TL;DR: Creator platform Passes (founded by Lucy Guo of Scale AI) is being sued for allegedly hosting CSAM after making the bewildering business decision to allow underage creators on their platform. They've now banned all minors, but the damage is done. A case study in how one terrible product decision can sink $65M in funding. Also, I will not promote.

Lucy Guo's second startup Passes was supposed to compete with OnlyFans by letting creators as young as 15 monetize their content (with "parental consent"). This seems like such an obviously terrible idea that I'm shocked it got through any level of VC due diligence.

Forbes published an investigation detailing how Passes is now facing a lawsuit for allegedly hosting and distributing explicit content of a 17-year-old. According to the actual lawsuit, Passes staff even removed protections meant for minors.

Sometimes there's a very good reason why competitors haven't done something - it's not an "untapped opportunity," it's a landmine they were smart enough to avoid. This case perfectly illustrates when "differentiation" is actually just a terrible idea that others recognize as such.

What's fascinating from a startup perspective is:

1. The platform hurriedly banned all underage users days before the lawsuit - an obvious admission they knew this was problematic
2. Guo admitted in (now deleted) tweets that their ML content filters weren't applied to talent managers due to "cost and trust" - a devastating admission
3. Despite this, they raised $65M from investors like Bond Capital and Menlo Ventures

For all the talk about content moderation being a solved problem with AI, this demonstrates how one fundamentally flawed product decision can't be fixed with technology. The lawsuit alleges Passes earned $47K from just one inappropriate conversation with a minor.

What other startup decisions have you seen that were so obviously flawed from the beginning? I can't believe this wasn't seen from 1 million miles away by investors.

I went to a co-founder matching event last night.

Met a lot of cool people but honestly it made me feel more like this is an impossible task.

I'm now 21... except with 27 years of experience (AKA I'm 48) and the older I get the more I value people I've known a long time.

I've had people I trust screw me over and people I met casually become very loyal to me.

I'm not sure anything can really help you find someone that you can trust except for time

I'd be willing to bet that the data around "startups that have 2 or more co-founders that are successful" might be tainted.

I'm wondering if they're interpreting the data wrong.

It seems that a co-founder that will eventually screw you over (either deliberately or accidentally) is actually a WEAKNESS not a strength.

The startups I've talked to, that have been successful, have been with co-founders that have known themselves a LONG time and already been in a fox hole together.

I'm starting to think I should just give up on finding a co-founder at this point and focus on product.

I'm a huge fan of stories Founders tell about weird ways they've funded their companies.

I loved Brian Chesky's story (AirBnB) of selling cereal ("Obama O's" and "Captain McCains" during the election to raise cash (I think they sold like 30k boxes!). I remember the (actual) Founder of Zappos (not Tony) talking about how his initial revenue came from photos of shoes at stores that he took and posted online to sell.

I always tell Founders it doesn't matter how you make your early revenue, just as long as you have some revenue. So I enjoy seeing examples of how folks are doing it.

Curious—what's the weirdest, scrappiest, or most unexpected way you generated cash to fund your startup?

(I will not promote)

Last week, I finally launched version 1.0 of my public-facing service. It’s the result of seven years of grinding: learning to program from scratch, understanding the math, solving complex concepts, and figuring out how to work with clients.

Former colleagues have told me “it looks GREAT.” And I believe them.

But now… I’m exhausted.

For the past four months, I’ve been working 15–18 hours a day. My savings are gone. The launch is done, but the next chapter — actually running and growing the business — feels overwhelming right now.

My short-term plan is to find part-time local work (maybe at a deli) and try to focus on organic marketing. But there’s a thought that keeps crossing my mind — maybe I should sell it.

I never seriously considered that before. But after investing nearly a decade into building this thing, the idea of alsooperating it is starting to feel like too much.

Anyone else been here? Thoughts?

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I have a very long history of being incredibly wrong about startup companies - which is why I'm not an investor ;)

What's the best idea you never saw coming? Here are mine:

Ring Doorbell - Jamie Siminoff (founder) was the co-founder of my last startup. When he was launching "DoorBot," a device that texts you when someone rings the doorbell, I thought it was doomed. Jamie is awesome, but I absolutely didn't see what he would turn into Ring. ($1b+ exit).

eBay - I'm old enough to remember when eBay launched, and I thought, "This is the dumbest idea. Anyone can just take a picture of a Rolex and "claim" they have it. This will last about 5 seconds. It lasted longer. ($31b Market Cap)

Uber - The early launch was a black car service, which made sense to me, but when they pivoted to "some random person in a Prius will pick you up and (maybe) drop you off alive." I was like "This will last about 9 seconds before someone's daughter never gets returned." Maybe that's the 80s kid in me being warned about getting in a stranger's van. ($152b Market Cap).

.. I mean, I can go on and on, but I've got to imagine some of you have a company that you absolutely thought would tank and is now wildly successful. I think it also provides some encouragement for all Founders who are going up against those odds.

(I will not promote)

,

I will not promote.

I have been doing my own startup for over a year now. The initial few months were exciting, I looked forward to everything, was very excitedly talking to my co founder and solving problems.

We attended a lot of VC calls, did multiple pivots and finally are building something which customer needs. Both of us are working a lot, I am as well spending a lot of time building.

We have not drawn any salaries and are bootstrapped.

For quite sometime I am becoming very non chalant to both the highs and lows. I mean I know I have to do this, build and sell and grow the startup, but there is no adrenaline rush anymore. I am just doing it because I have no other way. All the initial excitement, the feeling when our competitor raised a round etc. seems to be gone.

Now, with every new news or any event, it's mostly a shrug and like ok. Mind you, the work does not seem to get affected as it still is 14-16 hours per day. Apart from sleeping and working there is not a lot.

Does anyone else feel the same ? How do you keep the adrenaline pumping ?

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Hi everyone! So i am a 20 y/o Dev working on a productivity SaaS startup leveraging the obvious AI/ML haha with My former neighbour, we are currently working on the MVP, everything is there for the startup to be good enough for VCs to not ask, ‘How is your product different from your competitors?’ , we were thinking to raise pre seed, but according to some people it is hard to get a pre seed funding until and unless you have some experience on startups or some other parameters that makes you/your startup qualified for pre seed, is this statement true tho? Well, even though this statement turns out to be true, we’ll give it a shot, if we are unable to raise pre seed then we might bootstrap the development, then approach the seed round.

Building a kind of monetizable social media platform where creators can sell every kind of digital content, but running into the usual cold start problem: creators need an audience to join, and users want content before they sign up.

For those who’ve built in the creator or UGC space:

• How did you attract your first creators without demand?
• How specifically can I get the first creators on my platform?
• What non-scalable tactics actually worked?

Looking for real strategies that helped you get past the “empty room” phase.

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I had an interview for an accelerator program today. It’s my first interview where I had to give a pitch for my business. I’m still new to the startup world so I’ve never done anything like this before. I rehearsed for days and perfected my pitch. When it was time to deliver I was nervous! I saw the timer and the flow of everything threw me off. I’m really sad about it and I feel like such a failure. Life has been extremely hard for me over the last few months and I’m so tired of taking L’s. I was so excited for this opportunity and I feel like I just tossed it out the window :(

Hey guys, in the past year.... myself and another friend have invested $30K. I personally have also worked 10 hours a week for a year. All of this to make an MVP which has gotten validation from our niche. Not just validation but genuine excitement.

How much equity should I give another co-founder who wants to join today (1 year in)?

I want him to feel motivates but I also feel like if I give too much, it completely doesn't reward the risk I took to get to this point. - I will not promote

Let’s make it interesting. Your salary is taken care of plus your bills.

Founders work super hard on raising capital, sometimes not even really sure what happens next other than “I’m just happy I won’t be living on the streets.”

So what do you do?

Edit: It's interesting how a lot of the initial answers have to do with other startups or business ideas versus how you'd spend it in your startup.

I will not promote!

Hello everyone! I don't usually post much here, but I need help with something, and I think the community here might be able to help. (I will not promote)

Right now I’m juggling both inbound leads and outbound campaigns. The more I get done, the more behind I seem to be - It's making me crazy. If I prioritize inbound, my cold outreach pipeline suffers and vice versa. I am close to reaching burnout - do you have any tips before I reach the burnout phase (I don't want to reach it again - it's too hard to snap out of it!).

Thank you!!

I think this affects serial founders the most. You look at every problem (big, small, random) and think, “How can I turn this into a startup?”

I hear comedians do this with every life experience. They think “How can I turn this into a bit?”

So your mind is filled with constant thoughts of MVPs and then you realize “What the heck am I doing?” And then you have the audacity to start experimenting? Even talking to others about the problem.

Eventually your the CEO of six new ventures in your mind? Finally you have a place where all your ideas go to die and call it a venture studio. If you have a spouse they constantly roll their eyes. And sometimes the worst part if everyone around you encourages you and the is they’re all great ideas. Bahahah.

I’m sure I’m not the only one.

I've been helping startups get funding for a couple of decades, as well as funding my own startups, so I've spent a lot of time in different fundraising environments.

This one somehow feels the worst - and I'm going back to the early 1990's as a time frame.

Here's what I *think* is happening based on my purview -

1. There's a ton less early stage investing happening. I just don't see the frenzy anymore.
   
2. VC's are coming off a horrible run on IPOs, and that's killing the "greed" element of investing.
   
3. S&P 500 has been doing relatively well, so smaller investors can make good money in liquid stocks
   
4. Interest rates have gone crazy, preventing a lot of what drives fund investing, etc.
   
5. AI was supposed to be the "boom", but the investment largely concentrated on really big players.

... I think at some point all of this capital, especially from funds, has got to get deployed.

What are you seeing?

(I will not promote)

I was invited to applied for a job as a python developer and they said the position consisted of working 7 days a week. Who in his right mind would do this? They said they have almost 20 people in the team. This is for a normal position, not a founder.

The burn out after working 7 days nonstop, this people will change employees like socks. Is the market that bad right now? This is incredible

In 30+ years of being a startup Founder and working with thousands of other Founders, I have never seen or heard of a single instance of an idea being "stolen" by investors.

Yet it remains one of the most concerning issues first time Founders have when sharing their pitch deck.

Invariably they will say "I need investors to sign an NDA!"

Which works never. Also, if you're not sure, please don't ever ask investors to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement - they won't, and they shouldn't.

But back to the point - I feel like I've seen an awful lot in my Founder career, but "investors stealing ideas" has never come across my desk even once in that time.

Has someone legitimately had this happen? I would love to hear how/why so I can at least tell Founders "You know, there was this one story..."

(I will not promote)

Hey all,
Recently, I created an app for personal finance. I'm looking into Reddit to market/promote my app on Reddit. How to do this? There are a lot of Reddit communities, including this one are not meant to self promote (except a few exceptions), which I understand. I want to do this in the right way.

Like a lot of early-stage founders, I assumed cold email would be a great way to get our first users. We run a SaaS that helps local businesses manage their online presence, so I figured: buy a list, send some emails, and boom—customers.
Nope. Most emails bounced, some responses were downright hostile, and I learned the hard way that sending to bad addresses can hurt your domain reputation fast. We had to clean up our list and rethink our whole approach before we could even get emails into real inboxes.
Cold outreach is trickier than I expected—deliverability, targeting, messaging, all of it. What’s something you wish you knew before sending your first cold email?

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Hi everyone,

I'm wondering if anyone in the community has experience fundraising/running businesses that have a large Bricks and Mortar component. I feel like 95% of advice I see is angled towards digital businesses.

For background - I was a CEO for a startup (no equity) for 3.5 years in an emerging market in Asia. I built two large sports centers/academies that had memberships of 2000+ members each plus some casual users, and we also signed for another two locations whilst I was there. This was all privately funded by a rich investor and unfortunately started to be run like a family business which is why I left.

I'm now fundraising for a similar project, I have a contract to operate a great sports club that is being developed here and very good commercial terms. I'm trying to build a brand that will launch many clubs under one centralized management complete with customer facing app and dashboard developed onside. I have some options for investment (based on convertible debt) but I am still pushing to find an investor to buy 15% equity at about 800k USD which is enough for us to launch.

I'd love to talk with some of you who have stories about fundraising for physical businesses? Tell me your stories and maybe we can learn from each other

Thanks! (I WILL NOT PROMOTE)

Hey everybody I’m a solo founder working on a B2B SaaS product I launched at the very end of December 2024. Since then:

I already have 2 paying customers. One is a government organization and the other is a tech company. 8 other companies, some with hundreds of employees, reached out to me organically and are currently in a trial phase. They’ve already installed the software on their own servers. All of this happened with zero paid marketing. Just a few Reddit posts (the best one had ~60 upvotes), and I’m still on page 3 of Google search.

I’m currently doing almost everything myself. I build the product, manage sales and support, and run the operations. I have a part-time designer I pay hourly, and I used to pay a few freelancers to help with the website.

My question is: Is this level of traction enough to seriously pursue a pre seed round, or should I keep bootstrapping and push further before trying to raise?

I will not promote

Edit: I meant pre seed round

Hey r/startups I will not promote,

Seeing lots of discussion around MVPs lately, which is great! It's such a core concept. However, I've noticed (both here and working with founders over the years) that a few common misconceptions about MVPs often trip people up. Thought I'd share a couple and see what others think:

1. Misconception: MVP = The Cheapest/Fastest Version Possible. While speed and cost-efficiency are benefits, the 'V' (Viable) is crucial. An MVP isn't just minimal; it must deliver core value and solve a real user problem effectively enough to get meaningful feedback. Cutting too many corners can lead to a 'Minimal Non-Viable Product' that teaches you nothing useful.
2. Misconception: An MVP Needs Dozens of Features to Compete. Founders sometimes look at established competitors and try to cram too much into their initial release. The goal isn't feature parity; it's validating your unique core hypothesis. What's the absolute essential workflow or benefit that proves people want your solution? Focusing on that one thing done well is often more powerful initially.
3. Misconception: The MVP is Just About the Product. It's equally about the process of learning. The data, user feedback, and insights gained from launching the MVP are often more valuable than the initial code itself. It's the starting line for iteration, not the finish line.

These are just a few observations. Building the right MVP feels like a constant balancing act between speed, core value, and learning objectives.

What are some other MVP assumptions or pitfalls you've seen lead founders astray? Or what's been your biggest 'aha!' moment when defining your MVP scope?

My lease is ending soon. I prefer to move to SF. Instead of moving to random people’s 3rd roommate I feel if I move with someone who is on similar journey we can atleast emotionally support each other.

It’s fine if you don’t want to share the idea or anything.

We can help, motivate, keep each other accountable and if things take off we can even help each other in referring to investors etc.

What do you think?

(“ I will not promote”)

Hey everyone,
I’m curious about your experiences. There are tons of AI-focused startups popping up right now, and I run one myself. I’ve found that figuring out cost optimization can be really tricky, and it has a huge impact on how we set prices and plan our business model.

Have you had any good or bad experiences with these challenges? Any interesting stories about how you’ve managed to reduce your reliance on external providers or lower your AI costs? I’d love to hear your tips and insights!

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Hey everyone, I’m working on a SaaS startup and we’ve started building a solid base of free users. Now we’re focusing on the harder part — getting them to upgrade to paid.

For those of you who’ve been through this, I’d love to hear:

What strategies or tactics helped you convert free users into paying ones?

Some specific things I’m curious about:

• Did you use a paywall strategy — like making one key feature free and locking the next behind a paywall?

• Did feature gating work better than usage limits or time-based trials?

• What role did email sequences, in-app nudges, or personalized outreach play?

• Were there any “aha moments” or value triggers that led users to convert?

Also wondering:

• How long did it usually take for a user to go from free to paid?

• What didn’t work as well as expected?

Appreciate any real-world advice or lessons learned — especially things that worked for early-stage SaaS!

Seed-strapping seems to be getting more buzz (especially in this current funding environment). It promises to be a hybrid between bootstrapping and seed funding. I'm seeing some cool success stories (it's really not a new concept or method, but it's gaining awareness). There is also confusion because it sits on a spectrum between the two.

Any of you doing this or thinking about it? If so, how?

What's your definition?

Or is it all hype to you?

I personally think for certain types of startups, it's the way to go.

And as usual, I expect the comments to reveal general awareness, understanding, and sentiment. Let's discuss!

(I will not promote)