I literally see YC accepting literal college freshman who have never scaled a business let alone sell a peice of software or even lemonade at a lemonade stand, accepting like super "basic" (imo) ideas, or even just like people/ideas in general that don't come off as super qualified (i understand its subjective to a certain extent).

keep in mind, the CEO of replit got rejected from YC 4 times as the founder of a company already doing like 6-7 figures in annual revenue, made the JS REPL breakthrough in 2011 as a kid from jordan that got crazy amount of recogntiion from dev community and even tweeted about by CTO of mozilla at the time, and like only got accepted into YC because PG himself literally referred him to Sam altman

I really went all in on my SaaS start up. Mid-30s, married with kids. Left a $350k a year job. Dumped $300k+ into it. Ended up taking a lot longer than I thought and it cost me so much to maintain the biz and pay for my cost of living from savings for 3 years without an income. Ended up raising a pre-seed, but it wasn’t enough to pay myself anything. Ended up selling my second home to use the equity for living expenses. I’m now $150k in debt (0% interest), and down to my primary residence and a modest retirement account. We’ve rented out the house and moved to a cheaper place, but it’s not enough.

We are about to sign our 5th B2B client (~$40k/yr each) and I’m feeling the momentum. Probably not PMF, but it feels like it’s around the corner. We’re not quite at the revenue for a seed, and I worry that it can be another 6-9 months to get to a closed seed. The fundraising environment has sucked and it cost me too much precious time away from sales.

Anyway, I’m burning through my last little bit of savings and it’s incredibly painful. Each month I’m wasting time juggling bills and moving money frantically to make ends meet. I really need to make ~$100k to live modestly and pay for this mountain of debt. No options seem good…

1. Get a job - Don’t even know how I could manage this without quitting my startup.

2. Consulting / Gigs - I’ve done a small amount of this, but it’s distracting unless I spend a considerable amount of time on it.

3. Sell dream home / go bankrupt - My 5 year old LOVES our house and it would be heartbreaking for all of us. I would subsequently go bankrupt, but I don’t know if that would just mess things up for my business anyway.

4. Raise - I don’t think we’re at seed-level ARR yet, so I could do an extension so it doesn’t take so long to raise. But I can’t see myself taking $100k from investor money yet.

I’m sure some of you have had some personal finance pressures, so I’m hoping for some wisdom.

Edit: These options were not in my preferred order. I don’t want to do anything that distracts me from the business. I would suggest looking at this business as if it’s not a lost cause or we somehow are chasing a fantasy. Imagine the exit potential is $30MM in 2 years, or $100MM in 5 years.

Edit #2: For those of you thinking the business is in shambles or we’re not close to PMF: Notion, Linear, Loom, Airtable, Slack, and Figma didn’t even have their FIRST CUSTOMER until after their 3rd year. Sometimes up to 5th year. We have a few 5-figure ARR customers that love our product, and we’re fully aware of the market potential. Chill, Karen.

I dont understand what is point of geting funds and hiring 20 pepople, if you can do same results with 3-4 people?

Having offices in US, everything is ridiculously expensive, you can do same in Europe, with same quality employees.

I heard that many VCs require startups to move to US if they want to get investments.

So whats the deal, why they do that, and why startups burn cash?

Does your valuation increase if you have more employees or something

I was 21 when I graduated college in 2018. Five years later, I had built and lost a $7.5M ARR marketing company. Here's the uncensored story of what actually happens when you scale too fast and reality hits hard.

The Beginning ($0 to $15K MRR)

Fresh out of college, my best friend and I started a creator network after he was interning at a fast growing app company and dealing with creators daily. Found a client within 3 weeks, had no creators on our books. No fancy tech, just Google Sheets and hustle. Launched the campaign... First week: $3K. Second week: $5K. First month: $15K. We were running Instagram and Snapchat campaigns and killing it.

The Lucky Break ($15K to $200K MRR)

A client asked about TikTok. Ran a few campaigns here and there. Margin was good but it was way too early for TikTok. Started building relationships with creators and adde it as a separate offering. Then TikTok released a feature that changed everything. It basically allowed us to combine these 1 off campaigns with all the tech we'd built and the main part of our business. We moved fast – really fast. Hit $40K in a single week. Monthly revenue 5x'd. We thought we were geniuses. We were just lucky.

The High ($200K to $400K MRR)

• Team grew to 20 people
• Built networks of creators
• Launched a creator house
• Started working with major apps
• Helped customers raise millions

I was 23. Working 12 hrs a day. Everything worked. Success is a dangerous drug when you're young enough to think it's normal.

The First Cracks

Then Apple killed app tracking and TikTok started to throttle organic reach. We had to pivot or die. We gave ourselves 6 weeks to turn things around across the whole company. Had to rebuild the entire business model, cut off whole projects and departments that weren't returning enough $$$, while making payroll for 20 people. We survived. Then thrived. Then...

The Pivot paid off!

We managed to grow even faster than before and things were going well. Retention was better than ever and things were compounding.

The Slow Death (2022)

• Key clients started to get hit by recession and began mass layoffs
• Sales cycles got longer
• Top sales performer got arrested (yes, really - long story)
• Tried to pivot again to a lower cost but high margin product - impossible to scale
• Started missing revenue targets

The End (2023) The hardest part wasn't losing money. It was:

• Laying off loyal team members who'd been with us for years
• The self doubt in your abilities
• Realizing we couldn't fight the market forever
• Knowing when to stop throwing good money after bad

The Real Impact

In 5 years we:

• Helped 2 startups raise $20M
• Paid $3M to creators
• Funded a creator's dad's heart surgery
• Watched 3 of our former employees go onto start their own thriving businesses
• Changed lives

Yet we still couldn't save ourselves.

Key Lessons

1. Luck is definitely a factor but you also have to be prepared and ready, we got lucky so many times
2. Focus on the money maker - the core part of the business making $$$ and then diversify out
3. Understand the volatility of your market - ours changed so fast, we should done number 2 and then diversified quicker
4. You have to keep innovating - times change and what you do may be hot today but tomorrow can easily not be - choose wisely and act accordingly
5. Separate your identity from the business - the businesses success and failures are not a reflection of you - don't get too high and don't get too low.
6. Don't make it easy to join the team, especially when scaling and things are going well - you need to scrutinise hiring decisions. Everyone needs to be a top performer and not just a great person. You can find both
7. Make decisions early, with conviction - we could have taken certain actions or decisions earlier that could have changed our outcome or extended runway. It was our first time and we were slow to move - maybe it was naivety, maybe hope.
8. Not everyone will like you - of course, when laying off people it's never easy and it's expected that some people won't take it well or may question decisions but you can't help this and you're not there to be liked.

Starting Over

I'm 28 now. Starting again in the TikTok/short form space - this time with:

• Battle scars from a $7.5M business
• Real experience, not just enthusiasm
• Understanding of risk and market dynamics
• Knowledge of what actually matters
• A healthier relationship with success

For those building right now: The graphs don't always go up and right. Sometimes they crash. And that's okay. Building something that fails doesn't make you a failure.

Happy to answer any more questions or help with strategies if you're trying to get customers on TikTok/short-form. Just drop me a message.

EDIT: this post went crazy! Thanks for all the kind words. Getting loads of questions and messages about my new product too. Feel free to shoot me a DM, trying to get through all the messages now haha

I don’t understand where people get the audacity to expect free work on their terms. A friend of a friend asked me to meet about “hiring” me part-time on their startup. I figured I could probably work on it a few hours a week, so I messaged them back and had a meeting. They said they expected me to volunteer and I wouldn’t get any money or stock. I laughed. Then they said that I’d need to put in 10-20 hours a week on a schedule doing software development work and I’d possibly get a chance to get paid in the future. They told me that they know I do great work and I would be a valuable addition. Apparently not valuable enough to pay haha. Obviously, I’m not doing that. I just don’t understand where people get the expectation of free work from. It’s crazy to me! If I started my own startup, I wouldn’t expect to hire anyone on unless I was able to pay them to give them a part of my company. Is this a normal thing in the startup world?

Edit to add: They also went back to my friend and said that I was “unhelpful” and “not dedicated to my work as a SWE” because I wouldn’t volunteer my time. It’s laughable haha.

I have to admit it. I’m guilty as a non-technical founder who doesn’t have coding experience but took a coding bootcamp and has an EXTREMELY entry-level understanding of code.

I have, what I believe to be very great “concepts of a plan” Trump Voice.

But, I know how hard you developers work when you’re coding these applications/softwares/platforms.

I don’t know the best way to partner with someone (if you don’t have the capital to pay them to develop the project while I spend time on the front lines making sure it’s in everyone’s face).

The only thing I can think of is to find someone who particularly believes in the idea as much as I do to the point where they say “F It” let’s both be on board and make this happen, we split equity 50/50 and we just grind and make the MVP and get in front of investors.

As a technical founder, what would you say is the best way or most intriguing way to approach yourself if you’re the non-technical is a start up with no capital?

You see a startup: 6 years since launch. 4 founders, 40 employees. €250k ARR expected to go to 400k. Raised 1.4M 14 months away. Now raising 5M.

What do say from this?

Estimate a burn rate of more than 100k/month (only counting employees) , and have a easy to replicate SaaS. How could investors continue investing? What am I missing?

Just finished building the platform and now I have to begin promoting, selling and ,,,, etc.

Promoting for both B2B & B2C alone with many invitations sent and people said “ohh, it is a good idea, thanks for reaching out.” But you know the rest,,,(no body takes any action)

I failed 1st business as consultant, not interested in corporate, laid off from job, leaving 2 MScs behind. Now I turned into tech entrepreneur as I’m building a platform besides acquiring all skills needed but still no tractions..!!!!!

I’m really tired -:( doesn’t fit in jobs anymore; both blue and white collar while getting older and alone following my dreams.

Is life hard that much, or it is extra harsh on me???

I know Europe is really behind in the tech sector and USA and even China are crushing us right now.

What would europe have to change for it to start catching up to their American peers ?

What are some things that european entrepreneurs and startups could learn from successful people in the US ?

What are the startups you think ran by the worst idea ever. You can also talk about the startups which were totally the worst from your personal opinion. What are the startups that you feel like a total failure, when it comes to display in public or its entire idea itself.

This seems to be the most reoccurring theme when posts about business ideas are commented on.

Yes there's probably a number of competitors, ok?

It's always said as if it's the end all be all reason to just walk away from any pursuit when in reality most people should know competition is expected and healthy.

Sorry for the rant post but it's exhausting to see on every post about a new startup.

Competition is good, stop using that as a reason to not pursue your business

I am am huge advocate for remote work and have worked on distributed teams for about 15 years now. I do not want to ever go back. However, I am not sure if the younger me would have benefited as much from it as I did from being in the office with my peers and more experienced members of the team. What do you think? Does remote work in startups hurt people early in their career?

My experience is from meeting a couple people on YC cofounder matching/online, who are looking for a dev (me) to join their b2b idea. We talk, they have an idea, and talked to a few or couple potential customers, but can't produce any recordings or transcripts of their conversations. Or a document summarizing their findings and the market research. I'm immediately disinterested at how little information they can produce.

They just tell me the idea over a call as if I'm going to remember everything, and as if they remember every insight from those conversations.

I'm in a b2b startup rn, and I record every customer call, and note down interesting snippets/emails in a doc. When I look back at recordings, I realize that there are many nuggets that I didn't remember. And that's even with a good memory.

I'm still pre-mvp with a waitlist, so wondering what more experienced founders think?

Hi,

Me and a small team are building an enterprise grade genAI project and we are hoping to have a minimum viable product. We have some data scientists and a load of private data as we have connections to a large enterprise firm who is willing to help us. We have letters of intent from people in the enterprise too.

We need a lot of scale and as such need some seed funding. I have some people with a network but we want to look into an angel investor. Is this plus a usable demo product usually enough to be able to attract investors? Any tips would be super helpful as this is my first venture into the entrepreneurial side of tech

What is at the top of your "do not do" list? What do you believe are the most critical errors or missteps that new companies should avoid at all costs? For example, I would put "attend trade shows" as a key activity to avoid. Over index on angel investor feedback might be another. What else?

I’ll cut right to the point, I’m looking to start something new - something to really sink my teeth into. I’m a software engineer by trade (of about 10 years), and with experience over the past 2-4 years of managing and growing technical teams, making key business decisions, etc. I’m looking to partner with someone who has a great idea who needs a technical co-founder to bring it to life, whether it’s SaaS, something AI based, etc - I’m fully capable of building any kind of web app/website.

I feel there’s a chance for the perfect partnership here:

• You: have a great idea with experience, know-how and connections in that field
• Me: can build anything, lead technical vision, lead product vision, execute fast

TLDR: ready to work, do you need a technical co-founder? Let’s talk, my DM’s are open!

I cofounded bootstrapped a startup in the hot AI space last year, now it has over 25k MRR, but single digit monthly growth because we suck at marketing, we do have a pilot with a Fortune 10 company. If pilot is successful, it could skyrocket us.

VC's don't know this traction but got a few of them reached out to me. Hopped on a couple of calls. But it seems like it will take a lot of time to talk to them and they will mostly waste my time.

We do want to raise, but maybe start of Q2 when we would have more monthly growth.

The approach we have in mind is to make it a campaign, reach out to 200 VC's in our space, pitch them all essentially at the same 2 to 4 weeks period, maybe 10% will go to second calls etc. Make it a proper funnel. We expect the process to take 3 to 6 months. This way it saves us time, have multiple offers so we can get the best deal.

Is that the right approach?

Or should I spend time talking to some investors now even though we dont have our dataroom yet? And the conversations will drag on for months and we'd have a bunch of pitchdecks & projections we have to keep updating as time passed?

We've never raised VC's before so have no idea what the process should be. Would love to hear some stories of the process!

For successful founders, or anyone who’s worked in a successful startup:

What is the one small change, in any area of your startup, you made that had the greatest impact on the startup? Please provide metrics.

For example: implementing X increased DAUs by 18%….

First, second, third startup founders, I would love to have your help here…

Experience has shown and taught you alot, what do you wish you knew before your first startup came to the market? Were there any major lessons or insights that would have made a significant difference?

Google sheets seems like a horrible way to move forward. SF, Hubspot, Pipedrive all seem outdated at this point. Anyone find a new CRM that was built for founder led sales teams / startups that is potentially AI driven? Trying to find something that works for us but nothing is turning up. Looking forward to any advice on this.

Thank you!

We raised a good amount of seed capital but that was it. From what I hear, they hit end of the runway and no A round term sheets on horizon. So, closing down shop.

I was pushed out right after the seed was finalized. I was 1/2 vested at the time, remaining of unvested shares bought back. I voted against a move my cofounder really wanted. He rallied enough support and “poof”, out I went.

Now company is going through liquidation. I doubt I am high in the preference line but is there any chance of cash trickling into my pockets? Beyond what I put in (if that)?

The irony and schadenfreude I get to experience from the move I voted against being the costly mistake preventing growth… that’s worth a lot.

A startup reached out to me recently for an advisor role. They raised a series B and are operating in a space I've founded in before. They want my expertise in AI/ML, and I'm not sure how to price my services.

I understand advisors generally ask for cash and/or equity. I'll be happy to hear some of you guys' experiences being an advisor, and what package do you usually get out of it. Also, any reason why i shouldn't become a startup advisor?

Not sure if this matters, but

• 4 yoe in AI/ML for a big tech, working in a field that want my expertise in.
• currently CEO of bootstrapped startup on autopilot in same space, and successfully exited another one last year.
• currently CTO of a stealth startup in a very different space

I am a software developer, but I don't want to spend time coding an startup idea without knowing if people will like it. So, I want to create a video presentation, but I have no experience with video editing.

What tools do you use to create video demos?

I've been reading posts from this page for a while. Everybody talks of "raising money". How do you raise money? Some of you might think that's a stupid question but I'm really perplexed. Is this like getting investors? Also why the astronomically high amount of money? I'd need 100k€ max to start my business (game dev studio in Europe), that's why I'd like to know more about it please and thanks for the answers.

I'm 32 (m) and live in Melbourne Australia with my wife and 4 month old son.

Started my career in SaaS Sales, started, ran and sold a few businesses on the side (some more serious than others). My real passion, however has always been in Capital Markets. As an 11 year old I watched the movie Wall Street about 50 times and just knew 'that' is what I wanted to do and I became obsessed with that whole world and have been ever since, I love all the famous activist investors like Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn. However, when I first left school I didn't follow my passion, life sort of got in the way.

In early 2023 I left my comfortable well paying SaaS job to be a full time entrepreneur/investor. Not to sound arrogant but so far, I've been pretty successful. I've turned $300k (my life savings) into just over $2m all while having a pretty good standard of living (our life style costs around $10-20k a month).

This year I made my first activist investment, and found my onto the board on a publicly listed company here is Australia and have played a role in turning that company around. Last financial year the company made a $4m loss. I bought about 10% of the company while the stock was at an all time low and the company should break even this year (but we are still not out of the woods yet).

Trouble is I'm not moving quickly enough, I need to raise some capital in order grow and scale and make more activist investments.

Australia however is a very conservative market. We just don't have the same access to capital as people in the US have.

So our plan is to move to New York for 3 months for me to pound the pavement to try and raise money for a fund that will specialise in undervalued small-mid cap companies on the ASX (Australian Stock Exchange).

My wife is super supportive and I love her more than anything for encouraging me to do this. The worse case scenario is we spend about $100k to live in the US for 3 months and we come back home and just keep doing what we are doing.

Am I fucking nuts for doing this? Does this have any chance in hell of working? Is it irresponsible to take a young child to New York for that long?

Or is this cool? And I'm actually going to take the plunge and chase my lifelong dream?

Thank you for reading this far...

Any thoughts are appreciated!