We've shipped 15+ apps and run ads for them on Meta, TikTok, Google and Apple. For a long time we judged campaigns in the ad dashboards, and it never quite matched the money that came in. So this autumn we went back through two years of our own data, week by week, and made a keep-or-stop call on each week of spend using only what we knew two weeks in. Then we checked what that spend actually paid back.

The weeks we flagged made back 55 cents for every dollar within 90 days. The rest made back $1.51. That was 27 weeks flagged against 36 kept, and the flagged weeks old enough to check at a year still hadn't paid back.

The number that told them apart was new paying customers above the app's normal level, valued at what they actually paid, with each week compared to how earlier weeks looked at the same age. Two weeks in, that comparison already showed which weeks were going nowhere.

You can try it on your own numbers in a spreadsheet. Find your normal level of new paying customers from weeks with no ads. For each week of spend, count the customers above that level, and track what that week's new customers pay by day 14, 30 and 90 next to earlier weeks at the same age.

If you buy ads, how do you decide a week of spend was a mistake? A fixed rule, or gut feel?

I'm currently in the early idea validation stage of a startup, and I'm struggling to figure out what my next step should be.

The idea is to build a platform that collects real-world audio and video data through contributors using wearable devices (such as smart glasses). The goal is to provide useful datasets for robotics, embodied AI, and multimodal AI researchers.

I already have a basic platform and 150+ registered contributors, but I haven't validated whether researchers actually need this type of data or would be willing to pay for it.

Here's where I'm stuck:

• Cold outreach: I've emailed professors and researchers whose papers are relevant to the idea, but haven't received any responses so far.

• Conferences: I looked into robotics and AI conferences to meet researchers in person, but many cost $1,000+, which feels like a lot to spend before validating the idea.

• Customer discovery: I want to talk to people who actually work with these datasets, but I'm having trouble finding a way to reach them.

I'm trying to avoid the mistake of building something nobody needs, so I'd rather validate the problem before investing more time and money into the platform.

For those who've built B2B startups targeting researchers, technical teams, or other hard-to-reach customers:

1. How did you get your first conversations with potential customers when cold emails weren't working?

2. Are expensive conferences worth attending at this stage, or are there better alternatives?

3. Would you recommend creating a small sample dataset or prototype first, even before confirming demand?

4. What would you prioritize if you were in my position?

I'm not looking to promote anything. I'm genuinely trying to figure out how to validate demand without spending thousands of dollars or months building the wrong thing.

I'd really appreciate hearing what worked for you, what didn't, and what you wish you'd done differently.

We are past the point where having AI as the starting point of your idea is enough to build a new business sufficient to exit. Some of that might have been possible, but not any more. Instead, you need to have other differentiation(s) which AI can augment or accelerate.

This is only my opinion. Feel free to show how I’m wrong.

How do founders who start deep tech companies or hardware companies figure out if their ideas are plausible? And how do they get funding if their ideas are somewhat plausible? Is a startup pretty much just getting a group of people together to dedicate all of their time to see if building something is actually possible? I'm 19, and I want to start a deep tech company one day too, but I always wondered how deep tech founders get the knowledge that their products are plausible and marketable.

I've recently gotten an offer from a series B startup (500k "TC", as claimed by the recruiter) but the compensation is (simplified numbers) 300k cash and 200k ISOs/year. These ISOs are based on the value of the share in the most recent valuation. However, based off the strike price it costs 75k/year to exercise the option and purchase the 200k ISOs/year. So unless I'm misunderstanding something here, the effective TC is not 500k. The recruiter specifically used the word "total compensation" and just added the ISOs total value based on (share price * share count) + cash. It seems like a more accurate (although simplified) total compensation would be more like 500k-75k=425k TC due to having to spend cash to actually purchase the shares.

Is this normal or was the recruiter attempting to mislead me as a negotiation tactic (basically by saying "if we can get to this 500k total TC will you agree to sign?") and make me think I'm signing something different than I verbally agreed to?

So looking to build my first startup here.

How do you know how to price your product?

Let’s say you calculate all of your non-negotiable costs, how do you then calculate how much to charge customers/clients?

Does it depend on the type of product you’re offering? In my case, it will be a digital product/solution rather than a physical product.

I’m 38 years old and have moderate experience as part of the leadership teams over several companies. I still however, struggle with imposter syndrome when it comes to launching my own projects. This has been responsible for several completed mvps being abandoned throughout the years. This in turn has fueled my imposter syndrome and created higher levels of doubt within my own circles and creates a nasty cycle. I’m determined to see my current project through to the end (whatever that may be). For anyone else who has experienced/is experiencing this, how do you deal?

genuine question. built a couple things with lovable/claude code/cursor and only later realized i had no idea if i'd left keys in the code or if anyone could just hit my api routes and pull other users' data

curious what people here actually do before going live:

- do you check anything at all or just ship and hope lol

- if you paid someone to build it for you, did you ask them about it

- anyone ever got burned? like leaked keys, surprise bills, data exposed

not selling anything, we're doing a hackathon this weekend and trying to figure out if this is a real problem or just us being paranoid

I'm a startup cfo and having worked with good and bad startups, my observation is that you only need one thing to convince a VC to invest in your company: proven demand or a proven team.

Your job is to give VCs evidence that you have a high probability of making them a lot of money. You achieve this by showing that:

1. you are able to generate demand for your product and you can replicate it at scale

2. you are in a market where there is growing appetite for products like yours

3. you’ve built something successful before (either at a previous company, or as a project)

4. you’ve sold a company before

Take these examples:

• Uber, 2011: They ran an initial pilot in San Francisco, generated revenue and proved their ability to acquire repeat riders. This suggested the same playbook would work in any city. (generated demand + can be replicated at scale)

• Airbnb, 2009: They showed demand for spare rooms already existed on Craigslist and Couchsurfing. These type of bookings were particularly popular during big events when hotels sold out. (growing appetite for a dedicated marketplace)

• Beehiiv, 2021: The founders had built the growth engine behind Morning Brew (sold to Business Insider for $75M). With Beehiiv, they offered that same growth engine to other newsletter operators. (they had build something successful and could easily do it again)

• Affirm, 2014: Max Levchin co-founded PayPal (sold to eBay) and Slide (sold to Google). When he returned to fintech with Affirm, investors were backing a founder who had already proved he could win in the same market. (proven ability of scaling and selling companies)

VC money is more competitive than ever before, so you must make the outcome as credible as possible.

Ask yourself:

1. what’s my strongest proof: demand for what I’m building, or a fantastic team?

2. why now? (what makes this possible or urgent today)

3. why you can win (what is your edge? ideally something that cannot be easily copied)

Hey startups,

Looking for some blunt operational advice from founders who have been through the pre-seed fundraising phase.

I’ve built our MVP, locked down the pitch deck and am running disciplined daily outbound to target investors and incubators/accelerators. Because that part of the process only takes a couple of hours a day, I've hit that classic pre-seed bottleneck. I have a lot of empty time on my hands.

I’m a firm believer that the faster you fail, the faster you succeed, clearing out bad assumptions quickly is part of the loop. Because of that, I don't want to over-build or waste weeks writing code for features that might change once capital actually hits. But sitting around refreshing an inbox or only working two hours a day feels unproductive.

For those of you who were in this exact spot, product ready, waiting on investor responses, bootstrapping what you can, what did you fill your downtime with? Are there high-leverage tasks you focused on to keep momentum going without over-building, or do you just find other work to stay sane?

Appreciate any reality checks or frameworks you used to survive this phase.

Throwaway for obvious reasons.

I'm looking for some perspective from people who’ve been through something like this. I’m one of the co-founders of a seed stage company with low 7 figure ARR, and I’ve made the call to step away. My co-founder and I just don’t see eye to eye anymore on where things should go and have had a lot of conflict recently.

Now that I’m leaving, both my co-founder and the investors want me to give back (without compensation) a pretty big portion of my equity, and not just the unvested part but shares I’ve already vested. I understand the concern about a departing founder holding a big stake, but I can’t tell if what they’re asking for is standard or if I’m getting pushed around.

Has anyone dealt with this, either as the founder leaving or on the investor side? What’s typical, and what would you push back on?

EDIT: Should’ve mentioned this up front. I already had my own lawyer go through all the documents, and there’s nothing that gives the company any right to take back vested shares. What I keep reading about, and what the investors are claiming, though, is “dead equity” scaring off future investors. Is that a real concern or mostly a negotiating line? At what point does a departed founder’s stake actually become a problem for the next round?

We're a US company with the whole team (15 people) in the States so far, and we're about to hire our first person in London to look after UK customers, as a few of our bigger accounts are over there now.

Opening a UK entity for one hire doesn't feel right yet, so the plan is to go through an EOR like Deel or Workmotion and revisit once there's a small team in London.

Can't figure out how to tell them apart for a UK hire specifically, with pricing pages that look close and each of them saying they handle UK employment in house.

So if you've hired in the UK from the US, what did you check before picking one, and is there anything you'd do differently with that first hire?

I’m thinking about how product market fit involves understanding the customer’s problems deeply, and that sounds like what consultant are experts in. If the product is shaped by the customer’s problems, then why aren’t consultants always better at being entrepreneurs?

I know it’s common for consultants to start their own companies. I wonder why I should even bother trying to map out customer problems if there’s always someone more experienced than me (not necessarily a consultant) who has mapped it out.

In a successful healthcare startup, I heard the founders only interviewed 10 dermatologists to map out their workflow issues. This seems like an absurdly small amount, and maybe they did work with more people but didn’t say. Compared to consultants who talk to hundreds of people. Maybe the true advantage is just how many people they talk to, and not their specific way of thinking.

And sales people, another common job I’ve heard exposes you to problems, also say that being a bit of a consultant is key to being a good sales person.

I’m considering working as either a consultant or a salesperson just to get the experience of seeing product market fit, but I feel this contradicts with the phenomena of young founders.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I started working on a SaaS targeted at people looking to move abroad for work, studies, or general immigration.

How it works: It assesses a user's profile against various pathways and lists up to 4 countries they are the best fit for. It acts as a self-assessment tool so people can figure out their standing before dropping thousands on immigration agents or application fees.

The Monetization: The initial match is free, but users can pay $3.99 for a detailed breakdown. The paid report includes actionable improvement suggestions, a gap analysis, and red flags to watch out for before applying.

The Situation: I stepped away from the project about two months ago. While I was gone, organic traffic kept rolling in. I hit about 100 active users, but absolutely none of them converted to the $3.99 paid report. Reasons could be either the free preview is too generious or users didn't find it valuable enough.

My Dilemma: Seeing the organic traffic makes me want to jump back in, but the 0% conversion rate is making me hesitate. I’m starting to worry the product feels too generic or will just be dismissed as a thin "AI wrapper."

Should I continue building and try to fix the conversion rate, or should I just abandon it and move on to the next idea? Would love some brutal honesty.

Very early startup (commercial cleaning). Called a bunch of local cleaning companies to validate the idea to see if they’d be willing to subcontract for office cleaning, etc. I’m decent at sales and management so I thought this would be a great entry point into the market. Generate leads under my banner and manage contracts/contractors to fulfill the work while handling relationships (similar to what I already do for work). But I’ve been told, this is what they already do themselves essentially. My start up capital is low, so I want to use the skills I already have to make something.

A few offered to contract salesman me, and they would pay reoccurring percentages for referrals.
But I want something my own.

During these calls I had a pivot thought of “if I have to generate customers anyways, it doesn’t just need to be for cleaning companies. This could be way more scalable”

Their business model obviously works and they’re proof of that. I just wonder if this business model doesn’t fit with my skill set? I don’t know how to market great. But I can build trust, show value, and stick to something through the failures until it lands.

Say you’re raising $500k. You find a VC who invests in your sector, and a friend offers to introduce you. Then you look at the fund’s website. Their smallest check is $5M.

I’d save that intro for later.

When building an investor list, I focus on 4 filters:

1. GEOGRAPHY. Does the fund invest in companies based in your country? Some funds even specialize by region (e.g. Midwest) but I'd say country is a good enough filter.

2. SECTORS/VERTICALS. What do they actually fund? Say you sell software to clinics. A fund that invests in healthcare might spend all its money on drug development. That’s a different business.

3. STAGE. You can use rounds for Series A, Series B, etc. But at pre-seed and seed, it's very blurry. Instead, I prefer "Idea stage", "MVP/Early users" and "Early revenue".

4. CHCK SIZE. How much do they usually put in on the first check? If their minimum is bigger than your whole round, cross them off.

But also: don’t over-filter.

Some founders spend too much time filtering VCs by AUM, "dry powder", or who the LPs are. That data is often incomplete or just wrong, so you end up with a worse list AND you waste time doing it.

The 4 filters are good enough.

Once an investor clears them, add them to your shortlist and keep moving.

Hey Folks,

I’m starting a remote water softener business that requires me to buy and store equipment shipped on a pallet, once a month.

I am fully remote from the market I operate in. So I cannot regularly travel to this city.

I’m looking for any creative idea on how I can establish boots on the ground that can regularly receive and store the shipments on my behalf.

I have already tried calling a few self-storage business and no one offers to option to receive and sign on my behalf.

One idea I’m exploring: renting a storage unit and hiring someone on task rabbit to be present during deliveries.

Any and all ideas are welcome.

Thanks.

I made an ai receptionist and after hours dispatch for hvac companies, i want a pilot and people to test it . I have the lists from apify just can’t make myself call them been stalling for over 2 months. The fear of idk what .

I usually take meetings very easily , in person or google meets etc . Cold calling people to get reviews and a pilot is sooooooo hard for no reason.

Appreciate any help on how to tackle this

I'm doing research on lending to AI startups. The thing I'm trying to understand is the timing between paying for compute and getting paid by customers.

Your GPU or API bill is due every month but enterprise customers can take 60 or 90 days to pay. Has that ever caused an actual cash problem for you? How did you cover it, whether that was raising, venture debt, a bank line, credits, or getting customers to prepay? Did you ever look at financing your invoices?

Not selling anything. Just want to hear how people actually deal with it.

Edit: let just say net30, I am not in enterprise sales…

Edit: if you are charging upfront for usage on net30 there still is a working capital gap right? Or is it possible to net0?

Does anyone have any book recommendations for entrepreneurship or startup? I’m joining a startup as a PM and I’d love to better understand business and see how I can bring ideas to help further the company beyond just my role.

Does anyone have any book recommendations for entrepreneurship or startup? I’m joining a startup as a PM and I’d love to better understand business and see how I can bring ideas to help further the company beyond just my role.

I'm evaluating two marketplace business ideas and would appreciate some objective opinions on which has better commercial potential, profitability and long-term growth prospects.

Idea 1: Food Pop-up & Retail Marketplace

A platform connecting independent food businesses with places to sell.

Supply side:

• Home-based food businesses (cakes, cookies, baked goods)

• Food trucks, coffee carts and independent F&B brands

• Automated vending machine operators

Demand side:

• Event organisers (food festivals, bazaars, markets)

• Malls and shopping centres

• Offices, coworking spaces and residential communities

The platform helps food entrepreneurs discover and book temporary or recurring trading locations, from one-day events to semi-permanent pop-ups and vending placements.

Revenue: Booking commissions, with potential future expansion into food truck, cart and vending equipment sales.

Acquisition: Partner with event organisers and property operators to list available spaces, then reach out directly to food entrepreneurs.

Idea 2: Life & Career Transition Marketplace

A platform connecting people navigating major life transitions with individuals and professionals who have relevant experience or expertise.

Topics include:

• Studying and working abroad

• Career changes and finding the right career

• International relocation and immigration

• Starting a business overseas

• Digital nomad lifestyles and opportunities

Services include one-on-one consultations, paid messaging, expert Q&As, ebooks, guides, webinars, workshops and eventually events or retreats.

Supply comes from people who have successfully navigated these transitions, alongside relevant professionals, agencies and specialists.

Revenue: Booking commissions, digital products and potentially sponsorships or brand partnerships.

Acquisition: Affiliate partnerships with relevant communities, groups, organisations and content platforms.

Which would you pursue, and why?

I'm particularly interested in:

1. Which has stronger market demand and willingness to pay?

2. Which would be easier to acquire the first 10–20 paying customers for?

3. Which has better repeat-purchase and recurring revenue potential?

4. Which has stronger defensibility and network effects?

5. Which is easier to operate and scale as a solo founder?

6. Which has greater long-term growth potential?

7. What are the biggest risks or blind spots?

I'm less interested in theoretical market size and more interested in which has the best chance of becoming a genuinely profitable, sustainable business.

Are Millennials the building too much in their mid and late twenties without any direction and understanding of the code and other necessary skills needed to build a product. I think most of the builds that are happening today are Millennials riding on the AI wave and building products - looking as a side quest with their jobs and Academic pursuit , While newer generations do understand and have the capacity of friends circles who are well versed enough to discuss together and help each other Millennials are solo building and aiming to make an impact by themselves.

Locking in , Spending hours outside their comfort zones and rolling down the product they seem worthy which can make a difference or just trying out something new now that's coding can be done with a $20 paid plan and so on.

There's nothing wrong but this has definitely increased surge on the apps and websites being built each day on increasing level and anyone with a laptop , internet connection and a small understanding of how to navigate and put the pieces together on top of Youtube gurus with the thumbnails how it's easy to earn X amount of money daily from it.

Is the Startup space getting crowded or it's good that more and more are riding this wave and want to do something meaningful with their time and build a product which can actually help the world if of course if it's viable and helpful.

What are your thoughts on it and what should be something that's something needs to understand before building anything and entering the building space.

I've been trying to raise for a foundation model focused on commercial real estate investment analysis for a few months. I come from a Wall St. and university AI research background doing exactly what I'm raising for. I also have a team of very experienced PhD's that will be handling the technical build. We have an illustrative prototype and a lot of experience building more traditional ML/DL models (even some foundation models for other domains), but don't have a working version of the foundation model for our use case (it's going to require a decent amount of resources even for an early prototype of this). However..... I've been hearing a lot of "you're too early" responses from VC's, even early-stage. I know some of these could be gentle brush-offs, but some I know well and I believe they're being straight with me. I've raised money for more traditional investment vehicles, but not VC/tech/startup. So my question is: For something like this that is more resource intensive than the automated workflow type of startup, how do you raise funds to bridge that gap between the idea and the working prototype when it requires substantial investment for a startup (think $5M - $10M)? And how do you pitch something like this to a VC?