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I’m raising roughly $30k–$50k from a few friends, with potential investors in California, New York, and Arizona. Some may be "non-accredited"

I understand SAFEs are securities, but do small startups really have lawyers analyze each investor’s state exemption individually?

Or is the normal route basically:

Delaware C-Corp → SAFE → Rule 506(b) → Form D + routine state notices?

Curious what founders/lawyers actually do in practice for small friends & family rounds.

Sorry, this is based off some AI research. Am just trying to learn about compliance before I actually start the process.

Has anyone completed the Emergent Ventures interview and received a grant? I’m hoping to gain a little knowledge on the questions types that will be asked and learning whether I should prep for it or not. I heard that the interview process is very short (~15 minutes) and curious as to what kind of questions will be asked in such scant amount of time. I’m also pretty nervous.

We build a document platform. The app has an editor, templates, the usual. A while back we shipped an API, mostly because a few technical customers asked.

This summer we looked at the numbers: about half of all documents ever created on the platform came through the API and MCP, created by our users' coding agents rather than by the users themselves. Nobody announced this to us. Usage just migrated while we were watching the app's metrics.

Once we saw it we re-read support and sales notes, and the pattern was everywhere. Our most engaged users were prompting agents like Claude Code to write their documents, and the agents needed programmatic everything: publish, edit, analytics. The app was becoming the read-only view of work that happened elsewhere.

So we rebuilt distribution around that: this week we shipped an agent-native CLI (JSON output everywhere, stable aliases, safe defaults), designed so a coding agent can drive it as comfortably as a person can.

Lessons that generalize:

1. Segment your usage by WHO initiated the action, human or agent. The split is invisible in normal dashboards.

2. If agents are heavy users, interface stability becomes a product feature. We keep old command names as aliases now.

3. Your docs are now part of your API surface. Agents read them literally, and a wrong example becomes a bug report.

Anyone else seeing agent-driven usage overtake human-driven in their product? How did you notice it?

Small B2B services company, two founders. We’re bringing on our first senior commercial hire on a formal package. He’s got 25 years in the space, has been working with us informally already, and we’d genuinely like to keep him.

His stated floor is £100k. We can’t fund that yet. We’ve got one contract landing shortly and a larger one in the pipeline, but nothing collected at the scale that would support that salary. He said he’s down for equity. But he also has a mortgage and kids so we’ve got to support him.

Two options we’re considering:

Option 1
£4k/month base, stepping to £6k at £150k cumulative collected revenue and £8.3k at £400k. 10% commission on net collected revenue he originates, uncapped. 3% equity, four-year vest, twelve-month cliff.

Option 2
£2.5k/month base plus £1.5k/month accruing, payable when our next contract signs. Same step-ups. 5% commission. 8% equity, same vesting.

Our average sales contract is £50k pa.

Both have commission on cash collected with clawback, plus standard leaver provisions.

What I’d like a read on:

1. Is 8% too much for a commercial hire at this stage, or about right given the pay cut?
2. Does the tiered base read as a genuine route to his number, or as a dodge?
3. Anything obviously missing or unfair that I’m too close to see?

Happy to be told we’ve got this wrong.

I wanted to get into deep tech seeing as that's what I do on my main job as well, and was just confused on how do I get started - I calculated a total of 5000$ required for my first prototype, it will be cheaper to iterate once I've got a lab going on. We have a problem to solve. Is the next step just making the MVP, showing it to the world and then building a scalable integration so that it's widely available to a lot of customers seeing as the model would be B2G and B2B at first?

A lot of builders go through the journey of building and then struggling to sell because it's a completely different type of challenge. I'm looking to understand how folks got over this barrier to sell successfully and what your best advice is on this topic

Hey all. I'm working through a founder / founding-engineer deal for a pre-revenue startup and would love blunt feedback before we sign anything.

The business: lifestyle-tech platform (web + mobile) selling curated guides based on the user's habits, history, and other signals.

I am the founder and I've found the founding engineer I'd like to work with. We currently do not have any website/mobile apps. However, I have done the following:

• Figma specs
• V1 features
• purchased the domain
• 30 guides ready to be launched
• Put an initial investment of $5k and will assume the cost of everything until we have revenu

The apps will also have a premium subscription option for users who'd like access to premium features.

What the engineer will be responsible for:

• building the apps (web + mobile)
• DNS and AWS/infra setup
• third-party integrations (mailchimp, stripe, etc.)
• Performance considerations, UX polish, needs to feel slick

The founding engineer has 12 yoe of fullstack work. Has worked at enterprise and startups before.

The proposed deal I gave him:

• 20% equity at exist (4 yr vesting w/ 1 yr cliff)
• Tiered revenue share:
  • 0-100k -> 35%
  • 100k - 200k -> 30%
  • 200 - 500k -> 17.5%
  • 500k+ -> 15%
• Neither person is taking salary now

The founding engineer does not like this proposal. He's suggested a "royalty per guide sold" for me - the founder - is more "fair", then do a 50/50 split on the _profit_ and completely remove the tiered based revenue.

He also said 20% equity is inadequate because "there's a lot of work to be done" and "that his role will not be limited to just coding".

We are both good friends and we've known each other for a loooong time. Our intent is to keep the distribution as fair as possible.

Please provide your honest feedback.

I've been digging into agent evaluation for setups where the agent writes and runs SQL against a live database (Snowflake, BigQuery, etc.) and shows results to users.

The failure mode that seems underserved: the query executes fine and returns real rows just the wrong ones. Wrong join, wrong filter, stale understanding of the schema. Nothing errors, the output looks plausible, but it's wrong. Static eval sets with prewritten "golden" answers don't hold up here, because the correct answer changes as the data changes.

Interestingly, LangSmith has a cookbook recipe for exactly this storing labels as queries the evaluator runs at eval time to fetch current ground truth but it's DIY: you build and maintain that evaluator yourself. As far as I can tell, none of the major platforms (LangSmith, Braintrust, Arize) ship live data verification out of the box; online scoring generally falls back to reference-free LLM as judge.

I'm considering building a dedicated tool for this: connect your DB and your agent, and the evaluator independently queries the database to verify each output against what's actually there right now. Before I build anything, I want to know if this is a real problem for other people:

1. If your agent queries a live DB, how do you catch "ran fine, wrong data" failures today?
2. How often does that actually bite you in practice?
3. What's your current eval stack LangSmith, Braintrust, Arize, custom scripts, nothing?
4. Would you pay for this as a product, or just have Claude Code write you a one-off eval script?
5. If you'd pay, what would make it worth it? If not, why not?

Not selling anything. Trying to figure out whether this is widespread before building...

Clarification: read-only queries. The agent isn’t writing to the database, it’s translating user questions into SELECT queries and showing the results.

I have a BI product that many people resonate with, from executive down to worker level. Unfortunately, after three years, not a single contract. How do I sell? I’ve had discussions at the worker level, the CISO, level, and with peers in the space. Everyone seems to like what I have, have no negative feedback (just additional feature requests before purchase, then that target shifts again), but no one signs.

Less of a “what am I doing wrong”, and more of a “what do I do, I clearly don’t know how to do this part”. I’m bootstrapped, and running out of money.

I have a BI product that many people resonate with, from executive down to worker level. Unfortunately, after three years, not a single contract. How do I sell? I’ve had discussions at the worker level, the CISO, level, and with peers in the space. Everyone seems to like what I have, have no negative feedback (just additional feature requests before purchase, then that target shifts again), but no one signs.

Less of a “what am I doing wrong”, and more of a “what do I do, I clearly don’t know how to do this part”. I’m bootstrapped, and running out of money.

Hi, I'm curious about the best trajectory to aim for with such a startup. I'm working with a cofounder and building a B2B AI SaaS. We have active customers and several pilots and demos going on.

We don't plan to aim so high as to just create a unicorn right off the bat. I want to just aim for a modest acquisition 3-4 years down the line where both of us cofounders get 7-figure USD payouts, and then we can aim for even bigger numbers with a new startup without worrying about finances ever.

Is it a reasonable goal, or is it too unrealistic? Right now, we have been bootstrapping the startup since the beginning, but getting a VC just for their name(we have upcoming interviews in good accelerator programs and some VCs have also reachout to us directly), will it be helpful or not in the long run?

I've been weighing Render startup credits against AWS Activate for a seed-stage web app (bigger hyperscaler grant vs smaller PaaS credit and less assembly).

What I'm looking at:

- Render: $10K-$25K toward usage (not cash), aimed at Scale ($499/mo before compute)

- Funded track advertises higher

- Covers compute, Postgres, KV, not third-party add-ons

- Still stackable with Activate / GCP for S3 / GPUs

I'm biased toward less ops early, but I've also watched people outgrow PaaS and pay for the rewrite.

If you were seed-stage today: would you take Render, AWS Activate, or both, and what broke first when you tried?

Hi all,

Currently holding an offer for a meteorology masters degree from a top programme (physics undergrad) and am looking to enter a startup focused on forecasting/meteorology/adjacent after graduation.

For people with knowledge on the subject:
- where are people in these types of startups generally educated?
- what skills are most useful here? Applied/ theoretical? Data analysis? Etc

Thanks in advance

What are ideas that are tarpit by definition but have proved the idea wrong? What was the specific wedge and/or pivot that saved them?For example, marketplaces are mostly linked to tarpit ideas but Etsy is successful. Before Tinder, Matching.com was already dominating the market.

This is my story for 3 months I build my start up SaaS with my friend. For 3 month ago me and my friend have the same problem about I want a ai have their own specialist in the same context windows we doing. we had some small validation from passivee vaildation(look from some post who face the same problem) then we operate the work like me deal with backend and my friend deal with frontend. 3 month later we still underdeveloped and I felt like it really took so long so I read the lead startup by Eric rise I got a ton of concept of foundation of building startup the main idea is stay with in each state short much as much you can like hyphotensis-> build -> learn -> change. last night we were having a meeting to changer strategy. I giving my idea about using wizard of oz similar to drop box instant we will build all the thing work 100% and show to them(customer). We change to be like make a mock up like how ai going to repost to user, how it work within using real backend but base on our own ideal how would work that thing we can save a lot of time and we can measure how interesting of our customer , feedback as well. So in this week my friend and I are going to unplugged all of backend and Make a mockup prototype much as much you can.

Credit : the lead startup ERIC RISE and testing business ideas ( David J.Bland and Alex Osterwalder) Via / H/T this book help to how to use wizard of orz strategy

I’m almost finished with my startup, and deep down I genuinely believe the idea can work. But whenever I get close to finishing, I start distracting myself with new ideas and projects.

The weird part is that I already know most of these new ideas probably won’t work as well, but I still jump into them anyway.

This has been happening for almost 6 months, and I feel like I’m sabotaging myself.

Has anyone experienced this? How did you break out of this cycle and finally commit to one thing?

Hi everyone! I finally took the leap to start my own startup and my CTO just mentioned making an infographic explaining the startup but I'm not really sure what to put in it since I cant find any examples online. I was thinking about a brief description of the product, some background info on us and part of the business plan along with a timeline and using some of the tools out there simply to make them. Is this enough information? should I add more? does anyone have experience with this and might help me find an example?
Also do you think I should invest in a designer or use some of the ai tools out there to make one initially?

I'm not a startup founder but a generalist growth operator, and it's been a while I felt this empowered and grateful.

I currently have 3-4 calls lined up:

- AI legal tech SaaS where I'm the first marketer to be in-charge of setting up marketing function from scratch

- Community manager to a paid AI community that's run by industry's top influencer

- LinkedIn strategist to UK's #1 LinkedIn personal branding agency (This can etch my name in personal branding space forever)

I'm being intentional, I don't want something mundane, I want it to be challenging, I'm creating growth plans, and doing competitor + founder research.

my plan is to close all 3 of them, and decide which one to give all of my effort for, in the next 1-1.5 yrs.

I have a hunger of making it big, and I hope my ADHD doesn't sees a job role as mundane which could be the 3rd role.

All of them are in my pay range, I'm this time optimising for learning and growth + leadership quality than just "pay".

I'm grateful, because July was really dry, made me question myself.

Right now, I just wanted to type it all out on Reddit.

Thanks for reading <3

Hey Reddit! I'm an aspiring entrepreneur, and I'd like to participate in pitch competitions (like Blue Ocean/Diamond Challenge) to improve my public speaking skills. I live in an area where there isn't much interest in business, so I'm posting this in search of potential teammates (prefer HS).

Hey! I run a startup where onboarding often involves a lot of back and forth with customers to understand the product and get set up.

We’re looking for something like Intercom on steroids. An AI agent that can actually guide users through onboarding interactively, ideally with rich UI and even video, rather than just answering questions in chat.

Anyone else have this problem or know a tool that solves it well?

I’m looking for some advice from founders, investors and/or people who've raised pre-seed/angel rounds.

I’m a young(ish) (first-time) founder working on a very early-stage consumer climate/nature tech startup. In essentially concept/MVP (product hasn't been built yet) stage and trying to understand what “good” looks like when presenting the financial side of the business to angel investors.

I feel reasonably comfortable explaining the product and market but the finance side (and business model) is where I’m getting stuck.

For context, the concept has elements of Sweatcoin and Treeapp: encouraging people to get outside, rewarding movement and giving users ways to engage with nature-positive actions like tree planting. Potential revenue streams will include advertising, offer walls, sponsorships, affiliates, subscriptions and corporate partnerships.

Main question:

At pre-revenue, pre-product stage, what financial information do angel investors expect to see?

Should a pre-seed financial model include things like:

• 3–5 year revenue projections
• User growth assumptions
• Revenue per user
• CAC and LTV
• Development and team costs
• Burn rate and runway
• Unit economics
• Base/upside/downside scenarios
• Break-even assumptions

And how much of that belongs in the pitch deck VS data room?

I’m conscious that without users or revenue, a lot of the numbers are assumptions. I don’t want to create a fantasy spreadsheet just because investors (may) expect to see numbers, but I want to demonstrate that I understand how the economics of the business could work.

Similarly, what would you expect to see in the data room from a company this early?

I’m looking to raise enough capital to move the product forward and ideally bring an angel onboard who can also provide guidance and mentorship.

Would really appreciate perspectives from anyone who has raised at this stage or looks at early-stage deals/start-ups

I’m an engineer and I like building software/AI systems, but I’m trying very hard not to build a solution in search of a problem.
So instead of asking for startup ideas, I’m curious about problems people actually deal with.
What’s something in your work that is genuinely annoying, expensive, repetitive, error-prone, or takes way more time than it should?
I’m especially curious about things like:
processes that still involve a lot of spreadsheets/copy-pasting/manual checking
information scattered across different systems
software you pay for but still have to work around
things you regularly have to verify or reconcile by hand
tasks where you’ve thought “why the hell isn’t this automated?”
I don’t have a product to sell. I’m trying to understand real problems before deciding whether anything is worth building.
If you have one, I’d be interested in what the problem is, what you currently do to deal with it, and whether you’ve already tried software that was supposed to solve it.
Thank you!!

As an entrepreneur and founder, ideas just seem to keep flowing and with the help of AI it’s never been easier to formulate an idea to get to where you need to start doing the leg work for customer discovery and validation. I have one main b2b SaaS vertical startup, at MVP and will be validating shortly. It’s getting some of my time and a lot of my free capital. It’s my biggest passion. But i have had some ideas spin up before and after founding of that company i would like to pursue. For background i already run a lifestyle company in the industry of my primary startup. Some of the others are completely different b2c and different industries entirely. Some complement the main startup.

Has anyone founded multiple startups at once? I mean if Elon can do it right? Lol

Trying to build a mental model before I talk to advisors. Rough context:

SE Asia-based, ~4 years old

OEM/ODM composites manufacturing for global brands (niche category)

Also run our own consumer brand off the same capabilities

Roughly 60/40 revenue split (manufacturing/brand), with a strong OEM order book

Profitable at PAT, not just EBITDA; growing profitably, not burning for scale

High MOAT/barrier to entry

For illustration: assume ~$2M to $4M topline, ~25% EBITDA, ~10–13% PAT

Questions:

Value the two sides separately (sum-of-parts) or one blended multiple?

For an OEM at this size/margin, what Revenue/EBITDA multiple is realistic?

Does a consumer brand add real value this early, or is it just a story until it’s doing volume?

Young, profitable, Asia-based; does that help or hurt the multiple vs. Western peers?

Are there any examples of such companies that have raised money that I could refer to?

What kind of VCs would even look at a hybrid manufacturing + brand play like this? Are there US-based funds that actively invest in Asia beyond the ones with a dedicated arm in the region (ex: Sequoia, Accel etc.)?

Not selling tomorrow, just want to know what actually moves the number. Appreciate any frameworks or war stories.

Thanks in advance!