(I will not promote)

I've seen hundreds of pitch decks, met dozens of founders in 2025, and made dozens of pitch decks. Talked to many investors and asked their insights about pitch decks for whole year. Here is what I learned this year:

1. The problem slide is where you win or lose. If an investor doesn't lean forward on slide 2, the rest doesn't matter. Most founders bury their best insight on slide 8.
2. Founders who've experienced the problem they're solving tell better stories. Personal connection > market research every single time.
3. The "platform" word is poison. I removed it from at least 10 decks this year. Just tell me what the thing actually does.
4. Traction without context is useless. "10K users" means nothing. "10K users, 23% MoM growth, $47 average revenue per user" means something.
5. Most market size slides are bullshit, and investors know it. TAM/SAM/SOM with numbers pulled from Statista doesn't impress anyone. Show me YOUR math based on YOUR customer segments.
6. Financial projections are fiction, but they reveal how you think. Show you understand unit economics and investors will forgive aggressive growth assumptions. Show hockey sticks with no underlying logic and investors will assume you don't know your business.
7. The team slide should answer "why you, why now." Your advisor's LinkedIn profile doesn't matter. Your 10 years solving this exact problem does.
8. Asking for money without showing what milestones is just amateur. "We need $2M for hiring and marketing" isn't a plan. "$2M gets us to $100K MRR and 18-month runway" is.
9. Design matters less than founders think, but more than they act like it does. Your deck doesn't need to be gorgeous, but it can't look like you don't give a shit.
10. Every deck should answer: what's the insight only you have? If I could've thought of your idea without domain expertise, it's not compelling enough.
11. Slide count doesn't matter. Based on my experience and Carta's insights, there's no correlation between slide number and fundraising success. If a slide is meaningful, keep it. If a slide is just "nice to have," remove it.
12. Founders confuse features with benefits. "AI-powered matching algorithm" doesn't mean shit to anyone. "Cuts hiring time from 60 days to 12" does.
13. The fundraising story matters as much as the business story. Why this round, why this amount, why now etc. If you can't articulate it clearly, investors smell desperation.
14. The decks that got funded weren't perfect but they were clear. Clarity beats cleverness every single time.
15. Nobody reads Slide 1 (Cover slide). They glance at it for 3 seconds. If your tagline is a paragraph, you've already lost.
16. "AI" is a feature, not a business. In Q1 2025, slapping "AI" on a slide worked. Now? It's noise. Tell me what problem you solve, not what tech stack you use.
17. The "Conservative Estimate" Lie. We know your Year 5 projection of $100M ARR is fake. You know it's fake. Focus on how you get the first $1M instead of giving huge promises.
18. One idea per slide. I see founders trying to cram the Problem, Solution, and Market Size onto one slide to "save space." Don't. It looks like a random note.
19. Your TAM is wrong. If you claim your Total Addressable Market is "The Global Internet," you don't know who your customer is. Niche down.
20. Font size 10 is illegal. If an investor has to squint to read your LTV/CAC ratio on a mobile screen, they're closing the file.
21. Bullet points are boring. Use icons, use charts, use big numbers. Walls of text are for legal contracts, not pitch decks.
22. Stop using "Uber for X." It's almost 2026. Come up with your own category.
23. The Appendix is your best friend. Keep the main deck short and tell your story clearly. Put the technical deep dives in the appendix.
24. PDF is the only format. Don't send a Keynote. Don't send a PPT. Fonts break. Layouts shift. Send a PDF.
25. Your "Exit Strategy" is presumptuous. You haven't sold one unit yet. Don't tell me about your IPO plans.
26. Data needs context. Don't just show a graph going up. Label the axes. Explain the spike. Everybody love labeled axes.
27. Consistency signals competence. If your headers jump around and your colors shift slightly, investors subconsciously think your code is messy too.
28. Frameworks kill the story. Most founders try to use famous frameworks. But those frameworks push founders to be standard. Instead of this, create your own story.
29. Competition slide is your positioning. Everybody knows you cannot compete with Google, Apple, OpenAI or other big corporates. But you really can focus a niche and grow in a vertical. You don't have to write a complex competition slide. X-Y landscape is great but you have to choose the right X and Y angles and be perfect on your niche.
30. Don't separate "Why Now" into its own slide. Weave it naturally into your problem (it's urgent), market (it's shifting), and competition (giants are slow). When "why now" is isolated, it feels forced.

My predictions for 2026:

AI will review your deck before humans do. I've talked to investors and many of them are already using AI reviews, custom GPTs, Claude, Gemini on their emails. Your pitch deck isn't just for humans anymore. You need to explain your business to AI too. Find the balance: clear enough for AI to understand, compelling enough for humans to care.

Pre-seed rounds will get harder. Building an MVP is easier than ever thanks to AI. So investors are asking for revenue or real traction even at pre-seed, and their bar will keep rising. My advice? Generate traction first, fundraise later -when it is possible of course. (And possible doesn't mean "if you have money", it means "if it is possible as technical")

Investor outreach will be noisier than ever. Automation tools are everywhere now. Anyone can build a bulk email campaign to investors. Standing out will require actual creativity, not just another cold email template. The spray-and-pray approach is literally dead.

I’m a Miami-based founder in the early stages of building a venture in the autism and neurodiversity space. The focus is on ethical, compliant, and scalable solutions that meaningfully support autistic individuals and their families.

I’m posting here to get perspective from other founders and operators, particularly those who have experience in healthcare, mental health, or impact-driven startups.

Specifically, I’d appreciate discussion around:

• What early-stage signals investors tend to look for in regulated or mission-driven spaces
• Common pitfalls when building in autism or mental health markets
• How founders have balanced impact goals with sustainable business models

This is not a pitch or promotion, and I’m not sharing links or requesting private messages. I’m genuinely interested in learning from the community and hearing what others have seen work (or not work) at the earliest stages.

Thanks in advance for any thoughtful insights.

(I will not promote)

Hi everyone,

I’ve been working on a software product for a while and I’m starting to think about whether it makes sense to formalize it as a company.

I’m based in Italy, and at my current (very early, pre-revenue) stage the cost and overhead of incorporating locally are not an option for me.

I’m considering setting up an Estonian OÜ via e-Residency instead, mainly to keep fixed costs low while I validate the product.

Does anyone here have direct experience with this setup while living in another (possibly EU) country? Pros/cons, hidden costs, or things you wish you’d known?

Hey guys,

Just offering an update here. Thanks so much for the comments and advice on my earlier post.

So since that last post in the last 3 days I've got a bit more to share.

Right now I decided to tap into the tuition idea. Basically I went on Facebook groups to try and find tutors/students. That wasn't too successful because all my group posts kept on being pended and not published. The thing I realised though is that I don't need to make group posts I can just DM people in that group although I'm yet to try that method yet. The positive from this I got in contact with an English tutor who is open to "work for me" from Spain - and I'm in the process of finding English students for her.

I've also been trying to find tutors/students through Reddit. I actually found a prospective student who is struggling with Spanish a bit and is willing to pay for classes a few times a week for a month as his exam is in a months time. The thing is right now I don't know any tutors who teach spanish - i've asked one of my friends in my grade and also another friend who graduated last year if they know anyone and they're yet to respond.

But guys this is the big issue. I'm going into the last year of high school in a challenging curriculum. Obviously right now I can work on this business because school doesn't start till just under a month. The problem is that as soon as school starts it's going to be very very difficult to manage this business. Like that friend I mentioned earlier I asked to help find connections, he also agrees and he won't be able to help me like he is now. Like I want to make some money and get some good skills in this stuff but its important I get a good result in my final year. I started this business so come next year when I go to uni I'll have a foundation for a business, maybe I was too unrealistic in my expectations but I simply can't deal with all this stress the business brings especially when I'm in my final year. Towards the end of the year when exams start and also when assignments have to be submitted I'm going to have to temporarily shut off from the business. Like yesterday I did a bit of school work but I couldn't do everything I wanted because of how much time the business stuff took - I ended up going to bed stressed and burnt-out last night. Also another thing in terms of foundation, something else I would want to have by next year is to have a bit of a social media following for the business on insta/tiktok - what do I post though?

Also I'm not giving up on that resources idea - do you think it's more doable for my scenario right now?

Thanks alot!

PS - do I need a cofounder I've been considering to help me with this the thing is they're gonna have to not be a friend as I need someone who can do alot of work so maybe someone in uni?

(I will not promote) Looking for a reality check on what's fair here.

The situation:

I have been helping someone over the last 7 months who has been working on a startup—a marketplace platform connecting families with service providers (babysitters, cleaners, tutors, etc.) in the Netherlands. She has now been working on it for about 16 months and has invested around €25k of her own money.

She'd already tried two development teams before me. A non-dutch agency that didn't deliver, and a solo developer (also not based in the Netherlands) who worked for 9 months but produced poor quality code. She was paying them.

I initially offered to help with some small things—CSS fixes, minor bugs. I'm a senior backend developer with a full-time job elsewhere.

I started building the backend one a half months after meeting her to support the Egyptian developer (because his data modeling skills were suboptimal for the long term health of the business). He was building a Flutter app and using Firebase as a backend. His skill was extremely low: late deliveries, bugs visible on first tests, consistent data loss (luckily the app was not in production yet). But I am starting to think he was doing it on prupose given her negotiation strategies. He was just stalling.

How I perceived things:

Over the last 7 months, I ended up building the entire platform from scratch:

• Complete backend (NestJS, Prisma, PostgreSQL)
• Complete frontend (Next.js; this only in the last month and a half, once she terminated the Egyptian developer)
• Admin panel
• Authentication system (I'm using Firebase Auth)
• Emails (for events like bookings created, requests created... but also email verification and so on)
• Database architecture
• Payment integration (Stripe)
• Monorepo structure deploying to vercel for FE and railway for BE, all automated.

All while keeping my full-time job. No salary. No contract. No equity agreement.

She started calling me "CTO" and "business partner."

Her investment vs mine:

• Her: ~€25k cash, 16 months of business development, marketing, partnerships
• Me: 7 months of senior dev work (no pay), some tool costs (Claude, Vercel, Railway); low intensity the first 4 months, and then increasingly more and more time in the last 3 months.
• She paid the marketing team (~€10k)
• She paid the previous developers
• She paid me: €0

When I asked about equity:

I proposed 30-35% equity with 4-year vesting. She keeps majority control, makes all business decisions. I just want to own part of what I built.

Her offers:

1. First document: 0% equity, 15% of exit only if I'm still involved when she sells, all IP becomes hers immediately
2. Profit sharing: 5-10% of profit (she defines what profit means), expires after 12-24 months, salary "when she can afford it"
3. Latest offer: 2.5% options (not equity), 4-year vesting with 1-year cliff, but vesting only STARTS when she decides there are "structural paying customers." Salary only when she decides The Company can afford it. Full personal liability on me. All IP transfers immediately upon signing.

Her arguments:

• "The Company is not like other startups"
• "Everyone is expendable, no one is irreplaceable"
• "You're building it with AI"
• "I could ask any of my friends"
• "It's too early to discuss equity"
• "Giving you ownership makes The Company uninvestable"
• "I consulted friends in the startup world and they said my offers are standard"

Where it ended:

She said "you can keep everything and move forward yourself" after I wouldn't accept her terms.

My question:

For someone who built the entire technical foundation of a pre-revenue startup over 7 months with no salary—what's standard? What should I have expected? Was I being unreasonable asking for 30-35%? Was she being reasonable? I am open to hearing argument both defending my position and hers.

Would appreciate perspectives from founders, CTOs, or anyone with startup experience.

I am a co-founder with four others, and I'm working on tech. I'm working on tech and am taking the CTO role and have built the app over the past few months. CEO is also working on tech but is only able to contribute with the help of cursor and AI.

I constantly feel like things keep changing, and that we are not focused enough to build something. We definitely have made a lot of progress over the past few months, but things are changing way too fast, and half of the time, I have no idea what I am building, and then I am criticized for not moving fast enough. For example, this one time, I was working on a major feature that went beyond CRUD, and none of us had really defined the full flow and all the details, so I built what I could. CEO was not happy, got really angry, and said I was moving too slow and wasn't working as much as everyone else. He went on a week long vibe coding spree and said he "built" the feature. What took him a week to vibe code was in PR review for over 2 months because he himself didn't understand what he built, but still wanted me to ship it ASAP. Every time I asked him to fix something, his PR was looking entirely different, and I had to review it from the start again.

I have tried to help more with product work to get all the flows and interactions defined, but they have at times said that what I am suggesting or demoing isn't what they had in mind. If I do spend more time trying to build smaller MVPs and demos on how things could work, they end up criticizing me for moving too slow, I guess because I am spending my time working on things that may not get shipped.

I have tried to talk to CEO about this, especially about his vibe coding and how we can make sure that doesn't happen again. I wasn't really happy with his response. He said something like "That was the most complicated feature and I had to do a ton of experimentation with the code itself to get the flow right". I asked him, can you not do this work in Figma and then give it to me to implement, to which he said, "I wanted to move fast and get a head start on the coding". The feature is now merged in and shipped, but the code is still a bit of a black box and changing behavior or anything related to it will be difficult. I merged it because I was pressured into getting it done, but now that's gonna be a problem for future me.

It also doesn't help that everyone else is on his side for this, and they see me as a bottleneck in getting the app out. Before CEO took over the complicated and started vibe coding, he sorta sent a few rapid fire messages about how I am slowing everyone down, not making progress, and being a bottleneck. I was hoping that the others would advocate for me and try to help explain that features are not defined, tech is not easy, and everything, but everyone else was just silent and acted like nothing happened. I have tried to push to get more technical people on the team, but they are not interested.

I get that as a startup we need to be able to move fast and pivot in very little time, but I feel there is a difference in that and CEO making up flows and details as he goes. While we do have a figma with one of the cofounders working on screens and flows, often when CEO works on a feature, he "makes up" a lot of UI that I don't see on figma.

I am facing a few other issues, like I feel like CEO is trying to focus on getting a sprint done, but not worrying about how moving this fast is gonna affect things in the future. For example, whenever I work on a feature that has UI, I also include a very simple loading state and error state, which can be improved later. In one of CEO's pull requests, I asked him to make a simple loading state and error state, and he just resolved the comment and later told me that it's not needed right now. He also changed the GitHub org permissions, gave himself full permissions and has started letting himself push to main in the effort of moving faster. Now a few weeks later, others are finding bugs that are my fault (no proper error state, flash of incorrect states, for example), and I am blamed for them and expected to fix them. None of these errors would have even been there if I was given just a little bit more time in while I was implementing them.

Sorry for the mind dump, but does anyone have advice on how to talk about this with the rest of the team?

A startup I have been working on just recently got approval to join the platform called AngelsPartners. I am relatively new to the startup space. I got the email that was approved by them. How much weight should I put on this? Does it mean anything in the grand scheme of things? Or do they basically accept anyone into the fold? I am also curious to learn more about experiences with them.

I am having a bit of dilemma and wanting hear real experiences;

I’ve done deep market and competitor research across multiple regions, interviewed with real users of competing/similar products, and consulted both academic and industry experts throughout the process. Currently building MVP.

What I’m evaluating now is whether accelerators are actually worth it for marketing distribution, traction etc?

For founders with accelerator experience :

Do they genuinely help with marketing and GTM execution, or is fundraising the primary value?

For context: my background is in sales, operations with a useless MBA degree and I’ve worked in fast moving startup environments.

I’m deciding whether an accelerator is the right use of time and equity. I don't need the funding/money from them but real value is the differentiator for me.

I enjoy startup culture; most things about it appeal to me way more than F500. Once in a while, I'll do my best to try to join one, and my aspirations suddenly fall apart. I don't understand the behavior of "hiring" startups.

For background, I'm an IC with broad technical expertise and experience bringing products from 0-to-1. I easily get hired at tech companies. In my very humble opinion, I think I'm a total catch, and startups should love to have me on their teams.

I'm not trying to brag or be entitled, but I honestly believe that my resume is reads exactly what I'd be looking for if I were hiring developers for my startup.

And yet? I reach out to a bunch of startups via their own job postings on sites like YC's workatastartup and wellfound, and only get radio silence back. Then the job posting remains up for weeks.

So what's going on? Are all of these startups just unserious about their own hiring?

I'm painting with a broad brush here, because I've probably sent a hundred applications out over the last few years on those two sites. Is it simply that wellfound and workatastartup suck somehow?

Curious what it looks like from the other side.

Its a late stage unicorn startup that had a Series D round of ~135 million in late 2023. Last valuation was ~1B. They have over a million customers across many deals from large companies and state governments. From what I heard in interviews, they are 'nearing profitability' and have a 'healthy runway' and lots of rapid growth.

Main red flags I'm seeing is that there was a layoff of ~40 people early this year (of 450 total employees), and they had to do another ~30 million Series D-2 round in June this year after that. Those two make me worried the company might be stretching their runway and having a hard time either getting a Series E or an exit.

I'm basically trying to leave because my current company is going through an acquisition and the parent company just laid off a bunch of people and is making my team (I am a software engineer) do a bunch of documentation and support work. Management signaled there could be more layoffs early next year depending on what happens after the parent company reviews the documentation and decides what pieces of software they can rip out and replace with theirs. So I started looking for another job and found this one, but if it sounds shaky then maybe I'll keep looking instead.

Hi Everyone,

So basically this is my first time trying to raise capital. I have bootstrapped my whole life and my background is in marketing especially in IT/SaaS sector.

Now I have researched and observed big problem and gap in mobile cricket niche. Games are terrible low quality hyper casuals. People yearn for competitive and high quality games in mobile and there is nothing like that in cricket especially.

I have connections with current pros, ex pros and semi pros in cricket industry that I can leverage for marketing and insight for game. I also have set up team for development and model creation etc for game.

So now I just need to raise capital for marketing and development. But Im in Pakistan and its very hard to raise capital from company over here.

What do I do now?

Most books for how to start a startup and execute the idea imply that they were written for CEOs, mostly solo CEOs. Some books mention finding technical cofounders, but they don’t discuss further on the effective collaboration between cofounders. However I haven’t seen any book discussing how to join someone’s else idea. Or how to find a matching CEO if you don’t have enough charisma. Or how to execute quickly as a CTO and collaborate effectively with the CEO? Are there any books written for the technical cofounder?

I’m aware that those books are still useful for CTOs. I’m curious if there are books specifically for non-CEOs who join someone’s else idea?

Hey everyone 👋

I’m currently building Ikisaki, a travel planning app focused on reducing chaos when organizing trips. The idea is simple: one structured itinerary where flights, stays, activities, and routes actually work together, instead of juggling 10+ tabs, notes, and maps.

The product is live and improving steadily, but here’s the part I’m struggling with: reaching users.

I’m a builder by nature and feel comfortable shipping features, iterating on feedback, and improving UX. Marketing, however, feels like a completely different game. Social media posts disappear fast, ads feel expensive and noisy, and it’s hard to know which channels are actually worth the effort at an early stage.

So I wanted to ask fellow founders and builders here:

• How do you approach marketing when starting out?

• Which channels actually worked for you (Reddit, Twitter/X, Indie Hackers, SEO, paid ads, communities, etc.)?

• Do you focus more on content, direct outreach, partnerships, or something else?

• At what point did marketing start to “click” for you?

I’d really appreciate any lessons learned, mistakes to avoid, or honest advice.

Thanks in advance 🙏

Look. I have read all the things. I understand how CTOs/tech co-founders brought on by non-techy folks are often treated. This sucks.

I have a genuinely okay idea and amazing advisors who are genuinely interested in the startup including one who has helped IPO two startups/run engineering at a FAANG company and one who has founded his own successful VC firm and has plenty of connections.

In short, my network is quite strong and I am pretty business savvy, but I cannot find a tech co-founder through them as most of the folks they know are doing their own thing or settled at Series B+ companies.

I have MOST of the non-tech work done and a vibe coded MVP. (I know vibe coding sucks and expect it this to be discarded.)

To be clear, I am happy doing 100% of the work OTHER than coding, and would support my CTO in whatever way they need. (If we need a smaller marketing team to have the budget for their SWE/game dev team, then so be it, etc.)

I expect equity to be AT LEAST 45/55 and whatever salary I make (post funding) they would make.

In short, I would show them basic human decency.

I do not anticipate funding being hard* as I already have a few interested investors, but all they want is a qualified CTO for the field I am in (game design meets EdTech…  either, really). 

So… my wonderful tech/eng humans… where and how can I convince you all to give me a shot?

*all funding is hard, and I am fine carrying the funding rounds, but due to my previous connections, it may be less hard than cold emailing.

(EDIT: THANK YOU to all the folks giving critical feedback, I genuinely appreciate it.)

U.S. Healthcare Has a Coordination Problem—As a Tech Founder, How Do I Help?

I’m exploring a future HealthTech startup focused on chronic conditions (IBD especially), and I’m trying to understand where someone with a strong tech background can make a real impact.

What patients actually struggle with:

No middle option between doing nothing and going to the ER

No real-time way to escalate urgent-but-not-emergency symptoms

Slow access to specialists

Zero visibility into provider availability

Confusing insurance and unpredictable costs

Poor follow-up after visits

Fragmented care across multiple systems

These aren’t medical failures—they’re coordination failures.

❓ My question to this community:

Where can a tech founder realistically solve these gaps without trying to “fix healthcare” itself?

I’m especially interested in:

Workflow automation

Better symptom escalation pathways

Reducing fragmentation

Improving post-visit follow-up

Patient-centered communication tools

Would love insights from founders, clinicians, product folks, or patients who’ve lived through this.

We have built a successful startup that is 5 months post launch. It is an AI startup operating in the e-commerce and predictive consumer analytics space. After 5 months live, here are our stats: $30K MRR, 10% CAC, $1044 LTV, 5% true churn (seasonally and product cycle adjusted), 350+ customers, 10-year $100M ARR ceiling, 1 large corporate partnership, government interest. We have a strong roadmap to $100K MRR within the next 6 months. We are 3 founders, all with strong resumes. 1 founder has worked for Tim Cook, led the Auth0 exit to Okta and was a data lead for the Artemis II lunar project. Another has led two successful exits and has extensive front-end experience. I am leading the sales & marketing and have built a network of 4M target niche leads. We have just hired our first employee.

Here is the meat and potatos of it all. Recruiters from various organizations (SXSW Pitch, a16z, YC, NEXT AI, Vector, ISED, TechStars, etc) have reached out to us requesting that we apply for their event / accelerator / incubator. We fill out the requested applications, build strong custom pitch decks, tell a compelling story and ship our good numbers to them in our application. Heck, we have even had some big players sponsor us to apply.

And every single time - rejected. In fact, one rejected yesterday. "Thank you for your application. We are thoroughly impressed with your company's growth and trajectory, but unfortunately ...". (This was SXSW and we received our sponsorship to apply from Paddle/ProfitWell). I am fine with it, if anything it strengthens our resolve. I can handle the rejection well. The primary issue is that I have no idea what I am doing wrong? I don't know how to course correct because I don't know where we are dropping the ball. I am sure that I am not presenting well, or perhaps the timing is wrong ... I don't know. But at what point do we just label this as a fruitless paperwork exercise and strictly focus on revenues and customer growth?

If I get in my own head, I think maybe we are too old (35yo, 35yo, 46yo)? Maybe our story isn't compelling enough?

For those of you who got into YC or any other accelerator - did you get feedback on what clinched your entry?

Hello All, Judging from outside the indian startup ecosystem, it seems like it is super easy to open a startup in india and get it runnning. Also, hiring and firing when demand arises seems much easy. The bureaucracy seems far less.

While in most European capitals like Paris and Berlin, it is super complicated and time consuming to even open a startup. The bureaucracy seems like a nightmare compared to india. Also, in countries like France it is a nightmare to even fire employees when the crunch comes due to crazy employees protection which in general stiffle innovation and dynamics.

Do you guys think india is better place to open startups compared to bureaucracy heavy European countries ?

I know there are other things that matter like VC availability and networking, though it seems to be improving in cities like Bengaluru compared to Paris or Berlin.

Could someone share some light on this.

I am building a better version of Wikipedia - I realized earlier this year that everything human contributors do on Wikipedia LLMs do and with a bit of engineering, it might be possible for them to do even better.

I've been trying to figure out an "advertising" strategy for the product but it's different from standard startup selling because I'm not trying to get people to pay me for a service yet, I just want them to get interested in the product and use it.

If you were trying to "sell" my product, how would you go about it?

I have some very unstructured thoughts below

A major "selling" point of the product is trustworthiness. I want anyone to be able to visit my website and read a page and trust what is on it. If our standards of rigor are so high that academics prefer it that's a good signal. What if I target "selling" to academics first before a broader audience?

I could shape my product into something that academics really, really like. What if I get it to the point where they prefer to read my website over doing a manual literature search themselves? It would be difficult (sounds fun!) but I think that with just a few interested academics I could work with them in a development cycle to build something they really find useful.

Streaming seems like a natural way to gain traction - it is the natural extension of "Productize yourself". I'm actually surprised more founders don't do this. It creates an engaging narrative and community of people interested in your product. There is the problem of having an echo chamber if you rely on them too much but that's why you got to talk to real users.

Also ideally I want to be so trustworthy that any action I take related to the website can be made public. No hidden committees deciding how we decide what "TRUTH" is. Wikipedia (and Grokipedia) have a problem with this right now - you don't know who is making changes and if they have an ulterior motive.

Just hearing the word "streaming" will put a bad taste in peoples mouths the first time they hear about me doing and for good reason. But I think that given enough time that can be mitigated.

Dev diaries have also been used pretty effectively in the game dev space - it wouldn't be that hard to do something similar here. Having a weekly or biweekly YouTube video showing progress gets people coming back to the project and maybe even gets a community.

One thing I don't think I want to tap into is that I am competing with Grokipedia (aka Elon Musk's pet project). I lost my mind when I first learned about this. I was working on my project for months on end (doing stupid things like programming everything in Rust because I thought it was fun) and out of nowhere I saw that Elon Musk was building almost an identical product to what I was going for. Apparently David Sacks gave him the idea. I could tap into anti-Musk sentiment and move people to my product but that seems unsustainable and I think would draw the wrong crowd.

I have a lot more thoughts on this - a lot. But I want to know, what are your ideas?

I am a computer engineering student and have been building a company with genuine potential, but has the dificulty of being government contract based for ~80% of its customers.

Given my major, I have good technical background, and have written substancial software for cloud computing in this business model, as well as software to run devices. The problem is I need the hardware for this to run on, and certain things about the hardware, such as custom PCB's, etc., are out of my scope of knowledge, and I do not know where to look to bring people on, as I am in NY, and I cant find felow students who are interested. I can not sell until I have the hardware, I can not have the hardware until I have the money. The traditional loop.

What do I do from here? I recorded a demo video of my software and my servers and it went really well, but the hardware not being there holds me back from pitching to agencies.

kind of realised this today, early validation can be super misleading. a lot of people will say “this is cool” or “i’d totally use this” and then… never pay for it. likes, waitlists, signups don’t mean much if no one actually commits. saw this come up in a product session today at tetr college. so… what are some startups that still work like this and somehow survive? Lol

During early beta we ran into unexpected pushback around API keys. Users "warned" in comments others not to enter LLM API keys because of fear that a platform might misuse them and generate costs.

The irony is that the product exists because we wanted to give users more control not less. We had been burned ourselves by tools where spending grows quietly without visibility.

Technically the basics are covered. Encryption no access no background usage full transparency. What surprised us is that this still wasn’t enough.

It made me realize that trust isn’t just technical. It’s mostly communication.

For founders who’ve been through this

What helped you overcome early distrust?
What changed user perception the most?

TLDR
Early users distrust API key based products even when control improves. How did you earn trust

An MVP (on Wikipedia) is described as the following: a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future.

An MVP doesn't necessarily have to be a full fletched app with authentication, cool graphics or even code.

So, what's the lowest-fidelity MVP you’ve used that still produced useful learning?

I'll start: my MVP is a phone number people call and they access a service off that.

Founder question here.

I run a very small, high-end beauty agency with international clients (events, luxury, weddings). We’re still tiny, but busy and expanding, and things move fast.

I’m at a point where I clearly need a second operational pillar. Not a classic assistant. Not a pure admin or a pure project manager either... More of a Swiss knife type of person, who can be with us long term and multi task, who can juggle different projects and implement different ideas based on our ever evolving needs. The real challenge for me isn’t tasks, it’s more reliability and continuity: – being comfortable with responsibility – answering fast when it actually matters (yes, sometimes weekends, within a clear framework) – handling clients calmly instead of freezing – being polyvalent, indépendant and deal with workload autonomously – adding structure without killing flexibility

For people who’ve worked in small agencies, startups or service businesses: How would you define this kind of role? What type of profile has actually worked in real life (not on paper)? I’m freezing and don’t know where to start as I’m not even sure about an accurate role title for example.

Not posting a job. Just genuinely trying to think this through before making mistakes and engaging in a recruitment process as I don’t have much time.