My two job boards collectively made me $5000 last month. Here is what I would tell to someone who wants to build their own job boards.

$5000 maybe beer money to some. But for me, it's a game changing amount of money. And I guess many would feel the same way as me.

I am an independent developer from South East Asia. Here is my job boards:

https://www.realworkfromanywhere.com/ (2 years old)

https://www.moaijobs.com/ (10 months old)

Job boards are little bit tricky but not impossible to pull off. The most obvious bet you have to invest in if you want to build a job board is SEO. Because that's the most reliable and worthy source of traffic. People think building a job board is hard because no one wants to pay to promote their job ads anymore. That's not true. People still willing to pay if you have good enough traffic. And there are a lot of ways to monetize a job board than charging companies to pay to advertise their job listing:

• Charge job seekers to access latest listings
• Google ads/ banner ads

I know a few job board founders charging job seekers for access and making good money. And I am myself monetizing one of my job board with Google ads. It's paying very well for me.

If one monetization channel fails, you can try another. I tried to charge job seekers for access in Real Work From Anywhere but that didn't turn well for me. So, I moved to ads monetization. I know clearly why it didn't work out for me but that's for another post.

You don't need any capital to start a job board if you know some SEO and programming (Don't worry if you don't know how to program, Claude can help you. 😉)

Please let me know if you have any questions about bootstrapping a job board.

After years traveling with.. 

• Constant SIM swaps
• Bill shock from outrageous roaming fees
• Supposed “worldwide” plans with limited coverage
• Lack of transparent pricing

I got fed up and built a better solution for stay connected abroad:

Willow is a global phone plan for frequent travelers.

• $68/month unlimited everything
• 100+ countries, no roaming fees
• Keep your number wherever you go
• Manage everything via app - no contracts or hidden terms.

Just started our waitlist (https://willow.international) and I’d love to get feedback from this community. What were your expectations with your current phone setup and what’s been frustrating about it now?

This is for my son and his friend who are both young men, looking to try and get something going on top of their work, one is in an apprenticeship, the other in full time retail work (just started).

I've been involved in Internet marketing in some shape or form since 2008 but I'm looking for outside help as I'm autistic and don't want to teach them any bad habits.

Would love to give them a winning start, they are open to different ways too, affiliate, amazon, dropshipping.

I've told them that dripshipping is probably not the best as a first attempt but instead try affiliate marketing or maybe a product or service on JVZoo or WarriorPlus?

These are the areas I know, would love to find something low barrier low capital start up for them, they are more on the introverted side too, so things like pressure washing or car washing is out of the discussion, hence the online path.

They both have varying levels of adhd, just want to help them. Any advice welcomed. Tia

Hey, Redditors. I wanted to share my journey with you, especially for those who are trying to break into the online business world.

I started my online journey in 2018 with blogging and affiliate marketing. Blogging worked for a while, but when competition skyrocketed during the pandemic, my traffic tanked.

I tried everything to make affiliate marketing work—ClickBank, JVZoo, WarriorPlus, OLSP. I spent thousands on courses and Google Ads, yet I couldn’t get a single sale.

It broke me. I felt like a failure.

But every failure taught me something valuable:

• Blogging taught me how to create valuable content.
• Paid ads taught me the importance of targeting.
• Failing repeatedly taught me resilience.

Finally, I discovered organic marketing—using free social media traffic to make sales. After months of research and learning, I got my first organic sale. It was only $7, but it gave me hope.

Today, I’m earning consistently through organic methods, and while I’m still learning, I’m finally seeing progress.

If you’re struggling, don’t give up. Failure isn’t the end; it’s just a lesson in disguise. Keep going—you’ll get there.

Quick background - I co-run a startup consultancy and accelerator, and my partner and I get flooded with pitch decks most weeks for feedback etc through LinkedIn and email. I had this idea to build something useful and free that could leverage our experience helping startups raise, while also acting as a sort of filter for all our inbound requests and lead gen for our consultancy.

Despite never coding before, I dove in yesterday . With HEAVY (all) lighting from AI I built a tool that delivers instant, slide-by-slide roasting of pitch decks for Free (in our style) with actionable improvements. My partner and I threw a ton of real pitch decks at it during testing to make sure it was giving genuinely useful feedback based on our experience. Is it perfect? Not even close -But it works, and that's what matters.

We shared it on LinkedIn this morning, and the response has been pretty cool- a load of founders have already given it a go.

If you're actively fundraising or just want some brutal honesty on your deck, give it a shot here: pitchroasters

It's a broken record but AI is really flipping the startup team size landscape, that didn't really sink in until today.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

The more I learn about entrepreneurship the more I understand that there are two important phases:

1- Exploration 🔬

You are frenetically trying out a lot of different things in hopes that something stands out and has an impact that is out of the ordinary.

2- Augmentation 🚀

After finding that one thing you will try to squeeze the most out of it. By scaling up and optimising processes.

Ofc that this is easier said that done... Each phase is very resource intensive!

Is not necessarily hard, most of the things we try at Podsqueeze or Rankchase have been already done thousands of times before.

Things like: cold emailing, tiktok marketing, SEO, etc...

But they take time, specially if you have never done it before...

I'm increasingly thinking about raising a round to speed up our path to a million. 💸

This would allow us to hire great professionals in each one of these areas and iterate through it much faster...

The problem is that I am not really sure if I want all the baggage that comes with raising money...

So, what else can we do? Here are the options:

1- Keep it as it is

Doing everything ourselves.

Problem is that it is a slow and tiring process

2- Hiring consultants

People that are use to doing these things and can speed up a lot the process. The issue is that it is expensive, and as bootstrappers that means cutting down on our salary.

There is this narrative that indie makers must be always busy, building things, doing marketing, tweeting 😅

What if that is wrong?

What if a successful indie maker is someone with a lot of free time because has delegated most of the work.

Someone that is only doing what can not REALLY be delegated...

When we started building StartupBolt, we knew we didn’t have deep pockets or a massive team. What we did have was clarity about the problem we wanted to solve and the determination to do it efficiently. Here’s exactly how we turned zero traffic into 10,000+ visitors and landed 50+ paying customers—all in just 90 days and without spending a dollar.

Step 1: Validate Before Building

Instead of diving straight into development, we validated our idea.

We scoured Reddit, X (formerly Twitter), and LinkedIn for entrepreneurs struggling with SaaS launches. We directly asked about their pain points and challenges. The feedback was crystal clear: they needed help with payments, authentication, SEO, and scalable infrastructure.

With this validation, we had a clear problem to solve. Only then did we start building StartupBolt.

Step 2: Build a Laser-Focused MVP

We built our MVP in just 40 days, sticking to the essentials:

• Authentication ready to go
• Seamless payment integration for Stripe and LemonSqueezy
• SEO-ready templates for maximum visibility
• Lightweight components for easy customization

By focusing on solving key problems, we ensured our MVP was valuable from day one.

Step 3: Get the Word Out

We didn’t sit back and hope users would find us. Here’s what we did to bring in 10,000+ visitors organically:

• SEO Outreach: Using Ahrefs, we found sites with relevant high-quality backlinks and reached out with personalized pitches. This landed us some key backlinks, including one with a 90+ DR, skyrocketing our SEO performance.
• Affiliate Marketing with Rewardful: We created affiliate links using Rewardful, which served double duty by also generating more backlinks to our site.
• Daily Hustle: We spent 3-4 hours daily messaging bloggers, writing posts, and engaging with communities.
• Reddit and X: On Reddit, we shared in-depth posts about SaaS challenges and StartupBolt’s solutions, replying to every single comment to build trust and spark engagement. On X, we consistently engaged with users and shared valuable tips.

Step 4: Launch Smartly

We didn’t rely solely on one platform to launch. While Product Hunt gave us exposure and a key backlink, our biggest wins came from platforms like:

• Frazier
• Uneed
• Microlaunch

We won Product of the Day on all three platforms, bringing in substantial traffic and credibility.

Step 5: Listen and Iterate

The real magic happened after launch. We actively talked to our customers to understand what they loved, what they didn’t, and what they needed. Their feedback helped us:

• Eliminate unnecessary features
• Add more flexible solutions
• Sharpen the user experience

These changes turned casual users into loyal paying customers.

The Results

• 10,000+ visits to our site in just 90 days
• 50+ paying customers
• Recognition as Product of the Day on multiple platforms

What’s Next?

We also experimented with Meta and X ads, but that’s a story for another post. This journey proves that with a clear plan, consistent effort, and a focus on your users, you can achieve meaningful results without spending a fortune.

StartupBolt wasn’t built on luck—it was built on clarity, persistence, and putting the user first. If you’re ready to launch your SaaS without drowning in infrastructure work, StartupBolt is here to help.

Your idea deserves to shine—let us handle the rest.

I'm looking for ways to boost productivity and streamline tasks. Do you use AI for things like managing work, creating content, or automating stuff? I'm curious.

I recently spoke with a technical co-founder for a saas that is currently doing $xx,xxx I told him I could help him grow it as a partner since my expertise is in marketing.

Long story short he agreed.

How you would structure this deal if you were me? I want equity without taking any of the money he is currently making since that would not be fair but I also want to be compensated for the risk I am taking.

Hello,

I am a lawyer providing voluntary legal counseling services to SaaS and Web3 startups. As I expand my practice, I will offer these services on a voluntary basis for the time being.

My expertise includes:

-Drafting and reviewing contracts, including cross-border agreements.

-Assisting with Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) and confidentiality agreements.

-Ensuring compliance with privacy policies and data protection laws (including GDPR).

-Drafting terms of service, user agreements, and platform policies.

-Advising on regulatory compliance, especially for fintech and Web3 industries.

-Offering guidance on intellectual property strategies, including trademarks and copyrights.

-Providing legal insights on blockchain-related matters, such as tokenomics and smart contracts.

Feel free to DM if you’d like to discuss your legal needs. We can have a conversation.

Hi everyone! 👋

I’m working on an app called MapSound, and I’d love your feedback to shape its direction. The idea is simple: you create Sound Spots, linking specific songs to locations that hold personal meaning for you.

For example:

• This park is where I’d come with my dad and listen to our favorite song.
• This café always played the perfect 80s synth pop when I hung out with friends.

These Sound Spots can be shared with others, who might enjoy them because they feel a connection to the place or the music. Users can even layer their own Sound Spots over the same location, turning it into a multi-dimensional soundscape.

We’ve seen great responses from early testers who loved rediscovering places with music that resonates. But before launching, I’d really like your help:

• Does this sound like something you’d use?
• How would you use it, or what features would make it better?
• Any advice or suggestions for improving the idea?

Thanks so much for reading! I really appreciate any thoughts you have. 🙏

I'm currently writing my thesis, but not sure yet If I'll be opting to conduct a survey as we need atleast 150 respondents which must be entrepreneurs. Anyone know of any channels or ways that I could I use to actually reach this number?

Hi

We are a startup that aims to build a platform for businesses that wants to get their products into retailers. Before we start building we want to understand how big this problem is and what the main obstacles are for you businesses.

Therefore, what are the main difficulties that you face when selling to retailers? Is it finding them, understanding their process or demands or something completely different?

Thanks Jonathan

Be ready to get up at 8 a.m. on weekends. Why ? I have a call with the client about building MVP.

Every day, you have things to do. Sometimes it is answering on calls. Sometimes it is fixing bugs in the nights. I do it because I want it. I have a dream to become Solo Founder to build my own business.

Now I have 9-5 and alongside I build my business. I build it on evenings, mornings, and weekends. Why don't I leave my 9-5 and go all in ? Because I have family, my son is on the way and I need to pay my bills.

I am working to earn more from my business as soon as I get the same amount from business as 9-5. I am leaving. No hard feelings or anything like that. I like my 9-5. It is a pretty decent job and highly paid.

But building my own thing is always better for me. Because I understand why I am doing it.

Chase your own dreams and make it happen.

I know AI wrappers get a lot of flack, but I created a cool little AI wrapper project that I've been getting good feedback about. It's a storyteller app where you can incrementally write your own story quickly using AI.

This is free, so if you have a few minutes to try it out, I'd love some feedback! There are some more features I know I could integrate but I wanted to see what initial feedback was first for this V1 before committing further. Appreciate any and all comments!

https://www.ai-storyteller.org/

PLEASE READ IF YOU'RE SERIOUS... or not.

First, I want to preface this by saying I am well aware people come on here looking for technical co-founders to do everything for them, and I'm NOT LOOKING FOR THAT.

I have a plan, a vision, feedback to bring to the table and real-world sales and marketing experience to back it up.

Because I have spent most of my time and attention in sales and marketing, I did not have the time to learn how to develop/code.

With that being said...

I am looking for a PARTNER who may have an interest aligned with mine and is willing to take a risk with me in bringing this idea to life.

Ideas are just ideas without execution and all I am looking for is a technical co-founder to help me execute half of the idea while I make sure that execution turns into REAL results and money.

If you're interested in having an intro convo just dm me.

P.S. The idea is not just some random idea from chat GPT, it is a problem I am dealing with and I know a whole group of people deal with it as well.

Peace✌️

I recently quit my job to focus fully on my startup, which I’ve been building for the last couple of months. Now, I’m looking to move to a better location to stay connected to a stronger network, but I am finding it hard to prove employment/income without needing to pay a huge sum upfront.

How did you navigate renting when your start-up was still early? Did you have to get creative to convince a landlord?

I would love to hear your stories and any tips. Thanks!

I need to keep remind myself of this sometimes...

My co-founder and I talk pretty often about the future of our company.

And more often than not there is a feeling of disappointment in the air... Like we are doing something wrong!

We look at Podsqueeze and ask why are we only at the $16K and not at $50K? What is missing?

We keep trying new things, brainstorming new ideas, and sometimes even pointing fingers...

In moments of frustration, words of: "I told you so!", "You are not working enough!", "You are focusing on the wrong things!" are thrown around.

In conversations we have with other founders we find ourselves feeling small and jealous...

"Oh man! This makers have everything figured out. We are noobs"

When they asked us: "How is the company going?"

We always answer with a: "We are doing ok but.... there is this stagnation...".

THIS HAS TO STOP!!

Funny enough, when we start drilling down into other founder's numbers, we realise that we are actually not bad at all!

Maybe they are making more MRR but they have a much bigger team or huge running costs. Sometimes they raised money and are not even profitable yet...

We realised that we are actually making good decisions and the reality is that entrepreneurship is hard...

"EASY MONEY IS A SCAM!" - This is probably one of the best lessons from all my indie journey!

Being that masked on an NFT, a Pyramid scheme, a lottery or another maker selling their a miracle course, or they beautiful stripe graph...

It does not exist! It's hard, and you just need to keep playing the game with an open mind.

So, today, I am making the conscious decision of giving ourselves more credit!

WE ARE SUCCESSFUL FOUNDERS!

We have a successful venture, with an amazing team and thousands of users! We have helped improve the industry of podcasting with Podsqueeze and now we are revolutionizing SEO with RankChase

There is a difference between a self-confident person and a "know it all"!

We trust in what we have learned and what we have built

But, we also accept that we don't have all the answers. And we are always ready to learn something new!

Sorry for the rant, but I really appreciate the peeps the follow my journey!

Both here and on the Indie Founder Podcast! You are the best 😍

Cheers

Hi r/EnterpreneurRideAlong ! 👋

We’re building Schedly, a tool designed for developers to simplify event management and calendar integrations. We’re focusing on flexibility (think easy API integration) and usability.

To make it as valuable as possible, we’d love your feedback via this quick 3-minute survey: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=DQSIkWdsW0yxEjajBLZtrQAAAAAAAAAAAAa__e6EKmNUNUNLSk1RNU9WNU9GTlJDQ0NTRU1NOFZCUi4u.

As a thank-you, you’ll get early access to our beta version for free. We’re excited to build something truly helpful with your insights!

Feel free to drop any thoughts in the comments or DM me with questions.

Thanks for your time! 🙌

I have access through a connection to set up an MVNO. I am not sure the best way to market/ what niche to target with such a service. If you have knowledge on the topic or want to work with me just shoot me a dm

So, I have been building startups and multiple SaaS products for more than 5 years now, and I've already exited two successful companies. Currently I am building https://headshotly.ai but this is the very first time I’ve received such a long and in-depth piece of feedback. It’s made me so emotional that I had to share it with all of you.

I’ve been grinding non-stop, pulling countless sleepless nights. I couldn’t go out with my girlfriend, and she got mad so many times. She even asked why I’m dating her if I don’t spend time with her. I can’t imagine how much hard work I’ve put in over the last 5 years, and after receiving this review, I literally feel so emotional and can’t help but share it with everyone.

Here's the review from a paid user. I am posting it without any edits and have also attached a screenshot of the review: Screenshot: https://ibb.co/TqLywJS

Just wanted to add my experience/review. I like to play around with new apps. often using them as an opportunity to create "gifts" for my friends. I already have a good headshot, so when I saw the post the other day, I figured I'd give it a try and use a colleague's pictures as the "tester."

Not to pick on him, but I had noticed a while back that my colleague's profile pictures were generally older and not the best quality. I want to respect his privacy, so I won't disclose too much info, but what makes his situation all the more surprising is that he's the president of a successful company in the medical industry space. So I figured I'd surprise him with some pictures, provided they turned out well.

The first thing I think everyone should know is that when run the pictures through the app, you end up receiving quite a few results. I can't recall exactly how many, but I'm pretty sure it's like 25 or so pics. The reason this is good to know is because if you've ever played around with other AI image generation apps, then you know that even the better apps can be hit-or-miss.

So the first thing I noticed is that the output from Headshotly was overall pretty consistent. Just like the other apps, there can be random results that are just off. In my case, none of them were "off" in the sense of extra fingers, distorted faces, etc. That was a pleasant surprise. Instead, they were all "good" pictures, but in several of the results, Headshotly's AI took the liberty of adding color to what really should be gray hair. My colleague has had white/gray hair for years now, so anything other than that wouldn't really be accurate. But honestly, that was a very minor issue. Again, there were so many results to choose from that a few misses really weren't a big deal.

After I uploaded his pictures, I sent him a message to let him know what I was doing, and told him I'd send him the results once they were ready. If I recall, it takes about 15 minutes or so for the imaged to render. He told me that he was eager to see the results, because purely by coincidence he had planned to schedule a session with a professional photographer next week to get some updated headshots for his social media and other profiles.

So when they came back, it's not really an exaggeration to say he was "blown away." Of the 25 or so that got processed, I screened out probably half. Again, the ones I discarded were "good" pictures, but just not entirely accurate to his current appearance, hair color, etc. So he ended up receiving about a dozen really high quality headshots.

I'll paste a screenshot of my colleague's reaction here. Seriously, for the price, this app can't be beat for anyone who really does need some good pics for their professional social media profiles or website! I see now that a new LTD offer is available, so I'm going to buy some more.

To my brothers, sisters, and friends: there will always be negative comments, and so many people will tell you that you can’t do it. But believe in yourself. Trust me, you can achieve it if you stay true to yourself and remain honest about your work.

And coincidentally, today is my birthday, and this is one of the best gifts I’ve ever received on my birthday.

All the best to my fellow founders and builders! I believe in you, and I know you will be able to share such a story someday.

For the last year, I’ve been working on a B2C website with two cofounders, and we launched just in time for Black Friday. The goal? Help people find real deals without the spam and bloat of other deal sites.

At the start, we were just three people juggling full-time jobs and working on this as a passion project. But over the last year, here’s what I learned about building in a crowded space and finding the right team to make it work:

1. The team makes all the difference
I’ve had a lot of ideas over the past 10 years, but sticking with them was the hard part. This time, the difference is my cofounders. One’s an old friend from high school, and the other was working on a similar idea before we met. We started with a few low-stakes working sessions over the course of two months to see if we clicked. Turns out we did – and that dynamic has kept us going through the tough moments when motivation was low.

2. You need to bring value to the table
I see so many posts here about finding technical cofounders. If you’re non-technical, it’s not enough to just have the idea. You need to fill a critical gap. For me, that’s been design and research, along with some front-end work. My role complements my cofounders’ strengths and helps us stay balanced.

3. Building in a crowded space is hard
We’re competing with massive sites like Slickdeals and Fatwallet, but they feel outdated and ad-heavy. We wanted to build something objective and data-driven. Even so, breaking through and finding product-market fit has been tough and is an ongoing challenge

4. Small wins are still wins
We launched last week and saw a small bump in traffic thanks to the holiday season. It’s early days, but seeing even 10x growth from a tiny baseline is encouraging. Scaling takes time, but those small victories are worth celebrating.

5. B2C is a grind
Growing a consumer-facing product is way harder than we expected. Marketing has been a big challenge since none of us are marketers, but we’ve been experimenting with content, community engagement, and figuring out where our users hang out. Hopefully this is one of them :)

Some last thoughts:
If you’ve built in a crowded space or worked on B2C, or know how to scale or tackle marketing with a small team, I’d love to hear how you approached it.

Hopefully this helped, and if it didn't, hopefully we can help you save some money on stuff you already buy with Dealcrane (if not allowed lmk and I'll remove!)

Thanks for reading, and good luck with your projects! 🚀

Hi there!!

I ll keep this short, so i sold my last saas for about 1 k last month and now i am on to bigger things.

I have a lot of experience with programmatic seo, especially in Framer and i also want to start a service and ditch the SaaS life because as an indie founder without any funding it is hard to get the initial traction.

So one day i realized that framer has an extension marketplace and i created a plan: since i don’t have much experience in selling services i can create an extension for programmatic SEO in framer and use it as a lead magnet.

The extension will be live on the marketplace the next week and i need to make a decision:

• charge 25$ ltd
• make it free

And i will make money by promoting a done for your service inside the extension

Making it free will make it easier for me promote it everywhere. Literally i get a free promoting ticket just by having it free

On the other side i will lose some revenue by providing it free and i don’t want to screw up my launch.

This entire strategy is to avoid the usual service selling process which will take me more to learn, this way i can validate the idea fast.

Any advice?

PS: the landing page is this FlareRank

You’ve probably heard this before, but I think you need to hear it again.

I’ve spent the last 8 months building 3 projects, 2 of which failed, but one of them recently hit 1700+ users and $2000 revenue in less than 2 months.

For the first 7 months of building, my projects wouldn’t get any users or interest no matter how hard I tried marketing them.

I tried following so many different marketing guides but nothing worked.

it was only for the third project i realized I had to try something different this time.

So i took the advice that everyone gives and I tried talking to people before building.

I got on reddit, did a simple post asking for feedback on my idea, and got positive responses.

This made building feel safer, and it gave me more confidence in my project.. what I didn’t expect though, was the OVERWHELMING response when launching.

My MVP got 100 users in 2 weeks after launching. And I know that might not sound like a lot, but for me this was HUGE coming from months of getting no users at all.

When I went on to launch Buildpad on Product Hunt, I got 475 new users in 24h, and most exciting of all, I got my first paying customers after 7 months of building.

This number would grow to 1900+ users during the weeks post launch.

This was crazy to me.

Finally I had a product people were actually interested in.

AND they were paying for it.

I honestly think the success comes down to talking to people before building the product.

So if there’s one thing to learn from my months of failures, it’s to talk to people before building your product.

I hope this can save someone from wasting months building a product that no one wants.

I'm working on a tool that uses AI to create a roadmap based on your business idea (https://profitproton.com/). Then I thought, people who want to start a business might first want to get some validation of their idea to see if it has potential.

The idea is that my tool will also try to find flaws in your business idea which you may not have thought of.

If you are developing a SAAS, would this feature be useful to you?

As per title, as an indie developer I would not have all the resources to do A/B testing.

Would it be best to replicate what other popular competitors are doing?

I mean, context is mine is a nutrition app, a rather commoditised space.

Here's What Actually Matters for Success:

• Speed (be as lightning to build, ship, and start)
• User (start talking to your customers, get real feedback from them, and improve based on their request)
• Market (validate your idea before investing heavily in business)
• Problem-Solution (sometimes problems are not big enough and you don't need to solve them; be sure that your solution solves a real problem)
• Pivot (first idea fails, but it doesn't mean that you don't need to try, instead, try and start, after seeing failure, pivot to a new idea)
• Prioritization (write to-do lists by level of importance and execute them)
• Focus (do what you think is right and listen to users feedback)

If you need help with your MVP, write a message to me.

Hey entrepreneurs-I'm feeling a bit lost in this B2B agency space and would love to hear your advice. Throughout my life, especially high school, l've always knew I wanted to be a creator and not a consumer. So after I graduated last year I started looking for ways to fulfill that dream, and that's when I found my passion, Ai Automations using Make.com.

So l spent this entire year grinding, absorbing as much information about how to build automations, that provide actual value to businesses, instead of gimmicky "chat bots" that everyone ignores.

My first win was landed an agency on Reddit, and incorporated over 20 automations that cut their client intake, management and fulfillment time to 0. But I don't know where to go next, I know I have the skills to provide actual value, but I can't seem to get that out there to other agencies.

I'm more than interested in having a mentorship where I join an established agency, having them white label my services, and I can learn what it takes to run an agency from that.

But I would love to hear from you what you would do in my shoes, or even just one piece of advice you wish you heard earlier.

I wanted to share a bit about what I’m working on, how it’s going, and what we’re building. Hope you enjoy the read! I’ll try to keep posting updates on our journey here as we go. 😊

This August, my co-founders and I made the tough decision to shut down our first startup attempt. The value we were delivering to users just didn’t justify the cost of switching to our product. So, we went back to the drawing board. This time, we decided to tackle problems that frustrate us personally.

We hopped on Miro, set a timer, and started throwing every annoying thing we could think of onto the board. (Quick intro: we’re a team of 2 senior product designers and a developer—I’m one of the designers). From that brainstorm, we picked the top 4 pain points and began reaching out to friends in design and development to validate the problems.

Fast forward, we started ruling out ideas one by one until a recurring issue kept coming up: design handoffs and documentation. The initial problem we saw was a huge gap in communication—not just between designers and developers, but across product teams in general.

Next, we asked ourselves: Does our solution actually solve this problem? So, we set a goal to collect feedback from 30 people before doing any real work. (For context, we had struggled to get 15 responses to earlier surveys, so this was ambitious for us). Long story short, we managed to get 41 people to respond—15 from the earlier surveys + new folks we reached out to. By the 30th response, patterns were crystal clear: people complained about poor handovers, lack of design documentation, endless meetings, and constant "Where’s this?" or "Did we design that?" questions.

Enter &merge.

I whipped up a design prototype in just 5 days while one of my co-founders focused on lining up demos, targeting people who could drive process changes within companies.

Right now, we’ve got 77 people on the waitlist, and we’re hustling to launch our beta by January. So far, everyone we’ve talked to is really excited about the solution because it addresses so many pain points within teams.

So, what exactly is &merge?

It’s an AI-powered design documentation and knowledge base. Based on personal experience, poor documentation leads to ~40% more mistakes and rework compared to just talking things out in meetings or dropping comments in Figma. Our tool drastically reduces the time spent on documentation—what might take 20 hours manually could be done in 1 hour with AI. Plus, we’re building in version history, easy navigation, faster onboarding, and better offboarding since everything is documented from the start.

Oh, and a fun tidbit: we built our website, andmerge.com, with Framer in just 4 days—completely custom, no templates. We were rushing for a networking event, but hey, it turned out pretty decent! 😅

Thanks for reading this (pretty long) update! I’ll keep sharing as we go. If you’ve got any questions, feel free to ask. And if you think &merge might be useful to you, don’t hesitate to sign up for the waitlist. 🫡