Hey guys, just a short background. I’m an NYC realtor who has been building my CRM for about 5 months. I have hired a development company to help me put my thoughts into action as I am looking to bootstrap this. I am solely focused on NYC at this time as there is a big enough market here (20k active realtors and 1k in my own brokerage). Essentially, the software connects clients to listings and listings to clients. I’m planning on giving this software for free at first (beta) to my own brokerage and then charge a subscription fee when it’s completed. I will be beta testing the software myself as well, but I’m just concerned I am looking at this with rose colored glasses. Do you think it’s better for me to test out the interest in my software with only my MVP part complete, connecting clients to listings, or wait until it’s fully complete? Right now I’m eating all the monthly costs with no real sense of interest in my product. Thanks in advanced for your feedback!

Hi,

Working on a B2B API. I’m releasing the beta in a couple of days.

What I did so far:

• Built an MVP
• been talking to few parties that showed decent enthusiasm.
• Put together a serious landing page.
• Prepared some materials for content marketing.

What’s next:

• Finding better places/ways to discover and nurture leads
• Writing tests
• Packaging the MPV and setting up cloud infra and a reusable dev/deployment flow
• Getting people to actually use the product and pay for it

Let me know: Who you are, your background and age, your city, why are you interested and what are your long term aspirations for your life.

Thanks!

Hey everyone! I’m currently working on a new startup and have an experienced tech team in place, but now I’m focusing on building out the marketing side of things. While I’ve received great recommendations about marketing teams and launch experts, I’m still figuring out the best approach to onboarding and growing a marketing team that aligns with our goals.

For those of you who are also in the early stages of your startup:

1. How are you approaching the process of building a marketing team?
2. What roles are you prioritizing first, and how do you make sure your marketing strategy aligns with your product vision?
3. Are you hiring generalists who can handle multiple areas, or specialists who focus on specific functions?
4. How do you structure onboarding to get your marketing team up to speed quickly?

I’m particularly curious if any of you feel stuck or overwhelmed at this stage. If you're facing similar challenges, how are you planning to overcome them and ensure you're on the right track for growth?

I’d love to hear how other founders in the early stages are handling this process, and any advice or insights you have for building a marketing team from the ground up.

I recently built a WordPress website for a client with 6-7 pages. If you were in my place, what would you have charged? I’m asking because I’m considering revising my pricing to align with market standards. You can check out the site here: danisec.com (note that the client made a few adjustments; initially, there was more content).

Also, what do you think is a reasonable rate for a WooCommerce-based e-commerce store on WordPress with around 30-40 products?

Hey Reddit Community,

I’m seeking advice on how to get investors to engage and respond as we work to raise $2M to fuel our next phase of growth. Here’s a breakdown of our business and where we currently stand:

About Us:

•	We’re a D2C e-commerce dropshipping business focused on tech and scalability with a patent-pending platform. We operate with a lean model—no inventory risk, just pure tech enablement.
•	Historically, we’ve achieved $75M in sales, and after pivoting away from an old Amazon-dependent model, we’re now selling exclusively on our own website.
•	We’re currently generating $450K/month in revenue with 32.5% gross margins. We’ve hit 6 consecutive months of profitability and are continuing to grow.
•	We’ve served over 160,000 customers, with an average order value of $175, and have garnered over 18,000 positive customer reviews.

What We’re Looking to Do:

•	We’re aiming to raise $2M through either a growth investor or a convertible note to accelerate our growth and scale further.
•	The capital will allow us to optimize our existing debt and improve our cash flow, positioning us for faster growth and a potential larger equity round in the near future.

The Obstacle:

•	We’re currently optimizing about $1.75M in legacy debt, which costs us around $20K/month in legal fees, principal, interest, and debt settlements.
•	We’ve made significant strides, including settling a $2M supplier debt down to $800K, and restructuring payments with other financial partners to ease cash flow.
•	However, we’re hitting a wall—many investors see us as either too big for seed funding or too small for growth capital. This makes it challenging to get responses, even though we’re profitable and growing.

Looking for Advice:

1.	How can we optimize our outreach to get responses from growth investors or convertible note providers? What strategies have worked for you in getting their attention?
2.	Are there specific firms, family offices, or investors that focus on companies in our stage—profitable but still scaling?
3.	What are the best channels for outreach (cold emails, LinkedIn, warm intros, etc.)? Any tips on structuring these messages to increase engagement?

We’re confident in the strength of our business model and the growth potential of our current pivot, but we’re having trouble getting in front of the right investors who can see the value we’re bringing.

Any insights, introductions, or strategies would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much for your time and advice!

I run a Admix.softwaree. For months, our main competitor has been copying every feature we launch with remarkable precision. Looks/feels the same. I'm not sure about naming us/them, as I don't want this to be seen as a marketing campaign, but rather an ask for help.

The pattern I noticed:

• We launch a feature
• 2-4 Weeks later, they launch an identical copy (±90% same UX/UI) - even customers noticed it

As a result, we completely stopped posting on our public roadmap, as we know they're constantly on it.

Even more interesting: They write comparison pages with false information about competitors, get caught, apologize, then "accidentally restore" the same false claims months later. Have had another company confirm that they did the same thing to them. Also, learned this person has an history of copying products and launching them.

Questions:

1. How would you handle this systematic copying?
2. Has anyone experienced something similar?
3. At what point does copying cross from competition to something else?

Context: Admix.softwaree is bootstrapped, profitable. Just curious how to best approach this as it keeps getting worse it seems..

I built admix.softwaree and I have been getting some great traction but because of my schedule I am not able to dedicate as much time as the product deserves.

I'm looking for a marketing cofounder market the product and lead the direction. What is the best way to find such a person?

I'm building a project in my spare time without monetization in mind.

Instead I want to build a community as big as possible for enthusiasts in a niche. The ultimate goal is to generate reach and a happy target audience.

I'm building features that other competitors hide behind paywalls. I will provide the best possible product for free. And it's open source.

Whenever reach is big enough I can pitch ideas for new products and monetize those.

Is this a viable strategy and has anyone experience with this type of approach?

My team and I created a great MVP product for parents. We have a small marketing budget, but time and talent. Is guerilla marketing actually feasible or on old idea? I'd love to know if anyone has had success in acquiring users in creative, low-cost ways, unconventional ways. Bonus points if you have any idea for a B2C journaling product for parents! Thanks in advance!

I am struggling to get email lists because people don't grasp that a USB K/M switch can achieve the perfect goal of not having any buttons to switch. Something that doesn't exist on the market as we speak. For example, I am trying specific segment ads and posts on social media, but only a few really land to signups. I mean, this product solves so many issues with our technology, but it's like selling an iPhone 1 without funds to back up all the marketing.

Any take on this issue? Does anyone have good feedback?

Hi there,

If anyone has built a discord community around their startup before, I need some advice on how you did it.

It's kind of a chicken and egg problem where I want people to join my discord server but at the same time people won't join unless there are already other people in the server engaging.

Are there any ways I can get some pseudo members in my discord server just to get some initial traction?

Hey Reddit.

Today I finally deployed my first-ever coding project: loopfluent(dot)com

4 weeks ago, I had never coded any project besides basic stuff, like printing, defining functions, loops, etc. I am so proud of the progress I was able to achieve.

I had this idea because I was able to quickly learn Spanish using a method with ChatGPT: I'd ask him to generate a writing proposal for me, then I'd write and he would grade it for me. It worked extremely well, and when I challenged myself a few weeks ago to do an AI Wrapper, this idea came to mind.

So... Loopfluent was born.

Loopfluent is kind of Duolingo but you actually put into practice, things I was missing in any language learning app.

It now has features like personal knowledge and feedback loops to improve your proposals and get you to improve.

If you want to check it out, it doesn't even have a paywall, do it completely for free, and I'd appreciate any feedback!!

Thank you!

I want to know if there are any startups that use AR operating in edtech.Il

I got to know about these

Quiver: An app that turns coloring pages into interactive 3D models. Merge Cube: A cube that can be used to view 3D models and interact with them in AR. Google Expeditions: An app that allows students to take virtual field trips to different locations around the world.

As AR technology continues to advance, we can expect to see even more innovative and effective applications in education. By providing immersive and interactive learning experiences, AR has the potential to revolutionize the way students learn and engage with educational content.

As AR technology continues to advance, we can expect to see even more innovative and effective applications in education. By providing immersive and interactive learning experiences, AR has the potential to revolutionize the way students learn and engage with educational content.

As AR technology continues to advance, we can expect to see even more innovative and effective applications in education. By providing immersive and interactive learning experiences, AR has the potential to revolutionize the way students learn and engage with educational content

Hey Startups Community,

I'm getting ready to start designing our MVP in Figma (non-technical co-founder). I'm getting some conflicting answers as to whether we should design (in Figma) entirely from scratch (which would be free), or if it's better to go with an established library (i.e., MUI, Ant Design, etc).

If we build it from scratch, we have greater control. But that would take up a lot of time and it would push our launch way out. If we go with paying for a UI kit/library, I'm worried that it may "look like other products" or that "it's not innovative enough". I also just don't know how common paying for a library is for startups (and companies in general), and if that would impact how potential investors view us.

One advice I got was to use an established design system/library so we can focus our time on getting the product out as quickly as possible - because at the end of the data, having real users using the product is most important. Then, later on, we can put having our own customized design system in a future roadmap. But that's one person's advice, so I'm not sure.

Hello r/startups! I'm part of a team building an MVP for a SaaS focused on intelligent AI dashboarding and reporting for a niche industry. We're considering using Microsoft Power Apps as the primary development platform. The backend will be built separately and not tied to Power Apps specifically, and we plan to mainly leverage API integrations to connect the frontend to the backend.

The main benefits we see in using Power Apps are the ability to leverage custom AI copilots and build the MVP quickly. However, we wanted to get your thoughts on any potential concerns or downsides to this approach, particularly around pricing and vendor lock-in.

Some key points about our use case:

Backend will be built separately, not tied to Power Apps

Primarily using API integrations to connect frontend and backend

Aiming to take advantage of Power Apps' custom AI copilots and rapid development capabilities

What are your experiences or thoughts on using a platform like Power Apps for an enterprise SaaS MVP? Are there any major red flags we should be aware of? We're trying to weigh the pros and cons before fully committing to this approach.

Any advice or insights would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance for your help.

I have an app idea that I have had for quite some time. I know what I want it to do, what I want it to look like, etc. I do not know a single app developer! I asked everyone if they know someone who can code and I have gotten nowhere. My issue with any random person that i have 0 connection with is trust. I also know it would cost tens of thousands of dollars to go to some company to have it developed and I am not sold on using AI or some non-coding website. However, I am curious to hear any and all ways you found your developers or any general advice when it comes to this.

Thank you!!

Hi community,

I’m running a startup and my team is fully remote. Lately, I've been finding it a bit challenging to manage everything smoothly. From onboarding new hires (interns, full-time employees, and contractors) to keeping track of holidays, attendance, and leaves, there's always something that needs attention.

Here's what I’ve been using to tackle these challenges:

What Works for Us:

• Seamless onboarding process for new team members
• Centralized place for holiday calendars and important documents
• Real-time tracking of attendance and breaks
• Efficient leave management, including approvals and recurring leaves
• Self-service features for employees to manage their profiles and track their attendance

I'm curious to learn from all of you—what tools or strategies do you use to manage your remote teams? What features do you think are essential in an HRMS?

If you're facing similar challenges, I found an HRMS that really helped us. Happy to share more details if you're interested!

Let’s share our experiences and help each other out!

Hello. I am a 22-year-old co-founder of Desi Discoveries, a startup that invites foreigners to experience Indian weddings to showcase and promote our cultural heritage. My co-founder is my boyfriend, who is skilled in design, legal matters, and negotiation. This was one of the main reasons I started the company with him.

In the beginning, everything was running smoothly for the first 1-2 months. However, he then mentioned that he had upcoming college exams and couldn’t contribute for two weeks. I understood and managed the workload on my own. But now, it has been four months, and he hasn’t taken any significant initiatives or contributed to the work.

For the past three months, I have been asking him to open the company bank account, but it hasn’t been done. Although I lacked design skills, I redesigned the website by myself. He hasn’t helped generate leads or reached out to potential clients. Apart from setting up the initial base of the site in the first two months, he hasn’t made any further contributions.

I took on cold calling and cold messaging 30-50 people daily for an entire month, which led to securing 64 wedding opportunities. This industry is untapped, and some industry insiders even found our idea unusual and responded rudely. After his initial negative experience with a call, he refused to reach out to anyone again. (his communication is way better than me, and it was a challenge to deal with people on call)

Now, we need to redo much of the work, ifor finding foreigners. However, I have an important exam coming up in 10 days, which is imp for me. I’ve been asking him to take the initiative and shoulder some responsibilities, but he responds me saying that I only care about work and often argues with me. Despite balancing our personal relationship with dates and celebrations, I end up doing all the work to avoid conflicts and maintain our relationship.

It’s challenging to manage both my studies and the startup, especially since our idea is unconventional. I feel torn because if I don’t continue working hard, the past few months’ efforts will be wasted.

What should I do?

Hey r/startups,

I’m part of a team working on a unique project in the nutrition-tech space, and we're looking for advice on the best ways to commercialize our IP.

Our tech enables the rapid creation of professional-grade, personalized meal plans, covering all 46 USDA-recommended nutrients and accounting for allergies, dietary preferences, and food restrictions.

Unlike most solutions out there, it’s not AI-based and doesn’t use scraped data; instead, it’s driven by a meticulously curated database and deterministic calculations. We see potential use cases in medical nutrition, B2B integrations, and affordable healthcare for underserved communities.

Here's what we're trying to figure out:

1. Monetization models: What revenue models would you suggest for a platform with capabilities like ours?
2. GTM strategy: Given our target markets (B2B, healthcare, potential API integrations), what are the best channels or strategies to gain traction?
3. Potential partnerships: Any insights on partnerships or industry connections that could help us gain early adopters?

Right now, one company is interested in using the tech via API but we're looking at various other use cases as well.

Would love to hear any advice, resources, or personal experiences you think might help as we work on bringing this to market.

Thanks so much in advance, and I’m happy to answer any questions!

Hello sub,

I've been stuck at this point for several months now. I know my target audience and can seemingly reach them through Reddit, too. But, despite having a UI Mockup Video, I don't know the right questions to ask. I've read "the Mom test" and I've gotten answers to more technical questions such as which OS my target audience uses and I've tried to casually enquire to check the presence of any competitors.

What is my app about?
- My app is a word processor which has a skeuomorphic UI. It is meant to appeal to a very niche set of users who are particularly fond of 2007-2012 AQUA UI.

Currently, I don't know whether or not my target audience is actually willing to pay a premium for a word processor that looks and feels they love.
So, can you please suggest a few good questions to ask?

I'm at a stage where I'm eager to start writing code, but I'm just waiting to validate my MVP before taking the plunge.

Due to the restrictions, I'm unable to upload the video, but I hope it won't prove to be a hindrance in helping me with my query.

Thank you for understanding. :)

If you have any other suggestions for me or any tips from your own journey, please feel free to share them with me, I'd be extremely grateful to you.

Maybe you, like me, started building a relatively simple product as a way to make some extra income or even to have the option to leave your 9-to-5. Maybe while you were still brainstorming and planning your product, you thought: “I can build this pretty quickly and start testing and selling.”

How long did it actually take you to reach a first, finished version of your product that was viable enough to launch? Was building that first version harder (or easier) than you expected?

In my case, I have a co-founder working with me, and we built a solution that creates resumes, cover letters, and HR emails tailored to each job, called WinnerCV.io. In our first discussions, we thought we could build everything in three weeks but it actually took two months to get to our first launch. I still think that’s a quick turnaround for the first version, but it was definitely more than we expected.

What I really didn’t anticipate was spending so much time working with OpenAI’s tools to generate our documents consistently. Even though it’s amazing to achieve this with natural language, getting the resumes especially to follow a desired pattern was tough and required a lot of trial and error along the way.

How about you?

Hey, have been lurking here for a while and finally I am in a situation where I need some advice.

Some data:

• MVP will be ready in Jan
• We are a small team - Backend Devs + Infra + Product
• Some work 100% on this product, some would switch to 100% if/when we secure money.
• Location - Europe, mostly Germany

We are considering to raise pre-seed/seed round for a B2C mobile app (Not an LLM Wrapper) and would love to hear from anyone who’s been down this road, especially here in Germany. I know the startup ecosystem here has its own vibe, and I’m hoping to learn from your experiences.

If you’ve raised early-stage funding in Germany (or Europe generally), I’d love to know:

• How did the process go for you? Any surprises or things you wish you’d known?
• Which VCs, angel investors, or incubators did you find helpful? Are there any you’d really recommend or suggest approaching with caution?
• Also, any specific advice for someone navigating the local funding landscape for the first time?

Thanks so much in advance! Every story or piece of advice helps.

How you ensure your product availability? i want to achieve 100% (or 99.995%) uptime for my product, how you would do it?

Right now for my SP project, I rely on 4 servers (app) + base hosting for the website. Servers are load balanced in 2 different datacenters (2+2)

Let me know where it can be improved and what you are doing to stay always online

I am a technical founder and love building tech. I started my first project when I was 18 from my college dorm, that project got selected to some of the best tech universities and got mentoring and networking from there. But I had no money, so decided to start my tech agency to make some money and use it to build that startup.

Fast forward to now, I have three agency tech, marketing and pitch deck. We have done some amazing work on all these agencies and built an amazing team.

But the agency was consuming a lot of my time especially finding clients and converting sales ( I was managing sales , operations and tech all at once ) even though the tech and operation was at autopilot mode, sales was something I had to actively look after and was thus consuming a lot of time.

I did found a sales cofounder but he turned out to be a  complete jerk and ran away with the money after his first sale.

Now I am thinking on focusing on build my tech SAAS but at the same time don’t want to abandon my agency as I have some great portfolio and really good team which is sadly not able to do anything because I am too busy not to bring any sales.

I am really confused what to do and looking for genuine advice.

In my experience so far, many early-stage startups want a straightforward "template" design that's cheap and easy to implement. On the other hand, most large companies have design teams capable of delivering all the requirements.

Where are the companies that require bespoke design and want to outsource the design? Where can I find those companies? Is there any sub?

People who run successful design agencies targeting mid and large companies, how did you find your audience?

I am very early in my entrepreneurial journey, and my observations can be wrong. I am all ears to learn and grow.

I contacted Google to ask why my app’s download count on the Play Store wasn’t updated. They explained that I hadn’t actually crossed the threshold, despite the console indicating otherwise. According to them, their internal stats show that there were fake downloads, but they don’t disclose these figures to developers. This has been frustrating, as I relied on the metrics in the console for business decisions, only to find they may not be entirely reliable. Why is Google withholding the “fake downloads” count from developers?

Hello everyone,

I am developing an app and have recently heard about something called "build in public". If I understand it correctly, it simply means to share updates about one's app or project on social media.

I have never done building in public, so I could really use some pointers and guidance. For instance, what platform should I post on? Is Instagram okay for this? Threads? Something else?

Thank you.

I am not an expert or something, will share only practical tips that work for me.

Firstly, I will share details about me. I am a bootstrap founder, meaning that I don't spend money on marketing or sales. Because I don't have money for that right now, and trying to use all ways to maximize my efforts.

People really want simple things that solve their problems. Because of that you don't need to sell them something, but what they really need is to see that your solution can help them. You can do it in different ways, beginning with targeting ads or setting up Google Ads. But it will be another story.

Let's start.

1. Understand where hanging out your ideal customer is. For my cases it is X, Reddit, and LinkedIn. You need to start posting content related to your niche and product. In the beginning, focus on niche as long as you can. Because all you need is to understand their problems and improve on each request.

2. Give your perfect customer a free trial or free usage. Don't ask anything upfront. Just give them and be around. If they have any questions or ideas, write them down immediately. Try to document everything they say. You can analyze it later. After giving free usage or a free trial. Write them a personalized email or message, could they give feedback or review (ONLY AFTER USING YOUR APP, AND AUTHORIZATION). If they don't want to give, no problem, don't do anything, don't be rude, don't take away his/her usage. LET IT BE. A lot of people, especially in the beginning who are ready to give their time to your product, will be your best friends. All you really need to do is ask. 80% of them will give you what you want.

3. After understanding your ideal customer and getting at least 50-100 ideas/reviews/feedback from free users, you need to find general and common problems. Take them and work, work, work on it. After getting it done. Go to the next step.

4. You are ready to launch. Submit to directories as your product category. Write SEO articles from day one based on your website content (do it each day). If there is a need for free tools on the same topic as you do, you need to build them under different pages. For example, if you do wealth planning, it is good to have a wealth calculator. Don't build it blindly. Go to Google Keywords and analyze trends and keywords that people are searching for. It is your juicy traffic.

5. If you are doing B2B business, you need to generate a lot of cold emails. If you are doing B2C, you need to generate a lot of short videos on Youtube, TikTok, and Instagram, and ideally to generate content on platforms like Reddit and X.

First time solo founder here, based in the UK. I’m looking to know a little more about raising pre-seed. (I’m aware my startup is still a long way off this, but just out of curiosity I have a few questions).

When raising pre-seed, how much is expected to be factored in for my salary? I understand that founders should pay themselves minimum, but if I have committed to certain expenses e.g mortgage/kids, then I will need to have that covered - and if I earn around £96k then would I ask that as a salary?

What if I want to add another co-founder on board and they’re in a similar position?

A comfortable salary would allow us to work on the startup 100% with no distractions, so would a VC firm prefer this?

Currently I am working full time - but after raising the pre-seed, how much time would I have to quite my job? I’m assuming this is something that can be negotiated.

Or could I go down to working part-time say 2 days a week, and then pay myself less salary from pre-seed?

How are funds distributed? Say I have asked for £500k is that deposited in one lump sump into a business account, or would the company receive a certain amount of funding per month for 12 months?

Is there much flexibility on how funds can be spent, say I initially was spending 40% on product development, is there enough autonomy to raise this to 50% if needed?

Is it expected with pre-seed to have a runway of around 12-18 months ? Or can you spend pre-seed money like bootstrapping and spend only as needed ?

Terms I’m assuming vary, but generally looking at between 10-20% equity for VC? Are there any terms that generally get included in pre-seed contracts, like certain milestones to be met, before raising another round?

Thank you for your time & apologies for the long post !

I’m a 22 year old female working as a data analyst. Tbh 9-5 has never stood out to me since I’ve always seen my dad preaching financial freedom and entrepreneurship. I believe in working hard towards something in the short-term to reap its benefits in the long term. It’s very tough for me to stay in one spot, my mind is always wandering and never really stops working. I feel like I can never fully commit myself to a company since I’ll never be satisfied with the pay and also won’t see any advantage in it for me. I know I have the skills and knowledge to do what it takes though it’s my emotions I’m worried about.

Everyone around me seems to be happy with a 9-5 and wants to continue to do so for the next 10 years at least. I feel like I’m making a massive jump by wanting to start now. I have great support from my dad financially and he’ll also encourage me to try out anything new and make a step towards entrepreneurship.

Just seeing corporate suck ups on LinkedIn makes me feel if I’m doing the right thing. Is validation on Linkedin that important? Is it really worth working 9-5 for 70K a year?

Am i overconfident or do I have the mindset of an Entrepreneur?

I’ve got brilliant ideas but then I start thinking that if the idea is so good why hasn’t someone else already thought of it and executed it. If its so easy then why isn’t everyone else doing it. Am i being stupid by being so risk taking?

Any advice or words of motivation will be appreciated :)