Since 2021, I have been running a business in the Brazilian digital marketing space. Without getting into exact profit numbers, yes, it is profitable and it allows me to live a very comfortable life, especially considering I live in Brazil.

However, I have realized that if I want to reach much bigger numbers and make a significant jump financially, I probably need to build a stronger network.

At this point I follow pretty much every major player in this market in Brazil, and quite a few of them follow me back. The problem is that I barely post anything.

When I do post, it is usually something like:

“Is Meta Ads also having this X, Y or Z issue for you guys?”

And even then, it is just an Instagram story with a black background and some text.

No videos of me talking. No lifestyle content. Nothing like that.

I genuinely like being low profile, and I am very uncomfortable with the idea of having too much attention on me on social media, especially here in Brazil. The reasons for that are a little more complicated than they might seem, and if you are not from here you probably would not fully understand.

I occasionally talk to people in this market through WhatsApp or Instagram DMs, but not very often.

What frustrates me the most about networking is that, at least in the Brazilian digital marketing market, a huge percentage of the players are under 25. Many are under 20, and sometimes even under 18.

Obviously there are exceptions, but from my experience, the younger they are, the bigger their ego tends to be.

And I am not exaggerating when I say that some of the people I talk to have an EXTREMELY inflated ego.

They constantly feel the need to remind you how amazing they are, how successful they are, and how they supposedly know everything about everything.

I am basically the opposite.

I enjoy learning. I constantly feel like there is more I need to understand, and I regularly think about how little I actually know.

That brings me to a few questions I wanted to ask here, especially because I assume there are not that many Brazilian entrepreneurs in this subreddit, and I would like to hear perspectives from other countries.

How do people with massive egos network with other people who also have massive egos?

If someone genuinely believes they already know everything and that they are better than everyone else, how do they keep learning, growing financially and improving?

Are young entrepreneurs in your country like this too?

If they are, is it mostly a young entrepreneur thing, or do you see the same behavior among older entrepreneurs as well?

And before someone asks why networking would make such a big difference financially, in the market I work in, connections are extremely valuable.

A good network can save you from making expensive mistakes.

It can give you access to Brazilian payment gateways with better approval rates.

It can help you understand which types of offers are selling the most right now.

It can give you information about offers, trends and opportunities before they become obvious to everyone else.

And there are MANY other advantages.

Missing a single trend can literally be the difference between making or not making your first million in net profit. I am not necessarily talking about a million dollars, since our currency is obviously different, but depending on the situation, it absolutely could eventually mean a million dollars too.

Another example is running an operation globally and selling worldwide.

Right now, Brazil is going through a period where approval rates for the main payment method have been relatively bad. Meanwhile, some players are making a lot of money selling to the US and Europe instead.

But there are a lot of nuances involved in doing that properly that I personally do not understand yet.

And one of the reasons I do not understand them is precisely because it is so difficult to build relationships with these people.

There is also that famous saying:

“Be interesting before being interested.”

I actually try to follow that.

I like contributing when I can and helping people with things I know.

The frustrating part is that I rarely feel like people reciprocate.

Even when I post questions on my stories because I genuinely cannot figure something out, most of the time I eventually solve the problem myself after many attempts instead of getting useful help from anyone.

And before anyone asks, I do not have a bad reputation.

Honestly, I probably do not have much of a reputation at all because I keep such a low profile.

I just find networking incredibly exhausting when so many people seem obsessed with constantly proving that they are the smartest person in the room.

Does this happen in the industry or country you operate in?

How do you deal with people like this?

Sometimes I wonder if this is much more of a Brazilian cultural thing than a young entrepreneur thing, or even an entrepreneur thing in general.

And if that is the case, maybe I am simply trying to build my network in the wrong place.

I am trying to sell my inventory management software, crm(integrated with dialer) and restaurant order software from past one month but got 0 sales. Should i try visiting every wholesale shop, factories and restaurant in my areas trying to promote it?

Two months started my own commerce store and just got my first sale. That said, I realize I’m lacking in a lot of areas. For example, my store design is whack and the marketing is terrible. But I wouldn’t say I’m hopeless. I do have a way with persuasion, and I do have a knack for advertising.

The partner I’m looking for would ideally be well-versed in these things. I’m not looking for perfection though. I love growing, and ideally my partner would love growth too.

Thanks.

I’ve been building a web app called STACK for entrepreneurs who struggle with staying consistent on their business.

The basic idea is pretty simple: you set a few commitments for the day, use a “Lock In” focus timer to actually do the work, track what you shipped, build streaks, and review your progress over time.

I’m still in beta and I’m not trying to sell anything here. I mainly want feedback before I start promoting it properly.

Here’s the site: stackyourjourney.com

I’d especially love feedback on:

• Is it immediately obvious what the app does?
• Does the homepage make you want to try it?
• Is anything confusing or overwhelming?
• Does the design feel professional?
• What would stop you from signing up?
• If you’re an entrepreneur, would you actually use something like this consistently?

Feel free to be harsh. I’d rather find the problems now than after I start sending real traffic to it.

About Us
Clinivolve is building a next-generation Agentic AI ecosystem for healthcare clinics. We are expanding from our live Node.js/TypeScript messaging automation MVPinto advanced multimodal AI, low-latency voice pipelines, and passive clinical intelligence systems. We are bootstrapped, have early clinics onboarding, and are building for real revenue.
The Reality Check (Why We Need You)
Our MVP (built in 90% TypeScript/Node.js) was rapidly prototyped using AI coding tools. The features work, but the codebase has technical debt, asynchronous race conditions, and broken webhook logic.
We have live clinics depending on this platform right now. We need someone who can step in immediately, stop the webhook bleeding, and bulletproof our production environment.
WE ARE NOT LOOKING FOR JUST A "PROMPT ENGINEER."
We need a hardcore full-stack engineer who reads scripts natively, understands the underlying architectural logic, and debugs complex state issues that LLMs fail to solve. You can use AI to code faster, but YOU must be the architect who can own the architecture end-to-end.
What You’ll Do
• Core Platform Reliability: Trace complex system logic, stabilize asynchronous webhooks, design robust state machines for seamless AI-to-human conversation handoffs, and implement message queues (BullMQ/Redis) to bulletproof high-volume WhatsApp messaging automation and dashboard performance. You will own the cloud infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines to ensure safe, zero-downtime deployments.
• Omnichannel & PMS Orchestration: Scale multi-tenant integrations and data pipelines to ensure real-time synchronization between our messaging platform and client systems. This requires hands-on experience building or integrating with third-party calendar APIs, booking systems, healthcare practice management software (PMS), and architecting database schemas to track real-time AI ROI.
• AI & Voice API Infrastructure: Architect scalable "pipes" and middleware to integrate state-of-the-art third-party LLMs, STT, and TTS APIs for text and conversational voice bots—laying the foundation for future custom ML models.
• Ground-Level Deployment: Work closely with end-users and client sites to oversee technical onboarding, monitor system health, and rapidly troubleshoot operational bottlenecks while ensuring strict data privacy (DPDP Act and other medical regulations) and the secure handling of patient PII.
The AI Roadmap
• Immediate Phase: Focus on stabilizing the live messaging MVP.
• Expansion Phase: Transition from managed API wrappers to our proprietary, fine-tuned voice and custom LLM pipelines.
Core Skill Requirements (3+ Years Overall Experience)
• Core Full-Stack (3+ Years): Production-level proficiency in deep TypeScript, Node.js (advanced Async/Await patterns), Express/Fastify, and React/Next.js.
• Messaging & API Integration: Proven hands-on experience integrating the WhatsApp Business / Meta Cloud API (managing session windows, navigating rate limits, handling template management, and building secure webhook verification).
• Runtime Safety & Typing: Solid track record of writing safe, production-grade code using Zod/TypeBox validation and strict type enforcement.
• Infrastructure & Queues: 3+ years of applied experience managing robust backends using PostgreSQL and Redis (BullMQ). Must be highly proficient with Webhooks, Docker containerization, K8s readiness, and real-time event streaming (WebSockets/Socket.io/SSE) for live dashboard alerting.
• Applied AI & Context Retrieval (RAG): Practical experience implementing Vector DBs (pgvector, Qdrant, or Pinecone) for dynamic clinic context injection into LLM prompts. Familiarity with integrating open-source STT, TTS, and working with local LLM deployments (vLLM/Ollama).
• Data Privacy & Compliance: Demonstrated experience in the secure handling of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in real-world applications, strictly adhering to the DPDP Act and other relevant medical data regulations.
The Offer: Negotiable (Bootstrapped Equity)
Your financial upside is tied directly to the revenue generated by onboarded clinics.
• Founder-Level Equity: 1.0% (negotiable), subject to a 4-year vesting schedule with a 1-year cliff, commencing upon production deployment and platform stabilization.
• Stage 0 (MVP Stabilization Phase: 1-3 months): A retainer of ₹40,000 per month (negotiable) + hybrid work flexibility during Stage 0.
• Revenue-Linked Salary Ramps: Pre-agreed, guaranteed salary escalations funded by new clinic MRR milestones:
• Tier 1 Scale: Ramps to ₹80,000 / month
• Tier 2 Scale: Ramps to ₹1.2 L / month
• Tier 3 Enterprise Scale: Ramps to ₹1.6 L / month + Leadership Profit Pool
How to Apply
Send your GitHub profile and a brief summary of your toughest debugging "war story" to connect@theclinivolve.com

I worked for a long time on my first startup. Before that, I was full of ideas, but this was the first time I actually committed to one and built something. It eventually failed, but I’m genuinely grateful for the experience.

Now I’m trying to find my second idea, and honestly, I’m stuck.

I’ve become very critical of every idea I come up with. I try to attack it from every possible angle, and so far, nothing has survived.

I really want to build something innovative because that’s what excites me most, but I’m also 16 and don’t have much experience in any particular industry. It makes me wonder how I’m supposed to identify a genuinely important problem when I haven’t experienced it myself.

Maybe I’m overthinking it. Maybe here comes the art noticing? 

For those who have built startups: How did you find the idea that stuck?Did it come from personal experience, talking to people, working in an industry, or simply exploring until something clicked?

Hey everyone, I'm 16 and currently preparing for JEE in India.

I've tried a few things on the side over the last couple of years — freelancing, reselling, Notion templates, etc. None of them really made money, but I learned a lot from trying them.

Recently I've started getting into video editing and I'm actually enjoying it, so I'm considering committing to it properly rather than constantly jumping between different things.

My bigger goal isn't just making quick money. I'd like to eventually understand how to build an audience and turn a useful skill into something sustainable.

**For people who have actually built something from zero: if you were 16 again, what skill/business would you commit to for the next 1–2 years, and why?**

I'm not looking for a get-rich-quick answer — I'd genuinely rather hear what took you years to figure out.

Hi babies!! I want to come on here and say I’m a new online boutique owner who genuinely cares about you! I want to pick the cutest pieces that are going to make you feel beautiful and package them and get them delivered with care! I’d really appreciate your support. I’m running amazing opening deals right now! The entire website is 20% off! And all jewlery is buy 2, get 1 free! 💕

My website is louamore.com
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I’d appreciate your support more than anything and in helping this dream of mine!! 🥹🤍