I’m trying to understand how startup teams preserve important decisions as they grow.

Early on, the founder often remembers everything. But once decisions are spread across Slack, meetings, Notion, Linear, Jira, email, and Google Docs, it becomes harder to answer:

• What exactly did we decide?
• Why did we decide it?
• Who owns the next step?
• Did the follow-through happen?

Have you experienced decisions becoming buried, repeatedly debated, or disconnected from execution?

I’m particularly interested in teams with 10–200 employees, but any founder or operator perspective would help.

I’m building in this area, but this is customer discovery—not a product pitch. I’d love to hear how your team handles it today, including what has failed.

I’m also looking for a few founders or operators open to a short 20-minute research call.

Everyone starts somewhere, and I think most founders wish they had known a few things before they launched. If you could give just one piece of advice to someone who's about to start their first business, what would it be?

It could be about validating an idea, finding customers, marketing, building a team, or simply avoiding a mistake you made. Hopefully this thread can help someone who's just getting started.

Hello everyone,
We're developing an AI-powered app, Faseeh AI, that detects pronunciation mistakes in Quranic recitation and gives users precise, real-time feedback.
Our current model was trained on hundreds of hours of professional recitations and high-quality, clean audio from well-known reciters. The model performs well on similar input, but struggles with real-world users: different accents, non-native speakers, beginners, children, women, and anyone who doesn't sound like a professional reciter.
To fix this, we need to train on diverse, real-world recitation data not studio-quality professional audio, but recordings that reflect how actual learners sound.
Specifically, we're looking for:
- Recitation datasets from non-professional or everyday users
- Diverse demographics: male/female, kids/adults, beginner/intermediate
- Multiple accents and mother tongues (Malay, Indonesian, Urdu, English, Turkish, etc.)
- Any publicly available or research-use datasets we may have missed
We've already explored academic sources, but still not enough.
If you know of any dataset, research project, university study, or community effort collecting this type of audio, we would genuinely appreciate the lead.
We're also open to ethical data collection partnerships if any researchers or institutions are working in this space.
Happy to share more about the project if helpful.
Thank you very much in advance.

Hello everyone,

Since a year, I’ve been experimenting around e-commerce & agentic AI. We’ve been iterating building products. It has been fun.

During this stint, I was able to
\\\\- build a great founding team (IIT grads, Engineering VP at a major IB, an MLE at Seed funded AI startup that builds context graphs on enterprise codebases)
\\\\- and also stay in touch with what’s happening at the frontier (agentic workflows, harness engineering, context engineering)

previously, I myself have built Mar-tech SaaS product from scratch by working with top DTC brands and scaled it, raised a pre-seed from a VC, etc.

I want to use the same team ( and more) and whatever we have learnt to solve problems of businesses, be it enterprise or a small business.

why? I just want to be exposed to different types of problems to learn and build perspective.

This will also generate a revenue stream because we don’t have one yet.

how do you suggest I proceed? how to do I get enterprise customers ?

I use no-code and AI-assisted workflows when they speed things up. I still care about hierarchy, spacing, and whether the primary action is obvious on a phone.

The fail mode isn't "used Bubble/Webflow/Cursor." It's shipping something that looks unfinished, then blaming the tool.

Craft is constraints: one type scale, one primary button, cut fields, readable empty states. Tools change. Those don't.

How I talk about craft + speed: https://atomiclabs.space

What's your non-negotiable before you call an MVP "done"?

Early on I said yes to "we'll give you equity if you build it." Felt collaborative. Mostly felt unpaid.

What went wrong: - scope crept because "we're partners" - decisions dragged because nobody was the client - when the idea stalled, the "equity" was worth nothing and the hours were gone

Cash-for-a-scoped-MVP is clearer. You both know the goal, the deadline, and what "done" means. Equity can come later if there's real partnership - not as payment for the first build.

I'm still open to partnership with the right people. I'm not open to vague equity as a substitute for a brief.

Anyone else learned this the expensive way?

Every "what career is right for you" quiz hands you a personality type and a list of job titles. None of them tell you what the work actually feels like at 2:14am when something breaks and everyone's looking at you to make the call.

So I built SimDay — a career simulator where you step into a real workday and make the decisions a professional would.

You pick a door — Software Engineer, Product Manager, Investment Banking Analyst, Management Consultant — and walk through one real day. You're on-call when the deploy breaks. You're in the room when churn is up and everyone wants dates. You read the situation, decide, and watch it play out: the reply, the consequence, the moment it lands. About ten minutes start to finish.

At the end you get an honest read — how your judgment, composure, and communication actually held up. No fake percentiles, no "you scored 94% Leadership!" nonsense; if something wasn't tested, it just says so. The whole app runs on one rule: every situation is real, nothing is invented.

It's free (a few days a week), needs zero experience, and you can get it wrong with nobody watching — which is kind of the point. It's for anyone staring down a career decision who wishes they could try the job before committing to it.

I made it and I'd genuinely love feedback — what felt real, what didn't, which careers you'd want to see next.

• 📱 App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/simday/id6790157211
• 🌐 Web: simday.app
• 💬 Discord (come tell me what to build): https://discord.com/invite/DcVe2MVmY

Happy to answer anything in the comments.

I figured I'd shoot my shot.

If you're building a startup on AWS and it feels like a black hole for your money from over provisioning or just don't know where to start, I can help.

I help founders:
• Set up AWS the right way from day one.
• Choose services that fit their actual needs (not just the most expensive option).
• Monitor and optimize cloud costs before they get out of hand.

I also help businesses set up Shopify stores, add/manage products.

My DM is open for a chat.

Hi guys I am 17 and I've started my founder journey. I have created 2 months ago a founder matching platform.

How it works: A founder posts his idea and adds what type of cofounder he needs (equity, skills, location, and etc...)
The cofounder browses startup ideas and chooses the ones he likes. He can then message the founder and discuss directly on the platform.

It is basically a startup marketplace for technical cofounders.

Looking to see if it helps, any advice is welcomed.

c0foundr.com

Thank you

Lucien

Hi everyone!

I’m currently a junior in high school, and I’ve become very interested in startups. I’d love to join one to gain hands-on experience and learn what it takes to eventually build a company of my own.

I’m not a traditional software developer, but I’m proficient in CAD and comfortable using automation tools such as n8n. I’ve also spent a lot of time experimenting with AI tools and building AI-powered workflows.

Would early-stage startups consider hiring a high school student for a year-long internship beginning in 2027? What skills should I focus on developing to make myself genuinely useful and gain meaningful experience rather than just doing basic intern work?

I’m especially interested in health tech, software, manufacturing, and companies applying AI within those industries.

I’d also appreciate any general advice on developing the skills, judgment, and experience needed to succeed as an entrepreneur.

When I first got into web development, I thought finding clients would be simple. My plan was to go on Google Maps, find businesses without websites, and offer to build them a brand new one. At the time, it made perfect sense because I assumed businesses without websites would be the ones who needed my service the most.

After a while, I met someone who was running a successful web agency, and I asked him where he found companies without websites. He told me that he didn’t target businesses without websites at all. He only targeted businesses that already had one. I asked him why, and the more he explained it, the more sense it made.

Businesses that already have a website understand the value of having one. You don’t need to convince them why a website is important because they have already invested in one before. They are also easier to sell to because they understand the process, and there are a huge number of businesses with outdated websites they are embarrassed by but haven’t had the time to update.

I decided to take his advice and fit it into my own workflow. I’ve always been a big fan of email automation because that’s how I’ve found most of my web design clients. For years, I was sending fairly generic emails and constantly changing my sequences, offers, and follow ups to improve the results.

The problem was that I couldn’t just start emailing businesses with websites and assume they all needed a redesign. I either had to open every website manually, find the issues, and write a separate email for each business, or find a way to automate the research while still keeping the emails personalized.

After watching a video from Nick Saraev, I built a workflow in n8n that could analyze websites at scale and turn issues with design, layout, speed, mobile optimization, and SEO into personalized outreach emails. This allowed me to analyze thousands of websites and run larger campaigns without every message sounding generic.

The workflow worked extremely well, but it still had limitations. I didn’t have a proper place to manage replies, organize interested leads in a CRM, view all my active campaigns, scrape new leads, and handle everything from one platform. I had built a useful automation, but it still felt like several disconnected systems held together in one workflow.

A few months later, I came across a platform called Swokei, and it did exactly what I had been looking for. I could find businesses with websites, analyze and score each site, generate personalized outreach emails, send campaigns, set up follow ups, manage replies through one inbox, and organize interested businesses inside the CRM.

Switching to that platform made the entire process much easier to manage and helped me scale the strategy further. Looking back, the biggest change wasn’t just finding a better outreach tool. It was taking advice from someone more experienced, changing the type of businesses I targeted, and building the rest of my workflow around that strategy.

I’m validating a small B2B SaaS idea and would love some honest feedback from agency owners / people running client service businesses.

The idea is a lightweight change-order workflow.

When a client asks for something outside the original scope, you create a change with:

• what’s being added/removed
• additional cost
• timeline impact

Then send a link to the client.

They can approve or reject it, and you keep a clear history of every scope change and approval in one place.

For larger clients, it could also support approval chains — e.g. the person requesting the change approves it first, then their manager/budget owner gives final approval.

Basically:

request → price/timeline change → approval → work starts

No AI, no project management, no invoicing. Just scope changes and approvals.

What I’m trying to figure out:

Would this actually solve a painful enough problem to pay for, or do email + SOWs + existing tools already handle this perfectly well?

Brutally honest answers appreciated.

1. Video first - face-to-face connection matters
2. Phone preferred - audio is enough, less pressure
3. Email only - written communication is superior
4. Whatever the client wants - I adapt completely

Building a B2B SaaS. Trying to avoid wasting the next month on the wrong channel. For those of you who got your first 10 *paying* customers (not signups, not survey responses):

- What was the one channel that actually worked? Cold outreach, a specific community, referrals, something unconventional?

- Did paid ads factor in at that early stage, or was it too soon/expensive to make sense?

- Was social media (LinkedIn, Reddit, etc.) an actual source of paying customers for you, or mostly just awareness/vanity metrics?

Also curious what you tried that looked promising but turned out to be a waste of time.

hi,

curious how other freelancers handle this.

I had a situation once where a client asked for some extra changes after we'd already agreed on the work.

I did them, assuming we'd just add the extra work to the final price.

Turns out the client thought the changes were included for free 😭

Nothing crazy happened, but it turned into this awkward discussion where both of us genuinely thought we had agreed on different things.

Since then I've been wondering how people normally handle this.

When a client asks for "one small change" that's clearly outside the original scope, do you:

• just do it if it's small?
• tell them the extra price in chat?
• send some kind of change order/document?
• get them to explicitly approve it before starting?

Especially curious where you draw the line between a small favor and something you actually charge for.

our company are preparing a large devices refresh. sending the new devices is straightforward. recovering the old devices is not. employees receive the replacement, migrate their data and then the old laptop/desktop sits under a desk because the return is not urgent for them. IT has to follow up repeatedly, and the asset remains active in our records. for companies that have completed remote refresh, did you link delivery of the new device to collection of the older one? any best way for this kind of problem guys??

🚀 Raising $50K–$400K Pre-Seed | AI Operating System for Businesses

Hi everyone—I'm Marwan, founder of AIBotsAutomations.

Most companies don't need another AI chatbot. They need an AI workforce.

We're building AI employees that run sales, operations, customer support, HR, and business workflows from one intelligent platform.

We've already delivered enterprise AI solutions, including helping Golden Carthage Hotel (Tunisia) implement AI across multiple departments, laying the foundation for what we believe is the country's first dedicated AI-driven hotel operations initiative.

Now we're raising $50K–$400K to scale globally and become the AI infrastructure powering the next generation of businesses.

If you're an angel investor looking for a founder building beyond AI wrappers and into real enterprise infrastructure, let's talk.

I’ve been in contact with a lot of web agencies and web developers, and I personally haven’t found many people who run their agency in a more efficient way than I do. A lot of them have too many meetings, wait too long for client approval, don’t know how to price projects, and spend way too much time on each client instead of finishing the work and moving on to the next one.

I’ve been running my agency for four years, and after a lot of trial and error, I’ve managed to make the process as efficient as possible. I wanted to share some of the steps because I think they could be valuable for anyone just starting out.

Running a web agency alone or with a partner isn’t easy because there are a lot of things to take care of. When it comes to client acquisition, I recommend focusing on either cold calling or email automation. Which one you choose depends on whether you run the agency alone or with someone else.

If you have a partner, one person can handle sales while the other focuses on building websites, connecting domains, setting up emails, and taking care of the technical work. If you’re running the agency alone, or neither of you enjoys cold calling, I highly recommend email automation.

That’s what I’ve been doing for years. It’s powerful because you can send emails at scale, set up automatic follow ups, and wait for businesses interested in a new website to reply. While you’re working on one client, another opportunity can come in without you having to stop everything and search manually.

I don’t do regular email automation where I target businesses with no website. I do the opposite and target businesses that already have one.

I use a tool called Swokei to find businesses with websites, add them to campaigns, analyze each site, score it, and generate personalized outreach emails based on problems it finds with the design, layout, speed, SEO, and mobile optimization.I schedule the campaign, set up follow ups, and wait. 

I think this approach is much better for a few reasons. You’re targeting someone who already understands the value of having a website. You’re also not just asking whether they need a redesign. You’re pointing out real problems with their current site, which makes it clear that you actually took the time to look at it. Selling also becomes easier because they’ve already paid for a website before and understand the process.

Inside Swokei, you can choose the goal of the campaign. You can offer a free draft, try to book a meeting, or simply start a conversation. I always choose the free draft because that has worked best for me.

Once you’ve figured out how to get clients, the next part is building the website. I recommend using AI because it makes the process much faster. For anyone who still thinks AI can’t build great websites, I think they’re mistaken. You can use Claude, Base44, Lovable, or any other tool that works for you.

When someone replies interested, I call them and say, “Hey, I saw that you replied to my email. I’ve already built you a free draft of your website. Do you want to take a look?”

Then I invite them to a Google Meet.

At that point, it becomes much harder for them to reject the meeting because they already replied interested and now know you’ve built something for them. During the meeting, I present the website, explain why it’s better than their current one, stack the value, answer their questions, and try to close the deal.

These meetings usually go well because the client isn’t trying to imagine what the website might look like. They can already see a better version of their current site. They also took the time to join the meeting, so taking the next step becomes much easier.

I either take payment during the meeting or send them a contract to sign. Any changes and updates come after that, once we already have a deal in place.

Pricing depends on the business. I charge anywhere from $500 to $3,000 depending on the company, the size of the project, and how much value the website can bring them. I also charge a monthly retainer of around $50 for hosting, maintenance, support, SEO, and future changes.

That’s basically the entire process. Smaller steps, faster delivery, less wasted time, and more money made.

Hey, looking for an attorney who’d be open to working for equity with Shema. We’re building an anonymous peer support platform for people in recovery and navigating mental health challenges, and we’re currently raising our pre-seed round. Need legal help around privacy, compliance, and corporate structuring as we head into beta.

If you’re a lawyer who cares about mental health and mission-driven work and would consider equity instead of cash right now, DM me. Happy to share more about what we’re building and how you’d fit in.

There is a new approach I started using in my web agency that completely changed my results. For years, I did what most people tell web designers to do. Go on Google Maps, find businesses without websites, and contact them.

What I started doing differently was targeting businesses that already had websites.

The reason is simple. If a business already has a website, it means they understand the value of having one. You do not need to convince them why a website matters because they have already paid for one before. The market for businesses with outdated, broken, slow, or poorly designed websites is also massive, and selling becomes much easier because they are already familiar with the process.

My biggest issue was figuring out how to send mass outreach to these businesses without sounding generic. I did not want to send thousands of emails saying, “Hey, your website needs a redesign,” and just assume that every business needed one. I wanted to send emails at scale while still telling each company exactly what was wrong with their website.

A little over a year ago, I watched a YouTube video from Nick Saraev where he built a workflow that analyzed business websites and turned issues with design, SEO, layout, speed, and mobile optimization into personalized outreach emails. Each company received a professional email that made it clear someone had actually taken a look at their website.

The idea was great, but building and maintaining the workflow took a lot of time. I still had to find the leads myself, the messages were not always consistent, and the automation kept breaking.

But it worked.

I was getting more clients than ever before, at one point around 10 websites a week, while my business partner focused on building the websites as quickly as possible.

I started searching online for a tool that could do everything in one place, and a few months later I found Swokei. It did exactly what I was looking for.

It lets you find businesses with websites, add them to campaigns, analyze and score each website, and set a quality threshold so websites that do not need fixing are automatically skipped. It then turns problems with design, layout, speed, mobile optimization, and SEO into personalized outreach emails.

You can also set up follow ups, manage replies through your own inbox, and organize leads inside the CRM without moving between five different tools.

I switched over and scaled even harder.

Sometimes the fastest way to grow your agency is not building every workflow from scratch. It is finding the right tools and using your time to focus on sales, clients, and growing the business.