Competition Hello everyone. I'm curious, do you regularly monitor your competition? How often do yuu do it and what methods or tools do you use to stay ahead? Whether it's manual tracking, competitor analysis tools or AI solutions I'd love to hear your strategies and experiences. 4 0 replies
What’s the most underrated factor that determines a startup’s success? Startups often credit their success to factors like product-market fit, funding, or the founding team. But what about the less talked-about factors? For instance, I’ve noticed startups with exceptional customer service can gain loyal users even if their product isn’t perfect. What do you think is the most underrated element that makes or breaks a startup? Have you seen a surprising factor play a key role in success or failure? I'm currently involved in a start-up and we launched just a few weeks ago. A lot of money has... 4 0 replies
Would you hire a freelance software developer? Hi, I’m a freelance software developer looking to connect with startups and understand what makes freelancing work for you. I’d love to hear your thoughts: - What are the main reasons you’d hire a freelance developer instead of bringing someone on full-time? - And what kind of person or skills would make you want to work with a freelancer? I’m trying to figure out how I can better fit the needs of startups, so any advice or thoughts would mean a lot. Thanks! 5 0 replies
Freelance/Task Platform MVP Without an Escrow System? Hi everyone, I’m seeking advice from entrepreneurs, developers, and experts who’ve worked on building platforms or MVPs. I’m based in Ethiopia, where platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, and TaskRabbit have a huge untapped market but also face unique barriers. My goal is to create a platform tailored to my country, solving challenges like: Payment Systems: Most Ethiopians don’t have access to international payment platforms like PayPal. Language Barrier: Many don’t speak fluent English to navigate these global platforms. Task Complexity: Many tasks on these platforms require high-level skills. I want... 5 0 replies
Is it bad to brainstorm my startup idea with Chatgpt 4o? Currently I'm working in idea stage and there's possibility of getting funding from university for R&D I'm from non business background and I don't have any frnds from that back All I can discuss By chatgpt only But whenever people listen about CHATGPT they take it worthless Is it that bad? I mean with the current other analysis feature and search engines feature gpt is a bit trustable? Can you guys help me with this? 1 0 replies
Startup Culture - Great businesses are all about a great idea. - Ideas are nothing; it’s all execution. <— we are here. - Execution is nothing; it’s resilience. - Resilience is nothing; it’s timing. - It’s all just luck. This pretty much sums up how I feel about startup culture. First it was all about the idea, people are obsessed with coming up with the next big thing. Then about execution, and we get bombarded with hustle culture… But then even great execution doesn’t guarantee success. That’s where resilience comes in... 3 0 replies
I need a reality check. Please rate my idea and website? Hey guys, I need some honest feedback. If my idea or website sucks, please let me know. If you think it's good, I'd appreciate to hear that too. Not advertising here, I just desperately need some outside opinion from like-minded people who've done this before. Thank you. **nmthera(dot)com** 2 0 replies
Turning a Dream into Reality: Seeking Support to Empower Thousands in Ethiopia Hi everyone, I’m a dreamer from Ethiopia, a country where opportunities are hard to come by, but dreams still thrive. I’m working on building something that could change lives—not just mine, but countless others in my community. It’s a platform that seamlessly connects task creators with task doers. Imagine waking up stressed about money, without a job, or being a student needing quick income. My platform would let anyone with a laptop or phone find simple, quick tasks they can complete remotely—whether it’s a 2-hour gig or a one-day... 1 0 replies
Looking for Guidance, Funding, and Like-Minded People to Build a Dream in Ethiopia Hello everyone, I’m an entrepreneur from Ethiopia, a country where opportunities are limited, and creating luck often feels like an uphill battle. But I believe that luck isn’t impossible—it just takes time and the right mindset. Right now, I’m working on something that I truly believe can transform lives here: a platform that connects task creators with task doers, allowing anyone to earn money quickly and easily, even from the comfort of their home. My vision goes beyond just making money—I want to empower people, especially those who feel... 4 0 replies
LLM + Slackbot + admin tool I was thinking of setting up retool to have a bunch of admin/back-office functionality for my startup. Including account provisioning, making reports, seeing user activity, etc. But what I really want is a LLM powered slack bot that can do all of this for me. Is anyone building this? I’m sure I could cobble stuff together using n8n but would prefer a service. 3 0 replies
SAAS to Optimize Content Reach We all know there's algorithms behind virality and generating content that reaches audiences, why is there no tool to upload your content and receive optimization to maximize your chance of reaching the largest audience possible? This seems like an obvious product for the creator economy, it would be easy to develop and also to identify product market fit. 3 0 replies
Does OpenAI go down too much to take seriously as a production API? Right now the OpenAI API, ChatGPT and Sora are completely down. It's a major outage now at 2 hours 36 minutes and counting. Imagine building a product and just starting to get traction and your product stops working for 2 and a half hours. We were in the middle of a demo just now and a key component of our app stopped working. Thankfully it didn't affect our demo too much, but it hurts. I did the math, just looking at their reported uptime for the API alone 99.33%...... 1 0 replies
Employee #1 - how to structure/write my own ESOP offer? Hey all, I'm about to join a *very* early-stage startup as employee #1. The co-founders and I have already agreed in principle that I will be getting a fixed $amt translatable into shares (for the sake of discussion, let's say $500K). The number of shares will be pegged at the valuation of the next funding round, which is set to occur fairly soon. Again, for the sake of discussion, let's say that the post-money valuation cap of the upcoming round is $5M. My share would translate to 10%. But... 2 0 replies
ChatGPT is down! How is your startup product doing? So it looks like today one of those rare days when OpenAI ChatGPT downtime. I've noticed something interesting - many of my favorite AI tools that use OpenAI under the hood are still operating. This makes me think that the APIs might still be working, even though some services are down. It got me thinking: What gameplan have you all put in place for your products that heavily rely on OpenAI's APIs? How do you handle situations when the API becomes unavailable? I'm curious to hear about your strategies,... 2 0 replies
How do you get clients online? I own a music company where I provide tutors for those who want to learn a musical instrument online. This is my second actual business, the first one didn't fail but it took so much of my time and it wasn't fulfilling for me. I see my competitors using Facebook ads, but FB ads are quite expensive for me (for now). I also can't do lead generation, I'd have to pay for a business email (can't for now). I actually want this to flourish but I'm super new to... 5 0 replies
"Small Teams, Big Exits: The Power of Quality Over Quantity" YouTube: 65 employees → Acquired by Google for $1.65B Instagram: 13 employees → Acquired by Meta for $1B WhatsApp: 50 employees → Acquired by Meta for $19B Minecraft: 40 employees → Acquired by Microsoft for $2.5B Oculus VR: 75 employees → Acquired by Meta for $2B Waze: 100 employees → Acquired by Google for $1.1B Twitch: 100 employees → Acquired by Amazon for $970M Founders, take note: a single committed, high-performing employee is worth more than ten who lack dedication. This is the age of achieving more with fewer... 1 0 replies
Should I invest in a moderately expensive .com domain for my fintech startup, or consider specialty TLDs? I'm building a startup in the personal wealth/financial services space, and I need to change my domain name due to trust/spam perception issues. Since I'm targeting consumers directly and in the finance space, establishing trust is crucial. I'm considering three options: - Investing a few thousand dollars in a solid .com domain - Using specialty TLDs like .money, .health, or .ai - a longer less good .com Context about the business: - Still in the validation phase - Target market: Both established wealthy individuals/couples who self-direct their investments, and... 4 0 replies
How I Used 5-Search/Month Keywords to Land My First Customers (No Ads) When I launched my AI Pet Pawtrait busiess, I knew ranking a new site would be tough (**general advice says you won't rank for 3 months**). Instead of targeting high-competition keywords, I focused on ultra-low-volume ones like "{city} pet photographer" with just 5-30 searches/month. By targeting 100 UK towns and cities, **I reached 500-3,000 high-intent searches/month.** Using programmatic SEO, I quickly created location-specific pages, and while the traffic is small, it’s converting well—my first paying customers came in weeks. It's only a small start but it's enough to get... 3 0 replies
VCs - some great, some not so much! Recently engaged with several VCs, thought I'd share my thoughts here to help out others. |VC|Comments|Overall Score| |:-|:-|:-| |fika|Easy to connect and schedule, spoke to an associate who was respectful and intelligent. Did a quick follow up with one of the key partners. The partner meeting looked a bit disengaged and barely asked questions. It seemed he didnt want to be there :) The associate promptly responded in a few days with a respectful reject email citing reasons that seemed genuine. Overall, would still recommend working with them based... 2 0 replies
How I run customer interviews (and why they're better than analytics for 0-1) ## Why talk to customers? Look, I've built products at companies of all sizes - tiny startups, growing scale-ups, and 500-person enterprises. The one thing that's always worked? Actually talking to customers. Especially when you're starting from scratch. Don't get me wrong - tools like Amplitude are great at showing you what people do in your app. But they miss everything that happens outside it. Some of the best insights I've found came from discovering that people were using weird Excel templates or Word docs as workarounds. You'd never... 1 0 replies
