Advice on how to make a dream come true please? I am a solo parent who, 6 years ago, was left to do it all alone. I was left with a mortgage during COVID and a little girl to raise. Prior to that, I was forced by an overbearing mother into a career I actually hate. However, it has allowed me to earn enough money to run the house and provide for my daughter. I work full time and do everything alone with no help at all.

I have been in this career I hate for many years and my health is not great, but still I carry on working full time and often cry with exhaustion. Again, I am thankful I have a job that has kept me above water.

I have always been very crafty and creative and have written a few books which I have been told are really good. I scrimped and scraped and was able to put one together and make my own website. I also have some craft items I have made which, not to sound big headed, but in comparison to other people I have seen making a business, are of good quality. I also have a unique idea I have not seen yet that would tie into this.

I believe I have a fantastic potential business and it’s the only logical way I will ever stand a chance of pulling myself out of the cycle I am in, where I earn enough, but not enough to do well.

I need to get some capital to start the business, as I need to get more copies of the book, get the other books printed, and also I actually need a computer/printer and setup for my business stuff. However, as I have said before, I earn just enough to cover bills, so I am wanting any advice on any grants that may be available, or signposting to any free services that can give advice etc.

I am not looking for sympathy, so will not go into details of my past, as I consider myself a proactive person who will keep working hard and one day it may pay off for me.

I do not have it in me to go on benefits and live off other people’s hard work (I do understand for some it is needed and that is completely fine), but I see it every day people who are just plain lazy and entitled and I will be damned if I become that. However, every day working to exhaustion in a job I loathe is slowly destroying my soul, so I want to know options that are minimal risk for somebody in my situation.

I will add that I am quite shy, so do not have dreams of posting myself all over social media (I was stalked, so this is not viable anyway) and cannot handle unsolicited messages off Pervy men in my inboxes. I have overcome this by using a pen name and I understand social media, in today’s day and age, is a necessary evil, so will use voiceovers and creative ways to promote whilst maintaining my privacy.

This is my first ever post on Reddit, so I’m not sure if I have even done this correctly. Anyway, thank you in advance for any advice. I am also in the UK.

Have printed our ecom large 4x6 shipping labels (1000-3000 monthly) with our dymo labelwriters for years. I LOATHE their shitty machines and how often they break. What do the big boys use? 3PL folks, what say you? Ours just broke and before I repurchase would like to know if there are better options.

Thinking about hosting a small monthly gathering — maybe 20-30 people — for women who are actually building tech companies in NYC.

Not a networking happy hour. More like honest conversations about the real stuff. Fundraising, product decisions, visa headaches, co-founder dynamics — whatever people actually need to talk about.

No speakers bureau, no sponsors, no corporate vibe. Just founders being real with each other.

Would you come? And what would make it actually worth your time?

Hello may seem strange but I noticed in some business groups that certain people haven't yet started a business and are hanging out to see what is trending, get inspired and more.

So I was wondering, is anyone in this sub still in what business to start phase or testing ideas?

And if so what would you need to really get going?

Thanks

I thought I'd post here as some of you may relate.
Husband and I have been on a fertility journey for 1.5 years and I've been increasingly fed up with the lack of positive results in the last few months.

At the same time, I've been working hard to build growth for my business this year and I'm in a better position than last year. I had booked 2 industry events for networking in the next few weeks.

I'm now trying to decide whether to go ahead with IVF this cycle, with egg retrieval falling around the dates of the events, meaning I'll be bloated. So I'm not sure I'll be able to confidently introduce myself / sell my services to prospects. Plus I'm worried about bias from men at the events if I look as if I were pregnant (tech industry).

I'm torn because I want both: a chance at a healthy pregnancy, and fulfilling and paying work. Is that too much to ask? Not for men!
If you had to pick between focusing on business vs family, how did you make that decision?

I am from this world and I still feel that I am being left behind.

For context, I am a pretty good vibe-coder. I have built 20+ projects and I am very well versed in what is happening in AI around me. I have been a founder too so I know how to sell the products.

But despite that I have been feeling like OpenAI and Anthropic will just eat everything up. I mean I love Claude. But I still feel there is so much to catch up on.

Sorry about the rant but just wanted to start this conversation in case someone else is feeling like this too 😅

Solo Founder here with a webapp in beta, conducting controlled testing.
While I do this, I want to build an email list to demonstrate traction for the idea.
Any tips on how to do this? Or am I going about it wrong?

So I was fired 2 months back and now, after a break of one month, I am trying to build my own agency.

The core service I am offering is at the intersection of founder-led and employee-generated content. My targeted companies and founders are from B2B space.

I am struggling to get my first clients. Any recommendation or any advice would be really appreciated

One thing I’m struggling with as a beauty founder is realizing how much people trust ingredients they can’t pronounce over natural ingredients they’ve simply never heard of before.

I’m from Central Asia, and there are certain beauty ingredients and rituals that are extremely normal where I grew up. Women have used them forever. But in the US, the second people see an unfamiliar ingredient name, they immediately assume it’s fake, a scam, or just “TikTok marketing.”

Meanwhile people are completely comfortable buying products with ingredient lists that look like a chemistry final exam lol.

And honestly I kind of understand both sides.

I think consumers are exhausted from beauty marketing and everyone claims everything is a miracle now. But it’s also been interesting realizing that “unfamiliar” sometimes creates more distrust than actual harsh chemicals do.

Curious how other people decide whether they trust a beauty ingredient or not, especially if it comes from another culture and isn’t mainstream in the US yet.

Hi all!

I have developed an app which is currently in closed testing for another 10 days and would love to know if, besides Reddit, TikTok and product hunt and a video if you did anything else to get the app promoted at this stage?

Would appreciate your feedback since I’m a solo builder myself and this is my very first app.

Much appreciated.

Hi everyone,

We are building an early-stage platform/community for women founders and women in leadership, and we’re currently in the founding member onboarding stage.

We started with a simple question:

What would make a women-led professional community actually worth returning to?

So far, we have 22 accepted founding members across technology, healthcare, finance, nonprofit, real estate, marketing, education, legal, media, hospitality, consulting, and entrepreneurship.

A few early signals stood out:

- 50% of founding members have logged activity

- 40.9% have participated beyond just logging in

- 36.4% have posted comments

- Our first direction-setting poll had 40.9% participation

- The top-voted priority was: Events, Working Sessions + Mentorship

- The second strongest priority was: Focused Discussion Rooms + Peer Circles

The interesting part is that the responses are not pointing toward “another networking group.”

The pattern we’re seeing is that women want:

- deeper conversation

- practical support

- mentorship

- peer accountability

- honest discussion without performance pressure

- spaces that produce actual momentum, not just visibility

So our next platform goal is to test a structured Founding Circle format: small group working sessions around topics like sustainable leadership, burnout, decision-making, peer mentorship, and reducing cognitive load as founders/operators.

I’d love feedback from this group:

If you were joining a women founder platform today, what would actually make you participate consistently?

Would it be:

1. small peer circles

2. working sessions

3. mentorship matching

4. founder/operator resource sharing

5. async discussion prompts

6. AI-supported tools to reduce founder overwhelm

7. something else entirely?

We’re still early and intentionally building this with founding members, not around them.

If this sounds aligned and you’d like to be considered for the founding member group, I’m happy to share the link in the comments.

For anyone interested, here’s the founding member waitlist/application:

waitlist.intellisync.io

We’re still in the onboarding stage, so the goal right now is not scale. It’s finding women founders/operators who want to help shape the structure, culture, and first working sessions.

Okay modern love is messy & I’m coming with the mop lol.
I’m building a love/dating social web app because honestly modern dating feels exhausting as hell.

Too much swiping. Too much dry small talk. Too many people talking in circles while pretending they want relationships.
I started building something that feels more organic and social. Less “job interview with a stranger,” more “meeting people naturally online through conversations, humor, stories, flirting, shared interests, etc. You can send crushes, pokes and even get tipped.

The humbling part: Women engage with my dating content WAY more.

Especially when I talk about intentional dating, modern relationships, emotional availability, dating fatigue, all that stuff. They’ll jump into the conversation, share opinions, tell stories, debate in the comments….

Meanwhile the men in the comments are usually fighting for their lives especially if the post even remotely sounds feminist. But When it comes to actually signing up for the waitlist?
About 65% of my signups are men right now. I had even men thanking me for sharing it with them so I’m not bitching about getting them coz kinda made me tear up lol. it’s been fascinating because talking to real users completely destroys your assumptions … genuinely thought women would be the fastest adopters cause I am building this partly out of my own frustration with dating apps as a woman.

Hi fellow founders,

I’m a parent in NYC and a first-time founder building from my dining room table, like so many of us. A few months ago, I had to tell my closest parent friend I couldn't cover a school pickup...I was about to ask her for exactly the same thing...neither one of us could support the other. We were each other’s whole village, and we were both running on empty.

I’m a Conversation Designer by profession, and I’m applying that logic to a project called VILLAGE. It matches small groups of local parents (3 to 5 families) based on values, parenting style, and geography.

This is not a friendship app. It’s functional support infrastructure built on trust. Think school pickups, sick days, and clothing swaps. I’m using a "dealbreaker" matching logic (inspired by old-school OkCupid - it worked for my husband and I!) to ensure these 'villages' actually show up for each other.

I'd love the perspective of this community on two things:

1. On Trust: As a parent, what is the one vetting step or "dealbreaker" question that would make you feel comfortable letting another parent pick up your child?
2. On Utility: Do you feel a subscription model (to keep the community high-intent) or a freemium model better preserves the "utility" aspect over a "social" one?

I'll drop the link to the landing page in the comments if anyone wants to see the framework!

Thanks in advance!

Appreciate you all and love seeing what you're making and building!

Edit: spelling!

Does anyone know of any active female founder Slack groups, communities, or networks worth joining?

UK-based would be great, but global recommendations welcome too.

I’ve been searching for a while and keep finding dead ends: inactive listings, application forms with no response, or paid memberships before you can tell if the community is worth it.

Would really appreciate any recommendations + how you joined.

Thank you!

I've been vibe coding small tools for myself for a while now (somewhere north of 20 projects at this point), mostly to solve little daily annoyances. The latest one I actually use every single day, so I wanted to share it here.

It's a Morning Brief. Every morning it pulls together:

• News from the last 24 hours on the topics I follow
• Social sentiment around those topics
• Substack posts from writers in my world
• Relevant podcast episodes that dropped overnight

All laid out like a curated newspaper. I open it with coffee and I'm done in 10 minutes instead of bouncing between five apps for an hour.

The thing I want to share is that I am not an engineer. I built this in Claude Code by describing what I wanted, and I've started writing up the exact playbooks on my Substack so other non-technical founders can copy them. Paste the prompt, answer a couple questions, done. The bar to building anything is so low that it is criminal.

Happy to answer questions about the build, what broke, or how I'm thinking about the series. And if anyone wants the actual playbook for this one, I'll drop the link in the comments.