TrendPulse

people of startups, I want to know if newsletter are still relevant for your business? If you currently use a newsletter, I'd love to know: What made you start one? What problems has it helped solve? Has it improved customer retention, engagement, bookings, sales, or anything else? How often do you send it? If you don't use a newsletter: Why not? Have you considered it before? What stopped you from starting one? I'm researching how businesses are using newsletters to...

I’m the central developer of a startup for b2b management and a marketplace for clients to then purchase services for these businesses. This means transactions via stripe, scheduling, marketplace profiles, business analytics, travel time calculation for delivery, etc. The project is several years old, but it only got software 2 years ago. The product was not functional, nor was the scope of the current project (no functioning payment, no commute calculation, no marketplace). I joined a year ago ...

Any founders here building for, selling into, or expanding into African markets? I’m a repeat founder and have spent a good part of my career operating across Africa. One thing that keeps fascinating me is the risk-reward profile. Winning is by no means easier, but in many cases the cost of experimentation, customer acquisition, and building operational teams can be significantly lower than in more mature markets. That means founders can often take more shots on goal with the same amount of ...

So for the longest time the startup I work at isn't growing. In February I got a raise and now the founder wants to cut back on my income bc he can't finance it anymore. He's giving me the option to either work less hours a week or accept a lower hourly income. I work 4 days currently and have a permanent employment contract. What would you do? PS I work in the Netherlands

I'm an emergency veterinarian and I'm very motivated to start the journey and work on an scalable business idea I have in mind within the pet healthcare industry. However, I know I should try to find people and form a team to start working on this project. How do you guys find people to team up?

I'm an emergency veterinarian and I'm very motivated to start the journey and work on a scalable business idea I have in mind within the pet healthcare industry. However, I know I should try to find people and form a team to start working on this project. How do you guys find reliable people to team up with? What type of professionals should I try to work with? Business idea involves fee per use type of business and an online platform. [lin...

In February I got a raise and now that the founder comes to the realization that from July he won't be able to raise more funds he wants to cut down on my salary or make me work less hours. Also he wants me to use up all my vacation hours asap bc I have my employment agreement for an indefinite period. What would you do? Stay working here, use up all your hours or go somewhere else?

How can I get warm intros into a specific vertical/industry to eventually sell a B2B software product/solution if I have absolutely no warm contacts to reach in that industry? Is it possible? Maybe reaching out to advisors in exchange for equity? Would love to know as I want to start some design partnerships before moving to a paid pilot

I've been building something for small businesses and learned something that I didn't expect. Early on I would show business owners data about their own website. Specific numbers, real problems, stuff that was genuinely hurting them. Most of them would nod along and then do nothing. The information just didn't land the way I expected it to. Then, almost by accident, I started showing people how they compared to a competitor in their area. Same data, same problems, just framed differently. Th...

I am SDE intern at an AI startup. A senior reached out to me with a proposal doc (that was sent to a client) and asked me to propose a retainer for the proposed services for 3 months. I don't know what it is? can someone help? exactly what am I supposed to do here? The document contains roadmap of offered services (filming promos, ads, website, SEO etc).

I have 100k to spend on marketing for our 100% free walking/step health game. We have 1 goal, stay under €1.5 per app install. Currently we have 3 methods planned out: - Ambassador creators: larger creators that will create ongoing content - Micro creators: with max 100k followers that will all push an event in the app - UGC: Creator content that we can push through paid media on insta, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok etc. However, perhaps I’m missing some key approaches that are worth expl...

I am finance professional from India, skilled in financial reporting, FP & A, internal controls, MIS, reconciliations, process improvement, budgeting and auditing. If you are looking for someone who can turn finance reports into actionable insights, feel free to connect with me.

Any founders who’ve started off with design partnerships? If you’re a founder (or prev. founder), how did you start off your company with design partnerships? How were you able to land the first few and how detrimental were they to your startups success? Were you able to convert them into real customers? How long did the partnership last and did you charge for it? Do you recommend starting off this way and what even is the alternative to building the first actual version of your product/sol...

Hey r/startups , They always say "build something you want to use," so I did. I'm a frequent cruiser, and I got tired of literally setting calendar alarms on my phone to remind me to log into cruise portals at midnight just to book a dinner reservation or a specific shore excursion before they sold out. To fix this, I launched Cruise Activity Reminder on iOS. It tracks your specific cruise timeline and pings you before the critical booking windows open up. It was a great exercise...

Haven't built a startup yet, but I really want to. One of the things I'm wondering is what actually constitutes as failure. I've read that if your startup isn't doing well for a long period of time it's good to move on, but on the other hand I've read that you need to escape the "valley of despair" to actually see results. How do I know if my startup truly failed or if I haven't put enough time into it?

Struggling to find actual ways to acquire users in the early stages and wondering how others did it? Every time I think about posting online it feels either spammy or like I’m shouting into the void. For those who have already gone through this stage: - How did you get your first 10 users? - What got you from 10 to 100? - What acquisition channels actually worked? - What completely failed despite everyone recommending it? I’m particularly interested in things that don’t require a larg...

Running a B2B sales motion as a founder is weird. You're the rep, the manager, and the one explaining to investors why you missed... all in once how do you actually know if your pipeline is structurally broken vs just having a bad month? I had this moment where leads were coming in fine, activity was there, but something was just... dying somewhere between first call and closed won. couldn't figure out where. took me embarrassingly long to even frame it as a structural problem vs "we ju...

Struggling to find actual ways to acquire users in the early stages and wondering how others did it? Every time I post about it online it feels either spammy or like I’m shouting into the void. For those who have already gone through this stage: - How did you get your first 10 users? - What got you from 10 to 100? - What acquisition channels actually worked? - What completely failed despite everyone recommending it? I’m particularly interested in things that don’t require a large budge...

One thing I’ve noticed in this subreddit and the startup world:: People are very good at identifying problems, but not every problem is a business opportunity. Today, with AI, building an app is easier than ever. The challenge isn’t building the solution, it’s getting people to actually use it and pay for it. A common mistake is assuming that because a problem exists, people want a solution. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes changing behavior is harder than solving the problem itself. Anot...

I left my 9-5 tech job a few years ago to start a business with a friend. She’s a developer and I specialize in GTM. At first it was to solve a problem I was experiencing at work: slow hiring. But since then we have failed to find PMF. We’ve done over 300 sales calls, have had over 100 customers come and go, but still haven't built something truly valuable to make people stay. Since starting out we pivoted about 5 times but despite the numerous « discovery calls », or trying to work on « prob...

Happy Friday Everyone! Question for the group... Has anyone ever built something where people get the concept, but still can't quite wrap their head around what it would actually feel like to participate? Theoretically it makes sense, but there's still the but how does that work or am I really going to get a strong outcome in practice? reaction. If you navigated this challenge what were some lessons learn or words of wisdom? Did it just take getting the first few people through it and sharin...

We see this advice everywhere: “validate your business idea before building it”. But how to do that? Should I reach out to possible clients and ask them if they’d be interested? I have an idea for a small device for the agribusiness industry, but I don’t know if companies and large farmers will respond to me.

Considering talking to a startup with less than 20 ppl. However, I’m concern about medical and dental benefits. Is that usually covered? Or is it out of pocket? 401k or retirement plan may not be covered but medical and dental is a deal breaker for me. Anyone have a similar situation? Curious if it’s worth even having a convo with them.

Do they just have massive video animation teams? I’ll post a link in comments. But the whole text type writer animation, Claude mascot animating… Honestly there’s lots of animations. I wonder if they’re just super easy to make or something. Mostly wondering because I’ve been hearing about more screencasting tools, but haven’t been able to find a bunch

So I recently spent some time breaking down a consumer app that reportedly scaled to around $2M/month within its first year. Going into it, I assumed the product would be the main differentiator. It wasn't. The product itself was relatively simple and could probably be replicated by a competent team. What stood out was how much work went into distribution and conversion before growth. A few things I noticed: • They optimized onboarding before scaling traffic. • They put users through...

Something that's been bothering me for a while Every tool now does everything for you. write your copy, generate your ideas, plan your roadmap, build your content. and on paper that sounds amazing But i've noticed something. the founders who just let AI do everything start sounding the same. same ideas, same content angles, same positioning. because they're all pulling from the same machine that gives the most statistically average answer The ones actually standing out are using AI differe...

For context the pain we kept hitting: client agrees to project, we sent contract, they sign eventually, then the payment part becomes a completely separate follow-up battle. Genuine question. We've been working on a tool that attaches the payment link to the contract it only shows up after they sign and kept wondering if this is actually a widespread problem or just us. How do you guys handle this? Do you use anything specific or just raw willpower and passive aggressive emails? Upvote0Dow...

Building an intelligence layer of ai agents for a specific role inside an industry (ex: technicians inside automotive dealerships) to solve painful, expensive problems. Currently unsure on which industry to lock in on and start a deisgn partnership in there as a POC (paid) No domain expertise or much connections in any industry yet ( I’m almost 20, but not alone, got a co founder and 4 SWEs with me ) However my father is a project construction manager/engineer with 20+ years of experience ...

Building an intelligence layer of ai agents for a specific role inside an industry (ex: technicians inside automotive dealerships) to solve painful, expensive problems. Plot twist: Currently unsure on which industry to lock in on and start a deisgn partnership in there as a POC (paid) No domain expertise or much connections in any industry yet ( I’m still almost 20 that’s why, but not alone, got a co founder and 4 SWEs with me ) However my father is a project construction manager/engineer ...

I’ve been working on a concept for an app called iTree (working name). I think it’s genuinely unique, but I need some brutal, honest product feedback to see if I'm missing a massive blind spot. The Core Problem: Context Collapse & The PDF Nightmare Right now, our digital identities are completely fragmented and stuck in the past. If you're job hunting, you're constantly updating static resume PDFs. If you're looking for a partner (especially in family-centric or community-bas...