/r/startups

Photograph via //r/startups

Welcome to /r/startups, the place to discuss startup problems and solutions. Startups are companies that are designed to grow and scale rapidly. Be sure to read and follow all of our rules--we have specific places for common content and requests.


Wiki

FAQs, lessons, and resources


About

Welcome to r/startups, a community for all backgrounds, levels of expertise, and business experience.

What is a startup?

Startups are designed to scale/grow rapidly. Startups utilize tech to do this. Startups can be non-tech companies that utilize tech. Startups are information era companies and they are creating the new best practices in business.

/r/startups

We share interesting discussions and stories about our startup journeys, both the failures, the successes, and the embarrassments. Our best traits are authenticity and integrity.


Rules

1.Relevant Content Only

We are a community of discussion based around startups, not traditional businesses.

All content must be relevant to startups.

You are welcome to ask how to apply startup methodologies to your traditional business if you frame your question in a non-promotional way. We want you to be able to ask any question that helps your startup.

2.No direct sales, advertisements, or promotion

No direct sales, advertisements, or promotional posts of any kind. We have designated places that are an exception to this rule and they will always be stickied at the top of /r/startups.

  • You MAY share your startup in the Share Your Startup thread

Self-promotion is anything you have an interest, stake or relationship with including being friends with someone at the company.

At the end of the day, /r/startups moderators have the final say if your comments are promotional or not.

3.Submissions Serve a Specific Purpose

Submissions are for discussing methodologies, experiences, tactics, strategies, techniques, markets, and other such things WITHOUT tying them directly to your own project using its name or URL.

Titles must be clear and descriptive.

Submissions must have at least 250 characters of content. The more details you provide us the better support our community can provide you with. Life life, the more you put into something the more you get out of it.

4.Feedback Has a Place

All Feedback Requests (including surveys/polls) belong in our Feedback Thread or other appropriate weekly thread

You are invited to repost each week.

Be sure to contribute to the others in the thread and ask them to return the favor to increase engagement.

You may not publicly offer feedback or direct support outside of the Stickied Threads.

5.Rules for Links in Comments/Discussions

Sometimes you think the best solution is simply to link to a resource that might answer someone's question. We want you to be able to link in discussion to relevant content. We also don't want the discussion to turn into a self promotional mess and link farm.

If you are going to link to something in the comments please make sure to:

  • Write at least a sentence explaining why the link is relevant to the discussion.

  • Link only content you have no affiliation with. Affiliate links = banned.

6.Do Not Solicit PM Requests

The purpose of making a submission or comment is to engage in a public discussion with the community.

It is not to request a message from someone.

You are more than welcome to engage privately with one another, but it is up to you to take the initiative directly.

7.Sharing Your Blog is To Start a Discussion

Sharing your blog is not a means to self promote.

A link to the original blog post is allowed with prior Mod approval.

If you are submitting your own blog content, the full body of the content must be included in the post, properly formatted for reddit.

Include an outline & timestamps with a video.

If your blog is over 2000 words you may ask for an exemption.

All other rules still apply.

No blogs about your "startup" journey allowed.

8.Always Be Kind and Supportive

The goal of this community is to encourage people to learn and be inspired to pursue ventures related to startups.

Do not troll, harass people, or be an asshole. This does not mean to lie. It means to give support and explain why you don't like something.

Try to remember people likely do not have much experience yet or might be simply ignorant to what you know.

Be willing to hold a discussion and try to explain your opinion or point of view to the benefit of the entire community.

9.No Unscheduled AMAs

We do not allow unscheduled AMAs.

We need to verify and approve all AMAs.

If you wish to do an AMA you must use the "Message the Moderators" feature in the side bar and you must give us at least TWO (2) Weeks Lead Time to organize it with you.


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Previous Share your Startup threads


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/r/startups

1,624,255 Subscribers

2

Is this dumb? I started a service that provides human rewrites of AI-generated content.

My thinking is that this is only viable in the short term, but maybe we become very attuned to AIs' native writing styles and the demand continues.

Though it may be short-lived, I see a serious need for solutions that humanize content that is produced by AI. At least until LLMs dramatically improve in this respect.

There are many convoluted ways to humanize AI content, often using AI, but a human is currently the most reliable agent for this job imo.

Because writing aligns with my expertise and I have some good ideas for speeding up the whole process, I'm giving it a shot. Now that it's out the door, I'm questioning whether this idea is idiotic.

Thoughts?

3 Comments
2024/03/26
20:18 UTC

0

Seeking co-founder

Looking for a God like programmer.

I am Vancouver, Canada and you can be anywhere on the globe. Building a startup in the consumer space, has a practical application in North America and Europe. I have done consumer research in the market and the potential is promising.

Who am I looking for? A programmer able to develop an app and a website. Being able to handle the technical aspects, all alone for first 1-2 months.

Other than knowledge of programming, the only skill i seek is to be able to maintain honest and constant flow of communication.

Feel free to dm me and start the conversation.

1 Comment
2024/03/26
19:48 UTC

1

Series Seed Documents

For a while, there was a very active open-source effort to develop a standard set of documents for a priced seed round. It was called the "Series Seed" and was intended to provide a fairly uniform set of documents to simplify the process for early stage startups. But the docs were last updated a decade ago and that gives me great pause. Cooley forked it into their Github repo and seem to have tweaked it a bit more recently.

We used the Y-Combinator SAFEs (reviewed by counsel) for our angel round and it was delightfully simple. We're now moving closer to a seed, and I'd rather use something simple and off-the-shelf that's a well-accepted, open standard.

Does anyone know the status of that project, or of similar projects elsewhere?

To be clear, we are not looking to do this without counsel!! We have good lawyers. I just would prefer to have a common, standard starting point (as we did with the SAFEs) rather than something hand-crafted that will take us untold cycles to negotiate/red-line.

For now my inclination is to use the Cooley open-source set as a starting point, but would love the feedback of the community here.

2 Comments
2024/03/26
19:38 UTC

2

Stripe Says NO To E-Commerce Fad Rumors

The opening line in Stripe's 2024 Annual Letter:

"Charlie Munger described a two-part rule that works wonders in business, science, and elsewhere: 1) take a simple idea and 2) take it very seriously"

I like that...

Other tidbits:

  1. At $1 trillion, the output of businesses that run on Stripe sums to roughly 1% of global GDP. With a 25% grow YoY.
  2. Around 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned.
  3. This year Stripe shaved off 300ms off the Payment Links render time.

Food for thought:

  • More than 10 years ago, Amazon found that every 100ms of latency cost them 1% in sales.
  • In 2006, Google found an extra .5 seconds in search page generation time dropped traffic by 20%.

Talk about a major bottom-line rocket to Stripe and all the businesses using it.

I broke down more on my latest YT video🤓🪇

1 Comment
2024/03/26
18:06 UTC

12

Do you understand what my startup does by looking at our landing page

Basically another Roast my startup post. But instead of explaining what we doing, we want to know if the message we're trying to convey is clear to our audience.
Take a look at our page and let us know if you understand what our startup does just by looking at it. Thank you in advance for your time and feedback.

https://www.glomi.app/

56 Comments
2024/03/26
17:58 UTC

0

Looking to Dissolve company - Please provide your advise/reviews about services

Has anyone used goodbyestartup . com to dissolution of the C-corp?

How was your experience?

Are there other companies that does a similar job? Generic feedback and advice is also appreciate. We are looking to dissolving our company and find to easiest way to dissolve our Wyoming C-Corp and return money to investors. We also raised a community round on wefunder (not sure if it makes a difference)

0 Comments
2024/03/26
17:34 UTC

2

User Research SaaS Idea Feedback Needed

Hi everyone! I've been working on a user and market research platform with my friend for about a month now. It is a user and market research platform powered with AI participants modeled after real people. We recently dtarted talking to potential customers (mainly other startups, designers and marketing people) to see if they are interested in the product. Currently the platform has an accuracy rate of 90%-95%.

We are thinking about having features like doing large scale surveys, in-depth interviews, A/B testing, and usability testing. What else do you think needs to be there? How helpful do you think it would be for other startups or companies?

2 Comments
2024/03/26
16:26 UTC

2

Roast my startup idea

Hi everyone,

I'm currently developing a survey/customer interview platform and would love your feedback. As someone who has used platforms such as SurveyMonkey to earn a little money on the side, I know how easy it is to BS your way through the forms. I'm not sure how companies gleaned any real value from my completed surveys, yet SurveyMonkey still exists and still makes money.

Introducing my solution - another survey site! The competitive edge being twofold:

  1. "Surveys" act more as customer/user interviews with follow-up questions generated in real-time. This allows businesses to expand the possible value for each survey beyond a fixed number of questions.

  2. Survey responses by default are open to all customers reducing the cost for each business significantly. If private responses are a necessity, there is an option for that.

I would love to hear your thoughts!

8 Comments
2024/03/26
16:25 UTC

1

I want to interview some successful startup founders

Hi everyone,

I run a newsletter that features interviews with successful startup founders. We're currently looking for founders to interview for our upcoming issue next week.

If you're interested, please feel free to send me a direct message or leave a comment.

Not adding my newsletter link here because this community is very strict about self promotion.

4 Comments
2024/03/26
15:45 UTC

1

Seeking feedback regarding note-taking apps

Hello everyone!
Over the past years I've tried out various note-taking tools in the hope of finding the holy grail of note-taking for me: Notepad, OneNote, SimpleNote, Notion, Obsidian, Apple Notes but nothing seems to quite hit the spot.

Most of the time I need something to write something down quickly so I don't forget it while in a meeting or when talking with someone. All note-taking apps I've tried so far ask me to create a new note, add a title and then start writing.

  • Having one note with a "misc" title or something like that makes it hard to find what I wrote and when.
  • Having multiple small notes with one line of text and a random title clutters other, larger notes.

On Windows good ol' Notepad satisfied this need the most: I can fire it up quickly, write down something and that's it. But the problem is that I if don't save it it's gone. And I'd like to have it stored somewhere automatically.
One solution that I found for work is Slack: I DM myself what I need to remember and be done with it. Everyone in the company uses Slack so I have everything in one place.
For personal stuff it's a bit trickier since not everyone uses the same thing for chattting (I juggle between Messages, Signal, Whatsapp, and Messenger) and it's tedious to have a self-chat in each of the apps.
I'm wondering how everyone else takes their notes to see if there's a potential for a different kind of note taking app. If you have 2 minutes available please help me out with this survey: https://app.youform.io/forms/vkdy2ho4

0 Comments
2024/03/26
15:04 UTC

1

You can inspire someone!

I want to create some a platform, where people want to improve and change their lives.

Probably most of us had a person, or event, that changed our lives for better, and I want to create a platform, where people who struggle can listen/read for someone, that experienced similar.

For example me, I was horribly bullied at school for a very long period.
My father was at the war, so I can't complain about it, and didn't know what to do.
Boxing changed me a lot, at least I became more confident in myself.
Ryan Holiday and David Goggins putted a bit of knowledge and discipline into my head.
I want to show bullied pupils, or even grown adults, that they can stand for themselves.
But it would not only limited for bullying, it will be absolutely dedicated to people who want to recover, and change their lives. (and for authors who wish to inspire/motivate someone)
Start working out (or just doing sports), gain more knowledge in business(or any other field) recover from drug addiction, start standing after themselves, stop being emotional.

Each author will create a small community around him/her, and inspire someone.
People will know that they can visit this platform to get support, and stand on a new 'level', and change life to better direction.

2 Comments
2024/03/26
14:05 UTC

1

Sequoia Arc 2024 Updates?

Did anyone hear back from Sequoia Arc 2024 yet ?

We had an interview more than 10 days ago and haven't heard back anything. The wait is making us anxious.

Anyone heard any rejection/acceptance for the current cohort yet ? Seems like they send out batch acceptance mail before rejection, so checking if anyone got yet.

0 Comments
2024/03/26
13:57 UTC

2

What postage prices can teach you about Marketing at your startup

One of the clearest memories I have of learning a mathematical concept was in High School when I learned about step functions. The teacher told us:

Postage prices are determined via a step function.

And then proceeded to show us how there are different prices for different weights of packages, but they don't charge a straight wait per ounce, it jumps at different weight barriers, etc.

I was thinking about this the other day when I was trying to explain why having Fractional CMO help at B2B SaaS startups is a very useful thing, particularly in the first 3-5 years of a startup's life.

While it's true that you should "Always Be Marketing," it's also the case that, especially early on, there is A LOT to focus on product and people wise, and unless Marketing is a core competency of one of the founders, it can be difficult to harness your time or to justify spending time to become more proficient in a practice that you may not really enjoy doing to begin with.

The places where a Fractional CMO (or CFO, or even CTO under the right circumstances) can contribute can be thought of as a function that "smooths out" the step function. You can get immediate help before you have someone on board, and as you work your way up to more senior functions, you can leverage external help to coordinate, align, and reorganize as necessary.

What has your experience been of either getting to Product Market Fit, growing a startup post PFM, etc, and what role has a dedicated or Fractional Marketing role played in that? Weigh in below.

0 Comments
2024/03/26
13:21 UTC

2

Seeking Feedback: for a human-readable markup language and app for graph data

I have a project idea. I've already fully fleshed it out but I'm afraid of building it because it might be too big for one person to handle and I'm not even sure it can be a successful product. Can I get some opinions?

The idea is to create a new human-readable markup language that can describe typed and structured graph data. I would provide parsers and everything else that is needed to process this language. For typed graphs, it would be something like what Markdown is for formatted text.

Even though the markup would be completely human-readable and writable, it would still need tools to actually be useful, just like Markdown also needs tools to render it. These tools / application would be the actual product. The application would be text-based but it would have all kinds of features to make it easy to work with the text representation of the data.

I don't think there's a chance anyone reading this can actually imagine what I'm talking about, and it's hard to explain. I see some chance that this application would be as successful to manage any kind of structured data as Excel is successful to manage tabular and relational data - and it would be similarly hard to explain what Excel is.

The application wouldn't just be there to create and edit the data; it could also query and display it. Because the type and structure of the data and their relationship can be anything the user wants, the application could even be used to create user interfaces, calculated values, forms, reports, etc. For example, any node could connect to an htmlView typed node which has HTML content, and this could display the connected data in a nice way.

I feel I need to list some actual examples, but that would either be too long or incomplete.

Consider this example as a teaser:

(Todo)
  -- has -> task: Post to Reddit about my idea
    -- is -> state: In Progress
    -- due -> date: 2024-03-26
  ...

Now I have a "Todo" graph which connects to one "task" typed node with the "has" verb, etc. The language server sees that there are nodes and edges with the mentioned values and what their relationship is so far. If you add a new line in this text, the application will suggest this same structure to you; it will even suggest "In Progress" for the state node because it sees that as a possible value, and it will suggest "Done" as well as soon as you have a state typed node with that value. It would also do syntax highlighting, of course.

Then you can create a template for the "state" typed node, and this template could just be an HTML select element with the possible values. You could create an HTML template for all these and even for the "Todo" graph itself so even though the application is text-based, it could display an interface to manage your todos, and using that interface would edit the actual text representation.

Or you could query this graph in the application itself with a very similar syntax to get back let's say all the task typed nodes which have a "pending" state. You would see the text you write to query, but the application would display the actual results under it which you could still edit as text without the need to find where you've written them originally.

Might not be obvious what's the point of this, especially not with this simple example. The point is, that because you can freely create the structure, you could have for example a graph for projects you're working on, and you could attach some task nodes to these projects, and you could attach another let's say "assigned" node to the tasks as well which could be related to a "person" node, which could have a "phone number" node, etc...

Just because the resulting graph is huge and deep, doesn't mean it would be hard to edit it because the application wouldn't show the whole graph at once. You could literally just write (state: Pending) anywhere (with auto-suggest), and you would see all the pending tasks under it; then you could change some to "Done," and you can then even remove the query; the changed task remains "Done" everywhere it was mentioned.

AI could also help create the graphs (you paste in an email with some tasks, you get back the extended todo graph).
The graph is a text, but the data would also exist in a database simultaneously which would allow API access to the data (you create a query that lists something and you could see the result in Google Sheets or as products in your webshop).
The above Todo example is just some text (the node ID is the value by default) but the ID and node value can be separated; the value can also be Markdown, HTML, image, TOML, JSON, etc...

Because the node values can be Markdown and the Markdown can have access to the graph and could even query the graph, you could create a journal or something which has a graph just as some additional layer so you don't have to create nodes for everything; it could be useful just to write the journal as Markdown but attach this content to some date typed node or folder typed node or to tags. Or you could create graphs inside the Markdown content: ... Today I've met (person: John Doe), we've talked about (project: Project X) ... Any later you can query this person node, add email address to it and if you look at the original Markdown content, you would see the email address as well.

The idea is fully fleshed out; I have a similar description but in 50,000 characters length so I can't really expect that anyone here can just give opinions about the actual project. Still, I think it is possible that I can get some valuable feedback.

By the way, my plan is to have all this for free for personal use and most of it will be open-source. I plan to make money by providing services (sync, backup, api connections, AI processing) and I hope that this could be very useful for businesses as well who would need to pay something relatively significant.

Thanks for reading all this. Sorry if I couldn't explain it well; English is not my first language.

8 Comments
2024/03/26
12:53 UTC

3

ROAST MY IDEA - CORPORATE BOARD GAME

So, the main idea is to develop a online board game, with low-code tools (im not from IT), and sell it to medium to big enterprises.
The online board game focuses on well-being and mental health by simulating real-life challenges like work stress and balancing personal and professional life. Players answer questions or face challenges related to the theme, determining their progress. Accompanied by relevant content on mental health, the game provides useful information and clear instructions to help players develop self-care strategies. By encouraging teamwork and incorporating competitive elements, the game offers an engaging experience that empowers players to reflect on their habits and learn new ways to promote mental health.
After the game, administrators and managers receive a comprehensive report on employee well-being, allowing them to identify areas of concern and implement targeted strategies to support a healthier work environment.
The full sale of the game to a company includes a license for complete use, ensuring the organization can benefit from it as an effective tool for enhancing organizational well-being and promoting employee mental health.

Points for consideration:

I need scientific validation, from psychologists or whatever may be necessary.

I need to carefully consider how I will develop the game, since I lack programming tools.

What do you think?

10 Comments
2024/03/26
12:14 UTC

12

Building for Your Users vs. Building for Your Investors

I've noticed a trend among some founders to optimize their products for fundraising. Put simply, they build products that the investors in their space are most likely to fund, rather than solving a problem the users in their space may have.

For example, I'm following a company in the productivity space, which from the very beginning wanted to use AI. Nothing wrong with using the technology. It doesn't solve in any better way the problem its users are facing. In fact, when it comes to core functionality, the product is underperforming.

Have you observed a similar trend? Do you think this is a viable business strategy?

21 Comments
2024/03/26
10:29 UTC

0

Here’s how I actually made multiple income streams (~$45k MRR)

Hi Redditors,

I’ve struggled for years to make some online income streams but failed again and again. Today, I reached $45k MRR and none of my income streams require me to leave my home.

While I can’t exactly tell you what my income streams are, because I don’t want more people copying me and increasing my competition, I can tell you the frameworks that saved me from wasting more years of my life trying to make something work.

  1. Take inspiration from successful online businesses and change the angle

For example, take a traditional in-demand service like CRO consulting and frame it from a different angle such as humor + productized service. Create a website called RoastMyLandingPage and sell 15-minute Loom videos roasting the client’s landing page and giving him advice on how to improve. (this is a real working example btw)

  1. 3-days MVP

Don’t waste time building a complicated SaaS that nobody will use, or creating a copy-cat course that nobody will buy.

- Make a no-code landing page with a waitlist button

- Do some cold outreach trying to sell your product (even though you don’t have anything yet)

- Message a list of small influencers asking if they are interested in promoting your product commission-based

- Outreach to a list of low-visibility blogs/press releases asking if they are interested in featuring your - product for affiliate commissions

- Pitch the product in Slack/WhatsApp groups related to your niche.

- Ask the group admin if he’s willing to put the link to your product in the description of the group for affiliate commissions

Most MVPs will get little positive responses. But if you know people are not that interested in this idea in the first place, you just save yourself a lot of wasted time.

Little traction? Move to the next idea. It will take around 5 MVPs (5 different ideas) to find a good one that people are actually interested in.

  1. Build the product very fast

My advice is to avoid anything that will take too much time to make.

All-In-One SaaS product that will take years? No. 200h online course that will take you 6 months to film? Nope.

If it takes more than 1 month to create the product, it’s too slow. Find something that will make you money faster.

Create a v1 product and promote it using free methods (similar to how you marketed the MVP).

Use the revenue for paid marketing channels (ads, influencers, blogs)

Then, if you think it will make you more money, upgrade the product to v2, and so on…

Remember that it’s a trial-and-error process. It will take time, but if you find a lot of good ideas fast and do the MVP and product building accordingly, you’ll be set for life.

Hope that helps someone on their journey. Cheers!

4 Comments
2024/03/26
09:17 UTC

9

Roast my Idea

So we have urban company for service providers in Tier 1 cities. I was thinking something on similar lines for Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. Just a platform to connect local service providers like plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc and local consumers. For price discovery, I was thinking of reverse auction method to agree on a price. So that multiple service providers compete for consumer to get the best deal. What do you think?

30 Comments
2024/03/26
05:54 UTC

4

Azure Startup Account

I have seen many people sell Azure startup account with $3500 credits for like $90-100 , I wanted to know whether they are legit or not? Does such accounts got access to Azure OpenAI? Normally you have to fill up the form to get access but in startup case you don't have to?

And when I say $3500 credits, does this mean that I will get $3500 credits every month? And what will be the scenario if I fail to use all of those credits?

Also will it be OK to buy from such vendors who provide such account for $90-100?

5 Comments
2024/03/26
05:17 UTC

3

Feedback needed

I am working on a software platform that connects different dealerships, inventories where they can do cooperative selling On profit sharing basis, since for the past years since Covid, the supply chain has been a pain, and there is always shortage in inventory, it feels like such a solution could come handy for small and midsize dealerships, who are looking to increase their distribution channel and even sell brands that they don’t have. What’s your feedback on this? Do you think it would be valuable For dealers?

8 Comments
2024/03/26
03:13 UTC

0

Does anyone ever need an API that searches images from the web?

What are you using right now?
I have seen some offering from Google / Microsoft and they are either very expensive / limiting (in terms of number of API call you can make per day). Google only allows you to make 10,000 requests per day and $5 / 1000 requests. Azure on the other hand, costs $25 / 1000 requests (what!?)

2 Comments
2024/03/26
02:22 UTC

53

Interning and CEO told me to take more ownership and have more intentionality

I'm currently an operations intern at a very small tech startup (25 employees) for about 2.5 months now and right now they just have me do bitch work (watering the plants, putting away the dishes) and minor tasks like updating policies and maintaining budget dashboards. I do everything that they ask of me well (they said this themselves) but today the CEO sat me down and told me that I need to take more ownership if I want a full-time role. I agree to a certain extent with him -- but the problem and where my frustration is coming from is that I've tried to do this -- I asked engineers is there's anything they'd want to see improved operationally and got ghosted. I don't blame them at all though, they are swamped with work and all they see me do is put away groceries and dishes so of course they wouldn't take me seriously or see me as worth their time. My manager also seems like she doesn't want to lend her time to teach me some of the things that she does, and when I went into this internship it seemed like they didn't even have a clear direction with this role. The CEO confirmed my speculation today, saying that yes, they compiled a list of random tasks that they needed someone to do before I came in. He said I need to make a role for myself. I want to do this -- but it seems like no one feels an intern is worth their time so I'm left with nothing to work with. The company's biggest need right now are more technical skills which I do not have. How can I "take initiative" with what I have?

UPDATE -- I had a talk with my manager today and she apologized for the disorganization. She was very surprised to hear about my conversation with the CEO and said she will work to make sure all of our priorities are aligned. Also got affirmation that I am doing a great job. I will definitely take more initiative to do more research and at least propose solutions with the ideal goal of eventually implementing them. Thanks everyone for your comments.

135 Comments
2024/03/26
01:13 UTC

1

Startups in physical security space ...

I'm looking to join/support startup that have MVP in physical security space - video surveillance, access control, sensors, analytics, applications etc.

We have a path to get your MVP into PoCs, trials, limited deployments and large scale ones as well. DM me for a chat. Can sign NDA etc.

2 Comments
2024/03/25
22:45 UTC

11

What's the point of system status pages if no startups seems to use them right?

All of these businesses with status pages that don't report real time are simply a feel good rouse. I feel like I'm the only startup in existence that has actually tied the real server status into a system that reports accurately. I can't remember a time where a site was down and the status page actually reflected it accurately.

ChatGPT is hard down but https://status.openai.com/ says otherwise. I guess if they got it right we wouldn't need downdetector anymore.

Just me? Thoughts?

Gripe over

33 Comments
2024/03/25
22:39 UTC

0

How To Take An Idea And Turn It Into A Multi-Million Dollar Company?

I'm a total noob when it comes to startups and entrepreneurship. Does anyone have any specific recommendations (books, videos, blogs) that discuss the concept of what it actually takes to take a simple idea and turn it into a full-on functioning business? Just looking to learn more and educate myself on what it truly means to be an entrepreneur...

12 Comments
2024/03/25
22:18 UTC

1

high-growth valuation

hey friends. quick backstory.

we started a frozen meal delivery biz 2 years ago and it's crushing. we found an awesome niche and ship nationwide DTC. people find us organically on google, instagram, and word of mouth, we've done zero paid ads, and our main marketing has been sending small/medium sized influencers free boxes (they post on their IG) and we do a monthly giveaway in partnership with other companies in the space.

here's our 12month revs (march is pacing at this point):

3/31/2023 $ 18,933.08
4/30/2023 $ 32,536.69
5/31/2023 $ 42,966.61
6/30/2023 $ 37,657.83
7/30/2023 $ 60,952.00
8/31/2023 $ 53,469.07
9/30/2023 $ 57,513.98
10/31/2023 $ 65,618.74
11/30/2023 $ 69,819.72
12/31/2023 $ 60,593.46
1/31/2024 $ 87,271.09
2/29/2024 $ 84,096.14
3/31/2024 $ 114,000.00

and we're netting about 30%.

operationally, we're about to get going with a co-manufacturer who can produce all the food for us (and give us a healthy margin increase) as well as start using a nationwide frozen fulfillment network which will allow us to offer free shipping to everyone (not just the west coast). so really soon we won't have to cook or ship the food ourselves anymore. then we can actually start selling =)

in terms of fundraising, we took $30k total from 3 different friends. $20k back in 2022 when revenues were only $8k/month and another $10 in april of 23. for everyone we valued the company at $1MM. Yes it was a really good idea LOL.

sooo...the point of all this...a buddy of mine wants to throw in $100k for some equity. i really like the guy and he want's to play a role in the marketing function to help us grow.

he sent me some articles that basically say trailing 12mon revenues, or 3x trailing 12mon profits, but honestly, you couldn't pay me $5MM for the company at this point (i'd proooobably take 10 lol).

not bragging but i've heard firsthand from some reputable people in the food/wellness space that we're sitting on a $100MM company if we do this right.

obviously $100k would help us sprint much quicker once manufacturing and fulfillment is dialed in...

a couple questions for all you party peeps:

  1. is it fair to our original investors if we value the company less than $1MM?
  2. does anyone have articles or examples of how to value a high growth startup?

also feel free to share any experience or insight if you think will be helpful.

and yes, i realize we could go get an SBA loan or something (i'm looking into it also).

thank you!

1 Comment
2024/03/25
21:48 UTC

3

Fun startup swag question

Looking to buy our first branded shirts for team and customers. So what’s the best brandable shirt for a team to wear that is high quality and comfortable and flattering for a range of body types. No polos. No tanks. Ideally made in US. I’m also a female founder and hoping for something I would want to wear and still feel somewhat professional in. Not sure what that means but I know cheap t shirts aren’t it.

2 Comments
2024/03/25
20:07 UTC

0

Does anyone needs sales help?

Looking for part time / full time sales position. I currently own a startup as well but am working a part time job that I don’t particularly care for. I want to get back into sales because I think that is the most important skill set to have and I want to keep it fresh. Negotiating, pitching, selling, cold calling, all great skills to have and I feel like my current job I’m not growing or gaining anything.

I have about 6 years of sales experience generating hundreds of thousands in revenue.

I love working with startups because I want to be apart of that story. I also enjoy working directly for the founders / owners as their motivation and seeing them drives me to perform.

1 Comment
2024/03/25
19:19 UTC

3

Security certifications

I'm just a one-woman service-based startup (I occasionally hire contractors), and one of my clients recently asked for my IT/data security certs or Trust Center. I have all applicable insurance, but I don't know if it's reasonable that I'd have SOC2 certification. Am I wrong? If I'm wrong, how do I begin that process?

4 Comments
2024/03/25
19:16 UTC

4

How / where did you get your small business loan?

Basically the title. My company is pre-revenue but we have clients we will be converting to sales in about 2 months when their trial expires. Really just needing a bit of capital to float till then. Not worried about converting to sales, we’re getting a lot of great feedback and they like our product.

How did you get your small business loan? I’ve never done this before so I’m just looking for any guidance / information

1 Comment
2024/03/25
17:55 UTC

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