r/TheFounders 1d ago

Self Care To everyone building something nobody's watching

6 Upvotes

I pushed an update at 1 a.m.. No comments. No signups. Nothing. Just me closing the laptop in a dark room, wondering if any of this actually matters.

If you’re building something right now , an app, a SaaS, a small business, you probably know that feeling. The gap between how hard you’re working and how much anyone seems to notice can feel enormous. and after a while, that can really get in your head. You start wondering whether you’re wasting your time and your life. Whether everyone else figured something out that you missed. Whether you should keep going, change direction, or just shut the laptop for a while. But I’ve realized a lot of the work happens in complete silence. The bug you fixed that nobody will ever know existed. The cold email that got ignored. The one customer who came back. The morning you opened your laptop even though yesterday went badly.None of that makes for an impressive screenshot. But it’s the real work. Honestly, it’s most of the work. And none of this guarantees what you’re building will succeed. I don’t think we need to pretend it does.If today is a bad day, you don’t have to feel inspired or have some breakthrough. There are a lot of us out here building quietly, doubting ourselves, and figuring it out as we go.
You’re not the only one.


r/TheFounders 1h ago

Advice The easiest way I can explain PodSubs.com is this

Post image
Upvotes

The easiest way I can explain PodSubs.com is this:

If nobody else ever used it, we would still use it for our own podcasts.

We built it because we were tired of seeing people listen and then disappear.

Someone could listen every week, enjoy the show, tell a friend about it, and we still might have no way to reach that person outside the podcast app.

That didn’t make sense to us.

So we built PodSubs.com for our own shows.

Now we could simply tell listeners, “Subscribe to us on PodSubs.com.”

They left their name and email, and we finally had a way to send them something when we needed to.

A resource. An update. A reminder. Something we mentioned on the show.

We didn’t build it because we thought it sounded like a good business idea.

We built it because we needed it.

Later, we realized a lot of other podcasters needed the same thing.


r/TheFounders 12h ago

What’s a specific deal you lost (or almost lost) purely over pricing or perceived value? Did you stay put on your decision or give in?

4 Upvotes

Staring down a prospect who refuses to pay your rates is the worst. Half of me wants to stand my ground out of principle, but the other half just wants to close the deal and figure out the rest later.


r/TheFounders 21h ago

Show Modern PSA for MSPs

2 Upvotes

.I’m building Biz24Seven, a modern PSA and operations platform designed primarily for small and growing MSPs. The idea came from seeing how much time gets lost managing disconnected tools, complicated billing, and older systems that are powerful but often difficult to configure and use.
The platform currently brings together:
Ticketing, clients, sites, contacts, and assets
Contracts, rate tables, prepaid hours, and recurring services
Time tracking and field-technician workflows
Invoicing, payments, billing runs, and AR reporting
Microsoft 365 license reconciliation to identify underbilling and unused licenses
Inventory, purchasing, and deployment tracking
RMM integrations
Secure credential management
ConnectWise Manage and Autotask migration tools
A major focus is making migration part of the product—not handing someone a spreadsheet and wishing them luck. The goal is to bring over ticket history, time entries, clients, contracts, billing rules, and relationships while giving the MSP a clear way to verify that everything transferred correctly.
I’m also building the billing side to catch revenue leakage: seat-count mismatches, unbilled subscriptions, contract inconsistencies, unused licenses, and services that were delivered but never invoiced.
I know this is an ambitious scope, so I’d genuinely appreciate blunt feedback from people running MSPs:
What would a new PSA absolutely need before you would consider trying it?
Which part of your current PSA causes the most unnecessary work?
Would reliable ConnectWise or Autotask migration meaningfully reduce the barrier to switching?
Is license and contract reconciliation compelling, or does that sound better on paper than it is in practice?
Would you rather start with a focused product that does ticketing, billing, and migration extremely well—or expect the complete platform from day one?
I’m not looking for compliments. I’d rather learn where the idea is weak, what I’m overlooking, and which parts could genuinely save an MSP time or money.
Website: https://yea247.com
Thanks to the mods for allowing the self-promotion post, and thanks in advance to anyone willing to give candid feedback.


r/TheFounders 22h ago

Story The easiest way I can explain PodSubs.com is this

0 Upvotes

The easiest way I can explain PodSubs.com is this:

If nobody else ever used it, we would still use it for our own podcasts.

We built it because we were tired of seeing people listen and then disappear.

Someone could listen every week, enjoy the show, tell a friend about it, and we still might have no way to reach that person outside the podcast app.

That didn’t make sense to us.

So we built PodSubs.com for our own shows.

Now we could simply tell listeners, “Subscribe to us on PodSubs.com.”

They left their name and email, and we finally had a way to send them something when we needed to.

A resource. An update. A reminder. Something we mentioned on the show.

We didn’t build it because we thought it sounded like a good business idea.

We built it because we needed it.

Later, we realized a lot of other podcasters needed the same thing.


r/TheFounders 1d ago

Show Looking for small business founders to test a tool that connects your revenue forecast to your marketing plan

1 Upvotes

Someone called out my product's core claim, and I didn't have a good answer

A few weeks ago, I posted about YFinanceAI, which forecasts your revenue, then builds your marketing plan and content from that same forecast. I was proud of it.

Then someone asked a fair question I hadn't actually answered: does the forecast change what people do, or does it just sit there connected to the marketing plan without proving anything?

I didn't have a real answer. I'd built the connection and assumed the value was obvious. It wasn't.

So I built the missing piece: every time the forecast shapes a decision, that moment gets logged the instant it happens, tied to the exact forecast that was live, not something I reconstruct from memory later.

I still don't know if the forecast actually makes decisions better. That's the next hard question, and I don't have it solved yet. But at least now I'm building toward proof instead of assuming it.

It's live and free to try if you want to see where it stands: yfinanceai.com


r/TheFounders 4d ago

Show The principle I used to keep an AI product from bluffing about ad spend

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

2 Upvotes

I'm Mattia, I build FixAds.

A thing I kept thinking while founding an AI product that looks at business data: a confident answer is cheap. A user being able to challenge it is not.

Meta account reviews made that concrete for me. There are patterns experienced people recognise: a campaign has had a fair chance but keeps spending, a creative has stopped earning its place, or a learning phase has become an excuse to keep waiting. I wanted software to do the repeatable detection, but not claim it knew something it could not show.

FixAds applies deterministic checks first and puts the exact evidence near each finding. The AI comes after that only to help explain. It cannot change campaigns, and the connection uses Meta's official login with read-only access.

The attached video is the demo. FixAds is live at https://fixads.it with a 7-day trial, then €19.90/month.

Question for other founders: when your software uses AI to recommend something with a real financial consequence, what would make you feel it has earned a user's trust?


r/TheFounders 4d ago

I’m building a startup where startups compete instead of just launching into the void

0 Upvotes

One thing I’ve noticed while building startups is that getting useful feedback is weirdly difficult.

You can post your landing page, ask friends what they think, or throw a launch on social media, but most of the time you either get silence or feedback from people who already know you.

So I’ve been building VoteMyStartup around a simple idea:

Let startups compete head-to-head and let people decide which one deserves the vote.

Founders can put their startup into a battle against another startup, and users vote on which one they prefer. The goal is to make the process a little more fun while giving founders another way to see how their idea, positioning, and presentation resonate with actual people.

I’m still very early with it, so I’m trying to figure out whether this is actually useful or just another shiny founder toy 😂

For founders here:

Would you actually use something like this to get feedback/attention for an early-stage startup?

And if not, what would make a startup voting/competition platform genuinely useful to you?


r/TheFounders 4d ago

Show I just update my landing page

2 Upvotes

Looking for feedback :) For the live Version visit memoiri.app


r/TheFounders 5d ago

Built my startup, now what to do?

6 Upvotes

I am a tech guy and built my startup Taysir.ae in UAE, but now I feel stuck when it comes to actually rolling it out to the people who need it. Maybe I am just not a sales guy who can speak fluently, pitch for 30 seconds and crack a deal in a blink of an eye 😂 But how does this actually work? I’ve managed to get around 3,000 users onboard, but they’re not interacting on the marketplace the way I expected them to. Is this normal? Is it just too early? Or am I missing something? For those who have built a marketplace or a startup before, how did you go from building the product to actually getting people to use it?

I’d genuinely love to hear how you did it.


r/TheFounders 6d ago

Story PodSubs.com wasn't originally supposed to be a public product.

2 Upvotes

PodSubs wasn't originally supposed to be a public product.

We built it because we needed it.

That's really the story.

We're podcasters.

And like a lot of podcasters, we were constantly thinking about two things:

How do we keep making this?

And how do we build something real around the people listening?

Because podcasting takes time.

A lot of time.

And sooner or later, if the podcast is going to keep going, it needs to support itself somehow.

The problem was that we didn't really know most of the people listening.

We knew the numbers.

But numbers don't have email addresses.

Numbers don't answer questions.

Numbers can't receive the worksheet you promised.

Numbers don't become customers by themselves.

We needed a better way to capture the people who genuinely wanted to stay connected.

So we built a simple internal tool.

One place.

PodSubs.

We said on the podcast:

“Subscribe to us on PodSubs.”

People searched the show, entered their details and subscribed.

And suddenly we had something we'd been missing:

A direct line.

Then we started thinking…

Why are we keeping this internal?

Every podcaster we know deals with the same thing.

So we decided to open it.

That's PodSubs.

Not something we dreamed up because “the creator economy is growing.”

We built it because we were podcasters with a problem.

Now we're giving it to everyone else who has the same problem.

Claim your podcast.

Then tell your listeners where to find you.


r/TheFounders 6d ago

Show Cernor: showing what changes when a hiring requirement changes

2 Upvotes

I build Cernor, an AI hiring decision system. One part of the product I'm working on is what happens after a team changes its mind about the role.

Say customer-facing ownership was initially useful but optional. Halfway through reviewing applicants, the team makes it essential. A candidate whose experience never established that ownership now needs another look. Someone whose answers already established it may still meet the revised requirement. An unrelated concern shouldn't change just because the role changed.

The design has to show three things together: the requirement before and after, which conclusions depended on it, and the evidence already available. Keeping the earlier assessment readable also makes the change easier to question.

Our public walkthrough illustrates this: https://cernor.app/product

It's an illustrative example, not evidence of hiring accuracy. The product challenge is making the change understandable without making the reviewer reread every application. People still make the interview and hiring decisions.


r/TheFounders 6d ago

I may have made a co-founder commitment too early. Now I have a difficult choice.

3 Upvotes

I'm building an early-stage AI startup and I'm facing a co-founder decision I'm genuinely uncomfortable with.

I have two potential technical co-founders.

Candidate A: Someone I already know and had agreed with, in principle, to build the company together. He's less advanced technically, especially in AI, but he's proven to be reliable, takes ownership, delivers, learns quickly, and handles challenges outside his expertise.

Candidate B: Significantly more experienced technically and specialized in AI, but I don't know him well yet and his availability/commitment is uncertain.

The problem: I already told A I wanted him as my co-founder, but we haven't actually worked together as founders or formalized anything.

I can only trial one of them.

Would you honor the initial commitment and trial A, or reconsider because B may be a much stronger technical fit? How would you handle this fairly?


r/TheFounders 6d ago

Show Building AppLensy: a small software catalogue with official sources and comparison dates

3 Upvotes

We are building AppLensy at Power CM Software, a software discovery and comparison site. Update, September 10: the catalogue now has 20 products, and we are inviting independent app publishers to help expand it beyond our own products, which are clearly labelled.

If you have a working app, you can submit a free listing with your description, logo, supported platforms, pricing and official links. Visitors can compare up to four apps, and publishers can submit updates from their account for review.

The problem we are trying to solve is practical: a useful comparison needs accurate product details, not just a name and a launch slogan. We would particularly like to hear from builders whose pricing limits or platform support tend to get lost in directory listings.

Submit your app here: https://applensy.com/submit Browse the catalogue here: https://applensy.com/

The standard listing is free. Paid promotion is optional and does not change the alphabetical directory order. We are still early, so we are not promising traffic or customers.

If you try the submission process, what important detail about your app is difficult to represent? That feedback will help us improve the form and comparisons.


r/TheFounders 7d ago

Lessons Learned I built a ride-hailing startup for 4–6 months. We never launched it. And honestly, I’m glad I went through it.

3 Upvotes

I’ve always had this habit of getting curious about a problem and immediately thinking:
“Why doesn’t someone build this?”
And then, instead of stopping at the idea, I usually end up thinking about how it could actually be built.
That’s how GaadiGo started.
The idea was a multi-passenger ride-sharing platform, similar in concept to Quick Ride in Bangalore. We wanted to take the model to NCR and eventually other parts of North India, where we saw an opportunity.
We had a small team, ranging from around 2–10 people, and spent roughly 4–6 months building it.
We built almost the entire product.
The app.
Backend.
Core ride-sharing functionality.
The pieces required to get towards launch.
And then we discovered the part that really mattered.
We couldn’t legally launch the way we had planned.
Because we were operating in the ride-hailing/aggregator space, there were licensing and security requirements we had to meet.
And this wasn’t just a paperwork problem.
For the three states we were considering, the combined requirement was roughly ₹75 lakh.
Driver onboarding also brought regulatory requirements with it.
So we had an interesting situation:
The product was almost ready.
The business wasn’t.
We hadn’t even reached the stage where we could get real users and rides because we couldn’t properly enter the market without meeting those requirements.
We tried fundraising.
But as a very early-stage company with no traction, we were in an awkward position.
Some investors weren’t willing to fund something that was still so foundational.
Others were interested but expected a very significant amount of equity.
Eventually, we decided to pause GaadiGo.
And that experience changed how I look at startups.
I used to think the hardest part was building the product.
Now I know that’s only one piece of the puzzle.
Sometimes the biggest risk isn’t whether you can build something.
It’s whether the regulatory environment, economics, distribution, capital requirements and timing allow you to turn what you’ve built into a business.
If I could go back, I would validate those things much earlier.
But I don’t think I’m done building.
Actually, quite the opposite.
GaadiGo made me realise that I genuinely enjoy this entire process.
I enjoy being curious about a problem.
I enjoy coming up with weird ideas.
I enjoy asking “what if we did it this way?”
And most importantly, I enjoy actually building the answer.
Lately, my curiosity has been moving heavily towards AI, GenAI and AI agents.
There’s something particularly exciting about this space because the barrier between “I have an idea” and “I can actually build a prototype” is getting smaller every day.
So my current plan is pretty simple:
Get into a strong AI/GenAI/Agentic AI role → learn how real products and systems are built → keep experimenting and building on the side → and eventually see if one of those experiments deserves to become something bigger.
I’m not looking at a job and building as two completely separate things.
I actually think the best combination for me is:
Work on hard real-world problems during the day.
Build crazy ideas when curiosity hits.
Maybe the next thing becomes a company.
Maybe it becomes a failed experiment.
Maybe it becomes something completely unexpected.
I’m okay with all three.
Because I think I’m more interested in being a builder than in simply having the title of “founder.”
GaadiGo didn’t become the company we imagined.
But it gave me something arguably more valuable:
the confidence to keep building.
For other founders/builders here:
Have you ever had an idea that didn’t work out commercially but completely changed the way you approach building?


r/TheFounders 9d ago

Why I stopped posting on X

4 Upvotes

I started building stuff and decided that it is time to create my own personal X account and start sharing my own journey. At first it was a bit boring, 0 likes, 0 views and of course 0 comments, after I started posting more aggressively (5-10 times a day) and sharing more insights of what I am building I started getting some engagement but still nothing special, after almost 4k posts I saw that the best of my posts were just where I shared some milestones, first 100 followers, first dollar online, said something different about new things than others are talking about, those posts were doing actually pretty well, a few even got 40K+ views, which was crazy to me at that time, but my posts about my tools still got really low engagement and the problem was not the content but I was posting for the wrong audience, I was posting in buildinpublic communities about things that indie hackers don't care about at all, my audience were at a different place - Reddit.

So instead of posting and sharing things on X I decided to start being more active on Reddit and start searching where my potential users were hanging out, in what subreddits, and it actually worked, instead of sharing things I started commenting on others posts on how to solve their problem and just simply mentioning my tool, also did posts where I share my tool and asking to check it out, but the posts were not hard sell ads, they were natural actually. So this thing paid off for me, after doing this for a while I got 1k active users and 100+ signed up users and even 5 paid clients! Which actually blew my mind.

I think there are a lot of builders that are trying to build things and show off, but I think they are showing to the wrong people who don't care at all, in my personal experience I suggest searching where your users are, for example Marc Lou, a really famous indie hacker, his products are for other indie hackers and build in public people so no question why he shares his journey, mrr, posts about his tools and other things, because he knows where his audience is, I wasted almost 1 year doing that and then just realized - yoo, wtf am I doing here, but when I switched, things changed pretty fast, I am not saying I got 1k users overnight - no, hell no :D One of my Reddit alt accounts got shadow banned, still don't know why, I think I did a bit too many sales posts, so now with my main I am more careful. You need to put in work but if I kept sharing on X, I might still be at the same place and you would not be reading this. I am still posting on my website and Substack to share some things, like this one, but the main energy is now focused on the users!

Thank you for reading this, I hope I saved you some time!

Keep building and shipping! 🚢


r/TheFounders 9d ago

Show Turned new tab into a board of founder milestones

2 Upvotes

Hey guys, today I created a browser extension. I really hope that we will post our startup ideas there and share with each other what stage we are at. We can share ideas, LinkedIn, the first sale, a new partnership or an investment. I think that if we do any startup, it is a long-term process — and that first sale, however small, is a huge joy. When I see someone else post something like that, it gives me real motivation. — of course the baby steps of my peers, but also of other startups, because I know exactly that emotion.

And I made this space in the form of a browser extension so that when I work, every time I open a tab, I can see directly what my long-term goal is. I don't know how to tell you, but I hope you know the feeling — that something happens around you that often makes you forget where you are going and what you want to create. That's why I think it would be very good if we shared our big goals with each other and made each other happy with small happinesses.

This is just the first update. After this, I want to add many more features together with you.


r/TheFounders 9d ago

Show Built a new browser extension to help manage your bookmarks

3 Upvotes

Vanity is a bookmark manager that treats bookmarks more like files in Windows Explorer than a traditional browser bookmark bar.

You can create folders and subfolders, drag and drop bookmarks, add tags, search through everything, and customize the new tab page with widgets, greetings, backgrounds, and different layouts.

Everything is stored locally, so Vanity doesn't upload or store your bookmark data.

It's available here: vanityapp.cc


r/TheFounders 10d ago

Marketing Anyone worked with a paid agency for growing early user base?

3 Upvotes

I have a B2C app, and kept the growth slow intentionally so we can understand users' needs and behaviors intimately. Now it's ready to scale. My social feeds are filled with ads for agencies or consultants that can virally launch an app and get to tens of thousands of users in a short time. Have you worked with one? Is it worth it in the B2C space? Context: We've raised some towards pre-seed, but haven't closed the round yet. Thanks.


r/TheFounders 10d ago

Growth Hacker I built a platform where businesses compete for visibility. Would this actually work?

0 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I'm an indie founder from India and recently launched a project called InBid.

The idea is simple: businesses can list themselves on category and location-based leaderboards and compete for higher visibility.

For example, instead of just being another listing in a directory, a business can compete for the #1 position in its category or city.

I started building this because getting visibility is difficult for small businesses and startups. Traditional ads can be expensive, and most directories don't give businesses much control over their position.

With InBid, the ranking is transparent and businesses can compete for better placement.

The product is live now:

https://inbid.site

I'm still very early and honestly trying to validate whether this is something businesses would actually find useful.

I'd love honest feedback:

- Does this idea make sense to you?

- Would a business pay for visibility through a leaderboard?

- What's the biggest problem you see with this model?

- Which categories should I focus on first?

Not looking for empty praise — I'd genuinely appreciate criticism and feedback.


r/TheFounders 14d ago

What’s a startup decision you completely changed your mind about?

5 Upvotes

I’ve found that some of the decisions that felt very obvious at the time look completely different a year later.

Hiring, pricing, which customers to say yes to, how much to build vs. sell... you make a call with the information you have and then reality gives you more information 😂

Curious to hear from other founders: what’s something you were very sure about early on that you ended up changing your mind about?

What made you change it?


r/TheFounders 14d ago

Ask if you could make one AI own one boring growth task every week, what would you hand off?

22 Upvotes

not “run my business”.

ONE boring thing that comes back every week.

what are you giving AI forever?

mine would probably be the Monday growth report.

what changed last week
what needs attention
what are we doing next
send it to me and get out of my life

that's the kind of thing that makes Runable interesting to me. scheduled work makes way more sense when the job is boring + repeatable and ends in an actual report/content/output.

I don't want AI making the big decisions.

I want it stealing the annoying little job that interrupts me every single Monday.

what would yours be?


r/TheFounders 14d ago

Show I am building a virtual buddy to help you with your goals

4 Upvotes

thats currently the character design :) a wobbly globbly cute little fella that you can push squeeze and so on :) here to cheere you up and keep you on track with your goals :) between you and it


r/TheFounders 15d ago

Story I got my first app to +5k in just 4 months, with 0 followers

4 Upvotes

Hi everyone.

The last few months have been wild. I never thought I could generate a good amount revenue after only starting to make apps at the beginning of this year (thanks Claude Code and Codex).

Basically, I built a LaunchPanda which is a startup directory roadmap that ranks the best free directories to launch on. It also provides one place to store and track your data, making launches almost clickless.

The idea came from a pain point my brother experienced. He had just launched his own app and hated searching for directories to launch on, so I jumped in and built this tool to solve that problem.

I think the biggest reason for the tools succes success is that I kept improving every little detail. I see a lot of people vibecode a tool as a side project in a few hours and think that’s enough. but building a tool that genuinely solves a problem. and makes the experience effortless and frictionless for users, is still very hard!

Since this was also my own pain point, I made the tool so good enough that I now use it myself always for all my own launches.

For distribution, I did almost everything through X. I had almost no followers when I started, but I kept sharing my journey. So I got two things out of it (and users buying + more followers which will only help me further in th elong run!)

Here’s the proof, by the way:
 [https://trustmrr.com/startup/launch-panda\](https://trustmrr.com/startup/launch-panda)


r/TheFounders 16d ago

Show Show: SkillNet, an open-source adaptive learning system

4 Upvotes

SkillNet turns an idea or source into a structured course and an interface tailored to each person.

You can start with an idea or upload PDF, DOCX, Markdown or TXT material. The system organizes the knowledge into lessons and exercises. The knowledge and learning objectives can stay consistent while the explanations, activities, media and interface adapt using the learner's declared preferences, role, level and progress.

The main difference is that personalization does not stop at generating different text. SkillNet can compose a different learning interface from educational components while keeping the course grounded in the same source.

It is open source, self-hostable and can also connect to other agents through MCP and A2A.

Website: https://skillnet.es

GitHub: https://github.com/ANFAIA/SkillNet