Before this coaching session, I spent hours this past week with my co-founder trying to explain why we need to go all in on marketing and stop splitting our focus building features.

He wasn't getting it. He felt the company needed to go in multiple directions at once. I felt like I was talking to a wall.

In less than 45 minutes a business coach we'd never met said the exact same things I'd been saying. My co-founder listened.

That's the reality of founder dynamics. You can be right about something for months, but when you're both grinding on the same problem for so long, your co-founder stops hearing you. You're too close to each other and too close to the problem. Sometimes it takes an outside voice saying it in a different way for it to land.

Within 2 minutes of the session starting, the coach forced my co-founder to look at the problem from a different angle. Questioning the entirety of our efforts.

Tech founders always want to add more value and offer a better product especially when you have a lot of feedback from existing users.

That instinct can send you down an endless rabbit hole, and you end up with a massive blind spot about what the business actually needs from a business perspective. You need to learn how to be a business owner as well as a tech founder, and that is really difficult when you've just launched and you're being pulled in every direction.

The coach made the goal sound painfully simple.

You have a product. You already have paying customers. All you need to do is get in front of people. Really get in front of people at events and in places where your ideal customer hangs out. Have no shame in saying "would you consider paying for this? Support our journey. It's not even that much."

When you're overthinking it, you're not seeing the value of your own product. You are downgrading what you've built. You're sat there going "would people really pay for this if I don't offer them x, y, z feature?" But what you're offering has already made some people pay for it. So why wouldn't the next 10? The next 20? The next 100? Sometimes you are the obstacle in your own way.

He literally said to us, "your main problem might end up being too much money." If you go down this path and it works, that's a problem everybody wants to have. Once the money is coming in, you can chase every feature, every nice to have. You can change your value proposition, your pricing, and the sky is the limit.

Make a 30-day plan. Crunch it. Stick with it. See if you can get from 100 customers to 150. Those extra 50 customers matter more than any feature you're thinking about building.

On the other side of those 30 days, if you can't get those extra customers, you face the music. Go back to the drawing board and figure out if you should still be doing this. No sunk cost fallacy. No endlessly making a product better when nobody even asked you to.

He kept apologising at the end for being so direct. He didn't realise that's exactly what we needed. We wanted someone to rip the bandaid off.

If you're a founder stuck in that loop with your co-founder where you're both saying the same thing in different languages, get someone external in the room. It won't fix everything but it might be the thing that finally breaks the deadlock.

Happy grinding!

Hi guys, I have a problem and i know most of solo developers have the same problem. I have lots of ideas on my mind that i found in podcast, X or people that i know. I bet they are useful, worth to try at least. But when i starting to planning or even when i just thinking about them i hit the same wall everytime. How the hell will i reach my first 1000 or even 100 user without spending a dime. Lets be real ads prices are too high. Espacially for me. My country has big inflation.

I just want to open a thread because i bet there is lots of people in my shoes right now.

How you solo developers handle this. How did you find your users without spending huge amounth of marketing. I can make max 250$ monthly marketing. And this is nothing compare to market right now.

Can you share your marketing strategy?

Every business struggles by two things: a solid product and the ability to market it. You can build the most amazing product, but if no one knows about it, it's dead in the water.

So I've been thinking with the explosion of AI tools over the past couple of years, how are you all actually handling marketing for your startups?

Like, are you using AI for content creation? Ad copy? SEO? Social media scheduling? Or are you still doing it the old-school way?

Would love to hear real workflows from founders and early-stage teams what's actually working, what's overhyped, and what tools have genuinely moved the needle for you.

I would love to learn how you have been doing this. Whats your major pain point?

For those of you running US-based companies: When evaluating a vendor that’s not US-based (e.g., India, Eastern Europe, etc.), what actually creates hesitation - if anything?

Is it:

•	Legal structure / incorporation

•	Contract enforceability

•	Data/security concerns

•	Payment logistics

•	Time zone / communication

•	Or just pattern recognition from past experiences?

And on the flip side - what overrides those concerns and makes you say yes anyway?

Looking for real decision criteria, not generic answers.

For context: I’m an India-based founder evaluating whether to register in the US (likely Delaware) or keep it India-based while selling to US companies.

Trying to understand if incorporation materially impacts trust / buying decisions, or if execution and value outweigh that.

Running a news site is very different from anything I've done before, and it has forced me to think about which metrics matter most.

I want to make turn a profit on this very soon (via sponsorships), so right now all I care about is increasing these 3 metrics:

1/ Number of daily unique users (Target: 720)

2/ Average time spent on website (Target: 5 min)

3/ Number of returning users (Target: 50)

These are the metrics I believe sponsors will care about the most, am I wrong?

We had about ~45 people across US, UK, Germany and Singapore all submitting expenses into a shared Google Sheet.

Yeah… not great.

At the end of each month our controller would spend like 2 full days trying to reconcile everything, and there were still mismatches. Multi-currency made it way worse.

We tried Expensify for a bit. It was okay for the US side, but internationally it honestly created more work than it solved. The automatic currency conversion kept messing things up.

After a lot of trial and error, a few things actually made a big difference:

• keeping everything in the original currency as long as possible (instead of converting early)
• adding a proper approval step before anything hits accounting
• forcing people to submit expenses in a structured way (categories, required fields, etc.)

The biggest shift was probably realizing that “expense tracking” and “accounting” shouldn’t be the same thing. Once we separated that, things got much cleaner.

We also noticed that a lot of all-in-one tools try to do everything, but break down a bit once you’re dealing with multiple countries and currencies.

Curious how others are handling this with Xero + multi-currency setups.

Are you using one tool for everything or splitting workflow vs accounting?

Hey r/startups,

I am a software architect shipping LLM features into apps, everyday i see issues with sensitive content gets pushed into LLM of-course not intentionally. But either way that is a serious risk.

I mean as devs this is just normal workflow. But every one of those prompts was heading straight to whichever model we had connected, with zero filtering or redaction. It made me realize how exposed most LLM integrations probably are right now.

So I made a leak detector and proxy that I think will definitely help the startup founders and devs who is using LLM for their everyday tasks and integration workflows. Happy to share more details or architecture thoughts. I can share the link if anyone is interested. I would love to hear your feedback and valuable suggestions.

Hey, I'm just looking for genuine advice from as many business minded people as possible.

I launched a K-12 tutoring marketplace/platform but targeted for specifically Toronto and surrounding areas. The model is simple, clients book vetted tutors on my site, I take commission and tutors can get clients without having to promote themselves.

On the supply side I gathered 70+ tutors so far listed on my site with a whole working system for everything. I realized getting the supply is easy but how do I get the clients to book a tutor on my site?

All I can think of is reaching out in local Facebook groups or reddit groups to parents looking for a tutor and message them saying if you're having trouble finding a tutor you can check this website for tutors in your area. But I'm not sure if that comes across as spammy or fraudulent.

I could also run meta ads or google ads but is that a wise decision to make when I just launched a couple days ago?

Kinda don't know where to go from here.

Lmk your thoughts.

Been building SaaS projects nonstop since January 2025, 5 so far, and every single one has failed. Not one got real users.

I’ve been building in public on X, trying every possible way to find testers, DM people, offer early access, post updates… nothing seems to stick. It’s starting to feel like I’m shouting into the void.

Honestly, the toughest part of this whole startup grind isn’t learning to code or market it’s fighting the self doubt. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve told myself to give up, yet somehow kept going. But right now, it’s getting hard to see the point.

This journey really isn’t for the faint hearted.

I built a social video app where you can watch videos together instead of just sending links back and forth.

It came from always sending videos to friends or my partner and then waiting forever for a reply. I figured it would be better if we could just watch stuff together in real time, see ourselves, react, laugh.

I put it on the Play Store and it has about 100+ downloads so far. Not great, not terrible, just kind of stuck.

I honestly thought people would be more excited about it, but the reaction has mostly been neutral.

So now I’m trying to figure out:

Is this idea just not that strong, or am I missing something with how I’m positioning it?

For those who’ve built or grown apps, what actually helped you get your first real users?

I’m open to honest feedback, even if it’s blunt.

Welcome to this week’s Feedback Thread!

Please use this thread appropriately to gather feedback:

• Feel free to request general feedback or specific feedback in a certain area like user experience, usability, design, landing page(s), or code review
• You may share surveys
• You may make an additional request for beta testers
• Promo codes and affiliates links are ONLY allowed if they are for your product in an effort to incentivize people to give you feedback
• Please refrain from just posting a link
• Give OTHERS FEEDBACK and ASK THEM TO RETURN THE FAVOR if you are seeking feedback
• You must use the template below--this context will improve the quality of feedback you receive

​

Template to Follow for Seeking Feedback:

• Company Name:
• URL:
• Purpose of Startup and Product:
• Technologies Used:
• Feedback Requested:
• Seeking Beta-Testers: [yes/no] (this is optional)
• Additional Comments:

​

​

​

This thread is NOT for:

• General promotion--YOU MUST use the template and be seeking feedback
• What all the other recurring threads are for
• Being a jerk

​

​

Community Reminders

• Be kind
• Be constructive if you share feedback/criticism
• Follow all of our rules
• You can view all of our recurring themed threads by using our Menu at the top of the sub.

Upvote This For Maximum Visibility!

I am a founder trying to raise my pre seed and I was working on a list of Angels I could approach. here are the few things that I could come up with.

1. Someone who has done similar to what I am doing in my industry and has made an exit and now wants to mentor founders with their learnings.

2. Someone with a strong sense of purpose rather than just chasing valuations.

3. Someone who forges new founders into stellar CEOs

Are there any green flags or red flags you would watch out for or would you want them to be a future version of yourself that you aspire to be like. Share your thoughts.

I created an AI workout app just as a side project to help me land a new job in the city. I feel like what I created doesn’t really exist yet, it does in pieces but nobody has put it together.

The problem I’m currently having is really just getting people (outside my friends and family) to try it.

At this point it seems pretty normal that most teams are using tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc. in their day to day work.

Things like summarizing docs, debugging code, analyzing data, writing content.

Which also means people are pasting in:

• internal docs
• customer data
• codebases (claude code)
• financial info

I’m curious how companies are actually handling this in practice.

Do you:

• have any internal policies around AI usage?
• rely on employee judgment?
• restrict certain types of data?
• not really care as long as it helps productivity?

Also curious how teams are tackling this from a tooling perspective.

Are people standardizing around something like Microsoft Copilot or other enterprise tools?
Or is it still a mix of individual tools depending on preference?

I have also heard some companies say enterprise tools do not use your data for training, but I am not sure how much that actually changes behavior internally.

Also wondering if this varies by industry like fintech vs SaaS vs agencies, and by company size.

Trying to understand whether this is something companies actively manage, or if it is still mostly informal.

Hey there!

Three months ago, I joined a small team building a workspace booking platform (Wezoo) as a sales associate. It is probably safe to say that before, I hadn't known anything about the short-term office / meeting rooms + long-stay office market. I wanted to ask you all about some tips for progression, notes from more experienced people in the field, and maybe some general takeaways for me to be better at my job.

To me, it seemed like a hipster version of real estate that would still rely on slow and formal direct inquiries. Turns out the market is very hungry for solutions comparable to the hotel / tourism sector – think Airbnb and Booking com, but the properties in question are offices. The supply has met the growing demand for tourism much earlier than it was for offices, which is quite fair, but realising how similar these two types of products are for me was quite eye-opening. So I wanted to share what I struggled with (and still do) while working with an early-stage company that's trying to build a two-sided booking platform from scratch for office bookings.

The first problem was the cold start, of course. I work at the supply side, so I have to help onboard venue operators who wish to see demand before committing to anything, and customers who want to see what you’re offering before booking. Chicken and egg. I got through by doing the regular Apollo emailing to the operators, follow-ups, a lot of research and analysis, but what really helped was the product, not the marketplace as its exterior. Operationally, our USP remains automation by mirroring the API of operators’ booking systems, so we just list them and make offices bookable for customers. But still, that proves to be not enough to be appealing to everybody because of the strong tech-reliant aspect, which essentially is our main “better” point that many smaller operators get confused by.

I guess my team changes your relationship with work. There's no hiding. If I don't onboard venues, we don't have supply. If the product team doesn't nail the integration, the rooms don't show up. If support doesn't handle an issue quickly, we lose trust in an operator we spent weeks courting. Everyone's work is visible and consequential. It's the most accountable I've ever felt in a job, and honestly, I love it.

The EU-to-US expansion has been a lesson in humility. We started in Europe: the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and several other markets. Now we're expanding into the US. The assumption was "it's the same product, just a bigger market." It's not. Different operator expectations, different booking behaviours, different competitive landscape. We're learning a lot, fast.

I don't have a tidy takeaway here. I'm still in the middle of it. But if anyone else is working on a marketplace or a B2B platform with a physical-world component, I'd love to hear from you what would help me progress further, maybe there is something I am missing out.

Thank you! <3

This feels more psychological than logical.

People say they want facts, but they react more strongly to negative narratives.

Even if there are dozens of positive or neutral sources, one negative piece seems to outweigh everything.

Maybe because it feels less controlled or less biased.

Or maybe people just don’t want to feel like they missed something obvious.

Either way, it skews perception heavily.

Every tool in this space does roughly the same thing- monitor keywords, maybe slap an AI relevance score on top, send you alerts.

The relevance score is supposed to be the smart part. The thing that filters noise. But here's the issue: almost every tool defines "relevant" the same way. Buying intent. Pain points. Competitor frustration.

That's one narrow slice of why you'd want to find a Reddit post.

I know a founder who built a flat rental app (no-brokerage, Bangalore). His ideal post isn't "I hate my current apartment app"- it's "anyone know a good 2BHK in Indiranagar?" Completely different signal. No existing tool's AI would score that post as highly relevant for him, because their model doesn't know that's what he's looking for.

The tools are essentially pre-deciding what counts as a lead for you. And they've all made the same assumption: you're a B2B SaaS founder chasing switching intent.

Is anyone else running into this? Curious how people with non-standard use cases are handling Reddit monitoring..

Now a days reviews are mostly paid, ratings are unreliable and its all influencer marketing. Reading reviews takes hours and to come to a conclusion.

Therefore, I have built a rating platform where 1 = Utter Failure and 10 = Excellent.

(each number has a label)

You can rate anything in the world be it people, product, places, services, establishments..literally anything.

The rating of the item being rated will result into a unique rating figure based on the number of ratings the item has received..e.g. Air India - 3.2 (100 votes).

more interestingly you can share the ratings as well as compare three different items and share the comparison as well e.g.

Apple 4.5 (100 votes)

Samsung 5.9 (150 votes)

Opp 6.0 (200 votes)

an attractive share card gets generated and you can share it like a normal image.

There are no comments so no noise just a pure number which will be a real sentiment of the real people resulting in one single number. So just by looking at the number you can make an effective decision.

Once you rate an item the score is locked for 7 days you cant change it during this time. after that you can modify if you had a better or worse experience form the same thing.

How do i get people to use and rate there everyday items, experiences etc..

I'm trying to gather some data for our pitch deck and was wondering about the summary and the percentage of different sentiments around current AI language learning apps. Is there an existing service for doing this kind of research before I try to build one? Similarly, is there one for a reviews site like trust pilot? Thank you!

Watched a full interview with a founder recently and it left me a bit split.

On one hand, the story is intense. Talks about building early infrastructure, losing everything, going to prison, then coming back and rebuilding again.

On the other hand, what he’s building now is pretty ambitious. Multiple directions at once. Sports, AI platforms, media, all connected somehow.

Usually that kind of scope makes me skeptical. Feels like too many moving parts.

But at the same time, he wasn’t talking like someone pitching. More like someone trying to explain how everything fits together from his perspective.

Didn’t feel polished. Which either means it’s more real or just less structured.

I can’t decide if it’s vision or overextension.

Maybe both.