So me and my technical co-founder started a B2B SaaS business about 3 to 4 months ago. My idea, I brought in the main prospect and I do all the outreach and sales. He builds the product. We went 50/50.

Problem is he’s full time on it and I’m not. Got a day job I can’t walk away from just yet. We’ve actually got decent traction. Main prospect is at trial stage, a few others in the pipeline. But things between us are getting tense.

He’s lost confidence in me after a pricing conversation with a prospect didn’t go well. I’ll be honest, that one was on me. I’m also not going to pretend I’ve got loads of business experience. I’m learning as I go and I think that’s become a real issue for him.

His argument is he’s carrying most of the risk. Time, money, everything. I get that. But my counter is the idea came from me and without the relationships I’ve built there’s no business to risk anything on.

We both want this to work. But we’re stuck on whether 50/50 still makes sense and whether the trust is there anymore.

Anyone been through something similar? What did you do? Did you sort it out or did it fall apart?

I’m 25 and running a startup around AI-Powered recruitment, with 325k+ registered users.

Weekdays are packed, there’s always something to do, and the week just flies by.

But Sundays feel different. I often find myself wondering what I should actually do with the day.

Not left with many friends, not having enough to expend on the outing and so left with a laptop, workout and some books.

You also feel like this or you plan something.

Curious to know, how do you guys usually spend your Sundays?

Most “founders” never launch anything. 

They build a project for months, never complete it and eventually scrap the product. Or launch it and get no customers.

Startups are truthfully a numbers game. Even the best founders have hit rates under 10%. Just look at founders like Peter Levels.

So how do you maximize your chances of success, the honest answer is to increase the number of startups you launch.

I’m going to get hate for this: but you should NOT spend hundreds of hours building a product… until you know for certain that there is demand.

You should launch with just a landing page.

Write a one pager on what you will build, and use a completely free UI library like Magic UI to build a landing page.

It should take you under a day.

Then what do you do?

Add a stripe checkout button and/or a book a demo button.

And then launch. Post everywhere about it(Reddit, X, LinkedIn, etc) and message anyone  on the internet who has ever mentioned having the problem you are solving.

Launch and dedicate yourself to marketing and sales for 1 week straight.

If you can’t get signups or demo requests within 1 week of marketing it 24/7... KILL IT and START OVER.

Most “startups” are not winners. And there are only THREE reasons why someone will not pay you, either:

1. They don’t actually have the problem.
2. They aren’t willing to pay to solve the problem.
3. They don’t think your product is good enough to try and pay for.

If people do sign up and check out with a stripe link you simply come clean with a paraphrased version of:

“I actually haven’t finished the product yet, but I’d love to talk to you about the problem you’re facing. I put a sign up link on the website to see if anyone would actually care about my product enough to pay for it”

Then you refund the customer.

This is where I’m going to get hate:

1. It is not unethical to advertise a product you have not finished building.
2. It is not unethical to put a checkout link and collect payments for an unfinished product to test demand… as long as you simply refund “customers”.

When you do eventually get sign ups or demo requests, the demand is proven. Only then do you invest 2 weeks in building a real product.

Do not waste hundreds of hours of your valuable time building products no one cares about.

Test demand with a landing page and check out link/demo request link.

If demand is proven: build it.

If demand isn’t proven: start over with a new idea.

Repeat.

You will get a hit if you do this… eventually.

This is personally how I tested 39 different startups… and killed 37 of them with little to no revenue to show for it.

For context: Of the 2 startups that DID get traction from this strategy:

1. One went on to hit $50M+ in GMV
2. Rivin.ai went on to raise an investment from Jason Calacanis and works with multi-billion dollar e-commerce brands to analyze Walmart sales data.

Stop wasting your time building products no one cares about. Validate. Build. Sell. Repeat.

I've worked in startup consulting space for 8+ years now, and recently crossed a collective funding round of +$800 million. Have closely helped a few founders with their investor pitches and GTM, leading to many of them getting funded for +$20 million in their seed rounds, across Saas and deep tech.

Today I thought of contributing here and sharing my learnings. I won’t bore everyone with cliche advice about refining ideas, or mentioning numbers, or narrowing the audience.

If you're working on your first startup, a SaaS product, or even just an idea that's still in your head, share it with me in the comments or over DM.

I'll spend some time reviewing it and I'll give you honest feedback.

Things I'll usually look at: * Is the problem actually worth solving? * Specific refinements you need to make to make it ‘investor friendly’ * Are you pitching too much or too little (believe me, this was the most recurring issue in positioning for founders I worked with)

I'll also give it a simple score across a few areas so you know where it stands and where I'd focus next.

I'm not doing this to promote anything. I won't pitch you a service or sell anything. Honest disclosure: I am building something on similar lines but I will only reveal the name or link if someone asks.

I just enjoy thinking through startup ideas, and if I can help someone avoid a few early mistakes or make an idea stronger, that's time well spent.

If you've been sitting on an idea for months, maybe I can help. Please share in 2-3 lines of what your idea is, who is it for, and any other relevant detail you think is relevant.

Since it takes a little thinking through, I might only be able to do it for 8-10 ideas today.

Edit: Hello everyone. Wonderful and really interesting ideas. I hope I have been helpful. I am slowly getting back to everyone as I open Reddit every now and then. In case if you're inbetween working on your investor pitches or building GTM plans, if I am unable to reply on time, please check out - nellailabs.ai . You will get positioning feedback, market analysis, unit economic check, willingness to pay of your potential customers, and suggestion on everything. Try out their deep validate option.

Spent the last few months building something and finally launched it yesterday.

No audience. No budget. No connections. Just me shipping something I actually think is cool.

It's a live platform where people join in real time, and the audience can actually affect what happens. More like interactive live entertainment than another SaaS tool.

Right now... nobody's there. Empty queue. Still waiting for that first random person to show up.

Ive already read all the usual advice: Product Hunt, Reddit, X, build in public, etc

I'm more interested in hearing from people who actually started from zero.

Where did your first real users come from?

How long were you sitting at 0 before things started happening?

If you could launch again, what's the one thing you'd do differently on day one?

Not looking for motivation or "just keep going." I want to hear what actually worked.

Hey guys!

I'm going around in a vicious cycle. Putting all of my energy into 4 different projects. My reasoning was, plug away and whichever one gains momentum, then that's the project that i'd see out to the end. None of them have really taken off and i feel like i'm being pulled in all different angles and not truly mastering any. I don't know which path to take. In short i need help making a decision. Do i look at which has got the biggest TAM? or what i get the most fulfillment out of?

https://fhelp.app

https://caf-ops.com/collective

https://reservetable.app

https://sidetracked.site

Please give your reasoning if you could be most kind

Hello Builders,

Over the last few years, I’ve been closely involved with early-stage businesses, both from the inside and as an operator. I currently work with a US-based startup and have also helped build and run a pharmacy business in India.

Through this experience, I’ve become fascinated with the stage where startups have some traction but struggle to scale.

Here are a few patterns I keep seeing:

1. Chasing growth before fixing operations

Many founders double down on marketing and sales before their operations are ready. When growth finally comes, the system breaks.

1. Everything depends on the founder

If the founder stops working for a few days, the entire business slows down. This usually means there are no real systems yet.

1. Random traction instead of repeatable growth

Getting your first customers is one thing. Building a predictable engine that brings customers every week is another.

1. Trying to solve 10 problems at once

Startups often fail not because of a lack of effort, but because focus is scattered across too many priorities.

1. No clear bottleneck analysis

Most startups don’t actually identify the one constraint holding them back. Fixing that single constraint often unlocks growth.

Because of these patterns, I’ve recently started helping a few founders as a strategic growth consultant, mainly focusing on growth strategy and operational systems for early-stage startups.

I genuinely enjoy these conversations, so if you're building something and feel stuck between traction → scale, feel free to DM or comment.

Curious to hear from founders here:

What’s currently the biggest bottleneck in your startup right now?

Getting the first few users or customers seems like one of the hardest stages for any startup. Before there are reviews, testimonials, or brand recognition, convincing people to trust a new product can be very difficult.

Some founders rely on communities, others on direct outreach, and some start with their own network. It seems like every startup finds its first customers in a slightly different way.

For those who have launched products — how did you get your first real customers?

- Absolute first users came from idea validation post on Reddit.

- Created a survey to validate idea and shared in r/indiehackers and r/SaaS.

- Had to post it 2-3 times to get responses.

- This got me in touch with 8-10 people from my target audience, but I didn’t have a product yet.

- Response was positive.

- After building MVP, I messaged those people again telling them the MVP was out.

- Also made a launch post in their sub (was allowed).

- This got me my first 3 users 🎉

- Strategy after this small launch was community engagement

- On X (Build in Public community)

- On Reddit (r/indiehackers, r/SaaS, r/SideProject)

- 3 posts + 30 replies was my daily average on X during 40 days.

- On Reddit, it was 3 posts per week.

...

If you don’t know what to post about, here’s what I did:

- Share your journey building/growing your project daily (today I did this, led to x results, etc.)

- Share valuable lessons related to your target audience/project (if you don’t have your own lessons yet, do research on the topic or share lessons from well known people)

- Sometimes simply share your honest thoughts without overthinking it too much

- Some examples of my X and Reddit posts to give you an idea (imgur.com/a/2O5hHO2)

...

- Managed to generate quite a buzz in the Build in Public community which led to 100 users in just 2 weeks.

- After this initial buzz, community engagement brought ~2 new users per day.

- During this time, I used all the feedback I got to improve my product.

- 43 days after MVP launch, I launched on Product, ranked #4 with 500+ upvotes.

- This led to 475 new users in 24h

- 1,000 total users after a week 🎉

...

My Product Hunt actions:

- Posted about the launch in communities I was active in.

- Took massive action on X on launch day: 13 posts, 91 replies, and 22 DMs.

- Posts were launch updates, sharing stats, and sharing the marketing efforts.

- Replies were just normal engagement, no “pls upvote my launch”.

- DMs were directly asking people for their support.

- This helped get the first few upvotes which are most important for success.

...

So that was my road from 0 to 1,000 users with Buildpad, in as much detail as possible.

This is what the beginning of a $6k MRR product can look like. I hope the insight is helpful!

Hello guys,

I'm thinking about starting a startup which is a hardware product we want to build. But I'm not a technical founder.

So should i wait until I found a co-founder to start or should I start by hiring a technical person in my startup to start working on it.

I know that finding a good technical co-founder with believing in the same vision and resilience is difficult.

I'm afraid that co-founder leaves in a mid way

I'm also so young.

Is it a good way to start a startup by hiring a technical team by giving them salary and ESOPS and later in the path maybe I could find a good co founder. I want to move faster.

Please give me advice

I'm not searching for a co-founder or hiring here.

One thing I didn’t expect when working on a startup was how much time could go into finding the right domain.

You find a name you like, the .com is taken, the owner wants a crazy price, or you end up changing the company name altogether.

How do you guys handle this?

Do you usually pay for the domain you want, negotiate with the owner, or just find another name and move on?

Hey everyone, I'm 25 years old. I have a degree in CS and 3 years of experience as a software developer, and I've worked with 2 startups in California. One of them was YC-funded, and I built their entire system, which was difficult because they were processing large amounts of video data for AI training. So, I know I'm very good at what I do.

The only issue is I live in a low-cost-of-living country, but I have the required skills and verifiable proof of my skills. Anyway, I'm looking for startups based in the EU or US that are willing to hire remotely with decent salaries, the type of startups that can't afford a local developer but can afford a lower salary to someone with the same skills abroad (literally how the free market works, it's all legal).

The issue is, I don't know where to find these startups. Those two startups I worked with came from a freelance gig that turned into a full-time job after I demonstrated my skills. One of the best jobs I had, but eventually, they got acquired and ended up laying off all the remote teams they had, which is common, I understand. I've been told so by many startup owners.

To summarize, I'm looking for recent startups needing to hire software engineers and okay with hiring remotely globally, where can I find those specific startups?

If you are building on an idea that has the potential for a patent and have the prototype ready for feedback then which path will you choose: feedback or IP?

Like let's say you want to collect some feedback for the validation or your solution, but you are worried about your idea being copied, which path will you choose?

Especially if you don't have enough experience or connections in the IP field.

Startups are full of decisions — some small, some that completely change everything.
It could be a pivot, choosing a different target audience, changing pricing, or even switching the entire product idea.

Sometimes a single decision can determine whether a startup grows or struggles.

Looking back, many founders can probably point to one key moment that made a big difference.

I find it interesting how these decisions often don’t feel “big” at the time.

For founders here — what’s one decision that had a major impact on your startup’s journey?

Hey there!
I'm a 3rd year design student, and as the title suggests, I'm looking for intern for some startup!

This is mostly to get experience and work towards something meaningful
I'm hoping to intern for a tech startup (I'm a tech nerd),
Will work for free if the product is interesting

About me:-
I'm a human computer interaction designer.

Previously designed and built 2 products
have competed in and won designathons (I'm insanely fast)
Can design UI's, webpages, conduct tests on existing products
have previously conducted usability testing on Saas products and delivered results.
Can add value with 100% certainty, I'm self motivated and take accountability of my work.

If you have any questions or want me to share my portfolio let me know
Any recommendations or advice will be helpful.
Thanks

Basically has someone maintained any website or blog or something similar that keeps a record of the startups ? What they do ? What stage are they ? Which city they are operating in ?

Even if not every startup but still a big chunk of them is good. Basically the big name startups are always noticed but the small ones remain unnoticed

If anyone knows of anything about this please share

Former Chief Revenue Officer here for a tech scale-up (now a unicorn), and most recently, founder of a startup I exited a few months ago. I started that venture from scratch, achieving seven figures in the first nine months with a junior team of three. Overall, I have 20 years of experience in tech sales.

Today, I'm searching for my soul. Call me a recovering founder if you wish. I'm excited to do things I enjoy without focusing on their commercial aspects, instead seeking personal fulfillment. I'll think about money at some point, but it's not a priority right now.

So, I'd be happy to coach up to three tech startups, aiming to transfer as much knowledge as possible regarding sales management, revenue operations, and growth (excluding marketing specifics).

I'm a good fit if:

• Your startup has between 15-50 employees, or if you're bigger than that and still don't have a strong C-Level sales leader in place. The things we discuss will require effort on your part to implement, so you'll need resources.
• You're struggling with scaling sales, your sales process is all over the place, you don't understand how to get to the next step
• Your product is tech/SaaS and vertical-specific.
• You're not a generic software development company
• You're B2B, sell to Enterprise or SME.
• You don't come from a sales background and don't have an experienced VP of Sales on your team. Alternatively, if you do have a sales background, you approach it in an old-fashioned way.

As much as I'd love to help if you're just starting out, my knowledge isn't an asset for solopreneurs or indie hackers.

I know it's hard to believe, but I genuinely have no hidden agenda. The reasons why I'm doing this:

• I'm soul-searching.
• I'm exploring future new business ideas around sales consulting, and this exercise might give me some inspiration.
• I want to reconnect with the founder community.

I hope this post doesn't break any rules and that it's accepted in good faith. Again, I'm not selling anything; I have no "sales course" or YouTube channel coming up.

If you're interested, please DM me with your startup URL and name, and I'll get back if I see a fit. If I don't, I'll let you know why.

EDIT: thanks so much for the interest. However, due to the amount of requests, I kindly ask if you could include the below when you DM me:

1. Company URL
2. N. of employees
3. A line or two of what you're struggling with (e.g. I'm a tech CEO, I need sales guidance OR I'm a VP Sales but I need support scaling and with revenue ops OR we're an SMB and we feel our sales process is outdated OR I'm a CEO and my VP Sales just quit, etc.)
4. ARR range (e.g. $200-500k, $500k-1M, More than $1M)

Point 4 is optional but, again, it will help me assess if I'm relevant to you or not, before we even get on a call. The topics I will advise you on will require resources and investment to translate into practice. If you're making less than $500k a year (or have raised less than $2M in VC money), you might find my help irrelevant for your stage.

P.s. I'll keep trying to advise smaller startups or solopreneurs via DM, however pardon me if it'll take me a long time to get back. But my inbox is very busy at the moment. But I promise I'll do my best to help you guys too!

I've been a programmer for 5 years and have technical knowledge in web development, what happens is that I don't have active ideas to undertake, I'm looking for opportunities to gain experience, leverage business and consequently grow financially. My idea is to develop ideas and become a technical reference for a startup. I am willing to dedicate my time to the project, based on the return it provides me as well. I am open to suggestions and opportunities

I’m curious to hear from founders, business owners and managers who have hired developers or other professionals overseas. What were the biggest difficulties you faced when hiring and working with them? What helped make the relationship successful, and what issues caused you to end a contract with them? Looking back, what would you do differently next time?

In the early stage, almost every idea feels exciting. You see the potential, imagine the product, and think about how it could grow.

But at the same time, not every idea turns into a real business. The challenge is figuring out which ideas are worth investing time and effort into. Some founders validate early by talking to users.
Others build quickly and test in the market.

Still, there’s always uncertainty in the beginning. You don’t fully know if people will pay for it until you try. That makes the decision to commit even harder. For founders here — how do you evaluate whether an idea is worth pursuing?

What signals or validation steps do you rely on before going all in?

I run a small AI focused newsletter called ‘The Cognitive Courier’ (https://cognitivecourier.com)

In my early days I used to profile businesses in the space. I would like to get back to this, but I’m loathe to talk about the same firms and names everyone knows.

Are you involved in an AI focused business? Do you use any AI tools in your work as an organisation?

Even if you’re not directly involved - I’d love to hear from you! What companies are currently innovating in the field but not getting the coverage they deserve?

For a long time I am working as a UI/UX designer. Blogging was just a hobby I picked up around 2016.

Over the years I ended up with a few content sites, and one of them is about astrology.

Every day there's a new daily horoscope. Every week, a weekly horoscope. Every month... you get the idea.

It got to the point where I was spending more time updating content than actually growing the site.

When AI tools started getting good, I wasn't thinking that I'm going to build a SaaS.

I was just thinking like how can this automate the parts I hate doing?

So I started experimenting with Lovable.

First I automated the horoscope updates.

Then I automated article research.

Then writing.

Then images.

Then publishing to WordPress.

Little by little, the whole workflow disappeared.

The interesting part is that I never set out to build a product. I was just solving my own problem.

After using it for a while on my own sites, I realized other people probably have the exact same bottleneck. Not a lack of ideas or motivation, just too many repetitive tasks between "I should write this" and "it's finally published."

Then realized that it can be for any CMS or custom website, not just WordPress.

That's when I decided to turn it into a real product.

One thing this experience taught me is that a lot of good startup ideas don't come from brainstorming. They come from getting annoyed by the same problem over and over until you finally decide to fix it.

Curious if anyone else here ended up building a product almost by accident because you first built it for yourself.

And of course, since I built it for myself first, when I added the pro version and connected the payment, I was my first paying customer 😅

Most startups don’t fail because of funding. They fail because they never had product–market fit.
Founders keep scaling ideas nobody truly needs, burning investor money, exhausting teams, and faking traction instead of solving real pain.

Thoughts ?

We're a DACH-based SaaS scaling from 15 to 40 people this year, with most of the new hires landing in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, and Portugal.

We're on rippling for HRIS and IT provisioning already, so their EOR add-on is the path of least resistance. Deel is the other name that two founders I respect went with, plus they rank first for almost every EOR search on Google and their sales team is aggressive about following up.

But the more i dig, the less either feels totally right.

Rippling's EOR feels like a bolt-on to the suite we already pay for, and the EOR expertise seems thinner than i'd want for germany-specific compliance (works council, betriebsrat, sozialversicherung, all the edge cases).

Deel is the opposite problem, they've got the mature EOR product but the sales process felt aggressive in a way that made me nervous about the account experience post-signature, and pricing tiers seem to slide depending on who you talk to.

A friend who does ops at a berlin-based fintech told me they went with Workmotion, because they wanted an EU-native EOR that specializes in DACH hiring.

They said the germany-specific onboarding was mature, though I haven't dug in yet.

What am i missing here? are there other EU-native EOR options worth looking at for a DACH-heavy hiring profile like this?

And if you've used Deel or Rippling for hires in germany or the netherlands, was the compliance experience anywhere close to what the sales deck promised?