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So basically, I've always wanted to start a business, and a while ago, I was told that the best niches are health, wealth, and relationships. So I jumped into relationships, I have been building a tiktok following for more than a year and I have 30k followers, this doesn't really matter though because I've realised tiktok followers have no effect on views. I would say in the last week I've got about 150k views and most of those are people who are in or want to be in a marriage/relationship...

Hi everyone, I’m building a B2B/B2C marketplace in a niche services industry where service providers can create profiles, offer their services, and customers can book and pay for services through the platform. I’m a solo founder and currently handling everything myself. I’m trying to figure out the right commission structure. The platform uses Stripe connect for payments, so there’s already a payment processing cost of roughly 5-6% per transaction before I earn anything. My challenge is ...

Hey guys, I’m a startup founder at the Pre-Seed stage. Things were going well, but since last week, I’ve been feeling mentally exhausted and unable to dedicate much time to my startup. Last Friday, I lost my grandfather, and today I received the news that my best friend has died. I want to work, but my body feels extremely tired, and I’m unsure if it’s mental or physical. All I do is scroll on my phone and stay in bed, wasting time. I need motivation from my fellow founders. Throw me some good...

As the title suggests: Why do startups offer equity/options to employees? Why would you give equity to an employee? When would you stop giving equity to new employees joining? [Irrelevant words for character limit. Irrelevant words for character limit]

I am just wanting some advice. Firstly, I am in the uk, I have recently finished uni (haven’t technically graduated yet, but I will shortly), and I’ve struggled to find a job, I wanted asset management, but was applying to loads of roles in “finance”. I got two final rounds, 1 very good, 1 alright, for asset management, but didn’t actually secure anything, I went on a bit of an application spree, applied to anything that sounded cool, paid well, or where I believed it could lead to things I’d w...

Preparing budget for pre seed stage. We have a few b2b customers on our MVP and looking to get a few more within a specific bracket. Slight snag, this bracket makes the economics of the ICP quite narrow. As a result, we would struggle to reach break even, if we were to stay within this bracket. The goal is obviously to address a larger customer bracket later on, when the MVP has progressed to a point where the product is ready for larger scale deployments. At the pace I see things progr...

So basically, I've always wanted to start a business, and a while ago, I was told that the best niches are health, wealth, and relationships. So I jumped into relationships, I have been building a tiktok following for more than a year and I have 30k followers, this doesn't really matter though because I've realised tiktok followers have no effect on views. I would say in the last week I've got about 150k views and most of those are people who are in or want to be in a marriage/relationship...

About 18 months after I started the biz, I needed someone to take over content and a bit of operations. She had a great portfolio and a reference, so I skipped the paid test project. Didn’t need the extra cost or hassle. The first month went well enough. Then deadlines started slipping and I realized I was reviewing almost everything before it went out. By month four, I was doing a big chunk of the work myself. What surprised me wasn't that it didn't work out, but how I kept convincing mys...

Have received a tentative offer to lead a 25mio rev “start up” that has been around for roughly 10 years. It needs a reboot and new strategy. Owners would like to exit in 3 years (I’m not convinced this is a feasible timeline, but to be discussed). What would be fair to ask for in base and equity? Would you also ask for annual bonus? What types performance kickers would you add for addl base and/or equity? What do I need to be sure is included in my contract? Offer has no base. “Name your ...

I’ve been building a B2B sales tool for a while now and i need some real opinions. The idea is simple. You just past company name and website it will researches then find if they’re actually buying right now and writes you a cold email or LinkedIn DM based on what it found. Everything stays attached to that company so you’re not jumping between 5 tabs. It actually works. Like properly works. But here is my problem. Every time i feel good about it, I open Apollo out HubSpot and they’ve adde...

Because of generative AI, any product that is virtual can be copied. This includes the copy, assets, and unique ideas. So, I was thinking that perhaps products now need to provide monthly, even weekly fresh content. For example, in a game, maybe you'd release a new level every month with new challenges, and offer a subscription model. That way, the unique pull is your own imagination and ideas, which is what users will keep coming back to you for. Other interesting AI-proof ideas might involve...

A friend recently reached out to me about joining a startup that he is launching. He has been at it for a few months and so far it is just him. There is a term sheet with some investors and he will be likely closing soon. He would like to bring me on as founding engineer (equity post-dilution from this deal). The offer is an ok base salary plus the seemingly standard equity of somewhere between 1-2%. Maybe I just do not understand these sorts of positions, but this does not seem like a good posi...

Early on, most startups focus on the metrics they believe matter most. Traffic. Signups. Revenue. Retention. But sometimes customers keep talking about something that isn't even being tracked. It might be response times, onboarding friction, reliability, communication, or something completely unexpected. The interesting part is that these things can have a bigger impact on customer satisfaction and retention than the metrics founders spend most of their time watching. Looking back, what ...

​ Hello everybody. I am requesting advice regarding how to handle equity ownership in our startup. We are 4 people working on this project and my friend and i are the developers. Then we have the 2 other people who are working on business, branding, marketing etc. basicly they are the business part of it and how we can monetise it, design etc. They essentially are the idea and the vision behind it. What i am For context: My friend and i ( developers ) met these 2 last summer and t...

Hey everyone My team built an AI agent QA platform. Quick summary: It generates synthetic prospects across multiple personality types, runs real conversations with AI agents (chat or email), and evaluates every transcript across six dimensions. The scoring rubrics are built from real sales and industry experience across seven verticals. You get a full breakdown of where your agent fails with ways to fix it. We have different pricing tiers and have been building for a while now. Honestly the...

What founders do after selling or building a company? Do they start a new company? Or they retire? What you will do after building or selling your company? As a founder I'll probably start a new company with even bigger goal than previous. What you will do?

I'm a first-time founder, and I recently hired my first employee. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a pretty bad experience, mostly because of poor communication and a lack of alignment on expectations. It made me realize that building a company is a completely different skill from building a product. I'm comfortable building software, but managing people, creating processes, and running a remote team are all new to me. I feel like there are a lot of things I don't even know that I should be ...

Let's take a hypothetical situation in which some big shot (Stanford-educated, VP at some large company) wants to get on board at your startup because they see the potential. How do you find out if they're the type that comes in, brings their buddies, steers the relationships between the founders and eventually takes over your company? Sort of an activist investor? I can easily imagine such people targeting young/inexperienced founders who're not fully aware of what happens when money starts f...

Let's take a hypothetical situation in which some big shot (Stanford-educated, VP at some large company) wants to get on board at your startup because they see the potential. How do you find out if they're the type that comes in, brings their buddies, steers the relationships between the founders and eventually takes over your company? Sort of an activist investor? I can easily imagine such people targeting young/inexperienced founders who're not fully aware of what happens after money start f...

A friend recently reached out to me about joining a startup that he is launching. He has been at it for a few months and so far it is just him. There is a term sheet with some investors and he will be likely closing soon. He would like to bring me on as founding engineer (equity post-dilution from this deal). The offer is an ok base salary (which he will also take) plus the seemingly standard equity of somewhere between 1-2% (he has well over 50%). Maybe I just do not understand these sorts of p...

Honestly, I know I've been stupid with this. Dunno why I've stuck around so long. I got a job in 2020 working as an intern. I was freshly out of trade school for marketing, graduated with a certificate with distinction, and needed a remote gig due to home issues. The CEO himself hired me, and I reported to him. Within a couple of weeks, I was directing staff who had been there for years. It was for a B2B tech company in a space I hadn't worked before, but I grew up around. Within 3 months, t...

I spent the last few weeks looking into tech launches that blew up on X. ( I also researched and saw these companies implementing the same strategy on linkedin) surprisingly these just got some high impressions but there were also some which sold products and had founders talking about booking calls from their launch here is what I found how they work Tbh its never the video itself that does it. the video is like 20% of the outcome maybe. but what actually drives the numbers is a coord...

Probably a mistake, but during interviews I've been claiming that I'm not longer working on my own startup since I was under the assumption that companies probably would not want to hire somebody who is not 100% focused on the role they're hired for. I recently ended up getting an offer, but now I'm in a bit of a dilemma. Because our product is a consumer product, and we are actively advertising right now and will eventually be doing a crowdfunding campaign, there's a good chance that someone wi...

I've been building side projects for a while and I've noticed a pattern. In the beginning everything is clear in my head: The problem I'm solving The user flow Features I want to build Things I've intentionally decided not to build But as the project grows, that context gets scattered. Some thoughts are in ChatGPT. Some are in Notion. Some are in Figma. Some are in random notes. Some are just in my head. A few weeks later I find myself revisiting decisions I've already ma...

I've been building side projects for a while and I've noticed a pattern. In the beginning everything is clear in my head: The problem I'm solving The user flow Features I want to build Things I've intentionally decided not to build But as the project grows, that context gets scattered. Some thoughts are in ChatGPT. Some are in Notion. Some are in Figma. Some are in random notes. Some are just in my head. A few weeks later I find myself revisiting decisions I've already ma...

Hey everyone, I recently came across Instrucko and noticed that it’s founded and led by Devvaki Aggarwal. I was curious if anyone here has worked with her, interviewed at the company, or has any insights into her leadership style and the company culture. Would love to hear both positive and negative experiences if you’re comfortable sharing. Thanks!

I see this mindset all the time from technical founders: The problem is that startups are not coding competitions. There is so much more to building a successful company than writing software. You need to talk to customers, validate demand, figure out distribution, handle marketing, make sales, recruit talent, raise capital, negotiate partnerships, manage operations, and make strategic decisions under uncertainty. Most startups don't fail because the code wasn't good enough. They fai...

i want some honest opinions from people who have done this before. I 'm literally new to this, I have been mainly an employee (founded my own business but without any partners in the past), so startups are completely new to me. There's a founder I know. He is not a technical person, and he wants to start a company where I help him/be partners. It's going to be an app kind of like a marketplace and it's for the Middle East market. He got around 6 to 8 people together and asked me to be the tech...

Hello, since I was 13 I was always interested in investing - saved $100 a week for years, built up a mid six figure stock portfolio, bought my first investment property, and landed a job as an equity trader out of college. I want to eventually start a firm with what I have learned. However, I see problems with everything, and if anyone has gone down a similar path, would love some advice. The core problem: Young high earning people tend to be unfamiliar with investing and make suboptimal inves...

Everyday I see the same patterns. Perfect, algorithmically generated AI posts using the same copy style, frameworks and formats to get the best conversions. Anyone, who isn't a bot ,can see it. People still do it. Right now there is a huge wave of optimizations, mass spam for high volume squeezing conversions. I myself am going 100% no AI, in fact that is my gap. Anyone else here not using AI at all? Research, fine. In the actual product deliverables? Curious, let me know below! submit...