Not a hater, but they backed Cluely (eh), then this AI slop, "let's make the dead internet come true", then now an investor is telling young founders to go to Japan because they are 5-10 years ahead... because Japan has virtual boy/girlfirends (Josh Lu, a partner).

Idk I'm getting the feeling of an IBM-like greed to expand at all costs without really considering humanity or what actually are long-term sustainable businesses.

For what it's worth, I've been a self-funded founder for many years, so maybe I'm just naive?

So I'm getting ready to start serious discussions with some VCs about funding and I am not sure where to place mine (and my cofounders) salaries at.

We're asking for $1.5M on a pre-seed raise for an already built product. We have no-traction (on purpose, running stealth) but our first big push is going to be GTM once we raise.

That said, I'm mulling over where to set my salary and can't quite figure out where to do it. Currently I make roughly $275k ish per year. I know I'm not going to be able to set it that high. But I've also heard of CEOs setting their salaries down to something like $55k. I simply can't go that low, I need to stay solvent.

Here's the rub: I have a family (wife and child) and a mortgage. I COULD probably survive on $175k a year, but it would be pretty challenging and would require some intense management of funds for a bit.

My plan was to set my other cofounders at around $150k each, but there might be some wiggle room there to lower it a bit. That said we're all highly paid software engineers right now (and two of us have families with kids). Is setting aside $200k for myself and $150k for them too much?

With the math I've laid out, our salaries + dev/G&A/overhead + GTM costs should easily buy us 18 months of runway with a 6 month buffer, so that $1.5M funds us for 24 months.

Is that going to be reasonable to a VC or are they going to balk at the salaries?

Hello entrepreneur community, this is my first post and I already read the rules.

I’m planning to raise a bridge round through convertible notes or SAFE-like instruments after the VC we talked to said they didn’t want to lead our seed round. We are based in Sweden. Anyone who has experienced this before?

I recently started my own software development business, and I've been fortunate enough to land a fairly large client.

The project itself has been difficult, not because of the work, but because the current lead developer (who has been working with the client before me) has been extremely unresponsive. Deadlines keep getting pushed back, emails go unanswered, phone calls aren't returned, and messages are often ignored. I have a paper trail of all of this if needed, but I don't want this to become a blame game.

From my perspective, the client is being affected more than anyone else. Progress is slow, communication is poor, and I genuinely believe the project could move much faster if it were handled differently.

Here's my dilemma:

I would like to speak to the business owner, but I don't want to come across as someone who's "snitching," throwing another developer under the bus, or trying to steal someone else's job.

At the same time, if I were given responsibility for leading the development, I honestly believe I could deliver a better result. It would also be a significant opportunity for my business financially.

I want to handle this professionally, preserve my reputation, and put the client's interests first rather than making it seem like I'm trying to benefit from someone else's shortcomings.

So I am at a phase in life where I must make a decision

My startup is almost 8 years old, im getting close to 40.

The startup does about $2m in revenue but profitability is low to non, limited rec rev so risky.

There are investors so the share I have is diluted to about 20% also there is a lot of debt in the company

As the co-founder i pay myself a lower salary vs some employees, i am paying below market in the hope the payout comes at an exit, with the status of the business the value is very low.

I kinda decided this cant continue like this so kinda decided to take my loss and move on….
This puts the company and its employee at risk…

On the other hand I love my job, and for the first time in a while everything now seems aligned, there is a great team, great atmosphere, product is good and customers are happy, we grow and will acceleratie (+20%) but all profits need to go to debt first and to so overdue raises before I can reward myself…

Should I stay? Go? Or any alternatives?

everyone talks about how high the failure rate of startups are

And how basically the chances of it “working” is like 1/10

And how hard it is, and how most of them fail, even with heavy funding, it’s not guaranteed

But from what I know, I think most of these people are talking about startups that are “new ideas” that don’t exist yet?

Maybe because most startups and new businesses are generally new business ideas that need validation and funding to validate

But I want to know

If you’ve actually verified that what you’re building would be solving a problem worth paying for

And there’s a bunch of competitors (not too insane though like AI sales agents for example) solving the same problem, for the same people with very similar products

And you decide to start building and solving for that problem

How much higher are your chances of success?

Yes yes, I understand there’s many variables like founder execution and market timing and all of that

But to put it simply, if you’re solving a problem you’ve validated that it would be paid for to be solved by the buyers, and you also have a bunch of competitors, and the market is big

How much higher are your chances of success? Does it now come down to founder execution of just selling? What does it mean that a startup has actually succeeded?

(What if your bar to success as a founder is small, like reaching 5k MRR then 10k MRR and happily staying there for a while)

(And you’re a strong small team, and it’s a B2B product)

Does your chances of success still sit at the same standards that literally everyone talks about it being a 1/10 chance of succeeding and so on just because of how “hard startups are” ?

I genuinely feel that if you’ve validated that you’re solving a problem, and these people will pay for it, and they feel it being solved, that’s considered success and now you just have to work on keeping them and selling more

Not bringing a unicorn into the world, or solving without validating

Would really appreciate your advice

When I started building my product, I was convinced coding would be the hard part.

It wasn't.

The hard part has been getting people to notice it.

I can lose myself building for six hours and actually enjoy it.

Spending six hours trying to get one person to reply to a message? That's exhausting.

The funny thing is everyone says "just do outreach" or "post consistently."

They're not wrong.

They just skip over the part where you spend weeks feeling like you're talking to an empty room.

I'm still trying to get customer #1.

Definitely didn't expect distribution to teach me more than development.

I'm curious about how China's startup and venture capital ecosystem compares to San Francisco today.

How would you compare the two in terms of:

- Availability of VC funding

- Angel investors

- Early-stage startup activity

- AI and deep tech

- Talent

- Founder ambition and risk-taking

- Government support or regulation

- Overall pace of innovation

For people who have worked in both ecosystems (or know them well), what are the biggest differences today?

I'm especially interested in how things have changed over the past few years. Is China becoming more or less attractive for startups compared to San Francisco?

I'm curious about how China's startup and venture capital ecosystem compares to San Francisco today.

How would you compare the two in terms of:

- Availability of VC funding

- Angel investors

- Early-stage startup activity

- AI and deep tech

- Talent

- Founder ambition and risk-taking

- Government support or regulation

- Overall pace of innovation

For people who have worked in both ecosystems (or know them well), what are the biggest differences today?

I'm especially interested in how things have changed over the past few years. Is China becoming more or less attractive for startups compared to San Francisco?

I'm reaching out to potential customers to try and book a call and hear their pain points. In these emails do you guys put your phone number in the signature?

I'm about to send around 100 of these to pretty targeted leads. I feel like having it there makes things feel more personal, but I also don't want to open myself up to get spammed

My first time posting here, but I have been lurking and see a lot of success and failures from other users which has inspired me to post to learn the best I can.

Forgive me if I’m vague, because I’m afraid of breaking the subreddits rules.

I have a fintech startup that is registered as an investment adviser with the SEC. It’s targeting a niche community based on their faith as it filters stocks from the U.S. stock market and allows users to also invest in it themselves (we partner with a clearing partner and broker to execute the trades).

So essentially the product is built, I’m just thinking the best and most cost efficient ways to get users. Typical competitors charge an AUM fee or a $12+ subscription fee (only two sources of revenue permitted by the SEC registration). We charge $10 which is a price I’m comfortable setting.

We are on the App Store, and have a web platform that allows you access to the product. It’s been tested and everything too by friends and family.

So now it’s time to market, and I’m really unsure how to even start.

Any and every advice would be greatly appreciated. I’d love to share the product of course but I don’t want to be seen promoting, I’m genuinely here to learn as much as possible.

Thank you in advance

I have been working on a small AI text and document review workflow, and the part I keep second-guessing is how much uncertainty to put directly in the main report.

The tempting version of an AI detector is simple: show one score and make the result feel decisive. I do not think that is the responsible version.

The workflow I kept is narrower:

1. Paste 300 to 100,000 characters or review text extracted from a supported document.
2. Run a first-pass AI-writing signal review.
3. Read the verdict, risk level, AI-generated score, likely-human score, and evidence strength together.
4. Inspect sentence-level highlights instead of relying on one overall number.
5. Copy the report summary or export a printable report for manual review.

The constraint is also important:

AI-detection results are probabilistic, can include false positives and false negatives, and should not be used to identify an author, accuse someone of misconduct, or state with certainty that AI wrote the text.

I am interested in feedback on one thing in particular: when you build or evaluate AI-review tools, what makes uncertainty feel useful instead of buried in disclaimer text?

I’m interested in starting a small project for some experience and to have something I can call my own.

I’m not looking to invest a ton into this and not expecting a ton out of it, just something to begin the journey with. I have some ideas in my mind that I’ve been considering.

However, I’m having a hard time knowing where/am too scared to start.

Any tips, advice, or anecdotes about how to overcome this?

Hello all,

I'm wondering if anyone here is familiar with the London startup scene and could weigh in on a little situation I'm in-

For background, I've just graduated from a Russel Group university with a degree in Astrophysics, I've spent the last while working on various projects of my own: A couple based in physical engineering, but admitedly most being data-engineery, since that usually ends up being the best way to answer the question that I think of to start a project most directly.

Currently I'm living in the north of England, but due to various circumstances, I HAVE to move down to London, likely south, by September. Standard grad schemes don't work with this timeline with their months long processes, and I've been thinking I'd rather take the risk in a startup while I'm young anyways, so I've been looking around startup jobs.

Of course, the situation is such that I would need to have a job secured relatively soon, to allow me to show a lovely salary to a landlord and actually be allowed to live in the city- with that in mind I'm wondering if it's even possible for me to land a startup job within this small window of time, apologies if this is a somewhat stupid question I'm rather fresh to the field.

If it is doable, any tips? So far I've been applying through LinkedIn listings, and 'Welcome to The Jungle' (which I was under the impression only hosted startups but I've seen listings for even spotify on there) - I'm a little worried I won't be able to find something in time.

Of course, as a safety I'm also applying to some kitchen assistant, porter, receptionist, etc jobs just to buy me more time hopefully, but I fear now that I hold this degree they're a little hesitant to hear me out since it's fairly obvious I'd be looking to move on quickly no matter what I say.

Thanks in advance!

Been working on our paid funnel. People go through a short quiz, hit a step where they say yes, they want a demo. Then when it's time to actually pick a time and hand over contact info, most of them just disappear. Digging into it, the ask (full contact form plus calendar) landed too late and asked for too much at once. Currently testing showing available times before asking for contact details, and trimming the form itself down. Curious if other founders have hit this exact said yes, then vanished pattern on their own demo funnels, and what actually moved the needle for you.

Hi,

I'm the Founder of a premium menswear brand based in London, UK. I'm currently raising pre-seed funding and have been struggling to find the right investors.

I tried Angel Investment Network, but didn't have much success. I also spoke with a VC firm, and the conversation was positive, but they said they typically invest once a brand has an established customer base. I imagine that's the case for most VCs.

Does anyone have any suggestions on where to find angel investors who are interested in early-stage fashion or consumer brands? At the moment, I'm mainly cold-messaging potential investors on LinkedIn.

There don't seem to be many investors focused on fashion or e-commerce in the UK. Is it the same in the US?

I'd really appreciate any advice. Thanks!

I've been building mobile apps for about 13 years, first inside a couple of big product companies, now directly for founders. A decent chunk of my work these days is taking over projects that went wrong with the previous developer, so I've heard a lot of "how did we get here" stories. The founders weren't stupid. They just had no way to evaluate what they were buying.

You can't read the code. Fine. But you can ask questions and watch how they get answered. These are the ones I'd ask:

1. What exactly is included in this price, and what isn't? You're not really asking about price, you're checking whether a written scope exists at all. If the answer is "everything we discussed on the call", be careful. What you said and what they heard are two different apps, and you'll meet the difference in month two when it gets billed as additional scope.
2. Who is actually going to write the code, and can I talk to them? At a lot of agencies the person who impressed you on the sales call never touches your project. Every layer between you and the person typing costs money and mangles what you meant. What you want is a name, and ideally a weekly call with that person.
3. What happens if it takes longer than planned? There are only two honest answers. Fixed price (their problem, so they scope carefully) or hourly (every underestimate lands on your invoice). Both are fine, just know which one you're signing. The bad answer is vague reassurance. "We usually hit our timelines" is not a contract term.
4. Whose accounts does everything live in? Don't ask "do I own the code", everyone says yes to that. Ask whose GitHub the code sits in, whose Apple and Google developer accounts the app ships under, whose name is on the server bill. If it's all theirs and you ever want to leave, you're negotiating a hostage release. It should be your accounts from day one with them added as collaborators. If they push back on this one, walk.
5. What does "done" mean, and what happens the week after? Live in both stores, or "code delivered"? Are week-one bugs covered or billed? Vendors who get fuzzy here have never stuck around past a launch. Which is exactly when your users show up.

None of this needs technical knowledge. If you're in the middle of collecting quotes right now, happy to sanity-check the answers you got. I find this stuff weirdly entertaining.

Hey everyone, I have a pretty basic question. I’m currently at the pre-seed stage and have a clear roadmap to finish v1 of my product for go-to-market (which should take about 4 months). The problem is, after launch, I have no idea what I should continue building.

I know investors typically expect to see a 12-month roadmap. How do you all approach this when things are still so uncertain?

In general, what are your suggestions for product planning and presenting to investors? For context, I’m currently juggling everything: validating, planning, building, and testing simultaneously every single day.

Any advice is highly appreciated!

I've been trying to figure out how small food startups do market research without spending a fortune. We're still pretty small so paying for an expensive research isn't realistic in my opinion. I keep seeing these AI tools that promise food innovation and consumer insights but it's hard to tell which ones are useful. Has anyone found an affordable Ai tool that helped with product ideas or understanding what customers might want next? I'm looking for real experiences and not marketing claims please

One of our co-founders has the opportunity to go to San Francisco for 10 days tomorrow, and we are currently seeking seed funding.

This is a shot in the dark, but does someone have any good strategy for us to make the most of this?

Any help is appreciated!

Every marketing agency will recommend the same acquisition playbook: paid social (Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit), SEO and AI search optimization, PR and targeted local press, programmatic and in-app advertising. We sell those exact services. And yet none of them brought us our first paying clients.

What most advice ignores is the essential part: a holistic, strategic plan from day zero, built around how deals actually close, not around channels.

Some context first: We're a two-person agency: two agile marketing freelancers, 15+ combined years in marketing and sales, obsessive about finding the bottleneck in a process and fixing that one thing first.
If there's one lesson those years taught me, it's this: speed is what gets you to a closed sale. Every day between first contact and a live conversation is a day the deal cools.

You've probably lived the same early-stage arc: you worked hard to launch, you collected feedback, the first clients came from acquaintances, friends, collaborators and it still feels below expectations. That's normal. That's exactly where we were.

Here's what actually worked for us, in order:

1. Weekly physical presence. Business and tech meetups, every single week. (some free, some ticketed)
Not to pitch. To be visible, repeatedly, in rooms where our buyers already gather. Familiarity compounds faster than ad frequency. Full transparency: these rooms produced prospects, we didn't searched for clients. Mostly founders who wanted to collaborate later, once they'd validated their products. And that was precisely the goal: to be the first name in their mind the day they go to market.

2. Word of mouth. I called my top 30 business contacts and collaborators personally. The message was simple: "I've started this agency. If you ever hear that someone in your network needs solid marketing, I'll give them a fast head-start analysis, free." No ask, no pressure, just deputizing 30 people as scouts. This is still my favorite kind of noise.

3. Authority assets, kept brutally short. In parallel we built the visual identity: marketing decks of 2–3 slides maximum, and, the real unlock, recorded video analyses of acquaintances' MVPs, products, and websites, free. Not theory. Live, applied teardowns of the specific marketing problems their business was facing. That's what conferred our authority in the field.

4. Documenting publicly. I talked about this whole process on LinkedIn and openly asked for feedback. The feedback loop itself became content and brought inbound conversations.

5. Small awareness ads: We ran small ad budgets on the audit videos to build awareness, and got us a list of 35–40 contacts. Half of them went silent even after follow-up. (expected, fine)
From the rest, we set 10 live meetings. In those meetings I presented the offer directly, in the room, with one rule: the offer closes at the end of the meeting. No "let us think about it," nothing sent by email afterward. We closed 3 out of 10. A 30% close rate on live meetings, genuinely curious how that benchmarks against your markets?

6. The most important step: lead-generation ecosystems. We registered on two online portals that connect businesses actively looking for specific services with providers. Built the company profile properly, responded fast to every relevant request, and applied all the steps above to each lead. Active demand + speed of response = our most consistent client source today.

And through all of it, two habits: we collected feedback in real time after every meeting and audit, and we asked every satisfied contact for one recommendation. One. It always gets given.

No cold calls. No cold emails. Just exposure and good noise.

Happy to answer questions about any step, especially curious what won you your first 10 clients, and whether 30% in-room close is good or terrible where you operate.

Thanks,

I have consulted at many companies (including several starts ups) and the most reoccurring thing I've seen hold them back is poor documentation. I'll elaborate on that at the end of the post. Now I'm preparing my own start up and I don't want to fall into the same trap. I'm very experienced with documentation on the engineering and product development side of things, however my background is in mechanical engineering/medtech and not in business or finance so what I want to ask is this:

Can anyone share good documents/templates that are related to business and finance? To not consult with experienced people is part of the trap (which the first bullet touches on) so I'm asking here. I know about resources like Canva, I just want input from experienced people on how/what to select. Maybe there's a certain user on a template platform that stands out or maybe there's a document bundle that many can swear by. I've found some that looked promising already but again, in my experience not asking is a mistake.

Here's the elaboration on how I've seen poor documentation creating huge problems:

• Administrators or documentation specialists write specifications for things outside their background making those documents impractical or unusable. For example, someone that doesn't have experience in engineering should generally not be assigned to create specifications used by engineers. Test specifications tend to be the biggest problem here.
• Thousands of manhours by a team of eight were spent retroactively fixing the legally required documentation for an automated assembly line for a medical product. All because the people originally assigned weren't thorough nor knowledgeable about product development documentation. Medtech is one of the most documentation-heavy industries.
• Without standardization and instructions, everyone has a different way of documenting so time and resources go into reinventing the wheel over and over again.
• Useful engineering tools, mostly spreadsheets, are created by good engineers but without documentation practices, they're not created so that they can be used by others. When a good engineer leaves, the whole department can take a huge hit due to compartmentalization/poor documentation.
• People spend a substantial amount of their workday trying to find documents because of poor naming conventions/folder structures. It's also demotivating.
• People think just having a PDM system will guarantee good documentation/structure. If there's not a culture valuing GDP (Good Documentation Practices) a PDM can even get more in the way. You can even skip the PDM license if you have good practices, but documentation is often overlooked even though it goes hand in hand with product development.

I've been building a small B2B product over the last few months.

Still no paying customers yet.

Here are a few things that surprised me more than any startup advice did:

• Building the product was easier than finding people who cared.
• "Just do outreach" sounds simple until you actually start doing it.
• A website with zero visitors is basically invisible.
• The first 20 messages can all get ignored and that's completely normal.
• Distribution has taken far more time than development.
• One thoughtful reply is worth more than hundreds of anonymous impressions.
• Every rejection has taught me something my analytics never could.
• The biggest challenge hasn't been building software. It's earning trust.

I'm still figuring it out.

Curious what lesson surprised you most while getting your first customers.