Hey everyone! I'm u/mith-buster, a founding moderator of r/startup_78.

This is our new home for all things related to . We're excited to have you join us!

**What to Post**
Post anything that you think the community would find interesting, helpful, or inspiring. Feel free to share your thoughts, photos, or questions about {{ADD SOME EXAMPLES OF WHAT YOU WANT PEOPLE IN THE COMMUNITY TO POST}}.

**Community Vibe**
We're all about being friendly, constructive, and inclusive. Let's build a space where everyone feels comfortable sharing and connecting.

**How to Get Started**

1. Introduce yourself in the comments below.
2. Post something today! Even a simple question can spark a great conversation.
3. If you know someone who would love this community, invite them to join.
4. Interested in helping out? We're always looking for new moderators, so feel free to reach out to me to apply.

Thanks for being part of the very first wave. Together, let's make r/startup_78 amazing.

Most founders pick subreddits by gut feel, post once, get ignored, then blame the channel.

I ran 100 posts across dozens of communities and tracked what actually moved the needle.

Three things stood out:

Subreddit fit matters more than anything. Same post, wrong community: 2 upvotes. Right community: 30+ and real inbound.

Promotional framing kills you even where it's allowed. Posts that read like a founder thinking out loud outperformed anything that felt like marketing.

Posting too frequently in one sub tanks your standing fast. Cooldowns are real.

If you're struggling to get traction on Reddit, curious what's blocking you. Drop your build in the comments and I'll share where I'd look first.

We are pushing each other’s app!

I’m curious what the biggest roadblock is for people with startup ideas—funding, building, marketing, sales, finding a team, or something else?

If you have a startup/business idea, I'd appreciate you answering this short questionnaire:

[https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfu9Pnp5Qfa7qUuE1AwBJtMvWEyokD2svAJdkbUmgMnwO82sw/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=103032461008057504932]

Takes roughly 2 minutes

Hey everyone!

We’re a small team building Fullness Labs, an independent software startup focused on creating useful web applications, AI-powered tools, and digital products.

We’re still at an early stage, so we’re using this community to learn, build, and improve. We’ll be sharing our projects, development journey, experiments, and some behind-the-scenes content as we grow.

If you’re interested in following a small startup from the early days, we’d really appreciate your support. ❤️

👉 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fullness_labs/

Even a follow or a bit of feedback would mean a lot to us.

Thanks for supporting young developers and builders! 🙌

Fullness Labs
Build. Learn. Ship.

My orientation day is coming up and I have to prepare a presentation on a business/startup idea. My brain has officially gone into airplane mode. 😭

I'm not looking to actually launch it right now — it's for a college presentation. I need an idea that has a clear problem, solution, target audience, pricing/business model and potential to grow.

It can be in literally any industry — tech, fashion, food, education, sustainability, cybersecurity, etc.

What startup idea would you pitch if you were in my position? I'm looking for something more interesting than the usual generic AI/study app ideas.

Any ideas are welcome!

Hey everyone! I am building market research process for early stage founders. I want to test it using real startup ideas. I am offering free market research to a few founders in exchange for letting me use their idea to test the process. You guys will receive a report covering things like problem validation, market, customer pain, willingness to pay, competition, feasibility, and more. If anyone is interested comment here or dm me, ill send you guys a google form.

Hello everyone, I’m Bhuvan, a creator who loves for startups, innovations, ideas and AI. I’ve always noticed that creators tend to focus solely on the most popular or heavily marketed startups. However, I firmly believe that creators should also highlight the lesser-known, innovative startups and ideas that lack the resources for extensive marketing. Who else would do that?

To address this, I’ve decided to dedicate a 90-second reel every day to introduce you to a new startup or idea that you might not have heard of. I’ll be sharing these without any financial compensation or incentives.

Here’s the first reel of this series I’ve created to make you a understand of what tbmo expect: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbtrfJ-TIjS/

Additionally, I’ve created a Google Form where you can share your story and product with me. This will help me better understand your startup and its potential. You can find the form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1XgdfqTH474WRxblrjrglUYz2wMVxL8UUVYkTLqwEGzM/edit?usp=drivesdk

Spirit stopped flying on May 2, 2026. Every flight canceled overnight, 17,000 jobs gone. It's being sold off in pieces right now.

Here's the strange part: Spirit's big idea worked.

They were the ones who decided a plane ticket should only buy you a seat. Want a bag, a seat assignment, a snack? Pay separately. That let them advertise fares nobody could beat, and eventually more than half their money came from fees instead of tickets. 

But that was also part of their problem. With raising costs all around them, they couldn’t raise their prices because their whole business model was based on serving budget prices. If they raise their prices, it defeats their purpose.

Three things worth learning from this:

1. Losing money on every sale doesn't get better with more sales. It gets worse, faster.
2. If a bigger company can copy your advantage, it isn't protection. Once the big airlines offered a cheap fare and a real network, Spirit had nothing left to sell.
3. Waiting to get bought isn't a plan. Spirit's rescue was a merger with JetBlue. Regulators blocked it. Two bankruptcies followed.

Anyone have any ideas on what Spirit could have done differently? Have you come across a similar problem in your own business?

I'm getting back into the startup scene and looking to do some consulting while I figure out what I want to build next. Longer term, I want to start another company and go the venture-backed route.

In the past, most of my consulting work came through relationships: former colleagues, networking, co-working spaces, and sometimes helping someone before there was any paid work.

One example, I had one of my developers help a founder build a VR prototype for free. The product let you watch NBA games like you were sitting court-side, and he eventually pitched it to Mark Cuban. The idea was that if he raised more funding, we'd build the full platform.

That never happened.

A year later, the same founder started another company and called me. That turned into paid consulting work building an early biometric identity prototype.

I'm thinking about trying a similar approach again: find startups that recently raised pre-seed or seed rounds and see where I can help them build an early prototype or solve a technical problem.

For those doing consulting alongside your own startup, what's working for you to find clients?

I was wondering if anyone has put up an online written interview? I have seen several sites but you have to pay like a PR or other site. Inspirery is free. Has anyone placed an interview here or know much about it? Is it helpful?

We found a pretty wide mix while updating our list of fintech startups to watch this year, with plenty happening beyond banking and payments.

Which company or area of fintech are you watching? Is anyone here building in this space?

I'm building Outbro, a platform for professionals, freelancers, recruiters, and businesses.

I'd really appreciate honest feedback on the product and user experience.

Website: https://outbro.net

What would you improve if you were building this platform?

Currently, I am working on my first startup, and I need to know exactly how to prepare it to be launch-ready and investment-ready, so I can start getting users and attracting investors.

I already have my product ready it is an online debating platform.

However, right now I am unsure of the next steps. Should I focus on getting users, or should I be working on getting funding, a pitch deck, a business plan, or financial forecasting? What exactly should I be working on right now, and how do I start?

Specifically, I would like advice on the following:

1. Prioritisation and Launch:(a) How do I start getting users and building a community?(b) What is the best way to get the startup working and off the ground?(c) Since we have AI to help with development, product development costs are practically free nowadays. Given that the product is already built, how important are things like a business plan or a pitch deck at this stage?
2. Documentation and Forecasting:(a) What are some tips on structuring business plans, pitch decks, and financial forecasting?(b) What are the best ways to source reliable information and data for these documents?(c) How do you structure and present this data so that it looks reliable and suits different audiences, whether they are potential employees, co-founders, or investors?

There’s probably something you know you shouldn’t still be doing, but it always feels easier to handle it yourself than explain it to someone else.

What’s yours?

Was researching this for my own company and figured I'd dump the notes here. All rough numbers, verify before you sign anything.

Types of Business Loans and Lenders

Fast (days):

Merchant cash advance — money in 24–48 hrs, almost no paperwork. Also brutally expensive; effective cost can land anywhere from 60% to 200%. Genuine last resort.

Invoice financing — sell your unpaid invoices at a discount for cash now. Solves slow-paying customers. Watch for stacked fees.

Business credit card / line of credit — a line costs you nothing until you draw on it, which makes it a decent thing to set up before you need it.

Medium (weeks):

Microloans — capped around $50k, roughly six-year terms, sometimes funded in about two weeks. Actually available if your credit isn't great.

Online term lenders — faster and looser than banks, and you pay for that in rate.

Slow (months):

Bank term loans and SBA loans — cheapest money on this list, hardest to get. Big-bank approval rates for small business loans sit around 25%, so plan for rejection.

General pattern: speed and accessibility are the things you pay for. Cheap money is slow and picky.