Throwaway for obvious reasons. Looking for a gut check from people who've been around startups longer than me.

I'm a college student working part time at a 5 person startup. Nontechnical CEO, me, and the rest non-engineering. My title says "contractor" but in practice I own almost all the technical surface area: the infrastructure, the prod cluster, the security stack, the compliance work, and onboarding. If I disappeared tomorrow, I don't think the company could deliver or even keep the lights on. Bus factor is 1 and it's me.

And it just got worse. They got rid of our main dev, the one other person who actually wrote and tested code. So on top of everything I already own, I'm probably about to inherit all of that too. One part time college student doing the work of an entire technical team.

The recurring problem isn't the work itself. I actually like the technical side. It's the pattern:

The CEO closes deals for things that don't exist yet, then it becomes my emergency to make real. Most recent example: he sold a "simple" version of our product to a customer, except the real thing runs on infrastructure a normal customer can't support. We already did the re-architecture to make it work, but he closed the deal before any of that existed and I found out what I was building after.

Scheduled work is a fantasy. I plan a critical update a week out, confirm it three separate times, and he calls me 10 minutes before the window to say hold off. Priorities change every few hours. I get pulled into meetings I have no reason to be in.

I'm a 1099 contractor with no ownership and no benefits, and now apparently the workload of an entire team. I go back to full time classes in the fall so my hours are about to drop hard, and there's no plan, no documentation handoff, and no one to hand off to.

So is this just what early stage looks like and I need to toughen up, or is this a company quietly running itself into the ground on the back of one underpaid student? What would you actually do in my spot?

I'm not looking to learn how to build an app—I know there are thousands of developers who can do that.

What I really want to understand is how startups actually scale.

By scaling, I don't mean handling more servers or traffic. I mean:

• How did you get your first 1,000 users?
• What channels drove downloads?
• What marketing strategies actually worked?
• How did you retain users and keep growing?
• What mistakes slowed your growth?

I'd love to hear real experiences from founders or growth teams. If you've successfully scaled a product, what worked, what didn't, and what would you do differently if you started again?

Any beauty brand owners here? Looking for advice on growing a women's beauty brand as a male founder.

I'm building a Korean beauty curation platform for Australian women aged 25-40. Bootstrapped, no paid ads budget yet.

I've studied brands like Jo Malone and Aesop for design and positioning inspiration, but organic growth strategy for a niche beauty brand targeting a specific demographic is where I'm stuck.

Specifically wondering:

What content actually converts for this demographic on Instagram?

How do male founders in female-dominated categories build credibility without their own face being the product?

Any brands or founders worth studying in this space?

Appreciate any direction🙏

Hello people!

I am working on a new project, and im stuck designing the onboarding process.

I see some people suggesting a really long and detailed onboarding where they show how the app/saas works, what the benefits are, and ask questions.

While on the other hand others are suggesting and practicing a very short onboarding so they dont take much of the users time with it.

I know it depends for the type of business but im asking generally which has more success and the user gets that first impression, builds the trust, etc.

Thank you in advance

Idea -> validation -> MVP
And what next? How to get beta users and full waitlist?
I’m reading that I should aim for at least 1k signups so I get at least 100-200 beta users.

I read about people spending years creating YouTube channels, tik toks, instagram followers or building whole communities to get users for the launch.

What was your strategy?
Can I outsource it?
What’s the best path forward?

I’m building an mobile app in travel industry.
My cofounder is an event manager and good at community building as well.
Marketing might be our gap.

Hey redditors, I could really use a reality check or some advice from the sales experts and founders in here.

I am currently building a B2B SaaS tool specifically for the manufacturing industry. I have done all the foundational work that everyone tells you to do:

• I have a working prototype and a clean landing page.
• I have mapped out a hyper-specific Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
• I have spoken to enough people in the trenches to completely verify the pain point and validate the idea.

But here is where I am hitting a massive brick wall: getting actual B2B clients to convert from cold outreach.

My cold calls and outbound efforts are falling flat. I know the manufacturing space can be notoriously old-school and tough to penetrate from the outside, but I am quickly realizing that building the product and selling the product are two completely different skill sets.

I am looking for two things right now:

1. Advice: For those of you selling B2B software into traditional, heavy industries like manufacturing- how did you crack the code for your first 3 to 5 pilot customers? What does your outreach look like?

2. Partnership: I am ready to admit I need help with the closing side. If there is an experienced closer, fractional sales rep, or someone with deep connections in the manufacturing space who knows how to navigate these deals, I am actively looking for a partner. I am ready to offer a 5-15% commission on closed contracts for anyone who can help me get these early customers across the finish line.

Any tough love, outreach strategies, or direct messages are highly appreciated!

What I mean is that there are so many startups popping up today. It seems that the market is becoming over-saturated with startups. But I think that's the future. Millions of startups being created every year.

So what's the issue?

The issue I'm seeing (and will only accelerate) is that valuable tools are being created but no one is discovering their utility. With the primary factor being attention; not enough attention is being given to these new tools. But I think this is solvable if there's an incentive to direct attention to said tools.

So should there should be a new standard for startups: one that lets anyone become an investor from day one. Ideally, revenue would be shared with these early investors as it comes in. This would solve two problems: 1. this would provide startup capital for the founders. 2. the investors then have an incentive to share/direct attention to the product.

Mechanically, I could see one option being tokenization, where investors hold on-chain shares and revenue gets distributed in something like USDC (this might mean that the startup has to run on USDC, which I know introduces friction, and I don't know if there's another way). But the underlying idea matters more here.

And I know this gets into securities territory, but that seems to be changing (Reg CF already allows revenue-share deals with anyone, and the SEC just put "Regulation Crypto" on its rulemaking agenda this month).

Then once the startup grows large enough, it transitions to the traditional model, giving those same investors the option to invest traditionally as well (if possible).

What do you think?

I have been building a Windows screen recorder for about four months, and it has been publicly available for a little over two months.

So far, around 70 people have created an account and tried it. None of them became regular users.

What concerns me even more is that I personally emailed every user with a short, customized message asking about their experience, what went wrong, or what was missing. I did not try to sell them anything. Not a single person replied.

At this point, I genuinely cannot tell whether I have:

• a product people do not actually need,
• a positioning problem,
• the wrong target audience,
• a weak onboarding experience,
• or simply no effective distribution channel.

The software records the screen and can automatically apply zooms, pans, transitions, cursor customization, and custom backgrounds.

It also has a “director mode” that lets users control zooms, cursor following, transitions, screen drawing, and other effects through keyboard shortcuts while recording.

The same system can be used through a virtual camera, so those effects can also be applied live in software such as TikTok Live Studio.

I am currently experimenting with an MCP integration that would allow Claude Code to control the software and generate motion-graphics-style product videos, but I am becoming increasingly worried that I am continuing to add features instead of understanding the core problem.

I keep releasing patches, improving the product, working on SEO, and attempting outreach. However, I have not found a channel where I can consistently reach people who genuinely need this kind of software.

There are already several established products in this space, so I know that having a technically good product is not enough. I may also be overestimating its quality because I built it and know how to use it.

I am deliberately not including the product name or a link because I am not looking for traffic or signups from this post. I can include a couple of short, non-branded example videos if that is allowed and would help people understand the output.

For founders who have been in a similar situation:

How would you determine whether the real problem is the product, the positioning, onboarding, or distribution?

And how do you get honest feedback when users try the product, leave, and will not answer follow-up emails?

I’m from Finland and currently building a Nordic marketplace for hunting and fishing experiences. One thing I’ve been thinking about is why booking outdoor experiences is still surprisingly difficult, especially when travelling abroad.

There are thousands of guides and outfitters, but finding the right one, comparing options and actually booking can still be quite complicated.

How do you usually find hunting or fishing trips when travelling abroad? Google, Facebook groups, personal recommendations, specialised agencies, or something else?

And what would make you trust an online marketplace for outdoor experiences?

Every major social platform has a core reason people open it:

WhatsApp → Chat

Instagram → Reels & photos

TikTok → Short videos

Reddit → Communities & discussions

X → Real-time conversations

Discord → Communities & voice chat

LinkedIn → Professional networking

If a new social media platform launched today, what do you think its defining feature would need to be?

Not just "better UI" or "AI"—what would make millions of people download it and keep coming back?

I'm curious what people think is still missing from today's social platforms.

So it's official, we have our first ever VC meeting set up for this week. First one I've ever done as a founder and I am super, super nervous about it.

Honestly it's because I don't want to screw it up. I know a lot of founders on here will say you go through a ton of these meetings and this is just one of many. But this is my first, so give me a little grace on the nerves lol.

We're pre-seed. Still a really small, really early company.

I already sent over our pitch deck, which has our business plan laid out, the team, all that. So my questions for anyone who's been on either side of the table:

What should I have prepared going in beyond the deck?

What's usually one of the first things a VC asks you in that first meeting?

And honestly, what are these meetings even like? I'd love to hear what to actually expect so I can walk in ready instead of guessing.

Appreciate any insight.

I'm building a new research in core AI with a mix of RL, NLP, imitation learning, and GenAI. This requires a lot of training, and I'm planning to train it for a specific software for a few cases. Even then, we require a few H100 type GPUs for a couple of months of training and fine tuning. We're not funded by any VCs. Are there any resources that provide GPU credits / training for a startup that's in this ideation stage and experimenting with research?

Genuine question for people who invest in deep tech / science-based startups.

• How do you currently discover promising research coming out of universities? Cold outreach, tech transfer offices, conferences, personal network?
• What's the biggest friction point: finding deal flow, evaluating the science, dealing with IP/university ownership, or something else entirely?
• Have you ever passed on something interesting simply because you found out about it too late, or couldn't properly evaluate the tech?

Not pitching anything, just trying to understand how this discovery process really works today versus how people wish it worked.

I'm ramping up to a university spinout leveraging a technology developed during my PhD and postdoc. We're a year or two from spinning out, but me and my co-founder (my supervising professor) are beginning to have the equity conversation. We've both been giving large commitment for the past 12 months while still under the academic funding umbrella.

I'll be CEO, full time. He'll likely work on it one day a week. He's founded and exited before, while this is my first venture. I'm taking more risk, and giving more time, but he's bringing much more experience, credibility, and grey-haired wisdom. He's suggesting approximately 50/50 split of whats left after options pool, university stake etc, and that I'll earn a larger portion of the options pool going forward. I had heard that tenured academics should usually take a smaller stake as it kills investor confidence.

We had an initial conversation a few months ago with a partner at a VC that I met at a networking event (a "keep me updated" type of meeting just to get on their radar). Would it be unprofessional to ask for a short remote meeting to get their perspective on what investors would want to see from founder equity splits. Would this come across as unprofessional and a red flag of inexperience, or as a first time founder doing their due diligence early to help create an investible equity structure?

The only other advice we've gotten is from an exited founder in our general space (big half a billion exit not too long ago) who is an old friend of my co-founder. I'd like other perspectives, particularly VC.

To be clear, I'm quite happy with whatever equity split makes sense. My biggest worry is genuinely with investor confidence if one of the founders is essentially working 0.2 FTE with a big cut. We imagine after university stake, options pool, and key early hires we'll be left with ~50-60% to split between us. A 50/50 split would leave 25-30% of the company wrapped up in an academic with near-full time commitments to the university.

His ongoing university commitments are going to try to be tailored to the business, essentially back-filling relevant low TRL research to prop up expansions of our platform (medtech, lots of fundamental research to do), but that's a pretty nebulous commitment.

I'm a business analyst. On paper my job is to write the requirements. In practice the document is the easy part. I could write a clean spec in an afternoon. The hard part is that the spec is usually a polite fiction, because the people who signed off on it never actually agreed on anything.

Here is how it really goes. Sales wants the thing that closes deals. Ops wants the thing that doesn't break at 2am. The founder wants both, plus a timeline that assumes neither has a cost. In the kickoff everyone nods, because nodding is easier than fighting, and the disagreement just goes underground. Then you build for three months and it surfaces anyway, except now it costs a quarter of your runway instead of an awkward meeting.

The requirements don't live in the document. They live in the arguments people are avoiding. My actual job, the part nobody writes on a job description, is getting those arguments to happen out loud, early, in front of each other, before a line of code exists. A tidy diagram makes everyone feel aligned when they are not. No flowchart maker, free or paid, does that for you. The alignment is a conversation, usually an uncomfortable one, and someone has to be willing to sit in the room and force it.

I've watched teams skip that conversation because the doc looked done. It is the most expensive corner you can cut and it never shows up on the invoice.

For the founders here: if a build is going sideways, I'd bet the requirements were never really agreed, they were just written down. Has anyone found a way to get stakeholders to actually fight it out before the build instead of after?

A CEO I worked with in the past recently signed a Term Sheet for a new startup and wants me to join as a Founding Engineer.

Both the CEO and CTO have impressive backgrounds, and I really like the idea.
My main concern is how likely the round is to actually close after signing a Term Sheet.

I've been preparing for interviews focusing on LeetCode, low-level systems, and system design, but I haven't started any interview processes yet.

I'm wondering whether I should continue preparing and start interviewing as a backup, or pause everything and focus on the startup.

Also, what is typically expected from a Founding Engineer at this stage?

Should I start working with the startup immediately after the Term Sheet is signed, or wait until the funding actually closes?

I can financially afford to be without a salary for roughly another 4 months, so I can't wait indefinitely.

Would love to hear your thoughts

Starting a company with three cofounders. We want to maintain control through raises. A board seat would be fine and certain governance controls, but we want the voting majority. Seems like dual class is the way to go. Is the recommendation to do that at incorporation or later?

Genuine question for people who invest in deep tech / science-based startups.

• How do you currently discover promising research coming out of universities? Cold outreach, tech transfer offices, conferences, personal network?
• What's the biggest friction point: finding deal flow, evaluating the science, dealing with IP/university ownership, or something else entirely?
• Have you ever passed on something interesting simply because you found out about it too late, or couldn't properly evaluate the tech?

Not pitching anything, just trying to understand how this discovery process really works today versus how people wish it worked.

I keep seeing B2B founders hit this weird wall where the prospect likes the product, the budget is real, and then the first serious blocker is security.

Not "can you build feature X?" More like: can you pass SOC2, where does our CRM data go, who can see call notes, can we run this in our environment, what happens to demo data after the pilot?

That changes the whole sale. You are not just proving the product anymore. You are proving the company is safe enough to try.

The annoying part is that early startups usually do not have the money or time to do the full enterprise security motion before they have customers. But the best customers are often the ones asking for it first.

Curious how people handle that in practice.

Do you sell a smaller pilot first? Push for a design partner who helps fund the controls? Stay downmarket until the security story catches up? Or build the boring audit / retention / access-control stuff earlier than you wanted?

I see a lot of posts from people looking for cofounders, but for those of you who have actually built something successful with a cofounder.…what do you think made the partnership work?

Was it how you met? Having complementary skills? Similar values? How you handled disagreements? Or was there something you didn’t expect that ended up being the biggest factor?

Would love to hear the stories (including the messy parts).

So here’s the picture. I started with an idea in 2023. States dating her in 2024. Until then I haven’t really worked in the idea. I started working on it since April 2025 and it started making money since July 2025. Till then she has no idea about it. After I started making money from it, i worked more and invested my other income into this startup from November 2025 and to handle things she used to help a bit. Since then both of us started working on it. Whole idea, innovation, upgrades, initial capital was mine. She just helped me coz it used to generate money. Since December we also hired an employee . From then all 3 of us are working on it and it’s scaling up in revenue every month. Until now we haven’t had any word about the equity. Out of love I used to share the profit amounts with her. According to the necessity, sometimes I use to keep more and sometimes she used to keep more. We went on a vacation through this money as well. But now while we were having a conversation on this. It came to me as a shocker that she is expecting an equal equity in this. And that blew my mind. It’s just out of love I couldn’t complete that conversation. She has also worked on it but the whole idea and buildup from scratch was done when she started working. I never discussed about this with her before. But now I am in real shock what to do coz it’s going to be bigger. And we are not sure about our relationship either.(she coming from an orthodox family, her family might reject an idea of our marriage) At this duration please let me know what should I do? Should I offer her a fixed salary, should I ask her to stop working on it, should I give her equity, should I give her an exit? I’m really confused.
PS-: she has done the same thing that the other employee did for me. But with more time and dedication. And she he amount I shared with her is 2-3x more than the employee’s salary

Hello fellow startupers,

I'd appreciate some help finding the right fit for my startup to get financed as most seem to have some geolocation limitations or only invest in other rounds.

My project is the first system to implement a unified, end-to-end security architecture for organizational AI agents—combining persistent agent structures, role- and capability-based access control, immutable identity and provenance, complete information-flow tracking from source to destination, secretless execution, compartmentalized security zones, and policy enforcement across every action, handoff, tool call, and data transformation.

If you know VC investing in big AI concepts in EUROPE (Poland). Please forward the news and let me know where to apply.

Do you ever just think “I’m going to make a tweet or post on tik tok and blow up?” And then you do that and get the most underwhelming response?

I need a marketing strategy but I don’t even really know what that means. lol

The tool I made is genuinely useful, I use it everyday, my coworkers use it everyday and I have 6 more friends I just onboarded that are now using it. So I feel like I have something but alas, no marketing attempt I make goes anywhere.

I’d love your advice!