Tag: entrepreneurial experience

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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  Built an LLM product to solve AI privacy problem, how do I sell this as an indie dev?
  by /u/emirsolinno on June 7, 2026 at 3:49 pm

  TL;DR : Built this local/offline LLM layer product that manipulates Claude/ChatGPT apps to mask your identity, how do I build trust while selling this B2B as an indie dev? Hi guys! I would like to first clarify that this is not a self-promotion, I just wanted to get a few opinions. I have been working on this project for a few months as privacy have always been an increasing concern for me as we adopt more AI tools into our both daily personal and business activities. I developed this product that runs on your desktop to tokenize (mask) every PII (Personally-Identifiable-Information) on the go before it reaches to AI servers. Basically your data gets swapped for placeholders on the way out, and the real values are restored in the AI's reply, so you get a totally normal answer but the provider only ever sees masked data and nothing leaves your machine. It also scans the files you share with AI, gives you a confirmation layer about what is masked, let's you white-list or mask additional data before it uploads to their sever. Works on ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude Desktop and Web Apps. It is based on an LLM that can run pretty much every desktop, even your mobile phone. Also developed some additional services such as integrating this into your current workflows via APIs, Vision models for redacting images from documents, logging, and online note taker that produces meeting actions without uncovering any personal details to AI providers. As an indie developer, how do I sell this? My main concern is trust, because this software basically runs just like a malware on your device, intercepting your communication and injecting input/output to ChatGPT/Claude apps. I am targeting small businesses as large firms already have some other expensive solutions that they implement in-house(still doing a market research for this). I have a lot of friends who are in Law, as my brother owns a law firm. I am planning piloting with them and then start reaching out to other law firms organically, as well as doing some linkedin marketing, creating some blog posts that I can share. My main target is Europe because that is where I am located at and it is highly regulated market with extreme attention to privacy. Any comments are appreciated! submitted by /u/emirsolinno [link] [comments]

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  Sunday Steam: Vent It or Roast It | June 07, 2026
  by /u/AutoModerator on June 7, 2026 at 8:00 am

  Had a week? Same. This is your consequence-free space to complain about clients, platforms, algorithms, your own decisions, or the general chaos of running a business. Keep it venting with no personal attacks. We'll be back to being professional tomorrow. submitted by /u/AutoModerator [link] [comments]

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  Built a Shopify store past $1M revenue and then kind of abandoned it. Need some honest advice.
  by /u/human-robotiks on June 6, 2026 at 8:08 pm

  A bit of a weird situation. Last year I launched a Shopify store and scaled it pretty hard. From January 2025 until I stopped focusing on it, it ended up doing around $1.06M in revenue from over 17,000 orders and somewhere around $148k profit. At its peak it was doing around $25k-$30k a week and some months were in the $150k-$250k range. We spent roughly $500k on ads and built up two ad accounts with a lot of data behind them. The thing is, I got distracted with other projects and slowly stopped paying attention to it. Nothing dramatic happened, I just wasn't focused on it anymore. The store still exists, supplier relationships are there, email flows are there, customer service can be handed off to VAs and most of the processes are documented. But it's been sitting for a few months now and obviously isn't performing anywhere close to what it was when I was actively working on it. Now I'm trying to figure out what makes the most sense. Part of me thinks I'm stupid for letting something with that kind of history sit around and that I should just start running ads again, test new products and see if I can bring it back. Another part of me feels like maybe I'm emotionally attached to the numbers and should focus on newer opportunities instead of trying to revive an old project. If you were in this position, what would you do? Have any of you successfully brought back an ecommerce business after basically ignoring it for months? And how much value do you think the ad account history and past performance still has after being inactive for a while? submitted by /u/human-robotiks [link] [comments]

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  Pensez-vous que LinkedIn est un bon moyen de se faire un vrai réseau solide?
  by /u/Dispelda_ on June 6, 2026 at 7:40 pm

  Je me pose cette question parce qu’on dirait que les relations sur LinkedIn on l’air fake mais peut-être c’est moi qui suit fou. Et si vous avez des meilleures moyens de se faire un vrai réseau j’aimerais bien entendre vos avis. Merci submitted by /u/Dispelda_ [link] [comments]

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  There is no competition.
  by /u/eattheinternet on June 6, 2026 at 2:20 pm

  Over the last decade as an entrepreneur involved in multiple startups, I've run into the same reality again and again: There is a staggering lack of innovation. Most people copy what everyone else is doing, and very few are willing to step into uncharted territory. I'm kinda the opposite. I get bored quickly. I constantly want to build new things and experiment - sometimes to a fault (very ADHD energy, you know how it is). I'm always spamming ideas and wanting to test things. Because of that, I've discovered something that has been true for me (it may not be true for everyone): There is no competition. First of all there are few businesses sizable to be a threat. But even past that, 99% of them are slow and not willing to take action. For example: in a collectibles niche, I was the first to launch a subscription box. Years later, I somehow ended up creating the first convention in that niche as well. (Using the same brand - started by selling online like everyone else and then grew from there) It took years for anyone to even attempt to copy what we were doing. But by that point we were already well established as the biggest players. I've found that the biggest unlock is focusing on how your customers FEEL. (crazy concept I know! who woulda thought ...) I've seen that innovation naturally comes from that place of wanting your people to feel amazing.. because it's fundamentally different from a pure "money, money, money" almost panic, stress mindset. (which is shit for creativity) The subscription box came from a place of 'how can we have more fun with our customers and create a club around this?' - and the convention came from going to shows ourselves and dreaming about how FUN (key word) it would be to have an epic big thing like what we were seeing there. anyway thats my chunk of thought I wanted to throw at the internet today 🫡 LMKWYT submitted by /u/eattheinternet [link] [comments]

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  Y’a t’il des brokers en énergie en France avec un vrai réseau ?
  by /u/Dispelda_ on June 6, 2026 at 12:15 pm

  Bonjour J’ai des opportunités dans l’énergie / infra (projets, actifs, etc.), mais j’ai clairement pas encore le réseau pour les amener aux bons fonds ou investisseurs. Je cherche à savoir si y’a des brokers / intermédiaires qui ont un VRAI réseau dans ce milieu (genre fonds infra, ENR, gros investisseurs), ou si en vrai c’est surtout du marketing et que faut déjà avoir les contacts soi-même. Si quelqu’un a déjà bossé avec eux ou connaît des gens fiables, je suis preneur de retours honnêtes. submitted by /u/Dispelda_ [link] [comments]

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  After weeks of complaining on Reddit, I finally launched my new agency and have decided on how I'm going to win new business.
  by /u/DigiDynamicsN on June 6, 2026 at 11:20 am

  I spent the last few weeks feeling sorry for myself after my agency failed and I was forced back into employment. So I decided to try again. This time with a new offer focused on B2B lead acquisition, qualification and automation. Connecting the entire pipeline and refining the system around it. Better paid acquisition, instant AI follow-ups, lead scoring and routing, CRM integration, reporting and automation. But almost immediately, I hit the same wall as before. Trying to generate demand for a service that every marketer and their dog seems to be selling. Then I started noticing something interesting. Whenever I discussed the service with people in person, they rarely understood what they actually needed. Manual follow-up felt normal to them. Change was the barrier. But the second the conversation moved onto AI, everything changed. People would suddenly lean in. Conversations would flow for hours. Curiosity took over. That’s when I realised the best way for me to sell this service probably isn’t through cold outbound or polished landing pages. It’s in person. Because AI is already on everyone’s mind. It naturally opens the door into the bigger conversation around automation, client acquisition and operational efficiency. Ironically, every LLM will tell you not to position around AI and to focus purely on outcomes. I’m starting to think that’s wrong. It feels a bit like trying to convince a retailer in the 90s to sell online without first explaining what the internet actually is. What really pushed me to double down on this was a LinkedIn post of mine that unexpectedly went viral. Nearly every conversation, meetup and message that came from it somehow led back to AI. It became impossible to ignore. So my plan for the next 6 months is simple: Use LinkedIn properly. Meet more people in person. Attend networking events. Print some decent business cards. And see where it leads. What do you think? submitted by /u/DigiDynamicsN [link] [comments]

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  What Was Required To Spend $3,366,869.08 This Year On Facebook Ads With My Own Brand
  by /u/WizardOfEcommerce on June 6, 2026 at 9:03 am

  Good day Redditors, It's been a while. I've written many posts about lessons on growing other brands, but this time I want to share what was required to spend $3M+ on my own brand so far this year For those who like screenshots, I will attach them in the comments. Let's start. WHATS REQUIRED 1) A TEAM. You cannot just stumble your way into $3M+ ad spend; for anyone to spend hundreds of thousands a month in ads, a system is required. You cannot scale to multiple hundreds of thousands in ad spend by just thinking and focusing on ads or campaign structure (it does not matter at all). All of this requires a team. Our current setup is: Ads team: - Two in-house creative strategists, 4 video editors, 3 static ads designers, media buyer for facebook ads, Facebook ads media buying assistant, google ads media buyer, my agency for ad creation support, my old employee's creative agency for additional ad creation, another well-known agency in the space for ads creation. Together, this ad team is responsible for at least 1200+ ads created a month, with 80% of them being videos. Email marketing team- email marketing strategist, email designer and email copywriter. This team is responsible for sending at least 50 email campaigns per month and running A/B pop-up tests. We have a pop-up per category and product. CRO team - CRO strategist, developer, designer, Shopify manager, and a CRO agency that works with all the top brands for additional insight and fast learning curves. This team is responsible for about 15 a/b tests a month, constant updates on our website, and customer surveys Content team - creator manager, social media manager, 4 organic video editors, videographers, and a creative agency. This team puts out 20+ organic posts a day and shoots new content every single week. There is no such thing as having enough content. 2) THE MORE YOU SPEND ON ADS THE MORE MONEY YOU WASTE. 99% of the time your ads or facebook is not the reason you are not able to spend more on ad spend and grow your revenue. Most common issues are Bad product, until your business really makes about $50k+ a month you don't haven't proven market fit or demand for your product. Trash shopping experience on the website Trust Let's say you have a great product, great offer the biggest leak is your website. The more you spend the more Facebook needs to find new audience that would be likely to buy from you. That means your website must be built in a way that guides a completely unaware audience to conversion. Which is hard to do, and which requires many website a/b tests. Every single time you think about testing ads you also need to think about how to improve your add to cart rate, checkout rate, conversion rate, revenue per session, AOV. In fact, many brands don't have an ad problem, they have a website conversion problem. Focusing on making the website and doing a/b tests for it to convert better is as important as testing new ads every single day. 3) TESTING TONS OF ADS IS JUST A BASIC REQUIREMENT. With Andromeda, long are gone the days where you create a winning ad and it performs for multiple months, years. Even if you spend $20 a day the bare minimum you should test is 5 ad concept a week with 3-4 ads inside one concept. The more you spend the more ads you need. Your ad creative is the targeting, from the customer avatar, voice, and the background in the video. Meta is great at matching creatives to the customer audience. That's why we test 1000+ ads a month and we will go to 2000+ ads a month in the next 3 months. I'm sharing these numbers because that's the reality. It would be silly if I would say it's easy to scale to $10m+ in sales with few ads and just increasing spend. Don't be afraid of creating more ads, figuring out on how to create more ads. If you want to grow, that's just the basic requirement. 4) REMOVING YOURSELF FROM THE DAY-TO-DAY BUSINESS. Yeah, this is not about the Facebook ad structure; it's about your business structure. This is just basic stuff; anyone who wants to grow a business at some point understands that they need to hire a team, and not stand in the way of the team. I've spoken with many 6-figure, 7-figure, 8-figure, and 9-figure business owners. The business owners who operate at the 6 and 7-figure mark are the ones who somehow pride themselves on doing everything in the business. They are the key person who every decision goes through. In the beginning, it must be that way, but at some point, that type of operating a growing brand usually leads to the business owner being a bottleneck. I've seen this too many times, and since day one, when I was building my brand, I always thought about how the next hire could help remove me from the business. If you want to scale your business always think about how to remove yourself from the business to not be the leading bottleneck. 5) CONSTANT SELF IMPROVEMENT! I have never seen anyone write about this in here. The sh*t I have gone through as an 8-figure business owner is insane, and every single time the problems that I need to deal with only get bigger and cost even more. I personally do not recognize myself anymore compared to a year ago. I truly understand the saying - the business is an extension of yourself, the more you grow, the more your business grows. I know so many people who haven't grown and their business is simply dying. There is no such thing as a business being stagnant. It's always a slow-sinking ship. The most expensivest mistakes are usually the opportunities that are not captured. I remember there where days where we were losing $50k a day because we didn't fix one bottleneck. When you clearly see how this one thing can be fixed and you understand how much that one thing unlocks it's sometimes painful. 6) BLOCK OUT THE NOISE You gain nothing when you look at your competitors, when you compare yourself against them, you gain nothing from looking at their ads. Focus on your business and your customers, stalk your customers instead of competitors. Call your customers, email your cusotmers ask questions about why they bought, how they liked the product, ask for feedback. Spend 100% of the time in your business. I remember when I started my brand, I was obsessed about my competition, sometimes even more than my own brand. Last year I decided that I will literally just focus on my own business and went into habit. I just recently remembered that I have competitors and realized that we have outgrown them in two years, and we are not the biggest brand in our space. Now and then, I get reports that our competitors are bidding on our brand name on Google, which is silly. Hopefully, this post helps someone. To grow a business is not easy and it shouldn't be. Thanks for reading. See you in the next one submitted by /u/WizardOfEcommerce [link] [comments]

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  Success Saturday: What's Going Right | June 06, 2026
  by /u/AutoModerator on June 6, 2026 at 8:00 am

  Big or small, a win is a win. First sale, first client, or first time paying yourself, share it here. This community loves to celebrate with you. No win is too minor to mention. submitted by /u/AutoModerator [link] [comments]

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  Any recommendations on my situation?
  by /u/cartenui on June 6, 2026 at 7:43 am

  Here’s the deal, I have 15+ years of industry knowledge and had an idea to build a collaborative platform that allows the end users to handle a type of niche projects from A-O. Today most places use an arrange of tools and cross collaboration over email / teams etc. All in all I am doing a mixture between collaboration, project management and storage space etc etc. Functions are many and fit for purpose. I pitched the idea to a talented engineer I know and she got fired up about it. Now said person has pitched it to some other talented people they know who also bought in straight away.. and all of a sudden I have a team of ui/ux, backend, coders etc. Everyone basically working for free with the hope/thinking that this is a really good solution that is going to take off and then they get paid, employed and so on. It’s not a bad solution, I personally believe it’s up there with some of the industry leading tools in the sector. However, I can’t help but have doubts. In the end of the day enterprise products normally stem from money, investors, marketing campaigns, shoving their enterprise products down the throats of customers. In my head the things that make or break the market isn’t necessarily “the best product/solution” but more so it’s luck, investment into branding and recognition on the market, timing etc. At the same time, anyone and their grandma will vibe code SaaS products that do at least a portion of what the major enterprise products do for a fraction of the price. So I am sitting in meetings on weekly basis describing industry workflows and functions to a group of people building and developing features, reviewing UI layouts, adding functionality etc. But in the end of the day, I am not sure how this is gonna hit the shelves, if it will, even if the idea itself is good. It’s not a subscription product, it’s more of a traditional 30-40k usd / year + implementation + custom engineering and storage cost. We implement this tool for your enterprise type product. Think “servicenow” type operation. I am confident in being able to make sales if I Demo the product to my peers in the industry. But, I need to be able to demo it, they need to know of its existence and they need to take a leap on a new product which would replace old and proven products even if outdated. It’s a lot of if’s and but’s. I am an expert in the field, business owner that does a lot of consulting.. but can I be a software company owner? I feel like I am missing a few pieces of a puzzle. Any guidance, advice and honesty appreciated. Thank you. submitted by /u/cartenui [link] [comments]

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  The most expensive mistake I made as a founder wasn't a bad product. It was building before I checked if anyone wanted it.
  by /u/Existing-Ice221 on June 6, 2026 at 2:57 am

  Every founder I know has done this at least once. You get an idea, you fall in love with it, you spend [X weekends / a whole month] building it, you launch, and the silence is deafening. I did it more than once before it finally clicked. The product was never the problem. I just kept building things before checking whether a market actually existed for them. Market research sounds like a big corporate word but it's really just three questions you answer before you build anything. How many people actually want this. How many already sell it. And how old and crowded is that competition. Demand, supply, saturation. Doesn't matter if you're launching a SaaS, a service, a physical product or a digital one, it's the same three questions every time. My lane happens to be digital products so that's the example I'll use, but this moves to almost anything. The trick is most of it is free. Start with the search bar of whatever marketplace your buyers actually use. For me that's Etsy even when I sell elsewhere, because Etsy's autocomplete is pulled straight from what real buyers type. So those suggestions are basically a free demand list, already ranked by how often people search them. If your idea doesn't autocomplete at all, well, that's an answer too. Then look at the actual competition number, don't just eyeball it. On most marketplaces the result count is right there on the page. Search something broad like "budget planner" and the count is brutal, you'll drown. Now niche it down two levels, something like "budget planner for irregular freelance income," and watch that number fall off a cliff. Way fewer competitors, and the person typing that exact phrase knows precisely what they want and will pay for it. That gap is the whole opportunity. Then Google Trends, also free, for the demand trend over time. Set it to the past 12 months and switch the category from Web Search to Google Shopping. That one step filters out people just looking up a definition and leaves the ones with actual buying intent. You want steady or slowly climbing. A spike that already crashed back down means the wave left without you. One lesson that cost me real time: by the time something shows up on a "trending now" list, you're usually two or three months late to it. Trends have a lifecycle. Early when almost nobody serves it, then a growth window, then a peak, then it floods and dies. You want in while the room is still half empty, not when it's already packed. But here's the part nobody really tells you. Doing this for one idea takes maybe twenty minutes across four browser tabs. Doing it across [hundreds of] ideas to find the two or three actually worth building, that's the grind that breaks most people. I eventually [scored thousands of niches / built a whole system just to stop doing it by hand] because I was so sick of the tab-juggling. The payoff isn't just dodging dead ideas. When you finally do build, you already know the exact words your buyer uses, roughly how many people are searching, and who you're up against. That turns "I hope this works" into a number you can actually bet on. Evidence instead of vibes. It's boring. That's exactly why most people skip it, and exactly why the ones who don't are the ones still in business a year later. What's your validation step before you commit to building something? Does anyone here has a faster way than my four-tab circus. submitted by /u/Existing-Ice221 [link] [comments]

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  Need advice navigating with first client pricing.
  by /u/salmix21 on June 6, 2026 at 12:06 am

  [ So sorry for the wall of text :')] I'm currently in talks with a small company that needs some help with their processes etc. Basically they have some inneficiencies and I'm building an app that could automate these things so they don't lose so much time doing this work. Now the value proposition is strictly internal, it could help them get more revenue by being more efficient and having more time to focus on other things but all things considered is an internal tool doing something that could be done by a minimum wage employee or part-time worker. Now I have a very good relationship with Mike (Fake name FYI) who works in this company(Corp A), he was the one who personally helped me and my family when we had some issues and needed their services, I've know him for around 2 years and after the last time he helped us we even discussed some business ideas and topics so I think we have a fairly good relationship. Now he's basically 2nd or 3rd in command at his company since it's a small company with a specific niche and the CEO trusts him a lot. I had a talk with him as I had a couple of ideas for his industry and we spent like 2 hours in a cafe discussing various ideas until he explained to me one of the processes they had which was very tedious and I said that's something that could be automated, so I told him I'd do a Proof of Concept and I was able to get it to him within 1 month. He tried it and liked it and said if this can be installed in his company and integrated with other services. This is possible although the integration is a little bit tough. So all in all things are moving well, now I'm just worried about pricing. As I mentioned, Mike and his company helped my family during some tough times and we are not even their target customer(It's basically pro-bono work) so for me I would like to give back to them and I think that this app would help them but I can't help but think that it could also be done with some AI automation tools to some extent. The differentiator here is that our app would be tailored and scoped to their specific processes which would be easy to use and also more structured. If we were to do this with AI tools only (which I haven't tried yet) it could probably work but I am not sure how well. Now my concern with the pricing is that the initial workload would be a little bit high ( I think around 100~160 hours of work) and at my current rate it would be around $3k~$5k dollars(adjusted for local currency) and then maybe a monthly recurring fee of like $1k~$2k depending on their usage. I think they mentioned they paid for other companies who manage their website and salesforce so I think the pricing for those may be in the similar range but I'm not sure. Does anyone have any advice on how to move forward with this? I'm thinking of just telling him a general range and asking for his feedback like what he thinks but I'd like to know if anyone has any advice on what to focus on etc. FYI my main goal here is to keep a good relationship with them, this also means providing good support etc and I'm also worried if I price it too low maintenance would become tedious etc. submitted by /u/salmix21 [link] [comments]

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  Someone on your team (Zoom call) is falling asleep during a planning session... What do you do?
  by /u/rsimmonds on June 5, 2026 at 6:27 pm

  Curious... I went through this 5-6 years ago (long enough that I'm now comfortable admitting it haha) but I didn't really know what to do at the time. What would you do? submitted by /u/rsimmonds [link] [comments]

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  Left a $120k job to freelance. Lost my only client 6 weeks ago. feel dead inside.
  by /u/Spare_Worldliness_64 on June 5, 2026 at 4:40 pm

  Lost the freelance role about 6 weeks ago. Restructure apparently lol. I did everything right but I guess in this economy that doesn't matter. I can't tell my family. They'll just do the "we told you so" thing and I can't handle that right now. My mum texts asking how work is and I just say its good. I dont really have anyone to share this with and i dont want to because it makes me feel worthless. Every morning I wake up and it's a struggle. I stay in bed like an hour longer than I should. Not even sleeping. Just lying there. Here's what's messing with my head. I spent the last few months learning cold email, LinkedIn outreach (sorry, yes i add to the noise, but my noise booked meetings too), deliverability etc.. And I got pretty good. But now I'm sitting here wondering, is any of this even valuable anymore? Do owners believe they can replicate my work and book meetings themselves? Use claude or gpt to grow their brand. There was a lot of thought i put into this that got me good results, but it kinda feels like its been reduced to nothing. Idk, im feeling really down. Has anyone felt this level of doubt before? Im reading self help books again to keep me going. It works sometimes, but i have to admit, its really hard. submitted by /u/Spare_Worldliness_64 [link] [comments]

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  How to find a techincal cofounder that is extremely driven, and also hypercompetent
  by /u/kasheestee on June 5, 2026 at 12:18 pm

  I am at in an inflection point with my business. I have already reached significant product and revenue milestones, but I am not techincally savvy enough to build a truly robust tech platform. I could vibecode with claude, but honestly, I would be in over my head and out of my expertise. I need someone to completely own the techincal side; I need a technical cofounder to truly productize the service. However, I have no idea how to find someone. Because the business is already proven (eg, big rev milestones, PMF already), a 50-50 arrangement doesn't make sense, so things like the YC match program a probably not right. Obviously, this person should still get a meaningfully large chunk of equity, albeit not 50%. How do you guys go about finding your counterparts? submitted by /u/kasheestee [link] [comments]

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  Why founders don't have a data room when they fundraise?
  by /u/khalilliouane on June 5, 2026 at 11:38 am

  I have worked with at least 160 entrepreneurs (through accelerators, investors etc). They usually come to get the funding. When the accelerator or the investor ask for their "data room" or even a "pitch deck", the entrepreneurs send messy work. I want to understand why is this simple? If you are preparing to fundraise, why you don't prepare things before hand? Why don't you try to create a good pitch deck that truly articulate your vision? Why there is no clear KPIs that can win the investors? Why there is no data room? Is it an issue of knowledge or applying the knowledge? I have been helping technical founders to do this and funny enough they only perceive the value later on in the process. They never think it's something necessary. Does any one have an idea why is this happening? submitted by /u/khalilliouane [link] [comments]

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  Feedback Friday: Rate My Ideas | June 05, 2026
  by /u/AutoModerator on June 5, 2026 at 8:00 am

  Share your website, pitch, logo, idea, pricing, copy, or anything else you want honest eyes on. Tell us what you're looking for: brutal honesty, general impressions, or specific questions. Return the favour and leave feedback for someone else while you're here. submitted by /u/AutoModerator [link] [comments]

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  best places to hire marketing interns for the summer?
  by /u/Deep_Riser on June 5, 2026 at 12:37 am

  I am looking to take on marketing interns for my business but more so on a weekly budget of $300-$500 with social media posting skills. I just wanted to know what might be the best medium for finding interns like this submitted by /u/Deep_Riser [link] [comments]

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  A Hard Lesson I Learned at 23: Never Work for Free Based Solely on Promises
  by /u/DexTer__77 on June 4, 2026 at 10:13 pm

  I’ll tell you a story. Over the past few months, I’ve learned one of the most valuable lessons of my life. A lot of people will show you a vision of the future you want. They’ll talk about the success you’ll have together, the money you’ll make, the clients/customers you'll get, the ownership you’ll get, the life you’ll build. And because those outcomes are things you genuinely want, you start believing. You invest your time. Your energy. Your skills. You take the risk. You do the work. Sometimes they mean every word they say. Sometimes they don’t. But the result is often the same: you start working for free today because of a promise about tomorrow. The hardest part isn’t losing the opportunity. It’s realizing that the hope they gave you slowly turned into expectations you built in your own mind. You keep pushing because you’re convinced it’ll eventually pay off. You ignore the warning signs. You tell yourself it’ll work out. Then one day you look back and realize you’ve spent months building someone else’s dream while taking on most of the risk yourself. What I’ve learned is simple: Watch actions, not promises. You can usually tell whether something will work by looking at how people operate, how consistently they show up, and how much effort they’re willing to put in when nobody is watching. At 23, I’ve learned that even bad experiences have value. They teach you who’s genuine, who’s selling a dream, and who’s benefiting from your optimism. And here’s the part that stays with me the most: If I had spent that same time building my own skills, my own projects, and my own future, I would have created value that nobody could take away from me. Maybe that’s the real lesson. Bet on yourself first. Never work for free based solely on promises of what “could” happen someday. submitted by /u/DexTer__77 [link] [comments]

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  Ships are cheap. Harbors are not.
  by /u/BeeTheGlitch on June 4, 2026 at 8:43 pm

  Been thinking about where things are headed and wanted to put this out there. Building software is getting cheaper and faster. What used to take a team months now takes a fraction of the time and budget. That's great if you're a builder. It's a problem if you thought building was your moat. Because if shipping a product keeps getting easier, the ship itself isn't the hard part anymore. The water is filling up. Fast. The hard part is the harbor, actually getting in front of customers who'll pay. And there are only a handful of harbors worth anything: Google, Meta, the same audiences everyone is sailing toward. Limited space, more ships pulling up every month. More builders shipping similar products every quarter All running ads on the same 2-3 platforms Ad auctions get more competitive CAC climbs Margins shrink Most never make their money back The platforms own the harbors. They win regardless of whose ship docks. The builders just bid each other into the ground for the privilege of being seen. The real question for the next few years is "how do I reach people without paying the going rate at the gate." Organic distribution, communities, owned audiences, weird channels nobody's bidding on yet, that's where the edge is. Building is becoming a commodity. Distribution is the whole game. Curious if anyone here is already feeling this in their CAC numbers, or if I'm calling it too early?? That said, I build ships for people. You know what can't I say.. submitted by /u/BeeTheGlitch [link] [comments]