture.

What should we do? Where do we start?

Thank you

The question that kills most info product sellers before they ever add a coaching upsell is "how am I going to coach anyone?" You are not. That is the whole point.

The coaching model is not a credibility problem. It is a sourcing and operations problem. And sourcing is a solved problem.

The structure

You sell 1-on-1 coaching at $1,000 or above. You close the sale. Someone else delivers the sessions.

That person already exists. They are sitting on Upwork or Fiverr right now with a strong review history, deep subject matter knowledge, and a rate of $50 an hour because they have no idea how to acquire clients at scale. They are good at the work. They are bad at the distribution. You are the distribution.

Skip the top-rated profiles charging $300 an hour. They have their own pipeline and their own positioning. You want the practitioner two tiers below them: real reviews, real results, no marketing infrastructure.

The conversation

It does not need to be complicated.

"I send you clients every month. Your job is to coach them over text or calls for X weeks. I handle all the sales. You show up as the expert and I pay you Y per client."

They get a reliable client flow without touching acquisition. Your buyer gets a credentialed expert delivering real sessions. You keep the margin between what you charge and what you pay.

Three parties. Three clean incentives. No one is doing a job they are bad at.

Why most people never do this

They conflate delivering the product with owning the business. The belief is: if my name is on the offer, I have to be the one in the room.

That is the employee mental model applied to a business structure. The person who owns a gym does not teach every class. The person who owns a law firm does not take every call. Infrastructure ownership means building the machine, not being the machine.

The coaching upsell is just a fulfillment layer. You are not adding a job to your week. You are adding a revenue layer to your existing distribution and letting someone else clock the hours.

Find the expert. Write the deal. Close the clients. Step out of the delivery.

That is the whole model.

i am 20M single child..i don't have a older sibling who can help me out... collecting big bros i need advice on what to do i feel stuck..

1. 2 years work exp - yes started a job at 18 in college

2. 2 lakhs savings

(no major expenses like rent food since staying at home with family)

3. don't want a JOB anymore - i am DONe with working like a slave in my sales job

city - Ahmedabad

i want to start something of my own and make a career out of it -- any advices businesses?

ready to put in efforts hard work but i lack capital

thank you !!

I​'m a first generation entrepreneur

Sometimes it feels like none of our old friends or family understand us any more

And it feels lonely at times

I've been researching for a few months now, and I'm getting frustrated. Everything I see online is either dropshipping, retail arbitrage, or flipping furniture. I tried a couple of those and hated constantly listing items and dealing with returns.

I have about $5k saved up. I'm looking for something with actual recurring revenue. Ideally something where you set it up once and then just maintain it weekly. I don't mind physical work, actually prefer it over sitting at a computer.

A few ideas I've considered:

• Small vending machines in barbershops or salons
• Water filter dispensers in apartment buildings
• Coffee service for small offices (10–30 people)

The coffee one interests me most because everyone drinks coffee and offices already pay for bad coffee. But I don't know if $5k is enough to buy equipment and get started.

Has anyone here actually done something similar? What was the real startup cost? Any unexpected headaches?

For the longest time I was convinced my biggest problem was traffic. I kept thinking if I could just get more people to my site, everything else would fix itself.

So I tried the usual things. Content, SEO tweaks, a bit of social. Traffic did go up slightly, but nothing really changed in terms of actual results. That was the frustrating part.

What started shifting things for me was looking less at volume and more at how people were finding me in the first place. Not just keywords, but context. Where they are, what they are actually trying to solve in that moment.

I played around with that idea a bit, even tested some stuff using visigeo just to see how location based context might affect things. It was subtle, but it made me rethink a lot.

Now I am starting to feel like traffic alone was never the real issue.

Curious if anyone else has gone through something similar.

I have been on this sub (and other startup subs) for awhile and there is so much angst around idea validation. Do the MOM Test, put up a website and collect emails before you build, build in public. And yet these same would-be founders who check these boxes still fail.

I believe that a scalable idea comes from a combination of science (data) and art (intuition).

Does the MOM Test work? Not in a vacuum, and not badly implemented. Does building in public work? Maybe, but you'll get lots of bad feedback from people who aren't your ICP. Does collecting emails before launch work? Only if you can execute your idea.

My friend recently called me a "market empath." I think she meant that there is a part of seeing the pain point, solving it, and knowing you have a founder/opportunity fit, that is a lot about intuition.

The biggest, most successful founders (and many of the second and third tier founders) didn't do focus groups. They didn't build in public, and they would never have followed the advice of the MOM Test. They had an idea, knew instinctively how to solve it, and built it without fanfare.

Thoughts?

**This is not AI slop. Be nice.

In Short our business will be sustainable toothbrushes and we will donate 10% of earnings to removing plastic from our oceans.

Our name ideas:
- Brush Better
- Brush Forward
- Brush Revolution 
- Brush Collective
- All Smiles
- All Smiles Club

Also feel free to share your own ideas.

I would like to sell items from local original artists but I’m scared to get a C&D order or be shut down.

I would have my own website so I dont have protections like on Redbubble or Etsy. Is it still feasible to do this for things like marvel, halo, scream, stranger things etc? It would not be apparel but rather accessories.

I would not include any official names or logos.

Does anyone know if it will get on their radar or have horror stories? I also plan on selling at conventions etc.

Thanks

It seems like for a lot of people, the idea of starting a business doesn’t really come all at once, it builds up over time after working in corporate.

Sometimes it’s burnout, sometimes it’s feeling stuck, and sometimes it’s just seeing opportunities that don’t get explored in the system you’re in. I also wonder if for some people it’s less about “wanting to be an entrepreneur” and more about wanting more control over their time, decisions, and direction.

From what I’ve seen, the people who eventually make the jump usually don’t feel 100% ready. They just reach a point where staying feels heavier than trying something new. A lot of them start small first, testing ideas on the side before fully committing.

If you’ve made the switch from corporate to starting a business, what was the actual moment or thought that pushed you in that direction? And looking back, do you think it was a gradual decision or something that just clicked?

I'm definitely understanding the overwhelm and the feeling that you just want to break.

Little vent over

Is there actually a clear moment when you know you’re ready to start a business? Or is it more something you slowly grow into?

For me, it doesn’t feel like a big “aha” moment. It’s more like getting a bit tired of overthinking, wanting something of my own, and realizing that waiting for perfect timing might not really happen.

I’m starting to feel like being “ready” might just mean you’re okay figuring things out as you go, even if things aren’t perfect.

Part of me also thinks starting small makes it less overwhelming, just testing something on the side instead of going all in right away.

Just curious how it was for others. Did you have a specific moment where it clicked, or did you just decide to go for it anyway? Looking back, do you think you were actually ready at the time?

Small retailers operating on thin margins find themselves trapped in traditional distribution chains where intermediaries and distributors capture 40-50% of potential profits because retailers lack the connections, minimum order quantities, or platforms to source products directly from brands and manufacturers.