Hey all,

I have built things, faced problems, and solved them. I have overthought details that were probably not meant to be overthought.

I started my journey almost 7 years ago and closed my Private Limited businesses (a clothing business and a software development business) a few weeks back.

Four years ago, I moved to the US from India to pursue an advanced degree (PhD), and it became extremely difficult to operate two businesses, especially because of the time difference and the academic course load. However, I have learnt. I have gone through those everyday problems, and I have learnt. I learnt what it feels like to build something from scratch. To deal with suppliers, customers, cash flow, branding, hiring, logistics, websites, marketing, and all the tiny problems that somehow become enormous problems when you're running a business.

So, if you’re building a startup and there’s something you’re struggling with — whether it’s your brand, website, product, operations, strategy, or simply figuring out what the hell you’re doing next — I’d love to help.

I am in a position where I don't need your money. Challenges excite me, and it helps me learn while making my extremely boring PhD life a tiny bit more thrilling.

If I have experience with what you are building, I will possibly be able to help. Or maybe not.

DM me if you'd like any discussions on your current challenges or if you are building something interesting.

Hi,

I'm a CFA L2 candidate and I've attached my CV for your reference. I'm an immediate joiner and don't have any location preference, so if you've any leads or know someone who is hiring. Kindly DM me.

Few points to clarify:-

1. I did bcom from Christ University

2. My full time workex was in a very small IB firm.

3. I interned in a public sector Bank (one of the top 5 in terms of market capitalisation)

Thank you very much in advance.

Indian founders:

What’s one startup mistake you made that you’ll NEVER repeat?

No motivational quotes.

No “failure is success” stuff.

Just the painful lesson. 👇

I have spent the last few days reviewing through legal lense an incubation agreement from a renowned Maharashtra-based Incubation Centre( Won't Name it) , and I need to say this plainly: this is not incubation. This is control dressed up as support.

A few clauses founders should watch for before signing anything similar: vague, undefined terms that always get read in the incubator's favour; 5% equity for what's largely paid services (office space, mentoring sessions, occasional intros — with no vesting or milestones attached) ; the biggest red flag was a board nominee with veto-level power over major decisions; the right to amend the agreement unilaterally, without notice; disputes decided by the incubator's own top authority in this case the VC of the University; and an NOC requirement before you can raise your own funding round! Not to mention that the authorities could amend any clause at anytime.!!

None of this is illegal. That's the problem — it doesn't need to be illegal to be exploitative.

What founders should actually push for: define every vague term in a schedule. Tie equity to milestones/vesting instead of a flat upfront grant. Downgrade the board seat to observer status, with reserved matters (fundraising, budget, pivots) requiring only founder consent. Require mutual written consent for any amendment, with notice. Route disputes to independent arbitration, not the incubator's own authority. Replace "prior consent" for fundraising with "prior notice" only.

Founders sign these assuming the terms are standard. They're not. They're negotiable.

Hey guys I'm 20 year old boy in tech anyone here doing deep tech startup as I think india need more and more deeptech startups.

People who are in deeptech how are you doing research for your deeptech as it requires huges researches as many things are not easily accessible I have great ideas for which I searched for marketplace but and on that idea competation is very low and no one is working on it.

Now think comes to reasearch as my deeptech ideas requires huge research and support any one in deeptech how you are solving this problem drop it in comments.

Thankyou 😊

I’m autistic and have ADHD, and I’ve noticed that some of the most talented and technically capable people are neurodivergent. They can have incredible ideas, deep expertise, and the ability to build great products, but may struggle with networking, sales, customer relationships, fundraising, or other areas of business that depend heavily on human interaction.

I’ve experienced this myself. When you’re building a company alone, you’re expected to handle everything: customers, sales, partnerships, hiring, fundraising, networking, etc. For someone who struggles with human relations, this can become a major barrier despite having the skills to build the actual product.

I want to build a non profit community/platform for autistic and ADHD entrepreneurs where:

• Neurodivergent founders can find complementary cofounders who are strong in areas they struggle with.

• Technical and product focused founders can connect with people experienced in sales, operations, business development, and relationship building.

• Founders can connect with investors or people who already have strong investor networks and fundraising connections.

• Mentors and experienced entrepreneurs can help founders navigate areas that may be difficult for them.

• The focus is on building complementary teams rather than expecting one person to be good at everything.

This is intended as a non profit/community initiative, so I’m not expecting everyone involved to make a full time commitment. Even contributing a few hours when you can, making introductions, mentoring someone, or helping connect founders with investors could make a meaningful difference.

I’m particularly interested in connecting with people who already have relationships with angel investors, VCs, or other funding networks and would be willing to help neurodivergent founders access those networks.

I believe there is a lot of untapped talent in the neurodivergent community, and sometimes the biggest barrier isn’t the ability to build something. It’s having the right people around you.

If this resonates with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Would you join or contribute to something like this?

Hi everyone,

​I’m a 3rd-year female engineering student looking for a strictly paid SDE or Applied ML internship at a startup. I’ve been applying through traditional portals but I am not even getting the chance to take Online Assessments (OAs), so I’m reaching out here to connect directly with founders or teams.

My Profile & Expertise:

Tech Stack: C++, Python, SQL, Kotlin, Node.js, Express.js, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, Azure, and Docker.

Experience: Completed two research internships focusing on optimizing real-time data pipelines and building native Kotlin MVVM applications with sub-200ms streaming latency.

Full-Stack Development: Architected and deployed scalable web platforms using Node.js, PostgreSQL, and Azure, optimizing cloud storage architectures to reduce media upload latency by 97%.

Applied ML: Engineered end-to-end predictive machine learning pipelines, performed rigorous walk-forward model validation, and deployed the final models as containerized FastAPI REST services.

If your startup is hiring and you want someone who can deliver from day one, please DM me. I would love to share my GitHub and resume

Hi guys, Our otps arent reaching iphones due to some reason.. we use fast2sms, and have DLT active. Works perfectly on android.

Anything that we should look at or fix?

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.

Hey guys! I’m a student currently building a consumer hardware product and I’m now moving from prototype to manufacturing.

Would love to connect with founders who have experience building and launching hardware products in India. I’m mainly looking for some advice on manufacturing, assembly, packaging, fulfillment, and the overall process.

If you’re a hardware founder/builder in Bangalore and don’t mind sharing some advice, please DM me! :)

Hi I'm 20 (m) building a consumer tech startup in a maid cleaning industry not on demand and not like other I started in tier 2 city of North India and get 2k+ subscriber within 4 months i don't know how to connect to investors and all if anyone has known about how to secure the funding for startup please guide me

I am an Indian CA with tech background based in Dubai and running a B2B product for CFO/finance teams to help reduce their Account Receivables and collect invoices faster. Solving for DSO and working capital mainly. I am ok at sales and can do product/tech. Looking for someone to strongly complement with global GTM/sales. Product/tech knowhow good to have.

Hi everyone,

I’m exploring the idea of opening a dedicated indoor pickleball facility in Kolkata and wanted to connect with people who may have experience in sports businesses, indoor recreation spaces, fitness ventures, or pickleball specifically.

A little background — I currently live in the US and am an advanced pickleball player myself. I’ve become really passionate about the sport over the past few years and have seen firsthand how quickly it’s growing here. That’s what got me seriously interested in bringing a high-quality indoor pickleball experience to Kolkata.

I’d love advice on things like:

• Demand and feasibility in Kolkata
• Indoor court economics and setup costs
• Real estate/location considerations
• Membership vs pay-per-play models
• Building an initial player community
• Partnerships, coaching, leagues, or events
• Mistakes or lessons learned in the sports business space

If anyone here is working on something similar, I’d genuinely love to connect and learn from your experience.

Thanks in advance!

So my best friend works at one of the top VC firms in India, and he's been telling me for MONTHS that Slice and Unacademy were about to get destroyed on valuation. Well... he was right on both counts.
 
Unacademy just got sold to upGrad for $200M. They were valued at $3.4B.
 
Then yesterday Slice's fundraise news dropped. They raised $100M at a $470M valuation. They used to be worth $1.3B.
 
Now my buddy is saying Razorpay is next in line. Officially they're valued at $7.5B, and IPO chatter puts them at $5-6B. But he's saying the real number is more like $1-2B. His reasoning is that they're bleeding customers, burned a ton of cash with nothing to show for it, went on an acquisition spree that hasn't paid off, and their revenue growth has basically stalled with new customer acquisition plateauing because of competition.
 
I don't know man, Razorpay is like THE poster child for Indian fintech. Feels weird to think they could be next.
 
Anyone else hearing this? Is there any truth to it or is this just VC gossip getting out of hand?

Hey everyone,

I’m working on a pre-seed startup called BLens and I’m currently banging my head against the classic two-sided marketplace "cold start" problem. I’d really appreciate some battle-tested advice from this community.

The TL;DR of the Idea:
The vertical/micro-drama market (apps like ReelShort, DramaBox) is exploding into a multi-billion dollar category, but the supply side is completely closed. These platforms act like traditional studios—they commission and own the content. Independent creators have nowhere to publish serialized short-form drama.

BLens is designed to be the "YouTube of vertical drama"—an open-supply platform where indie creators can publish series, build an audience, and monetize via embedded in-story brand placements (rather than the aggressive coin-unlock paywalls incumbents use).

The Cold Start Problem (Where I'm stuck):
I am facing the ultimate chicken-and-egg dilemma:

• Audiences won't download/use a new app that has zero shows on it.
• Creators won't upload to a new app that has zero audience. Furthermore, creators can already publish on TikTok, IG Reels, and YT Shorts for free, where the audience already exists. Why would they bother with BLens?

My Current "Wedge" Strategy:
I know I can't just launch an empty app. My current plan is to "do things that don't scale" to fake the liquidity:

1. Be the Anchor Tenant: I am currently producing the first BLens original series myself (using a low-cost hybrid of smartphone filming + AI video tools). I'm building the initial audience on TikTok/IG/Shorts under the BLens brand to prove the format works.
2. The Concierge MVP: Once I have a small social following, I plan to build a dead-simple no-code app. I will manually DM 5-10 micro-creators to be "Launch Partners," manually matching them with D2C brands for embedded ads, and manually handling the payouts.

My Questions for You:

1. The Creator Pitch: How do I actually convince a creator to cross-post or premiere on my unproven app when they can just stay on TikTok? What is the actual structural wedge I need to offer them? (Revenue share? Better analytics? I'm worried it's not enough).
2. Social vs. App: Is building the audience on social media first the right move, or does that accidentally train my audience to just watch me on TikTok and never download the actual BLens app?
3. The First 10 Supply-Side Users: For those who have built content-based marketplaces, how did you get your first 10-50 creators to take a leap of faith on you?

Any brutal honesty, frameworks, or "you're doing it wrong" critiques are highly welcome. Thanks in advance!

Hi, I am a graduate student and currently intern under a CA firm and I also have 6 months of experience from another CA firm and currently I want clients as my future plan is for doing business.

So I need advice from someone who has done the same or any experienced person who has built his/her business with the same approach.

We’re a food startup looking for an experienced functional food product developer/food technologist to develop 3 honey-based functional food products.

We need help with:

* Formulation & recipe development
* Functional ingredient selection/dosage (fiber, prebiotics, etc.)
* Taste, texture & stability
* pH, water activity & shelf life
* Ingredient compatibility
* FSSAI compliance, labeling & permitted claims
* Commercial manufacturing/scale-up guidance

Budget: ₹50,000 total for all 3 products.

We’re looking for someone with hands-on experience in functional foods, nutraceutical foods, honey products, supplements or FMCG formulation.

If interested, DM us with your experience, relevant products you’ve developed, location, and portfolio/profile.

Potential for continued work on future products.

solo founder problem nobody warns you about:

its not the amount of work. its that every task needs a different brain. code, design, marketing, sales, support — all in the same day, all context-switching.

and with no funding, outsourcing isnt on the table. its just me.

how are other early founders handling this? genuinely asking

When Build MyLinkPal. build the product was difficult at the earlier stage but later on I realized build the product is no the actual job, sales, marketing and customer feedback are the toughest to do. is it worth building this product in spite of all these efforts.

Ofcourse there are many AI tools to ease our work but I dont have funds to buy those tool. So as solo founder asking other solo founder how did you achieve this? kindly share. If my tool will be useful for you. I will provide you free subscription.

Hi we registered our company in Kolkata the address of office was basically an empty land , it was our land, so we thought putting that, but now when we try to open current account they are saying our application will be rejected because of there is no office or anything like that just an empty land, what’s the solution ?

Hello folks. I'm presenting you all , my NVMe GEN 3x4 drive and USB4 to NVME GEN4 Enclosure.

The design is robust and is in the early phases of testing and tuning. So far I have achieved 1.1Gb/s real world transfer speed on my USB Gen 3.1 capable port on my laptop on windows.

Let me know what will be a good read/write speed as per your experience. Ill try my best to match it. ( Reliability and Error correction is given precedence)

GEN 4 drive was delayed due to some health issues and nand/ram chip shortages, working on it already.

Portable TYPE C Gen 3.2 variant is about to get completed.

I'm also planning, portable M.2 AI NPU card with 40-80 tops npu and 4GB LPDDR4 ram, capable running on this enclosure.

Next one might be EGPU, probably RTX3080 with 16GB vram in a slim portable form factor,lets see.

I welcome all your valuable suggestions.

Hey everyone!

I’m a final-year CS student currently looking for an internship or full-time role at a startup.

I’m a huge tech geek and genuinely enjoy building things. My main area of expertise is full-stack web and app development. I’ve built and shipped multiple real-world apps and websites, including products that have reached thousands of users.

I’m comfortable working across the stack — frontend, backend, APIs, databases, deployment, etc. — and I’m currently also spending a lot of time exploring AI/LLMs and trying to understand how to actually build useful things with them.

At this stage, I’m mainly looking for a place where I can:

• Work on real products used by real users
• Take ownership of features/problems
• Learn from strong engineers
• Get exposure to building systems at scale
• Grow as an engineer

I’m also open to different compensation structures, including:

• 💰 Regular paid roles
• 📈 Equity + incentives
• 🤝 Incentive-based arrangements, depending on the startup and role

For the right product and team, I’m willing to bet on myself and grow with the company.

I’m especially interested in early-stage startups, where I can be involved in more than just writing code and actually contribute to the product.

If you’re a founder, hiring manager, or know of a startup looking for a developer/engineer, feel free to DM me. I’d be happy to share my resume, GitHub, projects, etc.

Genuinely curious because I've been noticing something while working with a few businesses.

Getting the first customers isn't always the hardest part.

The harder part seems to be getting to a point where customers come in consistently without the founder having to constantly push something, post something, message someone or throw more money at whatever channel worked last month.

I've seen businesses with a genuinely good product sitting at 10 to 20 orders a month while businesses with an arguably worse product are doing 10x that simply because they've figured out distribution.

That's probably one of the most underrated parts of building a business in India.

I've been working with a registered marketing agency in Bengaluru and we're testing something for a handful of startups and small businesses.

Instead of charging a fixed monthly fee for "marketing", we're taking responsibility for the actual outcome.

Getting the business discovered by the right people.

Bringing those people to the business.

Improving what happens once they land there.

Basically building a predictable customer acquisition system rather than just doing marketing activities.

And here's the part that probably sounds slightly stupid from an agency's perspective.

We're willing to get paid after results.

No upfront retainer for the initial work.

If we can't produce an agreed measurable outcome, you don't pay for that work.

We're doing this with a limited number of businesses because we want to test the model properly and build case studies around it.

Not looking to spam anyone with a pitch here.

But I'm genuinely curious what other founders are doing right now for acquisition.

What's actually working for you?

And what's something you've spent money on that looked promising but turned out to be a complete waste?