What I’ve learned in 20+ years of building startups

1. Fail Well. You’ve heard it a million times before: ideas are easy; execution is hard. Execution is incredibly hard. And even if something works well for a while, it might not work sustainably forever. I fail a lot. I’d say my ideas are successful maybe 2/10 times, and that’s probably going easy on myself.

2. Keep Going. The difference between overall success and failure, is usually as simple as not quitting. Most people don’t have the stomach for point #1 and give up way too quickly.

3. Saying No. Especially if you didn’t have a particularly good month and it’s coming up on the 1st (bill time), it’s hard to say “No” to new income, but if you know it’s something you’ll hate doing, it could be better in the long-run to not take it or else face getting burnt out.

4. Work Smart (and sometimes hard). I would hazard to guess that most of us do this because we hate the limitations and grind of the traditional 9-5? Most of us are more likely to be accused of being workaholics rather than being allergic to hard work, but it certainly helps if you enjoy what you do. That said, it can’t be cushy all the time. Sometimes you gotta put in a little elbow grease.

5. Start Slow. I’ve helped many clients start their own businesses and I always try to urge them to pace themselves. They want instant results and they put the cart before the horse. Especially for online businesses, you don’t need a business license, LLC, trademark, lawyer, and an accountant before you’ve even made your first dollar! Prove that the thing actually works and is making enough money before worrying about all the red tape.

6. Slow Down Again (when things start to go well). Most company owners get overly excited when things start to go well, start hiring more people, doing whatever they can to pour fuel on the fire, but usually end up suffocating the fire instead. Wait, just wait. Things might plateau or take a dip and suddenly you’re hemorrhaging money.

7. Fancy Titles. At a certain stage of growth, egos shift, money changes people. What was once a customer-centric company that was fun to work at becomes more corporate by the day. Just because “that’s the way they’ve always done it” in terms of the structure of dino corps of old, that’s never a good reason to keep doing it that way.

8. Stay Home. If your employee’s work can be done remotely, why are you wasting all that money on office space just to stress your workers out with commute and being somewhere they resent being, which studies have shown only make them less productive anyway?

9. Keep it Simple. Don’t follow trends and sign you or your team up for every new tool or app that comes along just because they’re popular. Basecamp, Slack, Signal, HubSpot, Hootsuite, Google Workspace, Zoom (I despise Zoom), etc. More apps doesn’t mean more organization. Pick one or two options and use them to their full potential.

   

10. Keep Doors Open. While you’ll inevitably become too busy to say “Yes” to everything, try to keep doors open for everyone you’ve already established a beneficial working relationship with. Nothing lasts forever, and that might be the lesson I learned the harshest way of all. More on that below…

What I’ve learned in 20+ years of building startups: A personal note that might be helpful to anyone who’s struggling

Some years back (around 2015), we sold the company my partner and I built that was paying our salaries. During those years, I closed a lot of doors, especially with clients because I was cushy with my salary, and didn’t want to spend time on other relationships and hustles I previously built up over the years.

I had a really rough few years after we sold and the money ran out where I almost threw in the towel and went back to a traditional 9-5 job. I could barely scrape rent together and went without groceries for longer than I’m comfortable admitting.

There’s no shame in doing what you’ve gotta do to keep food on the table, but the thought of “going back” was deeply depressing for me. Luckily, I managed to struggle my way through, building up clients again.

What I’ve learned in 20+ years of building startups – Conclusion:

Navigating the world of startups requires a balance of resilience, strategic decision-making, and adaptability. The lessons learned over two decades in the startup ecosystem are not just strategies but guiding principles for sustainable success and growth in the dynamic world of entrepreneurship.

If you’re curious about how I make money, most of it has been made building custom products for WordPress.

Source: r/Entrepreneur

What I’ve learned in 20+ years of building startups – References:

1. Entrepreneurship Blogs and Websites: Look for blogs from successful entrepreneurs or business coaches. Sites like Entrepreneur (entrepreneur.com), Forbes Entrepreneurs Section (https://forbes.com/entrepreneurs), and Harvard Business Review (hbr.org) often have valuable articles on startup strategies and entrepreneurial journeys.
2. Startup Case Studies: Websites like Inc. Magazine (inc.com) and Fast Company (fastcompany.com) frequently publish case studies and stories about startups and entrepreneurial experiences.
3. Business and Tech News Websites: Platforms like TechCrunch (techcrunch.com), Business Insider (businessinsider.com), and The Wall Street Journal’s Business section (https://wsj.com/news/business) are good for staying updated on the latest in startup trends and business strategies.
4. Remote Work and Productivity Tools Blogs: For insights on remote work and productivity tools, check out blogs from companies like Basecamp (basecamp.com), Slack (https://slack.com/blog), and Zoom (blog.zoom.us).
5. Online Business Forums and Communities: Websites like Reddit’s Entrepreneur subreddit (https://reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur) or startup-focused forums on sites like Quora (quora.com) can provide real-world advice and experiences from various business owners.
6. LinkedIn Articles and Thought Leaders: Following successful entrepreneurs and business thought leaders on LinkedIn can provide you with a plethora of insights and firsthand accounts of business experiences.
7. Business and Entrepreneurship Books: Websites of authors who have written extensively on startups and entrepreneurship, such as Guy Kawasaki or Seth Godin, often have blogs and articles that are invaluable to entrepreneurs.

Examining the Fragmented Data on Black Entrepreneurship in North America

Entrepreneur Our community brings together individuals driven by a shared commitment to problem-solving, professional networking, and collaborative innovation, all with the goal of making a positive impact. We welcome a diverse range of pursuits, from side projects and small businesses to venture-backed startups and solo ventures. However, this is a space for genuine connection and exchange of ideas, not self-promotion. Please refrain from promoting personal blogs, consulting services, books, MLMs, opinions.

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  I finally got a compliment from my most stubborn client
  by /u/AtlasSEOGuy on May 14, 2026 at 2:23 am

  I know when you guys see success stories on here, it’s usually a $20,000,000 deal, someone selling their company, or something massive. But today, I might’ve done something that beats any new signing, at least in my mind: I got my client to finally give me a compliment. It may not seem like a big deal, but this client is an older guy who runs an HVAC company. He’s a pretty typical tradesman and definitely looks at me like some soft-handed SEO guy, which, don’t get me wrong, I am, especially compared to him. But the work I do is solid. Compared to this point last year, organic traffic is up 30%, and leads are following. Still, every time I’ve shown him a report, I’ve gotten pretty much nothing back. Until recently. It wasn’t the lead numbers. It wasn’t the traffic. The thing that finally made him smile was that he outranked his brother, who owns a much larger HVAC company in the town over. Apparently, they constantly go back and forth about who’s better, which is honestly hilarious. His brother mentioned it at their most recent family gathering, and my client gave me the old thumbs up with a big smile. It really warmed my heart, and hopefully I can get another one out of him soon. submitted by /u/AtlasSEOGuy [link] [comments]

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  I built a Entrepreneur Tycoon from the perspective of an investor
  by /u/thealexxx on May 13, 2026 at 9:41 pm

  Hey everyone! This is an idea I’ve had for a while, and I finally got around to building it. It’s a Entrepreneur/startup tycoon game, but instead of starting a company and building it yourself, you play as an experienced investor getting emails from founders and deciding who to invest in. It’s called Startup Tycoon Game - VC Phone (app store) You start with a bankroll of 100k, forcing you to pick and choose which investments you want to back and diversify across multiple companies. After investing in companies, founders will send you texts asking for help. Your advice can either hurt or help the company, increasing or decreasing the valuation of your investments. Eventually, you’ll start getting emails from larger companies looking to acquire your startups, allowing you to make 20x to 40x returns on your investments. As you grow, you gain more influence in the world, allowing you to take companies public, compete with other VC firms, and even pump the stock prices of public companies within the game. The game is free with no ads. You can buy in game money if you want, but with the nature of VC, you’ll probably no longer need to after selling a few profitable investments. I you try it, let me know what you think. This game is definitely somewhat niche, so I’m not sure how many people will be into it lol. submitted by /u/thealexxx [link] [comments]

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  How to find high quality OEM manufacturers?
  by /u/ZeraPain on May 13, 2026 at 6:12 pm

  So after months of research, I’ve finally identified a niche with strong growth potential for the future. Where I eventually would like to design, and manufacture my own product. However, as the title suggests, I’m now facing a new challenge: how do I actually find high-quality manufacturers, preferably based in Europe? I’ve come across quite a few horror stories about manufacturers in China who end up copying designs or concepts. From what I’ve read, even having them sign an NDA often doesn’t provide much protection in practice. Recently, I contacted my first manufacturer in my own country. While this initially seemed promising, the quoted bulk price was extremely high. Unfortunately, this doesn’t fit within my financial model at all, as it leaves little to no room for a sustainable net profit or to grow the company. At this point, I’m trying to better understand how to balance quality, cost, and reliability when selecting a manufacturer. Are there specific platforms, sourcing strategies, or vetting processes that can help identify trustworthy European partners. submitted by /u/ZeraPain [link] [comments]

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  Beware of "Stray Customers"
  by /u/baghdadcafe on May 13, 2026 at 4:59 pm

  Here is a thing I come across a lot. Some entrepreneurs get, what I like to call, a "stray customer" So, they get a customer, from lets say the oil industry. A lucrative, cash rich customer - who buys your service and money is absolutely no object. They are a dream customer. Guess what, the entrepreneur was so delighted with the whole process (and bigger bank balance) they starts chasing other customers in the oil industry hoping to replicate the success. But, unfortunately, it does not work like this. All businesses get these "stray" customers from time to time to time in the same way that your local coffee shop gets a visit from some A list celebrity for their americano. A lot of times these customers do not represent your ideal target market. For whatever reason, your firm just happened to be at right place at the right time. But sustainable sales pipelines are not built this way. They are in fact built in a way that is a lot more boring. submitted by /u/baghdadcafe [link] [comments]

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  I literally tried Expensify, Ramp & Brex for my travel expense management - My thoughts.
  by /u/BoiledEggs on May 13, 2026 at 4:24 pm

  One thing I’ve noticed after using three different expense platforms back to back is that every company claims to “simplify travel expenses,” but most of them only feel simple during the demo. Real travel is messy. Flights get delayed. Hotel receipts disappear into the void. Someone on the team forgets to upload expenses for three weeks and suddenly accounting is sending passive aggressive Slack messages at 4:58 PM on a Friday. Ugh. Over the past year, I used Expensify, Ramp, and Brex while traveling for conferences, client meetings, and internal team events. None of them were terrible. In fact, all three had moments where I thought, “Alright, this is actually pretty solid.” But they each approached travel expense management very differently. Ramp felt like it was built for finance teams first. That is not necessarily a criticism. If you are someone who loves visibility into spending, automated controls, and airtight policies, Ramp is impressive. Transactions sync fast, categorization is clean, and the automation can save a ridiculous amount of admin work. At one point I barely touched expense coding because ramp had already handled most of it before I even opened the dashboard... The downside is that it occasionally felt a little too structured when I was traveling heavily. If everything is neat and predictable, Ramp is cool. But travel rarely stays that neat. Brex had almost the opposite. Using Brex feels polished in the way luxury apartment lobbies feel polished. Everything is smooth, modern, and intentionally designed. The virtual cards were easy to manage, travel perks were genuinely useful, and international spending worked better than I expected. For startups especially, I can see why people gravitate toward it. The platform has momentum to it. It feels fast. But after a while, I noticed Brex worked best when your company already operates in the kind of ecosystem Brex expects. Once travel got chaotic or reimbursement situations became less straightforward, the experience lost a little of its shine. Then finally, I tried out Expensify. It did not immediately hit me with flashy dashboards or startup aesthetic. Instead, it handled the annoying parts of travel without demanding much attention from me. That became more important the more I traveled. The smartscan feature sounds gimmicky until you are standing in an airport trying to expense a wrinkled receipt with 3% phone battery left. After a while, I stopped thinking about receipts altogether because Expensify handled most of the work in the background. And honestly, that was the biggest difference between the three. Ramp made me feel like I was using a smart finance platform. Brex made me feel like I was using a modern startup platform. Expensify made me forget I was dealing with expense management software at all. That matters more than feature comparison charts will ever admit. The biggest surprise was how forgiving Expensify felt during travel. If something was messy, duplicated, delayed, or uploaded late, the platform usually handled it without turning the process into another task on my list. That reduced friction in a way I did not fully appreciate until I switched back and forth between all three. If I were running a finance department focused heavily on controls and operational efficiency, I would absolutely look hard at Ramp. If I were scaling a venture backed startup with a younger team and wanted strong perks plus sleek infrastructure, Brex would make a lot of sense. But for actual day to day travel expense management, especially for people constantly moving between airports, hotels, client dinners, and conference centers, Expensify ended up being the one I preferred using most consistently. I tried formatting this as best I could! Hope it helps and my fingers are exhausted from typing. Toodles! submitted by /u/BoiledEggs [link] [comments]

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  How to un-burn out?
  by /u/HiddenCity on May 13, 2026 at 3:11 pm

  I've been burnt out for over half a year and I honestly don't know how to get out of it. I am a single-person architectural firm with occasional help. Some background: I really started doing business development for the first time last year since things were slow. Mainly going to events and networking, but also working on my website and overall marketing strategy. I created a lot of promotional material like folders a literature I give to new clients, which I think has had a positive effect. I lost a ton of money with a Facebook ad strategy that went nowhere. Hired professionals to photograph some of my work, since that's one of the most important things I can do from a marketing perspective, and my firm doesn't really have any. Burned through my cash cushion so that's added some stress, especially since I've got two kids in pre-school draining my savings account. Anywhere, somewhere in the fall I got a bad client who created a construction problem and then wouldn't pay for it. I witheld my work until it was paid and he threatened to sue me, citing a bunch of nonsense like "compensation for taking time off work to deal with XYZ..." He's wealthy so the threat worked, and I had to go through all the insurance and all that. In the end he was bluffing and went away and everything's fine now, but for 3 months I was a wreck. Work is finally starting to pick up this spring after what was basically an entire year of nearly dead stream of inquiries coming in. But I'm just so TIRED. I could not motivate myself do anything in January or February-- from actual work to just doing the dishes at night. Literally just sitting down stressed out of my mind, even though the stress is over. No self-control eating, on the internet all day wasting time instead of doing work. I was told the stressful winter probably depleted all my vitamins, and after taking some B6 and B12 supplements I felt way better and kind of got out of the slump. But I feel like after the initial perk up I just get easily tired now, like a battery that charges to 25% and stops. I'm pretty much living off coffee despite getting 8+ hours of sleep. Pretty sure living with young kids doesn't help, but I just don't understand how I can wake up with zero energy or motivation to do anything every day. I'm not sure how to get out of this slump, but assume this has to be common in the entrepreneur community. Has anyone here had experience with this? submitted by /u/HiddenCity [link] [comments]

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  Services founders: what process do you wish you'd documented from day one?
  by /u/Late-Development-543 on May 13, 2026 at 2:55 pm

  We're 20 people now and still finding places where the lack of early documentation is costing us. Hindsight: we should've documented our quoting process before we hired our second salesperson. Each rep developed their own quoting style, and now the price/scope mismatch on the same service is genuinely bad. Took us 18 months to undo it. The first SOP we DID document was client onboarding because it was bleeding revenue. That paid off fast. Wish I'd doubled down on documentation earlier and on more processes. Curious what others would have documented first if they could go back. The patterns I keep hearing: sales/quoting (mine), client onboarding, hiring and new-employee onboarding, quality control or delivery review, cash flow and invoicing. What's yours, and what did the lack of it cost you specifically? submitted by /u/Late-Development-543 [link] [comments]

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  What’s the most unhinged AI automation you've seen that somehow works?
  by /u/Sure_Marsupial_4309 on May 13, 2026 at 9:33 am

  I saw a Shopify founder describe an absolutely unhinged setup recently. They connected Midjourney to a print-on-demand pipeline so trending memes from Twitter/X automatically became t-shirt mockups within minutes. The system scraped viral posts, generated parody shirt concepts, created mockups, and pushed products directly to the store before most brands even noticed the meme existed. The crazy part is they said most of the sales came from being early, not from having amazing designs. Basically weaponized internet speed. So curious from the entrepreneurs here, what’s the most unhinged AI automation you've seen that somehow works? submitted by /u/Sure_Marsupial_4309 [link] [comments]

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  Case Study: Three Website Changes That Improved Our Conversion Rate by 42%
  by /u/ManyInformation8009 on May 12, 2026 at 7:02 pm

  Over the last 30 days, we tested a few changes on our wholesale e-commerce website. We were getting traffic, but not enough visitors were turning into leads or customers. Here are the three changes that had the biggest impact: Simplified our homepage message Instead of listing every product category, we used one clear sentence that explained exactly what we offer. Improved our call-to-action buttons We replaced vague buttons like “Learn More” with more direct options such as: Shop Wholesale Apply for a Wholesale Account View Best Sellers We added more social proof We featured the brands we carry, customer testimonials, and photos from trade shows we’ve attended. This helped build trust right away. Results after 30 days Conversion rate increased by 42% Bounce rate dropped by 18% Average time on site increased by 27% The main takeaway for me was pretty simple: Clear messaging almost always beats trying to say too much. Sometimes small tweaks can make a much bigger impact than a full redesign. What’s one website change that had a surprisingly big effect on your business? submitted by /u/ManyInformation8009 [link] [comments]

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  Would you use a dark pschyology, stoicism app?
  by /u/Zorantscales on May 12, 2026 at 5:05 pm

  I was planning and thinking about building a philosophy, stoicism app that users can be brutally honest with, everything stays local, even the developer can't see that. We would integrate 4-5 philosophists, pschyologists that doesn't sound like a generic chatbot, but an actual mentor. Also with several other features. What are your thoughts on this and what suggestions do you have on features? submitted by /u/Zorantscales [link] [comments]

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  Found a real niche niche. Any advice?
  by /u/Starlyns on May 12, 2026 at 3:40 pm

  We always hear the same advice: find a niche to open a biz in it so u have less competition etc then we go thru life and we really don't see this niches because everything feels oversaturated. I have worked with over 200 companies in all sectors, I learn about their biz in order to do proper marketing for them but never felt that I found a real "there's hardly anyone working on this niche" do you know what I mean? 4 months ago I saw a job post asking for a marketing manager, I applied, research the company. Never heard of this type of biz before, research competition just 2 more. even in their website there is an article from 2007 saying how niche their business is and it was making 4.5 mill back then. it had 25 employees in 2007 and still has 25 in 2026. their whole marketing is literally stuck in time. Still the owner he does everything and decided after almost 3 months interviewing me not to hire anyone "we talked every 2 weeks and he always forgot what we talked previously" every other staff approved me for the job. Anyway, I still intrigued. because not only they lack competition in USA, is mostly global. This company Won't grow. the owner wants to do everything himself and dont want to change anything. I talked with staff and based on our meetings he is all the time flying around in sales meetings etc but nothing can get approved if he doesn't edit it himself. They sell a very unique type of products they manufacture in USA. their competitor makes a similar one but more expensive and harder to use. What would you do in this case? knowing that in a few years they reached 4.5 mill and 19 years later have hardly any competition and they are doing nothing to grow. and theres a need for their product globally. submitted by /u/Starlyns [link] [comments]

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  Is it easier to build a business right now or is that just what twitter wants us to believe
  by /u/Healty_potsmoker on May 12, 2026 at 3:16 pm

  I have been going back and forth on this for weeks and genuinely can't decide if we're living in the greatest era to start a company or the most deceptive one there's a 14 year old in my twitter feed who built and shipped a saas product using cursor and claude, this kid has paying customers and a stripe dashboard and hasn't started high school yet. and when you look at what one person can actually do right now it's hard not to be optimistic, you can build a full product with cursor and claude without being a real engineer. run your entire outbound through consolidated platforms like salesforge, fuse ai or clay where data and sequencer all live under one login, manage meta ads through ai connectors by talking to chatgpt, produce 50 video variations in an afternoon using magic hour or kling . claude can write your copy, debug your code, plan your strategy, and orchestrate your workflow. Dario amodei said we will see the first solo unicorn by 2026 and sam altman is betting on it too but here's the part nobody on twitter talks about because it doesn't get likes if everyone has access to the same tools then everyone has access to the SAME tools. The tools democratized creation but they also democratized competition and those are not the same thing. and then there's the distraction problem, we have more leverage than ever and also more noise than ever. The same phone that gives you access to every ai tool in existence also gives you infinite dopamine hits that steal your attention before you ship anything. I watch founders spend more time tweeting about building than actually building, the tools got better but our attention got worse. the honest answer to is it easier to build a business right now is yes building is dramatically easier and building a successful business is roughly the same difficulty it's always been. because the hard parts were never technical execution. The hard parts are choosing the right problem, reaching the right peoplw and maintaining focus in an environment specifically designed to destroy it. will we see a billion dollar one person company? probably but it won't be the person with the best tools. It'll be the person with the best judgment about which problem to solve and the discipline to keep solving it while everyone else is distracted by the next product hunt launch are we in the easiest era to build or just the easiest era to start and the hardest era to focus? submitted by /u/Healty_potsmoker [link] [comments]

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  Is it better to for a company (with low overheads) to position itself in having more customers, or in having a better class of customer?
  by /u/prankster999 on May 12, 2026 at 11:45 am

  As above... I understand that people don't want to say no to money, but at the same time, having lower quality customers will just result in having more headaches. The reason as to why I ask is because I am looking to create an ecommerce website with a membership component. For general onboarding, I am unsure as to whether to just use Stripe or use Stripe KYC (Know Your Customer). For the membership, I definitely do want to use Stripe KYC (Know Your Customer). So basically... Use Stripe KYC sparingly, or throughout the website? What would you suggest? EDIT: I am thinking about implementing the following: New Account + Simple Purchases (ie User Onboarding Process): Simple Stripe (but where trusted bank cards and not "pre-paid cards" are used) + basic fraud prevention. Membership: Stripe KYC (ensures high trust and anti-bot user legitimacy, including minimum age rating). submitted by /u/prankster999 [link] [comments]

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  Talent Tuesday: Services and Collabs | May 12, 2026
  by /u/AutoModerator on May 12, 2026 at 8:00 am

  Looking to hire, get hired, or find a collaborator? Post what you're offering or what you need. Keep it brief: who you are, what you do, and how to reach you. No spamming. submitted by /u/AutoModerator [link] [comments]

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  How to Build a Pitch Deck That Actually Gets Investor Attention: What 590 Reddit Comments Reveal About What Works
  by /u/Melvinak on May 11, 2026 at 10:20 pm

  I analysed 590 comments across 15 Reddit threads where real investors and venture capitalists were giving founders detailed feedback on their pitch decks. I wanted to understand what investors actually care about, what needs to go on each slide and why. The summary of it all is that you have to clearly communicate that you understand your business and your market. The Cover Slide: Your First Three Seconds Matter An investor will spend approximately three seconds looking at your cover slide. This is your window to establish clarity and professionalism before they've read anything else. You need to give a summary of your company: What you do, Who it is for, and What result it gives them. This might seem limiting, but it forces you to distill your entire value proposition into something memorable. One often overlooked detail is the format in which you send your deck. Investors consistently emphasize sending your pitch as a PDF rather than a .pptx or .key file. The reason is because fonts break, layouts shift across different systems, and you risk looking unprepared before the substance of your pitch has even been evaluated. The "Why Now" Problem: Going Beyond AI Before you present your product, you must address a fundamental question: Why does this business have to exist right now? Too many founders begin with their product feature set. Instead, you should start by identifying something that has changed in the world, a behaviour shift, a market move, or a regulatory change that makes the problem you are solving more urgent. This creates the context that makes your solution timely rather than simply clever. However, there is a critical caveat here. Every pitch deck in 2025 seems to claim "Why Now? Because AI." Investors have stopped being impressed by this answer. You need something more substantive, a regulation that changed, a generation that behaves differently, or a major competitor whose business model collapsed. The "why now" has to be real and observable in the market. The Problem Slide: Your Most Important Moment This is the slide where an investor decides whether the rest of your pitch is worth their time. Do not present a statement. Present a story. Give your customer a name. Walk through a specific moment where the problem hit them hard. "Every Monday, Sarah spends four hours on reconciliation, and once it nearly cost her a client" is better than "Companies struggle with X". If you or a co-founder have personally lived this problem, this is your strongest advantage, and most founders do not play this card loudly enough. Lead with it. Show how you understand this problem not from research, but from experience. Bring your own evidence to this slide. Rather than citing market research PDFs or industry reports, share what you have directly gathered: customer interviews, results from a landing page test, the size of your waitlist. There is a meaningful difference between "We think people have this problem" and "We talked to 50 people and 42 of them listed it as a top-three pain point." The latter signals that you have done the work to validate your assumptions. Keep this slide to one slide only. Do not cram your solution or market size into this frame. It will look cluttered, and it will dilute the emotional impact of the problem itself. The Solution Slide: Show What It Does, Not How It Works Your solution slide has one job: explain what your product does. That is literally the entire purpose. Many founders confuse features with benefits. Your investors do not care about your "AI-powered multi-tenant architecture." They care that it "cuts the Monday morning reconciliation from four hours to twenty minutes." One experienced reviewer noted that they have removed this slide from at least ten decks because founders keep explaining how the technology works instead of what it accomplishes for the customer. There is a useful test here: if your grandma cannot understand what problem you solve in thirty seconds, your explanation is still too technical. Strip away the implementation details and focus on the outcome that matters to your customer. Show the Product Early: Screenshots Beat Explanations Show your product early. Really early. Screenshots are so important, they allow investors to understand instantly what they are looking at. Do not ask them to imagine what your product looks like while you are explaining it. Simply include a screenshot. As one commenter put it plainly: "demo beats explanation every time." If you do not yet have a product, a clean mockup works just as well. Add one line underneath the screenshot explaining what the viewer is seeing. The Traction Slide: Retention Tells the True Story The most important chart you can display is a retention chart. This shows how many of your users are still using the product at week one, week two, week four, week eight, and week twelve. A curve that flattens indicates product-market fit. A curve that drops to zero indicates that users tried the product once and did not return. When it comes to presenting numbers, context is everything. Saying "10K users" means almost nothing to an investor. But saying "10K users, with 23% month-on-month growth over six months, and 68% still active after three months" tells a coherent story about sustainable growth and user satisfaction. Do not simply show a graph going upward and expect investors to be impressed. Explain why the spike happened. Tell them what the numbers actually mean for your business. Market Size: Do Your Own Math Do not pull market size numbers from Statista or similar databases and paste them into your deck. Investors know you did this, and it does not impress anyone. Instead, do your own math. Calculate how many specific people or companies have this exact problem. Estimate what they would realistically pay you per year. Multiply those two numbers. That is your target market. That is what investors want to see. If your total addressable market is too broad, It signals to investors that you do not yet know who your customer is. Market size estimates require you to niche down, to be specific, and to ground your estimates in logic rather than wishful thinking. How You Acquire Customers: Where Most Decks Fall Apart This is the slide where most pitch decks fail completely. Founders will spend ten slides detailing their product and its features, then present one vague slide that says "we will do SEO and partnerships." A venture capitalist in one of the Reddit threads mentioned that they have stopped asking "how big is your market" and started asking "how do you get your first one hundred customers", because the answer reveals everything about whether a founder understands their business. Pick one channel. Not a list of channels. Do not say "we will do social media, partnerships, and paid ads." Instead, describe what acquiring a customer through one specific channel actually looks like in real, concrete terms. For example: "We send thirty cold emails a week. Three reply. One becomes a customer." This is a plan. Show any evidence that this approach is already working, even if only at a small scale. And demonstrate that it costs you less to acquire a customer than they will ever pay you. The Competition Slide: Honest Positioning Matters This slide has one job: show where you sit in the market relative to your competitors. Use an X-Y map. Choose your two axes carefully, they need to be things your customers actually care about, not dimensions that conveniently make you look good by default. Investors who know the space will see through a misleading positioning immediately. Name your competitors. All of them, including the large ones. One reviewer shared an example of a founder who built a product with a UI similar to Tinder but never mentioned Tinder as a competitor, it looked like the founder did not understand the market they were entering. This is a mistake. Be honest, don’t give investors a reason to believe you are hiding something. The Team Slide: Lead With Your Unfair Advantage Investors often skip directly to the team slide to decide whether the rest of your deck is worth their time. Investors want to know: Why is this team uniquely suited for this problem right now? What lived experience, unfair insight, or hard-earned access does your team possess that most other founders in your space simply do not have? If someone on your founding team has personally lived the problem you are solving, this is your answer. Say it clearly and confidently. One experienced investor put it this way: "A team slide treated as an afterthought, just names and logos with no hint of why this team is suited to win, is one of the most common mistakes I see." Do not make this mistake. Your team's credibility on this particular problem is one of your strongest assets. The Ask: Connect the Dollar Amount to an Outcome Your ask should be one sentence. How much are you raising? What milestone will it get you to? How long is your runway? "We need $2M for hiring and marketing" is not a plan. "$2M gets us to $100K monthly recurring revenue with eighteen months of runway" is a plan. If you cannot connect the dollar amount to a specific, measurable outcome, investors will conclude that you do not fully understand your own business yet. Overall The Reddit threads revealed that the founders whose decks impressed investors were the ones who could tell a clear, grounded story about a real problem, a team suited to solve it, and a path to get there with the capital they were seeking. I hope this helps someone. Happy pitching! submitted by /u/Melvinak [link] [comments]

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  School of Hard Knocks
  by /u/Vouchy-MOD on May 11, 2026 at 6:50 pm

  1000 interviews and the advice is always the same five lines. Wake up early. Work hard. Read. Believe. Take the leap. Thats the whole playbook. Nobody verifies anything. Guy says 80k a month at 21, host nods, cut. Could be real, could be daddys credit line. You cant tell and the host doesnt ask. The funnel does the rest. Free clip, bio, paid community. The interview is the ad, not the product. submitted by /u/Vouchy-MOD [link] [comments]

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  Does anyone track what happens to paid clicks that land on a Google Business Profile?
  by /u/Due-Bet115 on May 11, 2026 at 6:31 pm

  Hi, Something I've been sitting with lately that I haven't seen discussed much here. A lot of local Google Ads campaigns route clicks to the Google Business Profile panel, not a website. Maps placements especially. The prospect clicks the ad, the advertiser gets charged, and the person lands directly on the listing. Which means the listing is functioning as a paid landing page. But it's not being treated like one. Standard ads analysis tracks CTR, CPC, conversion if the setup is right. What happens inside the listing once someone arrives isn't tracked anywhere. No session time. No exit signal. Just a click that counted and a prospect who left quietly. The evaluation happens fast. Photos, description, how recent the reviews are, whether the business looks active. If something doesn't hold up, the tab gets closed and the money is already gone. That gap is structurally invisible. There's no metric that says "twelve people landed on your listing from paid traffic and left without contacting you." It just doesn't exist. I'm not sure how many people running local campaigns are treating GBP quality as a paid conversion problem. It mostly seems to get handled as an organic visibility problem, which is a different frame entirely. Anyone here think about this, or do you mostly let the listing sit and focus on the campaign side? submitted by /u/Due-Bet115 [link] [comments]

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  One lesson I learned too late: not every paying client is a good client
  by /u/Traditional_Key8982 on May 11, 2026 at 4:53 pm

  Early on, I used to think every closed deal was a win. Over time, I realized some of the most exhausting clients were the ones I fought hardest to close. More revisions, slower decisions, unclear expectations, endless “small additions.” Meanwhile, the clients who understood the value and moved decisively were often easier to work with. Revenue matters, but client fit matters more than I realized. submitted by /u/Traditional_Key8982 [link] [comments]

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  Turns out the kid who couldn't sit still in class was just 20 years early for the AI era.
  by /u/Popular-Cap-9013 on May 11, 2026 at 3:26 pm

  AI is giving non-ADHD people their first taste of what my brain has been doing for 36 years. welcome to the chaos. people who've always been focused and structured are starting to use AI seriously and suddenly they can't stay on one thing. idea at 9am, Claude builds a prototype by 11am, by lunch they've moved on to something else. 8 projects a month, zero finished. and they're stressed about it because this has never happened to them before. you know what thats called? thats ADHD. thats been my entire life lol. I've had ADHD since I was a kid. the jumping between 14 ideas before breakfast, the "I'm going to build THIS now" energy that dies after 4 hours, the losing money on projects I abandoned at 80%. I've been managing that chaos for decades. I know when my brain is lying to me about what's important. and now I'm watching neurotypical people discover that feeling for the first time because AI removed the friction that used to protect them. before AI a random idea would die naturally because it would take 3 weeks to build. now theres no friction. every impulse becomes a prototype in 2 hours. and if you've never dealt with that before its genuinely terrifying. but for people like me? this is the best era ever. we already have the coping mechanisms. we already know that feeling productive and being profitable are not the same thing. the chaos that AI creates is just tuesday for us. I'm building a solo business right now, $103K ARR, AI as my entire team, and my ADHD brain is genuinely an advantage for the first time. fast context switching, holding 5 half-finished ideas in my head and knowing exactly where I left off, going wide and fast while AI handles the depth. thats not a bug thats how I've always operated. I talked to a friend last week whos super sharp with AI. like genuinely good with Claude, builds stuff fast, sees opportunities everywhere. and thats exactly his problem. he's overheating. sees so many possibilities that he's going in every direction at once and burning out. and I was like bro welcome to my world except I've been managing this exact feeling since I was a kid and you're discovering it now. now I'm not romanticizing ADHD. it still sucks in a lot of ways. but specifically for working with AI? pure advantage. to anyone feeling overwhelmed by all the possibilities. you're not broken. your brain just got capabilities it wasn't trained for. commit to one boring important thing per day before you touch anything else. I've been doing that my whole life because I had to. and to my fellow ADHD people. our time has come. the ones who spent their whole lives being told their brain was a problem are now the best equipped for whats happening. thats not irony thats justice lol. submitted by /u/Popular-Cap-9013 [link] [comments]

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  Monday mentorship: ask anything | May 11, 2026
  by /u/AutoModerator on May 11, 2026 at 8:00 am

  New to entrepreneurship or just starting out? This is your space. Ask the questions you're afraid to ask elsewhere. Experienced folks, jump in and share what you wish someone had told you early on. submitted by /u/AutoModerator [link] [comments]