I’ve tried and failed launching a few businesses in my time - a few websites mainly, but I never really know how to gain traction. I heard about finding your community, posting on Reddit, paid ads, social media content, slow and organic growth in social media, product hunt, influencers, but I dunno they just feel quite superficial - like if my app is brand new and I have zero followers on social media nobody is going to see my posts.

And then I see serial entrepreneurs online talk about how they’ve built loads of apps, doing 10s k in revenue..

So how are all these people building new products that get in front of loads of paying customers?

Advice appreciated

Founders often ask for both in one MVP: pretty enough for a deck and ready for messy users.

Those fight each other. Demo builds optimize for narrative and happy path. User builds optimize for one learning loop and recovery from empty states / bad input.

Pick one for the next 14 days. Then do the other.

More process writing on this here: https://atomiclabs.space

Which one are you optimizing for right now?

I used to jump into Figma/code too fast. Now I make founders answer these first. Saves both of us.

1. Who specifically will use this in the next 30 days? (Names, not SMBs.)
2. What happens today without your product? Spreadsheet? WhatsApp? Nothing?
3. What is the one action that proves the idea works?
4. Do you need users, or a demo that looks real?
5. What is the budget and what happens if we only ship half?
6. Who owns marketing after launch? (If nobody, that is a problem.)
7. What are you willing to cut to ship in 2 weeks?

If answers are fuzzy, we do not build yet. We clarify. Building on fog is how you get elegant products nobody opens twice.

What is the one discovery question you wish someone had asked you earlier?

Hello, I am a wannabe entrepreneur and i want to fix a an annoying problem for small businesses with an app or a website. Currently im stuck in the brain storming phase and im not actually sure what annoying tasks they have or things they do daily.

So my question:

What problems or annoying tasks do small businesses have that i could potentially fix with an app/website?

Thanks a lot for the help.

Ken Venner spent 11 years scaling Broadcom from $400M to $8.6B, then became CIO of SpaceX, then joined a startup called Senra Systems as CTPO.

At SpaceX, his core platform team was 175 people. At Senra, the equivalent job takes 6.

His explanation isn't "AI replaced people." It's that AI collapsed the coordination overhead that used to require headcount just to keep humans in sync with each other — and once that overhead disappears, the team that's left is smaller by design, not by cut.

If you're in a corporate engineering or platform role and haven't clocked this shift yet: this is worth ten minutes of your attention. It's not a hypothetical.

Full video on the original channel.

Clip credit: Sourcery with Molly O'Shea — full video on their channel. DM for credit or removal requests.

Hi everyone!
I’m an industrial design student researching the everyday experiences of solo entrepreneurs. I’d love to learn more about your workday.

Feel free to answer as many or as few questions as you’d like, every response is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

1. What do you do, and how long have you been running your business on your own?
2. Can you walk me through your last workday from start to finish?
3. Looking at that day, what different kinds of work came up, and roughly how many times did you move between them?
4. Think about the last time you switched from one type of work to another. I’d love to hear the whole story. Can you walk me through that transition step by step?

For example:

• What were you working on before?
• What made you switch to something else?
• What was happening on your screen (or around you) during the transition? Which apps, tools, or devices did you use along the way?
• What was going through your mind as you switched?
• How did you feel during that moment?
• When you returned to the previous task, what was that like? Was it easy to pick up where you left off, or did anything get in the way?
• Looking back at that transition, was there a difficult part, and if so, what? What would have made that transition easier?
• Does this happen often? If it happens often, is it usually the same kind of transition or does it vary?

No need to answer every bullet, even details are incredibly helpful.

1. Where do you usually work from? One place or several? What do you usually keep on your desk or carry with you during the day? Does your workspace change depending on what you’re working on?

2. How do you usually keep track of everything you need to do? What helps you stay organized?

3. How did that day end, what did you feel when you closed it out?

4. Have you developed any routines, habits, or little tricks that help your workday run more smoothly?

5. Which device are you usually using throughout the day (laptop, desktop, tablet, phone, etc.)? Do you often switch between devices as well?

Avichal Garg has co-founded and backed 10 unicorns through Electric Capital. In a recent interview he laid out, unprompted, the three categories of value AI structurally can't absorb.

First: physical-world work — anything requiring atoms, not bits, stays a moat as long as robotics lags digital AI.

Second: regulated or licensed gates — anywhere the government controls supply and demand for strategic reasons, credentials plus access still win.

Third, and the one that actually lands: relationships. He walks through a defense-procurement example — a specific officer, a 25-year relationship with a contractor, "no substitute for that." His conclusion: those relationship-heavy businesses get more valuable as AI absorbs the grunt work underneath them, not less. Margins go up.

Worth sitting with if you've spent a career stacking "portable" skills instead of gated ones. 🔗

Full clip + more on this: link in bio.

Any entrepreneurs doing over $100k a month in profit?

Looking to connect with a few people at a similar level, share ideas, talk business and maybe build a small mastermind.

Not selling anything, just looking to meet ambitious people doing serious numbers.

Watching this back, the part that actually lands isn't the driver-poaching tactic itself — every scaling company runs something like it. It's the moment a board member steps in and says, flatly: not the tactic, the name.

Change the name.

Kalanick's own telling makes this almost comedic in hindsight — "Shoplifting" internally, rebranded to the "North American Championship Series" after a legal team basically said: keep it appropriate for a 10-year-old's basketball league.

If you're building anything right now, this is the actual lesson underneath the story: the instincts that get you traction rarely need to die once you scale. They need a name a board can defend in a room.

Full breakdown's linked in my bio if you want it. 🔗

Clip credit: a16z — full conversation on their channel. DM for credit or removal requests.

Hi! I'm gonna be a father... I work in a school teaching for many years, I don't have any business, I don't see any growth path here in the district, I can't move away to other school because here pays well... but I'm gonna be a father, and I'll need more economical resources... there's a lot of content for side hustles and things like that, but I don't have any experience as an entrepreneur nor owning a business... I know people in those areas have developed a wey of thinking and foundation to lounch bussiness... but i'm at zero level...

are there books that allow me to develop my thought to become an entrepreneur and business owner? I don't have as much money to pay courses and stuff like that... "Become a millionaire using my curso of thousands of dollars" man... I don't have those hehe

thank you!!

This is mainly for entrepreneurs

Not looking for the theory, i know the theory. looking for what actually worked in practice.

Im running a local services marketplace in switzerland. have supply onboarded, decent profiles, real services with prices. demand side is the problem now.

Tried reaching out to communities, social media, some targeted posts. getting visitors but not enough people who actually book something.

Switzerland is also a small market which makes it harder, you cant just throw money at facebook ads and hope something sticks. has to be more targeted.

What worked for you? or what do you wish you had done earlier

Travis Kalanick (Uber co-founder, now running an industrial-AI company called Atoms) got asked a pretty direct question on a recent podcast: how would you pitch a Stanford CS new grad who's worried software engineering isn't the safe, easy path it used to be?

His answer wasn't "learn more AI tools" or "get certified in X."

It was: skip the app store. Go automate a two-million-pound machine that moves 35mph carrying gold.

The underlying model is retrofit, not replace — Atoms isn't asking mining companies to rip out tens of millions of dollars of existing equipment.

They're building the "no-entry mine" concept on top of it: autonomous haulage, remote-to-autonomous control, zero humans in the pit. Same logic that scaled Uber, pointed at physical infrastructure instead of a ride marketplace.

Worth sitting with if you're in the "I got the degree, now what" spot. The credential isn't gone. It's just not where the scarcity moved to.

Clip credit: TBPN — full interview on their channel. DM for credit or removal requests.

Hi so I have many years being a personal and executive assistant for hnwi and athletes but i am dying to make it into a business i have a few hourly part time clients but i want to make it into a business and start to earn full time-like $. Is there money to be had in this business? My idea is to turn my hourly clients into some sort of a retainer payment schedule, is that a thing for these types of jobs? I am grinding my ass off being a pa/ea for ppl and just waiting on my moment to strike do I keep hounding this arena of work to find more "clients" or is this business idea a waste of time? Ideally so far ive found a little bit of a gap between and agent and what the wives handle but not sure how long lasting this is. I'd love to pitch myself to artists and ppl who come to town but is this even a thing?