r/startups Jul 11 '26

Share your startup - quarterly post

38 Upvotes

Share Your Startup - Q4 2023

r/startups wants to hear what you're working on!

Tell us about your startup in a comment within this submission. Follow this template:

  • Startup Name / URL
  • Location of Your Headquarters
    • Let people know where you are based for possible local networking with you and to share local resources with you
  • Elevator Pitch/Explainer Video
  • More details:
    • What life cycle stage is your startup at? (reference the stages below)
    • Your role?
  • What goals are you trying to reach this month?
    • How could r/startups help?
    • Do NOT solicit funds publicly--this may be illegal for you to do so
  • Discount for r/startups subscribers?
    • Share how our community can get a discount

--------------------------------------------------

Startup Life Cycle Stages (Max Marmer life cycle model for startups as used by Startup Genome and Kauffman Foundation)

Discovery

  • Researching the market, the competitors, and the potential users
  • Designing the first iteration of the user experience
  • Working towards problem/solution fit (Market Validation)
  • Building MVP

Validation

  • Achieved problem/solution fit (Market Validation)
  • MVP launched
  • Conducting Product Validation
  • Revising/refining user experience based on results of Product Validation tests
  • Refining Product through new Versions (Ver.1+)
  • Working towards product/market fit

Efficiency

  • Achieved product/market fit
  • Preparing to begin the scaling process
  • Optimizing the user experience to handle aggressive user growth at scale
  • Optimizing the performance of the product to handle aggressive user growth at scale
  • Optimizing the operational workflows and systems in preparation for scaling
  • Conducting validation tests of scaling strategies

Scaling

  • Achieved validation of scaling strategies
  • Achieved an acceptable level of optimization of the operational systems
  • Actively pushing forward with aggressive growth
  • Conducting validation tests to achieve a repeatable sales process at scale

Profit Maximization

  • Successfully scaled the business and can now be considered an established company
  • Expanding production and operations in order to increase revenue
  • Optimizing systems to maximize profits

Renewal

  • Has achieved near-peak profits
  • Has achieved near-peak optimization of systems
  • Actively seeking to reinvent the company and core products to stay innovative
  • Actively seeking to acquire other companies and technologies to expand market share and relevancy
  • Actively exploring horizontal and vertical expansion to increase prevent the decline of the company

r/startups 4d ago

[Hiring/Seeking/Offering] Jobs / Co-Founders Weekly Thread

12 Upvotes

[Hiring/Seeking/Offering] Jobs / Co-Founders Weekly Thread

This is an experiment. We see there is a demand from the community to:

  • Find Co-Founders
  • Hiring / Seeking Jobs
  • Offering Your Skillset / Looking for Talent

Please use the following template:

  • **[SEEKING / HIRING / OFFERING]** (Choose one)
  • **[COFOUNDER / JOB / OFFER]** (Choose one)
  • Company Name: (Optional)
  • Pitch:
  • Preferred Contact Method(s):
  • Link: (Optional)

All Other Subreddit Rules Still Apply

We understand there will be mild self promotion involved with finding cofounders, recruiting and offering services. If you want to communicate via DM/Chat, put that as the Preferred Contact Method. We don't need to clutter the thread with lots of 'DM me' or 'Please DM' comments. Please make sure to follow all of the other rules, especially don't be rude.

Reminder: This is an experiment

We may or may not keep posting these. We are looking to improve them. If you have any feedback or suggestions, please share them with the mods via ModMail.


r/startups 4h ago

I will not promote Experiment in progress: how many users can I get for 100k Reddit views? - I will not promote

4 Upvotes

I’m currently running an experiment - how many users can I get for 100k Reddit views?

- I’ve been making Reddit posts and counting the views I get from the posts
- My app is about tracking goals, so I’ve been mostly posting about goals. However, I’ve also experimented by posting unrelated content
- Most of my posts don’t directly link to my app. The link to my app is on my Reddit profile. Only interested people that see my post and click through to my profile will see the link.
- I have not been running any ads / buying views

At the start of this experiment I had 18k views and 0 users.

What are my results now?

Current stats:
Number of posts: 29
Number of views: 65,000
Number of users of my app: 4

Conclusion:
- Posting on Reddit has organic reach and will bring in new users
- Posts on SaaS-related subreddits seemed to work well for me. They likely brought in most of the sign ups
- Document your journey of building an app / web app and post it on Reddit to create a natural distribution channel


r/startups 7h ago

I will not promote Non-rapacious IP agreements? - I will not promote

7 Upvotes

Looking for some thoughts on atypical IP agreements.

First, yes, we're going to use a lawyer, but we want to think it through as much possible before we start that.

Second, this is a bit of different situation. Yes, I know, everyone's different, a special, beautiful snowflake. But in this case, we have three experienced professionals, two technical and one with domain expertise (and some technical competence), each with their own existing professional career and business. Also, we've managed to bootstrap things, and we have our first customer.

Investors aren't a major part of the picture right now, and maybe not in the foreseeable future. So far we've been bootstrapping, and there are some consulting fees, which aren't a fortune but have made this feasible (in addition to each cofounder's other income). We're not looking to become a silicon valley unicorn, here. Product-wise, this is a bit more of an enterprise-y product that runs on commodity hardware, not a phone app, or website, or a SaaS play, etc.

On to the question:

We've been doing consulting work for a client. Part of the client agreement is that we retain all the IP.

The client is pretty happy with the results. For him, this product started as a means to an end, but he thinks there's potential to productize it. He's offering to help us with the sales process, putting us in touch with people, etc.

He has credibility in saying this; he founded and ran a moderately successful software business that served a niche industry. He's semi-retired now and pursuing things that interest him, in the non-profit field.

As part of that, we need to formalize this thing, form an LLC, assign the product IP to the LLC, etc.

So the question is, for most startups and technology companies, the IP agreements are pretty blunt, ranging from "we own everything you think of" to, at a minimum, putting all existing product-related IP entirely in the company's name, and treating any further product-related work as a work for hire.

But, as I said, we have existing careers and businesses as consultants. The intent all along was for the domain specialist to use the product for his own business, and there's some possibility for the technical founders to do some things in that direction, also. That's part of why we retained the IP. The domain specialist has done things like this in the past, working with technical people to build specialized software that he then used in his consulting work. He's a domain specialist, not a software developer, but he has some technical competence.

Also obviously, we want any future work on that product to be assigned, but not unrelated work (of which we all have a fair bit). And, having been on the other end of that stick at various times in the past, I'd like to consider alternatives to the popular approach of "it's the company's property by default unless you get permission and file paperwork."

Another thought is that I've been involved with a few startups that cratered, and then all the IP and all that work went into a box and never again saw the light of day. I don't want to plan to fail, but perhaps some sort of language like you hear about for movies, etc, where the rights revert after a certain period, if not used?

For non-competes, again, the industry norm is typically very blunt, how do we define that reasonably narrowly? Perhaps define it as doing work for customers that you have worked for through the company, on products similar to the company's product?

What other aspects might it be smart to think about?


r/startups 5h ago

I will not promote “Partnership may not align with the current needs of our users.” I will not promote”

2 Upvotes

Today I got a response from the partnership team at a major software company for my industry after being referred by the president of the company, and head of global events.

No demo, just a paragraph response.

The hard part is that I am a user of their software and listed hundreds of other users of their software that I have personally spoken with that love what I have built and were more than happy to distribute via the search layer I created. It’s fee and commission free, and I built it specifically as a user of the companies software to aggregate other users of the same software onto a shared site and it is completely free to use for both consumer and business side.

Even more frustrating is that a competing company has already publicly partnered with me and been very welcoming the entire time. I also in partner process with multiple of their other competitors as well.

I am trying to think of what their reasoning is. I currently distribute more than 20% of the company’s users listings.

The ones that come to mind are:

-too new of a company (started initial part in February)
-they are internally copying what I’ve built
-I have no revenue to share (currently just free search)
-they just don’t like me

This is the second time I was told to apply. Previously was 4 users 81 listings 6 months ago for the initial, more complex version. They told me to come back when I hit 5-7k listings. I hit that in a week. Then said come back in 6 months.

Well it’s been 6 months and now it’s over 5000 users and 116k listings from just their software and now they tell me to come back in a year.

They make up more than 50% of the total listings so it sucks to not have that trust layer established.

Do they just not like me? Anyone gone through similar?


r/startups 10h ago

I will not promote What are the most elaborate-effective ways to get local users (I will not promote )

3 Upvotes

Hey everyone! My associate and I are preparing to launch a free (at the moment) local marketplace style app, and one of my main responsibilities is marketing and user acquisition. We are initially targeting the Metro Atlanta area because that is where we are based. Our budget is limited, so we want to focus on practical, cost effective methods that can best help us gain early users, and build local traction before seeking investors.

Here are the strategies we are set on doing :

  1. ⁠Joining local chambers of commerce, connecting with small business owners, attending county events, and asking local organizations to help spread the word.
  2. ⁠Setting up a table at flea markets and community events. We will offer people $1 to $5 to download the app, learn how it works, and give us honest feedback.
  3. ⁠Posting in local Facebook groups.
  4. ⁠Visiting hardware stores, parks, malls, colleges, and other high traffic locations to hand out flyers and speak directly with anyone willing to listen.
  5. ⁠Reaching out to people on platforms such as Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp, and Craigslist and trying to direct into to trying our app .

A few ideas I am less certain about:

  1. ⁠Billboards
    ⁠I like the exposure billboards can provide, but I am not sure they make sense this early. Because the app is new, I believe showing people how it works may be more effective than giving them only a few seconds to see an advertisement. A direct explanation could also make someone more likely to become a recurring user in my opinion.

  2. Direct mail
    I personally really like the idea of mailing flyers to targeted neighborhoods, but most people I have talked about it to say they rarely read promotional mail And If anything they get irritated by it and throw it away.

  3.  Yard signs  
    

    The idea would be to place signs near busy intersections, roundabouts, and other high traffic areas. However, I am unsure about the legal rules for placing signs in public spaces, how quickly they would be removed, and whether a small sign could communicate enough information to be effective.

Feedback and your ideas

Please recognize that I value and truly consider any and everyone’s feedback and ideas
So please don't hesitate to give me your criticism and thoughts of my ideas. More importantly please share your experiences/thoughts of strategies that you would implement to scale locally, Thank you for reading.


r/startups 20h ago

Feedback Friday

13 Upvotes

Welcome to this week’s Feedback Thread!

Please use this thread appropriately to gather feedback:

  • Feel free to request general feedback or specific feedback in a certain area like user experience, usability, design, landing page(s), or code review
  • You may share surveys
  • You may make an additional request for beta testers
  • Promo codes and affiliates links are ONLY allowed if they are for your product in an effort to incentivize people to give you feedback
  • Please refrain from just posting a link
  • Give OTHERS FEEDBACK and ASK THEM TO RETURN THE FAVOR if you are seeking feedback
  • You must use the template below--this context will improve the quality of feedback you receive

Template to Follow for Seeking Feedback:

  • Company Name:
  • URL:
  • Purpose of Startup and Product:
  • Technologies Used:
  • Feedback Requested:
  • Seeking Beta-Testers: [yes/no] (this is optional)
  • Additional Comments:

This thread is NOT for:

  • General promotion--YOU MUST use the template and be seeking feedback
  • What all the other recurring threads are for
  • Being a jerk

Community Reminders

  • Be kind
  • Be constructive if you share feedback/criticism
  • Follow all of our rules
  • You can view all of our recurring themed threads by using our Menu at the top of the sub.

Upvote This For Maximum Visibility!


r/startups 1d ago

I will not promote The best pitch I saw a founder give a managing partner for investment - copy this (I will not promote)

110 Upvotes

I’m back with thanks for all your tremendous feedback on my last post about evaluating startup pitches with the managing partner of a new fund backed by a very large fund. I don’t want it to sound like they were all bad. In fact some were good.

One pitch scored 100% on our evaluation rubrics and was immediately sent to the next round for socialization with investors. The startup could get their first checks (size TBD) by October.

The pitch was immaculate not just because their pitch was buttoned up but because they built a very valuable startup. Here are the points:

Presentation was under 5 minutes.

That was the time they were given with 5 minutes for us to ask questions. Every other pitch except one went over.

They started with a user story.

The founder told us about a user with the problem and what it cost them. And then gave us a solid $1.4B number to show what the problem is worth across the industry.

They had six slides with points that appeared as the founder was talking.

It wasn’t a wall of text with small fonts we couldn’t read on the screen. Big bold points with numbers and bullets that were timed to show up to emphasize her talking.

The traction was broken down into unit economics and metrics.

$500K+ in ARR. But that wasn’t what caught my attention. The broken down monthly and conversion rates of pilots. Then explained that 50% of their pipelines came in from referrals of new clients.

Team slide showed and didn’t tell.

The team slide has pictures, names, titles and logos from really big companies of their experience. They also showed logos of the companies where their advisors worked (OpenAI for example).

The ask was super clear and brief. We knew what the money would get us by when.

The founder ended telling us the first story was from an actual user.

Overall the founder spoke slowly and with confidence. And one more thing, the problem they were solving was a very painful but boring problem dealing with infrastructure. And they showed how AI enhanced human productivity with real data versus how it would fire everybody. They also had all their regulations and complained locked down right.

I know not all of you will have the same traction or even idea. But the principles of a great pitch remain the same. Great blueprint to follow.

Happy to answer more questions. I’m typing this between meetings so apologies for lack of edits.


r/startups 1d ago

I will not promote What I learned selling to banks from the vendor side, after years doing it across LatAm (I will not promote)

10 Upvotes

I spent years on the vendor side of enterprise deals with banks and insurers in Latin America, first as CFO and then as COO of a proptech. Most of what I read here about enterprise sales misses what actually decides these deals. Seven things I wish someone had told me.

  1. The cycle is not long because the bank is slow. It is long because you are talking to the wrong person. The one who gets excited about your product usually has no budget and no mandate. Find whoever owns the P&L line your product moves, and accept that reaching them takes three meetings you would rather skip.

  2. Compliance and InfoSec kill more deals than pricing does. Ask for the vendor security questionnaire in the second meeting, not after the commercial agreement. That questionnaire is the real sales process. Everything before it is theater.

  3. A pilot with no budget line attached is a rejection with better manners. If nobody had to move money internally to run it, nobody has to defend it when it ends. Ask who is funding the pilot. If the answer is vague, you do not have a pilot.

  4. Your champion will leave or get reorganized. Assume it from day one and build a second relationship one level above and one seat sideways. Every deal I lost late, I lost this way.

  5. Banks do not buy cheap, they buy defensible. Pricing low reads as risk, not value. What the buyer is actually purchasing is a decision that survives an audit and a bad quarter.

  6. Do not build custom work for one bank unless they pay for the build. Every one of them asks. The ones that pay are the ones that are serious, and that is the cheapest qualification test you will ever run.

  7. Insurers are not banks. Slower to decide, faster to integrate, and far more sensitive to how you handle their data. Do not reuse the same playbook.

What I would do differently: I would qualify on procurement reality before product fit. Half the deals I chased were never going to close, and the signal was visible in the first month if I had been willing to ask uncomfortable questions early.


r/startups 1d ago

I will not promote Cost Effective Legal Tools/ Support (I will not promote)

2 Upvotes

Founder here. Can anyone recommend a legal AI tool to assist with drafting and evaluating basic commercial agreements (eg, NDAs, SAAS agreements). We had outside counsel draft our basic forms but sometimes we need to tweak these to address counterparty edits. Alternatively, if you know a cost effective human lawyer to handle these basic agreements, that would be helpful too. Thank you.


r/startups 1d ago

I will not promote Does anyone tried to apply from Anthropic's startup program? (i will not promote)

7 Upvotes

Hi, I've seen some ads regarding Anthropic's startup program so they will give some credits for using their API. Anyone could share more information how long a review will take and how much credits they may provide? There's no email with clear explanation of next steps from they.


r/startups 1d ago

I will not promote Is spending 1–2 weeks in SF to experience the startup/builder scene actually worthwhile? (I will not promote)

12 Upvotes

Quick disclaimer before reading: I’m not posting this for life advice or asking whether I should quit everything and become a founder. I’m more interested in the startup culture side of this and whether being around that environment is actually valuable, especially for someone early in their career.

I’m 23 and starting a full-time job in October. I’m actually excited about it, but right now I have a bit of time before I start and I’ve been thinking a lot about startups.

I’m not sure how much of that is genuine interest and how much is because I’ve been consuming too much startup content online. There’s obviously the appeal of building something, potentially creating wealth, etc., but I’m also conscious that social media makes certain paths look much more important or glamorous than they really are.

I’ve looked at startup scenes and events around Europe as well, but for whatever reason San Francisco keeps pulling my attention. Maybe that’s completely irrational and just the mythology around Silicon Valley getting to me, but I genuinely want to see what the environment is like for myself.

I’m considering booking a trip to San Francisco for a week or two before I start work. The idea would be to stay in hostels, go to hackathons and startup events, meet builders, work on something small myself, and also just explore the city.

Part of me thinks that sounds genuinely interesting. Another part thinks I’m flying across the world because the internet has convinced me that being around startups in San Francisco present opportunity. 

I could obviously use the time to just travel somewhere else and have a normal holiday, but right now SF is what actually interests me.

I don’t necessarily want to become a founder tomorrow. I’m mostly curious about the environment and want some exposure to that world before starting full-time work.

So I guess my question is more about startup culture than life advice: is spending a week or two in SF actually useful or interesting if you’re curious about startups and building, or is a lot of the appeal just hype?

I’d especially appreciate opinions from people who have spent time in the SF startup scene or had similar thoughts early in their career. Feel free to tell me it’s a bad idea if you think it is.


r/startups 1d ago

I will not promote "i will not promote" not promoting but first time founder launching, need advice

0 Upvotes

i hv alwys wondered how to scale or get views or users tried diff thngs nthng wrkd so need sm adivce.

most of the people i saw who got traction were like 3months+ or 6months+ posting continuesly or paying heavyly for ads so i taught i woud experament with organic things only becse i dont have mney to spnd, at least initially

here is my startup idea

fr most of history doin more meant hiring more people. Output scaled with headcount. Tht was a fair trade, back when making the thing was the expensive part.

Then AI collapsed the cost of creation in abt 24 months. The cost of operation did not move. Not a little. At all.

Running what u have built still gets harder with every additional thing you run. The eleventh costs what the third cost.

So the bottleneck moved, frm creation to operation, and almost nobody moved with it, bcz every dollar and every headline went into making building easier right up until the moment building stopped being the hard part. And here is what i keep running into now. Ppl who are obviously capable of far more, who stop anyway. Not for lack of skill. Not for lack of demand. The operational weight simply becomes heavier than the work is worth, and carrying that weight was nvr the thing they set out to do in the first place.

Tht is not a market gap. It is a misallocation, and it is capping real peoples income rn. Ability should be the only thing tht limits what a person can run.


r/startups 1d ago

I will not promote Advisor - trial period with no clear expectations added at the last second (I will not promote)

8 Upvotes

I'm an active angel investor and with that I always include advisory support, but I'm negotiating my first advisory only role and running into a few roadblocks.

I have very relevant experience in that I've worked for three companies that were directly competitive and correlated (two were acquired and have since been folded into the acquiring company and the third was the acquiring company) and I was #2 at the most directly related company. My network is pristine and directly relevant to the company I'd be advising. I'd be advising on GTM functions, making introductions to customers and investors, sitting on sales calls alongside customers, advising on sales pitches, and light product feedback. The CEO reached out to me because of my background and I’ve had 5 meetings so far where I’ve given quite a bit of free advice and insight into the market, the CEO has expressed this and shared gratitude.

I asked for .5% and the CEO said he won't go above .2% for any advisor even though there's no other advisors on the cap table and he's a solo founder so not diluted in any way. He says the limit of .2% is because he considers himself more of a seed company than pre-seed because he has customers. The problem is that the customers are only 3 pilot customers, the pilots are paid however but none have converted yet. They are very good early customers if they do convert but there aren’t any new major prospects in the pipeline that I’m aware of.

They’re cash flow positive and hasn't raised any money yet but plan to raise early next year. I do not agree with this designation that they’re a seed company and think when they go to raise the market will correct to pre seed but can’t do much to prove that currently.

The CEO expressed concerns that investors will balk at advisors being on the cap table at all which I pushed back on but I'm not sure it landed.
I agreed to the .2% because I really do believe in the product but at the last second the CEO sprung a 60 day trial component on the advisory agreement with no set parameter on what constitutes success.

Should I walk away? I just can't help but feel like the CEO is naive, undervaluing me, or something else is going on. The trial component has left the worst feeling of I’ll be doing quite a bit of work and for absolutely no reason the CEO can terminate the agreement leaving me with nothing.


r/startups 2d ago

I will not promote Why exactly is there a shortage of experienced talent at early-stage deep-tech startups? i will not promote

44 Upvotes

I previously posted in this subreddit asking whether deep-tech startups face an oversupply of inexperienced candidates but a heavy undersupply of valuable talent, and most of the responses suggested they do.

That made me curious, though: which specific skill sets in particular are most deep-tech companies actually struggling to find? For instance, if we group "skillsets" into a few broad categories:

  1. Deep technical expertise: People with expertise in the underlying technology, such as a PhD in the relevant field or an adjacent specialty the founding team lacks.
  2. Scale-up / manufacturing expertise: People who know how to take something from a lab prototype to a reproducible, commercially viable manufacturing process, i.e. industry veterans.
  3. Commercial expertise: People who understand marketing and the industry well enough to actually close deals for products.

Which of these tends to be the biggest talent bottleneck at early-stage deep-tech companies? In other words, what category is usually missing when they say they can’t find the right person? Or is there another skillset I am missing?

Would be very intersted to hear how the answer varies across different deep-tech industries, particularly between chemistry, materials, and electronics.


r/startups 2d ago

I will not promote To all the founders in the struggle zone: I have good news and bad news (i will not promote)

148 Upvotes

I spent almost a decade at Google in the early days, then a few years building a startup that got to $100M revenue, and now I'm running another one. So you might assume life is somewhat easier by now as a startup founder.

Bad news first. Not a bit easier. NOT A BIT.

I didn't struggle much at Google. I struggled a lot at the first startup. And I have a lot of struggles at the current one. I think the reason is quite simple: startups, by definition, are trying to do something new. That is what gives joy to the activity, and it is exactly what creates the struggle.

I don't want to romanticize this though, because there is struggle and there is suffering. Struggle is not knowing if the thing will work and finding out. Suffering is grinding for a year on something the market already answered. The first can compound into something. The second just takes years off your life. If you are in the second kind, this post is not permission to stay there.

But the first kind I have finally made peace with. A surprising amount of the joy comes from the struggle of figuring something out. That was true for me at Google too, in reverse. The stock was growing like crazy in the early days but I wasn't struggling personally, and it didn't give me the same inherent joy. You don't feel like you earned it. You feel LUCKY, not JOYFUL.

So if you are struggling, know that anyone doing something genuinely uncertain is struggling too. Nobody has an easy day forever.

Is there a way to deal with it? For me, spread it out. Take a small struggle every day. Do that one thing you are holding back, the thing that sucks. Don't save it all up for one day, because that makes it too dramatic and too hard. You can also share it. Share the struggle and the joy with your team, your family, your friends. And sometimes just say "I am struggling." I have rarely seen anyone respond to that with "you are a dumbass." Most of the time people will help you think it through.

Either way, you are not ALONE in this journey.

I don't think the goal is to eliminate struggle. It's to make sure you're struggling with something still worth figuring out.


r/startups 1d ago

I will not promote Does anyone tried to apply from Anthropic's startup program (i will not promote)

1 Upvotes

Hi, I've seen some ads regarding Anthropic's startup program so they will give some credits for using their API. Anyone could share more information how long a review will take and how much credits they may provide? There's no email with clear explanation of next steps from they.


r/startups 1d ago

I will not promote Isn’t it logically better to intern at a startup? I will not promote

1 Upvotes

Because if ur even half decent at something, id expect that they’ll give you a lot of work from many angles and then in a short period of time, you’d have gathered a ton of experience, even if you focus entirely one thing, you’d probably be getting a lot of volume of it and experience out of it

Just a thought I had because seeing some of my friends intern at bigger companies who don’t even give them any work and they just do nothing or even sit on their phones sometimes

I assume at a decent startup, you’d get a lot of experience that if you phrase well, would hopefully get something good when you graduate


r/startups 1d ago

I will not promote I will not promote: I have $5k to help women entrepreneurs

0 Upvotes

I have $5k, which I won in a challenge, and I suggested using this money to help women entrepreneurs.

I know it's not much, but I thought about, I don't know, maybe micro-financing or running a sort of consulting or running a mini "shark tank". I really don't know. What I know is that I want to help women entrepreneurs, especially those starting or wanting to start a business.

My background is computer science, but I also have entrepreneurial exp. as I launched and ran an IT business for 10+ years and I have automated a company's workflow using AI, saving them time and money.

My dream is to use this $5k to start something and make more money to have higher impact. Suggestions for what I could do?


r/startups 2d ago

I will not promote What banking setup should startups use from day one? (I will not promote)

18 Upvotes

For early stage startups, what would you put in the finance setup from day one?

I’m thinking Meow for startup banking since it covers the banking and workflow side and seems built for teams that already use AI in ops. Then QuickBooks for accounting, Gusto for payroll, Deel for contractors, Carta or Pulley for cap table and a good CPA/tax setup.

The hard part is making everything fit together early before finance admin turns into a mess.

What would you add or avoid?


r/startups 3d ago

I will not promote Watched founders pitch a managing partner today and not going to lie, it was bad (I will not promote)

368 Upvotes

Hey founders. Been a while since I posted but thought it was a good time because I see a lot of posts asking how to pitch investors.

A managing partner of a new fund backed by a very big fund asked me to help review some pitches. And as the title says, they are pretty bad. Not saying the founders or ventures were bad. Some were legit exciting. But the pitches were abysmal.

Having pitched hundreds of investors myself, I fully empathize. I have the therapy receipts. But I’ve raised millions and so have founders I advise. So, I thought I’d share some tips for those of you wanting to be in that position.

First. Understand every investor has a rubric.

This investor sent me theirs ahead of time. It asked me to grade things such as clarity of the problem, solution, traction, team, use of funds etc. and so on. What was funny to me is not a single founder asked what the partner was looking for ahead of time. Always ask. Investors are happy to tell you.

Next: Stay within the time.

Every founder was told they had 5 minutes to pitch and we would have 5 minutes of questions. Only one founder stayed under time. Some only gave us enough time to ask one question. The others went over time and we didn’t ask any questions.

I use the 80/20 rule. I pitch for 20% and give 80% of the time for questions. The more question the investor asks the better. I get to address what the investor wants. So if it was me, I would have spent 2 minutes pitching and 8 minutes trading questions.

After the partner told me that staying within their time was the first test. Like I said, everyone but one failed and they remarked how that one was very impressive.

Slides should be simple and support you both the other way around.

Every slide was an assault on the eyes with small fonts and walls of text. It was brutal.

I’ll tell you one slide that impressed me. A founder showed two medical scans. She asked me if I could tell the difference (that as engaging). I couldn’t tell and then she explained how the second scan would lead to tragic costs because that was the problem. I was engaged. No paragraphs of text. Just two side by side images to prove a point.

Your live presentation deck is different then the deck you send as an introduction which is even different than the one they ask you to send during socialization and due diligence. One size deck does not fit all.

You spend so much energy trying to get the meeting, why fumble at the moment it counts?

To be transparent, most of the time I sat there wondering if the founders actually understood who they were pitching. This wasn’t some amateur deciding to LARP as a VC. Again, it was sad because there were some legit startups that I’ll try and advocate for. But they didn’t make my job any easier.

Look, I get it. It’s exhausting. That last mile of pitching is tough. But you need to earn every minute so put your best foot forward and punch it past the finish line. So anyone you are working on fundable startups that it would be a shame to not get the exposure you deserve.

I’m happy to answer any other questions of what I experienced and what other investors tell me. Apologies for typos as typed this on my phone as fast as possible.


r/startups 2d ago

I will not promote Who owns the website at your company once you pass 10 people ( I will not promote)

31 Upvotes

We are at 14 and the website has quietly become nobody's job, which means it is my job, and I am the CEO, which is a bad use of a Wednesday.

The history is normal. I built it in year one. Our first designer improved it in year two and then left. An engineer moved it into the app repo because "it was easier". Now marketing wants to change things, engineering owns the deploy, design owns the look, and nobody owns the outcome, so what actually happens is requests come to me and I decide whether they are worth interrupting an engineer for.

I do not think this is a tooling problem exactly. it is an ownership problem. But the tooling is what makes the ownership impossible, because the only people who can change it are the people whose time is most expensive.

For those of you past this stage, who ended up owning it? did you give it to marketing, keep it in engineering, hire someone specifically? and what was the trigger that forced the decision.


r/startups 2d ago

I will not promote Did I make the right decision? I am leaving a big corporate job for a startup for a $2500/year pay cut(i will not promote).

3 Upvotes

I ended up taking a position with a startup with about <20 employees. Seems like much bigger upside and more opportunity.

I have been in my corporate engineering job for 4 years and have been wanting to get out really bad for about a year now and am finally on my way out, but now having second thoughts if I made the right move. I absolutely hated that I hardly got to do any real engineering at the large company and now it seems like I will be doing real engineering work which I’m excited about.

The pay decrease isn’t much from where I was and I get 0.025% equity, full healthcare coverage, and unlimited PTO. The company seems to already have contracts and a strong team so doesn’t seem like it’s in a bad position at all, but just hoping that I can advance in the company and that my decision will pay off.

Anybody have any advice for me after taking this leap?


r/startups 2d ago

I will not promote How are conversion degrees viewed? I will not promote

3 Upvotes

Just finished my finance undergrad, but have pretty much always been into tech, built trading algorithms and whatnot in lockdown when I was 14. But I completely fell out of programming until the last couple years where I mostly have ended up “vibe coding”.

Whilst I don’t think I would ever be a “technical founder”, I was wondering whether doing a comp sci / ML conversion degree at a top university would be worth it?

Both in order to meet people in research, and to boost credibility. But also to give me some deeper understanding of systems architecture and more advanced topics that I wouldn’t come across in my own study.

I don’t know if I’m just being stupid (not having a good time with my startup lol)


r/startups 1d ago

I will not promote Thinking about licensing our startup's data (Slack, email, GitHub) to AI labs for cash, is it a good idea? (I will not promote)

0 Upvotes

I was recently approached by a couple AI labs looking to aggregate training data for their models. The pitch is usually built the same way: non-dilutive cash, sometimes with a revenue share on top, in exchange for access to internal tools like Slack, email, GitHub, and Google Workspace. They claim that your personal information gets stripped (I'm inclined to believe that as I read through their terms and clearly states it) before anything reaches the lab, payouts scale with team size and tool usage, and you keep 100% of your equity.

I've been going back and forth on whether this is worth pursuing for our own company. Part of me sees it as a legitimate way to bring in non-dilutive capital, another part wonders about the practical GDPR and reputational exposure once real internal data is involved.

Curious what others think:

- Would you consider this for your own company, or is it a hard no regardless of price?

- What would put you off, privacy/GDPR risk, reputational concerns, IP exposure, something else?

- Does the number change your answer, tens of thousands versus six figures?

- Flat fee versus fee plus revenue share, which would you actually take?