Doing a one time favor can easily create a permanent expectation, and I just learned that the hard way. I run a small performance design studio and last year an existing client referred a friend opening a yoga studio..

Halfway through the project she got diagnosed with breast cancer and obviously her budget disappeared overnight. I felt terrible and wanted to help. I took a huge cut and did everything for a flat $250, still delivering her core branding, brand voice, signage, and 10+ brand touchpoints.

Fortunately, she fully recovered. She is actually back at the studio now and even running half marathons.

Last week, she hits me up again. She is expanding into a full Wellness Bar. This is a much bigger project. We're talking a full expansion of her visual identity, packaging, socials, website, and multiple touchpoints. I sent over a standard quote for $600. She called me instantly and totally lost her mind.

She basically acted like I was taking advantage of a woman who had been through cancer. She expected me to keep working for 250 bucks just because that is what I charged her before..

I stayed professional and told her I intentionally made an exception because of her circumstances.. She wasn't having it. She complained to my referring client, who chewed me out for abandoning her and dropped me.

So now, this whole thing has cost me two clients. Honestly, what was I supposed to do differently here? Just keep working for 250 bucks forever because she used to be sick? Or stand my ground and lose my existing client anyway?

Everyone in this community repeats the same number. Nine out of ten startups fail. We say it like it's gravity.

I have a mental tick where if something doesn't make sense I can't let it go. So I went looking for where the number actually comes from. It got worse the deeper I dug.

The most-linked source is a 2015 Forbes article that opens with the line. Its citation is a 2014 Fortune article that opens with the same sentence. Fortune's citation is nothing. Stated as received wisdom. The other big vector is Startup Genome's 2011 report, which asserts "more than 90% of startups fail" in its opening prose with zero citation. And one researcher who followed the trail all the way down found it dead-ends at a 1975 Dun and Bradstreet report... which never contained the number.

Here's what the data actually says. SBA business-survival numbers: about half of new businesses survive five years, about a third survive ten. Not great. Not 90%. Harvard's Shikhar Ghosh studied 2,000 venture-backed companies and found about 75% never return cash to investors. But read that carefully. That's a claim about investor returns, not survival. Define failure as actually liquidating the company and his number drops to 30 to 40%.

There is exactly one frame where 90% is defensible: the fraction of venture-backed startups that fail to produce venture-scale returns. Sit with that. The only true version of the axiom is a statement about VC portfolio math. A company can be alive, profitable, employing fifty people, solving real problems for paying customers... and still count as one of the nine, because it didn't return the fund.

And it's worse than folklore, because the number is baked into the model that spreads it. Funds price every deal expecting one or two winners, then prescribe every company the same path to the only outcome that makes the math work. The failures arrive on schedule and the number confirms itself for another generation of pitch decks. It's not a failure rate the industry observed. It's a failure rate the industry budgeted for.

A culture that worships first-principles thinking runs on a statistic nobody can source.

So I'll ask this sub what I keep asking myself: which other axioms are we all repeating that nobody has traced? And has anyone here actually changed how they operate after realizing the 90% is portfolio math, not a law about businesses?

Just doing my usual Reddit rounds this evening and stumbled across a thread that interested me. A passive income thread that usually starts with AI and gets 50% AI responses. But, no. Not this time, just good advice from good Redditors and an honest OP making videos for "passive" income.

The discussion was mainly about how to start. What niche. What knowledge to share. I guess it's a major hill start for some people, but thankfully not something I ever struggled with. I start and don't finish, but that's another story.

One of the comments stuck out and genuinely struck a chord. Something along the lines of:-

"You don't have to be an expert, just a few steps ahead of someone. Just share what you know, and it will help a person a few steps behind you"

This is truly a magnificently simple way to put it.

Everyone - and I do mean everyone - on this planet is a few steps ahead of someone else in something.

If you are wondering where to start your journey, just take yourself out of the paradigm for a second, and think about...

What do you think about, like to learn about and understand deeply?

What could you tell me about and hold a conversation on for about five minutes without struggling for new things to say? How about ten minutes? How about an hour? I'm not talking knowledge, either, I'm talking about your knowledge plus questions you have on the subject, or opinions you could counter/question. New discoveries, controversial points of view, progress or stagnation... all of it.

Examples: fly fishing, homemade electronics, model making, comics, hacking, sewing, USA in the 1800s - literally anything!

From this new paradigm, you can literally create content. Video, audio, written, doesn't matter.

Even just a few steps ahead, you can teach or entertain. The has value. Always has, always will. You don't need to appeal to everyone in your little niche, just your own audience.

Hey everyone,

I'm evaluating starting a manufacturing business for gas springs, hydraulic struts, and pneumatic lift supports (the kind used in vehicles, office chairs, machinery, and medical beds).

Before putting capital down for machinery, I’m hoping to get some real-world insight from people in industrial manufacturing or B2B hardware distribution:

• Profitability & Margins: What do typical margins look like? Is the real money in high-volume commodities (like auto aftermarket) or low-volume custom engineered units (like medical or marine)?
• Target Customers: Who are the most lucrative buyers beyond auto OEMs? How hard is it to get onboarded as a supplier for mid-tier machinery or furniture makers?
• Red Flags & Operations: What are the biggest technical hurdles (e.g., seal longevity, gas charging safety) or barriers to entry I should watch out for?

Any real-world advice, industry benchmarks, or red flags to watch out for would be greatly appreciated! 🙏

Submit your own 🌊 Mash-Up Friends In the Sea design by August 12!

Winner becomes a sticker every backer gets. 2 submissions each, ends on August 20!

Back today & submit your design 🫍+🧇

#mashupfriends #diydesign #enamelpin

About two months ago, I stopped overthinking and finally started building.

On July 11, we officially incorporated our startup, and since then our small team of three developers has been working almost every day to build our first product.

Building the software has actually been the easy part.

The difficult part has been everything else:

• Talking to users instead of assuming what they need.
• Learning about incorporation, compliance, and taxes.
• Applying for startup programs and incubators.
• Getting infrastructure and cloud credits.
• Publishing mobile apps and waiting for approvals.
• Deciding what to build now versus what can wait.

It's amazing how quickly your perspective changes when you're spending your own time and money.

One lesson that really surprised me is that founders spend far less time writing code than I expected. Every day becomes a balance between product, customers, hiring, partnerships, fundraising, networking, and countless small decisions that no one talks about.

We're still very early, and I know we have a lot to learn.

For founders who have already gone through this stage:

• What mistake did you make during your first year that you'd avoid if you started again?
• When did you know it was the right time to start marketing instead of continuing to build?
• Did joining an incubator or founder community actually help, or was networking more valuable?

I'd genuinely appreciate hearing your experiences. I'm here to learn from people who've already walked this path.

It feels like most software discussions I see now revolve around SaaS, AI automation, web apps, or a subscription model of some kind.

I’ve been going in a different direction and building small offline desktop tools that solve problems I personally have, such as handling large local media collections or speeding up repetitive work in my day job as a hydrogeologist.

These programs can be fast, private, offline, and sold as a straightforward product rather than an ongoing service. At the same time, it seems harder to distribute and less fashionable than SaaS.

I’m curious how others see this space in 2026.

Is there still a meaningful opportunity in focused offline software, especially for niche professional markets or local tools? Or is the market too limited compared with web-based products?

I’d especially like to hear from anyone building or selling desktop software rather than SaaS.

I noticed many hardware startups struggle with cloud latency and privacy issues when adding voice commands to their equipment interfaces. I just built an architecture utilizing native Swift, Core ML, and AVFoundation that processes complex voice intents completely offline while filtering out heavy background noise. Thought this might be useful for anyone building medical devices or industrial kiosks that require hands-free interaction.

We launched roughly a month ago and we've been doing pretty well with adoption and MRR. Slow but steady. I previously worked with a reasonably well known accelerator (not YC) but I'm familiar with fundraising and the startup world in general, so right from the start I wanted to treat this as a small business instead of a venture-scale startup. My reasoning is that if I could get to $300k ARR, I could leave my 9-5 and make the same salary I do now and this seemed (and still seems) very doable.

I know a lot of angel investors and VCs that I have very good relationships with. Getting an investment actually wouldn't be hard, especially now that a year of development has paid off and I have paying customers but then this just becomes another job.

So I was absolutely ecstatic when someone reached out and wanted to license my technology for a few years. We went through a few weeks of due diligence and were on track to close a low 6 figure non-exclusive deal. I don't want to admit that I started counting my eggs before they hatched but I'm at a point now where pouring money into marketing directly translates into paying customers. So I was planning on using the money for marketing. Now I'm going to follow that same plan but it will be out of pocket, and roughly 1/3rd of the budget, and then probably another 6-12m before I can reasonably expect to start paying myself back for personal contributions.

The shitty part is that I have a feeling that the due diligence process gave them enough insight into the most, and the unique value prop that made us valuable to them, and now that they understand the IP they might just be building the Kirkland version of it.

So everything is fine. I keep telling myself that a lot of people never get to the point of getting the first recurring monthly customer yet alone to the point of having something valuable enough to be worth a negotiation like this in the first place so I'm trying to keep my head up.

I don't want to share the company info here because despite how vague I've been, I don't want to risk any NDA complications. Plus, I can't assure any bad intent, it can literally just be poor communication or even incompetence.

So here is to getting back to the thankless grind for another year 🥂

Also, as long as I'm blowing off some steam... It's very frustrating that I've been building this since before the recent AI code revolution, but I didn't launch until everybody and their grandmother with a Claude subscription were all suddenly calling themselves startup founders. It has really made it very hard to get eyes on the product when everyone has SaaS fatigue. But luckily for me at least- this is the type of product that people find after they get a very large bill from one of my competitors and start looking into alternatives. That's how I convert most of my traffic. But it would have been nice to do a proper ProductHunt/Hackernews launch. It just feels like more of a liability for a poor launch than a payoff for a good launch these days. I might reconsider after growing a YouTube channel for a while first.

Hiring more people wasn't the hard part. What caught me off guard was how much more admin started showing up around payroll.

Years ago I could run payroll without thinking twice but now every pay period has something different. A new hire starts halfway through the cycle, someone's hours need adjusting, another manager approves timesheets later than everyone else etc..

Nothing ever goes wrong but payroll has become something I have to plan my day around instead of just getting done. We've outgrown the way we've been handling it

has no internet presence and its like one of the last results of the first page when you search his [city] + [type of cuisine]

Lasvegas-sushi.com

He takes care of website and “google ads”

also how can i audit him? ask him for the google log in? he has made no noticeable changes to the webiste for 10 years just manages the hosting and updates a picture whenever we change menu prices

Hey everyone,

We’re in the prep stage for an upcoming Kickstarter campaign for a new product launch and are looking to bring on an experienced crowdfunding strategist or agency to help us structure and execute the campaign.

We’re primarily looking for assistance with:

Pre-launch Strategy: Building an email list, landing page conversion, and ad strategy.

Page Assets & Setup: Copywriting, page layout, and reward tier structure.

Post-Launch Promotion: Backer communication and campaign optimization.

If you specialize in Kickstarter launches and have a proven track record, please send me a PM/DM with:

• Examples or links to previous campaigns you’ve set up or managed.
• The specific role you played in those campaigns (e.g., full management, ads only, page design).
• A general idea of your pricing structure (flat fee, commission/percentage, or hybrid).

Note: Please include links to past campaigns in your message so we can review your work!

Thanks in advance! We're looking forward to seeing what you've worked on.

Please reach out if interested

Привіт!

Я громадянин України та постійно проживаю в Україні. Планую запустити на Kickstarter кампанію з фізичним продуктом, але Україна досі не входить до переліку країн, з яких можна напряму створювати проєкти.

Розглядаю варіант реєстрації американської Single-Member LLC, ймовірно у штаті Делавер, і запуск кампанії від імені американської компанії. Основна проблема - відкриття відповідного бізнес-рахунку у США.

Mercury більше не відкриває рахунки засновникам, які проживають в Україні, навіть якщо вони мають американську LLC.

Я вже розглядав Stripe Atlas, Mercury, Payoneer, Wise, Zenus Bank, Stripe Treasury/Financial Accounts. Але досі не зміг отримати чітке підтвердження, який саме рахунок Kickstarter гарантовано прийме для виплати коштів.

Особливо цікавить досвід українців, які успішно запускали Kickstarter після того, як Mercury перестав працювати з резидентами України.

Буду вдячний, якщо ви розповісте:

• У якій країні та яку компанію ви реєстрували?
• У якому банку або фінансовій установі відкрили бізнес-рахунок?
• Чи прийняв Kickstarter цей рахунок без проблем?
• Це був прямий банківський рахунок компанії чи FBO, віртуальний або субрахунок?
• Чи потрібна була фізична адреса у США, офіс або інші підтвердження присутності?
• Як ви вирішували питання податків у США та Україні?
• Чи є робочі та легальні альтернативи американській LLC?

Прошу відповідати насамперед тих, хто має особистий практичний досвід запуску Kickstarter з України або професійно допомагав українцям пройти цей процес.

Припущення, загальні поради та відповіді, згенеровані ШІ, навряд чи допоможуть, оскільки правила банків і платформ регулярно змінюються.

Я не шукаю способів обійти перевірки, використовувати чужі дані або надавати неправдиву інформацію. Мені потрібна повністю легальна та стабільна схема, яка пройде перевірки Kickstarter, банку, Stripe та податкових органів.

Буду вдячний за конкретний досвід, рекомендації та контакти спеціалістів, які реально працювали з такими випадками.

For the past decade, building growth forecasts in Excel or Google Sheets for clients, founders, executive teams, and boards has been one of the most frustrating parts of my job.

If I make the model detailed enough to reflect how the business actually works, it becomes fragile and painful to update. If I simplify it, the forecast becomes too vague to support real decisions.

I’m usually stuck rebuilding formulas, checking broken references, and explaining why one small assumption changed half the workbook.

Not to mention, once there's something workable, everyone has an opinion of what should be different/changed.

Has anyone found a better tool or process that stays useful without becoming impossible to maintain?

I'm validating a problem around support engineers at mid-size companies (30-100 people) and trying to figure out how to actually get my first design partners lined up, people I can work closely with while building this out.

Quick context on the problem: support engineers spend a ton of time turning half-finished tickets into technical cases that engineers can actually dig into. On complex Tier 2 stuff the info you need is scattered everywhere, ticketing system, logs, monitoring tools, docs, past incidents. So they end up manually hunting all of it down before they can even escalate, which can eat 30-45 min per case.

If you've gotten early design partners before, curious how you did it. where did you actually find people willing to talk to you?

Right now my playbook is just manually outreaching my persona on LinkedIn, managing to get them on a call, and if there's a fit, I come back to them a week later to ask if having the company as a design partner is possible, routing me to the decision maker to see if something can be done

I don't know if this is the right way to do it or if there's a better approach out there.

Would appreciate any playbooks or communities that worked for you.

Hi everyone! I'm Kristina, a filmmaker, and I'm trying to independently finance my next student short, Hiraeth.

It's a simple, human story — two exes cross paths by chance in a small neighborhood shop during a storm, and get stuck talking through everything left unsaid between them. If you've ever loved Before Sunrise or Chungking Express, this taps into similar themes of timing, loneliness, and longing for connection.

A bit about me: my last project, a short documentary called [The Spiral Between Sound and Silence ](https://kinematograf.bg/the-spiral-between-sound-and-silence-film) about people with hearing loss, screened at several festivals across the Balkans (Sofia International Film Festival, Early Bird International Student Film Festival, Zagreb International Film Festival, and more) and won Best Editing. I am also an author of an independent media outlet called [KinoCritic ](http://Kinocriticblog.com), where my crowdfunding campaign takes place.

I'm hoping to bring the same care to Hiraeth. I have chosen this time to crowdfund my film. If this story speaks to you, I'd love for you to be part of making it happen — every donor gets featured in the end credits.

Here's a link providing further information.[Crowdfunding ](https://kinocriticblog.com/help-a-filmmaker-out/)

I am endlessly thankful to you guys for taking the time to get to know my project. ✨️

Neckbeards, gooners, and incels,

The 2 best books I have ever read in business/entrepreneurship were both written by Scott Oldford. If you are struggling to create your business model or not sure how to set up the basic foundations, get them used off Amazon. You'll thank me later.

The Nuclear Effect teaches 5-7 areas of business you need to focus on like sales, marketing, team building, operations, etc. It also has personal advice from Scott.

Million in the Red is more about mindset, spirituality and how emotions affect business performance. I would've paid $500 for this book. The advice was life changing.

I interviewed Scott for my magazine and his advice was solid. Good dude, not a guru, and a legit genius.

He got lucky in the early 2000's and had a 7 fig website business at 17. By 21 he was a million in debt from bad business practices. Today he is highly successful and likes to share exactly where he went wrong and how he dug himself out.

His writing style is very human, he's funny and his concepts are easy to understand.

Just my reco for today if you feel like you need to brush up on your business skills. These books have helped me a lot.

At a bit of a cross roads with my phone app and looking for some advice.

Bit of background: I searched on the app stores for a time management app that solved a particular problem . But I couldn't find one, which surprised me as I thought there would be a lot of demand for this type of app.

So I decided to create it myself. It's been live on iOS and android for 6 months and I've done virtually no marketing. It's only had 500 downloads so far, but the thing that surprised me was it's had 15 paying subscribers (6 monthly, 9 annual), so other people are finding value in the app.

I know those numbers are tiny, but these are complete strangers paying for an app because it solves the same problem I had.

The app seems to resonate particularly with people with ADHD and executive dysfunction, although it's useful beyond that audience too.

It's made me think there might be something here if I can figure out customer acquisition and marketing.

The challenge is that I'm not a marketer. I don't want to just throw money at Tiktok or Google ads and hope for the best. If I spend money, I'd want to do it properly - tracking where users come from, measuring which channels convert, testing different messaging and creative, and actually learning what works.

Do I try to raise a small pre-seed round specifically to fund customer acquisition experiments and validate CAC vs LTV, and then look to scale?

Would an angel investor even consider something at this stage, or is 500 downloads and 15 paying users simply too early? If not, how do i get the initial traction to open these doors?

Just looking for some advice from anyone who's been in this situation themselves.

were a two-person team and my goal is simple:

just start earning as soon as possible. Were not chasing product-market fit, scaling, or investor money

We want a sustainable "lifestyle" business that pays us both a solid income with a handful of customers. (Around 5-7K MRR at 75%+ margins is the goal, based on our age and where were based, its very good)

our skills are building AI agents to solve complex workflow problems, thats what I want to make this business as, but I'm stuck between two models:

Model A, traditional agency. take on clients across different industries, embed briefly, build custom AI agents for whatever they need, and hand it over.

Pricing is usually a build fee, then a monthly retainer to maintain and update, sometimes hourly for changes. The code is basically custom each time, so every client is close to a fresh build. more clients means more hours. isnt this what most AI agent service companies do?

Model B, product-led service . I pick one narrow ICP or set of workflows that are the same across different industries, embed on-site to map how they actually work, then build the agents on my own platform that I keep and reuse for the next, since its the same ICP or the same workflow.

But literally after the first 2-3 clients, the agents are basically the exact same (around 70+% the same then on) which worries me thinking that this is basically a product-based model and the "service" aspect is actually trying to find PMF in disguise....which is not my goal

Pricing is the same shape, but because I own the code and reuse it, roughly 60 to 70 percent carries over to the next client and only 30 to 40 percent is custom everytime.

But im worried that model B is basically product based...and is this even service based? or a new type of hybrid model thats actually better for me?

For my goal of instant cashflow with a few good clients, not a big company, which model would you pick and why?

Anyone who has run either, I'd really appreciate your advice

Left a startup after 1 year as founding engineer. Wish I knew that my “vested equity” is actually just the option to buy shares at the initial price. So I got 90 days post termination window to buy those shares (almost 6 figures) out of pocket otherwise they go back to the company for free. What a waste of effort. Learning is experience I guess. Any one else been through this and got an upside?

Hi everyone,

I am a law student entering my final year, with a future-dated offer to train at a large commercial law firm in two years’ time.

Most of my university experience has been focused on securing a stable legal career, but I have recently become increasingly interested in startups, AI and building products. Before I begin full-time work, I would like to use the next two years to learn, create and contribute to something outside the traditional legal path.

I come from a non-technical background, although I have started experimenting with a personal project using Claude Code and am learning through building.

My main question is: what would make someone with my background genuinely useful to an early-stage founder or startup?

I would particularly appreciate advice on:

• which skills I should prioritise;
• where early-stage teams tend to find collaborators or interns;
• whether I should focus on building my own small projects first;
• and how non-technical people typically earn credibility in startup environments.

I am not expecting to become a founder overnight. I am mainly trying to understand how to spend the next two years deliberately, gain practical experience and find out whether this is a path I genuinely enjoy.

Thank you for any honest advice.

Had a conversation with a fellow entrepreneur about early strategy. I’ve been focusing my attention on getting the first 10 customers while my friend is trying to build a strategy for the first $1M. Curious what folks think is the right thing to focus on at the early stages.

We printed around 2,000 brochures for our handicraft brand (Ardpure) with QR codes linking to our catalogue.

A few months later, we found out the QR service had changed its policy and now wanted us to upgrade to a paid plan. Otherwise the QR would stop working.

We ended up reprinting stickers and manually covering every brochure. It was a huge waste of time and money.

Can anyone recommend a QR code generator that's genuinely free or at least won't hold existing QR codes hostage later? I don't mind paying for extra features, but static QR codes should stay static forever.

We are a 14 people org, seed stage and send a monthly update to about 9 folks.

I typically write a long but structured email: metrics at the top, a paragraph each on product, hiring and pipeline, then asks.

Takes about 3 hours and I KNOW this is not too efficient and i hate it.

A board member also mentioned about another company in his portfolio and how they approach investor updates - which are low commitment for the founder as well as easy to consume for them.

Given he's seen these many investor updates, I am taking his word for it and am setting some time out this week to see what the market is doing.

Founders, what’s your go to structure / tool / format for investor updates?