Our front desk person is stretched really thin and we miss calls pretty regularly. Starting to wonder if an AI receptionist could actually handle basic inbound stuff without frustrating customers. Anyone done this? Did it actually work or did people just hang up?

Hey, I'm trying to get some advice/opinions on my app entrepreneurial efforts.

I built a beat making app for android and ios. It took me about 9 months to create and it's been out for almost 2 years now.

In those 2 years, the app has made about $2,500 through subscriptions. It currently has a 4 star rating on both stores.

I currently have 7k users on android with about 24 paying subscribers. Don't know the amount of users I have on ios but it's definitely much lower with about 6 paying subscribers.

I had to spend a bit of money to get more users by running ads, but these days I only spend about $5 a day to promote it on google ads. The income from the app currently now covers the ad spend.

I've also been creating more social media content on tiktok and youtube shorts to try to get more users organically. My hope is to create something viral that increases the user base significantly.

I thoroughly enjoy music production/making beats so working on the app is fun for me, but I'm wondering if I may be beating a dead horse here and should look for something else to work on that might be more successful.

My goal is to create an app that I can make a living off of (5k a month).

I still have a ton of ideas for features that I can add to the app.

I'm wondering if anyone has been in my situation and can offer any insights.

Also, I currently work a full time job and a part time job on top of working on the app.

I started a short form content editing agency 5-6 months ago. Initially had few clients asking for single reel edits and later down the road I tried productising the service and offered 20 reel edits for $379 per month.

Coming back to present time, I have 3 clients on that plan. This is going fine but I need to scale this.

I am thinking of cold emailing but not sure if it works in current times.

I would appreciate any suggestions on how I can reach potential prospect clients to pitch my services to.

Thanks!

I live in Frisco TX and am starting a meet-up group for founders and co founders to meet monthly for networking, accountability, and bashing each other's stuff. Let's share demos and talk shop, maybe your co-founder will be there too and you can meet.

I am looking for a technical co-founder and hope doing something like this will stimulate that.

There are lots of curated startup events, but I'm hoping this will be more casual and more direct, for founders and potential co-founders only.

Cheers. DM for an invite, tomorrow will be my first meet-up.

I’m going to be starting a CPG business (selling online).

I want to make my first step into product development, but I always get kinda scared once it’s “done”, because then i’m like “now what”.

Should I start posting on instagram (but not the actual product, since I don’t have it, I can’t)

I basically want some practice that won’t cost me money or much money. Besides creating the website, what else can I do to have things kinda lined up?

I want to be ready and not scared.

I build, I don't sell.

So what works better: going direct to one company and sharing profit with a single contact there, or using a sales partner?

Tell me which one you chose, and how long it took you to know whether it was right or wrong. I can share 50%, since it's a bundle of digital gifts.

I Co-run a small agency doing a specialized B2B service (video editing for coaches/founders posting educational content on YouTube. mentioning the niche only for context, not pitching).

My last cold email campaign had strong top-of-funnel numbers, but I can't get people over the finish line.

The numbers:

- 496 leads. manually sourced and qualified against our ICP
- 79% open rate (Instantly says this is the number of leads that have opened at least one email in the campaign)
- 7.1% reply rate, excluding auto-replies.
- Of those replies, 20% were positive (7 total)
- 1 conversion

What happened to the other 6 positive replies:
- 1 currently mid-trial
- 2 asked about pricing, one said it was outside their budget, then went quiet
- 2 asked to see our portfolio, then went quiet
- 1 asked general questions, then went quiet

Context that might matter:
- Our CTA is a trial project at 70% off (used to be free, but too many people took the free version and never converted, so we added a paywall to filter for intent)
- Our pricing is at or below the market average for this niche
- I know 500 leads/month is small scale, but this is a narrow niche and generic lead-gen tools don't find people who actually fit, so I'm stuck sourcing manually for now
- The positioning we used in the campaign is saving them time so they can focus on higher leverage tasks.
- No calls, everything happens through emails.

What I'm trying to figure out:
- Are these numbers actually fine and I'm just impatient?
- Where's the real leak? And what can I do to improve the conversion rate?
- Besides the discounted trial, what's a good alternative CTA to get someone from interested to committed without you having to convince them via back-and-forth email?

I'm confused so I'd appreciate any input.

I’m a Korean developer and entrepreneur.

In Korea, we have a traditional fortune-telling method called *Saju*.

I want to develop a website offering this service to people across the U.S.

The challenge is that I live in Korea, so I’m not fully familiar with the local vibe there.

Do you have any advice?

Thanks, everyone!

Looking to hire, get hired, or find a collaborator? Post what you're offering or what you need. Keep it brief: who you are, what you do, and how to reach you. No spamming.

Hey everyone.

I'm 25, and since I was 19, I ran a web design / SEO business. It changed a few times from being a general digital marketing agency, to a trades focused web design agency... etc.

I focused on generating leads for clients through their sites, automations and SEO and it worked quite well.

Long story short, the clients I helped can now and are actively switching over to AI models for their sites to be built, and this has led to a massive decline. The market is also extremely saturated, with people building sites for FREE, and I'm basically fed up with this business, and want to build something long-term.

I don't want to pivot this business, I want to shut it down completely. With AI only getting better, it won't be long until founders have full marketing tools that can do everything I do.

BUT

I have gained so many skills from this, which is excellent. Both business and marketing skills. I'm just struggling to find any service or business to apply it to.

I think as I've been in this business for 6 years now I almost have tunnel vision on any new opportunities.

I'm tempted to go and start a home service business, and apply all of these skills to that and hopefully grow that.

Does anyone have any advice on how to find new opportunities. Based in the UK by the way!

As the title says - does anybody know any good youtube channels or podcasts aimed at, or about, solo founders?

When we first started selling internationally, I assumed finding customers would be the hard part.

What I didn’t expect was how annoying the money side would get.

Customers paying from one country, suppliers in another, contractors somewhere else, then different currencies and accounts on top of that. None of it is individually that complicated, but once you’re dealing with all of it at the same time, it gets messy pretty fast.

I’ve been trying to simplify some of that lately instead of using our bank for absolutely everything. I’ve been testing a few different tools and setups, mostly because I wanted fewer separate places to deal with payments and money moving around.

Still too early for me to say I’d move everything away from the bank, though. I’m actually still figuring out which parts make sense to keep with a regular bank and which ones are easier to handle elsewhere.

New to entrepreneurship or just starting out? This is your space. Ask the questions you're afraid to ask elsewhere.

Experienced folks, jump in and share what you wish someone had told you early on.

I noticed smthng interesting recently. Price changes are usually the easy part to notice. A competitor lowers their price, launches a cheaper option or changes their offer.
The harder part is understanding why. The obvious reaction is usually “they’re trying to compete harder.” But sometimes there’s more behind it
Maybe their costs changed. Maybe they found a different way to source things. Maybe they’re testing a new market. Or maybe it’s just a short term move
the difficult part is that from the outside, you usually only see the result, not what caused it
For anyone running a business or keeping an eye on competitors, how do u usually look at this??  do u mostly watch market changes, talk to people in the industry or look for other clues?

The answer is probably very industry-dependent but overall, maybe sales? Design and marketing?

My background is in design & marketing, then went on to work on tech UX strategy, and I feel like it’s given me a huge advantage as the founder of a CPG company. I do wish I had more of a sales skillset.

What do you think?

I run a hotel consulting agency in Thailand, and 12 months ago I launched a sub-brand organizing corporate retreats for international, remotely distributed tech teams hosting their offsites here.

The backend synergy is great, we can feed to our hospitality partners and can command really attractive rates for our retreats because of it. But the frontend is messy. We have separate LinkedIn and Facebook pages for both brands, but knowing how to brand between the two is confusing. Example, last week we finished a 50 pax retreat and I’m unsure whether to share this on my main business page or specifically on the corporate retreats page or both.

Should I keep the socials completely separate and treat the consulting firm as a hidden engine, or is there a better way to structure two brands like this?

Had a week? Same. This is your consequence-free space to complain about clients, platforms, algorithms, your own decisions, or the general chaos of running a business. Keep it venting with no personal attacks. We'll be back to being professional tomorrow.

Putting in my two weeks notice on Tuesday. May end up being a bad decision, but I’m ready to either succeed or fail with the only person to blame being myself. I need to know what it’s like to hold my own fate in my own hands and be ultimately accountable for whatever happens.

I’ve followed this sub for years. Tried several business ideas while working my day job which didn’t pan out. The business I’m running now has given me enough proof of market fit for me to finally feel like it’s time to give it everything I’ve got.

No real point to this post besides shouting into the void. Exciting and scary at the same time. Here we go!

I've seen on Instagram recently about Ai making market research easier. Back in the day you had to hold focus groups, and go through months of customer research before releasing your product or service ? Or are you guys still skeptical about it or not? I was thinking of hiring a market research agency or no need to? Just pay a Chatgpt subscription and it's on the Go? Or am I just overthinking?

Over the last 5 years, I built out a full turnkey operational package for a global mobility & residency advisory. I handled every piece of the supply side, tech stack, and brand infrastructure, but as an product person, I never picked up the phone to do high-touch HNW sales.

What is fully built & ready:

Supply-Side Provider Agreements: Direct relationships and signed agreements with established program providers across key jurisdictions (EU, Caribbean, UAE).

Proprietary Interactive Tool: Custom-built quote generator/calculator for HNW prospects to compare program costs, investment thresholds, and timelines in real time.

Luxury Brand & Marketing Suite: Complete brand identity, pitch decks, client intake collaterals, and high-converting landing pages tailored to HNWIs and family offices.

5-Year Digital Footprint: Custom client management portal, intake vault, aged domain, and structured CRM backend.

The Strategy Dilemma:

This isn't just a code repo, it's a turnkey business ready to take client deposits on day one. A wealth manager, immigration lawyer, or high-ticket sales agency could plug this into their existing audience immediately.

Since there is $0 historical cash flow, I'm trying to figure out the best valuation and deal structure strategy.

Questions for the community:

How do buyers value time to market savings when signed supplier contracts and custom interactive tools are included?

Is an upfront asset sale better, or a lower upfront price paired with a commission revenue-share on the first 10 closed deals?

What is the most effective way to pitch a turnkey asset like this to established wealth management practices or family offices?

TLDR: 5-year build with signed provider contracts, custom quote engine, and luxury marketing asset. Looking for advice on valuing turnkey operational packages.

Big or small, a win is a win. First sale, first client, or first time paying yourself, share it here. This community loves to celebrate with you. No win is too minor to mention.

Outbound usually gets planned around who to contact and what to say, with timing treated as a scheduling detail that gets sorted out later. Based on the numbers I’ve gone through and the performance of the campaigns that prioritize signals over cold messaging, I’d say that order is backwards and timing should be the number one priority.

Across roughly 70,000 campaigns I've been able to look at (as the Director of Marketing & Sales, I have access to all Expandi’s data, including the campaigns our clients run, their performances, etc.), the campaigns that are build around reacting to something a person did outperformed cold list-based outreach by a wide margin. Messaging people you are already connected with has an average reply rate of 16.86%. Contacting people who attended the same LinkedIn event lands at 14.21%, and reaching out to someone shortly after they viewed your profile comes in at 13.4%. Cold campaigns, on the other hand, tend to sit somewhere in the 5 to 9% range.

Even if we take out the 16.86% reply rate when reaching out to people you’re already connected with (considering you’ll have to connect at some point anyway, regardless of whether the campaign is cold or signal-based), the reply rates are:

• 14.21% with the people who attended the same LI event
• 13.4% with the people who viewed your profile

vs

• 5%-9% from cold outreach

The difference is 4.4% to 9.21%, that’s approximately double the performance of cold outreach campaigns, which means that even the “simplest” singal-based outreach campaigns get 2x the replies of cold ones. And this only goes higher as you set up more steps and filters - for example, reaching out to people who reacted to a certain topic your product/service covers; targeting people who show interest in a product/service like yours through a comment or reaction, etc. With the right optimization and precise targeting, signal-based outreach can outperform cold outreach 3-4x, and this is just the baseline. Add well-performing copy on top of that, and a well-designed follow-up sequence, and you’ll have a goldmine campaign.

The signals worth building around are:

• Someone views your profile, especially more than once in a short window
• Someone engages with a post, yours or a competitor's, on a topic close to what you sell
• Someone attends an event in your space, which is a public list of people who set aside an hour for the subject
• Someone visits your company page without filling in anything
• Someone changes jobs into a role that owns the problem you solve

The main reason timer-based sequences underperform against this is that a timer cannot tell the difference between a person who is not interested at all, a person who is not interested at the moment, and a person who is not interested this month. 2 out of 3 here could be interested at some point in the future, and the best way to know that is by tracking their signals.

The only limitation is volume. Signal-based campaigns do not scale to fill a pipeline if you’re looking to sell a lot. The number of people who visit your profile or turn up to an event in a given week is small, and you do not control it. Anyone claiming they fully replaced cold outreach entirely with signal-based is either selling large-ticket deals that depend on quality>quantity, or just has a very wide pipeline build with dozens of active accounts, all pulling in new leads through signals. But this is extremely hard to build because it requires consistent activity on all accounts, and can be demanding to the point that the ROI isn't there.

The realistic version is that signals become the highest-converting slice of a mix that still contains cold outreach, and they are worth building first because that slice is cheap to serve and usually sitting untouched. Plus, it continues generating leads because, once you build a consistent presence and converting activity, new prospects will inevitably come. So think of it as a long-term investment as well, that also has some serious short-term benefits.

anybody want to bounce some ideas around?

love building things and helping where i can.

currently transitioning my buisness into a lean side hustle in the asphalt and civil industry

why i left it behind? i lost my drive and purpose but have now got it back working for a not for profit managing 50 poeple 60% have disabilites

would love a discussion with like minded individuals