r/advancedentrepreneur

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.

We're a team of two building an AI startup, so we're wearing pretty much every hat imaginable. One minute we're doing product engineering, the next growth, customer calls, infrastructure, marketing, fundraising... you get the idea.

Lately we've realised our biggest bottleneck isn't actually execution, it's organising the work.

We're trying to keep all of this connected:

• Long-term vision (12-24 months)
• Quarterly objectives
• Product roadmap
• Active projects
• Kanban boards
• Documentation/wiki
• Meeting notes
• Short-term tasks
• Ideas/backlog

The problem is that they all influence each other, so when one changes, everything else should ideally stay in sync.

We've been trying to use Notion, but we've hit a few problems:

• It feels like you spend more time designing the workspace than actually planning.
• The flexibility becomes a downside because there are 100 different ways to structure everything.
• Relationships between databases become increasingly complicated.
• The UX starts feeling heavy once you have lots of projects and views.
• My co-founder and I also think differently. He prefers one way of visualising work, I prefer another, so we end up fighting the tool instead of planning.

The irony is we're spending hours discussing how to structure our planning system, instead of discussing what we should actually build next.

I'd love something where strategy naturally flows into execution.

Something like:

>

...without having to manually maintain five different databases.

I'm not necessarily looking for another "task manager." I'm looking for something that helps us think and execute as a small startup.

A few questions:

• What are you using instead of Notion (if anything)?
• Has anyone found a setup where roadmaps, docs, projects and tasks actually feel connected?
• Are people combining multiple tools (e.g. Linear + something else), or have you found one tool that does most of it well?
• At what point did you decide Notion wasn't the right fit?

I'd especially love to hear from founders or teams of 2-10 people building software, because I suspect the needs are very different from larger companies.

Thanks!

One lesson we've learned while building software for startups is that founders often try to launch with too many features.

A recent project started with more than 25 requested features. Instead of building everything, we worked with the client to identify the core problem they wanted to solve.

We launched the first version with just the essential features.

The results:

• Faster development and lower costs.
• Earlier user feedback.
• Less time spent building features nobody needed.
• A clear roadmap based on real customer usage.

If you're building an MVP, ask yourself:

>

I'm curious—what's one feature you initially thought was essential but later realized wasn't?

I’m based in Tokyo and work with overseas companies sourcing products from Japan.
One challenge I’ve noticed is that many excellent Japanese suppliers are difficult to find from overseas due to language barriers and limited international experience.
What Japanese products are you looking for, and what’s been your biggest challenge when sourcing from Japan?

Looking for perspective from people who have been through a similar transition.

I'm 28 and recently sold my business.

Current situation:

• Net worth: approximately $2.6M
• Married, no kids... yet
• No debt
• My wife works and earns $100k+
• Annual household spending is relatively modest ~ $90k
• Goal is long-term wealth creation and reaching $10M+ net worth

Current assets are a mix of public markets, cash equivalents, and private lending opportunities. I'm also building relationships with local operators and business owners.

The challenge is that I'm struggling to determine what game I should be playing over the next 10-15 years.

I don't want to:

• Build another agency
• Work 60+ hour weeks
• Create another job for myself

I do want to:

• Work ~30-35 hours per week
• Have flexibility for family, golf, travel, etc.
• Continue building wealth
• Stay in coastal NC long-term
• Own assets rather than sell my time

I've been exploring:

• Public market investing into VOO, VXUS, and AVUV
• Private lending (currently evaluating loans around 12% secured by real estate)
• Buying minority stakes in local service businesses
• Eventually acquiring another small business outright

The question I keep coming back to is this:

If you were 28 years old, had a recent liquidity event, ~$2.6M net worth, wanted to stay in a mid-sized NC market, and wanted to build toward $10M+ without returning to a 60-hour work week, what would you focus on over the next 5-10 years?

Would you:

1. Stay mostly invested in public markets?
2. Participate in private lending?
3. Buy a small business?
4. Buy minority stakes in operators?
5. Something else entirely?

Interested in hearing from people who have actually gone through the post-exit transition and what worked (or didn't work) for them.

I run a small digital services business (VA, graphic design, social media management) and I'm at the stage where I'm doing pretty much everything myself — client work, admin, marketing, sales.

A few people in a discussion I had recently mentioned that hiring their first contractor was the real moment they stopped feeling like a freelancer and started feeling like a business owner. That got me thinking about timing.

For those of you who've hired your first contractor or employee — how did you know it was actually time? Was it:

• You were turning down work you couldn't fit in?
• A specific task you hated doing or weren't good at?
• You did the math and realized delegating was cheaper than your time?
• Burnout forced the decision?
• Something else?

Also curious — did you hire too early, too late, or about right? What would you tell yourself if you were back at the "should I hire" stage?

Doing some research on the lead gen process for small business owners and freelancers. Not pitching anything — genuinely curious.

Do you do outreach manually? Use a tool? Just rely on referrals and hope for the best?

What's the part that wastes the most of your time or just never seems to work?

A small win that feels much bigger than it looks.

A few weeks ago, I decided to stop waiting for agency work and start building something of my own.

This week I signed my first direct client as a Virtual Assistant and Social Media Manager.

It's only a few hours a month,just 3hours, but knowing someone chose to work with me directly feels incredibly rewarding.

I'm especially passionate about supporting women-led businesses, and I can't wait to get to the point where I'm partnering with three or four incredible founders each month. Right now, I'm enjoying the process of building one relationship at a time, doing great work, and creating space for what's next.

For those who've built service-based businesses, what did the jump from your first client to your next few look like?

Hi everyone! I'm in the research phase of starting a small linen clothing brand and would love some advice from those who have done it before.

I'm trying to understand:

• How you found reliable fabric suppliers
• Whether you started with local tailors or manufacturers
• How much you budgeted for sampling and your first production run
• Any beginner mistakes you wish you had avoided

For context, I'm planning to start small and focus on simple, timeless linen pieces. Any insights or experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

A few months ago, I started talking to doctors. The biggest pain they mentioned was documentation—writing prescriptions and consultation notes takes time they simply don't have.

So I decided to build an AI scribe.

But then I thought:

"If they're going to use my software, they'll also need appointment management, billing, patient records, admin dashboards..."

Three to four months later, I had built a mini hospital management system.

Then I asked myself one question:

What am I actually trying to validate?

The answer wasn't whether doctors wanted a new EMR.

It was much simpler:

Does an AI scribe save doctors enough time that they'll keep using it?

That realization changed everything.

Instead of asking clinics to migrate their entire workflow, I built the AI scribe as a standalone app.

Now onboarding takes minutes:

• Enter the patient's name.
• Start the consultation.

That's it.

No migration.
No replacing existing software.
No training staff.

If doctors love the AI scribe, I can build the rest later.

If they don't, I've only spent time validating one assumption instead of an entire platform.

My biggest takeaway:

An MVP isn't the smallest version of your product. It's the smallest experiment that validates your biggest assumption.

That mindset completely changed how I think about building products.

Has anyone else realized they were building Version 3 instead of an MVP?

· B-OPS-07 · Flair: (none)

Agency, eleven people, been at this long enough to have opinions I would have argued against five years ago. The one that surprised me most: referrals quietly became my worst lead source, and it took actually tagging client origin to see it.

Here is what the data said once I bothered to look. Referred clients closed faster and felt great in the room. They also had the lowest margin, the most scope creep, and the highest rate of "but so-and-so said you would just do X." Because they came in warm, I skipped the qualification I would never skip on a cold lead. No real discovery, no proper scoping, just a handshake and a vague yes. The warmth that made them easy to close is exactly what made them expensive to serve.

Cold inbound, the leads I assumed were lower quality, converted slower but ran cleaner because I treated them like strangers and actually scoped the work.

I am not killing referrals. I am putting them through the same gate as everyone else, which feels rude and has already saved me one nightmare project. Anyone else find their "best" channel was lying to them once they measured it properly?

revenue crossed a number i used to dream about and i felt less free, not more. took me a while to admit why. i hadn't built a business, i'd built a job with a good salary and no boss, and i was the single point of failure for all of it.

every important decision came to me. every key relationship was mine. if i took two weeks off, things didn't break exactly, they just paused, waiting for me to come back and unblock them. i'd confused being busy and well-paid with having something that exists independent of me. the test i finally applied was simple and uncomfortable, what happens to this if i disappear for a month, and the answer was that it slowly stops.

the fix has been slow and it's mostly about hiring above my comfort, a real manager who owns outcomes instead of another doer who needs me to direct them. the hard part isn't the cost, it's that delegating decisions means accepting they'll be made differently than i'd make them, and sometimes worse, and that this is the price of the thing actually running without me. i'm still bad at it.

for those who've made this shift from operator to owner, what was the first thing you successfully handed off that proved it was possible? i need a win to believe the rest is doable.

Hey, everyone. I'm currently looking for some advice on corporate cards since our business model is a bit different. My team doesn't travel at all so airline miles and lounge access are basically useless to us.

Most of the big banks advertise huge point systems and what I've come to find out is a lot of those rewards programs end up being filled with useless coupons or perks that we will never actually touch. I've been looking at a few different options that are more new/modern like ramp and others to see if they are a better fit for a company that prioritizes direct savings over travel rewards.

Are anyy of you getting genuine value bank, or are we just stuck in the same cycle of useless points? Thanks in advance.

Hello everyone! I have a somewhat unique problem that I have not been able to figure out yet and wanted to see if anyone else has gone through something similar.

A few months ago, I had the idea for what I believe is a pretty interesting product. Since then, I've been putting a lot of effort into trying to create a prototype. From my research, it seems like it's going to be pretty easy and cheap to make, but I am having trouble sourcing the key ingredient, PVA powder. It's the same stuff that makes up the dissolvable film around tide pods and items like that. Even though it seems like a harmless chemical, most chemical manufacturers require that the product be shipped to a business / commercial address and do business vetting prior to shipping. I've tried ordering it to my personal address and they were unable to ship it. I've tried explaining the fact that I am an early-stage inventor and don't meet that requirement, to which they said they were unable to help.

I'm in the process of forming my LLC, but even then, I won't have a commercial building. I'd much rather validate the project first before entering into something that risky. Has anyone had a similar issue to this? What solutions are available that I might not have considered? Thanks in advance for all of the help!

I'm finishing my engineering undergrad and I'm at a weird crossroads.

Since 2021, I've picked up a handful of paid projects locally and internationally. I've worked as a developer, designer, video editor, and even helped with content strategy. Nothing huge, but enough to know how client work operates and that I can deliver.

The problem is that almost everything I look at now feels commoditized.

Websites are cheap.

Design is cheap.

Editing is cheap.

AI is making everything even cheaper.

Every niche seems saturated with agencies, freelancers, and people promising the world for $99.

I'm not looking for a job.

I'm trying to figure out what business model or service businesses genuinely struggle to find competent people for.

If you own a business or regularly hire freelancers/agencies:

What is something you happily pay for because good people are genuinely hard to find?

Not trends.

Not "learn AI."

Not hypothetical opportunities.

What are businesses actually spending money on repeatedly today?

For context, I never built a portfolio because I never planned on turning freelancing into a business. I just took opportunities when they came. Now I'm considering building something long-term, but I'm struggling to see where real demand exists versus where people are just making content about opportunities.

I'd appreciate honest answers from people on the buying side.

I mean, I am genuine serious about this and wanting to gather more actual advice from real life humans rather than just doing research from LLM Models! Please let me know what your opionions about this.

If our core philosphy is similar or I think We can do something greater in this field, We would definately collaborate in this.