Last year we got really fed up with LinkedIn. Every other post is AI slop, everyone sounds like a motivational speaker. People sharing events which they dreamed last night after fapping twice. Intolerable corporate BS.

So we decided to build our own platform. Basically, the opposite of what LinkedIn has become.

We built a karma engine like Reddit where people build reputation by actually contributing something useful, instead of farming engagement with generic posts. Users can only post in skill-based communities or comment on job listings.

We built ML based home feed job matching that helps candidates figure out which jobs are actually worth applying to,

We also added a free voice-based AI interview tailored for each job to practice for specific roles.

The recruiter side is just as important to us. When every applicant has a perfectly tailored AI resume, how do you figure out who’s actually good?

Recruiters end up screening endless applications and spending days on calls. I want to give them better ways to find the right people without relying entirely on what’s written in a resume. They can simply visit the relevant skill communities and see the top contributors and directly message them.

There’s proper fb messenger level messaging too excluding calls, and I’ve made everything free for job seekers and recruiters both. No premium subscription to unlock the useful stuff.

But here’s the reality. I’ve spent months building all this and I’m still struggling to get users.

People already have LinkedIn. Even if they hate parts of it, getting them to join another platform and start from zero is a completely different challenge.
I probably spent too much time building before figuring out distribution.

I’ve been trying a few things to get the word out.

I’ve been posting about the platform in relevant subreddits, reaching out to recruiters on LinkedIn, making short videos showing how the features work, and building a community around the product.

I’m also trying to get people to try the interview tool because I think that’s something useful even if they aren’t ready to switch professional networks.

So far, it’s been a lot harder than I expected to turn that attention into people who actually stick around.

For those who’ve built something that needed a community to become useful, how did you get your first real users? Not signups that disappear the next day, but people who actually come back and participate.

I’m curious what worked for you, especially if you were starting with basically no audience.

I’m a cofounder and the CTO of a startup in a fairly niche B2B sector. We started 5 years ago, and have been bootstrapped this entire time. We’ve grown our customer list pretty effectively and have many leads in the works still.

Problem is, I’m super burned out. For 5 years I’ve been putting in 60-70 hour weeks, and it’s really getting to me. To top it off, I feel that my salary is below what I could make as a standard software engineer with my experience. We’ve recently decided to do a proper VC raise, and had a mentorship meeting earlier today to get some guidance. I brought up that one of the things I’d like from the raising capital is to increase my salary, so that I’d be getting market rate. He basically laughed at that idea, and said that there is no respectable VC that would be willing to let a cofounder make market rate pay after only a Series A. So now I feel like I’m working twice the hours of a standard job and making half as much, which has gotten me pretty down.

Of note, although we’ve grown our developer team and have 5 devs under me, I still manage the majority of the production workloads. Managing infrastructure, security, architecture, roadmap, etc.. (which is obviously all my responsibility as a CTO). But I want to say that, without any ego, I’m the most valuable asset in the company. To the point that the other cofounders have taken out a keyman insurance policy on me just incase anything happens to me.

So now I’m really conflicted. If I leave I feel like the company won’t survive. But at the same time I’m tired of being overworked and underpaid. Lastly, if I do decide to leave I want to do it before any fundraising takes place, as the other thing the mentor has told me is that it’s common for the cofounders to revest half/all of their equity to show they are “all-in”. So if I want to not burn my equity I feel now is the best time to leave. The dead equity might be an issue for fundraising, but worst case they can buy me out maybe?

Has anyone been in a similar situation? Any possible advice you can share to help me with this decision. It is five years of building something from scratch, I don’t want to make this decision without taking everything into consideration.

Hey everyone!

I'm exploring a startup idea in the solar energy space and would love some honest feedback before building anything.

The problem:

People and businesses with solar panels and batteries often rely on different apps to monitor their energy production, consumption, and storage.

For companies that maintain solar installations, this gets even more complicated. Technicians may need to monitor hundreds of installations across different manufacturers (Huawei, Fronius, SolarEdge, etc.).

Sometimes, a solar system starts underperforming without triggering an obvious error. The issue might go unnoticed until the customer complains or someone manually checks the system.

The idea:

A single platform that connects to existing solar inverters and battery systems and provides:

• One dashboard to monitor multiple installations, regardless of manufacturer.
• Automatic detection of unusual drops in solar production.
• Alerts when something might be wrong, before it becomes a bigger problem.
• Battery and energy consumption monitoring.
• Prioritized maintenance alerts so technicians know which installations need attention first.

The goal isn't to replace existing hardware or manufacturer apps, but to bring everything together and make maintenance more proactive.

I'd love your thoughts:

1. Does this sound like a real problem worth solving, or are existing solutions already good enough?
2. If you work in solar installation or maintenance, how do you currently monitor your systems?
3. Would companies actually pay for something like this?
4. What's the biggest flaw you see in this idea?

I'm still at the validation stage, so I'm particularly interested in criticism, not just encouragement.

Thanks!

Someone who at least claimed to be a millionaire on this sub said the way they did it and perhaps easy way to do it is to work in and industry, find the niche gaps, and then sell a solution to those gaps.

I work for a hyperscaler company. A colleague and I have identified a safety gap in the datacenter that we don’t see much discussion about in the industry but appears that it the gap will only get worse with the AI buildout. We worked with a vendor using company money to develop a bandaid solution for one particular datacenter.

The thought crossed our minds that why don’t we set up and moonlight an LLC to create a new and improved product with a different vendor and start selling this safety solution to the broader industry. Surely we will have used some qualitative learnings from the work with the previous vendor - learnings that would lead to a new and better idea than the bandaid solution we came up with - but we wouldn’t use any direct IP developed with the vendor during our time at the company.

I ran this notion through 2 AI chat bots and both destroyed me, citing legal concerns, conflict of interest etc. They said that even though we wouldn’t use direct IP, because the idea came to us during the normal course of business with our company, and it “relates to the employer’s current business” that our company has the rights to the new product idea we would come up with. Further, they cited concerns about “duty to employer” as we would potentially be selling this product to our own hyperscaler when we have a duty to make the product internally and therefore the company benefit without us taking a cut. Amongst a few other points, NDAs, trade secrets, confidential information - even if all moonlighting activity is performed after work and on weekends.

But this got me to beg the question. How does anyone moonlight and then (or) leave industry to start a business selling a solution to a gap they found while in industry if they would have discovered and potentially worked on solutions to the gap while employed. The AI chat bots made it seem like their old employers would all have a right to that IP. Are the chat bots right but over stating the likelihood that an old employer would actually care and sue?

Hey, I received an email from someone at Google, and I'm looking at the email. It's definitely someone from Google. The email address says its google, and the title is Apps, Games, New Business, and Growth Strategy (also LinkedIn looks really good). This person's email says that they're part of an accelerator program at Google, helping with paid growth.

A little about me: I have an app. It's a consumer app. It's not too big, to be honest, but we're definitely at a point in which we can scale. They were saying that they would give a product specialist, an account management team, and other resources, however the ad spend/budget is on us

Has anyone heard of this? Is this worth doing? it seems too good to be true

I’ve spent the last few months building a website for beatmakers to upload their music, create profiles and get discovered through a leaderboard.
I’ve put a lot of time into it. Probably too much, honestly. I’ve spent hours fixing little things, improving the music player, working on the design and adding features.
And now that the site is live, I’ve run into a problem I wasn’t really prepared for.
There just aren’t many people using it.
I’ve been contacting producers on SoundCloud and trying to spread the word, but getting someone to visit the site is one thing. Convincing them to actually upload a beat is another.
I think the biggest problem is that nobody really wants to post their music somewhere that doesn’t already have an audience. But without people uploading, it’s pretty hard to build that audience in the first place.
And I keep going back to working on the site because, well, that’s the part I know how to do.
I’m starting to realize I probably should’ve spent more time finding users before building so much.
Has anyone here built something that depends on users creating content?
How did you get past that initial stage where everything works, but the platform still feels empty?
I’d genuinely like to hear what worked for you, especially if you started with basically no audience.

Deciding between two marketplace ideas. Which would you pursue, and why?

1. Activities & Experiences Marketplace for corporates and social clubs

A platform listing bookable activities like pottery, cooking classes, workshops, sports and wellness experiences.

While several companies already offer these, they're generally consumer-focused marketplaces that also serve corporate clients, rather than platforms tailored to companies, clubs, social clubs and communities looking for team activities, group experiences and interesting third spaces.

Revenue would come from booking commissions, with potential for repeat bookings from companies and groups.

2. F&B Space Marketplace

A platform where food entrepreneurs can discover and book mall kiosks, retail space, food-market stalls, pop-up spaces, food-truck pitches and shared commercial kitchens.

I haven't found a platform covering these categories in one place with straightforward online booking. Existing options seem fragmented, and many listings require enquiries or booking requests rather than allowing users to book directly.

Revenue would come from commissions on bookings, with potential for repeat bookings and multi-date packages.

My concern is whether the lack of a direct competitor signals an untapped opportunity or simply a market that doesn't work well as an online marketplace. Perhaps these spaces are usually arranged offline because every location has different terms, licensing requirements and operational considerations.

Which would you pursue? I'm interested in actual demand, supplier willingness to participate, repeat revenue, ease of acquiring customers, and profitability. What are the biggest blind spots or reasons either model might fail? I'd appreciate candid opinions, especially from people with relevant industry or marketplace experience.

I’m considering returning to an early-stage startup where I previously worked as an engineer. The company has been bringing in new pilots and pursuing contracts, but it’s also preparing to raise its next round.
I asked the founder how much runway the company has before the raise, given the new pilots and contracts. He responded that he couldn’t discuss it because it was proprietary, then said they were raising soon.
I’ve spoken with founders at other startups who were comfortable sharing approximate runway, so I was surprised by the response.
I understand that exact financials can be confidential. I’m not necessarily expecting access to the company’s books, but I’d like to understand the company’s financial position and fundraising timeline before making a career decision.
For founders and people who’ve joined early-stage startups:
Is it normal to consider approximate runway proprietary, even when speaking with a prospective employee?
Would you expect a founder to share a rough estimate or at least explain the fundraising status?
What questions would you ask to assess the risk of joining before a raise closes?
I’m interested in understanding what’s normal in the startup ecosystem, rather than assuming the response necessarily means something is wrong.

Long ass rant:

Man I have been searching for a design partner so long and literally nothing. The problem is real, people validate it. The solution is good it saves a lot of money. Still nobody fucking agrees to be a design partner. No one I am not even stealing data or anything and way cheaper than building in-house as well. And the thing is I am frustrated of fuvking human beings man the fvk man. Agents ain’t that good as well and fvking fable man it destroys me in so high level English that I don’t even understand why is it criticising me man. Fvk fvk fvk fvkf vk fvkf

We’re two founders in Stockholm building a CRM. A few weeks ago we changed our pricing and stopped charging per seat. I’m still not sure if that was smart or naive, so I’d like to hear from people who’ve priced it either way.

What pushed us was one customer. He’s a co-founder at a small consultancy and he almost never opens our app. He updates everything through his AI assistant over MCP: it drafts the updates and he approves them. About 92% of the updates in his account are written by the AI.

When we first pitched him our pricing (which was per seat), he was disappointed. He said seat-based pricing is old news and that in the AI era you should charge for outcomes.

He got me thinking about what a seat actually is. It’s a price on how many humans you have. Might get redundant now when AI takes over more of the work?

The thing is, almost every other CRM still charges per seat, and I’m pretty sure we’d make more money if we did too.

We did it anyway. Now there’s a small base fee for the whole workspace, plus usage: we charge per company you have an open deal with, which is the only real way for a CRM i think. Happy to take ideas here as well.

What I like about it:

• Nobody pays for logins they don’t use, and nobody has to do admin moving licenses around when someone leaves or barely uses the tool - should mean less churn or downgrades.
• We only make more money when customers get more out of the product. It feels more honest, and like a truer product/market fit.

What worries me:

• Revenue is harder to forecast, and billing is a bit of a nightmare with bills changing every month in Stripe
• We probably make less money than we would on seats
• Buyers and investors understand seats instantly. Usage takes a while to explain

If you’ve priced a B2B product recently, did you go with seats, usage or hybrid, and would you pick the same again?

And if you’re the one buying, do you actually want usage pricing, or do you prefer a predictable bill?

I'm starting to do outreach to small businesses and potential customers to validate my start-up idea. Some subject lines are is getting responses and one works about 30% of the time but about half of respondents from that subject line are less than thrilled.

I am curious what y'all are using to get more people to respond to you and how positive those responses are? I realize some of these are likely to be specific to your start up but hearing about how you are approaching things is a great way for all of us to get better!

Hi, I’m Ahsan from the UK.

I build software. I have SaaS products live and I’m running Google Ads, but marketing is clearly my weak spot.

For those of you who brought in a marketing partner or co-founder:

• Where did you find them?
• Did you start with a trial period, revenue share, or equity straight away?
• What made it work, or not?

Any advice welcome.

I launched my app about 11 months ago and have done everything myself: building it, the tech, design, social media, and marketing. I didn’t start with a huge vision, but I’ve always had a clear sense of how I want the product to look and feel, and what the content should be.

About a while ago I met my now cofounder at a community event. She has a law background, a little entrepreneurship experience, and no tech or marketing experience, but she’s great at talking to people and getting things done, so I gave it a shot. When we started, I was clear about what I own (marketing and social included) and what her role would be. She handles things like outreach, logistics and basically all networking.

The problem is she keeps getting involved in marketing. She gives feedback, says “it’s your call,” but words it so that her way is clearly the right way, and pushes back on each post and wants to put input on each post. She also has very high urgency, where everything feels like it needs to happen right now. It’s gotten to the point where I dread working on something I used to love.

A recent example: we did an event, she volunteered to take all the photos, and I put together a photo dump. She pushed on photo order, which people were featured, adding music, and eventually said she wants to be in the posts because she feels “invisible” and her effort isn’t seen. Since she was behind the camera, the only photos of her were a few posed ones that didn’t fit the post in my opinion. I also never envisioned for my business to showcase the founders, it's mainly community driven and I prefer that no one really knows whose behind it.

The thing is:

• Neither of us is named or featured on the brand account. I deliberately keep it faceless and focused on the community and product. I genuinely think brands are stronger when the founders aren’t the face (unless they are creating personal social media content).
• She lists herself as cofounder on her personal profile and signs every email as cofounder.
• I’ve offered her ways to be more visible on the brand (sit-down videos to go with the writing she does, being part of video ideas), and she’s said she’s not comfortable yet.
• She’s also brought up wanting “IP,” and I’m honestly not sure what she means.

To be fair to her, some of her feedback has merit (showing real users sells the product), and she does say “your call” a lot. But it’s constant, it slows everything down, and I don’t understand what she actually wants.

How would you handle this? Is this a fixable role clarity issue, or a sign the partnership isn’t a fit? And for those who’ve brought on a cofounder after launch, how did you handle ownership and equity?

I used to be in the camp that posting a bunch of half baked junk online was the wrong move. I'd think to myself, "What if someone sees it and shits all over it"?

Realistically though, nobody fucking cares. Nobody will even see your work, or click the login, or get far enough to realize that you've published a pile of dogshit.

And if they do, that's great! That's awesome feedback actually! Because it means that you've found something that people hate so much that they can list out their grievances with your AI dogshit SaaS app. And then you can improve.

But if you stay put, and don't ship anything until it's perfect, nobody will see that either. And that's just as bad! Shipping a bunch of what you think is still slop will give you 3 things:

1. Frequent at-bats. An idiot in motion makes more progress than a genius at rest. And even if nobody sees it, that's fine! No feedback is a form of feedback.
2. Get you out of a rut and into a habit of shipping. It's so much easier when you have momentum.
3. If you're introspective enough, and see your pile of AI garbage, you'll say "wow, this was ass!" And hopefully you'll adjust. Taste is a muscle you grow by building and publishing.

Whatever you are working on is probably slop anyway! So please just ship your slop.

I have read so many inspiring posts from all of you and I cannot stress how much I commend you all for having the balls to follow your dreams and launch something that you put so much time and effort into, without knowing how it will turn out. The success stories inspire me the most.

I have worked tirelessly (literally) on my niche aggregator that solves a real cultural problem, yet I cannot stop thinking of everything that can go wrong or like I will be the laughing stock of well......myself since I barely told anyone about it.

Any tips to help get me through the vomit fest that is week 1.

When I started, "a lesson on any topic, built just for you" sounded like a product. Now a competitor with a $16M round lets you generate courses for free, and every chat assistant will teach you anything if you ask.

So I've stopped leading with that. What's left is the part they don't do: the product picks what you learn next, so you don't need to know what to ask, and the lessons are hands-on, with simulations you can play with instead of walls of text.

I'm not sure that's enough. "You don't have to ask" can sound like a weakness to people who know exactly what they want.

If your main feature became free somewhere else, what did you end up positioning on?

When you first started selling your product, how did you figure out what worked and turn it into a repeatable process?

What were your biggest challenges? And how did you eventually build a system that someone else, like an SDR or AE, could follow?

Did you document everything yourself, hire someone experienced in sales, or bring in a GTM engineer/operator to help build the system?

Would love to hear how you approached this, especially in the early stages.

Hi guys correct me if Im wrong - ive researched that a startup building is done this way

1. User acquisition - People to find and sign up for your product

2. User activation - Them to actually use it and see the value the first time

3. User retention - keeping them coming back instead of leaving

4. User revenue - turning them into paying customers

5. User referral - Them telling others about it [optional]

(I may be wrong about this list)

So in this context whats the biggest hurdle for you right now?

P.S. im particularly interested in saas startups

Ran the numbers on my creative tests from this year last weekend. 214 variations tested, 11 winners. The thing that stuck with me wasn't the 5% hit rate. It was how many of the 203 losers never had a chance, and not because they were bad. The tests were too small to prove anything either way.

Reframe for this post: creative testing is a math problem first and a creative problem second. Here's how I size tests now.

1. Set the kill rule before you launch. Mine is 2.5x target CPA per creative. Target CPA of $40 means each creative gets $100 before I judge it. Five creatives need a $500 test budget. If you've only got $150, you test one or two creatives, not five. Every extra creative crammed into an underfunded test is one you'll end up killing on vibes.

2. One variable per test. New hook, same body, same offer, same landing page. I once tested a new hook plus a new offer plus a new landing page all at once. It won. I had no idea why. Three weeks to unpick it. Boring single-variable tests are the only ones that teach you anything.

3. Read nothing before $75-100 per creative or 3 full days, whichever comes later. Day 1 numbers are mostly noise. I've watched creatives look dead on day 1 and become the account's best seller by day 4. The number of winners killed on day 2 by impatient buyers is honestly depressing.

4. Judge on the deepest event with real volume. Purchases first. Add-to-carts if purchases are thin. Never CTR alone. A 5% CTR with zero add-to-carts means the algorithm found professional clickers, not buyers. My order: cost per purchase, then cost per add-to-cart, then cost per landing page view. CTR is a diagnostic, not a verdict.

5. Kill fast after the threshold, and replace immediately. Past 2.5x CPA with nothing to show, it's dead, no funeral. The part people skip: a testing ad set should always hold 3-5 live creatives. Winners fatigue, usually in 2-4 weeks on broad audiences. If you don't feed new tests in constantly, your account fills up with dying winners and you wonder why performance decays every month.

6. Keep the lab separate from the retirement home. Testing happens in a testing campaign. Winners graduate to the scaling campaign. Never test inside the ad set that's carrying your revenue, because every failed test drags its average down and you'll start killing good tests to protect the number.

Rule of thumb: test budget divided by target CPA. If the answer is under 10, you're not testing, you're gambling. Raise the budget or cut creatives until the math works.

I want to know if you check your COD orders remittence and is there any way I can match the payments with my payment gateway orders. Currently I have all the orders on razorpay but the remittence reports are from the courier services, so have to separately check the prepaid and COD orders.

Which gateway + courier service do you use and how do you check your COD payouts ? have you ever found a short payment by any courier service ?
Also I heard shiprocket lets you have the reports automated to some email ?

Hi, Seeking some advice here from people who have already built similar initiatives....

As the title suggests, and perhaps this is a little niche type of initiative, for context, I'm trying to build a community of enthusiasts around the theme of mindfulness in tech/ai products, business models (micro), and larger economic setup (macro). It is based on the the concept of Sustained Growth and Digital Wellbeing, and an opportunity to grow the community of like-minded people (especially in Corporate, Startups, Wellness Domain and Academia) to organise conferences, talks, events, (physical and otherwise), content channels, merchs (meh!). [which will in turn be the revenue sources]

Right now, I want to ask for your (human) inputs (Al always seemingly gives false positives), and if this is something that you'd consider interesting?

Bit about me, My background has been in Technology Adoption and Digitalization, with a strong focus on creative narrative strategies. Over the past few months, I find myself frustrated with the whole polarized discussion of Al Use-it-or-loose-it FOMO .... OR.... AI being a catastrophy..... And that made me want to build such a community. Ofc, it may not be a new idea (and thankfully so!), but that's the entire point.

as the title says, i closed my first b2b pilot today after my first ever demo and i'm very hyped. is this good signal and what should i focus on now on the pilot period?

i've only been cold calling like 20 leads i scraped, not actually even that targeted leads and i got 3 demos booked. what other channels should i try for outreach?

also, feel free to give me tips how to move forward with my b2b saas! :)

context: it's a niche SaaS for service businesses

EDIT: the pilot i offer is 1 month, forgot to mention

I’m creating an app with two of my friends and I’ve been tasked with the marketing. I am a paid media manager for a large sports brand, so I do have a background in marketing. However, I have only ever worked for established brands and never started something from the ground up. My work also revolves around ad spend and using assets created by other teams.

I have all the socials set up but I’m hitting a wall on content. I’ve tried carousels, vlogs, and just speaking to the camera and nothing is landing. I’ve watched so many videos on how to create content, but I feel like everything is over edited and I’m not confident it would land. I also can’t do any photography since it’s a digital product.

I would love any advice or suggestions. Thank you!