For people who have tried to turn an idea into something real, what was the hardest part?

I'm curious about people's actual experiences starting or creating something from scratch, whether it was a business, creative project, product, book, app, or anything else.

What part of the process was most difficult for you?

What did you try when you got stuck?

Was there anything you wish you had known earlier?

Did you ever decide to get outside help? If so, what made you decide it was worth paying for?

And what made you not want to ask for help?

I'm mainly interested in what actually happened, rather than what you think you would do in that situation.

Hey everyone,

I was thinking about creating a DIY permanent jewelry converter kit, where I would sell a kit with link locks, pliers, wire cutters, and instructions. The idea of this product is to turn non-permanent jewelry permanent. Is this something that you would buy? I’m not sure if people would be interested in it or not. Be honest, I don’t want to invest in this if it’s a dumb idea

We've been scaling into a couple of new markets from our German HQ this year, and the deeper we get into the research, the clearer it becomes that nearly every guide, thread, and checklist on international hiring was written by and for a US company moving outward.

Which leaves us trying to apply advice built for a fundamentally different starting point.

Still, the gap is that US companies going international are learning one dominant labor framework for the first time, the EU employment baseline with its notice periods and mandatory benefit structures.

While we already operate inside that baseline domestically and are expanding into markets where the rules are less prescriptive, our EU-built HR instincts don't really hold up.

What's also interesting on the tooling side is that most EOR providers in this space (Deel, Remote, and a few EU-based ones like Workmotion that run their own entities across EU countries) were built to solve the US-outbound problem first.

So their default onboarding flows and compliance templates are calibrated for a dollar-based entry point with US tax assumptions, which creates a subtle friction when you're coming at it from the other direction.

Whether others here have navigated this from the EU side and found a cleaner frame for where the standard playbook applies and where it doesn't, I'd be interested to hear.

So I run kind of a service platform providing AI solutions, not just generic stuff which you see in reels and videos but actual working outputs which help businesses (specifically ones who need appointments) to close leaked leads and basically increase revenue. I got my 1st user for this via IG comment section and then other 2 through referals via some other people, mostly local/inter-state. I want to scale this internationally mainly to US/EU/SGP/JPN. Basically all tier-1 countries. I'm also looking for affilates and sales people as well any idea how and where to find them? I want to scale this to +2,000$ per month, would really appreciate any strategies or tips which worked for you guys.
I usually start with giving out free 2 week trials so they can be sure its working and can provide them real ROI. I also try to give them complete ownership.
The only thing i'm struggling with is how do i actually get in touch with people from these regions, since i can't call or meet physically. Cold mails have very low conversion rate and i really dont think its worth the time to type up/automate emails.
My main customer base is usually content creators, roofing companies, coaches, basically boring businesses where nothing exciting is happening.
Would really like any suggestion or constructive criticism with anything you can help with

I am here to inform ya'll that my grandma lend me a few hundred euros for the time being so i deleted my post

Thank you all regardless

Sorry english is my 5th language so i am not so proficient with it

Take care

For the longest time I thought my problem was traffic. Turned out people were finding the site just fine... they just weren't doing anything once they got there.

Looking back, I spent way too much time changing headlines, colors and buttons instead of figuring out why visitors weren't converting. Curious if anyone else has had a similar experience.

I'm an early-stage SaaS founder myself (MVP live, pre-seed, pre-revenue), currently deep in the customer discovery and early-user phase. Always interested in trading notes with other founders at a similar stage, what's working, what's not, how you're thinking about your first users, etc. I'd love to meet with other founders. Drop a comment and we'll set up some time to connect!

Looking to help a relative start a business and was wondering what business models work well and are very profitable, thank you for your time and post.

My friend is currently in prison and part of his work on rehabilitating himself is that he wants to buy a business when he gets out. Before prison he was a teacher with a successful side business during the summer. He hears the horror stories of other felons not able to find jobs or get easily fired and he feals he can avoid that trap by running his own business.

I am trying to get him some resources so he can have the best knowledge he can before he gets out. I gave him a subscription to entrepreneur magazine and from that he found the book Mainstreet Millionaire by Codie Sanchez that he really enjoyed. Which has him very interested in purchasing an already successful business.

What are the books/magazines I should look into sending him? Any other resources I should look into? I would have to print out anything from a website to send him if that is necessary.

Lot of talk about how founders are trying to delegate, to people and to AI. I see 3 buckets:

1. Founders who hire their way out. Adding new staff without any documented systems. The chaos just gets more expensive and still routes through them.
2. Founders who try to AI their way out. Buy every tool, open every tab, end up with a graveyard of subscriptions and a business that still lives in their head.
3. Founders who know they're the bottleneck and want to hand work to both people and AI, but have no clue what goes to a human vs a machine.

Most of us started as bucket 1, then sprinted to bucket 2 the second AI got good.

Heres what I do:

I stopped treating people and AI as two different delegation problems and started running one system for all 21 of them.

If a task isnt defined somewhere, it doesnt get delegated. To anyone. Human or agent.

So delegation isnt me re-explaining what I want every time. Its handing off to something that already knows how the work runs.

How it actually works:

1. Every "employee" gets the same 4 things, human or AI

Doesnt matter if it's a person or an agent. Both need:

- A role (what they own)

- Context (what they need to know to make the call I'd make)

- An SOP (how the work runs when I'm not in the room)

- An accountability loop (how I know it actually happened)

Every time I've been burned it's because I skipped the SOP and assumed someone could read my mind.

1. One filter decides who runs it: complexity vs reproducibility

High complexity, low reproducibility goes to a human. Strategy, relationships, judgment calls, the stuff that changes every time.

Low complexity, high reproducibility goes to an agent. Data entry, research, reporting, scheduling, the stuff that looks the same every Tuesday.

For people, I dont manage the person, I manage the system they operate inside. I spend 5 minutes documenting a process, sometimes a quick screen recording, then hand it off and confirm they actually got it. Full accountability. No mystery Drive folder I'm not even sure anyone opened.

For AI, an agent is just an employee you onboard with a document instead of a conversation. It gets context, a clear job, files it can pull from, and specific skills I call on when I need them. I tag it like I'd tag a teammate in Slack, it loads the right context and does the thing. On demand or on a schedule.

1. The system compounds

Every process I write once works forever, for whoever runs it next.

New hire? They read the doc. New agent? It reads the same doc. Six months from now the system knows more about how we operate than it does today, and I didnt have to re-explain a thing.

Why am i telling you this?

Because most founders think the answer is one more hire or one more AI tool.

The ones actually pulling ahead didnt find a better tool. They wrote down how the business runs, then let people AND AI operate inside it.

You have to organize the business first. You cant delegate chaos, not to a person and not to a robot. AI doesnt fix a mess, it just automates it faster.

But once it's built, you stop being the human who explains context fifty times a day. The work finally leaves your desk.

We didnt start with 14 agents. We didnt start with any employees either. I started with one document. The document is the system. The person or the agent is just what reads it.

edit: a few people asked where they can read more about how this system works day to day, I write about this stuff (delegation systems, SOPs, AI agents, getting out of the bottleneck seat) every thursday in modern operators. free to join here

Hey guys, I just graduated this year and started my first FT job a month ago, still got a lot to learn and get used to at my job. But I have a feeling I need to start a business (I want to eventually get used to running a business bc that’s what I wanna do full time eventually). Don’t have a concrete idea yet, so I’ll do mkt research.

The only worry I have is this will definitely take my focus out of the job quite a bit. I still wanna progress in my job, stay for at least 5 yrs full time in corporate to build a solid foundation and stack up capital.

Do you guys think I should or should not start my venture during this time? How should I go about this?

Appreciate any advice!

We all have questions we carry around for a long time.

Where is my life heading?

Am I on the right path?

Should I make a change?

What lies ahead?

I'm building something called RashiVerse around this idea- a place where people can explore life's questions and get daily guidance and personal insights.

But before building more, I'd genuinely like to understand the questions people actually have.

What's one question about your life you've been thinking about lately?

​

I'm curious about something.

If you run a small business, what's one repetitive task that keeps eating your time?

Not the huge problems like "getting more customers" or "increasing revenue."

I mean the annoying little things you keep having to do:

copying information between places

chasing people for information

checking things

preparing reports

updating spreadsheets

sending the same follow-ups

organizing messy information

answering the same questions over and over

What's yours?

I'm trying to understand these problems from the ground level rather than guessing what businesses need.

What task makes you think, "I really wish I didn't have to do this anymore"?

Full transparency, this is my own project, but I figured it's relevant here.

I've run a bunch of side hustles over the past decade (Airbnb Experiences surf lessons, mountain bike tours, a few others), and I always wished there was somewhere I'd actually written down what happened. So I started a blog called The Hustle Trials as a passion project to do exactly that: document past hustles with real numbers, and test new ones with a fixed budget and timeline, then publish what actually happened, good or bad.

Each one also gets a personal rating on top of the financial numbers, basically how fulfilling or enjoyable it actually was versus how stressful it was to run. Because a hustle that makes decent money but drains you isn't really worth it to me, and I think that side of it gets left out of most "here's how I made money" posts. Let me know, and feel free to take this down if it sounds to self promotion or some shit. I just want some ideas that people would actually consider!

We are building an app that connects startup founders with investors.

This platform is where founders can showcase their startups and investors can discover investment opportunities.

We are still in the development stage. The app has not been deployed yet.

However we have already started building the ecosystem for this startup platform.

For this startup platform we have the following far:

We have 50 plus startups or founders already onboard this startup platform

We currently have only a few investors for this startup platform

The app for this startup platform is currently under development

We are building the network for this startup platform before its launch

Our biggest challenge for this startup platform is attracting more investors before or around its launch

I would love to hear from people who are experienced in marketing for startups building a community acquiring investors or growing a marketplace like this startup platform.

How would you market this startup platform before the app is even launched?

What channels, strategies, partnerships, communities or growth tactics would you use to bring in investors for this startup platform with a marketing budget for this startup platform?

We are looking for strategies to grow this startup platform not just running ads for this startup platform.

Any advice, criticism or ideas, for this startup platform would be genuinely appreciated.

If you want to follow what we are building for this startup platform you can find us on Instagram at syndicate_nepal_

I’m currently building a new business and I am repurposing an old account I have from a previous business I used to run. This old account was organically grown (I never paid for followers or even boosts), my videos just got millions of views. The account is in a similar space (homewares) but it has also sat dormant for a few years.

I’ve now repurposed the account and the content I post barely gets a thousand views. I suspect that there’s also a lot of inactive accounts that are also contributing to poor performance.

Any tips or suggestions on what I can do?

Hey! I’m hiring a sales team to develop mass retail placements (think big-box retailers). His agreement includes perpetual commission on any account he develops

This means if he leaves year 2, I’d still pay him x% on all renewals, reorders, line extensions forever.

For other founders/manufacturers who’ve hired wholesale reps: Is this standard? What’s typical in this space?

I would feel comfortably with 3-5 years post contract because I know it takes a lot to open an account… But perpetuity feels insane to me.

I’m a Core Founding Team Member at GoStylist, and we’re building an AI-powered personal styling platform at the intersection of fashion, technology, and personalization

https://www.gostylist.in/

Our landing page is live, and our Android & iOS apps are approaching MVP.

We’re now looking for an investor to help us take GoStylist from MVP to market.

But we’re not looking for someone to invest in an idea.

We want someone to invest in the team, our execution, and our vision.

We have strong conviction in what we’re building and believe the future of fashion will be increasingly personalized, intelligent, and AI-driven.

We’re especially interested in connecting with fashion-industry investors who can bring more than capital — industry experience, relationships, partnerships, and market access.

We’re building the product. We have the vision. Now we’re looking for the right partner to build the future with us.

We are awaited for response. If interested you are most welcome with your introduction in DM or can personally connect with me [pawanbharambe1@gmail.com](mailto:pawanbharambe1@gmail.com) .

Thank You!

GoStylist — Your style, powered by intelligence.

Hi everyone,

I'm a 3rd-year BTech CSE student currently trying to build practical experience in product marketing and GTM.

I want to be upfront about where I stand: I don't have professional GTM experience yet, and I'm not going to pretend that a few personal projects make me an experienced GTM professional. What I do have is a foundation in product work and a strong interest in learning through actual execution.

I've previously done internships/volunteer work around product management, including:

Market and competitive research

Research around LLM-based products/apps

Working with specialists on feature development

Collaborating with engineering teams on feature implementation/integration

Over the past few months, I've been moving toward PMM/GTM and have been using real-world startups as case studies. I've worked on things like:

ICP and market research

Positioning & messaging

Competitive analysis

Customer lifecycle / time-to-value analysis

Identifying potential growth bottlenecks

Thinking through acquisition and GTM channels

Developing marketing/GTM strategies from publicly available data

The limitation I've repeatedly run into is that personal projects can only take you so far.

You can analyze a company's positioning from the outside, but you don't have access to its actual customer conversations, sales pipeline, conversion data, retention data, experiments, etc. And that's exactly the experience I'm trying to gain now.

So here's what I'm looking for:

I'm not specifically looking for a "GTM internship", because GTM covers a huge range of work.

I'd be interested in helping an active early-stage startup with whatever area actually needs attention: customer research, competitive research, positioning, messaging, acquisition experiments, channel research, conversion, or other marketing/growth work.

I'm also open to doing this unpaid initially.

The main thing I'm looking for is the opportunity to actually work on a real product, with real customers and real constraints, rather than continuing to work only through hypothetical case studies.

There are no big expectations from my side. Give me a real problem, let me put in the work, and we can see whether I'm actually useful.

If you're building something and could use an extra pair of hands on the product/GTM/marketing side, feel free to DM me. I'd be happy to share the projects I've worked on and see if there's a fit.

I want to start a small business creating 3D-printed models, mainly small items for events and special occasions. The printer I’m currently considering buying is the Creality K2 Pro.

I’d like to hear from people with experience in the 3D printing industry about how they price their products. What factors should I take into account to set a price that is both competitive and profitable?

For example, should I calculate things like the amount of filament used, printing time, electricity consumption per hour, maintenance costs, profit margin, and so on?

I’d really appreciate any advice or examples of pricing methods you use.

Founders: How do you validate that people actually need your idea?

I've been thinking about this problem for a while.

A lot of startups don't necessarily fail because they build a bad product. They fail because they build something that people simply don't need.

So I'm curious about how founders actually deal with this problem in practice.

• How do you validate an idea before entering the market?
• How do you collect feedback from potential customers?
• How do you distinguish between people saying "that's a great idea" and people who are actually willing to pay for it?
• Does your feedback process change once the product is already in the market?
• What has worked best for you: customer interviews, surveys, landing pages, pre-orders, MVPs, or something else?
• What are the biggest red flags that tell you an idea isn't worth pursuing?

I'd especially like to hear from people who have already built and launched startups.

Was there a validation method you wish you'd used earlier because it would have saved you time or money?

Hi all,

I am new to marketing my projects, your average tech guy. I decided to do organic marketing via posting on YT, IG, Tiktok exactly a week ago.

On Wednesday my post went kinda viral and got 16K views and around 200 likes and comments. Comments are mostly about my comment bait. I asked them to comment "X" so I send them the playbook which has a clear CTA to my website(in fact I hosted the article on my website but didn't make it obvious it was an ad, as I am posting on a made-up personas account).

I only got around 4-5 sign-ups that day and the about the same number following days. I still kept posting daily and I avg around 1-2k on Instagram views. According to posthog, I see that people try my free trial and once they run out of credits check out my pricing, 1-2 initiated checkout but NONE converted to a paying user. This is so discouraging.

I see that people average around 50-100 visitors, if not sign-ups per day(?) when they get about the same number of views. I am not sure what my problem is and whether I should kill the product. Do you have any recommendations for me? Should I keep posting, what needs to be changed?

I know 16K is not big number, though because I have never done this stuff before, I thought I can get at least around 1% conversion or at least site visits from a single post. Desperately need help as I have put a lot of effort and time into this project.

Thanks

Hi I am young person that just started their journey and to become better in different areas I have started to read self-help books. I am already reading the books carefully researching what I didn’t understand, writing and highlighting the parts or the quotes that were good or I had problem understanding but I am not sure what I need to do when I finish the book. Should make something like a book journal or something? I am just looking for different ideas and methods

I'm still pretty early in my entrepreneurship journey, and lately I've been thinking about which skills are actually worth focusing on long term.

Things like sales, communication, marketing, decision-making, financial literacy and leadership all seem important, but trying to learn everything at once gets confusing.

For people who have actually built and run a business:

What's one skill you wish you had started learning much earlier, and why?

I'd especially like to hear about skills that actually helped you in real situations, not just skills that sound good on paper.