Hi, Seeking some advice here from people who have already built similar initiatives....

As the title suggests, and perhaps this is a little niche type of initiative, for context, I'm trying to build a community of enthusiasts around the theme of mindfulness in tech/ai products, business models (micro), and larger economic setup (macro). It is based on the the concept of Sustained Growth and Digital Wellbeing, and an opportunity to grow the community of like-minded people (especially in Corporate, Startups, Wellness Domain and Academia) to organise conferences, talks, events, (physical and otherwise), content channels, merchs (meh!). [which will in turn be the revenue sources]

Right now, I want to ask for your (human) inputs (Al always seemingly gives false positives), and if this is something that you'd consider interesting?

Bit about me, My background has been in Technology Adoption and Digitalization, with a strong focus on creative narrative strategies. Over the past few months, I find myself frustrated with the whole polarized discussion of Al Use-it-or-loose-it FOMO .... OR.... AI being a catastrophy..... And that made me want to build such a community. Ofc, it may not be a new idea (and thankfully so!), but that's the entire point.

Hi,

When people talk about startups, 90% of the time they are talking SaaS or an app, and some do fancy hardware. It's rare to talk about entrepreneurs launching a food brand. I wonder if the food space is a poor fit for entrepreneurship or is it just not glamorous?

Thanks

as the title says, i closed my first b2b pilot today after my first ever demo and i'm very hyped. is this good signal and what should i focus on now on the pilot period?

i've only been cold calling like 20 leads i scraped, not actually even that targeted leads and i got 3 demos booked. what other channels should i try for outreach?

also, feel free to give me tips how to move forward with my b2b saas! :)

context: it's a niche SaaS for service businesses

EDIT: the pilot i offer is 1 month, forgot to mention

I’m creating an app with two of my friends and I’ve been tasked with the marketing. I am a paid media manager for a large sports brand, so I do have a background in marketing. However, I have only ever worked for established brands and never started something from the ground up. My work also revolves around ad spend and using assets created by other teams.

I have all the socials set up but I’m hitting a wall on content. I’ve tried carousels, vlogs, and just speaking to the camera and nothing is landing. I’ve watched so many videos on how to create content, but I feel like everything is over edited and I’m not confident it would land. I also can’t do any photography since it’s a digital product.

I would love any advice or suggestions. Thank you!

Update: posted again today and got 35 more signups in a day, so about 60 now. A lot of the early drop-off was setup bugs I’ve since fixed, so I’m less worried about “does anyone want this” and more about “how do I reach the right people consistently”. Would love advice on that!

hey all, looking for some honest advice

I’m a student and I’ve spent the last few months building a desktop app on my own. It’s an AI assistant that sits next to your cursor on Windows/Mac.

The building part I’m ok at. The getting-people part I’m clearly not lol

Where I’m at right now:

posted on r/SideProject, r/imadethis, r/SaaS and a few others, got 28 signups (mostly on day one)

21 of them actually used it, some asked 20-40 questions, then most stopped after a day or two

7 signed in and never asked it anything

emailed every single signup personally and got 1 reply

TikTok got views but basically no clicks

my budget is tiny, like £50-100 total, because student loan

Stuff I’m already planning: Product Hunt, Microsoft Store listing, AlternativeTo, and fixing the setup since that’s clearly where people drop off.

What I’d love to know:

If you had ~£100 and zero audience, what would you actually do first?

Is it even worth paying for ads at this stage, or is that just burning money?

For anyone who’s launched a desktop app, where did your first 100 real users come from?

How do you get people to come back after day one, rather than just signing up?

Cheers!

I think people are making this stuff more complicated than it needs to be.

Sometimes you just need an API call, a few rules, and an LLM for one specific step. Instead, people build multi-agent systems that are harder to debug, more expensive to run, and somehow still need a human to check everything.

Obviously, some workflows do need agents. But figuring out where autonomy actually makes sense seems like the harder part.

Where do you draw the line?

Hi reddit, this is my first step towards i don’t know where i end up. Its all about tech ai and all. I am lead dev with 9y exp and an ex MNC guy. So basically i am thinking to start an AI excellence startup which helps companies or businesses adopt ai in their day to day. And need advice to move in this direction.
So i am curious, are there any problems that can be productised.

Disclosure up front: I build a pre-post checker for Reddit, so I've spent a lot of time reading how removals work. I will not promote it here. No name, no link.

Something I see a lot in founder subs. Someone posts their product, gets two upvotes, and decides nobody wants it. Sometimes that's true. But sometimes the post got removed and they never found out.

Reddit says a post removed by mods is "only visible to the original poster (OP) and your mod team". So you can still see it, and you may never get a message, because sending a removal reason is optional for mods.

The check I use now:

1. Open a private window and stay logged out (old reddit needs a login now, so use the normal site)
2. Open the sub, sort by New, and look for your post
3. If it's not there, open the direct link. "[Removed by moderator]" means a mod or AutoMod took it down
4. If your posts are gone everywhere and your profile doesn't show when logged out, the account itself may be flagged for spam. Reddit's help center points you to its appeals form for that

As for what removed it, it's usually one of three things.

Reddit's own spam filter. Reddit limits how often people can post in a community, and its help center says new, low-karma accounts "may be hitting this spam filter". Commenting in the community first can help. The spam policy also lists "mass-posting repetitive content for the purpose of exposure or financial gain", and dropping the same launch post in 6 subs in one day fits that.

The sub's automation. Reddit's transparency report for July to December 2025 says 68.6% of what mods removed was handled by automated systems like AutoMod. Some subs also turn on a reputation filter, which "does not filter based on the post content, but instead on the user behavior of the account". It scores your account on karma, verification and other signals. When you create a post, Reddit shows which requirements you meet and don't meet, but the exact numbers "aren't disclosed at this time to deter potential misuse".

Then there are the human mods and the written rules. I went through the rules of 33 subs founders and marketers post in. 20 of them either ban promo posts or only allow them in a designated promo thread. 11 ban AI-written posts and 3 more restrict them. Even this sub only allows sharing your startup in the pinned share thread. And the SaaS sub doesn't allow promoting SaaS built for ads, outreach, lead detection or content generation at all.

Reddit also has its own Post Check now, which uses an LLM to flag likely rule problems before you submit. It only covers the community's rules, not sitewide ones, and Reddit says it "may make errors".

Also read whatever the submit page tells you. When I pasted this post in, it warned that this sub doesn't allow links. My first draft had links in it.

Has anyone found a reliable way to tell an AutoMod removal from a human mod's? That's the one I still can't call with confidence.

Solo founder, applying to YC Winter 2027. I'm not a dev. I don't write or read code, AI agents in Claude Code write everything. What I do is decide the product and the architecture, and nothing gets built before I approve it. Then I test everything using it, I use it every day.

The application says a technical founder "can build the product without outside assistance". Nobody outside built anything, it was only me with AI. But I'm not a programmer.

I'm also looking for a technical cofounder, but most people I talked to want a good salary and security.

In my place, would you check "technical founder"?

Basically as the title says.

How do you approach potential clients? Whats the strategy? How do you reach the right person? What happens when you get the chance to meet the right person? How does the process typically go?

Do I make a spreadsheet and then just start cold emailing and cold connecting?

What are the best approaches to reaching the right person? Cold email? Cold phone calls? LinkedIn? Any other methods?

Doing everything on my own atm.

Hi all,

Wanted to share an interesting experience I had past year or so.

I've always wanted to find a good SaaS / startup idea, like most other people. But never came up with something really useful that people wanted.

The past year or so I took a complicated part time office job, my main role was fixing processes and setting up automations, without realizing it, my day to day work slowly formed a full on SaaS.

It was first an excel file, with another shared linked excel file for other staff to run reports etc. iterated and iterated till excel was not good anymore for the job. It's now a full on web application, and the users go wild for it.

I honestly plan to redo this approach in other industries, it worked.

Thanks for reading my story :)

Good luck.

I am a bootstrapped B2B SaaS founder, and trying to figure out how people actually go about raising their first $100K.

We have built the product, have paying enterprise clients, and are generating some ARR. It's still early, but we hav validated that organizations are willing to pay for what we are building.

So far, we have been extremely lean and largely founder-driven. We have managed to get here without external funding, but now at a point where some capital could help us accelerate sales, build out the product further, and take the business to the next level.

I am not sure I am ready for VC funding, nor am I convinced that's the right route for us at this stage. A small round from angel investors feels more appropriate. But here's where I am struggling.

I don't know if I'm being too coy about asking for money, or if there i an underlying fear of putting myself out there. I am quite comfortable pitching the product to clients, but approaching someone to invest feels like an entirely different ballgame.

And I genuinely don't know how founders go about this. Do you just start telling people you are raising? Reach out to successful founders? It all sounds straightforward in theory, but somehow feels rather awkward in practice.

For founders who have raised their first $50K–$150K from angels:

• How did you actually find your first few investors?
• Did you approach people in your existing network directly, ask for introductions, or reach out cold?
• How did you initiate the conversation without making it awkward?
• Did you have commitments lined up before formally announcing a raise?
• What worked for you, and what turned out to be a waste of time?

I am particularly interested in hearing from founders who raised relatively small rounds after getting their first paying customers, rather than those who went straight into the VC ecosystem.

And if anyone here knows angel investors who are interested in early-stage B2B SaaS businesses, warm introductions would be absolutely amazing!

I am trying to understand how people actually navigate this stage, and hopefully learn from those who've been through it.

Are there any non technical founders here that received funding for an app or Saas?

If so, can you share your journey, such as how did you get funding, how much funding you received, from who, what was the idea, why you, etc?

I am building a saas and have some traction, but Im feeling apprehensive about applying for funding while being a non technical founder. I am vibe coding, but I'm not completely fresh, I'm about 50% technical. I've always had an affinity for tech, Ive dropped out of university twice for computer related degrees. But I hate coding and wouldn't be able to do it without AI.

Appreciate any insights. Thanks, guys.

I hopped on a call with a yc founder to do marketing for them (i dont have proper marketing experience just a few viral videos, one which did 5m+ views which is what I shared to get the call)

They essentially pitched me, told me they were on a call with paul graham he wrote their first check, someone in the room with paul graham also wrote a check after overhearing the call.

then they talked to sam altman about it, garry tan uses their product..

and yea after i pitched some of what i did i essentially got "seems like the person who referred you made a mistake, but if you know anyone else who does marketing send them my way" and then they hung up.

so many people around me have gotten funded, prestigious accelerators, and ive graduated earlier this year and can't even land a job or have a successful startup.

i got into an accelerator because of connections, its basically an ai accelerator and im making a game. i have a demo day in a few days in front of 100 vcs, essentially im the only consumer product, have 0 revenue, and the other people in my cohort have thousands of users, they're olympiads, yc background, etc. and i am supposed to go on stage and be like hey guys i made a game...

I'm a bootstrapped B2B founder gathering info on how serious startups are actually hosting there software (frontend, backend, database, etc), deploying to it, monitoring and alerting on it, etc.

Most I've talked too these days fall into a few different cohorts

• Build it yourself (spin up an ec2 or similar in the early phases)
• I well funded so I hire an infrastructure person or pay a contractor / don't worry about this shortening my runway
• Pay a managed PaaS (Vercel, Netlify, Lovable, Cursor, etc)

What about monitoring/alerting? Free tier Datadog/NewRelic? Open source stack? Don't care about monitoring until a bigger funding round?

What about deployments? Github Actions? Gitlab? Self hosted?

What about AI in this space? Has Claude (etc) been able to bridge the gap for the early stages for you or are you kicking SRE problems down the road?

Let me know your thoughts! I'd love to know what I'm missing

What makes a P99 product engineer now? Code generation, and review to some extent, is becoming less important with agentic coding. This will increasingly become the case.

What attributes are important? System design, architecture, taste, user experience etc?

Hi everyone,

I've recently advanced through the initial rounds of a fairly well-known startup accelerator and have been invited to live interview rounds. Part of the interview will focus on my startup's product and traction. I have several potential collaborations coming up that could meaningfully strengthen my application, but they may take a few weeks to materialize. The program has interview slots available over the next two months.

Would you recommend scheduling an interview within the next 1–2 weeks, or taking more time to see whether these opportunities turn into concrete results before interviewing?

My main concern with waiting is that I might lose momentum in the application process, or that the team might be less engaged by the time I interview. On the other hand, going in with stronger traction could make a meaningful difference.

For anyone who has gone through accelerator interviews or admissions processes, how much does interview timing matter compared with demonstrating additional traction?

Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone, I have been searching far and wide for a relatively small community of Latino founders. I’m part of Techqueria and it was an awesome community until it got sold/acquired and I dipped. I am looking for something like what Techqueria fostered, but focused on startups and Latino indie hackers, bootstrapped or funded

Anyways I have not been able to find a community like this and I am curious if maybe it’s because they are not publicized and they are invite only - does anyone know of any? FWIW I find plenty of other communities for like women founders for example so I hope there is something out there.

Here is what I’d ideally want in a community like this:
- I want it to be small, being part of a group with 5k members does not appeal to me, I prefer small where relationships can flourish
- I’d like for it to be Latino focused, kind of like Techqueria was built for folks working in tech
- I want to join a community that vets its members, I don’t want to be in a group where we are getting pitched to every day by a marketer or other founders, we support each other but it’s not “hey try my product” type of constant sales pitching
- I want to be able to help problem solve, I’m a Product Manager by day so I know I can help others solve problems and brainstorm
- also looking for accountability, a place like WIP.co

Maybe I am describing a unicorn but hey thought I’d ask.

Hey guys, I recently left my full time job & started building my open source consistent character platform which has it's own gen engine & all.

In short: One character format that works across different open source models.

that was a huge hit, lot of feedbacks, 550+ stars on Github under two months so I decided to publish a cloud version for this. It has around 300 users, mostly free ones.

There were no paid users till last week so I sent an email, whoever ran something to share their feedback.

Soon a customer returned & paid $25, which is not even a smallest tier, then he is gone & haven't came back till now & not even replied to the email.

I am just wondering what does that mean. I am just hoping that he will come back, but it's just so strange.

Can anyone explain?

Hey everyone! I’m 25 and have been working in business lending and commercial loans for about two years. I’ve been fortunate enough to find success early, earning around $150K annually, with my highest earnings reaching approximately $185K.

Over these two years, I’ve gained industry knowledge, built relationships, and learned a lot about how the business operates. Now, I’m seriously considering starting my own business in the same industry, potentially beginning as an independent broker.

Financially, I have approximately $120K in cash reserves that I could invest while still keeping enough money to cover my personal expenses. My living expenses are relatively low, and I’ve also connected with people in the industry who are willing to offer guidance.

I’ve spent the past two months researching, journaling, analyzing the numbers, and talking to experienced people. Despite that preparation, I’m still nervous about taking the leap.

My current job has treated me fairly, and I recognize that making this kind of money at 25 is a great position to be in. I’m not looking to leave because I’m unsuccessful. **I want to build something of my own.**

I value autonomy, control over my decisions, and being directly responsible for my success or failure. While I understand that entrepreneurship comes with more stress, longer hours, and financial uncertainty, I feel that at 25, I have time to take calculated risks and learn from my mistakes.

My biggest concern is whether I’m approaching this strategically or underestimating the challenges. Being successful as an employee doesn’t necessarily translate to running a successful business.

**For those of you who’ve started your own businesses:**

Would you take the leap in my position, or gain more experience first?

How would you approach the financial risk with $120K in reserves?

What would you want in place before leaving a $150K–$185K job?

What advice would you give your 25-year-old self in this situation?

Any honest advice, criticism, or insight is appreciated.

I’m building a developer tool that checks whether code changes break existing functionality. I’m comfortable with the technical side, but finding people willing to try it is where I’m stuck.

For anyone who’s launched a dev tool, where did your first users come from? Direct outreach, developer communities, technical content, or something else?

I’d also love to hear how you earned enough trust for someone to connect a tool to their codebase. What worked for you, and what turned out to be a waste of time?

​

SeedLegals were quite cost effective when they launched, but their prices keep increasing.

I'm in the process of preparing for SEIS and a pre seed. There is a few complexities in our SEIS application that makes the self application not a good idea. So I'm considering resorting to them.

I'm wondering there might be any viable alternatives to SeedLegals in terms of value for money and success rate?

Is there any other route that SeedLegals these days to prepare for pre seed with SEIS?

I’m starting my fundraising efforts and discovered that it’s a norm to send a teaser deck to VCs to encourage them to connect with you and spend time on a fuller presentation. Is this something others have experienced? What did you share in the teaser deck? What did you save for the full deck?

Do they usually qualify to lead the technical teams? Or do they usually just own some technical IP that the company was built upon?

How does a technical co-founder who just graduated university qualify to lead the technical teams? Are they just that good?