TrendPulse

A month ago, I shared that we had reached our first 100 users. Hardly anyone saw the post. A few days ago, I came back after we crossed 30,000 users. That post blew up. Some people congratulated us. Some were skeptical. Others questioned the numbers or our product. Honestly, I understand why. Big growth claims on Reddit deserve scrutiny. But regardless of what people believed, one thing I appreciated was the feedback. Some comments pointed out problems I hadn't considered, others challenge...

Founders: What’s the most annoying operational task you deal with every week? I’m building a startup focused on automating operational work, and I’m trying to better understand where founders lose the most time. I’m not looking for broad answers like “marketing” or “sales.” I’m looking for specific, repeatable workflows. Examples: - Copying information between apps. - Following up with people. - Gathering context before meetings. - Updating CRMs or spreadsheets. - Chasing approva...

Hey everyone, I'm part of a small team exploring a home services marketplace for Coimbatore. We chose a Tier 2 city instead of a metro because we think the experience of finding plumbers, electricians, cleaners, and similar services is quite different outside large cities. Before we spend more time building, I wanted to understand whether we're even focused on the right problem. If you're from a Tier 2 or Tier 3 city: How do you usually find someone for home repairs? What's the biggest...

Hi guys, I am a guy from India straight out of college with a bachelor's degree and I have my expertise in silicone design and FPGA related works and currently I am working with a US based person on making an AI chip where I am handling all the technical design work of the chip architecture and here would like to ask for advice like the idea was proposed by the person in US it's something like he reached out to me for working with him and it's kind of freelancing where he is paying me $1500 for ...

I've taken 5 products for 0-1 in this space before but at large scale companies. I am currently at a startup now and did it again in a cold market. I am now being brought on to a small team of 4 with offshore support/manufacturing & strong funding to bring a product to life here. What steps would you take? I've done this before but now it's all on me & im nervous but confident. I can work with brands, wellness programs, hospital systems, mom & pop clinics, fitness studios/gyms/...

Hello, fellow BizMen! I'm looking at selling my current company and moving on to a larger project, and I'd love to get some honest feedback on an idea I've been kicking around. For the past three years, I've been importing products from Southeast Asia for my own business. During that time, I've learned how to avoid scams, find reputable manufacturers, negotiate pricing, navigate tariffs, coordinate shipping, and manage the entire importing process from start to finish. Over the years, I've...

Did you get someone who’s like an industry veteran or someone who’s been in the industry you’re selling to for a long time and has deep connections with your buyers to be an advisor for your startup so you can get a few warm intros that eventually become customers ? I’m considering this currently as I’m building and selling to the AEC industry (specifically MEP firms) and they’re quite relationship based, not easy to just cold outreach directly to them and get a demo But need more warm intro...

I recently finished a PhD focused on applied mathematics, control theory, and dynamical systems. I have now started a postdoc at a top university in the Bay Area, but the work is in the life sciences and may require a substantial pivot away from my existing background. I still enjoy fundamental research, but I no longer care much about following the traditional academic track (too competitive and time consuming; and I'm not in my 20s anymore). I am concerned that spending several years retrain...

I've taken 5 products for 0-1 in this space before but at large scale companies. I am currently at a startup now and did it again in a cold market. I am now being brought on to a small team of 4 with offshore support/manufacturing & strong funding to bring a product to life here. What steps would you take? I've done this before but now it's all on me & im nervous but confident. I can work with brands, wellness programs, hospital systems, mom & pop clinics, fitness studios/gyms/...

Does anyone have experience raising funds to start a business on start engine or similar platforms? If you can share the type business you started, how long it took you to raise the funds through the platforms and any other information you may want to share, it would be appreciated!

I'm wondering since this will be the first time I'm actually creating a start up, will my project be viable enough for just proof of concept/mvp or do I have to have alot of users?. My goal is pre-seed. Can you all tell your testimonies on how you started this process? I would love to hear it!

I’m building an AI agent product for MEP design firms (AEC/construction industry) It solves an expensive problem for them, got feedback from a few people in the industry and decent problem validation so far (There’s also a bunch of competitors around this same problem) How do I go about getting my first customers outside of my warm network and going to industry trade events? Does LinkedIn cold outreach/networking work? Should I reach out to people with deep industry connections to who ...

Hi everyone, I'm a college student building an AI-based app as a side project (let's call it Example, hosted on its own subdomain that I already own). Before I launch the website, Android app, and iOS app, I wanted to get some clarity on a few things I've done some basic reading already (Class-wise trademark search on the IP India portal, App Store/Play Store naming policies), but wanted real experience from people who've actually shipped and listed apps: Could my current brand name lead...

Curious how people here have handled this in practice. When you got your first term sheet (or sent one), what did you actually do with it? Did you send it straight to a lawyer, build your own dilution spreadsheet, use some kind of tool or calculator, or just read it a few times and trust the negotiation? Specifically wondering: Did anything help you understand terms like liquidation preference or anti-dilution before you were sitting across from the investor, or did you learn them mid-ne...

New grad here deciding between two very different SWE opportunities and would appreciate some advice. Option A SWE I at a Series C startup (~200 employees) Backend infrastructure/distributed systems Clear career ladder (SWE I → SWE II → Senior) Strong mentorship and established engineering practices ~$140k base + standard startup equity Option B Founding Engineer at a 3–4 person startup Building core cloud infrastructure from scratch Daily interaction with founders ...

I have Enterprise solution, where is very difficult to get users because.. enterprise. They dont really deal with startups. Solution build, tested working. Contacted a lot of VCs either no reply or few replied they are not interested or they dont invest pre-seed/seed in my region. ok I am not in US, not even in "interesting" startup area. I have feeling that without warm introduction it is very difficult to get interest. I dont have money to travel around the world to meet VCs in p...

I’ve been a software engineer for over 10 years. I spent seven months developing a SaaS product, but when it was finished, I didn't launch it because I didn't know how. I’ve spent the last two months reading books on product launches, but I don't seem to be very good at it; I can't seem to apply the methodologies I read about, and everything like building a list of emails or social media followers seems to take too long. I’d like to launch organically, but that process appears to be very time...

Been thinking about this. Bezos didn’t invent books or bookstores. He just saw that the internet made online books selling way more scalable, then used that as the wedge for Amazon. So if he was starting today as a normal middle class founder, with AI being the new big shift, what do you think he would go after?

Hey everyone so I created an AI assistant app that is actually top tier quality on the frontier agentic harness level of quality with 45 users within the first 2 weeks without any marketing only word of mouth. Still working on setting up subscriptions etc. But the AI agent pretty much replaces 80% of busywork for teams, general users, businesses etc. and can automate mostly anything online besides things that require explicitly a human. At what point is the idea validated enough to know I’...

I’m looking for advice from entrepreneurs who have been in a messy client to product situation... Over the last six months, I’ve been building a niche software platform for a combat sports event operations use case. Think registrations, event workflows, participant management, matchmaking style workflows, payments, documents, results, and operational tools for organizers... This started from conversations with someone I’ve known for years through my gym community. He is a gym owner with valu...

I'm curious what founders and investors consider "enough traction" to realistically raise a pre-seed round after about six months of building. I know the answer depends on the market, product, and whether it's B2B or B2C, but I'm trying to get a sense of what people actually see in today's fundraising environment rather than idealized benchmarks. For example, after six months, would you expect something like: A working MVP with a handful of paying customers? $5k–20k MRR? 20...

I’ve been thinking about this through writing, but it feels relevant to startups too. For a long time, I thought distribution came after the thing was done. You build it. You launch it. Then you ask where to share it. I’m starting to think that question comes too late. A recent writing experiment made this clearer for me. I wrote an essay about Jordan Mechner’s Prince of Persia journals. Pretty narrow topic. Most people do not care about an old game-development book from the 80s. B...

I'm CTO of a govtech startup. About a month ago we received the contract for a pilot with our first customer. My co-founder (CEO) wanted to have the contract revised by a lawyer since it is our first contract and didn't want to take any risk. In fact, there are a couple of clauses in the contracts that are favouring our client too much, so I do believe that a revision was necessary. What frustrates me is that it has been a month since we received the contract and we haven't sent back the revis...

I’ve been calculating for a while to get a good understanding of our value prop Currently, the conclusion I’m reaching is we bring back and save 50% of the labor hours spent on X tasks by every employee (firm wide) Those labor hours spent on those tasks cost 300k-1.5m USD in salaries (and every thing else in labor costs) firm wide So, does that mean, the value we bring is basically 150-750k USD worth of labor hours back to the employees (and to the firm)? And then we can charge 10-15% o...

Hi everyone, I’m an indie developer and I’m trying to learn how other developers got their first users without spending money on advertising. What worked best for you? Reddit TikTok Facebook Groups Instagram ASO (App Store Optimization) Blogs Word of mouth If you were launching a new mobile app today, what would be your strategy to get your first 100 or 1,000 users? Thanks for sharing your experience. [link] [comme...

So I am starting a business, maybe, eventually, been half a year trying, anyway, how do you get people to notice you exist, honestly, I could post the cure to cancer on YouTube and get zero views or some such miracle, is it just pay to play or what? No, I am not a doctor, I just am weird, I won't say more but for the uniqueness, nothing ranks anything, and I am not posting to stuff that takes permanent right to your stuff e.g. IndieHackers, am I doing something wrong? What have you done that wor...

I’ve been thinking about how much the short term rental ecosystem has changed over the last 10 years, and I’m curious if I’m missing something. When Airbnb launched, it provided almost everything a host needed: payments, calendars, messaging, reviews, and distribution. For many hosts, Airbnb was their software stack. Today that seems different. A large percentage of professional hosts now use PMS platforms like Guesty, Hostaway, Hospitable, Lodgify, and others. Those systems increasingly...

Not because the user is an idiot but because they are not an accountant. I will be building this entirely in public here on r/startups for now. After 6 months of R&D (procrastination), I just started building this and will take you through the entire process from build to our first customers and to the moon and beyond. This series will be posted twice a week so keep a lookout! Before we get started let me answer the questions I get asked the most, Am I stupid to want to compete again...

My life goal has been and will always to build a successful start up, whether that is as a founder or early stage member etc I want to break into the fintech, specially fraud-prevention, but i don't have any experience outside of my legacy company, no connections, I really dont have much going for me I want to join a start up, ideally early stage, and learn about start ups, the ins and outs, ideally in a role that exposes me to as much as possible But I've been struggling to find a way to ...

I’m trying to sell software (AI agents for specific problems) to franchise dealerships in the US. Just trying to get our first paid pilot now However, I’m not based in the US. And especially with the automotive industry, it operates as a very face 2 face type-relationship basis. I was advised to make connections with the industry trade association in the US and have those people get me warm intros into the industry I definitely believe in this approach and I’m working on it The thin...