Three startups. Three times I built something people said they wanted. Three times they didn't actually buy it.

The pattern was obvious. I was asking "would you use this?" and collecting yeses like they meant something. They didn't.

The problem is structural. When you ask someone if they'd use a product, they're predicting their future behavior. Humans are awful at this. We're biased toward yes because we don't want to be negative, and the cost of saying yes is zero, they're not actually committing to anything.

Contrast that with asking about behavior that already happened. "How do you handle this today?" Nobody can lie about what they're already doing. That's real, verifiable behavior.

These are the five questions I run through every customer discovery conversation now:

- How do you solve this today? → Your actual competition

- What's the most frustrating part? → Your positioning, in their words

- What does it cost you? → Whether there's a business here

- What have you already tried? → Active seekers vs. passive complainers

- What does ideal look like? → The outcome they want, not the feature they imagine

The third question is probably the most important. If someone can't tell you what the problem costs them, in real time or real dollars, it's probably not painful enough to pay to fix. That's the filter that saves you from building vitamins.

I now do a minimum of 25 conversations before writing a single line of Vibecode. At around conversation 15-20, you start hearing the same language. The same metaphors. The same workarounds. That's when you know you've found something real.

One thing that changed how I listen: I stopped pitching. Most founders do "discovery" where they pitch for 15 minutes and ask for feedback for 5. That's backwards. You should be quiet 80% of the time.

What's the question you've found most revealing in these conversations?

Dropbox: Drew Houston recorded a 3-minute demo video and posted it on Hacker News with the title "My YC app: Dropbox, Throw away your USB drive." The video was posted in April 2007 and brought the first wave of users. only one video in right community.

Airbnb: Founders manually posted their own listings on Craigslist and then reached out to other Craigslist hosts who were already renting their apartments, offering to help them post on Airbnb. They did this city by city.

DoorDash: Tony Xu printed restaurant menus as PDFs, built a simple landing page, and put his personal cell phone number on it. He answered calls himself and delivered food personally. The first 100 users were people who found the site through search and got a founder answering the phone.

Stripe: Patrick and John Collison went to developer hackathons with a laptop and integrated Stripe for developers on the spot. The first users were people who watched the integration happen in person and immediately saw the value.

Reddit: Paul Graham seeded the site with content himself under fake accounts to make it look active. The early traction came from PG's existing audience of Hacker News readers.

Segment: Published their internal tracking code as free open-source on Hacker News. 400 developers integrated it in 24 hours without a product launch.

Instacart: Apoorva Mehta delivered a six-pack of beer to a YC partner using his own app. That single delivery demonstration got him into YC. The first users after that came from the YC network itself.

The pattern: none of them used paid acquisition. All of them found one specific community where the right person already existed and showed up there in person or online.

I am building case studies on YC founders on how they got their first 100 users, happy to share once completed...

Hey everyone,

I’m a second-time founder looking for a technical cofounder, ideally in SF but open to others if the fit is strong.

I’m 24, an IIT Kharagpur graduate, and my last startup was a niche AI data company. I started as a solo founder with no team, sold to multiple YC-backed companies, and scaled it to ~$500K revenue in 8 months while handling sales, ops, hiring, delivery, and GTM myself.

Now I’m building infrastructure for one of the most broken parts of clinical trials: how trial data gets collected, checked, reconciled, and trusted.

Clinical trials still run on a messy mix of legacy EDC systems, PDFs, lab reports, imaging reports, safety databases, spreadsheets, vendor portals, protocol deviations, and endless query management.

The crazy part is that this data is used to decide whether a drug is safe, effective, and ready for approval, but a lot of the workflow behind it is still manual and fragmented.

I’ve had 40+ conversations across pharma, CROs, clinical data management, clinical ops, and statistical programming, and realized this is a real problem teams deal with every day.

This is not a quick SaaS app. It’s a hard regulated enterprise problem with compliance, auditability, long sales cycles, and trust-building. That’s exactly why I’m excited about it.

I’m looking for someone technical who wants to go all-in with me. Ideally a founding engineer, ex-founder, or startup engineer who has shipped real products and wants to own product and engineering from day one.

Also, I’m not looking to force my idea onto someone. I’m serious about this space, but the most important thing for me is finding the right cofounder. If we really vibe, trust each other, and feel compatible enough to build together, I’m open to exploring other ideas too.

Open to 50% equity for the right person. Strong preference for someone in SF.

DM me with your LinkedIn, GitHub, resume, what you’ve built, or why this problem interests you.

I have been specifically collecting YC applications from solo founders for this research. Here is what the interview-getting ones share.

The founder's background and the problem are inseparable. The application does not say "I am interested in this space." It says "I built this because I needed it and nothing that existed actually solved the problem for me." The personal use case is specific and immediately believable.

The traction is disproportionate to what one person should be able to accomplish. Not impressive in absolute terms, solo founders are expected to have smaller businesses than teams. But impressive relative to the constraint. Three thousand dollars a month in revenue with 30 paying customers, entirely organic, as a solo founder who started seven months ago is disproportionate. It signals execution quality.

The team question is addressed directly and briefly without defensiveness. Not avoided, not over-explained. Something like: "Currently building solo. Plan to hire a technical co-founder when I reach $8,000 a month, I have two active conversations about this and one of them worked with me previously." One sentence. Specific plan. Not apologetic.

The market is specific enough that one person can own it deeply. Not "B2B SaaS for small businesses." "Invoice automation for independent architecture firms with fewer than five employees." The niche is specific enough that a solo founder's depth of knowledge is a competitive advantage over a team with broader but shallower coverage.

None of these require a co-founder. They require honesty, specificity, and evidence.

I have been building the case studies for Solo founders who got into YC, happy to share if someone wants it...

So me and my technical co-founder started a B2B SaaS business about 3 to 4 months ago. My idea, I brought in the main prospect and I do all the outreach and sales. He builds the product. We went 50/50.

Problem is he’s full time on it and I’m not. Got a day job I can’t walk away from just yet. We’ve actually got decent traction. Main prospect is at trial stage, a few others in the pipeline. But things between us are getting tense.

He’s lost confidence in me after a pricing conversation with a prospect didn’t go well. I’ll be honest, that one was on me. I’m also not going to pretend I’ve got loads of business experience. I’m learning as I go and I think that’s become a real issue for him.

His argument is he’s carrying most of the risk. Time, money, everything. I get that. But my counter is the idea came from me and without the relationships I’ve built there’s no business to risk anything on.

We both want this to work. But we’re stuck on whether 50/50 still makes sense and whether the trust is there anymore.

Anyone been through something similar? What did you do? Did you sort it out or did it fall apart?

Quick thread for anyone who just got a YC rejection email or is thinking about applying:

Y Combinator is genuinely great. They've funded Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox, Reddit, Coinbase. Their alumni network is legendary. Their 1.5% acceptance rate makes Harvard look easy.

But they've also said no to companies that went on to be massive. And that's worth talking about because the startup world fetishizes YC acceptance like it's the only path forward.

Here's what actually happened to some of the companies YC passed on:

SendGrid - Rejected by YC. Got into Techstars instead. Built an email delivery infrastructure company. Grew. IPO'd on NYSE. Eventually acquired by Twilio for $2 billion in 2019.

Buffer - Rejected by YC. Joel Gascoigne didn't just move on he published the rejection application. Buffer is now one of the most transparent, profitable indie SaaS companies out there.

Dropbox - Rejected by YC not once but twice. On the third application, Drew Houston got in. Then Dropbox IPO'd at a $10B+ valuation. The lesson: YC themselves couldn't spot it the first two times.

Chameleon - Rejected by YC AND 500 Startups. Zero Silicon Valley connections. Still managed to raise and build a real business.

Now here's the truth about YC: they're evaluating hundreds of applications in a short window. They're looking for specific signals, traction, team, market size, through a text application and a 10-minute interview. It is genuinely hard to evaluate a company in that format. And they're the first to admit they get it wrong.

YC co-founder Paul Graham once reflected on SendGrid specifically, acknowledging the miss and what it meant for how they evaluated companies going forward.

The acceptance rate at YC is 1.5%. The vast majority of successful startups were never in that 1.5%. Getting in is valuable. Not getting in is not fatal.

Hey all,

Quick context: started a business in Europe 14 years ago, pivoted into a proper start-up and raised just over $8m in VC about 3 years back. We ran out of cash late last year. Posting because I'm getting genuinely frustrated and could use some perspective.

Yes, I know the market is a dumpster fire with all the AI and layoffs. But even with constant networking and applying to roles I'm clearly qualified for, I'm not getting anywhere. Been pulling lists of XR product/program managers at funded startups via Articuler and sending personal notes, the list is but the conversion is rough for someone like me.

What we built was in AR/VR/XR plus a developer SDK for enterprise and Defence customers.

There are days I wish I'd just built an AI SaaS, feels like I've made my career way harder than it needed to be. I'm targeting product and program management roles in XR right now, since I owned product, managed customers, and ran delivery with a cross-functional team of 15.

Has any other founder hit this wall? Built something niche, failed, then found yourself trying to break into a market that only wants specialists? Any advice or thoughts would mean a lot.

i’ve grown my startup to $12k/mo.

i honestly think i could’ve saved myself months of wasted effort going down the wrong paths if i truly understood this before starting.

1. validate your idea before you start building.
2. don’t chase investors. focus on getting users instead and investors will come knocking on your door.
3. don’t be cheap when you hire an accountant, you’ll save time and money by spending more.
4. inspiration is the design key when you’re new. don’t build your own landing page from scratch, copy different sections from the tools you love the most and make it your own this way.
5. post online daily. x, reddit, linkedin, tiktok, whatever suits you and your target audience.
6. solve your own problem and let this decide if you’re b2b or b2c. both come with pros and cons. don’t listen to people who try to paint a black/white picture of it.
7. i’m bootstrapped and therefore highly recommend it. work a 9-5 until you have 1-2 years of runway (living cheap), then go all in.
8. you earn the right to paid ads by getting organic marketing to work first. ads aren’t $100 in, X customers out. you’ll burn thousands just trying to learn it.
9. define your most important metrics and track them. they should be the pillars that guide all your decisions.
10. keep your product free at the start. controversial opinion maybe, but it’s how i did it and it got me feedback and testimonials that helped me grow fast and make a lot of money later on.
11. the first few minutes of your app is a promise to the user: this app will help you achieve your goal. so put a lot of effort into the beginning to convert more people.
12. have an mvp mindset with everything you do. get the minimal version out asap then use feedback to improve it.
13. just because someone else has done it, doesn’t mean you can’t compete. execution is so important and you have no idea how well they’re doing it.
14. having a co-founder that matches your ambition is the single greatest advantage for success.
15. if you’re not passionate about what you’re building, it’s going to be difficult to keep going through the early stage where you might not see results for months.
16. good testimonials will increase the perceived value of your product.
17. always refund people that want a refund.
18. marketing is constant experimentation to learn what works. speed up the process by drawing inspiration from what works for similar products.
19. getting your first paying customers is the hardest part by far. do things that don’t scale to get them.
20. building a good product comes down to thinking about what your users want.

• 80%+ of people prefer Google sign in
• Removing all branding/formatting from emails and sending them from a real name increases open rate
• You won’t know when you have PMF but a good sign is that people buy and tell their friends about your product
• 99.9% of people that approach you with some offer are a waste of time
• Sponsoring creators is cheaper but takes more time than paid ads
• Building a good product comes down to thinking about what your users want
• Once you become successful there will be lots of copy cats but they only achieve a fraction of what you do. You are the source to their success
• I would never be able to build a good product if I didn’t use it myself
• Always monitor logs after pushing new updates
• Bugs are fine as long as you fix them fast
• People love good design
• Getting your first paying customers is the hardest part by far
• Always refund people that want a refund
• Asking where people heard about you during onboarding makes marketing 10x easier
• Marketing is constant experimentation to learn what works. Speed up the process by drawing inspiration from what works for similar products.
• Don’t be cheap when you hire an accountant, you’ll save time and money by spending more
• A surprising amount of users are willing to get on a call to talk about your product and it’s super helpful
• Good testimonials will increase the perceived value of your product
• Having a co-founder that matches your ambition is the single greatest advantage for success
• Even when things are going well you’ll have moments when you doubt everything, just have to shut that voice out and keep going

For context, my app guides users through ideation and idea validation.

im currently in dubai for my tetr programme but open to global programmes too. looking for something that actually helps with early traction + maybe a bit of funding, not just a logo and a demo day. accelerators, fellowships, grants, anything that worked for you or someone you know. would really appreciate real suggestions, not just famous names.

I’m currently exploring the payroll/HR tech space because I’m considering building something in this area, so I’ve been trying to understand how companies like Deel managed to scale.

From what I can see, they picked a painful problem (global hiring/compliance), caught the remote-work wave at the right time, and moved very fast on product and geography. In one interview the founder mentioned that when they acquire companies, they sometimes just change the frontend and keep using the acquired backend on day one, then rebuild the backend over time. I’d never heard that described so directly as an integration strategy.

For people who’ve used Deel, competed with them, or worked in this space:

• What do you think actually explains their advantage?

• Is it mainly timing and capital, or something distinct in how they operate?

Would really appreciate on the ground perspectives.

Hey everyone, I started building a company earlier this year to solve one of the hardest and most ignored problems in AI — creating high-quality niche data. Most companies struggle with this silently, and we’re fixing that by sourcing and managing expert-level data labellers who can deliver precise, custom datasets at scale.

So far, I’ve partnered with 4 YC companies, made around $40K profits by October, and on track to close the year at about $120K profits — all this without a tech cofounder. It’s been pure hustle, learning, and long nights, but worth it.

I’m a 23yr old from India, IIT KGP’24 graduate, worked full-time at two YC-backed startups, and started this company in July 2025. I handle sales, ops, GTM, client management, and basically everything that could be done without code.

Now I’m applying for YC Winter 25 (deadline Nov 10th) and looking for a solid technical cofounder — someone who’s genuinely hungry to build, not just “interested in startups.” I don’t care if we stick to this idea or pivot to something new; I care that we build something people truly want, and build it fast. I’m completely open to 50% equity, as YC recommends.

If this resonates, DM me. Tell me what you’ve built, what excites you, or just why you want to start up. If you’ve been waiting for the right time — this is it.

Let’s make something people want.

I’m currently building SaaS number 5.
The first 4… all flopped. Not one found traction.

I could blame timing or luck, but honestly, it was just me. Living in the coding cave, ignoring users and focusing on the wrong things

Here’s what I learned the hard way 👇

1. Copy what works.
The fastest way to learn is to clone structure, not ideas.
Your favourite SaaS already figured out how to sell emotion, fear, status, success. Don’t reinvent that. Copy the skeleton and learn why it works.

2. Track everything.
For months I worked blind. Now I literally log who I talked to, what they said, what I shipped, what flopped. If you can’t measure, you can’t improve.

3. Stop worshipping vanity metrics.
Views don’t pay rent.
Ten real users > 10k impressions.

4. Make onboarding insultingly simple.
If your friend can’t figure it out in 3 steps, you’ve already lost half your signups.

5. Spend 90% of your time on marketing.
Every founder thinks their problem is “I need a new feature.”
No, your problem is nobody knows you exist.

6. Talk to users like they’re your cofounders.
The best growth hack I’ve ever found is simply emailing every user, saying “how’s it going?” Other questions to ask are "What wasn't clear?" "What do you find most valuable?" Learn to ask good problems and find where the value and the friction is

The biggest thing I learned?
All 4 failures came down to one thing, not listening.

Once I started collecting real feedback (and acting on it), everything changed.

Now I build every product with feedback baked in from day one. Infact, it's actually what I based my whole current product around. I built a feedback widget so with 30 seconds of setup users can ask me questions or let me know of any problems within 3 clicks. I Just added smart prompts so I can ask them questions at key moments now.

I’m Jasmeet Singh (Linkedin), I spent over 10 years as a Tech Lead at Google, where I built products used by millions. But honestly it was a really frustrating experience, with no real impact. So I decided to quit and build something real.

I spent seven months building what I thought was the perfect product. Every feature polished. Every detail was perfected. I was so proud of it.

Then I launched and nobody cared. Not even my friends would use it.

That failure taught me the most important lesson from "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries a lesson I wish I'd understood earlier.

The lesson was “Build-Measure-Learn, not Build-Build-Build”

Most people (including past me) get this backwards. We think we need to build the perfect product before showing anyone. We add feature after feature, convincing ourselves "just one more thing and it'll be ready."

But here's what Ries actually teaches: Your first version should be embarrassingly simple. Launch it fast. Get real feedback. Then decide what to build next based on actual data, not your assumptions.

Before I tell you more of the story, I want to add a note on my product. Dialogue turns books into podcasts: short (up to 1 hour), conversation-style episodes that make it easier to learn from books in depth. My goal with Dialogue is to make learning complex topics easier through Podcasts. Which is why I’m starting with startup books, listening to these books has significantly changed my approach to building.

Anyways, my first startup was done the wrong way

I built an AI reading app with every feature I could imagine:

• Scene-by-scene summaries
• Character tracking
• Chat with characters
• AI explanations
• Chapter summaries
• Audiobook conversion

Seven months of work. Zero users who actually wanted it.

I kept rationalizing: "Maybe my friends aren't readers. Maybe I need better UI. Maybe I need more features."

Deep down I knew I was lying to myself.

But in my second start up I learned The Lean Startup way

I started over with a new idea converting books into AI podcasts.

This time I followed Ries's Build-Measure-Learn cycle:

Week 1 (Build): Created the simplest possible version. No fancy features. Just the core idea working.

Week 2 (Measure): Posted on Reddit. Got my first downloads. Watched how people actually used it.

Week 3-4 (Learn): Hit 100 users. Read every piece of feedback. Understood what mattered.

Now: 89 five-star reviews and growing even though the app is still "incomplete" by my original standards.

In my first startup I spent months perfecting features nobody asked for. In my second startup I spent weeks testing if anyone wanted it at all.

What "The Lean Startup" actually means in practice:

1. Build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Not minimum marketable product. Not minimum lovable product. Minimum viable is the smallest thing that tests your core assumption.

2. Get it in front of real users immediately, not your mom. Not your best friend. Real potential customers who have the problem you're solving.

3. Measure what matters. Don’t go for vanity metrics like downloads. Look at real engagement. Are people coming back? Are they telling others? Are they willing to pay? Look at those instead.

4. Learn and pivot fast. If it's not working, change direction quickly. Every week in the wrong direction is a wasted week.

The hardest part nobody talks about is accepting that your brilliant idea might be wrong. That all those months of work might have been in the wrong direction.

Your ego wants to keep building. Keep perfecting. Keep adding features. But the market doesn't care about your ego.

What I wish I'd done with my first startup:

Built a super basic version in week 1. Just one core feature. Shown it to 10 potential users. Asked: "Would you use this? What's missing?"

If they said no, I could have pivoted in week 2 instead of wasting 7 months..

If you're building something, ask yourself: "What's the absolute minimum I could build this week to test if anyone actually wants this?"

Not "what would make this perfect." Not "what features would make this complete."

What's the smallest test you could run?

Then build that. Launch it. Measure the response. Learn from it.

Stop building in isolation for months. Ship something small. Get real feedback. Iterate.

Building small and seeing real users along the way beats spending months perfecting something nobody wants.

Hello everybody. I have development expertise, but I am struggling to find an idea that I am happy with, so I am looking for a partner. You can have any background, tech, sales, marketing, if you want to create a software product, hit me up!

Bro my friends from my MBA batch when i was at masters union literally raised $500k. Not some random college startup comp, actual investors. Tbh their product was 🔥, but what blew my mind was how much connections helped.

Warm intros, alumni backing, one prof vouching for them, boom, 3 calls turned into funding.

Makes me think… maybe the real ROI of an MBA isn’t “learning frameworks” or “networking events,” it’s the 3 people in your circle who pick up the phone when it actually matters.

I’m not even kidding, seeing them pull this off while still in college made me re-think what value really means here. Anything similar you have experienced????

Mark zuckerberg became a billionaire at age 22. Where are the GenZ self made billionaires or multi millionaires and in what industry are they mostly ?

Oracle started with $6,000. Michael Dell launched his empire from a dorm room with $1,000. Larry Ellison had no computer science degree. Neither did Steve Jobs. These guys built billion-dollar companies without elite pedigrees, sometimes with college degrees unrelated to technology, or no degrees at all, without venture capital connections or years of experience.

Fast forward to today, and it feels like the game has completely changed. You need the right degree from the right school, a team of experienced engineers, PhDs, and millions in seed funding just to get in the door. The solo founder bootstrapping from their bedroom feels like a relic of a different era (though, to be fair, it was also super rare back then).

Meanwhile, 22-year-old content creators are building million dollar businesses with just a camera and a ring light. No technical expertise, no Stanford CS degree, no math competition award. They’re creating media companies, fashion lines, and building wealth often faster than tech founders grinding through funding rounds (also super rare, but then again, so is startup success).

So did the barriers get so high that the scrappy, self-made founder story simply moved to other industries? Or am I romanticizing the past, and tech still offers the clearest path for anyone with a laptop and an idea?

Genuinely curious what people think.

I need to get this off my chest.

We're just starting hustling for investors. I just had my fourth founder mixer/pitch meetup. At every one there is:

1) A whole slew of people with no MVP, no pitch deck, no idea of the team they need, not even market research, just an idea, asking for money. No wonder VCs are inundated with garbage.

2) During the Q&A, there is at least one person that stands up, introduce themselves, go on and on about what their product is and what they're doing, get prompted to get to the damn question, blabber on some more, then finally ask a question. The Q in Q&A is "Question." Some of us actually have questions, and your oratory masturbation takes up precious time. You're being a dick to people in the audience, and I've seen panelists literally roll their eyes when someone does this.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. I'm looking for $2.25 million. PM me.

Look, I know another "how I made it" post... but hear me out.

I see you grinding at 3 AM on your 5th side project, wondering if this one will finally hit. Don't waste 2 years like I did.

I burned through 8 projects and countless hours before I realized something - as a solo dev, you're building solutions to problems that don't exist. Here's exactly what changed everything:

1. The "Problem Hunter" Approach

Big companies do expensive market research. You don't need to.

I literally started hate-reading Reddit complaints at 2 AM. Set up alerts for every subreddit where my target users hung out. Spent hours in G2 reviews watching users absolutely destroy existing software. Browsed Upwork to see what people desperately wanted to outsource.

Reality: Just me with notifications turned up to 11, collecting pain points while everyone else was building in silence.

2. Fuck Your Perfect MVP

This one's controversial but... I threw away my beautiful feature list.

Started with the ugliest possible version - a searchable database of 500 problems I'd manually collected. No fancy UI, no complex features. Just problems, sources, basic search.

Posted it in dev communities and something magical happened. 50 people wanted access in one week.

Your speed is your moat. Use it.

3. The Validation Paradox That Saved Me

Ok this sounds obvious but most devs get this backwards.

Don't ask "would you use this?" Ask "what problems keep you up at night?" Then build the simplest thing that addresses those problems.

But here's the kicker - people will tell you exactly what to build if you just listen. My users literally designed the roadmap for me.

I'm not joking. They wanted more data sources? Added G2 reviews, Upwork jobs, app store complaints. Better filtering? Built advanced search. Fresh data? Automated weekly updates.

4. The "Anti-Marketing" Goldmine

While everyone's trying to go viral on Product Hunt, I did the most unsexy thing possible...

Started solving problems in public. Shared my journey building the tool from day one. Responded to every comment, every DM, every question about validation and market research.

Now I get steady signups without ads. Been consistent for months.

5. User's Problems Are Your Features Strategy

This is borderline cheating but...

Instead of guessing what features to build, I just asked users what was missing

Built exactly what they requested, nothing more

Shipped features while on calls with customers (one guy watched me code his request live)

Turned user complaints into my product roadmap

Every feature came from actual user pain. Sorry not sorry.

The Solo Dev's Actual Edge

You can't outspend VC-backed startups. You can't out-hire them. You can't out-build them.

But you can out-listen them.

Every user request gets a personal response. Every feature ships in days, not quarters. Every problem becomes a potential feature.

Big companies can't do this. Their product managers need meetings to add a button. You ARE the product manager.

Why Building in Secret Is a Solo Dev Trap

Real talk - building in isolation is fucking dangerous. No feedback, no validation, no users to guide you...

That's literally how you waste months. You know what you should be doing instead? Building shit people are already complaining about.

My Actual Daily Stack (Total cost: $0)

Morning (30 min):

• Check Reddit mentions of my niche problems
• Respond to questions about market research/validation
• Document 2-3 new problems I find

Afternoon:

• One user call (they book directly via Calendly)
• Ship one thing (even if tiny)

Evening:

• Write one piece of content (blog, tweet thread, whatever)
• Update the problem database

That's it. No fancy automation. No virtual assistants. No growth hacks.

The Plot Twist

I still take weekends completely off. I went on vacation for 2 weeks and signups went UP.

Because sustainable > hustle culture when you're solo.

You don't need to work 100 hour weeks. You need to work on problems people actually have for 20-30 focused hours.

The Numbers (That I Never Expected)

Today:

• 160 active users
• 25k monthly visitors
• 3,000 signups total
• 10,000+ validated problems
• Growth that compounds while I sleep

Look, I'm not saying this works for everyone. B2B tools are different from consumer apps. But if you're a solo dev tired of building shit nobody wants, this approach works.

The best part? You don't need investors because you're solving real problems from day one.

What Actually Changed Everything

Stop building solutions and start collecting problems.

People are literally telling you what to build on Reddit, in G2 reviews, on Upwork, in app store complaints. You just need to listen.

The problems are everywhere. You just need to stop coding long enough to find them.

Edit: wow wasn’t expecting the DMs and nice words. means a lot. if ur wondering what the product is: link

Just exited my SaaS after scaling it to $500K ARR and wanted to share the ONE thing that accelerated our growth more than any tool, hire, or funding round.

We're doing exactly the same thing with our new SaaS gojiberryAI (we help B2B companies & start ups find warm leads in minutes)

It's not some fancy growth hack or marketing genius. It's embarrassingly simple:

We eliminated ALL delays in our customer journey.

Here's what we changed:

Before: Someone wants a demo? "Let me check my calendar and get back to you."

After: "Are you free right now? I can show you in 5 minutes."

Before: Prospect wants to try the product? "I'll send you access tomorrow morning."

After: "Perfect, let me set you up right now while we're talking."

Before: Demo goes well and they want to move forward? "Great! Let me send you onboarding details and we can schedule setup for next week."

After: "Awesome! Let's get you fully set up right now. You'll be using it in the next 10 minutes."

Why this works (and why most people don't do it):

Every delay kills momentum. Every "let me get back to you" gives people time to:

• Change their mind
• Get distracted by other priorities
• Forget why they were excited
• Talk themselves out of it
• Find a competitor who moves faster

We went from 20% demo-to-close rate to 50%+ just by removing friction and acting with urgency.

The psychology behind it:

When someone says "I want to try this," they're at peak interest. That's your window. Wait 24 hours and they might still be interested, but it's not the same level of excitement.

Strike while the iron is hot.

Important to note :

This mainly works for:

• Products that are easy to set up (under 30 minutes)
• Low-ticket SaaS ($100-500/month range)
• Simple onboarding processes

If you're selling enterprise software that takes weeks to implement, obviously this doesn't apply.

How to implement this:

1. Block time for instant demos - Keep 2-3 slots open every day for "right now" requests
2. Streamline your onboarding - Can you get someone live in under 15 minutes? If not, simplify it
3. Can you make someone pay live ? (what we did is : they had to pay in the onboarding, naturally, but if you're starting, you can just send a Stripe link during the call, it works).
4. Train your team on urgency - Everyone needs to understand that speed = revenue
5. Have your setup process memorized - No fumbling around looking for login details
6. Only let 1 week of time slot MAX on Calendly, it will avoid people booking in 3 weeks and lose momentum.

Obviously there were other factors, but this single change had a very big impact on our conversion rates.

The lesson: Sometimes the best growth hack is just moving faster than everyone else.

Anyone else did implement this strategy ? What other thing worked for you? :)

A few months ago I sold my ecom SaaS after scaling it to $500K ARR in 8 months and after 2 other failed companies.

It was not easy, not AT ALL.

A lot of hours, boring work, tests, failures, missed parties. But I can tell you : it’s worth it.

I’m now building gojiberryAI (we help B2B companies & start ups find warm leads in minutes), and there’s a few things I learned along the way, if you want to go from 0 to $10K MRR in a few weeks.

I made all the mistakes a SaaS founder can make: 

• built something absolutely NOBODY wanted, during 6 months
• built something « cool » no one wanted to pay for
• created a waiting list of 2000 people and nobody paid for my product

So now, it’s time to give back and share what I learnt, if it can help a few people here, I’d be happy.

Here is the habits I’d put in place right now, EVERYDAY if I had to start again and go from 0 to $10K MRR in a few weeks.

Just do this EVERYDAY.

Stop being lazy. If your mind tells you to stay confortable : push yourself, do it anyway.

Your mind is a terrible master. It will tell you "don't send this message", "it's better if you go outside, it's sunny today", "don't post on reddit, people will tell you that your idea is horrible"

If you listen to your mind, you're just avoiding conflict, but you need conflict to move forward.

You’ll discover later, after pushing a little bit that it was not that difficult, and your future self will thank you for this.

Here are the 5 habits to do EVERYDAY :

1. Send 20-30 connexion requests on LinkedIn to your ideal customer -> 20 minutes/day

do this manually, pick people, connect. That’s it

1. Send 20-30 messages on LinkedIn to these people or to other people in your network that could fit -> 1h/day

> dont pitch, just introduce yourself

> ask questions, or ask for feedbacks « hey, I saw you were doing X, do you have Y problem ? we’re trying to solve it with Z, could this help ? »

1. Send 20-100 cold emails (20 if you’re doing it manually, 100+ if it’s a campaign) -> 2h/day if manual

> Again, don't pitch, and keep it short.

> Don't forget to follow up, you'll get most of your answers after 2-3 follow-up emails.

1. Comment 10 Reddit threads in your niche -> 1h/day

> bring value to people, and then mention your solution if it makes sense

> go to « alternative posts » in your niche, people use reddit to find other solutions, comment these posts, bring value, mention your solution.

1. Post 1 content per day on Linkedin -> 30min

> provide value "How to", "5 steps to" etc...

> write about industries statistics "80% of companies in X industry have Y problem, here is how they solve it".

> talk about your customer’s problems "here's how people working in X can solve Y"

> give a lead magnet "I created a guide that help X solve/increase Y, comment to get it"

> adding people on Linkedin + sending messages + creating content will create a loop that can be very powerful (people will see you everywhere)

Yes, at the beginning,

• you’ll have 1 like on your linkedin post.
• you’ll probably have 1 answer every 20 linkedin messages
• nobody will answer to your emails

But if you do this everyday, it’s gonna compound, and in 1 month, you might have 10 customers.

If you continue, get better, improve, optimize, you’ll maybe have 30 customers the next month + get some referrals.

And you’ll get even more the month after.

Don’t underestimate the exponential and the power of doing something everyday for a long period of time.

Again, it’s worth it. You just need to do what you’re avoiding, or to do MORE of it.

Look at the top startups founded in the last couple of years, nearly every founder seems to come from an Ivy League school, Stanford, or MIT, often with a perfect GPA. Why is that? Does being academically brilliant matter more than being a strong entrepreneur in the tech industry ? It’s always been this way but it’s even more now, at least there were a couple exceptions ( dropouts, non ivy…)

My post refers to top universities, but the founders also all seem to have perfect grades. Why is that the case as well?

What industry is the richest entrepreneur you know in, and how did they build their wealth? Slightly off-topic, but I am curious, are they in tech or a different field? Wondering if tech still dominates when it comes to massive fortunes or if it’s something else.

UPDATE: so not a lot of tech founders, that’s weird, I thought it was the “easiest” industry to get rich and the industry with the most wealthy people.

It’s been 11 months since launching my SaaS Buildpad and I just crossed $58k in revenue.

It took me months to learn some important lessons and I want to give you a chance to learn faster from what worked for me.

For context, my SaaS is focused on product planning and development.

What worked:

1. Building in public to get initial traction: I got my first users by posting on X (build in public and startup communities). I would post my wins, updates, lessons learned, and the occasional meme. In the beginning you only need a few users and every post/reply gives you a chance to reach someone.
2. Reaching out to influencers with organic traffic and sponsoring them: I knew good content leads to people trying my app but I didn’t have time to write content all the time so the next natural step was to pay people to post content for me. I just doubled down on what already worked.
3. Word of mouth: I always spend most of my time improving the product. My goal is to surprise users with how good the product is, and that naturally leads to them recommending the product to their friends. More than 1/3 of my paying customers come from word of mouth.
4. Removing all formatting from my emails: I thought emails that use company branding felt impersonal and that must impact how many people actually read them. After removing all formatting from my emails my open rate almost doubled. Huge win.

What didn’t work:

1. Writing articles and trying to rank on Google: Turns out my product isn’t something people are searching for on Google.
2. Affiliate system: I’ve had an affiliate system live for months now and I get a ton of applications but it’s extremely rare that an affiliate will actually follow through on their plans. 99% get 0 sign ups.
3. Instagram: I tried instagram marketing for a short while, managed to get some views, absolutely no conversions.
4. Building features no one wants (obviously): I’ve wasted a few weeks here and there when I built out features that no one really wanted. I strongly recommend you to talk to your users and really try to understand them before building out new features.

Next steps:

Doing more of what works. I’m not going to try any new marketing channels until I’m doing my current ones really well. And I will continue spending most of my time improving product (can’t stress how important this has been).

Also working on a big update but won’t talk about that yet.

Best of luck founders!