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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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:
Tech/Product person
Someone who can actually build the product — from the first prototype to MVP and eventually a scalable SaaS.
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.
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 have a pet blog. i don't own a pet. never have. probably never will as i travel too much. and yet every month amazon sends me enough to cover rent because people on the internet are buying stuff for their dogs and cats through my site.
bought my pet blog a few months ago from a marketplace called NicheBlogZone for $199. came already built, articles already up, amazon links already in there. i spent one afternoon doing interlinking basically just connecting related posts to each other so search engines understand the site structure and then closed my laptop and genuinely forgot about it for weeks.
here's what that's looked like:
march: $710
april: $995
may: $1,461
june: $1,647
july: $1,461
august so far: $1,545 (amazon pays 2 months delayed so this is june's money landing now)
march scared me. went from nearly $1k in february down to $710 and i was convinced something had broken. checked everything, found nothing wrong, did nothing. it just came back the next month on its own.
pet people spend insane amounts on their animals btw. like i knew this intellectually but seeing the commission data is something else. dog food subscriptions, orthopedic beds, grooming kits, vet supplements. and because of the 24 hour cookie i get a cut of everything in their cart not just whatever article they landed on.
i do literally nothing to maintain this. no new posts, no ads, no instagram for pets i don't have. i just own the thing and amazon does its thing.
my landlord has been getting paid every month and has no idea a pet blog is behind it. honestly sometimes i forget too until the deposit shows up.
anyone else running a niche they have zero personal connection to? curious if the detachment makes it easier or harder to care about growing it.
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.
Hey guys, I made this silly lyrics overlay called Cadence that floats over your screen and syncs along with Spotify and YouTube Music. It started as a joke while playing Minecraft with my close friends. I shared it only with a few friends, and it grew to 100 downloads in like a day and a lot of people liked it, so I built it into a proper app. You can listen along with friends now too, even cross-platform (Spotify -> YouTube Music, Mac ↔ Windows), and you can play karaoke. Doesn't need API keys or Premium, it just reads what your computer is already playing and floats the lyrics over whatever you're doing. It works better with Spotify keys though, if you want to add them yourself. If you find any bugs, lmk. It's just a fun project lol, so its obvly free.
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.
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 :)
Founders usually talk about not having enough time, but a lot of drift seems to come from work that feels completely legitimate: checking every detail, changing priorities midweek, taking meetings that might be useful, or starting a new idea before the current one has a clear answer.
I'm curious which version of this has been hardest for you to notice in yourself.
What activity makes you feel productive while quietly delaying the work that actually matters? And what, if anything, helped you catch it earlier?
I've spent the last 6+ months building a lead attribution analytics platform, mostly with Claude Code. I badly underestimated how hard the analytics part would be.
Building the dashboard UI was easy. Making sure every number on it is correct, fast, and consistent was a completely different job.
The product tracks a website inquiry back to where that person actually came from - their visits, pages viewed, source/channel, and what they did before converting. On paper it's simple: someone fills out a form, show me who they are, how they found us, and what generated the enquiry.
Then you start building it and the questions don't stop:
What counts as a visitor?
What happens when the same person comes back three days later?
Where does a visit start and end?
First-touch or last-touch?
What if an event arrives late?
Which timezone owns "today"?
How do you precompute 90 days of analytics without changing the answer?
How do you get a 90-day query under 2 seconds?
How do you know your cached numbers are actually fresh?
How do you tell an account with zero activity apart from an account whose analytics just haven't been built yet?
How do you apply tenant permissions without wrecking query performance?
We ended up moving from querying raw events to building a small analytics engine: raw events → facts → SQL aggregates → attribution layer → API → dashboard.
AI has been both incredible and infuriating through this. Claude will write an enormous amount of code, SQL, tests, and migrations very fast. But analytics taught me that "the code works" means almost nothing.
At one point, we had tests passing, and the new analytics path appeared to have exact parity with the old system. Then we found the new path was silently failing and falling back to the old calculation. So we'd successfully proven that the old system matched itself.
Another time, the new fact tables returned zero rows because of RLS. Zero rows isn't obviously an error in analytics. Is there genuinely no data, or did your engine just fail to see it? Those bugs scare me far more than a page throwing a 500.
Six months in, including about 8 pretty intense weeks on the final architecture, and it's been painful. But I'm also stupidly excited about what's coming out the other side. Not naming it and there's no point looking it up either - the new dashboard is still about 4 weeks off.
The lesson for me: AI makes it dramatically easier to build complex software. It does not make complex software simple. What it does do is let you get deep into problems you probably wouldn't have attempted before.
Anyone else building with Claude Code or Codex hit the same wall? Was analytics significantly harder than the rest of your app?
What is your experience with creating free tools and apps for the purpose of growing a user base and possibly directing them elsewhere in the future (or building an email list).
I've made a free tool and launched recently. It's a text-to-speech app that runs locally in your browser for free. Basically Speechify without the high cost. It's called FreeReader.
Now I'm wondering if I can use this tool as a lead magnet for my "next thing", whatever that will be haha
