We celebrate launches, hires, funding rounds. But some of those are secretly landmines that go off 6 months later. What looked like progress ends up as an explosion.

One I keep hearing about is "office space commitments". At first it feels like a milestone, a sign that you're real, growing, and/or able to offer a better experience org-wide. But then the overhead and a 3-year lease quietly box in your runway.

It’s not that these moments aren't worth celebrating. It’s just wild how often they come with hidden shrapnel.

So, what’s been your biggest "milestone" that secretly turned into a landmine? And if you've dodged a few, how did you spot them early?

A comment on my last post inspired me to share a few personal examples of things I did working on my previous venture that don't scale.

If you're selling b2b, you don't need to build a payment processor integration for your MVP.

Especially if you're selling in a domain other than tech (eg. healthcare), you can probably get away with manually sending Stripe invoices for the first 50 clients. Sure, it will be a pain in the ass, but your time is probably better spent building the actual product. When you're getting ready to scale, you can build your integration.

Optimize for iteration rather than efficiency/perfection

As a software engineer coming from big tech, I had to really learn this one. You don't need to overengineer your MVP or new feature. Let's face it, you're probably not going to have millions or even thousands of users. What is most important is validating your business. YOUR PRODUCT WILL CHANGE AT LEAST 10 TIMES BEFORE YOU REACH PMF. Your customers probably don't give a damn how your product works; they just care whether or not it says what you promised.

Always see if you can buy instead of build

There is probably a product for the problem you're trying to solve. Maybe it's auth, identity verification, or whatever, it probably already exist and you will save so much time using an off the shelf solution vs building it in house. I say this one doesn't scale, because a lot of these products will get very expensive when your business gets traction.

My general philosophy is to only focus on whatever is mission critical to your startup. Everything else can probably be put on the back burner until you hit PMF. I found it incredibly helpful to always ask myself what the business impact was of an initiative before sinking too much time into it.

There are also a few things you can do that DO SCALE that are quick wins. Spend one day setting up tooling for observability, it will save you so much time in the long run. Also, make sure your customers have an easy way to reach you. Whether it's Slack, a chat box on the website, or a contact form, just set it up! Customer feedback is probably the most important thing early on.

I would love to hear your examples!

Too many business owners are stuck in the Death Valley phase doing everything themselves, trying to get by. To get out, you need to think like a business builder, not just a practitioner. The principles that usualy separate those who survive from those who scale.

1. The LTV/CAC rule spend 80% of your time increasing Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) and 20% on reducing Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). A higher LTV allows you to spend more to acquire a customer, giving you an unfair advantage. Focus on improving your product and customer experience.

2. Direct response first, brand later, don't try to be Nike when you're just starting. You don't have the cash. Use direct response marketing (cold outreach, organic content with a clear call to action). This gets you customers and cash flow immediately. Once you have a business, you've earned the right to build a brand.

3. The two-channel strategy, you can't master both demand capture and demand generation at the same time. Start with demand capture. These are people already looking for your solution on platforms like Google or Chatgpt these days. This is the fastest path to millions. Once you've perfected that, move into demand generation (e.g., Facebook ads) to reach the larger, untapped market.

4. Your offer is more powerful than any argument you can make. It should be so good that a customer would feel stupid saying no. This means you must bear the majority of the risk. A great offer lowers your customer acquisition costs and dramatically increases your conversions.

5. The chef vs. business builder mindset, you're a chef who loves their craft. That's great. But to scale, you must become a business builder. This means focusing on revenue-producing activities, generating cash flow, and delegating the operational tasks you were once doing. Your job is to make yourself redundant in the day-to-day so you can focus on the big-picture swings that will change your business.

This post is relevant because it tackles startups from first principles.

People have built rockets to space with startups, but can't fix traffic or pollution.

Why do so many problems stay unsolved - is it because we don't know all of the problems from a micro to meso to macro scale in a connected way?

Of course, there are economic incentives like in the pharmaceutical industry, but I'm trying to dig deeper.

Hi everyone,

I’m a college student and just starting to learn programming (Python, a little bit of networking). I know I don’t have much experience, but I don’t want to waste more time without trying to build something.

My question is: what are some very small and simple projects that a complete beginner could work on that might eventually grow into something useful? For example, should I try:

building a very basic app (maybe no-code/low-code at first),

making small automation tools, or

trying something web-based?

I don’t have co-founders or teammates (I’m an introvert), but I still want to try something on my own just to learn by doing.

What I’m looking for are concrete examples of starter projects that can teach me the basics of building and maybe give me a little direction. I’m not expecting to build a unicorn startup tomorrow I just want a clear starting point.

Thanks in advance for any advice 🙏

I’ve been wondering how startups in here handle security when they’re building MVPs.

From what I’ve seen (and what folks here often post), early-stage teams pour most of their energy into speed—whether that means building a mockup, prototype, or a full-blown product—just enough to validate the idea quickly . That makes total sense. But I’ve also seen MVPs get targeted within weeks of going live, sometimes even exploited, simply because security wasn’t on the radar early on .

I’m not talking about building an enterprise‑grade security program or breaking the bank. I mean the basics—avoiding misconfigured cloud storage, exposed APIs, default credentials, debug endpoints left unsecured, or other features that accidentally leak critical data. These kinds of issues aren’t glamorous, but I’ve seen them in real MVPs—even from smart teams—because they just didn’t anticipate the risk .

So I’d love to hear from founders and builders in here:

At what point do you start thinking seriously about security in your product?

Have you ever budgeted for things like penetration testing, even roughly, during MVP development?

Do you treat security as something to address only after traction, or something essential and integrated early?

For those who skipped early checks, did it ever come back to bite you?

I’m genuinely curious how the startup community balances speed, validation, and basic security—especially when budgets and timelines are tight. Have any of you seen a quick test or glitch turn into something bigger later on?

Would love to hear your stories—even if they’re just small near-misses or lessons learned. Let’s get a real conversation going on how security fits into this lean, move-fast world.

Hey all,

Marc andreesseen wrote 4 parts to career advice back in 2007. One of the 5 things he mentions is crucial to learn about is finance.

Undergrad engineer here. There are books like The Lean Startup or 0 to 1, but those are mindsets. I'm looking for resources that teach the $ technicals.

I want to self learn how to think about spending dollars for highest ROI, turning operations into cash, and principles like M&A, network effects, economies of scale.

Also things like the strategy behind technology, fundraising (dilution), modeling.

What resources have been valuable for you to develop this understanding?

Thanks!

Currently, at my startup, we use CodeRabbit for code reviews, but it mostly gives low-level comments. I still end up doing the architectural review myself and testing the app for every new PR - it’s a big time sink.

What do you use to supercharge this? Looking for tools/workflows that provide architectural-level review, spin up PR preview envs, and auto-run tests (unit/integration/e2e) with results posted on the PR.

Whats up everyone :) first time posting in here after browsing for a little bit.

Just wanted to share my extremely humble experience so far. I opened my own insurance agency (28M) after 6 years in the industry fresh out of college. I never knew what the hell I wanted to do. Stumbled upon insurance (property and casualty) mostly personal lines, and it has been fantastic for me.

2 months in and I have made about $1,000 a month so far. Going from 6 figures a year to $0 and starting from absolutely nothing is so scary but I am dedicated to put in the work and realize this could be good for my future if i can hold on and be okay being poor for a couple years. Doing doordash as well to pay the bills. Never had to do it before and it’s very humbling.

I am starting to look into SEO and how to get natural growth slowly but surely. Word of mouth is huge obviously as well. Doing a great job so people want to send friends/family over to try and help them as well.

Just wanted to say hello to everyone and share my extremely humble experience in my startup journey.

If you have any tips or just want to say hello and share your experience, I would love to hear from you all! 🙂

The title says it all. Let's say there is an established player in the industry, does it even make sense to try to compete with the same? All the startup advices focus on launching MVP, which doesn't make sense against an established player. So how do you tackle? I can think of:

• Start with a niche
• Start with a better product and hope that you get acquired by them What else?

Earlier this year, I was a technical cofounder for a health tech company. I built the entire product, came up with the actual business model that was pitched to investors, and did all of the branding. Literally, the name, logo, and all of the copy on the website I drafted are still the same to this day.

I spent countless sleepless nights building. I even went through 3 months of my personal runway and put ~10k into the business. I knew the product better than the founder.

Before we raised, we agreed the first thing we’d do was pay ourselves so we could give our undivided attention to the product. When we actually did raise, everything changed. I couldn’t get a straight answer for months, and I eventually had to walk away.

The reason I say "Pushed Out" is it felt deliberate. I should have seen the red flags. My cofounder was inconsistent about ARR to investors. I couldn’t get access to Stripe for months (I needed access to prepare the data room for earlier interested investors). We rarely talked with customers (I couldn't get their contact info). I would be lucky to get a single meeting with my cofounder a week. I was basically treated as the help, with my input never really being considered. Whenever I raised my concerns, it was always, “next week” or “I’ll do better”. This went on for months, and nothing ever changed.

I think there were several mistakes I made throughout those 8 months.

1. I probably should have stuck to working with someone I already knew and trusted. I honestly didn't know this person well, but I thought a piece of paper would have saved me.
2. I should have walked away sooner. ~ 3 months in, I started noticing red flags. In retrospect, I should have just listened to my Husband's intuition and walked away.
3. I should have advocated for myself more with our advisor. I rarely ever talked to our advisor outside our weekly meetings because I don't like talking behind people's backs, but I probably should have called him before things blew up.

Welp, lesson learned. If you're a technical founder, watch your back and make sure you're not building someone else's vision that you have no say in.

I’ve been exploring ideas for a startup and I’m realizing that a lot of the best ones don’t come from chasing “big trends,” but from solving simple, daily frustrations. Things like reminders, scheduling, tracking, managing small tasks tiny frictions that everyone faces but no one has nailed.

I know there are plenty of apps available for this but I still wanna try my hand and see if I can provide some service at cheaper rate and less tacky

what’s one everyday pain point you think is just begging for a startup to solve? I’m looking for inspiration and validation before I start building.

I guess in this sub there might be people who have built a SaaS with billing (Stripe) integrated and are of INDIA

I'm trying to integrate stripe into my SaaS for first time, but when i go to stripe site, they say that

Stripe is available by invite only in India. Please request an invite to

onboard in India. If your business is incorporated outside of India, select

the relevant country.

and they ask for a work email, which i dont have, now tell me what to do? Am i in any misconception or what coz i have seen many people using Stripe for billing without any issues

Kindly help me!

Hello everyone,

I am currently working on a project called I won't say the name, a payment solution designed for the Lebanese market. The idea is to offer merchants (online and in-store) a Stri*** experience: • Simple and fast onboarding of merchants • API integration for e-commerce (Shopify, WooCommerce, etc.) • Android payment terminals (POS) for physical stores • A clear dashboard (Arabic/French/English) to manage transactions • Responsive local support

Technically, my solution would rely on a technology that I cannot say the name of (which already has partnerships with the acquiring banks). In their contract, they offer me a revenue share of only $0.05 per transaction (which is very low). It is for this reason that the real economic model of SwiftPay would not be based solely on this sharing, but on fixed income on the merchant side.

💡 My economic model: • Setup fees (~$75 per merchant, one time) • Monthly subscription (~$25) • Margin on POS rental (~$8–10/month per device) • Optional additional services (plugins, premium support, etc.) • • the small revenue share company that I can't say the name ($0.05 per transaction).

According to my projections: • With 50 merchants → around $30,000/year in revenue • With 80 merchants → around $50,000/year in revenue

⚡ My questions: 1. Do you think merchants in Lebanon would agree to pay ~$25/month + installation fees if it really simplifies their lives? 2. For physical merchants, would the availability of Android terminals + local support be enough to convince them? 3. For e-commerce merchants (Shopify, WooCommerce, etc.), would they trust a new solution like SwiftPay if onboarding is simple and quick? 4. Do you see any obvious obstacles to this model in the Lebanese market?

I am aware that the Lebanese market is complicated (limited trust, sensitivity to fees, banking problems, etc.), but I feel that there is a real gap for a local Stripe-like solution.

I am making earmuffs for sleeping but I don't know how to price my product. Facebook ads optimized towards an audience that is from the US in the midwest aged 40-65. I reached out to the people on the email list and they said a good price they would pay is 30-35$. I am planning to launch on kickstarter(No sales to date). Kickstarter backers come from richer regions like California, New York, etc. Competitors price themselves at least 50$ to 80$. So either I need to target a better audience with my ads or price myself at 40$ and eat up lower margins. I would also like to test different prices but I don't know how to go about that.

This might sound a bit obvious, but it’s my first time seriously looking for business ideas (beyond the usual “solve a problem you already have” advice).

I’ve been considering using SEO as a starting point, basically digging into keywords that aren’t too competitive but still get solid traffic. Has anyone here tried using keyword research as a way to generate business ideas?

Also curious: are there other channels or methods (like SEO) that give you a sense of both demand (how many people are searching) and competition (how crowded the space is)?

If you’ve gone down this path before, I’d love to hear about your experience and if you have any favorite tools, resources, or tips to get started, even better.

I’ve built a web app called Vocably a topic-based voice and video chat platform where people can create and join rooms to talk about their interests. The platform is live, but I need a co-founder who can take charge of marketing and help grow our user base.

Hi everyone, I've been working on a product for a few years now. I have prototypesthatbwork well and look good. I also continue to test and improve them. The product is an electronic gadget and takes a decent amount of time to solder and assemble it together. I am the only person working on it. I don't have a team and I don't have a lot of money or time to dump into this because I'm supporting a family first with my full time job. I started looking into Kickstarter, but as soon as I checked it out I realized the people on Kickstarter are basically small companies that are using the platform to market their product before launch. In order to look like the other guys, I need to make a website, an online store, videos, and flashy ads. I am an engineer, so this part of the process is not my strong suit. I feel that even if I push myself to finish the Kickstarter, I will be irrelevant because I'm not as flashy as the others. Any suggestions for a different platform that might be a better fit for my situation? Should I finish the Kickstarter anyways and just work with what I got? Any advice on next steps is appreciated. Thank you.

I wanted to share an experience that surprised me while I was still in R&D for an idea.

I posted on Reddit about my personal struggles and what happened next… well, it just surprised me. In under 48 hours, the post reached 70,000 people, got 566 upvotes, and sparked 110+ comments from others saying they felt the exact same way.

The key takeaway for me: 👉 Sometimes the best early validation comes from sharing your authentic experience, not a polished pitch.

It taught me that: • Authenticity drives engagement; people respond when you’re real. • Speed matters; if something takes off in 24–48 hours, you’ve hit a nerve. • Consistency counts; even follow-up posts got tens of thousands of views.

Curious for this community: • Have you ever had an “unexpected traction” moment that validated your idea? • How did you turn that into your next step (building, pitching, fundraising, etc.)?

Thanks 🙏

Hey everyone, am a German based small business owner. I am new to the field with enormous IT/Cybersecurity background. I have just registered my business with the German chamber of commerce. I wanna get into consulting and rendering IT & Cybersecurity solutions to SMEs. I am stacked on how to go about the next steps to follow to build my business. I have website under development. Any suggestions, roadmaps, advices or steps to follow will be really appreciated. Thank you

What's the difference between an app marketplace and an integration? Are all apps on app marketplaces a type of integrations?

What has been your experience with any adding these to your SaaS products? Any pitfalls we should avoid? At what point in a startup would it be good to start building these out?

Also, what is your opinion on Zapier vs. n8n vsv. Make, etc.?

Hopefully this doesn't get me into trouble, but I'm actually trying to understand how founders really balance building a product with promoting it with driving sales and with making "connections".

My background: 4.5 years at FAANG -- left to learn software sales but job offer didn't fall thru, moved back home, started as a personal trainer to make some income while I build a local automation company.

I'm new to entrepreneurship and honestly, I have no idea how to properly spend my day. Should I make more content to promote the idea of the business? Network with other founders? Cold-call? Paid ads? I've had a couple of clients, nothing major, but it's not money that I could live off of.

I just feel a bit lost. I've paid for $5k worth of mentorships and honestly, I'm a bit jaded learning things that I already know without any help in actually making it feasible (how tf can I make good content posting 5x a day?).

That aside, successful founders, how did you structure your day when you were first beginning? How did you balance promoting, sales and actual product development? Did you hire out for the development, sales, or any other part of the process?

EDIT:

Thank you for all of the helpful responses!

From what I can tell, the two most helpful and recurring advice is:

• talk to customers FIRST
• build enough to demo and THEN talk to customers
• once you have enough to sell, SELL as much as possible. Once someone is ready to pay, then you can fully build it out.

So we launched an iOS app (for the first time) and I've learnt a bunch of things by making mistakes - sharing here to add to your pre-launch checklist

1. The first time did an internal launch to ~100 potential users. Pitched and shared a QR code to download our testflight app. Until then we had just 2 users (me and my friend). People loved our demo and a bunch of them scanned it at the same time. Result signups blocked - we got rate limited by supabase.
2. We launched on X and LI - and our sign up verification emails did not get triggered properly for all users. we lost a bunch of users here and it is painful to think about. we fixed it within 30 mins but still hurt us.
3. we launched on product hunt - and the next morning we got emails saying our app (which is a voice ai assistant) stopped speaking. this happened because we had exhausted our credits for our voice platform and we did not have a credit card on file. This was a quick fix.

Lessons learnt

1. Test external systems very strongly before launching - add credit cards wherever needed.
2. Sign up is everything - make it as simple as possible.
3. If you have the resources stress test it at least with 30-40 people.

Sorry if this is already too obvious - this is for folks who are launching for the first time. Experienced folks please add to this list - would be very helpful

I've written about the problems of the Bay Area and NYC. They definitely have great pools of talent. The Bay area I'd say is No 1 with the universities in the area. NYC... Great business acumen. But they both are overwhelmed with chaos which disrupts progress and creates fear and uncertainty. Moving also has its challenges, but we recognize it as necessary.

Something every founder should consider, IMHO, is access to talent and capital. Then how do you access talent if you have capital? Can you get talent without capital? Do the employment laws get in the way of using equity and using contractors to bridge the gap to become interesting to investors? And how do you access the investors?

edited to correct seplling :p

There’s so much talk about AI in the business world, but I want to hear it from those actually running companies. From a leadership perspective, what’s the most exciting opportunity you see in AI? And on the other side, what’s the biggest concern that keeps you cautious?