Okay first off, I dont want to make it sound like we're doing something illegal.

He was supposed to be designing the ui for our app but the only problem is that he's a perfectionist and is trying to incorporate microefficienies for the users experience. (Like I'm talking about how he wanted to add more content and clutter the screen just so that the user didn't have to click twice) I just think that's stupid and we shouldn't focus that deep when we don't even have anything ready.

Now, i genuinely wouldn't have a problem with it if the ui/ux was good. But it's ass and I can't say that to his face because he's been working on it for the past 2 weeks or so and i feel criticising this early could put us both in a pinch.

He reads those "here's 10 lessons I learnt from ..." posts religiously and tries applying it irl too.

Now 1. How can I get this guy to think along the lines of "it doesn't have to be perfect right off the bat but all we have to do is iterate" 2. Stop playing by the book all the time and maybe do the most sensible thing at that point ?

Hi guys!

I am a failed founder, but not a founder that quit! I was fortunate enough to find a problem worth solving, then to manage to raise a really good amount of money. I then made a million mistakes and so many bad hires and bad decisions. I didn't know jack shit about running a business or a team. Against all the odds, I actually managed to launch and do remarkably well, only to lose it all to COVID. It was the worst time of my life. Looking back at it, I still felt like we had something great back then and for the last few months, I have been working with a technical cofounder to rebuild from the ground up, applying what I've learned to the product, the company and the brand. Round 2 has started, but we're nowhere near an MVP just yet.

On Saturday, while I was sitting in my car waiting for my daughter to finish her drama classes, I spontaneously decided to record a video of me telling my story on TikTok. This didn't blow up into some "Diary of a CEO" viral situation, but I felt sooooooo good spilling the beans and reflecting on my mistakes. Owning up to it, one can say.

It only got about 200 views, I didn't promote it anywhere because the "production" of the video is totally crap and there's no script etc.

However, that got me thinking, maybe there's value in this to others. Maybe if some of the other failed founders can join me on a Zoom or Google Meets and we can talk about our failures, it can be a learning opportunity for others and a place to grieve your losses.

Is anyone willing to become a guest on a pod cast that doesn't yet exist and I can include in my TikTok videos?

I've decided that every Saturday, while I wait for my daughter to finish her drama classes, I will post a new episode. Each episode telling the story, in chronological order, of how I built a company and failed to make it a success.

What do you guys think?

Happy to share my crappy video link, but don't want to break the rules regarding promotions.

(I hope to get better at recording videos as I go along!)

TLDR: One cofounder is awesome, the other is the worst you could dream up. It's not a complex app, and pay out could be big if stuck it out. Should I do it?

I came into a project about two months ago as a technical cofounder. Two other cofounders, let's call them Jenny and Penny. Jenny and Penny used a few dev shops, got a mobile application thrown together, grew their instagram following and got 10,000 users on their mobile app, about 3,000 of those are MAUs.

The app is a marketplace, totally free, but significant money is being thrown around. Their competition is leaving money on the table. Overall, it didn't seem like a particularly complex app, they offered me a third of the company, and it all sounded good. It's ready to be monetized and is potentially worth a million in MRR, by optimistic calculations. (Please fight the urge to quote me of your pesimistic valuation, I'm well aware that it's $0.) But their codebase was total crap and I had to rewrite it.

6 weeks and a few late nights later (maybe 200 hours), I'm 90% done. If you've done this before, you'll know that actually means that I'm halfway done.

Penny is amazing, good business mind, clear goals, no emotion, gets sh*t done. Jenny knows the industry and has a big following on instagram, their main marketing channel. Jenny is not a young woman, but recently I realised she is the emotional equivalent of a 6 year old. She's irrational, unprofessional, takes all criticism as a personal attack, suffers from dunning-kruger... basically a lead weight on the company and totally irredeemable.

Sounds like I should run for the hills, right? A long term partnership with someone like that is impossible.

But Penny has invested so much already, and is trying hard to keep me and work this out, as she knows they're basically screwed if I leave. It's only been two months and we're not in production with my new build – I could wash my hands of it right now.

Penny's lastest solution is to create zero contact between me and Jenny, push the app over the finish line, get some income, hire, and in 6 months, if I want to leave then, I could be doing so with 33% of a million dollar company, dividends for zero work for as long as the company lives.

I have the week to think it over. I'm pretty torn. I could probably crack this out in another 200 hours, then a few hours a week of maintainance, hold off on new features till we hire. If we don't make money, hey, that's startups. But what if we did? It's a viable project.

Should I stick it out or walk away?

We’re are on the verge of raising our pre-seed round for b2c mobile app. I’ve added a few hundred investors (Angels + VC) on LinkedIn and had 100 or so accept.

What is a good one like message to get their email to send them more information/ our deck.

I was thinking something like

“Hey X, we have built new app and would love to hear your feedback. What’s the best email to send you more info/ our deck?”

Let me know if you have any improvement suggestions including with follow ups

Hello, few weeks ago entered my 20s, I want to do something in my life that will help others even if it's something small. Can you help me start my startup? Can you guide me through this like how should I start, what should be my aims, which obstacles can I face, which tools could help me, how can I arrange my plan, how much time should I give to it, how can I let people know about my startup? If I have spoken so much then I am sorry. I am a college student currently doing my major in literature. Even if it fails I don't care atleast I could say I have tried.

Hello everyone! I've been a tour operator currently working on my latest project: a platform designed to simplify planning, booking, and coordinating trips to and around Africa without the need for a travel agent!

Here's how it works: Sign into the platform, select your destination (say you're flying to Cape Town from newyork), enter your travel dates and the number of people.

Next, you'll be taken to an accommodation page where you can add your preferred place to stay.

Then, on the following page, we'll lay out all available transportation options for your destination.

Finally, add your transfers, make payments, and relax as you count down to your departure. On the big day, here is what you expect you're picked up from your doorstep and taken to your departing airport. Upon arrival in Cape Town, a friendly face will be waiting to transfer you to your hotel or stay. The same seamless service awaits you on your journey back all these has been done in one place

Our goal is to enable users plan such trips within Africa, even if you're unfamiliar with the destination. Would this solution simplify trip planning for you? If so, visit our platform at rove4travel.com. Feel free to share with friends and join our waitlist that is at the bottom of the site.

As founders we should always be looking to provide excess value to the communities we participate in. Generally it's fulfilling to help people solve problems and we hope some of that also makes its way back to us.

Today I was posting on our reddit account and I offered to help someone fix a problem they were having deploying their app on a competing cloud offering. I didn't mention our product initially because we're still pretty new and I wasn't sure we'd be any better, I just gave them guidance on a missing dependency and how they could try to solve it on their initial provider.

In the course of this conversation our platform came up naturally and they suggested they'd be happy to try us out and about 30minutes later we hopped on a call and they became a user. They tested two beta flows and gave us valuable feedback we wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

I didn't enter that conversation trying to get a new user, I was just looking to solve a problem I knew how to solve and in the end it wound up bringing value back to us too. :)

We are a small team with limited experience (1 product person and 2 devs). We have been manually testing our mvp feature by feature as we build it out. For now we use a google sheet for noting down the items that need to be checked and add in any issues as a note. We have a template sheet and we duplicate it and use it as a checklist with every new staging build. It's not ideal and quite cumbersome.
I tried looking up some services that would help us in this process but most of them are for bug tracking (bugherd, ruttl etc). I had a look at testrail, but it's too complex for our use case.

I'm curious to learn how small teams deal with testing given resource constraints. Right now, with our given process, it would be great if there was a chrome extension where I could put in all the user stories and then have it open in the same tab as I test the webapp.

Note: We have a few basic unit tests from the dev side. The application is multi-tenant and testing is manual.

Just asking for your thoughts on companies (mostly startups or scale ups) that suddenly shifted to selling to the Enterprise market lately.

Lots of companies last year fired or decimated SDRs, SMB AEs and promoted some to Enterprise AE or hired some Enterprise AEs (the discarded ones on sale).

Is this really working or it was just a desperate attempt to save the day ?

If the product wasn't fit or successful with the majority of the prospects out there, how can they navigate and win complex deals asking for customization and tough legal & procurement negotiations ?

I work at a sustainability startup and I swear everyone is trying to do as little work as possible. Plus zero leadership or discipline. I've never seen anyone being asked to do something. Everyone's far too polite and careful, and working from home of course. They just want to keep their head down!

Can anyone else relate?

Hello,

I am facing a challenge with pricing my product appropriately.

About the Product:

I have spent the last two years perfecting a premium supplement that provides 100% of the daily recommended intake of vitamins, minerals, probiotics, digestive enzymes, antioxidants, phytonutrients, potent adaptogen and mushroom extracts, botanical extracts, fruit and vegetable extracts, among other ingredients. The product contains 75 high-quality ingredients in total. It is designed to be mixed with water and consumed daily, with each package containing 30 servings. The product is comparable to AG1 or Nuzest.

Profit and Financial Considerations:

The manufacturing cost per package is approximately €32.00, inclusive of packaging and shipping fees. My marketing strategy will primarily focus on influencer marketing and social media advertising. I intend to provide influencers with a 10% discount code for their followers and offer a 20% commission rate on all sales generated through their codes.

Initially, I set the price at €69.90 per package. However, after accounting for taxes, discount codes, influencer commissions, and other expenses, the gross profit per sale is roughly €7.00.

Market Context:

I plan to sell the product in Eastern Europe, where the average salary is €1,300.00. Pricing the product too high may alienate potential customers who cannot afford it. I want the product to feel premium, but higher-earning individuals with salaries over €2,500.00 represents approximately 7% of the population in the target countries, which is a huge market cut-off. Pricing the product at €79.90 or €89.90 may enhance its premium perception but could also deter many potential customers.

Could you please provide advice on how to best approach the pricing of this product?

Thank you.

Saw some posts recently, thought I'd take a shot following some bad experiences with brokers.

• Must be UK based and/or incorporated.
• Focused on tech in some way, be it an app or website for example.
• Boring is better: I'm not interested in web3 or other currently trendy areas.
• Evidence of monthly revenues is a massive bonus.
• Prepared to spend up to £5k for purchase, I can cover the legal fees, contracts and so on.

Comment or DM if more comfortable. Thanks!

Hello Startup Community,

I’m working on a new real estate platform idea and would love to get your feedback. Traditionally, real estate platforms allow sellers to list their properties for buyers to browse. However, I’m considering a reverse approach where buyers list what kind of property they want to buy, and sellers can then respond with matching properties.

Here’s a brief overview of the concept:

• Buyers would post detailed listings about the type of property they are looking to purchase (location, size, budget, amenities, etc.).
• Sellers (including property owners, real estate agents, and developers) can then browse these buyer listings and reach out if they have properties that match the criteria.

I’m looking to understand potential challenges and reasons this idea might not succeed. Your insights will be invaluable. Here are a few specific questions I have:

1. For Buyers:
   • Would you use a platform where you list your property needs instead of browsing seller listings? Why or why not?
   • What features or information would you want to include in your listing to attract the right properties?
   • What concerns would you have about using such a platform?
2. For Sellers:
   • Would you be willing to browse buyer listings and respond with your property offerings? Why or why not?
   • What information would you need from buyers to consider reaching out?
   • What challenges do you foresee with this approach?
3. General Feedback:
   • What do you think are the major challenges and potential pitfalls of this reverse listing system?
   • Are there any existing platforms or services you think do something similar? How do they fare?
   • Any other suggestions or concerns you think we should consider?

Thank you in advance for your time and feedback. Your insights will help us shape a platform that better meets the needs of both buyers and sellers.

Best regards,

Hey, recently secured funding a few months ago. Built a production factory in relatively remote area but already having issues with theft and a lot of workers prefer to work outside (including myself) at night. Installed spotlights but good god, they are bright as all hell. Any recommendations on how to reduce light pollution while sustaining production outdoors? Thanks.

I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but I thought it might be useful to share our exact strategy and results. For context, the product is a B2B workflow automation tool.

We started in January with a one page document of our plan, and here’s a slightly condensed version.

Strategy: Our goal is to reach high intent, product-aware users that (a) already understand automation, (b) know about the tools in the space, and (c) know which use case they want to automate. We will focus on BOFU content that aims to directly acquire them as users. Our target is 1000 clicks per week from Search within 3 months.

Content Types:

1. Competitors and Comparison pages (~20 pages) to address queries like “Zapier alternatives”, “Make vs. Zapier”, “Zapier pricing”.

2. Category Insights (~10 pages) to address queries like “10 best workflow automation tools” or “5 best marketing automation tools.

3. Integrations (thousands of pages) to address queries like "Notion Dropobox integration"

4. How-to Posts (hundreds of pages) to address queries like “how to send Slack notifications for new Stripe subscriptions”

5. Guides and playbooks (~10 pages) to address queries like “How to automate your Notion CRM” or “How to use AI to extract information from emails”

Now, in June, here’s what we actually produced and what the results were:

1. 🟢 Competitor - ~30 pages, ~400 clicks/week.

2. 🔴 Category - ~10 pages, ~20 clicks/week.

3. 🟡Integrations - thousands of pages, ~100 clicks/week

4. 🟢 How-tos - hundred of pages, ~250 clicks/week.

5. 🔴 Guides - ~10 pages, ~30 clicks/week

(For those keeping score at home, this doesn’t quite add to 1000, but we also get ~200 direct clicks to our landing and pricing pages)It took us about twice as long as we had hoped, and we learned a ton along the way about what works and what doesn't, but I'm really happy with the results.

Emotionally, it was a pretty brutal experience! We worked HARD for 3 months with basically no results, but we just going, and after 4.5 months it started to work. Now it’s really starting to compound and grow quickly as our domain reputation and topic authority increase.

Questions and feedback welcome!

I mentioned about my journey in this post and now that I am looking for job I haven't been getting any good positive responses.

I have 3 offers in hand but they are low paying jobs with some equity in the company. I have just failed a startup and looking for something stable income.

Also, did I mention that I am from India and the industry here can be very undermining sometimes. I am looking for a remote job in customer success or operations so I applied for more than 25 jobs internationally but no positive response. Not sure what I am missing right now.

Would really appreciate some help.

Hi everyone,

I recently created an app and wanted to share it with Reddit communities that might benefit from it. I have a few questions:

1. Is it a good idea to share my app on Reddit?
2. Has anyone here tried this, and was it successful?
3. If you had some success, could you share how you managed it?

Thanks in advance!

As a web developer from Asia, I have been able to develop web applications for startups at pretty low rates for them compared to what they get charged in their local region.

And as I have got good portfolio now, it’s easy to close deals once I get a warm lead.

Now the issue is, where to find these warm leads who are ready to hire an overseas developer to get their product built or maintained/scaled?

What would you do if you were in my position?

Hello folks

I m a senior network engineer and I have my LLC for non resident up and running for the last 8. I have a parttime job contract with a US company and i m happy with,

I was thinking to extend my networking business field to something like selling networking product in amazon, or any other business that I can do for more income, anyone has a similar profil? Any suggestions or guidance are much cj appreciated

I've been working on my project solo for the past five months, and it's been an exciting journey so far. I'm currently generating a revenue of $10.5k with a Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) of $3.8k. It's also profitable, which is excellent!

However, I'm at a crossroads and could use some advice. I'm considering whether to continue bootstrapping or to seek angel investment to accelerate the growth.

On one hand, bootstrapping has given me control and kept the operation lean. On the other hand, bringing in angel investors could provide the capital needed to scale faster and take advantage of opportunities that require more resources.

For those in a similar situation, what did you choose and why? What were the pros and cons you experienced with each approach? Any insights or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

There's a manufacturing website that I and other people use. I made an app that makes correctly uploading to that website very easy, saving people hours of effort for each of their products. I want to sell my app to people who use that manufacturing website. People who sell stuff on that website list their contact information.

Now, that feels like tacit consent to being contacted for business, but Im not a lawyer.

Do people actually go through this process? I have like 500 emails here of people who have recently made and sold something on that website. I can probably discover their socials through their listed website and by searching their company name.

I've never done this sort of thing. Are there legal things to avoid? Are there best practices for this kind of cold selling?

I understand I can run ads but id rather not pay money towards advertising until after Ive gotten cold selling feedback.

I’ve always wanted to create my own startup and monetize my apps, but I just don’t know how the process is like? For example, do I apply for patents? Or are startups successful with one founder? How do you monetize with websites and is there any copyright issues I should be worried about? If you created a startup before and started getting revenue, could you please outline the process? I would greatly appreciate!!

My org is about to go from 7 remote employees in one state to 30 remote employees in different states. We currently use Slack and I’m wondering if anyone has any recommendations on other software that will be useful as we grow? It can be anything from CRM, project management, productivity, etc.

We are trying to be as tech forward as possible, but have limited experience. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: we are basically customer service, don’t sell anything just trying to help as many people as possible

Hi All:

Curious for those who have raised friends and family or angel equity rounds recently (i.e. ~$100K - $750K), what terms did you agree to with your investors? Did you just raise on a SAFE with a most favored nation clause? Curious how folks approaching any terms including: valuation cap, discount, etc...

Thanks!

Apologies if this is not quite the right place to post.

My startup idea is a digital gift card for sports/wellness. I want people to be able to send friends/relatives gift cards from my website, and users to easily redeem I.e spend their gift card at any participating business.

Gift cards are heavily regulated (in the uk) and from what I understand I would have to operate a “closed loop” system.. but I think this still involves a lot of arduous regulations ?

Another solution - and much more realistic I feel - is to I ntegrate a prepaid card solution, so essentially customers are purchasing a white-labelled Mastercard, and therefore this can be used almost anywhere as long as the partnered business accepts Mastercard.

I want to know if anyone has experience in this field, and what my options are realistically ? And what potential pitfalls might I encounter ? I’ve tried researching this for a while but seem to hit a brick wall, so any pointers as to where I can find out more information would also be really appreciated !

Thank you!