r/Entrepreneur

I straight up email manufacturers, I even use their contact form, and now I started calling, and half these places do not answer and do not respond to the voicemails.

Why is it so difficult to get in contact with manufacturers to develop a product or private label.

I’m just ranting because I have been ghosted SO many times on top of not even getting responses.

I even buy the product to sample, as this one place recommended, and then I must’ve said something (just inquired about the sample size discrepancy), and boom, blacklisted.

I have had enough.

But yet I keep going!! It’s been over a year of trying to make a place work.

You submit a proposal and then find out you’re competing against several other companies.

At that point, the price is already on the table. What have people actually done afterward that helped them win the business without immediately offering a discount.

Did you follow up and reinforce something from the original conversation? Offer another meeting? Clarify the scope? Provide additional proof that you could deliver? Or just give the prospect space to make the decision?

I think there’s a tendency to assume that if multiple companies are bidding, lowering the price gives you a better chance. But I’m not convinced that’s always the best move.

For those selling B2B services, what has actually helped you better position yourself after the proposal was already submitted?

I am working on videos, it's been around 6 months now. 

During this time, I have come across founders contemplating that they think they should be doing more videos. But I don’t seem to know how? 

As video production costs a bit, I'm not sure if it moves the needle on the retention graph. One major reason for my curiosity is, these founders don’t seem to demonstrate or share about their video production system and what actually works for them. 

Like are they agents? or they have hired a launch guy or agency? 

Because engagement is not a metric I want to target as a Saas owner. I want to know what is working for others. Like actually working, not 4.5M views with no notable increase in signups. 

So, what have you experienced in the real world? 

• Is video content bringing you more signups or increasing retention? Or is it just something you’re jumping into like a “me too” thing.
• What type of video has worked or is working best for you? Like launch videos, product demo/walkthrough, founder-led videos, short form ads, short form feature reveal, or anything else that i don’t know about? 
• What’s wasting most of your budget in video content? Whether time or money, or both. 
• If you have mastered the process and found something repeatable that you do, what does it look like?

 

Looking for insights from those ahead of me.

 
Happy to share what I’ve been seeing too if it’s useful. :)

Genuinely asking. Every founder I talk to at 30-150 employees says this, but half the time what’s actually broken is that three teams have three different definitions of the ICP, or the agency running outbound owns all the data. RevOps gets blamed for problems that are really ownership problems. Anyone seen it go the other way, where RevOps really was the fix?

I keep running into this while building software for healthcare, and i’m curious how other founders have handled it.

on paper, things like eligibility checks, prior auth, claim follow-ups and denials all seem pretty repeatable.

then you talk to five clinics and somehow discover eight different workflows.

one clinic handles eligibility inside its EHR. another has someone manually checking multiple payer portals. home health prior auth is completely different from cardiology or dental. some customers want the whole process automated, while others just want one painful step fixed.

then there are all the random exceptions.

half the time, the real workflow isn’t documented anywhere. it just lives in the head of one employee who has been doing it for years and knows what to do when something breaks.

my first reaction was basically, fine, we’ll add more settings, integrations and rules.

but i’m starting to wonder whether “highly configurable SaaS” eventually just becomes custom software wearing a SaaS hat.

every new customer needs discovery, workflow mapping, setup, integrations and some special thing that apparently nobody else needs.

so i guess the options are:

1. go very narrow and make customers adapt to the product
2. accept that software plus services is the actual business model
3. build reusable workflow blocks and configure them differently for each customer

the third option sounds best in theory, but also feels like the easiest way to build something insanely complicated.

for anyone who has built vertical SaaS, where did you draw the line?

when did customization become a real moat, and when was it just your SaaS company slowly turning into an agency?

My idea is to produce podcasts and content for small and medium companies. The model: one 45 minutes recorded conversation with the founder per month, and I turn it into everything they publish for the next 30 days: the episode itself, short form clips, an article, LinkedIn posts, a newsletter.

I have no portfolio yet and every prospect asks for samples before they'll talk price. So my plan is to record and produce the first episode for free fully delivered and then ask whether they want to continue at €1,200/month.

Two things I'd like a reality check on:

1. The free first episode: it costs me roughly half a day. My thinking is that it removes the "can I see examples" wall and lets the work sell itself. But I'm aware this can backfire (people take the free thing and disappear or it anchors the service as low value). Has anyone run this as an entry motion for a retainer service? What conversion did you actually see, and did it attract the wrong kind of client?
2. One price, no tiers: I'm considering a single €1,200/month option instead of good/better/best. Simpler to sell and it stops the race to the cheapest tier, but I might be leaving money on the table with clients who'd have paid more.

For context I'm solo, doing this alongside a part-time contract, so I can realistically handle 4-6 clients. Not looking to build an agency.

Any hard feedback welcome, especially from people who've sold monthly retainers to SMBs.

Hey everyone!I have a small business and I am trying to figure out the best way to hire people internationally.

I run a digital marketing consultancy and I’ve been working with clients in different countries. I want to bring on some remote team members to handle various tasks like content creation and account management. But I feel like the whole process of hiring in other countries sounds a bit complicated with all the local laws, taxes and compliance stuff.

I was searching for ways and learned about EOR services that handle all the legal side of things for you, like payroll, contracts, compliance, etc. I feel like it’s a good solution but I am not sure what to use because there are tons of options out there. 

Okay, this post will be a little bit of a hot take on the topic of entreprenuership but I recently struggled too much with myself and I finally got one legit answer. We must copy old timers. Let me explain.

Today, most young entrepreneurs think if they describe their idea to Claude Code and deploy it on render, they're the next billion dollar company. But I personally look at Claude Code (however I'm more of a DeepSeek guy) or render like a mechanic looks at his pliers or screwdrivers. Those are tools not guarantees of success.

A screwdriver, makes it easier to connect pieces together, AI makes it easier to design a web page. Anyway, I was thinking like the level of dedication which results in success is like old timer entrepreneurs. Look at Thomas Edison, Henry Ford (okay, do not look at his opinions about Jewish people...), Karl Benz and see how dedicated they were.

Today we have best tools, but worst levels of dedication. People made literal computers or cars in their garages, and we still are struggling making a simple web page and market it to make one paid customer.

P.S: This is thinking out loud, but I personally believe copying an old timer business person is still a way to go. The universe rewards your systems and dedication, not ideas you even don't bother to write down.

I have been watching a lot of Starter Story videos lately, and there’s one thing I can’t really figure out.
I keep seeing people making apps that do $20K, $30K, $80K/month, sometimes even way more. And when they explain how they built them, the tech stack doesn’t seem that crazy anymore.
I saw one of the breakdowns where they were using Claude Code, and I think the Claude Code subscription was around $200/month. Then they had things like Supabase, RevenueCat, a paywall tool, etc. The whole tech stack was actually explained step by step.
And that’s what got me thinking:
Can someone who isn’t a professional developer actually build a fully functional subscription-based mobile app this way?
I’m not talking about just making a basic prototype that looks good.
I mean a real app with:
iOS + Android
backend/database
login/auth
subscriptions
RevenueCat
paywalls
payments
analytics
all the stuff needed to actually publish it on the App Store and Play Store
I have made a website using Gemini before, so I’m not completely clueless about AI coding. But I’ve never built a mobile app, and I’ve definitely never built a subscription app.
I also have an app idea that I genuinely think has a lot of potential. I don’t want to share the idea publicly right now.
The only problem is that I can’t really afford the Claude Code subscription at the moment.
So I’m wondering if anyone here already has a Claude Code subscription and would be willing to let me use it for a while to try this experiment.
I’m not saying “give me your subscription and I’ll make a million dollars” 😂. I honestly don’t know if this will work.
I just want to try building the app and see how far I can actually get with AI coding without having a professional developer background.
If it actually works and the app starts making money, I’m open to giving the person who helped me a percentage/share. I can’t promise a specific percentage right now because I don’t even know if I’ll be able to build the thing successfully 😅, but if someone is genuinely interested, we can figure something out beforehand.
So yeah, I’m basically looking for someone who already has Claude Code and is interested in trying this with me.
And if you’ve already built and launched an app this way without being a professional coder, I’d really like to hear how it went.
Is this actually realistic in 2026, or do those Starter Story videos make it look easier than it really is?

Looking to hire, get hired, or find a collaborator? Post what you're offering or what you need. Keep it brief: who you are, what you do, and how to reach you. No spamming.

A couple weeks ago, I made a post titled ‘Most of you shouldn’t be entrepreneurs’

And holy shit, so many of you got triggered.

The DMs are disturbing and hilarious. What the fuck guys?

Ironically, those responses kinda proved the point I was trying to make.

Think about it-

I’m some asshole on the internet. You don’t know me. My opinion has absolutely zero bearing on what you’re capable of doing with your life.

So if some dickhead writing a Reddit post can change your emotional grounding point and genuinely get under your skin, it’s worth asking yourself WHY.

Because entrepreneurship is going to hit you infinitely harder than anything I could ever write on Reddit.

Business will gut punch you so hard it’ll feel like the hand went through your stomach and ripped out your fucking intestines..

You’ll have people tell you you’re an idiot, you’ll lose money. You’ll throw stuff at the wall and not have it stick no matter how much you try.

Do this long enough and it’s a guarantee that you’ll make decisions that turn out to be catastrophically wrong.

You’ll work your ass off on something that completely fails.

And then you might have to keep your head down and ignore the world. And wake up the next morning to calmly do the same boring tasks you’ve been doing for the last 500 days.

That’s the game.

And behind it is emotional regulation: one of the most underrated skills in business. That’s what allows you to keep functioning when everything around you is going to shit.

And that includes not giving a fuck about somebody else’s opinion of what you’re capable of.

It shouldn’t matter what I think or what some loser Redditor thinks.

If the literal Pope himself walked into your house and told you, ‘You’re never going to make it as an entrepreneur,’ your internal response should basically be:

“Fuck off.”

That’s the mentality. It’s a fuck you, watch me type of energy.

So if my original post pissed you off, maybe don’t immediately dismiss that feeling.

Dig into it.

Why did some stranger’s opinion have that much power over your emotional state?

Because if a stupid Reddit post can knock you off center, what happens when some real shit goes down?

Looking for some tips.

I’ll keep this short. Title essentially says it.

If you see early signs of disrespect and hate, envy, whatever - just bad energy.

I can promise you one thing:

It only gets worse the more money you make.

If someone shows you who they are, believe them.

One more casualty because of AI.

Acc to The Wall Street Journal, shortly after scoring a multimillion-dollar book deal for a debut author, the novelist’s agents pulled the plug. They could no longer support the project, they said, because they couldn’t verify that the book had been wholly written by their client.

The Wall Street Journal Link iin comments.

Greetings, I want to share my experience with running a boring business specifically a Landscape construction business, In the past Year I have grown it from essentially 0 to making 35-45k a month consistently during the season with one other employee.

All my equipment is paid off in cash and there is a very steady lead flow of referrals, organic advertising ie yard signs door hangers.

In my experience if you pick one niche, put in the reps consistently, do good honest work the results and money will follow, now days many people over looking starting a unsexy business but there is a ton of opportunity in the trades especially with an aging population.

Age is irrelevant, just want to show you aren’t too old or too young, I started when I was 13 and I am only 19 now, You can do anything you put your mind to.

Cheers fellow entrepreneurs😎

New to entrepreneurship or just starting out? This is your space. Ask the questions you're afraid to ask elsewhere.

Experienced folks, jump in and share what you wish someone had told you early on.

I've been trying to reach out to agencies to help get a better understand of their operations but I havent gotten a single response back yet and I dont know what im doing wrong. I dont spam the same email to 200 diff agencies but I create a personalized one based on what they do and what projects they've completed but I still dont get any answers. I also include incentive for them to reply but nothing.

What am I doing wrong or how can I change things to improve my response rate?

I never imagined I'd come as far as I have, but suddenly things are happening. I'm closing deal after deal, but my line of work is usually a 1-time arrangement and most of my leads are produced by me doing a lot of work to generate. It isn't perfect, but we still had a wildly successful summer that surpassed all my expectations. We now have enough work lined up to sustain our operation through the end of the year. Still, the minute I close one client, I still feel intense pressure to find the next client.

Looking for the rec you'd love to read for the first time again. One that really changed your trajectory.

I mentor people because I’ve built businesses, screwed things up, rebuilt, scaled and learned a lot the expensive way.

But here’s what I’ve realised:

Experience doesn’t mean you’ve finished learning.

I might know something about sales, business or leadership that saves you 12 months.

You might know something about AI, technology, investing or an industry I’ve never touched that completely changes how I think.

That’s the kind of connection I’m looking for.

Not guru and student.

Two ambitious people exchanging unfair advantages.

Sometimes the mentor becomes the mentee.

And I reckon that’s exactly how it should be.