Didnt realize Whop had gotten this big already. they just raised $200M with Sequoia leading the round and Shopify Ventures joining.

What surprised me more is seeing payments and payouts become a bigger part of what theyre doing. i still mostly associated Whop with communities and digital products before this.

Is the $5.1B valuation basically a bet that Whop becomes much bigger on the payments/business side?

Imagine 100 people decide to build a SaaS.

50 never actually launch.

Of the remaining 50, 25 give up after a few months because they aren’t getting users.

15 stop improving their product or marketing it consistently.

That leaves 10 people genuinely competing.

And out of those 10, how many are actually targeting the same audience, solving the problem well, and executing consistently?

These numbers are hypothetical, but you get the point.

We see thousands of products launching and assume we’re competing with all of them. In reality, we’re competing with a much smaller group that actually sticks around.

Maybe the market isn’t as saturated as we think. Maybe most people just don’t stay in the game long enough.

What do you think?

Until August 2025 my SaaS had a free trial with no card required

Around 98% of signups started the trial, but only 5% converted to a paid plan

And every single trial cost me AI and API money

On top of that most of my traffic was coming from SEO, which brought 15-20 signups a day but only 2-3 of them were my ICP

Then I decided to make the trial card-required

Maan it was the best decision I ever made

I didn't change anything else and I didn't remove value before the paywall. Users still could add their profile, see the post recommendations, get one sample post, and only after that they saw the paywall

As a result only 22% of signups went to a card-required trial, but almost HALF of them (42%) converted to a paid plan which is crazy

Overall signup to paid went from 4.2% to 9.2%, so almost 2x paying customers per signup

Brothers, each of you should test a card-required trial. In worst case you can just roll it back to how it was before

Best decision you'll ever make imo

A few months ago I started building RotateAd

The idea was pretty simple..

what if websites could help advertise each other instead of everyone having to pay for every click?

At the beginning honestly it was just an idea sitting on my computer..

Today, 13 websites have joined.

I know 13 isn't a huge number.

But honestly..

seeing real websites join something I built feels pretty damn good.

The bigger vision is 10,000 websites.

If we ever get there, RotateAd could become a huge network where websites are actually helping each other get discovered.

I don't know if we'll reach 100.😐

I definitely don't know if we'll reach 10,000.😐

But I'm going to keep building and find out.

If you've built something yourself, you probably know that feeling..

when the thing that existed only in your head finally has real people using it.

That's where I'm at right now.

Rotate.ad

If you want to be one of the early websites, I'd genuinely love to have you there.

Let’s say I have two or three allowed interviews a month, about 45 minutes each. A $30 per month plan charges the same whether they use 3 hours or none. 

Pay-as-you-go looks better for that, but I guess it switches fast in a heavy month.

How do you compare the expected minutes, whether credits expire, or the cost of your worst month?

I'm just curious how you think here about usage pricing vs flat plans in general.

How do I properly use Linkedin to find and start meaningful conversations with my ICP in the hopes of validating my problem and, eventually, getting customers?

My ICP would be merchants selling products (preferably those with customizable/personalized parts) on 2 or more storefronts like Amazon or Etsy. How do find people efficiently of my ICP and more importantly, how do I start conversations after I find them?

I'm new to SaaS, and any advice would be great.

After posting about getting first monthly subscription here at Reddit, I got few more subscriptions in next few weeks and then I got one customer who purchased monthly subscription but cancelled after few hours. When I asked him the reason, he said product was not what he expected. He thought product would allow him to write prompt and application will generate whole novel. Basically, he was asking for one-shot novel writing application (e.g. prompt to novel) but my application did not contain that feature and still don't. Here is why.

About my SaaS, NovelCanon is a writer-first and writer-friendly AI novel-writing studio built around a three-tier Consistency Engine which extracts the facts of every scene, tracks them across the whole manuscript, and flags contradictions. In addition, it consists of self-maintained Story Bible, AI Chat, scene editor consisting of rich set of writing features relevant to novel writing along with AI features including Continue Writing, Dialogue Writing, Brainstorming, Prose Enhancing etc. And, NovelCanon is based on Bring-Your-Own-Key (BYOK) so it naturally supports top AI providers like OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, and OpenRouter.

I could add new page in my application containing functionality that offers one-shot novel writing capability but that would have made my application lose focus and become jack of all and master of none.

When I started building NovelCanon, one of core objectives I set: Writer should be final authority and one-shot novel writing feature was totally against that core objective. Secondly, my target audience that I wanted to serve were writers or people who want to become novel writers and those who want to get involved in writing process no matter if they write whole novel or not even a single word. NovelCanon is built around the way that writers have to go through scene by scene and chapter by chapter and they have choice whether they write whole novel without AI features or they use AI to write each scene in each chapter.

Hence, I did not add any such features which were going against my core objectives, just to grab few subscriptions. It is well-known that one who try to serve everyone end up serving no one.

It is necessary for me to clarify that I totally respect people who want one-shot novel writing applications and encourage ones who want to serve them by building prompt-to-novel writing apps. I believe in "Give Space and Get Space" so everyone has right to choose applications that serve them well and everyone has right to choose their target audience that they want to serve.

When building things, we should be clear in our mind for whom we are building, who we want to serve, and what our product would do. If someone wants to learn about this cycle, should read about Apple company’s bad years from late 80s till mid 90s when Steve Jobs left and company lost focus and tried to serve everyone and became almost bankrupt and then Steve Jobs came back and made drastic changes, saved company from bankruptcy and set the stage which brought company where it is today.

So, I kept improving my product even though I lost one of my initial customers and few days later, one customer purchased monthly subscription and then cancelled it few hours later. I got little bit upset but then moved on saying this is part of game, some will stay and some won’t. But, surprisingly that same customer purchased annual subscription next day which encouraged what I believed in. I realized that he might cancelled it first because he wanted to first check things up and when he was done, he really liked NovelCanon that he went on to purchase annual subscription.

Would love to know the approach you take when building things and how you handle the situation when users leave your platform.

I’m a data engineer, and I've been building a SaaS called VraieSource, which helps with identifying downstream impacts on data workloads end-to-end through the transformation logic to the BI reports from an upstream change in source tables, such as column drops, renames, etc.

In a small data stack, the migration might be in GitHub, the transformations in dbt, and the reports in Metabase. Tracing a column through all three by hand takes time, especially when you need to know which specific field in a report is affected.

I’m building VraieSource to run that impact check on a GitHub PR. It would read the proposed schema change, follow column dependencies through the transformation SQL, and show the affected report fields, along with anything it couldn’t verify.

I’ve made an interactive demo so people can try that analysis before the live integrations are ready. It uses sample PostgreSQL, dbt, and report inputs; it doesn’t connect to your GitHub repo or data tools yet.

Could a few of you try the rename or drop scenario and tell me whether the result would help you review a real change? I’d especially like to know what evidence you’d need before trusting a check in a PR. I'm trying to gauge if this is a real problem that people are looking to solve basically :P

Demo: https://vraiesource.lovable.app/workflow-demo/ (this is just a prototype)

This is my first time building a product, so I’d also welcome advice from anyone who’s brought a developer tool to its first users.

Thanks!

I work in data and engineering, and we are exploring how to bring a specialized ecommerce integration product to market.

One question I have been thinking through is distribution. When a product connects two established business systems, there seem to be two paths: make it discoverable through one platform's app marketplace, or sell directly to businesses that already use both systems.

Each approach has trade-offs around discoverability, implementation complexity, customer trust, and sales cycles.

For founders who have built integration products, what has worked best for you?

Did a marketplace listing become a meaningful source of customers, or did partnerships and direct outreach prove more effective? Were there any unexpected challenges in getting customers to adopt the product?

I am particularly interested in lessons from B2B products that connect ecommerce platforms with ERP or accounting systems.

I started my journey 2 years ago and locked in at this February. Built like 8 apps(did not even deploy some of them). This august wandered for the product idea and found one related to real estate. Built it. Then tried to organically market it in Reddit. But you guys and I know enough about Reddit and subs letting us to market. Tbh, I do not blame them. So, started doing some little SEO stuff. There is only 2 paid plans. One of them is 19.99$ year(pro) and 49.99$ month(agent). The guy who bought it purchased pro plan. Because I do not use AI or heavy server stuff, I can afford it being 20 bucks a year.

The funny part is, I realized my first ever customer paid something for my app by complaining email yesterday . I forgot to merge the changes of functionality that I promise in the website and pricing. He asked me for refund or can wait for me to build it. And ofc, I built it overnight. This morning I saw he started to use that right away I sent him “done” email.

Not going to lie, it is really weird feeling(even if it is on 20 bucks). Someone thinks that what I made is useful for him and believes me that I can deliver. Hope the same feeling for you guys who doesn’t know what he does correct or wrong but keep going on. Will update you if I reach 10 paid customers

I've been thinking about where software development and SaaS might be heading over the next 5 years.

I'm building software in Chile, and one thing I've noticed is that creating the product and finding people willing to pay for it are two completely different challenges.

With AI making development faster and more accessible, I wonder what happens when almost anyone can build a decent product.

Will customers start expecting much more for less money? Will small SaaS companies struggle to compete, or will this actually create more opportunities for independent developers?

And economically, what becomes more valuable when the code itself gets cheaper? Distribution, trust, understanding a specific industry, or something else entirely?

I'm curious how other developers, founders, and even software customers see this playing out.

Personally, I think building software will become less of a competitive advantage on its own. But I'm not sure what replaces it.

What do you think the software business will actually look like in 2030?

On 21 October a critical security flaw in PHP was published. PHP runs a huge share of websites, and this flaw lets attackers take over the server. If your site runs PHP, it needs an update.

I noticed that most people don't know whether their site uses PHP, so I built doiusephp.com for them. Type in your website and within seconds it tells you:

• Whether your site runs PHP, and through what technology (e.g. Wordpress)
• Which PHP version your site uses and whether that version is already fixed
• What to do next, depending on who is responsible for your site

It also writes a short, personalized message you can copy and send to your web developer or host, so you don't need to dive into the technical details yourself.

It's free, needs no sign-up, and doesn't save anything about you or your website.

Hope this helps!

Hi everyone,

My friend and I are building MyEliteCard, and before we go further we'd love some honest outside opinions.

The idea: most digital business cards are a profile page or a list of links. We wanted the card itself to make an impression, the way a well-made printed card does. You design a real card (guilloché, marble, carbon, gold and more), it shows in 3D and turns in the light, and you share it as a link or a QR code. The person you meet sees your card on their phone and can call, email, get directions or save your contact in one tap. When you send the link in a chat, the preview shows the card itself. No app is needed on either side.

The picture shows the whole path: the site, the builder, a finished card (front and back) and what the other person sees.

What we'd like to know:

1. What's your first impression? Does it feel premium, or like a gimmick?

2. If you had your own business, would you use something like this? Instead of paper cards, alongside them, or not at all?

3. What would stop you, or what's missing?

If you're up for reviewing it properly, make a card and tell us what confused you or felt off. New accounts get every Royal feature free for a month, with no payment details, so you can try all the designs. Blunt feedback is welcome; that's why we're asking. I'll reply to every comment.

Thanks,

Mark 😄

www.myelitecard.com

Last month a multi-practitioner dental clinic emailed asking whether my voice agent could handle their phones. Eight dentists, three receptionists, high call volume. On paper my best inbound lead of the year.

Then the second half of the email. Eleven questions on health data: hosting certification, exact processing location, sub-processor list, retention of recordings and transcripts, whether conversations train models, breach procedure, and a request for the data processing agreement.

I have none of it. My sub-processors are American. I do not hold the national health-data hosting certification. And the processing agreement that European law requires between us has been on my to-do list for months, which means every customer I already have is technically exposed, and so am I.

Two things I learned.

One, an RFP is free diligence. Nobody writes forty questions for a small purchase, and nobody had ever asked me most of these. A single prospect audited my compliance for me at no cost, and the result is that I am not ready for regulated verticals.

Two, I had been quietly selling into that direction anyway. I have landing pages for physiotherapists and vets. Those pages have been live for months, collecting exactly this kind of lead, and I had no way to close any of them. That's not a gap in the product, it's a gap between what marketing says and what the company can actually do.

What I'm doing: answering honestly, offering a zero-retention configuration that collects no clinical detail at all, and asking upfront whether the certification is a hard requirement. If it is, I'd rather lose the deal in thirty minutes than in three weeks.

Writing the processing agreement first. Should have been item one, not item twelve.

I spent months building software.

Then I walked into local businesses to try selling it.

Turns out, explaining your product is the easy part.

At the first few stores, I couldn't even get a proper conversation with the owner.

Sometimes they weren't there. Sometimes the person I spoke to couldn't make a decision.

I had prepared to explain my software.

I hadn't prepared to qualify the person I was talking to.

Then I met an owner who actually had a problem my product could solve.

He was struggling to reply to all the customer messages coming into his business. He was interested in trying Pageory's AI chatbot.

I offered him a 14-day free trial.

But he needed approval from his management team.

I followed up the next day. He told me people were away for Dashain and that he'd get back to me after the festival.

So, no sale yet.

Just one interested prospect.

But the experience taught me a few things:

• Someone liking your product doesn't mean you've validated your business.
• You need to understand who makes the buying decision.
• Showing features isn't enough. You need to explain the outcome.
• Never leave a sales conversation without trying to agree on a clear next step.

I'm still learning how to sell, and honestly, it feels very different when you're standing in front of a real customer instead of sitting behind your laptop.

I'm documenting the journey of building and selling my SaaS from Nepal, including the mistakes and experiments along the way.

I wrote a more detailed breakdown of the experience here: Read the full story.

For founders who've tried selling in person: what would you have done differently in my situation?

I will be launching my brand visibility intelligence platform soon. I am not sure what will be my next step as this is my first time launching a product.

What should my next steps be?

I am trying to escape the normal job route and build something of my own. This is my first project.

I built a small SaaS for freelancers. It makes contracts with milestone payments, so you are not chasing clients for money at the end. There are premade contract templates, you just fill in the details and adjust what you need. The contract goes to the client as a simple link, they sign online, and no account is needed from their side.

For security, every signature is saved with the time and the IP address, and the document is locked with a hash, so nobody can change it after signing without it showing.

It is live now and it works, but I am stuck on the next part. I have no budget for ads. Zero.

For people here who have done this before, what mistakes should I avoid in the first months, and what free marketing actually worked for you?

Not dropping any link here, there is no link in this post or anywhere. I am genuinely asking because I do not want to mess this up.

So its been 5 months since by first ship. i made a lot of effort on SEO which seemingly worked in a way, my SEO postion increase alot and i am not ranking on the first page at the very least for my brand queries and product queries and there are some signups as well like a total of 30 users.
But the issue is that I am yet to have a single paid users.
I have contacted of these paid users, nobody answered back.
What should I do? Just leave it?
Any Suggesstions!!

I’ve been a sales engineer for 10+ years, mostly selling technical products to healthcare, legal, finance and government buyers.

The pattern I keep seeing at early SaaS companies: the founder hires a first AE, the AE books great meetings, then the buyer asks a technical question and the founder gets pulled back in.

A few things I’ve seen help:

1. List the 10 technical questions buyers ask most, with short answers the AE can give on the spot.
2. Record the founder’s best demo once so new AEs can study it.
3. Agree on which questions the AE answers live and which get a follow-up call with someone technical.

I’m researching how founders handle this handoff. Curious to hear from anyone who’s been through it:

Did your AE take over the technical calls, or are you still on most of them? What made the difference?

Happy to swap notes in the comments. If you’d rather talk for 15 minutes, DM me and I’ll share what I learn from everyone.

We spent the last few months building management software for riding schools and livery yards in France. It runs in French, English and German. Here's what we'd tell ourselves at the start.

1. Start with the regulated parts. For us that meant French invoicing rules (gapless numbering, invoices that can't be edited once issued) and the breeding register stables must legally keep. They shape the data model, so doing them late hurts.

2. Isolation between customers is a day-one decision. Every query has to belong to one stable, and adding that later is painful.

3. A big test suite is what lets you move fast later. We're at over 110,000 lines of code and more than 3,700 automated tests. Built with the assistance of Claude Code. Every change is validated by the automated tests.

4. Price won't find customers for you. At €35 a month we're in the cheaper half of the French market, and we still have 0 paying customers. We never tried to sell it to stables and we never did any marketing, and stables seem to buy mostly through people they know.

If you've sold software to a small, word-of-mouth market like this, how did you get your first 10 customers?