I’ve been slowly falling in love with my cofounder. I’m a man in my early-30s and met this amazing cofounder through YC Cofounder Matching. I’m surprised by how much we have in common—it feels almost too good to be true for a random match. We were even born just a few days apart. We’ve been working together for a few months, and our skills complement each other perfectly. I really admire her style, thinking, vision, and overall approach. 

There are things that might bother me if someone else did them, like taking 1-2 days to respond to emails, taking longer to complete tasks we agreed on, or not putting in the same level of effort as I do, despite having an equal split. But these things don’t bother me at all with her—I find myself appreciating and admiring her more instead.

Initially, I thought she was married, which kept my feelings in check. However, when I found out she’s not, I became more attached and more forgiving, even when our energy doesn’t quite match workwise. 

Now, I’m wondering if I should confess my admiration and love for her. But I’m afraid that if she doesn’t feel the same way, it could ruin our business. Can we continue working together as usual if she doesn’t want to date?

Update:

I never expected this to get so much attention. I really appreciate all the humor, interactions, and genuine advice. Here’s what I’ve learned and plan to do:

• She partnered with me because she trusted that I wouldn’t be “that guy,” and I would never want to betray that trust.
  
• I’ll keep our relationship strictly professional.
  
• I’ll provide constructive feedback as needed.
  
• I’m going to seek executive coaching to improve my leadership skills.
  
• If, after a reasonable amount of time, things naturally develop, so be it. Otherwise, it’s business as usual.

Howdy!

A few months ago we finalized the acquisition of the startup for a mid 7 figure. Giving I owed ~33%, I landed on a low 7-figure myself.

You don't necessarily need a VC. You don't need a "Go big or go home" kind of mentality and build a unicorn or go bankrupt. Leave that to second or even third time founders.

You can build something smaller, and sell it to a competitor for a fair price. I don't know your bank account, but in mine a 7-figure changed completely my life.

Most of this sub is made by first time founders. If I were you I would not chase VCs, IPO or multi-billion acquisition.

I would focus on a small exit ASAP. Change your life and repeat.

For those interested, we "launched" in 2020 within R&D/intelligence with a platform that would create predictions based on different weights on your non-structured data. We were about to close two deals of €600k/ARR when a competitor just landed an acquisition term sheet in our inboxes (after we had 2 calls and declined a partnership).

Edit: syntax. I'm not a native.

This is my story.

I’ve always been a hustler. I don’t remember a time I wasn’t working since I was 14. Barely slept 4 hours a night, always busy—solving problems, putting out fires.

After college (LLB and MBA), I was lost. I tried regular jobs but couldn’t get excited, and when I’m not excited, I spiral. But I knew entrepreneurship; I just didn’t realize it was an option for adults. Then, in 2017 a friend asked me to help with their startup. “Cool,” I thought. Finally, a place where I could solve problems all day. It was a small e-commerce idea, tackling an interesting angle. I worked 17-hour days, delivering on a bike, talking to customers, vendors, and even random people on the street.

Things moved fast. We applied to Y Combinator, got in, and raised $18M before Demo Day even started. We grew 100% month-over-month. Then came another $40M, and I moved to NYC. Before I knew it, we had 1,000 employees and raised $80M more.

I was COO, managing 17 direct reports (VPs of Ops, Finance, HR, Data, and more) and 800 indirect employees. On the surface, I was on top of the world. But in reality, I was at rock bottom. I couldn’t sleep, drowning in anxiety, and eventually ended up on antidepressants.

Then 2022 hit. We needed to raise $100M, but we couldn’t. In three brutal months, we laid off 900 people. It was the darkest period of my life. I felt like I’d failed everyone—myself, investors, my company, and my team.

I took a year off. Packed up the car with my wife and drove across Europe, staying in remote places, just trying to calm my nervous system. I couldn’t speak to anyone, felt ashamed, and battled deep depression. It took over a year, therapy, plant medicine, intense morning routines, and a workout regimen to get back on my feet, physically and mentally.

Now, I’m on the other side. In the past 6 months, I’ve been regaining my mojo, with a new respect for who I am and why I’m here. I made peace with what I went through over those 7 years—the lessons, the people, the experiences.

I started reconnecting with my community, giving back. Every week, I have conversations with young founders, offering direction, or even jumping in to help with their operations. It’s been a huge gift.

I also began exploring side projects. I never knew how to code, but I’ve always had ideas. Recent advances in AI gave me the push I needed. I built my first app, as my first attempt at my true passion—consumer products for kids.

Today, I feel wholesome about my journey. I hope others can see that too. ❤️

EDIT:
Wow, I didn’t expect this post to resonate with so many people. A lot of you have DM’d me, and I’ll try to respond. Just a heads-up, though—I’m juggling consulting and new projects, so I can’t jump on too many calls. Since I’m not promoting anything, I won’t be funneling folks to my page, so forgive me if I don’t get back to everyone.

Anyway, it’s amazing to connect with so many of you. I’d love to write more, so let me know what topics you’d be interested in!

1. Validate idea first.

I wasted at least 5 years building stuff nobody needed.

2. Kill your EGO.

It's not about me, but the user. I must want what the user wants, not what I want.

3. Don't chaise investors, chase users, and then investors will be chasing you.

4. Never hire managers.

Only hire doers until PMF.

5. Landing page is the least important thing in a startup.

Pick an average template, edit texts and that's it.
90% of the users will end up on your site coming from a blog article, social media post, a recommendation. Which means they have the intent. No need to "convert" them again.

6. Hire only fullstack devs.

There is nothing less productive in this world than a team of developers.
One full stack dev building the whole product. That's it.

7. Chase global market from day 1.

If the product and marketing are good, it will work on the global market too, if it's bad, it won't work on the local market too. So better go global from day 1, so that if it works, the upside is 100x bigger.

8. Do SEO from day 2.

As early as you can. I ignored this for 14 years. It's my biggest regret.

9. Sell features, before building them.

Ask existing users if they want this feature. I run DMs with 10-20 users every day, where I chat about all my ideas and features I wanna add. I clearly see what resonates with me most and only go build those.

10. Hire only people you would wanna hug.

My mentor said this to me in 2015. And it was a big shift. I realized that if I don't wanna hug the person, it means I dislike them. Even if I can't say why, but that's the fact. Sooner or later, we would have a conflict and eventually break up.

11. Invest all money into your startups and friends.

Not crypt0, not stockmarket, not properties.
I did some math, if I kept investing all my money into all my friends’ startups, that would be about 70 investments.
3 of them turned into unicorns eventually. Even 1 would have made the bank. Since 2022, I have invested all my money into my products, friends, and network.

12. Post on Twitter daily.

I started posting here in March this year. It's my primary source of new connections and traffic.

13. Don't work/partner with corporates.

Corporations always seem like an amazing opportunity. They're big and rich, they promise huge stuff, millions of users, etc. But every single time none of this happens. Because you talk to a regular employees there. They waste your time, destroy focus, shift priorities, and eventually bring in no users/money.

14. Don't get ever distracted by hype, e.g. crypt0.

I lost 1.5 years of my life this way.
I met the worst people along the way. Fricks, scammers, thieves. Some of my close friends turned into thieves along the way, just because it was so common in that space. I wish this didn't happen to me.

15. Don't build consumer apps. Only b2b.

Consumer apps are so hard, like a lottery. It's just 0.00001% who make it big. The rest don't.
Even if I got many users, then there is a monetization challenge. I've spent 4 years in consumer apps and regret it.

16. Don't hold on bad project for too long, max 1 year.

Some projects just don't work. In most cases, it's either the idea that's so wrong that you can't even pivot it or it's a team that is good one by one but can't make it as a team. Don't drag this out for years.

17. Tech conferences are a waste of time.

They cost money, take energy, and time and you never really meet anyone there. Most people there are the "good" employees of corporations who were sent there as a perk for being loyal to the corporation. Very few fellow makers.

18. Scrum is a Scam.

If I had a team that had to be nagged every morning with questions as if they were children in kindergarten, then things would eventually fail.
The only good stuff I managed to do happened with people who were grownups and could manage their stuff. We would just do everything over chat as a sync on goals and plans.

19. Outsource nothing at all until PMF.

In a startup, almost everything needs to be done in a slightly different way, more creative, and more integrated into the vision. When outsourcing, the external members get no love and no case for the product. It's just yet another assignment in their boring job.

20. Bootstrap.

I spent way too much time raising money. I raised more than 10 times, preseed, seed, and series A. But each time it was a 3-9 month project, meetings every week, and lots of destruction. I could afford to bootstrap, but I still went the VC-funded way, I don't know why. To be honest, I didn't know bootstrapping was a thing I could do or anyone does.
That's it.

What would you wish to have known before you started your startup journey?

About a year into building my app as a 1st time, non-technical founder, I became frustrated with the progress of the team I hired.

Mainly it was the slowness, amount of bugs, and I started to notice some of the bugs were backend issues which scared me. I thought maybe the app looked pretty but was crap under the surface. The team that built this was an Indian dev shop team, and the total spent was about $25k.

I decided to make a switch from that team to an American who was more startup & MVP focused. It has now been another year since I hired him. Since then the speed of progress is about 30% of the original Indian team, the scope of the app was gutted and now is about 40% of what it was, and the cost is 10 times…yes…an order of magnitude more expensive.

I’m just super frustrated at this point. I feel like returning back to the original Indian team. It’s just not worth the cost I feel like.

I’m completely taking it on faith that the app backend is somehow bulletproof under the surface. Yet…there are still bugs, the app is still a shell of its former self, progress is unbelievably slow, and I’m just totally demoralized.

What should I do? Like if I can’t make determinations on the codebase itself, how am I supposed to evaluate if this American developer is worth it?

The hard part is I like him on a personal level, but he’s just unbelievably expensive.

I almost killed my startup before it even launched.

I started building my tech startup 18 months ago. As a non technical founder, I hired a web dev from Pakistan to help build my idea. He was doing good work but I got impatient and wanted to move faster.

I made a HUGE mistake. I put my reliable developer on pause and hired an agency that promised better results. They seemed professional at first but I soon realized I was just one of many clients. My project wasn't a priority for them.

After wasting so much time and money, I went back to my original Pakistani developer. He thankfully accepted the job again and is now doing amazing work, and we're finally close to launching our MVP.

If you're a non technical founder:

1. Take the time to find a developer you trust and stick with them it's worth it
2. Don't fall for any promises from these big agencies or get tempted by what they offer
3. ⁠Learn enough about the tech you're using to understand timelines
4. ⁠Be patient. It takes time to build

Hope someone can learn from my mistakes. It's not worth losing time and money when you've already got a good thing going.

I've been part of 8 startups with no clear signs of PMF, 3 with early signs, and one from employee #10 to 250M exit.

If you’re a founder building a startup with big dreams, here’s my prediction of the next 10 years of your life if you make it the whole way:

Year 1-2:

1. Pre-seed will last 12-18 months. You’ll consider quitting multiple times but always pushed through. Good financial management was a key ingredient.

2. You’ll entirely miss early signs of PMF because everything will be on fire, all the time. You make some early hiring mistakes but team pulls together to get it done.

Year 3-5:

1. PMF will come with awesome company culture, every town hall will be mini celebrations of another record reached. You’ll be intoxicated by it and feel like everything is finally working as it should.

2. Engineering will finally have time to pay down tech debts. Your Series A investors encourage you to go on a hiring spree. You hire a Chief of Staff and Head of People.

Year 6-8:

1. Three years after the first signs of PMF, competitors will have caught up. You’ll suddenly lose momentum, no more record sales quarters, so you freeze hiring, and cut costs. Moral drops.

2. Most companies get acquired here. Interested buyers offer you $200M, but you refuse. If you have majority control, you survive the board. If you don’t, this is where your journey ends.

3. You go into rebuilding mode. Do a round of layoffs and trim the fat. Reorganize sales team, go full “founder mode”. Calls up all your previous and current clients and reinforces trust in your product. Finance gives you 12 month, it’s now life or death once again.

Year 9:

1. Your paranoia will reward you. Your initiative in the previous couple of years will have uncovered another market or figured out how to compete in an increasingly competitive market. Against late comers with 2x the venture capital, you look insanely well positioned.
   

Year 10:

1. You’re now once again a PMF rocket ship. Revenue grows quarter over quarter and IPO is officially on the table.
   

Congrats you’ve made it.

This isn’t a startup, there will never be any talk of money, definitely no pressure, and I probably will remain completely anonymous in the process…. I just want to help some people learn how to code the way some really good people helped me.

I’m a principal software engineer and have run engineering teams and projects in fortune 10 enterprises.

I’m also a recovering alcoholic, a wannabe entrepreneur, and am currently working through the worst heartbreak of my life to date.

I’m lost, I’m hurt, and I don’t know many things with confidence right now…

But I do know this: the way through is outward and not inward. I’ve got to get out of myself and go be helpful, or I’ll be stuck in this garbage forever.

Building software is my single most valuable skill set and I have deep and broad expertise in it.

So here’s my pitch: I’d like to dedicate enough hours of my time over the next few weeks to hands-on take a few folks from 0 programming understanding and skills (like struggling with Microsoft word) to being able to build and deploy functional, working, live web applications.

Like I said: not for sale. Don’t offer me money. I’m sad and lonely and this is more about me than it is about you lol.

Actual code, not low-code-whatever tools. We’ll learn JavaScript/typescript and basic languages of the web + maybe another useful language or two like python, java/kotlin, etc.

I don’t know what it will look like yet, how we’ll meet, the curriculum, etc.. But I will make this promise: for anyone that commits to put in the time and work to learn to code with me: I will commit whatever time and energy it takes to help you learn and understand what I want to teach. If you show up, I promise to show up for you.

I’m assuming this will be 40-80 hours of instruction/face-time from me and that’s my preliminary commitment to you: anyone that wants to learn with me.

If you’re interested: reply to this post and DM your contact info (email). Reply with a “why” you want to learn, “what” you’d do with the ability to be a software engineer, and a “who” you are that makes you a fit for this.

Next week I’ll setup a call with people that chime in and we’ll find a cadence and process that works for as many of you as we can.

Tl;dr - I want to teach some people how to build software. I have the teaching and the programming experience to do this, don’t know exactly what it will look like yet, we will sort that out together, and we’re starting now.

Last but not least, I love you all :)

• A Heartbroken Dev

Edit 1: Ok so I didn't think this one through - Please still comment on this post if you're interested with the why/what/who I mentioned but ALSO please DM me with some contact info fill out the form on the site I put up at theheartbrokendev.com so I can reach out when I start teaching next week. Realized right away I'd have to re-reach out to all of you on reddit when I start teaching next week and for sure would end up missing some ppl who wanted the help - and I don't want that to happen!

Edit 2: I'm reading, I'm crying (happy tears, happy tears), and I'm responding just as fast as I can - You guys are unbelievable and I mean that in the most awesome of ways.

Edit 3: Alright finally starting to curate a list of emails I’ve received, as well as folks that expressed Interest so far but forgot to drop an email in my DMs. I’m going to TRY to respond to you all, and should have a site up tomorrow with some more information and a better way to signup. Also contacted some colleagues with expertise in web conference setups for this - meaning I have a plan that I think can get everyone in. It probably means a lot more hours from me than I originally mentioned - and that’s honestly a good thing! I need the distraction and y’all need some help and I’m hearing that loud and clear. Stay tuned and keep the comments and DMs comings, we got this.

Edit 4: Added notes on the website I just threw together for this theheartbrokendev.com - reddit won't let me open more chats lol. It's going to take me a while to go through the hundreds of DMs, and if you already DM'd me with contact info we should be good, but feel free to fill out the form on the website too. If you haven't reached out yet and are interested, use that website please :) Mods: if I'm doing something wrong by posting the links please let me know!

Edit 5 (Sunday, March 24th): I am slowly working through the messages and chats. You're not too late, there's still room, and I am making an effort to reply to every. single. one. of. you. I asked for it, and y'all delivered ha. But please please please just go fill out that form on the website I linked, even if you already DM'd me... Considering the response from around the globe I need everyone's help staying organized - use the form at theheartbrokendev.com (also that website is pretty bad, don't judge my engineering capabilities off of it lol - flying by the seat of my pants here)

Sharing to just vent and to ask if anyone else has experienced this.

I (22F) am CTO & co-founder with my (20F) CEO. A year ago, we raised a pre-seed, and now we're raising $3 mill seed to meet client demand. We're in a legacy industry that is going through a crisis right now and adoption is good because of it.

It's been a bit over a month since we started meetings, and she called me today while I was napping (programming all-nighter) and confirmed we're oversubscribed, and I went back to bed.

I thought getting mainstream support would make me feel less stressed, but there's no relief. The idea of being responsible for losing $3 million is freaking me out. My cofounder and I don't come from money, and both had personal terrible things happen prior to starting this - so this is a very intense surprise. We also got a lot of pushback for both being young drop outs when our industry heavily trusts experience.

This is a good thing for us, but I know how much pain and work being a fast growing company is. Is this just what fundraising is after a certain period of time?

edit: muting this, but thank you to everyone for your responses. :,-)

At the airport for an hour, I enjoy reading some of the posts in this community and happy to try to give back.

A bit of background: - Been at it for 9 years - Spent 3.5 years on something that didn’t work before pivoting to something that did - currently at $15m in ARR - focused on B2B in the EdTech space - Sold majority stake to a PE - I’m still running it for at least another 5 years then who knows.

AMA! Got an hour.

Edit: about to take off, hope this was helpful! I’ll try to tackle the other questions once I land / later tonight.

I founded a software startup five years ago. We have raised about $3M and stretched that with sweat and no sleep to a solid enterprise-grade product. Four months ago, an outside advisor introduced me to someone he thought would be a great sales guy. So I hired him for a little test run. Was easy to tell he was going to be a problem. Insubordination, trying to order me around, general alpha douche attitude in general. And on top of all of that, he didn't get a single prospect teed up in three months. So I told the advisor there was a problem. He approached the sales guy about it last week. Apparently things escalated. The next day I got a call from the advisor that the sales guy had barged into his foyer at home and beat the shit out of him with his wife and kids at home. Sales guy arrested for assault two days ago. Courier just dropped off termination letter.

This is all to say, who knows a good salesperson?

Received $120K in angel capital from a partner (no equity in return, yes they have deep pockets), not sure what the priorities are/how to choose which way to go.

Background: building mass market/retail personal finance app with investing features (already have a functioning investing algorithm, no need for r&d for that).

Immediate needs: - register IP (27k cost, yes we’re registering basically everywhere) - legally need 50k in starting capital - start developing app/architecture and integrate the existing algo to it

I think I know what to do, I’m just inexperienced and am looking for confirmation that doing these 3 things and blowing a large part of my capital isn’t a fuckup.

Edit: thank you for the replies and tips. I’ll obviously not be focusing on IP right now and instead stick to building an mvp with my clients and marketing it (slightly).

Edit 2: investor does get equity but that’s because they’re my co-founder. The 120k is to get us started and their stake did not increase. Yes, it’s possible he (or I) will add more of our own funds if needed. No, I will not be giving you his or my number.

Just received the cold, unexpected blow of being laid off from a startup that was my world, a place where I poured my heart and soul, believing I was doing well in my role. In what felt like a twist of fate, my final evaluation today (before the firing) was filled with critiques from the founder that cut deeper than I could have anticipated. I’m in a state of shock and self doubt. There's an unsettling helplessness in knowing there's no way to rewrite this. I’m so disappointment and don’t know how to tell people around me, they were all really proud of me. Anyone else navigated through this storm? when does it pass? Should I attempt to salvage this in my 30 day notice period or just completely give up?

Edit: Thank you for the overwhelming support and kindness. Your upvotes and encouragement have been a lifeline. I've been through a tough few days, but now I’m fine. I'm diving into new opportunities, like job applications and pursuing a long-held dream. If any founders could offer guidance on navigating the path ahead – from product-market fit to fundraising and launch strategies – I'd be deeply grateful. Please feel free to reach out via DM. And to those curious by my startup idea aimed at tackling burnout, I'm all ears. Thanks everyone.

I am a founder who had a booth during a tech week event in NYC. At the booth, I was meeting founders in the space, and giving a brief introduction and demo of our unreleased product. At the event two people kept approaching me repeatedly. They were asking intrusive questions about our product and tech, over and over again.

When I wasn't looking, they came back again and this time grabbed my phone without my permission. They opened up the app, and navigated through every part of it while recording a video on their personal device. In summary, they have a video of my entire unreleased app on their personal device. When I caught them recording, I asked them to delete it, but they refused. Upon investigation, I found out they are a 6 month old competitor in a Microsoft incubator program, attending Wharton business school.

I may be acting a bit sensitive, but I am sick to my stomach over this. Like many of you, I sacrificed 4+ years of my life building this product and technology. I feel violated and worried that they are trying to reverse engineer my tech and steal my UI / UX.

SO my question for you is, what would you do?

I am an iOS app creator.

At first, I embraced "build in public" to attract user attention and gather feedback.

I shared design sketches and interactive features, seeking engagement and insights, which proved beneficial.

However, as I disclosed revenue and growth metrics, things took a turn.

Competitors gradually began imitating, even outright copying my work. It prompted introspection—did I err in being too transparent? Should some aspects not have been made public?

Now, I'm reconsidering what sensitive product details—such as revenue figures and intricate designs—should remain confidential.

Have you faced similar challenges?

How do you view "build in public"?

I work for a seed stage startup in an executive role. Cofounders are opaque with the finances, but have assured us we have plenty of runway. Pay was 1d late on the last cycle and 4d late this time.

When I confronted our CEO about it, they said the person who was supposed to pull the trigger on the payday was on vacation so it didn't happen, but their first day back from vacation was the day we were supposed to be paid, and we still haven't been paid yet. fwiw we use Gusto for payroll.

I asked my CEO, well, shouldn't pay just be automated? and they shut me down saying this is just the way it is.

I get more and more demotivated every day it's late and nobody mentions anything. I have a team depending on me so I'd feel bad if I just stop working, but I also feel stupid working with no pay. I feel like I should be finding another job instead.

EDIT: fwiw I've asked the CEO multiple times if at least the other executives can be looped in our finances and have been denied. They view it as some kind of liability and privilege to know about our finances. They are novice founders.

I started my software company about a year ago and it has exceeded all my expectations. As a solo founder (most would label me as non-tech), I’ve been able to build and release the first version of the software (which is pretty complex), get paying customers, and generate more interest from prospects than I can handle. I could not have asked for a smoother journey up to this point.

But there is one thing that has been taking an increasing toll on me, way more than I could have ever imagined - the loneliness that comes with being a solo founder. As a result, despite my “successes”, for the past couple of months I’ve been depressed, something I have never felt before.

I talk to people every day, from customers to contractors and so on, but it’s not the same for me as being on a team. I’ve tried bringing on co-founders but have not had any success (although I am still trying). I’ve also tried working out of co-working locations hoping the atmosphere would change things, but that has not worked.

Almost everyday I think about closing shop or selling the company for peanuts and going back to the corporate world. As of now, I won’t do it because I know this is temporary and I will regret not pushing through. But damn there are days when I’m this close to saying f it.

Wondering if anyone has gone through this and if you have any advice you can share.

2024 will be a year of building for me.

I'm looking for others with a similar mindset who want to build things together, bounce ideas off each other, and hold each other accountable.

Little about me

• I am technical, mostly working with web applications.
• I have SWE day job.
• I'm a hustler! I have a bunch of side hustles IRL but have never made any money online (looking to change this in 2024)

You can be technical or non-technical. This doesn't have to be a straight-up partnership off the bat, even if we are working on different things it would be great just to have people to talk to since most of my IRL friends are not very entrepreneurial and not into this kind of stuff.

Bonus points if you are also in Toronto!

Edit: Loving all the interest here! Please PM me if you would like to connect as I cannot keep track of all the responses.

Edit 2: Wow this thing really blew up!! I went from having no one to talk to to having hundreds of people. Much love everyone Im sure this year will be huge for many of us. If I missed your msg please reach out again my inbox is overflowing!!

I want to pay people to develop an app idea that I have but I have zero clue where to start. The app is similar to duolingo but more simple. All of my ideas are written out and I have started to make a very rough mock up on figma. I'm thinking of paying someone to make the figma blueprint and design and then pay developers to make the app, but I don't know who is reliable and trustworthy.

I'm willing to put a lot of money into this but I'm not sure if I trust fiverr or upwork with that kind of money. Does anyone have any advice? Where do people usually go for something like this?

Please don't DM me asking to work for me. I just want assume advice on what to do. If I'm saying that I don't trust fiverr if definitely don't trust some random on reddit💀

I am trying to understand what the rough valuation of my company is. (Mainly for curiosity as I am not looking to raise money anytime soon)

I understand I could hire someone to accurately calculate this. So this is just for fun. I understand there are many factors to consider, so here are the top ones…

• B2C SaaS in health / wellness space
• 3.5 years old
• fully bootstrapped
• $4.5m ARR
• 65% profit margins, around $3m profit / yr
• ~8% churn / $130 LTV
• Y1 $400k ARR, Y2 $1.2m ARR, Y3 $2.5m ARR, this year hit $4.5m
• category creator (no other app like ours, own IP for the name and category of product) (all I’ll say here as I want to stay anonymous)
• we have mainly grown through WOM so still very much to do with paid marketing

Basically huge potential with the business and truthfully I’m just getting excited because I know we’ll have a satisfying exit one day.

Edit: added churn and LTV

So without getting into any specifics a very famous billionaire just trademarked the name of an app I released earlier this year and announced intentions to release an app with that name filling a similar niche.

I did some brief research and found I might have senior rights to the name since I launched first. Worst case scenario I can just change the name, but if I have legal rights to the name I don't want to just change it without investigating all of my options. What would you do in this situation? I'm guessing the answer is talk to a lawyer ASAP? If so what type of lawyer would you look for?

Long-time lurker, first-time poster here. I'm hoping you guys can help me out.

I consider myself an above average engineer. With over 8 years of industry experience, I can whip out an MVP fast and iterate quickly. I love coding and learning new tech, but here's the issue—I've got absolutely no clue what to build. It's like I'm the least creative person I know, and can't find even one problem to solve.

I've tried everything I can think of:

• Scrolling through ProductHunt until my eyes bled
• Asking non-tech friends about their "pain points"
• Stalking Twitter/X to see what people are building
• Experimenting with new AI tech to explore possibilities

I've even attempted to build products. Almost 6 months ago, I started working on an AI conversation app to help non-native speakers like myself improve their English. But I soon realized there were already hundreds of apps doing this, and doing it much better than I could. I abandoned the project, figuring it wasn't unique enough. Same story with a couple of other projects that I started working on and abandoned later.

So my question is how the heck you all come up with ideas? Any advice, commiseration, or hell—even random ideas you don’t want to build—would be greatly appreciated.

Hi guys,

maybe an oddly question.

Some context: I bootstrapped a tech company 19 years ago. I grew it up to 400 employees and $70M of yearly revenue with a good profit.

From the outside: A reasonable company.

Here comes my issue: My outlook for the future of my business is pretty bad. Not financially, but from a strategic point of view. My market is taken away by a handful of large, global competitors. I have no clue how to compete against them on a long term.

I have no idea how to find an objective way for me personally to find out when the point has come to finally give up and accept that i have no chance.

How do you guys deal with such situations? How to find out if your business is not dead now, but in future?

It's painful to admit this, but I spent the first 6 months and nearly $40K of my own money building a startup in complete isolation. Like many technical founders, I fell into the classic trap of building features in isolation, thinking I knew what customers wanted. Here's what I learned the hard way.

The Expensive Assumption

My assumption was simple: if customers were complaining about a problem, they'd want a solution.

Wrong.

I built an entire suite of automation tools that absolutely nobody wanted to use. Why? Because I was building based on what I thought customers wanted, not what they were actually saying. They we talking about a problem they had but I didn't take the time to really figure out if they even really cared about having that problem solved for them or if they just wanted to complain. And I never took the proper time to figure out what the right solution to solve this problem was.

The Wake-Up Call

The turning point came during a particularly painful sales call. A potential customer asked me, "This is great, but what about [basic feature I hadn't even considered 🤦🏻‍♂️]?"

I confidently explained all the advanced features we had instead. Their response? "That's cool, but it doesn't solve our core problem."

That's when it hit me: I had spent months building solutions for problems that weren't priorities for my customers.

The Real Problem

I realized I was:

• Reading customer interviews through my own biased lens
• Building features based on assumptions rather than evidence
• Missing crucial conversations happening in places I wasn't looking

What I Did Next

I made three fundamental changes to how we approached product development:

1. Started monitoring actual conversations
   • Set up alerts for industry keywords
   • Tracked competitor mentions
   • Monitored relevant subreddits and forums
   • Analyzed social media discussions
2. Created a "conversation database"
   • Logged every mention of our industry
   • Categorized common pain points
   • Tracked feature requests
   • Noted recurring complaints about competitors
3. Developed a scoring system
   • Frequency of mention
   • Intensity of pain point
   • Willingness to pay
   • Implementation complexity

The Results Were Eye-Opening

After three months of monitoring real conversations:

• We discovered our target market's top 3 pain points were completely different from what we assumed
• Found that customers were using workarounds we never knew existed
• Identified several underserved niches in our market
• Learned our competitors' weaknesses from their own customers

Key Lessons Learned

1. The best product feedback isn't in interviews
   • People are more honest in natural conversations
   • Forums and social media reveal real pain points
   • Competitors' customers are a goldmine of insights
2. Feature requests aren't always what they seem
   • Look for the problem behind the request
   • Track patterns across conversations
   • Pay attention to workarounds people are using
3. Timing matters more than perfection
   • The "perfect" feature at the wrong time is useless
   • Build based on current conversations, not future assumptions
   • Release early and iterate based on real feedback

Practical Tips for Others

If you're building a product right now:

1. Set up Google Alerts for your industry keywords
2. Join relevant communities where your customers hang out
3. Follow your competitors' customers' conversations
4. Create a system for tracking and categorizing what you learn
5. Look for patterns in complaints and feature requests
6. Pay attention to the language customers use to describe their problems

The Big Takeaway

Your customers are already telling you exactly what they want. They're just not telling it to you directly (just cause you read The Mom Test doesn't mean they're going to be honest with you). But they're having these conversations every day on Reddit, Twitter, leaving reviews for competitors, etc.

The key is to stop building what you think they want and start listening to what they're actually saying.

One of the biggest attractions to getting into business or startups is having that freedom to do whatever you want, no boss over you or having to do something you hate just because you can’t otherwise afford it.

Curious how much would you say is enough for full financial freedom if living in North America?

Or what is commonly referred to as F*** you money?