Hey everyone,

We recently had a meeting with a VC (follow up after our initial pitch) and we realised that the questions from the GP were quite tough when it came to our commercial strategy.

They basically asked “What will be your main source of revenue” and we basically fumbled it and focused on the wrong thing and we did not have a slick pitch there. We still think our initial commercial revenue generators are fair but it didn’t flow well and looked cluttered.

That said, we now had to rethink our commercial strategy for our next pitch but we are simplifying it down to a ridiculous amount so that the story flows well.

The also means our company starts to look quite different to what we originally started pitching it as. That is what is our worry.

Now is it normal to “pivot” our commercial strategy to make it more VC friendly after a VC meeting or is it better to stick to our original pitch?

The niche itself is very new, but validated, competition is popping up and I honestly really believe it has tons of potential although it's a very boring niche data business, it has a rapidly increasing market. We launched the MVP but something completely killed our SEO and got us deranked. We haven't pitched to investors yet because my co-founder thinks it's not good enough yet, needs an advanced feature as the core of the product, which right now I'm rushing to finish.

Problem is, I have about 10 months left of runway before my savings are empty, and that's after pinching the penny.

When do I decide to call it quits and move on to something else? For example, if we don't get an investor within the next 2-3 months? What then? Go find a job again? Or try a different idea? Or would I be in a wrong head space and there wouldn't be enough time to do anything (3 months to quit, 6-7mo runway remains).

BTW this 10 months runway isn't all my savings, it's just an average of what I'm comfortable risking. I wouldn't be homeless if I blow it all.

I'm the founder of Stageworks, a vertical SaaS for the performing arts sector. This is a crowded market and we have a fully-integrated solution that I'm confident will cut through. We launched in February and have good traction and early revenue. It's been all founder-led sales and word of mouth so far. We're adding new partners every week.

I'm raising $500k pre-seed to fund the initial GTM plan: sales, marketing, and customer success hires with aggressive outbound sales motion.

My background is both in tech and the arts. I have leaned on my existing tech network but struggled to find the right thesis fit with investors. We're too early for VCs and the tech Angels I talk with seem interested but are only investing in AI or other "deep tech" and don't know much about the arts.

Given that our customers are mostly non-profit arts organizations, I'm thinking of pivoting from the tech investors to high-net worth individuals that understand the arts world. An ideal fit is someone who has a business or entrepreneurial background but is also a big supporter of the arts. Maybe these people sit on the boards of arts organizations or donate to arts organizations.

I would love some advice on this approach. Thanks!

Early-stage founder here, just starting to experiment with UGC. I've talked to a few creators and what strikes me is that the brief feels like the whole relationship! (you send it, they film, done)

But the content I'm seeing from brands that do this really well doesn't feel like that. It feels like the creators actually understand what the brand is about, not just what to say in the video.

How do you close that gap? Especially when you're small and can't afford a dedicated creator manager?

What's worked for you in terms of making creators feel genuinely connected to what you're building or is that just not realistic at this stage and you treat it as a transactional content production thing?

I'm building in the agentic AI reliability space (runtime stuff, catching weird behavior in prod before it spirals) and I've been trying to do customer discovery for months. Not selling, not pitching, literally just trying to get 20 minutes on a call to ask people what breaks when their agents break in production and I cannot get people to talk to me.

I'm doing ~30 LinkedIn DMs a week, CTO to CTO (or head of engineering), no pitch in the opener, just curiosity. Stuff like "saw you're shipping agents in prod, would love to hear what your reliability story looks like." Most get ignored. The ones that do reply usually say "no thanks". I also do reddit, build in public on X, all that. The one thing that's actually worked is in person events. I went to Boulder Startup Week and got 3 real champions out of it, but obviously I can't fly to a conference every week.

My ICP isn't even loose, I'm filtering for CTOs and heads of eng at 10-200 person companies who are already interacting with my competitors. So these are people who in theory should care about this exact problem. But they still don't reply. Maybe LinkedIn is just the wrong channel for this audience. Maybe my opener is too generic even though I'm trying not to be. Maybe people who already use a competitor have no reason to entertain a stranger's DM. Honestly not sure.

So for anyone who's done customer discovery for technical or infra products, how did you actually get people to take the call? Did you filter harder upstream, use a different channel, different opener, pay them? I'm open to literally anything at this point.

Here is the first message I've been sending:

"Hey [name]! [reason im messaging them], not pitching anything, doing some research.

I'm building in the agent observability space and trying to understand how teams actually catch regressions that slip past their eval suites. From your end, are agent regressions in production something that's genuinely costing you, or more of a minor annoyance you've worked around?

Would love 20 minutes to chat just to learn from you. Worth a quick chat?

[calendar link]"

And if they dont respond to that, here is the follow up I send:

"

Hey [name], know calls are a big ask. If you've got 2 minutes, I'd take quick answers to these three over DM:

1. Last time an agent did something weird in prod, how'd you find out?
2. What are you using to monitor agent behavior right now, if anything?
3. Where do your evals fall short of catching real issues?

Just trying to get a real picture from people actually shipping this stuff. Appreciate it either way.

"

I would love ANY feedback at all, I feel very stuck.

I'm the founder of Stageworks a vertical SaaS for the performing arts sector. This is a crowded market and we have a fully-integrated solution that I'm confident will cut through. We launched in February and have good traction and early revenue. It's been all founder-led sales and word of mouth so far. We're adding new partners every week.

I'm raising $500k pre-seed to fund the initial GTM plan: sales, marketing, and customer success hires with aggressive outbound sales motion.

My background is both in tech and the arts. I have leaned on my existing tech network but struggled to find the right thesis fit with investors. We're too early for VCs and the tech Angels I talk with seem interested but are only investing in AI or other "deep tech" and don't know much about the arts.

Given that our customers are mostly non-profit arts organizations, I'm thinking of pivoting from the tech investors to high-net worth individuals that understand the arts world. An ideal fit is someone who has a business or entrepreneurial background but is also a big supporter of the arts. Maybe these people sit on the boards of arts organizations or donate to arts organizations.

I would love some advice on this approach. Thanks!

This is the second time I'm asking for advise.
But I'm building a people lead market place for small task, it differs from Angie's list because with us people post business comes instead of business post and people come for help. What makes us different is that we do small day to day task. I need help this is the simple version but I believe there's a huge market and l need help.

I'm willing to give potential equity / ownership do yall think I'll be able to find people willing to help with the skills and give time for something that's not tested or proven just theory. ?
How could I find people?

Please keep negative comments your self, but I'm open to criticism or flaws in my idea.

Any skills will be useful.

I live in nyc… before you look at my wsb history I no longer gamble I’m 5 hours free.

Hey everyone,

I’m researching how startups and developers currently manage spending on AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Gemini, etc.

I’ve noticed many teams keep adding subscriptions/APIs without really checking:

- whether they’re on the right plans,

- whether cheaper alternatives exist,

- or how much they’re actually overspending monthly.

I’m trying to understand:

1. Which AI tools you currently pay for

2. Approximate monthly spend

3. Whether you actively optimize those costs

4. Biggest frustration with AI pricing/tools today

Would love to hear from:

- startup founders

- indie hackers

- developers

- small teams using AI heavily

Even short replies help a lot.

Thanks!

Hi,

As a side project (solo founder in New Zealand), I'm working on a SaaS that requires integration with another company's API (Private). They've sent over an NDA to be signed.

Key concerns:

• "Forever" confidentiality. I'm bound indefinitely with no expiry. From what I've seen, most NDAs cap at 3 - 5 years.
• Uncapped indemnity. I indemnify them for "any loss" caused by any breach, with no cap. As a pre-revenue solo founder with little to no money, that's terrifying. Even if realistic damages from leaking an API spec are small, "uncapped" means I can't quantify my exposure, right?
• Work product ambiguity. The definition of "Confidential Information" extends to "computer programs, processes (in whatever form) developed from the Confidential Information." Read strictly, the integration code I write using their API docs could be deemed their confidential information - meaning I might not fully own code I've written.

I'm not sure if I'm overthinking this, but all they're sharing is API + API documentation, not trade secret material. The terms feel disproportionate to the scope.

Has anyone signed something similar and had it cause problems years later? and for those who pushed back on similar terms - how did the other side react, and should I push back?

Thank you!

I'm getting this role for founders office mainly from the conversation it is strategy and business. The founder after initial conversation gave an internal business problem statement to solve or rather come up with a probable solution.

I know it's an unstructured role but the founder didn't give the vibe that he will hire for an EA kind of role cuz everybody on reddit says it's this so kind of skeptical.

I personally although never felt that it's going to be assistant role cuz he gave a real business problem to solve. I'm also an early career professional.

So give your opinion please.

Why is everybody on reddit against this role when most people I've spoken to in real life say you get to learn a lot on a breadth of functions?

So for context, I have about 4-5 years before I start a business. I don't have any business ideas yet but was wondering what skills I should learn so that it would be easier for me later on. Is it-

1. Web dev? Quite skeptical about this as I've heard people saying that AI can replace it.

2. Sales? If yes, how do I learn it? (I am still a student)

3. Content creation?

4. Digital marketing?

I honestly have no idea what i should learn now. What skills helped you in your startup?

We've been using Claude and ChatGPT heavily for client deliverables (interactive reports, visual proposals, mini dashboards). The quality is genuinely good.

The problem is what happens next. The file gets attached to an email or dropped in Slack. The client opens it on their phone, nothing works, they ask for a PDF. We export it, it loses all interactivity, and nobody knows who even opened it.

We're essentially printing our most interactive work the moment it leaves the building.

Has anyone solved this cleanly, either with a tool or a workflow change? Not looking for a dev-heavy solution, this needs to work for non-technical teammates.

A few months ago, we were deeply unhappy in our corporate jobs, and decided to f* corporate life and build our own thing. Now our side-hustle is walking the runway at Miami Swim Week!!

This moment is absolutely unreal.

Never thought I'd be saying this, and I had to share it with the internet. 🙌💙

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Starting my first job out of uni working at a startup! If you’re a woman, what do you wear? I’m trying to buildout my wardrobe before I join, so please lmk! And also where do you buy it from? I’m looking for affordable but high quality clothes that I will be able to rewear. Thanks!

Got a college deadline for an internship by June 1. Been looking for a month but most are unpaid. I don't want an MNC, just want to work at a startup and learn from the team.

Since I can't post my resume photo or a link here, here is the main stuff on it:

- Built a browser extension with 650+ active users in 2 weeks (React, TS)

- Web browser prototype with a 200+ waitlist (C#/.NET)

- Full-stack community meetup platform that successfully hosted 2 events with 30+ users (Next.js, PostgreSQL)

- Team-rating app used by my college for their official internal Smart India Hackathon evaluations (React, Firebase)

- A real-time Medieval 3D environment (Three.js, custom shaders)

Is this good enough to land something in a week? What should I change or highlight? Also lmk if your startup is taking interns!

Hello r/startups,

I am planning to go all out with this with no funding at all, covering all infra and development costs on my own.

The company name is Ekarche with 3 products, 1 going live June 1st and the other 2 in the following months.

Any thoughts, ideas, or experiences you would like to share before I make a fool of myself and lose hope?

Hey folks!

I am an ex-Amazon engineer (25M) who left his job to build something I genuinely believe is going to be the default way of law firm operations. I have been working on an agentic AI first legal tech startup for around 1.5 years now. Its got not just cool but actually useful features. It has a chrome extension for easy access, mcp, word addin, autonomous agents, indexed 17 Million Indian supreme/high court judgements (which is extensible to other countries and open to public for free) etc basically my platform has feature parity with the likes of Jurisphere, Lexlegis, legora (except the partnership with top legal Database companies which is like impossible to have unless you are at multimillion dollar valuation).

I have booked several demos (with Managing Partners of mid sized firms) in past month with law firms. Many of them confirmed that this is what they are looking for or it solves their pain of task management using AI agents. But the lead gets dropped the moment they get to know how early stage we are and we can't afford security certifications like SOC 2 yet. And there is a trust issue of us not being from law background. Many of them said they will manage with existing softwares as they are much more common in their network.

This is the story of selling legal tech in India. And I'm not able to schedule even one demo outside India as I have no presence and credibility. I have been selected for startup showcases at major events, yet it has become a chicken and egg problem for me. I need customers/investor's money to survive and keep selling and for money/investor I need customers.

I am trying to figure a way out of this situation, I am considering these two options

1. Get Acquired/Acquihired and keep the startup alive and see it grow.
2. Bring a senior advocate as sales cofounder who migh fill the sales gap (Which is very hard)

What do you guys suggest?

Solo founder here building a consumer dating product.
I’ve already:
hired developers,
built the product,
reached TestFlight/polishing stage,
handling GTM and launch strategy,
testing creators/content,
and preparing early user rollout.
Now I’m talking with someone with a very strong technical/scaling background who may potentially get involved later on.
My question is more about founder structure and timing.
At what stage do you properly involve a potential co-founder when:
most of the product vision and execution already exists,
the current dev team is already operating,
and the product is still in validation/beta-learning stage?
Also:
how do you properly define boundaries, expectations, and responsibilities before discussing deeper involvement?
what are the biggest mistakes founders make in this situation?
and how do you avoid premature scaling/organizational complexity before real traction exists?
Would love honest advice from founders who went through this themselves, especially in consumer/social products.

I’m validating an idea and not selling anything.

I’m based in Berlin with a product/UX/web app background. With India–EU and India–UK trade momentum increasing, I’m wondering if Indian companies entering Germany/EU need help with the digital trust layer.

Not legal/tax/import consulting.

More like:

- EU-ready website/landing pages
- localized positioning and UX
- web apps, portals, dashboards
- AI Agentic workflows
- CRM, analytics, lead capture
- GDPR-aware technical setup
- German-language project support through partners
- making the company look credible to EU buyers

Would Indian SaaS companies, service agencies, exporters, or D2C brands actually pay for this?

Or is the pain not strong enough?

Curious who you think the best ICP would be.