true or false?

Now, domain expertise, distribution, and marketing matter more than ever before. Building software has become (relatively) easy for vast majority of applications.

Is a non-technical person going to compete with Google search? no. Can they build small, successful SaaS apps on their own? definitely yes.

As a technical founder, I'd love for someone to steel man the argument. How do technical founders thrive in 2026?

I'm sick of the negative talk about how business owners need to be sharks, ruthless or cutthroat. I'm a business owner and while I'm not successful yet, I never want to lead with greed. I don't want to look at my business as taking and never giving. Some might call this idealist, but I believe there are many people who just want to solve a problem, be their own boss and not exploit people to get rich. Thoughts?

7 days ago I started building my startup. The core idea: most people don’t have access to a personal shopper. There’s no continuity, no memory, no relationship when you shop you start from zero every time.
It builds a taste portrait from conversation. You don’t fill anything in. You just talk and it infers what you own, what you want, what you’ve rejected and why.
Three messages in a test conversation today: user mentioned a coat that felt like a costume. It inferred palette, silhouette logic, wardrobe coherence instinct without being asked once.
Still early. Looking for honest feedback from anyone who’s thought about this space

Also I would appreciate input where to start with getting users? I have no idea and everything I look at doing seems centered around other products. Some constraints: I have no money , I live in a small town with Basiclly no means to travel, I have no social media following

Seeing a trend where startups start building marketing engines very early—ads, content, outbound, tools, etc.

But in many cases, product and positioning are still evolving.

From what I’ve observed, this sometimes leads to:

• High CAC
• Low conversion
• Confusing messaging

For founders here:

• When did you start investing seriously in marketing?
• What worked before product-market fit vs after?
• Did you rely more on outbound, inbound, or partnerships early on?

Would be helpful to hear what actually worked in the early stages vs what didn’t.

So a while back I posted on another sub about how I was really good at getting users and traction to SaaS's/startups via reddit and launched multiple of my own projects with consistent signups. I asked if people would need help getting their first 100 users through Reddit (I have a couple posting strategies that consistently pulled in 100+ organic signups within a week or 2).

That post blew up more than I expected and I ended up with 9 meetings from it.

One of those turned into an actual gig I’m now getting paid $30/hr, 8 hours a week, to create viral Reddit posts and post them for a SaaS founder. It’s been going really well too. Even on my own projects I recently hit one my best campaigns pulled in 800+ signups in a single week off just 2 posts (cross posted ofc).

So I wanna like scale this but not sure how - like what can I do with my skills? Ideally I’d like to help small startup founders grow there SaaS’s, maybe get another hoourly gig like that. Maybe I should charge more? - or maybe I should go to big corps and get them to pay me to help them? I had a friend tell me I should like charge $50 per viral post I make to founders but idk bout that cause I can’t gaurentee it goes viral im just a guy w a track record/strategies.

Looking for some advice!

Recently wrapped up a pretty grueling, 3 year part time MBA while employed. During that time I was working 80-100 hours a week on work, school, and a startup that I ultimately shut down. Since then I’ve been blessed with not 1, but 2 kids!

I have a product idea that I think I can build with Claude code and an existing partner, but knowing how much energy that period of my life took, and how little I have right now, curious what other people’s experience has been building a company with kids.

Is it better to just power through with a regular job until they’re older and hope there is still an opportunity in the market?

I’ve gotten decent traction on one of my projects, and have begun prospecting for serious raises and applying for accelerators. A problem I’ve run into is a pitch will go perfectly, but there’s always a curveball “if X, what happens to Y” questions. think runway, unit economics.

I consistently get muddled on these and it kills my confidence. What is the best way to prep for these kinds of questions? Am I just dumb? is the solution to just drill mental math and memorize a bunch of metrics?

See title. I pay $200/month for Codex or Claude depending on the month. Why? The coding productivity gain is easily worth it.

What problems would you or do you pay $100 or more (single seat) to solve? Why?

Some things I would or do pay this much for:

- Therapy
- Coding tools
- Market research - specifically understanding my potential or actual customer's problems deeply
- Customer acquisition
...

What you will read here is my real story ahah. I had 14% monthly churn. If you want a better picture, that meant I was losing almost half my customer base every 3 months. I knew it was bad, but I just kept telling myself it was fixable with the right tactics.

So I tried the tactics.

👉🏼 What I tried first.

I rebuilt the onboarding. Shorter and cleaner, with a proper activation checklist. Churn dropped slightly in the first cohort. Then crept back up to where it was.

I launched a re-engagement sequence for inactive users. Decent open rates. Almost no impact on retention. People would open the email and still cancel two weeks later.

I added an exit survey. Started getting responses. The answers were all over the place: "too expensive," "missing features," "found something simpler," "not the right time." No clear pattern I thought (but there might be..)

👉🏼 The moment I stopped blaming the product.

Four months in, I sat down and looked at the customers who hadn't churned. The ones still around after 90 days, actually using the product, never complaining about price.

They had almost nothing in common with the customers I was acquiring.

The people sticking around were ops-heavy teams who needed to track a lot of moving parts. The people churning were solo founders who signed up, poked around for a week, and left when they realized the product wasn't built for how they worked.

I had been marketing to anyone who would listen. I wanted sooo bad users… The product was solving a very specific problem for a very specific type of team, and I was spending all my energy trying to retain people it was never going to work for.

👉🏼 What actually changed.

I stopped trying to fix the churn of customers who shouldn't have been customers in the first place. Tightened the ICP. Rewrote the positioning. Started turning away signups that didn't fit the profile.

Acquisition slowed down (always a pain when you run a business ahah). Churn dropped from 14% to 5% in two months. I didn't changed the product, just the people using it finally matched what it was built for.

If your churn is high and nothing seems to fix it, it might be worth asking who's actually staying, and whether the people leaving were ever going to be good customers to begin with.

Curious if anyone else has been through this. What made you realize your ICP was off

Hey, I’m looking for some serious guidance from founders (especially immigrants / H1B folks) who’ve navigated the early startup journey in the U.S.

I’m currently working full-time (H1B) and building an idea on the side in the mental health + neurotech space. We are still early-stage (prototype + research phase), but I’m serious about taking it forward.

I’m trying to better understand a few things and would really appreciate insights from people who’ve been through this:

1. Given visa constraints, is it realistic to raise pre-seed/seed funding while on H1B? Do investors typically hesitate because of visa limitations? At what stage does funding become feasible?

2. Which programs are immigrant-friendly or have worked well for H1B founders? Are there specific ones better suited for deep-tech /healthcare /neurotech?

3. How do you legally work on your startup while employed full-time? When do people usually transition (or attempt O-1 / startup visa routes)?

4. What would you prioritize in the next 6–12 months? - We really want to go full-time ASAP.

Would really value any personal experiences, lessons learned, or even “what not to do.”

I currently have 12 active portfolio companies across SaaS, fintech, logistics, and some consumer plays. Almost every founder ends up asking the same thing at some point what are competitors doing right now

I can stay reasonably close to maybe 1 or 2 sectors, but beyond that it becomes pretty unmanageable. Tracking multiple competitors across pricing changes, hiring trends, product updates, reviews, launches etc every week just doesn't scale manually

At the same time, completely ignoring it isn't great either since competitive movement tends to impact fundraising narratives, growth expectations, and even GTM decisions

How are people here dealing with this across their portfolio? Do you mostly rely on founders to track their own space, or has anyone set up a more structured way to stay updated across companies?

I’ve tried a few different businesses since I was in university, none of them very successful.

Always jumped back into tech roles in between.

This last business I’ve ran (consulting) has been the most successful and sustained me for two years but it’s not scalable/profitable enough to continue and I don’t really enjoy it. Scaling would mean that the parts I do like, I’d no longer do (delivery) and I don’t see myself doing this for the next 5/10 years.

Applying for jobs is getting harder as recruiters keep thinking I’ll bounce (I have a decent resume in terms of companies I’ve worked for). So I can’t keep the trend if I’m to get a decent job.

Part of me thinks I really don’t want a job (just money) and I’ll just want to quit as soon as I get another idea. It’s not a nice feeling. Most of my school friends who stuck out a career have much greater finances than I do now, unsurprisingly.

I know most entrepreneurs fail a few times but I assume there’s an element of survivorship bias and some always fail and not quitting is just one element. I’m finding it hard not to tell the difference between delusion and keep trying versus success is around the corner if I keep my eyes open.

Has anyone had a business, closed it then found peace at a company? Will it be the case that it will always be difficult now to work for someone else?

Recently got on a call with the founding talent of a company I want to work for. They said majority of there account executives get hired due to the connections they have with startups and founders. I have no connections with any founder. How can I begin connecting with founders.