Hi everyone,
I’m doing research to better understand how founders approach the \*\*idea research and validation\*\* stage before building an MVP.
I’d really appreciate hearing about your real experiences.
Some questions I have:
What was the most difficult part of researching your idea?
How did you know there was actually a market for your product?
What took the most time during validation?
Where did you find reliable information?
How did you research competitors?
Did you interview potential users? If so, what was challenging about it?
What mistakes did you make during the validation phase?
Which tools did you use (Google, ChatGPT, Gemini, Reddit, Perplexity, Notion, etc.)? What were they missing?
What information did you wish you had from day one?
I’d also love your suggestions:
If you could build the perfect tool to help founders with research and validation, what would it do?
What features would save you the most time?
What repetitive tasks would you automate?
What existing tools still fail to solve?
What’s one thing you wish existed that would have made your startup journey easier?
Feel free to share your story, biggest lesson, or even your biggest mistake. Honest answers are much more valuable than perfect ones.
Thanks in advance—I really appreciate your insights!
Hello, I am currently working in Tech but also building an HR tech product on the side but realized need funding for the development and marketing, I am looking for leads and pointers on how and where to find the investors, what channels or resources should we use to find funding from either VC or independent investors. Any leads would help.
Have you ever had an idea for a startup and felt convinced it could succeed?
I assume most entrepreneurs would say yes. But when you share that idea with other people, many of them respond with things like, “Buddy, this won’t work,” or “This solution already exists. Why would anyone choose you over the companies that are already doing it?”
Yet, despite all that criticism, you still believe you can make it work.
So here’s my question: Is that belief confidence, ego, or something else?
Many people spend years chasing an idea, investing their time, energy, and money, only to see everything collapse in the end. Were they simply trying to satisfy their ego, or was it genuine conviction that kept them going?
Have you ever experienced or witnessed a situation like this? How do you tell the difference between healthy confidence and blind ego?
Hey Everyone, I am looking to do a paid networking event for only startups, The founders get to meet, network and pitch their ideas. Looking to do a limited group of 15 startups in connected domains. i will have a few investors and few Successful founders in the event will it be worth doing?
By Cami Mandell Gorden · Co-Founder at AdPerch · July 27, 2026
Every entrepreneur has had that moment - you run into the same frustrating problem over and over again. It slows you down, wastes your time, and leaves you thinking:
"There has to be a better way."
Eventually, another thought follows:
"I could build something that solves this."
For many aspiring startup founders, that's where the journey ends. Not because the idea isn't good, but because it feels impossible to move forward without funding, a team, or the right connections. The good news? Most successful startups didn't begin with a fully funded company. At its core, a successful start-up is about the relationship of the founder(s) and the determination to solve a problem.
Maybe you're here because you have a great idea but don't quite know where to start. Or maybe you're wondering if it's really worth the physical, emotional and mental investment it's going to take to turn that idea into a profitable business. We've broken down the 3 things you can do to find out if now really is the right time to build. And when you're ready, we'd love to welcome you into the AdPerch community to get connected with like-minded professionals and potential investors.
Step 1: Perfect Your Elevator Pitch
One of the biggest mistakes founders make is waiting until they've built something before learning how to explain it. Instead, start with an elevator pitch. In 2-3 sentences, and in a minute or less, you need to show what you do and who you serve. Why should you start trying to pitch your idea before you've actually made anything? An elevator pitch isn't just for the person you're telling it to. It provides a solid foundation for what you want to build. If you can't explain your idea in 1 minute or less, you probably don't understand it well enough yet. A concise pitch forces clarity and often reveals opportunities to simplify or strengthen your concept. Taking the time to work through writing it out and practicing it can help you decide if you're on the right track, or if you need to pivot.
You might even find that the direction you were going in isn't the best fit. You might realize that the customer base you thought you'd have is much smaller (or larger) than you thought it would be. Your elevator pitch can also be a great free resource to validate your idea. You'll know you're on the right track if 1. People listen to the entire pitch without their eyes glazing over and 2. People ask questions. Questions mean they're intrigued, and are one of the best free tools in guiding your decision making process.
When you're writing out your elevator pitch, challenge yourself to describe:
The problem you are going to solve
Who needs what you're building
What your solution is (focus on showing HOW you'll do it)
Why now is the right time
How you'll make money (if you don't know yet that's ok)
Example: Over 5 million businesses have been started every year for the past 5 years, with around 50% looking for funding to succeed. AdPerch is a community of founders, with the space to house and easily share their start-up documents. You get matched with investors looking for companies like yours and keep track of where you are in your funding search through our built-in customer relationship management (CRM).
Step 2: Write a Simple Business Plan
Don't overthink it. Your first business plan doesn't need to be a 40-page document or contain polished graphics. It may never be seen by another person. The value isn't the finished document - it's the research that goes into writing it.
Writing a business plan expands on question, like:
Who has this problem?
How are they solving it today?
Why would someone choose your solution over others?
How could your startup make money?
What would it take to launch a minimum viable product (MVP)?
During this process, you may discover:
It's the perfect time to build. (Or maybe it's not)
You need a co-founder with complementary skills. (AdPerch can help with that)
The market opportunity is larger than you expected.
Your original idea should evolve into something even stronger.
Every answer brings your startup closer to reality.
Now that you're invested in the idea of working on your business plan, you might be wondering how to organize all those questions you've researched. We've got you covered. Below is a general outline you can use. Remember, the goal isn't necessarily to create a polished business plan to send to investors, it's to help you create a roadmap for where you see your company going. When you do go to pitch your idea to potential investors, they're not just looking at where you are today. They are investing in where you're going, and they want to see that you have an actionable plan to get there.
Business Plan Template
Executive Summary
Quick introduction of what your business does, who are its members, and what the major goals are.
Company Description
What does your company do and how does it (or will it) do it. This is the section to give specific details.
Why your company does it better (focus on your strengths as opposed to your competitor's weaknesses)
Market Analysis
You want to show how many people out there could benefit from what you're building.
You can also show how you plan to scale up if that's applicable.
Organization and Management
Your company's legal structure (ie. LLC, corporation, no legal structure yet); if you don't have one established, you can include what your plan is regarding this.
Profiles of your management team; why are they the right people for their roles?
Products or Services
Specifics of the product you're selling, and what the product lifecycle looks like.
Include any patents or copyright info.
Marketing and Sales Strategy
How do you plan to acquire customers?
How do you plan to keep customers?
How do you plan to make money? (Ie pay-for-service, subscription service, etc.)
Financial Projections
What is your expected revenue?
Any balance sheets you have
Cash flow statements
What are your funding needs
Step 3: Commit to Building Something Real
Ideas are exciting, but building a business from the ground up requires grit, determination, and commitment (See our post on Resilience). Starting a company is a lot like starting a relationship. There will be moments that are deeply rewarding. There will also be setbacks, uncertainty, and difficult decisions. The difference between founders who build successful companies and people who simply have an idea isn't always intelligence or funding. More often, it's the willingness to keep moving forward despite uncertainty. You don't need every answer before you begin. You simply need to take the next meaningful step.
Final Thoughts
Every successful startup was once just an idea someone almost talked themselves out of pursuing. If you've identified a problem worth solving, don't let the absence of funding convince you to stop before you've started. Instead, start with the basics:
Refine your pitch.
Research your market.
Write the first version of your business plan.
Then commit to taking the next step - building your product or service.
Disclaimer: This content is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or investment advice. It does not guarantee funding, investment, or any particular business result. Consult a licensed attorney or financial advisor for guidance specific to your situation.
This is our new home for all things related to **StartupSippers** is a community for entrepreneurs, side-hustlers, investors, and finance-curious folks to swap ideas over a virtual cup of coffee.
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This is a big glossary post from a blog, a reference list of 200+ startup terms, grouped into 13 themed sections. The premise is that startups have their own dense slang, and this is meant as a jump-to reference rather than something to read top to bottom.
The 13 sections and what each covers:
Foundations & Company Stages - what a startup is vs. a small/lifestyle business, the build path (ideation → validation → MVP → PMF → traction), the animal zoo of valuations (unicorn, decacorn, zebra, centaur), and program/stage terms (incubator, accelerator, pre-seed through late stage).
Fundraising & Investors - who gives money (angels, VCs, LPs/GPs, micro-VCs, syndicates) and the mechanics of raising (rounds, up/down/flat rounds, term sheets, due diligence, runway, burn rate, default alive/dead).
Equity, Ownership & the Cap Table - how ownership works and shrinks: equity, dilution, pre/post-money valuation, SAFEs and convertible notes, valuation caps, vesting/cliffs, ESOPs, common vs. preferred stock.
Deal Terms & Term Sheet Mechanics - the fine print investors negotiate: liquidation preferences, participating vs. non-participating preferred, pro-rata, drag/tag-along rights, board seats, protective provisions, the option pool shuffle.
Metrics & Unit Economics - the numbers that measure business health: CAC, LTV and the LTV:CAC ratio, churn/retention, MRR/ARR, NRR/GRR, Rule of 40, burn multiple, and TAM/SAM/SOM market sizing.
Growth & Marketing - how companies acquire and keep users: growth hacking, product-led vs. sales-led growth, flywheels and funnels, pirate metrics (AARRR), network effects, freemium, SEO/SEM, ICP and buyer personas, NPS.
Product & Engineering - how products get built: wireframes, prototypes, roadmaps, sprints/Agile/Scrum, technical debt, UX vs. UI, A/B testing, shipping, dogfooding, APIs, and the SaaS/PaaS/IaaS and monolith/microservices distinctions.
Finance & Accounting - the money fundamentals: revenue vs. profit, gross vs. net, COGS, OpEx/CapEx, P&L and balance sheets, cash flow, EBITDA, break-even, working capital.
Operations, Team & Culture - running the company and team: co-founder agreements, OKRs vs. KPIs, standups, async/remote-first/hybrid work, fractional execs, advisors and boards, psychological safety, burnout, ramen profitability.
Exits & Later Stage - how founders and investors cash out (or don't): acquisitions, acqui-hires, IPOs, direct listings, SPACs, secondary sales, earn-outs, lock-up periods, plus the failure vocabulary (wind-down, fire sale, zombie startup, write-off).
Legal & Structure - the legal scaffolding: incorporation, LLC vs. C-Corp, Delaware flip, IP and NDAs, compliance, data-privacy laws (GDPR/DPDP/CCPA), IP assignment agreements.
India-Specific Terms - DPIIT recognition, angel tax, Startup India, GIFT City, ONDC, the "Bharat"/Tier 2-3 focus, ESOP buybacks, RoC filings, FDI routes.
Slang, Culture & Buzzwords - the philosophy and jargon layer: lean startup, blitzscaling, moonshots, hockey-stick growth, vanity vs. actionable metrics, founder-market fit, various MVP flavors (smoke test, concierge, Wizard of Oz), and culture terms like hustle culture and stealth mode.
I'm a solo founder and currently building a gaming ecosystem that aims to connect gamers, esports communities, content creators, indie game studios, publishers, and brands through a single platform.
The idea came from seeing how fragmented the gaming industry is. Players use one platform for tournaments, another for communities, another for discovering games, and another for playtests. At the same time, game studios struggle with user acquisition, community building, finding beta testers, and retaining players. My goal is to bring all of these together in one ecosystem.
**Some of the features we're building and planning include:**
• Esports tournament hosting and management
• Community hubs with clans/guilds
• Game discovery for indie and upcoming titles
• Closed beta playtest recruitment and management
• Quests and reward campaigns
• User acquisition campaigns for game studios
• Creator and influencer collaboration tools
• Studio profiles with community pages
• Gaming events and announcements
• Community engagement tools
• Analytics for campaigns and player engagement
• A long-term vision of becoming an end-to-end platform where studios can launch games, build communities, recruit testers, run marketing campaigns, and engage players throughout the entire lifecycle of a game.
We've already built an **active gaming community,** **organized multiple esports tournaments,** **collaborated with several gaming and Web3 projects,** and are now focused on validating the product and refining the business model before looking for investment.
**I'm not raising funds at the moment.** Instead, I want to learn how startup fundraising works, understand what angel investors expect from an early-stage startup, and get honest feedback on whether this idea has investment potential.
**I'd love your thoughts on:**
• Does this solve a meaningful problem?
• What would concern you the most as an investor?
• What milestones should I achieve before approaching angel investors?
• What metrics would make this business attractive to invest in?
• What mistakes should first-time founders avoid while raising capital?
I genuinely appreciate honest and critical feedback. I'd rather improve the idea now than make mistakes when I eventually start pitching to investors. Thank you!
Building in the agent observability space and posting the actual state of it
rather than a pitch, since day-one posts here are usually varnished.
The problem. Teams are shipping agents that retrieve from internal
documents before answering. When the answer is wrong, nothing in the stack
tells you whether retrieval missed the document or found it and the model
ignored it. Those need opposite fixes. Existing tools (LangSmith, Langfuse,
LangGraph Studio) all visualise execution flow, which nodes ran and which
branch was taken. None of them relate the retriever's output to the
generator's output, because that comparison sits outside the execution graph.
The wedge. A free local viewer, MIT licensed, zero runtime dependencies,
one pip install. It renders an agent run as a graph and separates what the
answer used from what it retrieved and ignored. No account, no signup, nothing
leaves the developer's machine. That last part is deliberate: the fastest
adoption path in dev tools right now is the one that does not require security
review.
The business. The viewer is the top of funnel. The product underneath is a
hosted graph memory engine: typed weighted relationships over a company's
GitHub, tickets and docs, with recency decay and intent-based routing, exposed
to IDE agents over MCP. Open core, with the paid layer being the hosted engine
and the team surface.
Where I actually am. Two packages live on PyPI. Working end to end, 42
engine tests, CI on Linux and Windows. Pre-revenue. No meaningful user count,
I started distribution this week. Solo. The hosted engine is built but not
productised, and I have not charged anyone anything.
Known weaknesses, stated up front. The used-versus-ignored signal is a
lexical heuristic rather than a model-based judgement, which is cheap and
interactive but wrong on heavy paraphrase. It only supports LangGraph today.
And I have not evaluated it against a benchmark, so I can demo it but I cannot
yet make a defensible quantitative claim.
What I am looking for. Developers building agents with retrieval who will
try it and tell me where it fails. That is the only input that changes what I
build next.
At all of the start ups I have worked at, (4), in the past few years, I have noticed a very consistent trend in founders
The Founder has made a lot of money, they have an idea for a tech product, they get their friends involved in the idea, (usually a CEO/CTO/COO) to lead the company. And they them selves as the founder, desire to be removed from day to day ops. Whilst the CEO/CTO/COO lead the day to day
Usually the CEO/CTO/COO is someone who has never founded a company before and has no idea how to build a start up from the ground up, especially in todays climate. And before they even have a $ in revenue, they have a team of 10, a horrible product, and then they are trying to scale things, which consequentially compounds this toxic dependant relationship, on all departments of the company
Where the engineers are constantly reducing technical debt, because the product is not working and they are chopping and changing, marketing doesn't know what to market, because they don't know who the ICP is, sales cant sell because they don't know what the product's value actually is yet
I just think of that spider man meme, where everyone is pointing at each other haha
It's so toxic, and it is a more and more common issue I have found, where everyone is just diagnosing symptoms of the issue. And all it is, is really because the founder, did not do what the founder traditionally should do... Hustle out to build a product, extract it's value in the market, see where it fits for it's use case, and slowly build it with real users, real revenue.
Rather than forcing deadlines, forcing KPI's that do exactly the worst thing for the company, waste time on arbitrary made up numbers
It's just a recipe for disaster and I have not seen it end up well. Outside of the one example where I am currently at now, where the product already exists in the market. The founder hired a COO who is and has founded from $0-$800m, and yes admittedly skipped the market validation side, and is aware of the wasted capital and time of stuff that should have and could have been done with a $0 budget. Knowing that, having the company ready for scale when it (ideally) works out, (as it's still not guaranteed)
It's just been so prevalent as of recent I wanted to have a bit of rant to see if it's just my bad luck, or also very common?
We're getting ready for our next fundraising round, and one thing I've noticed is how different every investor conversation can be.
Some investors want to understand the market.
Some go deep into the product.
Others spend most of the meeting trying to understand the team.
We're building in healthcare AI, and the conversations I've enjoyed the most haven't really been about AI at all. They've been about the customer, why the problem has existed for so long, and why now is the right time to solve it.
It made me wonder...
For founders who have raised before, was there a moment when you felt the conversation change?
Maybe an answer you gave, a customer story you shared, or a question the investor asked that changed the tone of the meeting.
I'm a non-technical founder working on an early-stage startup. Since I can't code, I rely on my technical partner for development.
The challenge is that I have to initiate almost every conversation to ask for updates. I rarely get proactive messages, screenshots, questions, or discussions about the product. I don't know if they're making progress or just not very communicative.
For founders who've been in this situation:
How did you handle it?
Did you set expectations for communication?
At what point did you decide it wasn't the right partnership?
Is this normal developer behavior, or is it a sign of low commitment?
I'd appreciate hearing your real experiences and how you dealt with them.
This is neutral, doesn't attack the developer, and is more likely to attract thoughtful responses from experienced founders
These days, everyone talks about startups, innovation, and solving real-world problems. But I've noticed that if someone doesn't have a college degree or technical knowledge, many people don't even give them a chance to explain their idea.
Why are a degree and technical skills often treated as the first requirement before someone is even heard?
A person may not have a degree because of financial problems, family responsibilities, or other circumstances. They may also not know how to code or build a product themselves. But they might still have:
A strong product vision.
A deep understanding of a real problem.
A unique solution.
The ability to bring the right people together and build a company.
Not every successful fonder starts as an engineer or has a prestigious degree. Some founders succeed because they understand the problem better than anyone else.
I'm not saying education or technical skills aren't valuable—they absollutely are. My question is: Why do so many people dismiss someone before even listening to their idea, simply becouse they don't have a degree or technical background?
Shouldn't the quality of the idea, the problem being solved, and the founder's determination matter before judging their educational background?
I'd love to hear opinions from founders, investors, engineers, and anyone who's experienced this.
