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One thing I've learned from building platforms with large content libraries: The challenge usually isn't storing the data. It's helping users find the right thing in under 30 seconds. Most founders think about features first: Uploads Dashboards User accounts Analytics But once you have thousands (or millions) of assets, users stop caring about features and start caring about discovery. A few things we've seen repeatedly: Search quality matters more than adding another f...

Hey everyone, looking for some realistic advice on a co-founder crisis. My friend and I started a social media agency/production startup. We scaled up to 7 clients, but recently dropped down to just 1. I know we can rebuild, but my partner is completely slacking and our execution styles are totally mismatched. Here is the situation: Survival vs. Hobby: My family isn't rich. I have university tuition and bills to pay, so this business is my actual livelihood. He comes from a wealthy bac...

for anyone who's gone through SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA etc recently - how much of this can you actually do yourself with AI now? feels like it can handle a lot of the policy stuff, control mapping, basic Q&A. but curious where people still found it worth paying for a proper platform or consultant (scytale, drata, vanta etc) if you diy'd it what caught you off guard? if you used a vendor what actually made it worth it? [link] &#3...

Built a journaling app inside Telegram. 3 months in, trial users are active, but zero paid conversions. Where should I be looking? I failed at journaling for years because of one thing: I had to go open an app. That single friction point killed the habit every time. My fix was Memoria, a journal that lives inside Telegram. You send voice notes to a bot (@journaldoc_bot), it transcribes them, and they become entries in a private web journal at memoriajournal.me. Photos and video work too. The...

I keep seeing people talk about “building in public.” But I think the more interesting idea is: Don’t build in public. Build with the public. “In public” often means broadcasting. You post updates. You share numbers. You announce launches. You tell people what you’re doing. That can be useful, but it is still mostly one-way. “With the public” means something different. It means your users, followers, waitlist, and early supporters are not just watching you build. They becom...

Built a journaling app inside Telegram. 3 months in, trial users are active, but zero paid conversions. Where should I be looking? I failed at journaling for years because of one thing: I had to go open an app. That single friction point killed the habit every time. My fix was Memoria, a journal that lives inside Telegram. You send voice notes to a bot (@journaldoc_bot), it transcribes them, and they become entries in a private web journal at memoriajournal.me. Photos and video work too. The...

Hey everyone, looking for some realistic advice on a co-founder crisis. My friend and I started a social media agency/production startup. We scaled up to 7 clients, but recently dropped down to just 1. I know we can rebuild, but my partner is completely slacking and our execution styles are totally mismatched. Here is the situation: Survival vs. Hobby: My family isn't rich. I have university tuition and bills to pay, so this business is my actual livelihood. He comes from a wealthy bac...

I'm thinking of putting together a small group of 8-10 people who are actively working on projects, startups, products, content, research, or other ideas. We'd meet once or twice a week at a café, grab coffee, and spend a focused work session making progress on our own goals. Think of it as a "builders club": - Work on your own thing - Stay accountable - Exchange ideas when helpful - Meet ambitious people No formal structure. No presentations. No pressure. Location: Mountain ...

I am trying to pick between Fondo, Escalon, Pilot and some local India based CPAs who are more services heavy. Any pros or cons on how to evaluate this? We are a small 3 person pre-revenue startup in Bay Area. The Indian CPAs seem to be more personable but not sure they can do R&D tax credits well. Fondo seems right for our size but again they don’t have any marque clients. Pilot seems to charge for every single thing. [link] ...

I am trying to pick between Fondo, Escalon, Pilot and some local India based CPAs who are more services heavy. Any pros or cons on how to evaluate this? We are a small 3 person pre-revenue startup in Bay Area. The Indian CPAs seem to be more personable, cheaper but I am not sure they can do R&D tax credits well. Fondo seems right for our size but they don’t have any marque clients, everyone seems to move on and they are priced at par with Pilot. Pilot seems to charge for every single thing...

I created an IP Holding company that houses several core AI IP entities. This IP powers various derivative products that have revenue and traction across multiple verticals (total about $350k ARR so far) I initially wanted to raise for the products individually, but it seems the interest is all at the IP HoldCo level. This isn’t necessarily surprising, but I’m struggling with how to value this, how to properly structure, the best way to move forward, etc. I’m looking for someone who has be...

Did you notice that not so long ago, you could easily get attention for your startup just by posting a title like “How I built this using that” or “My journey building a startup,” and it would almost guarantee views and comments? Today, that kind of thing barely works anymore. Are people just tired of overly polished “success stories”? Or is it because the internet is now flooded with fake AI-written articles?

I'm new to running a business and I own a small food business (still early stage, not stable profit yet). I built the product, handle operations, inventory, and reinvest most of the earnings back into growth. A friend wants to join to help grow the business. His main role which I value would be acquiring consignment partners (placing the product in stores/canteens). He also mentioned he can provide marketing strategy and business advice, but I see that as secondary since I already have access ...

We have tried listing on NextDoor, local Reddit forums, Facebook, and Instagram. We created a Google business profile. We can’t list on Winnie.com or Care.com until we have the license (currently in process of completing requirements). We have sent info to friends and family with very little response. If anyone has suggestions, we would love to hear them. Thank you!

I'm new to running a business and I own a small food business (still early stage, not stable profit yet). I built the product, handle operations, inventory, and reinvest most of the earnings back into growth. A friend wants to join to help grow the business. His main role which I value would be acquiring consignment partners (placing the product in stores/canteens). He also mentioned he can provide marketing strategy and business advice, but I see that as secondary since I already have access ...

My background: Just graduated, unemployed, won a bunch of hackathons, built a hackathon platform that was used at hackathons including yc. I feel deeply unqualified for building this new idea Idea: My hackathon platform, I want to convert it to an accelerator. I would brand it as a 5 week hackathon. Bring your ideas, apply. Will choose maybe 50+ founders who will focus on building traction. The idea is to find founders before they're discovered; ones who aren't yet qualified for yc, techstars,...

I came across something recently that genuinely surprised me. For years (and even now), the common belief has been that successful SEO requires experienced strategists, content teams, technical SEOs, outreach specialists, and a lot of manual work. That's why I was pretty shocked to see an SEO automation startup win a Silver European Search Award. Not an AI writing tool. Not a keyword research tool. An actual platform that appears to automate most of the SEO process end-to-end. From what ...

Hey! I’ve made it to the “finals” at the local startup incubator with my startup idea. There are 6 finalists remaining. At the beginning there ware ~30 teams. I’m preparing the pitch for it now,.. If I get into top 3 - I could get some “seed” from local government and potential investors,… Constraints. 3 minutes long. Q&A afterwards. PDF slides only. No animations. I have a saas product that has gained some early users. Non of them are yet paying. Not that the world not - I just haven’...

Six months ago I launched a mobile app for learning foreign words. For months I was just improving the product. Adding features, fixing bugs, polishing the UI. But revenue almost did not move. The app was stuck at around $60 MRR. Then I changed only two things: onboarding and paywall. I made onboarding more personal, let users try the main flow before payment, added a 3-day trial, and changed how the paywall works. After that, trial conversion grew from 2.5% to 5%. And the app made $...

So I have an idea for a very dating app, the actual population of people is quite large but the interest is still seen as niche. Should I follow the “build it and they will come” philosophy? Given AI development I am sure I can drive the cost down for this app however I am wondering how much I would need to budget on marketing. Given that’s it’s B2C I know I need some marketing my question is just how much. [link] [co...

Hey everyone, I know the market is absolutely deafening with generic "AI wrappers" and hype-men promising to revolutionize businesses with AI. I’m a senior engineer based in India, I’ve been architecting and building AI. I'm currently looking into an AI-First Consulting & Implementation service targeted specifically at Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs) in Europe. My core thesis is that most SMBs know they need to adopt AI to stay competitive, but they have no idea ho...

I have an app that's about 80% ready, and from what I've read, that's actually the right time to start getting users in the door. I'm currently on TestFlight build 31 (yes, 31 lol) and it's working well enough to share. My plan is to use TikTok for organic traffic to drive early downloads. My question is whether I should point that traffic to TestFlight or go ahead and push to the App Store first. A few things shaping my thinking: TestFlight is easier for rapid iteration -- I'm still pus...

I'd love to learn about the testing/QA approach in startups these days considering the agentic coding and everything else. I'm not interested in the traditional approaches and blind test automation answers. I'm already deep into those and seen with multiple startups that they invested a lot in automation without much ROI and lots of maintenance cost/resources(even with AI) and their tests rarely find real critical bugs that internal manual testing or customer usage find. I'm more looking f...

I have an app that's about 80% ready, and from what I've read, that's actually the right time to start getting users in the door. I'm currently on TestFlight build 31 (yes, 31 lol) and it's working well enough to share. My plan is to use TikTok for organic traffic to drive early downloads. My question is whether I should point that traffic to TestFlight or go ahead and push to the App Store first. A few things shaping my thinking: TestFlight is easier for rapid iteration -- I'm still pus...

As the title suggests: I don’t have the budget but I Do have traction. I am a full time employee and new father - for the last year I’ve been building a mobile application and have started to get real tractions from users. Currently I am doing everything myself but desperately need help with repetitive tasks that AI cannot replicate in good quality (not expert quality just human quality and context) My biggest bottlenecks is time. Outside of the 9-5 I’m a Father and can only work on the bu...

It’s my first launch and I’m planning to go live on multiple channels at once (Product Hunt, HN, Twitter, here). I know it can be brutal and that many launches are required.. Anyone who’s done a launch before: what would you do differently? What actually moves the needle vs what’s a waste of time? Specifically curious about: - Channel priority (where to focus energy) - Timing - What to avoid Appreciate any war stories or hard-won lessons…

As the title suggests: I don’t have the budget but I Do have traction. I am a full time employee and new father - for the last year I’ve been building a mobile application and have started to get real tractions from users. Currently I am doing everything myself but desperately need help with repetitive tasks that AI cannot replicate in good quality (not expert quality just human quality and context) My biggest bottlenecks is time. Outside of the 9-5 I’m a Father and can only work on the...

Background: I'm a content creator. I've been posting on Instagram for a while and I was doing something embarrassing - manually copying my reel transcripts into a spreadsheet, pasting them into Claude, and asking it what went wrong. Every. Single. Reel. It worked. But it was taking me 45 minutes per video. I'm posting four times a week. The math was killing me. The specific frustration was this: Instagram Insights shows you a retention graph but it doesn't tell you why the drop happened. It d...

YC always says “talk to users” even before building anything. I agree. But I thought it’s “talk to users”, then find one of them to become a design partnership, build alongside them for 2 months, then contract and repeat. But I’m kind of thinking that talking to users before anything, is enough to build an actual solution to their problems, then you can jump straight to paid pilots instead of a 2 months long Deisgn partnership? Would appreciate your opinion on this submitted by &...

I’ve been advising the occasional startup for a few years, not in a full time capacity. Ranging from 2-3 meetings to "board seats" and on rare occasion a bit more hands on helping the team architect the thing correctly. I’ve seen some wild ideas over the years, not necessarily stupid, but… out there (Hi NFTs, I see you.). Split is anecdotally maybe 50/40/10 for pre/seed/series A? Because of the space I’m in, the demos were often times After Effects, Keynote “magic move”, Framer or Fi...