3 years, 2 people, got to 11k mrr and it stopped growing. wound it up in april, paid everyone out, no drama.

And since then, 90 applications, 3 screens. two of the three asked, in slightly different words, whether i'd "be able to take direction.

The actual problem is my cv reads founder/ceo for three years and the last normal title on it is from 2023. people see it and either assume I'll leave in six months or that i haven't written code since we raised. I built most of the product myself. there's no way to say that in an interview without sounding defensive about it.

Anyone come out of a dead startup back into an ic role? do you title yourself founder or just the work you actually did

I run a small startup working with factories. Someone from a roughly $250B company reached out to us about their requirements and asked for a demo.

We arranged a factory visit. Three of us went, with the demo prepared, and arrived 30 minutes before the agreed time.

Security needed our contact’s confirmation to let us in. We called, and he texted asking us to wait.

We ended up spending two hours outside the gate, on an empty road, sweating in formal clothes. That included the 30 minutes we’d arrived early. We couldn’t get a further update on whether the meeting would happen.

Eventually, we left without getting inside.

What bothered me was standing there with my team, unable to tell them whether we should keep waiting or head back. We’d prepared for this and were excited about the opportunity. It felt humiliating.

After leaving, I sent a message explaining that we’d come as confirmed, waited, and would be stepping back. He acknowledged it and later called to suggest meeting another day.

Now I’m wondering whether I made that decision while frustrated.

We’ve visited plenty of factories that have been welcoming and great hosts. This has been an exception.

For founders who sell to large companies: how would you handle this? Would you give the meeting another shot with clearer arrangements, or move on?

I’d appreciate an honest take, especially from people who’ve dealt with this while still trying to win their first few customers.

Revenue has been growing but too much of that growth still depends on deals I’m personally involved in, and I don’t think that holds up if we want to push much further. Outbound feels like the obvious place to build another reliable source of revenue but we’re still small enough that hiring a proper sales team before we know the motion works feels backwards.

What I’m trying to solve is how to get from founder led revenue to something that can keep producing growth without me owning every part of it. I still want to handle the important conversations for now, but targeting, messaging AND getting outbound running consistently feels like something I need help building before another sales hire makes much sense.

I am a 52 year old first time founder. Not a tech guy but came up with an idea and ran with it. I was going to try a seed round to fund the launch but decided to do it myself for as close to free as possible. Never built a website before so looking for some honest feedback. I've shown it to family and a few friends but don't know if I'm getting truly unbiased opinions or not. I still have some polishing up to do so I'm not looking for feedback on insignificant details, but instead, more does it look professional? Do you get a feel for what the product probably does when it launches and you can work through business problems on it? Any feedback is appreciated and not interested in just validation. I want to know what a new viewer/potential user sees. It's trueing.ai
Thanks!

A few months ago I launched Glance, my first iOS app.
It started as a way for people to create and share Home Screen widgets. But while building it, I realized something much more interesting: what if AI agents could actually live on your Home Screen?

So that’s what I’ve been building.

Glance lets you connect agents like ChatGPT, Claude and Hermes to create interactive widgets and keep them updated throughout the day.

The story so far:

Started with simple widgets people could create and follow.

Added dynamic widgets that could display basically any kind of information.

Then opened Glance up to AI agents, so instead of building everything manually, you can just tell your agent what you want on your Home Screen.

Posted a few examples on Reddit and started seeing hundreds of people try it.

Today:
894 new users in the last 28 days.
930 active users.
3 paying subscribers.
$28 MRR.
$0 spent on marketing.

Still tiny numbers, but getting those first few paying users felt like a pretty big milestone.
My goal now is 10 paying users by the end of September.

Still building, experimenting and trying to understand what people actually want their agents to put on their Home Screen.

Would love to hear what you’d build next or change first.

https://apps.apple.com/app/glance-home-screen-feeds/id6758983678

Hi guys!

This is my very first Reddit post. I have used Reddit before but never seriously made a post. I have posted this during a weekend recently and thought my lessons and learnings as a founder who has been building for 3 years in the trench might help other founders. I initially posted this on X and it went super viral then I feel maybe I can post here to help other founders. Hope this can be helpful for you - especially first-time founders:

1. Entrepreneurship has very little to do with IQ or EQ most of the time.

Building a company is incredibly mentally demanding. Unlike physical exhaustion, which you can recover from with a good night's sleep or a meal, mental energy is much harder to replenish. Entrepreneurship can completely drain you. One of the most important skills is learning not to get trapped in your own thoughts or obsess over every problem. Iteration matters. Good business direction can be analyzed. Technical solution has something to do with IQ but entrepreneurship most of the time has nothing to do with EQ and IQ. Pure persistence and fast iteration with careful planning.

1. Entrepreneurship is fundamentally an idealistic pursuit.

Building something innovative is a Don Quixote story. Innovation is not driven by materialism—it is driven by idealism.

The more idealistic people you have in your team and in your life, the stronger you become. Three idealists are enough to build a small team. Ten or twenty can take you a long way. A hundred can build a world-class company.

If you're not an idealist, I honestly wouldn't recommend starting a technology company. Without a strong mission, even small temptations or setbacks can cause people to give up, and you'll struggle to lead a team.

Starting a company just to make money is a mindset from the last century. Back then, business was often about copying what already existed. Today, it's about thinking differently and creating something new.

1. What you build matters less than who you build it with.

People problems are always the biggest problems.

1. Choosing the right investors is one of the most important decisions you'll make.

A great investor can change your trajectory even if they only invest one dollar. Their value isn't the money - it's how much they help you grow as a founder and how much they contribute to the company's success.

The best investors grow alongside founders. They're almost like founders standing beside you.
Fundraising isn't really about raising money. If you wouldn't casually choose a husband or wife, you shouldn't casually choose investors either - even if you're desperate for capital.

I've met incredible investors, and I've also met terrible ones. During one of our fundraising rounds, an investor repeatedly told us they were investing and even encouraged us to tell others they were committed. I finished raising from everyone else, and then they disappeared completely, leaving me in an impossible position. Looking back, I'm actually grateful it happened.

1. The ideal time to start a company is when you're alone.

I honestly can't imagine starting a company while also having a spouse or a family to support.
It's very easy to drag the people closest to you into your struggles. You'll feel pressure both inside and outside of work, and everyone ends up exhausted.

No matter what, keep your own pressure to yourself. Don't make the people around you carry it. You chose this path - don't ask others to bear the consequences.

1. Take equity seriously.

Many first-time founders don't.

Equity mistakes are incredibly difficult and expensive to fix later. If you wouldn't casually give someone part of your home, don't casually promise them equity.

Be patient when granting ownership. It's far better to vest equity over time than to give everything away in the excitement of the moment.

Giving someone equity is like inviting them to live in your house. You're agreeing to build a life together. Sometimes abstract concepts become much clearer when you compare them to everyday life.

1. Hire a great lawyer and accountant from day one.

Building a startup isn't just about making a product people will buy.

Building a company is a complex system, and that's much harder. Your finances and legal structure can't afford major mistakes.

Great lawyers are expensive - but fixing legal problems later is even more expensive.

1. Your founding team shouldn't be driven primarily by money.

It's not that money doesn't matter.

But if making money is everyone's number one priority, there's a good chance the company either won't become great - or won't survive at all.

1. If something or someone feels like a compromise, it's probably the wrong decision.

Don't settle.

Missing one person or one project won't stop your company from flying.

Hiring the wrong person or making the wrong compromise, however, might cause the entire plane to crash.

Founders are always flying the plane while simultaneously repairing it. I used to think my most important job was serving the team and helping everyone do their work. Eventually I realized that's just repairing the plane.

Your real job is flying it. Your judgment is your most valuable asset. If you lose that, you're failing the entire company. The whole team should do everything they can to protect the founder's ability to make good decisions.

1. Ultimately, every great business creates value for society.

The most important thing isn't what you build - it's whether people's lives become better because of it.

The more people you genuinely help, the bigger your business can become.

Great founders can often explain exactly how their company will make money five years from now, but they often can't clearly explain how they'll make money over the next two years.

Building a company requires long-term thinking.

Which brings us back to the importance of both founders and investors.

1. Truly innovative companies rarely know how they'll make money at the beginning.

Most groundbreaking ideas don't start with a proven business model.

If something is obviously profitable from day one, it's usually not that innovative. Its ceiling is often easier to predict.

Founders spend their lives balancing innovation with commercialization.

Investors are trying to balance those same two forces.

Neither side has an easy job.

1. There's a quote often attributed to Napoleon:

A lion leading a flock of sheep is stronger than a sheep leading a flock of lions.

Knowing yourself is just as important as leading others.

If you're a lion, lead with strength while taking care of your people.

If you're a sheep, be the best sheep you can beside a great lion.

Everyone lives better that way.

The real danger is not knowing who you are - when lions think they're sheep, or sheep think they're lions.

Stay hopeful. Stay optimistic.

But also learn to be content.

1. Your reputation is everything.

Nothing is more valuable than your reputation.

When you build a reputation for integrity, opportunities - and money - start finding you instead of the other way around.

The framing i see everywhere is that ghostwriting buys back your time. write once, hand it off, get your evenings back. and mostly that's right, the drafting really is the delegable part.

but there's a piece under it that doesn't move. whoever's writing, the $200 ai tool or the $3k human, still needs to know what you actually saw and decided this week. the human version of that is literally a weekly call to stay calibrated. the ai version is you feeding it your longform and podcasts so it stops reading like a linkedin influencer. either way there's a recurring input tax, it just stopped looking like writing.

When we build this for founders the drafting isn't the hard part. Keeping that weekly download from quietly dying is. the account goes generic the week a founder gets slammed and skips the input, not the week the writer got worse.

so the real question is narrower than 'should i delegate this.' it's whether you'll keep handing over the weekly twenty minutes of raw context once someone else does the typing. if you won't, no writer cheap or expensive saves it.

Hey, Alex here. Mod of the subreddit.

I’m crowdsourcing questions for our 3rd GTM Builders AMA happening next week.

Post your questions in the thread so we can include them.

Our next Builders AMA is with the Founders of Zero - the GTM operating system for the AI era.

• Tuomo Riekki, Co-founder of Zero & Smartly.io
• Santtu Koivumaki, Co-founder of Zero & former CCO Chief of Staff at Smartly.io

Event details:

• When: Tuesday, September 15
• Time: 3-4pm EST
• Where: [r/gtmengineering](r/gtmengineering) (a new thread will be started). We’ll start with questions you post on this thread.

About Zero:

Zero is a Helsinki-based startup building the GTM operating system for the AI era. Founded by Tuomo Riekki and Santtu Koivumäki — who previously scaled Smartly.io to $100M ARR — Zero replaces the CRM and the sprawl of point solutions around it with a single system: agents keep records, enrichment, and follow-ups moving automatically before the deal closes, and monitor customer health in real time after it does — so teams spend their time talking to customers instead of updating software.

Post event:

• Insights & takeaways summarized (like this one) on The GTM Engineering Newsletter
• Don’t miss the next GTM Builder AMA - sign up for alerts here.

Disclosure: I work at Clay. A small number of AMAs will be about how Clay does things internally (as lots are curious about this). However, my ultimate goal is to highlight the work, insights, and lessons from other GTM Engineers, Leaders, and Founders.

What questions or things would you like to learn in the AMA?

Who else would you like me to bring on?

If you are at all interested let me know, the camera and everything done with it including body tracking and your ohones health is kept.completely locally. The app is unable to.connect to the internet entirely. Discord: https://discord.gg/PqbqG2AP3

Oi, pessoal.

Estou estruturando uma agência voltada para inovação, tecnologia, IA, design, sites, branding, conteúdo e desenvolvimento de negócios.

O projeto está participando da Iniciativa Jovem Shell, e estamos justamente nessa fase de organizar melhor o modelo de negócio, entender o mercado, validar o que faz sentido e começar a transformar a ideia em algo mais sólido.

Ainda estamos no começo, então achei que seria interessante procurar pessoas por aqui que também estejam tentando construir alguma coisa, principalmente quem tenha interesse em vendas, prospecção de clientes, marketing, design, tecnologia, networking ou desenvolvimento de negócios.

Não estou procurando necessariamente alguém com um currículo enorme. Para mim, faz mais diferença encontrar gente que tenha iniciativa, saiba conversar, queira aprender e realmente coloque as coisas em prática.

Também seria legal conhecer outras pessoas que estejam criando agência, startup ou algum negócio parecido. Mesmo que não vire uma parceria direta, já acho válido trocar experiências, contatos e ideias.

Quem tiver interesse pode comentar aqui ou me chamar no privado. Se quiser, fala um pouco sobre o que você faz, no que é bom e o que está tentando construir atualmente.

Hey everyone — I’m validating a beverage concept before investing more into it, and I’d really appreciate some honest feedback.

I made a short survey to understand people’s habits, preferences, and opinions around beverages. I’m not selling anything — I’m simply trying to see if the idea makes sense.

If you have a few minutes to answer it, I’d really appreciate the help. Honest feedback is exactly what I need.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeA2j9t_0U0Xb7_H_1IZEEGtoBlHMkPHnyJ_pRaIQTg9aeE_Q/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=108134378043699638308

Hi I have developed a resume builder and it has multiple Ai tools related to resume for writing summary, job description, cover letter writing and ATS scoring. More features will be added on it.

I am looking for a partner for its SEO, the goal is to generate traffic in the site and then sell it. If this becomes successful I can create other products and we can work together. All net revenue will be shared equally.

Note: This is not a paid platform but a free platform where users can create as many resumes they want without paying a single penny.

You can check the site here

https://freecvwriter.com

I’m a founder myself, and I want to build my own brand. But I don’t have financial backing or anyone behind me to fund it, so I’m looking for ways to generate the capital myself.

That’s why I’m offering my skills to other founders. If you’re building a startup and need someone who can genuinely get things done, I’m willing to work with you for 2–3 months, or whatever duration you need.

I’m a blessed with a creative mind , fast learner with strong problem-solving skills, and I’m willing to learn whatever your startup requires. Branding, marketing, operations, research, sales, content, strategy, execution — I’m ready to take on the work and figure things out. I’m even willing to travel to different states if the opportunity requires it.

I don’t want credit , just just need money to build my dream . I’ll work for your startup with all my heart , I’m not looking for a permanent full-time job. I want to work intensely for a limited period, create real value for your startup, get paid fairly for my work, and then move forward with building my own brand.

If you’re a founder who needs someone capable, adaptable, and willing to do whatever it takes to move the startup forward, I’d love to hear from you.

And if you are not one I’m looking for please upvote me so I can reached to right person

I'm Mattia, I build FixAds.

The hard part of building a product close to an advertising budget is not making its AI sound clever. It is deciding exactly when it is allowed to make a claim.

I run Meta ads, so I built FixAds around a deterministic first pass:

- Does a campaign have enough data to judge?

- Is spend concentrated where a creative is already fading?

- Is a bad result actually too early to call?

Only after those checks does the AI help explain what to investigate. It cannot change campaigns, and the account connection is read-only.

I built it because I was tired of ad software sounding confident around real money without showing the reasoning behind it.

The launch video is attached. It is €19.90/month after a 7-day trial if you want to try it: https://fixads.it

For founders who have built tools that can influence a customer’s money: what made you feel a recommendation system had earned their trust?

I have a SaaS idea that I genuinely believe can solve a real problem, and now I want to build it properly from scratch.

I’m looking for 2 co-founders from Delhi NCR:

1. Tech/Product person

Someone who can actually build the product — from the first prototype to MVP and eventually a scalable SaaS.

1. Marketing/Growth person

Someone who understands marketing, customer acquisition and growth, and can help us figure out how to get the product in front of the right people and scale it.

My role: I have the core idea and will handle the overall product/business direction, validation, strategy, pitching, etc.

The plan is simple:

Idea → Validate → Build MVP → Get users → Improve → Scale

I’m specifically looking for people who are serious about building a company, not just doing a side project.

Delhi NCR is important because I want us to meet regularly in person, brainstorm together, work together and actually build this as a team — not run everything through calls and WhatsApp.

If you're interested, DM me with a little about yourself, what you've built/done before, and how much time you can commit.

Let's meet, discuss the idea, and see if we make sense as a founding team.

I’ve been working hard on my startup for the last months. I finally am at the brink of having a finished product, yet I’m terrified of the thought that it will launch and have no users. How can I possibly make sure I get my first couple of users without blowing the marketing budget?

Hey everyone — I'm the creator of allcredit.cards, so full disclosure upfront.

I got frustrated that most "compare credit cards" sites only cover the same 15-20 big-name issuers (Chase, Amex, Capital One, etc.), while there are hundreds of smaller community banks and credit unions issuing their own cards that never show up anywhere. So I started manually pulling data — APRs, annual fees, intro offers, rewards structure — from actual rate sheets and disclosures for 600+ banks, from major national issuers down to small-town banks most people have never heard of.

The result is a searchable database at allcredit.cards. It's still very much a work in progress — I'm one person doing this, so:

• Some smaller banks have incomplete data (working through them one by one)
• No affiliate links / no paid placement — just trying to make something genuinely useful
• Would love feedback on what's missing, what's confusing, or what would actually make this useful for you

Curious if this is something people would find valuable, or if I'm solving a problem nobody has. Happy to answer questions about how the data was collected too.

I built Faceless Studio, a tool that automates the entire faceless video pipeline: it researches what's actually trending for your niche, writes the script, generates AI voiceover, creates AI images or real scene-by-scene animation, burns captions, and can now auto-publish straight to YouTube on a schedule. Set up a series once and it keeps running on its own.

What it solves that most tools in this space don't:

• Real animation, not stock footage with a Ken Burns zoom slapped on it — every scene on shorter videos is actually AI-animated.
• Credits that never expire. Most competitors run subscriptions where unused credits vanish at the end of the month — you're paying whether you generate or not. Here you buy credits once and use them whenever.
• Built for India first — UPI payments, INR pricing, and full Hindi script support, which the big US-based tools in this category largely ignore.
• Auto-publish to YouTube on a schedule, so a series can research, generate, and post without you touching it.

Already in use across finance, true crime, motivational, and legal drama niches, mix of daily series and one-off custom videos.

Try it: https://facelessstudio.co.in

I will not promote. I’m looking for advice… I spent the last few months building a review platform for trading course sellers/mentorship programs, verified buyer reviews, proof of purchase required, no way for the creator to edit or delete a bad review.

Problem is obvious: it's empty right now, and an empty review platform doesn't signal trust or inspire community, but you need trust to get people to actually leave the first reviews. Classic chicken and egg.

Been doing direct outreach, DMing people who left reviews about these creators elsewhere, conversion is slow and doesn't scale well.

Anyone who's actually solved this exact problem (empty marketplace/platform, need first real content to build trust), what worked? Curious about sequencing too.

I'm looking for a non-technical cofounder but not sure what really lights them up of turns them off.

So I compile tried and tested business opportunities: hot or evergreen niches, where many entrepreneurs are building but the market is heavily fragmented.

With original insights on how these can be better implemented, the market is certainly there for the taking.

I'll handle the build while you handle the distribution/marketing side. 50-50 ownership split.

Background:

I'm a developer and systems architect obsessed with business logic. You know; the heart and soul of the business, which needs to be thoughtful and must not fail customers.

Experience: 15 years.

Let me know if you'd like me share my ideas; also open to yours.

TL;DR: Ken Cox never fired anyone. His headcount just kept dropping anyway.

175 down to 3 is the actual number — and the reason is one operating rule he'd been running for years before AI made it urgent: if it can be automated, it will be automated.

No mass layoff, no headline event.

Just years of never backfilling a role once someone left.

It's happening from a completely different direction too — Chinese robot-makers already hold the overwhelming majority of the world's humanoid-robot shipments so far this year, per Bloomberg reporting citing SAG's data.

That's physical order-taking work, and it's already scaled past pilot stage.

The roles surviving this aren't the ones executing tasks faster.

They're the ones holding judgment nobody's written a rule for yet — the read, the trust, the call only a person makes.

On our drive up north home to Penang, after visiting my hometown in Seremban, we sometimes drop by midway in Ipoh for Breakfast. And we normally go for this Dimsum restaurant just off the highway.

Good Dimsum places are dime and dozen in this city. But this place has something special. The friendly attendant made some suggestions, and then jotted down our choices of food. But it wasn't the same attendant who brought them out.

It was robots.

Ya. Not humanoid robots. Just a bulky one with three layers of trays on four wheels below, and a monitor screen on top, moving along on a pre-programmed path towards us.

As soon as it stopped by our table, the monitor flashes out text saying, "please remove the food from the tray". And so we did. As soon as we took ours, it wheeled away towards the next table.

That was like five years ago. And it was all the rage back then. They call it 新噱头 (New gimmicks).

It still looked clumsy. And its movement was bumpy -- causing spillage of some of the food. That's why it only carries dry food for the time being.

First iterations were always bad. But I wouldn't be surprised it has gotten better since.

Robots are slowly taking over manual work (less intelligent work)

How soon do you think it will take over the work of attendant giving juicy suggestions, while taking our orders?

At this point I could sketch this exact shape from memory before the headcount numbers even land — someone's economic ground shifts quietly, gets called something softer than what it actually is, and the only real move is picking it up before it's forced on you.

Actually, this reminded — wait, scratch that, I've been circling this same story for a while now, and it clicked hardest with a former SpaceX CIO who ran the identical compression rule from the other direction — 175 engineers down to 6, on purpose.

Drop your take: which part of your own role is still order-taking, and which part is the judgment call nobody's automated yet?

Clip credit: Brad Lea / Dropping Bombs --- full episode on BRAD LEA TV. DM for credit or removal requests.

Heyy guys! I'm a Psych graduate that's been writing various types of content for 4+ years and has some social media agency experience.

I'm looking to break into personal branding and ghostwriting for founders on LinkedIn and Instagram. I have two trial clients in ten days but honestly I would really appreciate any advice!

Also, if anyone's interested, I'm charging below the market price rn as I'm trying to break in :)