r/Femalefounders

Building Relio made one thing obvious: a great product isn't enough without great distribution.

I'm looking for a non-technical co-founder to own GTM, sales, partnerships, and fundraising .(Equity only)

If you're hungry to build a category-defining AI company from zero, DM me for more details

I've seen a number of posts from people looking for technical co-founders. I've got one - he's my romantic AND business partner, and has 30 years of programming experience. We've been working together on an app for 6 months (I'll post here when we launch).

He told me he gets pings on LinkedIn from people looking for technical help all the time. None of them pay, and none of them have MVPs. "At least vibe code something!" he said.

I find I agree with him - to be taken seriously, you need to have something that shows you've put some work into your idea. If you want a tech person to think your idea is good enough to work on it for cheap or free, you need to show it's good by putting hours in first.

I'll also add that I've been to several AI and startup networking events in my city and there are plenty of out of work coders who are project-curious. I bet those would be great places to show off a prototype or MVP to recruit someone. There are a million on Meetup - even virtual ones. Give 'em a try!

I’m looking for honest advice from founders who have been through this.

I’m building a B2C femtech product. I have angel investment in place, a validated problem space, beta users ready, and a strong GTM/customer understanding. My background is in growth, ops, and strategy at Silicon Valley tech companies, so I’m not coming at this from “I have an idea, someone build it for me.” I know the market, the user, the distribution problem, and the pain point deeply.

But I’ll be honest. I think I’ve been a little brainwashed by the YC-style advice that I NEED a technical co-founder before launching.

The technical co-founder search has been exhausting.

A few patterns I’m seeing:

1. Since this is femtech, I initially preferred a woman co-founder. But the pool of senior technical women interested in early-stage femtech is painfully small.
2. It’s surprisingly hard to get men who haven’t experienced hormonal or metabolic health issues to truly understand why this problem matters. Some intellectually get it, but the urgency is not always there.
3. When I do find technically strong people, many are very passive. I understand that conviction takes time, but if someone agrees to a work trial, I expect some real energy and ownership. Instead, it often feels like I’m trying to drag excitement out of them.
4. Most technical people say, “This is technically easy to build; GTM is the hard part.” Fair enough. But then they still want cash comp from the angel money, equal equity, and less downside risk, while I’m carrying the fundraising, customer validation, GTM, product direction, and early operating risk.

I’m starting to wonder if I should stop searching for the mythical perfect technical co-founder, hire a strong founding engineer, launch the beta, prove traction, and revisit the co-founder question later.

I know the standard advice is that B2C is hard, femtech is hard, and you want a true technical partner early. I get that. But at what point does waiting for the “right” technical co-founder become more damaging than just moving?

Would love advice from founders who have faced this decision.

• Did you wait for a technical co-founder?
• Did you hire a founding engineer instead?
• Did you regret either path?

And for non-technical founders who raised or built the first version without a technical co-founder, what would you do differently?

So yeah pretty much going through the ups and downs of being a female solo founder and this week has been the most devastating week I've had in a while last week I was very excited I had my first free trial person sign up and I was talking to a developer who could help me build it MVP I even offered to pay and they agreed to the payment when I went to go ahead and pay the fee they completely ghosted me it's pretty much been a week since I've heard from them. They sent me some of their demo projects and they weren't even working. Out of five of the products four of them didn't even work now they're not responding to any of my messages. The person who used my free trial went ahead and ghosted me they said they just weren't interested in my project anymore. Honestly I'm really discouraged last week was supposed to be my transformation week but nothing has worked out.

The top that off every person I tried to make a partnership with has pretty much ghosted me others just kindly rejected. So yeah pretty much I guess my original idea was just terrible. To be honest I'm wondering if this entrepreneurial thing is for me I've never had a week this bad before I've never talked to so many people and they all straight up rejected me all in the same week. I've talked to a lot of people trying to build partnerships or equity into my company but they all pretty much said no. It was polite so I'm not angry about it but it's absolutely devastating

TL;DR: Interviewed 50+ women about their gym experiences, came up with a women-first fitness startup, but a VC said the TAM is too small. Am I solving the wrong problem?

This idea actually came from a very personal experience.

A couple of years ago, I joined a gym for the first time. I was excited, I wanted to get stronger and make fitness a part of my life.
Instead, I spent the first few weeks feeling incredibly uncomfortable.

People stared. And not just the occasional glance I remember men old enough to be my father’s age openly gawking while I was trying to work out. Male trainers would also openly flirt, which made things even more uncomfortable. Whenever I spoke about it, the advice was always, “Change your gym or change your timings.”

Ironically, I’m also someone who loves being cheered on. If someone celebrates me hitting a new PR, I absolutely love it. There were men at the gym who genuinely encouraged me too.

But there’s a huge difference between feeling supported and feeling observed.

That experience made me wonder how many other women felt the same way.

Over the past year, I spoke to 50+ women across Delhi who regularly go to the gym. Some common themes kept coming up:

- Feeling uncomfortable because of staring, unsolicited advice, or trainers crossing professional boundaries.
- Personal information being shared with trainers without consent.
- Feeling intimidated while strength training.
- Existing women’s gyms focusing mostly on yoga, Pilates, or Zumba instead of strength training.
- Wanting community, accountability, and a space where they could actually enjoy working out.

That led me to the idea of building a women fitness gym with all-female trainers, strength-focused programs, community events, and eventually a tech layer.

Last year I got a chance to pitch the idea to a VC.

His feedback:
- TAM for women-only gyms is too small in India.
- Gyms are capital-intensive and hard to scale.
- Validate demand through offline camps first.
- Women-only spaces get attention easily but are difficult to scale.

Since then I’ve been wondering if I’m thinking about the wrong product.
Maybe the opportunity isn’t a gym. Maybe it’s software, community, or something completely different.

Would love brutally honest feedback from founders and investors:

- Is this a VC-scale problem?
- If you were building in women’s fitness today, what would you build?
- What’s the biggest flaw in my thinking?
- What would convince you this could become a $100M+ business?

Not looking for validation. I’d genuinely love to know where this idea breaks.

I run a US-based/fractional executive assistant staffing company, women-owned, and last year we made two pricing decisions I keep getting asked about, so I figured I'd write them down somewhere public in case they're useful to anyone else thinking through similar issues.

Most of what gets written about the gender pay gap is aimed at Fortune 500s or governments. Useful, sure, but not exactly actionable when you're a small-ish business owner trying to decide what to charge. I wanted something we could actually do at our size.

So we anchored two decisions to one stat. McKinsey estimates women in the US won't reach pay parity with men until 2072. That's not a typo. 2072.

First one: every woman in a leadership role gets a standing 20.72% discount on our EA support. We could have rounded to 20%. But we didn't, and the odd number turned out to be my favorite part - roughly every person who sees it asks why it's 20.72 and not 20, which hands me a thirty-second window to explain exactly what it's tied to. A nice way to get the word out.

Second one: most of our EAs are women, and a lot of them are moving into this work from a completely different career. We price their support at $45/hour. That number does two things at once. It's low enough that more leaders can actually afford to bring on help, and it's sustainable enough that more women can build a real career in the field instead of treating it as a side gig.

None of this is charity and both decisions make plain business sense for us. They just also happen to say what we care about out loud, where a customer can see it. Our prices are one of the few places that we can make our values visible.

If anyone's built something similar into how they price or operate, I'd genuinely love to hear it. I love both of our initiatives but also want to find more!

(If you know anyone who needs an EA or is looking to break into the EA career, please DM me and I'd love to help them out)

Hi all new member here! I have wanted to start a business for a while and finally feel like I have the confidence in myself and an idea I’m passionate about. I’ve had ideas before but gotten discouraged or overwhelmed. I really want to go all in on this one.

Looking for advice-

Have any of you validated a consumer app idea before building it? What did you do first?
How do you tell the difference between “I personally hate this” and “this is a real market pain point”?
For consumer products, what signals would make you think an idea is worth pursuing?

What early mistakes should I avoid as a non-technical founder exploring a consumer-tech idea? I’m going to try my hand at vibe coding, when should I start to bring others in? UX / UI and function are critical components of my idea

Do you have any book recs or podcasts I should start with as I build?

Lately, I've been asking myself this question, what actually keeps me moving?

Building a startup is exciting, but it's also full of setbacks, self-doubt, and days when it feels like nothing is working. I've realized that what keeps me going isn't just the idea or the hope of making money, it's having a mission and a vision that I genuinely believe in.

My mission has become my compass. It reminds me why I started and helps me decide what deserves my time and what doesn't. It doesn't mean I can't pivot, but I try not to change direction just because things get difficult.

I'm curious how other women founders think about this.

What keeps you moving when building your business gets hard?

Solo founder, pre-seed, B2B product that helps teams train new hires on their operational workflows.

Starting point: I'm not the most connected person in the startup world. I don't have a deep bench of founder friends or old colleagues running companies I can tap. Cold outreach so far disappears into the void, my buyer sits at companies that get pitched constantly.

Extra wrinkle: my product can't do a self-serve free trial, someone at the company/ team has to actually decide to try it. So I need a yes from a decision-maker.

Design partner profile: US scaleups with customer-facing teams (CS, support, onboarding ops) that are constantly hiring and need to ramp these teams. Open to anyone with a fitting use case though, the goal right now is feedback.

So for founders who've done this:

• What was your strategy for finding and landing design partners?
• What was the ask that worked? Step by step if you're willing.
• And what turned out to be a waste of time?

Not promoting anything, just to learn from others.

A friend of mine was a beautician. She got an interview opportunity with the UN. She never went.

She said, “Majhi English bhagunach mala ghenar nahi,” which roughly translates to, “They'll reject me the moment they hear my English.” This happened around six years ago, but it has stayed with me since.

I'm an English teacher. I've taught public speaking, and most recently, professional communication at Thadomal Shahani Engineering College.

When I first started thinking about building an English-speaking community for women, I assumed the problem was English.

Now I'm not so sure.

I wonder how many opportunities we quietly walk away from before anyone else has the chance to say no. I wonder whether English is the real barrier, or whether it's just the most visible one.

Before I build anything, I'd like to have a conversation with 1–4 women and simply listen. No course to sell. No workshop to promote. Just an honest discussion about where communication, confidence, and opportunity intersect in our lives.

If it eventually becomes something meaningful, wonderful. If it doesn't, I hope we've had an interesting conversation and maybe made a few new friends along the way.

If this resonates with you, I'd love to hear from you. We can decide together whether we meet online or offline, depending on what works best for everyone.

Hi there.

In 2022 I was laid off with a 2 y/o and 11month old baby. At that time, I decided I would figure out how to start a company so that my family and kids wouldn't be dependent on the whims of a CEO/investors.

After a couple of years, I took the leap and started a business. First 12 months...a lot of pivots and then we got traction. For 6 months, grew from 1 to 18 clients...and then my partner was laid off from their job. For the next 6 months, I did my best but I didn't lean into sales and just struggled.

I've been job searching + speaking+ trying to get new clients for the last month. I'm staring down 7 months of cash runway. Partner has been unable to land a job...

With two kids under 5, I'm feeling the heat. I'm doing everything I can...and it feels like I'm staring into the abyss of financial failure. Growing up poor, I swore I would never do the same to my kids...and here I am realizing that I might be giving them the same future.

Our kids keep wanting things and I just have to tell them that I can't buy the pass to the pool, I can't buy the small toy, and, no, we can't get snow cones at the farmers market.

I need encouragement, hope... anything...

I've been really annoyed with my partner feeling like he's not doing enough...he thinks we'll be just fine, but I don't see him working his a off like I am.

I had interviews today and hoping I can land it to keep food on the table and our house.

I have been working for 5+ years in corporate and now decided to work for myself but as a female in indian family it becomes so difficult for reason mentioned below:

1. Parents think we don’t need it
2. We need to manage a lot of other things
3. Leaving them and staying alone to build for yourself isn’t an option

Life is unfair. Am i to the only one or someone else face this issue too.

hey everyone 👋
i’m building LinAI — an ai tool that helps people grow on linkedin.
i’d really appreciate it if a few of you could test it and tell me what you honestly think.
what was confusing?
what did you like?
what annoyed you?
would you actually use it?
don’t be nice 😭 i need real feedback.
thank you so much 🫶

Everyone talks about why being a female founder is harder.

Fundraising bias. Being underestimated. Walking into rooms where you're the only woman. We've all heard (and many of us have lived) those stories.

But after a startup event in Vienna, I started wondering about the opposite.

The event itself wasn't particularly useful for my stage. Investor dating was poorly matched, partnerships were too early for us, and we had already closed our fundraising. Honestly, I realized I didn't really need to be there. So I decided to squeeze every bit of value out of the trip.

I booked meetings with anyone I thought might matter in the next few years—people from large companies, potential strategic partners, anyone I could get in front of.

Almost every meeting was with a senior man.

The funny part? I was probably only 30% prepared.

Instead of pretending I knew everything, I leaned into curiosity. I asked questions. I admitted when I didn't know something. I built the conversation as we went.

And every single meeting turned out to be valuable.

It made me wonder whether this is one of the hidden advantages of being a female founder.

If I had walked into those meetings as a man, I feel like there would have been much more pressure to project certainty and expertise. As a woman, people seemed more willing to explain things, share advice, and genuinely help.

Maybe I'm completely wrong. Maybe it was just those particular people.

But it left me wondering: what advantages do female founders actually have that we don't talk about enough?

Is the saying “you have to spend money to make money” actually true? Can you share some cost‑effective ways you managed to build something from nothing? Many entrepreneurs start without savings or upfront capital. Should a person wait until they have something saved before starting a business? What free tools helped you launch and maintain your business until you began seeing a return on investment?

I built a product for moms. My core voice is strong and moms connect with it. But I am not able to understand how to figure out retention and giving enough value to drive people to use it more. Any thoughts guidance appreciated.