r/founders

I have a startup idea that I’ve been seriously working on for some time now. I’ve already completed market research, competitor analysis, and initial validation, and the feedback has been positive so far.

Now I’m confused about what the actual next step should be.

1. Should I directly start building an MVP first?
2. If yes, what do people usually do about the startup name at this stage? Can I just use a temporary/random name for the MVP, or should I properly register the brand/company first?
3. At what stage should I register the company?
4. I’m also looking into grants and incubation opportunities, but many of them ask for DPIIT registration, company details, incorporation documents, etc.

So now I’m stuck between:

1. Building the product and validating with customers first
2. Registering the company/brand first

For founders who have already gone through this process in India, what did your sequence look like after validation? What would you recommend doing next?

Would really appreciate practical advice from people who’ve built startups from scratch.

We have a cancellation flow where we ask churning users to select the reason they're leaving before they can cancel. Standard stuff: too expensive, missing features, not using it enough, switched to a competitor, and one other option, "my business is closing." The options are randomly placed in the questionnaire.

For months I assumed "business closing" would be a fringe response. It's not. It consistently shows up as the top answer, somewhere between 55% and 65% of cancellations depending on the month. That's not a business closure rate. That's people clicking the option that requires the least explanation and feels the least confrontational.

The problem is we can't act on it. If the real reasons are price, competition, or a feature gap, we're completely blind to it because the data is buried under a pile of polite exits. We've thought about removing "business closing" entirely to force people into the honest answers, but I'm worried we'd just shift the noise to "not using it enough" which is equally vague.

We've also tried following up by email after cancellation asking for a 5-minute call, with a small incentive. Response rate is around 3%, so basically nothing.

A few things I'm genuinely curious about from people who've dealt with this:

Is this "business closing" skew something most SaaS products see, or is it specific to certain customer segments? We serve small businesses so maybe that's part of it.

Has anyone removed or restructured the options and actually seen the data quality improve? Or did it just shuffle the dishonest responses around?

Is there a different moment in the flow, or a different format entirely, where you've gotten more honest feedback from churning users?

I'm not looking to add friction to make cancellation harder. I genuinely want to understand why people leave so we can fix it. The current data just isn't helping.

A few months ago I saw someone online complaining about AI chatbots on websites.

Not because they were “bad AI”
But because they all felt disconnected from what visitors were ACTUALLY doing.

The person basically said something like
> “Why are these bots still blind?”

And honestly… that sentence stuck with me.

Because they were right.

Most AI support/chat systems today are basically just floating chat boxes waiting for someone to type first.

They don’t actually SEE anything.

They don’t know
what product someone has viewed 7 times
when someone is clearly stuck
when someone is rage-scrolling pricing pages
when someone looks ready to leave
when someone has been comparing the same two products for 15 minutes

It’s like hiring a salesperson and blindfolding them.

So I got obsessed with the idea
What if an AI chatbot could actually watch behavior live and react to it in real time?

Not in a creepy way.
More in the same way a real store employee notices body language.

Like “Hey, I noticed you’ve been comparing these two plans for a while, want a quick breakdown?”

Or “I can see shipping is probably what’s stopping you right now”

That became the entire obsession.

And honestly… building it was way harder than I expected.

Because now you’re not just making “another chatbot.”

You suddenly have
real-time visitor tracking
behavioral triggers
live session monitoring
handoff systems
timing logic
AI guardrails
proactive conversations that DON’T feel robotic

At one point I genuinely thought
“Okay yeah… there’s probably a reason nobody built it like this.”

But we kept going.

Late nights. Rebuilding everything. Constant testing.

Some of the earliest versions were horrible.

The AI interrupted too much.
Sometimes it responded too early.
Sometimes too late.
Sometimes it felt creepy instead of helpful.

Finding the balance between “smart” and “annoying” took forever.

But eventually something clicked.

The conversations started feeling… natural.

Not like support tickets.

More like the website itself became aware of the visitor experience.

And that’s when things started getting interesting.

People testing it would literally ask
“Wait… how did it know I was looking at that?”

And honestly, that reaction became addictive.

Fast forward to now

We quietly launched.
No investors. No viral launch thread. No fake “AI revolution” marketing.

Just a product we became obsessed with building correctly.

And somehow we already have 3 paying customers using it live.

Still tiny.
Still early.
Still a million things to improve.

But seeing real businesses trust something that started from one random internet comment feels surreal.

The weirdest part?

The original person who inspired the entire thing probably still has no idea they accidentally sparked a startup.

Hey guys 👋 So about a year ago I had an idea that I couldn’t shake. Millions of people play competitive video games every single day — Madden, NBA 2K, COD — and there is literally no safe place for them to play each other for real money. The informal wagering already happens constantly, it just happens on Cash App and handshakes with zero protection.
So I built the infrastructure for it. Non custodial, meaning nobody holds the funds but a smart contract. Winner gets paid automatically. The crypto side is completely invisible to the user — feels like a normal app. I spent months figuring out the tech, the legal angle, the tokenomics, all of it. Self taught. No computer science degree. Just obsession and Google.
The site launches in a few weeks and I’m in that weird middle ground that I think a lot of founders hit — the product is almost real but I’m pre revenue, pre users, and trying to raise a early round without the metrics investors usually want to see.
I’ve been grinding Reddit, Discord, Facebook groups, cold DMs, angel investor pages, everything. Some days feel like momentum and some days feel like screaming into a void.
For the founders who’ve been here — how did you break through this phase? Did you find your first investor through warm network or cold outreach? Any advice on approaching angels when you’re pre launch would mean a lot.
Also happy to connect with anyone in the Web3 or gaming space who’s building something interesting. Always looking to expand my network.

As a solo founder, i need a advice for hiring a agency which is providing end to end growth and marketing from listing my products on marketplaces and my own websites to generating organic content and ads and all for me. They are asking for $2000 for that. Is it fair? Should i pay them? What would you do as a founder?

I recently went through an interview process at an AI-focused startup. Here’s the full breakdown and I genuinely want honest feedback on what to fix. Background on me: 20yo, third year CS, self-taught through building products and getting clients before I even studied CS formally. I’ve shipped real full-stack AI products, contributed to an open-source LLM orchestration startup, and won a hackathon recently. I use AI heavily in my workflow but I genuinely build and iterate myself.

The process: To get shortlisted I had to build a project assignment and record a demo video. I felt my submission was strong. They shortlisted ~25 people. Then there were two calls: ∙ 1 hour technical call with the CTO ∙ 30 min conversation with the CEO/founder

What I expected vs what happened: I assumed the technical call would cover my assignment, product thinking, architecture, AI workflows. Because in the JD they mentioned providing Claude Code max. Instead the CTO opened with tell me about yourself and then gave me a DSA problem cold, it was an easy one though. I completely blanked. Before starting I told him honestly: “I don’t really do competitive programming, I mostly build products.” He said no problem, let’s focus on the logic. But I still struggled heavily and couldn’t progress independently. He then moved to a system design question. I struggled initially and needed him to re-explain the problem a couple of times before I could start reasoning through it.

Then he asked operational questions like “if something breaks in production and I text you, what do you do first?” — I got closer on those eventually but needed prompting.

He stayed engaged the whole call and didn’t cut it short. At the end I asked him “if you hired me, what would you expect for me to achieve in 3 months” and he said: “Ownership.”

The CEO call afterward felt relaxed and genuine — we talked about life and ambition more than technical stuff. He said they’d get back in about a week and a half. This call was really nice. 9/10.

My honest self-assessment:

My communication, energy, and builder mindset were probably my strongest points. My DSA and structured reasoning under pressure were clearly weak. I know how to ship things. I don’t know how to perform CS fundamentals cold in an interview setting.

Why I’m posting:

1. To know if they will get back?
2. I have another technical interview with a same kind of startup in 15 days. I know I need to fix something but I don’t want to spend 15 days grinding LeetCode and end up mediocre at everything. I’m a product builder by nature and I learn fast when I have a clear target. What’s the most efficient way to go from “completely blanks on DSA” to “can at least reason through basic problems out loud” in 15 days? And how do I get better at system design specifically around scale/concurrency which is where I fell apart?

Hello,

I am here not to promote my startup. Ive had free credits from antigravity, lovable, cursor. I kept on building and now that the credits finished, Iv realized that I have a monster built. AI First complete ERP vibe coded.

Honestly don’t have funds to get it to production. So either I open source, find a partner who can bring this to production or find an investor. What should I do ?

Anyone interested can reach out to me

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share something I'm offering because I genuinely think it can help a lot of founders in here who are at that early stage where getting people to truly understand what you're building is one of the hardest parts.

I'm a brand storyteller and video producer and I specialise in creating launch and explanation videos for startups.

Here's what I mean by that and why it matters:

When you're early stage, you're constantly trying to explain your product to three very different audiences at once. Potential customers who need to get what it does and why they should care. Investors who need to quickly understand the vision and the opportunity. New team members who need to be brought up to speed on what you're building and why.

A well made video does all of that for you. It tells your story in a way that's clear, compelling and consistent every single time someone encounters your brand. No more hoping your pitch lands the same way twice.

What I offer is a one-time launch or explanation video, no retainer, no ongoing commitment, no fluff. Just one focused, high quality piece of content that captures what you're building and why it matters, and does the talking for you.

I'm fairly new to working with startups specifically but I have a strong portfolio and I'm more than happy to share examples of my work before you commit to anything. My goal right now is to work with founders who are serious about how they present themselves and their product to the world.

If this sounds like something that could help your startup, drop a comment or send me a DM. Happy to have a no pressure chat and share some of my previous work.

Would that be of interest to anyone?

Aidan

Hey everyone,

I’m a developer and I’ve been working on a project that started with me building a database from scratch.

At first, it was just meant to be a solid foundation for a startup kit, but I ended up putting a lot of time into researching and structuring the data in a way that actually makes it useful for founders. It’s not just a basic or generic setup — the whole idea is to make it easier to connect people, ideas, and opportunities in one place.

Over time, it grew into more of a platform where founders can connect, share ideas, and find potential co-founders, all built around this database.

I’ve been using it myself, but now I’m curious if it actually helps others too.

If you’re interested, you can share your idea, explore what others are working on, or just check it out. Would really appreciate any feedback.

Feel free to comment or DM me if you have questions.