r/StartupsHelpStartups

🇬🇧** E**N

Hi everyone,

I’m currently working on my Master’s thesis in Finance and I’m looking for startup founders, angel investors, VCs, or people working in incubators or accelerators who would be willing to have a quick 20–30 minute chat.

My research is about how startups fund their growth and the decisions that help them scale successfully.

If you’re interested, or if you know someone who might be, I’d really appreciate a message.

Thanks a lot for your help!

🇫🇷** F**R

Bonjour à tous,

Je travaille actuellement sur mon mémoire de master en finance et je cherche des fondateurs de start-up, des Business Angels, des VC ou des personnes travaillant dans un incubateur ou un accélérateur qui accepteraient d’échanger avec moi pendant une vingtaine de minutes.

J’étudie la manière dont les start-up financent leur croissance et les décisions qui les aident à se développer durablement.

Si vous êtes disponible, ou si vous connaissez quelqu’un qui pourrait m’aider, n’hésitez pas à m’envoyer un message.

Merci beaucoup pour votre aide !

Hi everyone,

‎

‎I'm 21 and work full-time in finance, but I've always wanted to build something of my own. The problem is that I have no idea where to start, and the more I read online, the more overwhelmed I get.

‎One thing that's always stuck with me is how difficult it's been to find shoes that actually fit my feet comfortably. I even tried starting a small shoe reselling page on Instagram, but it never took off. Looking back, I think I focused on selling instead of understanding the problem or the customer.

‎

‎Now I'm trying to start from scratch and learn the right way.

‎How do founders know if a problem is actually worth building a business around? What should someone with no startup experience focus on first? And how did you find mentors or communities that helped you grow?

‎

‎I'm not looking for someone to hand me a business idea or a shortcut. I just want to learn how to think like an entrepreneur and build something that genuinely helps people.

‎

‎I'd really appreciate any advice or stories from your own journey. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

For about $0.01 each, I'm gathering leads overnight. I drag a space on the map, specify by industry, keyword, name, business, and watch it work. It collects companies and individuals at those companies (or one or the other). I get names, emails, phone numbers, socials, and more all in one shot. I can set it to auto mode and it does this while I sleep...

The tool is free, but you have to obviously pay for the api usage...

It automatically plugs these individuals/companies into my custom CRM that features deal tracking and automated sales guidance/actions/scripts/messages.

Have a good day and keep going!

I'm conducting research to understand the biggest operational and workflow challenges businesses face today.

This isn't a sales survey—I'm trying to identify real business problems that current software and AI tools still don't solve well.

It takes about 5–7 minutes, and your responses will directly shape what we build next.

If you're a founder, CTO, engineering leader, operations manager, or business owner, I'd really appreciate your input.

Survey: https://forms.gle/UJiani5sSJaKM1Xd7

Thank you!

Recently came across a company called Paires. They seem to be a tech company focusing on introductions. I am raising around currently, and I started talking to them as part of my due diligence. I wanted to come on here and ask for people's opinion who have either worked with them or work for them. Anything you guys can share would be helpful. I have looked at other tools as well just not sure what else is out there besides the traditional things like crunchbook and pitchbook and manually doing it.

I’m a social worker based in Zimbabwe with on-the-ground experience. I’ve seen firsthand how hard it is for people in distress to find the right help, and how independent social workers struggle to reach those who need them most. The system is broken, and I believe technology built thoughtfully can fix a big part of it.

I’ve spent months building on this idea and have been stuck especially with the technical side.

But I’m not a developer. I can design the workflow, bring the networks, and ensure the solution works within our local context. What I need is a technical cofounder who can build the first version: setting up servers, integrating APIs, handling payment systems, and creating a clean backend that social workers can actually use. It’s not a massive platform, just a focused, reliable tool that connects people to care.

If you’re a software engineer who enjoys working with APIs, databases, and backend systems, has built or wants to build something that makes a tangible difference, is open to working remotely and partnering for equity (this is not a freelance gig), and cares about improving social welfare in underserved communities, then I’d love to hear from you.

I’m based in Zimbabwe, but you can be anywhere. I’m ready to start building, and I’ll share full details in a private conversation with serious candidates.

Drop a comment or DM with a bit about yourself, what you’ve built, and why this project speaks to you. If you have a LinkedIn profile, please include the link as well. This is a true partnership; I’m looking for someone who wants to build and own this with me, not just code for a paycheck.

Let’s see if we’re a fit.

Need help: I’m a founder raising for a pre-seed, pre-revenue startup. Live product, real users, engagement beating benchmarks. We’re a marketplace where the core behavior is new, so part of the raise funds building the habit itself, not just acquiring users into an existing one.

The struggle: every “no” is “more traction.” But a new-behavior marketplace needs acquisition spend to hit critical mass before revenue, which is what the raise funds.

Investors want the outcome the investment is supposed to produce.

For anyone who’s been through it:

1.	Chicken-and-egg (the real one): Pre-revenue, thesis is building a new habit at scale. Does nobody invest until revenue shows? Or is there a way to frame pre-revenue marketplace traction that lands at pre-seed? What did your “yes” look like?  
2.	investor Outreach: Finding thesis- and stage-aligned investors and getting to a real conversation. Tools like Raisi got me intros, not momentum. Intro-to-pitch is where I get stuck.  
3.	Legit fundraising support: Fundraising help (consultants, boutique accelerators to a certain extent) actually worth it? Not the “blast your deck to 500 investors” crowd.  
4.	Daily grind: what’s the day-to-day like? I’ve been researching left and right, following advice that I see online, but most are non-responsive, they say we’re off-thesis, or require more traction. what changed between the rounds that stalled and the one that closed?

Happy to share more via DMs.

i want to develop an application for entrepreneur and solopreneurs to connect each other and has disucussions and have collabroations for mutual benfits how is it , and is it have demand yet

So hi guys.I'm Roy,the cofounder of the first space club of its sort in any public school in the entire country(Kenya,East Africa),and am here to call for all those space nerds out there on the continent.

In the wake of creating the space club,first of its kind,i saw it fit to begin an online community and future startup of Space engineering teen enthusiats in Africa who will,together with me and my team,work together in building and coming up with Aerospace solitions for our continent and the world.

So ill start with creating a subreddit then we could work from there peeps,you could also give me ideas on this however youd like this to go in achieving our mission,after all we're one(you could dm me directly).Under what i presume will be our parent company in the early stages,LEO SKY AFRICA(a company in kenya focused on space education to youth in africa,you can go check out their website)(not to mention we have some contact with the Kenya space agency we are yet to nurture)ive contacted a friend of mine in Ghana hopefully wherever you guys come from could help us with that too,the could come to your country and help building substancial space clubs for all you enthusiasts,the CEO...Mr.Kimani is super charismatic about Africa and space,trust me!...we've already began this seed planting all over our own country already,but its taking time for sure.

The name of the subreddit is gonna be r/sayari_ aerospace....lemme go put it up right now.So hope you guys like this initiative,I solemnly welcome all u guys to this task we'll take upon ourselves to build the African aerospace industry ground up and probably get even more of our enthusiastic friends on the continent. Thanks https://www.reddit.com/r/sayari_aerospace/s/vKwc4Zz388

Context switching is the silent productivity killer. Every time you move from email to chat to a project tool and back, your brain resets. I’ve started batching similar tasks and using platforms that connect communications instead of separating them. For example, keeping emails, related files, and tasks tied to the same conversation reduces the mental reload time. It’s also helped my work-life balance — fewer loose ends at 9 PM. What strategies or tools have worked for you?

We all know the pain — you pour weeks into your pitch deck, send it to dozens of investors, and get... crickets. Or the classic “not the right fit right now” with zero explanation.

No insight into what actually landed, what confused people, or what red flags killed your chances.

So I’m curious — how are other founders getting useful feedback on their pitches?

• Cold outreach to investors?
• Friends & family (brutally honest ones)?
• Accelerators / incubators?
• Paid coaches / consultants?
• Online communities or “roast my deck” threads?
• AI tools?
• Something else?

What’s worked best for you? What hasn’t? Any horror stories or game-changing moments where feedback completely leveled up your deck and fundraising?

Would love to hear real experiences (especially from anyone who’s recently raised or iterated multiple times).

Thanks in advance!

(For context — I’m building something to help close this exact feedback gap, so all input is gold.)

We're both 19-year-old BTech students (currently about to enter Semester 3) and have been building our startup alongside college.

Recently, we got accepted into the next cohort of Founder Startup House by 2047 Ventures in Bangalore. It's a 3-month residential program where we'd get to live with other founders, work on our startup full-time, and be surrounded by mentors and investors. For us, it's a huge opportunity.

The problem is that the program overlaps almost entirely with our Semester 3.

We're now stuck between two choices:

• Stay in college, attend classes, and continue building the startup on the side.
• Go all-in on the startup house, potentially missing a semester or finding some way to manage the academic consequences.

We genuinely believe in what we're building, but we also don't want to make a reckless decision that we'll regret later.

Has anyone here been in a similar situation? If you chose your startup over college (or vice versa), how did it work out? Is taking a semester hit for an opportunity like this worth it?

We'd really appreciate advice from founders, students, or anyone who's had to make a similar trade-off.

Quick context on where i am. I build AI agents that take over the repetitive operational work inside a business.

Right now i have one agent live for a ~$4m skincare brand in India. It handles about 90% of their AP 3-way match. It is in production and doing real work daily. Automated the work of 4 humans, each doing 4hr work daily! The team is very happy with the work and we already have 2 workflows in discussion to be automated (started development on one last week).

The plan from here is to go deep on one vertical. Nail a handful of use cases, then build a whole stack of agents for that same vertical and own it properly. That seems to be the only moat right now given the advancement of AI!

I am a tech founder, and am confident that I can build anything. But one thing that i cannot do is sell!! And hence am looking for someone who can do that.

About me:

• ~2 decades of pure tech, from linux kernel development all the way to building AI agents today
• built 3 products from scratch that eventually got acquired, and 3 others that did not work out (learned more from those actually)
• confident building anything on the tech side
• i will own tech / team / product end to end

Who i am looking for:

• someone who can own the entire business side, the sales / marketing / and the ops that comes with it
• someone who knows the ins and outs of his vertical
• someone with a few high-profile connects, so we can close some early deals

The early-deals part matters a lot, if we can get a few big customers initially, its easy to convince the mid-market/smb.

Open to negotiate on salary/equity.

If this sounds interesting (or if you have any advice for me), please drop a comment or DM me.