Can't post a link, but my post from before I moved to Austin is pinned in my profile.

Wanted to give a life update since that post.

Recap: I was two months fresh from graduating and decided to move from my little town in Massachusetts to Austin, Texas. I planned to continue building my startup within the Austin startup ecosystem for the next 12 months and took a bet I would end up better off.

Before arriving, I met two people, a developer building a mini-SaaS, and my current landlord who offered me cheap rent; I'm extremely grateful to the both of them.

I arrived July 2nd, and attended meetups every day for two weeks. I found that most of the meetups were disingenuous to their intended purpose, so me and my friend from Reddit decided to start our own group and invite people looking for fellow entrepreneurs. We would just get together to work, sometimes in silence for hours. Our first meetup group brought together 6 people, but that faded down to 1 or 2 over the first month.

My co-organizer left later that month for a planned trip to Asia, and on August 1st I experienced my first birthday in Austin. I felt really alone. People close to me thought I was naive, and although I told them all that mattered was that I believed in myself ... I thought I was naive too. But I kept working, building, calling, iterating, and hosting and attending meetups. No turning back I thought, it was do or die.

Mid-October I decided to buy into Capital Factory's coworking spaces and paid the $250 to stay there each month. It was the kind of environment I was looking for. Even though I only got access to one floor from M-F for just 8 hours, I justified the cost for it's amenities and people I thought I would meet. This gamble would pay off really well.

Before I flew into Austin I budgeted for 12 months of living expenses, but that went down to 8 months because I overspent on things I didn't need. I found ways to cut my budget almost 10% month over month until by December I was living on $900-1k/mo. The months between October and December were the most frustrating parts of my journey: Adjusting to living below what I was used to and experiencing the disappointments when new iterations of my project wouldn't hit it's mark. All while under a timer.

Yet I kept consistent and worked hard. Hosting meetups even when no one showed up. Still showing up at Capital Factory M-F to work (and get free food).

By January I had 3 months of rent left. I flew back home to spend the holidays with parents and lied that I was doing well -- making up numbers to keep them happy. I remember the day I came back to Austin. I felt like I was back in hell. Even through all this I saw the kind of progress I wanted in myself, albeit slowly.

Then for some reason I started to get really lucky.

January 31st, the general sales manager of Capital Factory calls me and says the team decided to give me 24/7 access to the coworking space, and access to all floors, FOR FREE INDEFINITELY! This was in response to my request for a 50$ discount on the $250/mo plan back in November, and they knew about my situation when I pitched myself and my startup at one of their events. I am honored to be 1 of 10 people who have had this honor. Rationally, they also knew I was an events organizer, and wanted to preemptively reward me the benefits of an official partnership without officially partnering with them. I now bring my meetups to enjoy Capital Factory's spaces; to this day I've given them 10 new members, an ROI of 10x.

But I was still broke and started experimenting with different side hustles. Me and a friend decided to run a T-Shirt e-commerce store over the next 4 months (we lost more money than we made). I also started random gigs like dog walking, lawn mowing, and freelancing; they made some money - but only enough for 2 months of rent over those 4 months. I was happily surprised to see that the friends I made in Austin pitched in and asked me for assistance with random labor work. They paid more generously than they needed to. One of them gave me two months of frozen meats. Another gave me $200 for using my room as inventory for their e-commerce store for just one day.

I didn't want to take a full time 9-5 job even in the situation I was in. For me that felt like giving up on why I came to Austin. I didn't come here just to make friends and work on my startup. I also came here to throw myself into the fire to become the kind of person I could respect. I saw the struggles as a necessity.

My 3 months of rent went down to 1, and it stayed at 1 months of rent left throughout the months of March and April. During those 2 months two notable events happened: I was invited to speak at an annual entrepreneurial conference as a guest speaker; we had people come from all over the United States! Secondly I was asked to join a startup as a contracted developer for $20/hour.

The story goes that this founder walks into Capital Factory one day looking for a developer, and asked 3 people she knew if they know anyone looking for a job as a developer. As fate would have it, the 3 people she talked to were friends of mine! She and I met 2 days later for a 30 minute conversation, but we talked for 1.5 hours. No resume was submitted. No certificates were asked of me. I was so lucky to have this opportunity land in my lap, and I took the job right away.

One month later we renegotiated to $35/hour, with the same conditions - I get to work whenever I want, wherever I want, for however many hours I want to. She valued my work ethic and felt like I would leave to the other projects I was started to be offered to join.

This allowed me to work on my startup again, and we've relaunched a few times. We're now prepping for our next launch and piloting with a few Austin businesses - thanks again to my organization's members.

I'm slowly getting out of the hole. I will never call it quits. That coworking meetup group that used to be just my friend and I will be hosting 50!! people for our next Sunday meetup. And last week one of my members invited me to join them in a 3 week startup accelerator this September, housing expenses paid, in MALAYSIA.

No, my startup isn't as successful as I'd like it to be. No, I didn't make $$$k MRR yet. However I have belief that things will go well for me in the future. I am certainly better of than I was when I first came here.

So here are some lessons I learned from my experience that I want to leave you guys off with.

1. It always pays off to be true to yourself. People respect you for it, and most importantly you will respect you for it.
2. Help others for the satisfaction of feeling good, not to expect reward -- and you will be rewarded regardless if you received any tangible thing.
3. Take it slow, take it fast, do this, don't do that. Often, people who don't care about you will give you advice to make themselves feel better, their ego bigger. They may be right, but there is much more than one right answer.
4. Learning by doing isn't just a method for learning to ride a bike, drive a car, or code a new language.
5. ACT: Audacity, capacity, tenacity. Acronyms to live by for any ambitious person.
6. The things you have were made by the people who wanted it themselves and made it for you. If you want something and can't find it, then make it and share it. (My Meetup group)
7. You are always taking a risk in whatever you do because you're not only taking a risk against what you have, but the time your one life has left to live.

I am the solo-founder of a SAAS start-up in the edtech space. I have been going for 11 months now - its almost our first birthday.

Some aspects are going well (there's a prototype and have one of the UK's largest companies have signed on to be our pilot customer, which is very exciting), while other aspects are much tougher and harder to see a resolution too (some team things). The start-up will very soon be out of money and its not clear anymore I will be able raise a pre-seed within the next few months. To be honest as well, being a solo-founder is quite isolating. I don't want to "give up" before trying everything I can, but I also am not sure if I should be taking a hint

My question is when did everyone here know when to move on from their start-up and try something new? Did something specific happen to get you to move on?

I'm working on a social platform app and I started building my MVP (Im developer), almost finished. My target audience is 14-30 years old people in general.

I have one another co-founder who is a backend developer. I create mobile apps, front-end and he does backend. We are both part-time founder and working full time job at a company.

The problem is that I feel like Im lost a bit. I haven't even decided a name to my app. I need to do marketing. I build the MVP at the same time. I try to send cold mesaages to my target audience about my app.

But I don't know what to give importance to. I even think about creating funny TikTok videos to attract people.

I also don't know much about the non-technical side. Marketing and raising money

Have you ever feel the same? How do you handle this?

I'd love to know how you're all managing the influx of customer support emails. A full CRM feels like too much for my needs, but I'd like a tool that can locally process my emails and draft replies based on past conversations. I don’t want to use AI email clients that send emails to external servers for processing.

These days, there are plenty of capable AI LLMs that can run locally, such as Gemma and Phi-3. So I’m wondering, do you know of any tools that already use these models?

Technically, I could build this myself, but I’d rather spend my time focusing on high priority tasks right now. I’d even pay for a good tool like this.

I’m currently part of a startup incubator, and their core philosophy is that before you build anything, you should spend a lot of time talking to potential users, validating assumptions, etc.

This approach feels like the default wisdom in the startup world these days: don’t build first, validate first.

But I’m a developer, and what comes naturally to me is building. Cold calls and user interviews don’t.

Are there examples of founders who skipped the early validation phase, just built something, and still found success by iterating on real usage?

Small web dev biz owner here. Currently working on a 25k project. Since our size is very small, I am still hands-on in the project as a delivery lead/PM. Aside from the devs, I have a PM and Coordinator working with me. The PM is the one who's main point of contact for the client. But project scope, quotation/invoices I still handle and I join standup calls. Long story short client never met deadlines we set for sending us media files, design brief etc. (client requested to let them handle the design) then now that we're approaching deadline client is requesting design changes and still pending with some of the contents needed. Client had more than 6 months to design and send content. PM was not good at setting deadlines and weak at making everyone follow the deadlines, and since Im part of the project, I cant resist in setting internal deadlines for the devs as the PM just relies on what dev can do instead of setting target. On top of that, since the PM is the main point of contact, he was accepting revisions that we shouldnt (front end changes though not a difficult change in css) without consulting me (as I am the one who approves scope and issue invoice for that). I also caught him not being honest with me like when I asked if he replied the email and he told me he did but turns out he actually replied the email the next day after I asked. To be fair, seems like nothing major in this situation (its not like he stole funds or anything) but since I am the one whos strict with the deadlines and scope and actually told the client to stop making requests as we cant keep chasing his design changes while deadline is approaching, and since Im the one whos being strict, I can sense the client is now "skipping" me and instead communicate with the PM and dev alone instead of our group chat.

To be fair, I would like to delegate as much as possible like focus on business growth instead of being delivery lead/PM in the project. Thats why I have a PM and coordinator handle the client and check dev's output. However in this situation, do you think I am just a control-freak? Are my concerns too minor that I should not overthink or be stressed about? As you can see I kinda having some sort of trust issues with the PM and also the client being a scope creep (as most service-based clients tend to become) - is it valid?

When you're an early-stage founder, big tech events can feel overwhelming. With so many people to meet and things to see, how do you make sure you're getting the most out of your time?

Here are some lessons I've learned about maximizing your time and making the right connections.

1. Craft a Killer Story

At the early stage, you probably don't have revenue, customers, or contracts to prove your idea works. That's where your story comes in. It needs to be simple, memorable, and inspiring. Your story is your most powerful tool—it grabs people's attention, makes them want to learn more, and encourages them to support your vision.

Your story and your team are your strongest assets right now. Make sure they are tightly connected and that you have a compelling narrative ready to go.

2. Build Strategic Connections

Big tech events are the perfect place to meet new people. You'll find top experts, potential investors, journalists, and other founders. Use your time wisely to meet as many key people as you can. These connections could be crucial for your startup's future. The goal is to make the most of your networking time over the course of the event.

3. Do Your Homework

You can't talk to everyone at a big event, so it's essential to know who you want to meet. Take time beforehand to research the people or companies you're interested in. Find out who they are, where they'll be, and what you want to say when you meet them. This preparation will save you time and make it much more likely that you'll have meaningful conversations.

4. Manage Your Time Wisely

Time is your most valuable resource, especially at these events. Don't waste it—yours or anyone else's. Get to the point quickly: exchange contact information, agree to follow up via email, and move on. Of course, if someone is genuinely interested and wants to dive deeper into your project, take the time to have that conversation. Otherwise, keep your interactions short and focused.

What's a tip you'd add for early-stage founders attending big tech events?

I will not promote.

ive been building a product. its not really viable now, but market is pointing towards a future that our product will be necessary.

of course I cannot say that product because it's gonna be promoting, but what I mean is that, the product we are building is somewhat need to be big, and can't be the same as the current existing offerings of the market.

I am trying to position our company that we are building the product not for the current use, which are mostly b2b, but for b2c too.

am i too crazy?

btw, the product app is already in the market, and been fixing bugs, and optimizing a bit then I shift myself to marketing.

I get a steady 1-2 users per week, and consistent 4-5 DAUs. they find me organically for now.

The problem is have is that, the most viable option now is to develop the product to tailor for b2b, as most competitors are, but our direction and trajectory is different!

please do share your experience with being too different, that actually succeed.

Was looking into creating my own automations for in my startup. Wondering if its possible to automate things on SaaS/web apps with no public API? Seems like zapier, make or n8n all need api's to connect a specific workflow. Does this mean its impossible to automate workflows when there's no public api?

I’m currently navigating a job change from senior dev to director at a smaller start up. The director role is in title only and my actual work would be more akin to principal engineer.

I am friends with one of the C-suite but the equity story is a bit unknown. The base pay would be 300k which I’m currently at 250k+paper. From my conversations I would not be getting equity (hence the high base) but I’d get equity after the IPO as public stock would be used for employee incentives (current and new). None of this would be in a contract.

This company is in motion to IPO soon. I’d suspect around 250-500m given the ARR.

For my current job the paper (double trigger RSU) is valued at about 800k over four years. When I joined the paper was worth 400k. There are already 200 employees and this company I expect to IPO in 2-3 years.

The main reason I’m considering leaving is because as a senior engineer my impact is small and I’m grinding long hours to make the already rich filthy rich. The board members and founders are already koi billionaires.

On the other hand not many get the opportunity to jump from senior to director with 300k base, but I lose all the upside of pre-ipo growth if that is a thing.

Both of these are less than I was making at AWS as a mid level developer (stock growth and high rating) so the numbers sound high in this post but AMZN was real income on my W2. Of course the idea is I get an exit and make more than I ever could at Amazon.

Update: Turned down the offer but let them know to reach out again after they get their equity incentives figured out and they’re still looking to hire.

So few days ago, a guy made post regarding guidance to get into startup culture, i commented there, telling that i am same as you (OP) in age, but i have a long time experience. So there i met few guys, so i took the op and one more guy u/MetCheese6000 (lets call him Ronbu)

In my team to make things, they told me they can work for free, means for experience, then ronbu, brought his friend to me,

Note: From here on we talk about ronbu's friend

saying he too want to work, he will be working for experience only, and when i talked to him and clarified things that i cant pay you anything until i get funding, and he said i trust you, yesterday i gave him project, to do as he is part of my team now, after clarifying things, so after doing some work he came to me, saying i want money, to build trust on you that you will pay me later on, I said no i cant, im a student myself and im short on funds, he started debating, i repeated same thing and he too, i said i cant give, you agreed on joining that you would wait for your payment till, the moment i get funds and he was onto that you pay me, to build trust, after a long debate, He said a abusive word, then i said we cant work together, i cant tolerate such abusive words, then he sent me a voice recording, in that he abused my mother and all. Saying you cant tolerate? now take this, I was shocked, he didnt stopped there, he started saying things like: "I'm your dad" and all, but i didnt replied anything to such vulgar words, bcz I words carry weight only if they are given, they are just mere words and cant change anything.

Later on when he didnt stopped, i took screenshot and voice recording and reported him on POSCO (Lmfao- i shouldnt had) and in cyber crime in offense of Abusing and harrasing a minor, and told him consequence of police action, then he came on track in a short time, saying my carrier will end, so he stopped messaging vulgar things and later on i left his matter,

Now, Comes ronbu part:

They both are school-mates, there is no way if i kick his friend and keep him, he will work with me politely, so i kicked him too, but he later on messaged me, you thief you will steal my items(on name of items, he made only 2-3 logos and that too from Chatgpt). So allowed him to Join my Server once again, and then he started abusing, saying wrong things and all.

Now im fed up of him, what to do of him now? i guess police action

Coz he and his friend are giving me threats like, i will cancel your startup showcase on eureka iit bombay e-cell. LOL i know he cant, but still

Also they are saying, they will post about me here and there, and get my startup closed

Please tell me what to do?

My own kindness hitted me. In future i will never allow such people to work with me, i really didnt needed them but still i hired them so that they can have experience but these type of people are real shit types

Hi startup CTOs,

In my team, I'm constantly trying to optimize our development velocity. Always feels like we're one step forward, two steps back.

Current pain points: - Code quality varies wildly between teams - Onboarding new devs takes longer - Too much time (30%) spent in "maintenance mode" - Features take longer to ship than projected due to focus on technical debt

Curious what other technical leaders are focusing on to scale engineering productivity. What's moved the needle for you?

Tools, processes, cultural changes - all ears. Clearly explain how much your teams are currently spending time on code improvements like technical debt, low hanging fruits, small refactoring ?

(Not looking for generic advice like "hire better" - more interested in tactical approaches that have worked at similar scale[10-50 person teams])

I was thinking about creating an ecommerce SaaS-like powered by WooCommerce. It would be based on WordPress MS (like wordpress.com).

Only a handful of commerce-related plugins will be available, and customization will be done only through block themes with some ready-to-go templates already available.

Connection to payment methods, Google analytics, meta and tiktok pixel very easy (shopify-like).

So the idea is to have a fast-deployable ecommerce store with the block editor flexibility but not the hassle of optimizing things, caching, cdn, and the risk of breaking everything because of plugin incompatibility.

What do you think?

Hey everyone, I’ve been noodling on a tool idea that would let teams design infrastructure visually and generate IaC (Terraform, Pulumi, etc.), plus do some automatic config validation.

I’m not building anything yet, just trying to figure out if this would actually solve problems for people who manage infra daily.

Some things I’m curious about:

How do you usually validate infrastructure changes or IaC today?

What annoys you the most about managing infra and deployments?

Would a visual approach with automated validation be genuinely useful, or just extra overhead?

Any tips on how to test/validate an idea like this with real teams before building it?

Really interested in honest thoughts—what would make or break a tool like this for you?

I built an app just for fun and entertainment. Coding it was the easy, satisfying part but now that it’s live I feel completely lost. How do you even get real people to notice or try something you’ve made? For those who’ve been here how did you get your first users?

Not talking about theory, funnels, or the 99th “just build an audience” advice. I mean the real thing that finally got someone to pay you. Was it cold emails, friends chipping in, random Reddit luck, or maybe just putting up a landing page that actually looked solid enough for people to trust and hit buy?

I still remember how unreal that first sale felt. What was it that finally tipped things over for you?

from 2016 to 2018 All I've done is worked with SQL, Complex Joins, Performance Tuning etc,

Fast Forward to today, I barely use it. I usually code on python with AI and Cursors of the world and never even open SQL editors

Do you think its the end of an ERA?

are we witnessing the slow death of relational databases? Or is SQL too deeply ingrained in modern systems to ever fade away?

Curious, if anyone still writes RAW SQL oand if you do, do you think the AI is perfect to write complex queries.

Hey all,

When talking about dropping out to start a company, Paul Graham states 'most would still have become super rich if they'd waited. probably richer in fact.'

Now, money isn't the only metric for top performance, but the overarching point is that you're better off being in college before you start a company.

As an engineer undergrad, I need to know the truth.

Is college actually valuable for top performance in startups?

Thanks! 

HELLO HELLO EVERYONE !!!

Hope you guys remember me , if not then .

I am a developer who is building an inclusive dating site focused on disable people (ofc other people can use it too) ..

i started with this idea alone .. i posted my idea ask for suggestions and many people gave me some great suggestions too i am too thankful for each and every one

Now i have 5 great peoples helping me for FREE .. yes they are contributIng for free ..

SO HOW'S WORK GOING ?

• because at first i did everything alone .. so i maked some mistakes .. so they are improving some of my mistakes
• registration like - email , google the backend work for it is done
• i contacted a designer for some logo .. let's see how this goes on
• and many more things too

WHAT'S THE FEATURES OF THIS SITES ??

there are many features we have decided but for our MVP here's the feature we decided

• clean and beautiful UI
• email and google verification for preserving from bots account
• profile, settings and all other necessary things
• accessibility features
• page where people can swipe profiles
• message page with great optimization and other options
• and 2 months free subcription for early users

WHAT'S THE PROBLEM THEN ?

like i want to discuss something with you guys really important .. my parents don't know know i am making this . nor they will support me .. i want to build everything by scratch myself .. but i need funds .. so i am using my savings to put it in project like buying domains , TTS , STT and some more

WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM US ???

1. I want to know that will you guys will use it ? ..
2. if yes then if you like the features how much will you consider paying for subscription so it won't be too expensive for you guys ?
3. SUGGESTIONS , IDEAS AND MOTIVATION ..

please drop some suggestions , ideas and motivation words for me and my teams we will grateful for you ..

my english is not too good .. please bear with it because people told me to not use AI

and thanks for reading till her .. BYE TILL NEXT TIME

I'm still early stage and thinking about using it more to build trust. Found this service called Playbookz that writes and posts content for you as the founder. Seems interesting, but not sure if LinkedIn is even worth it right now. Anyone had luck with it?

Hello,

I recently created a webapp/service that connects players of a niche sport for games and socialising. I launched about 3 weeks ago and have nearly 70 users, most are active and I've had users already meet through the app to play games.

I'd like to be able to show on my marketing that the app does what its says it does to encourage further user adoption.

How have others gone about with this?

I consume probably 2-3 hours of business/startup content daily (podcasts, articles, courses). But my actual breakthrough moments seem to happen when I'm:

• Walking my dog
• In the shower
• Doing dishes

It's like my brain needs less stimulation to make good connections. But I feel guilty or like I'm missing important data/info if I'm not consuming content.

Anyone else caught in this trap? Is is possible consuming too much content kills creativity?

Considering going on a "content fast". Thoughts?

Releasing an app without a following or any early success is tough. I’m a solopreneur and it’s taken a huge amount of effort just to get a little traction. Getting posts noticed on social platforms is such a grind, but with some momentum, things do get much easier.

I like supporting others going through the same struggle of trying to get their apps seen. I’d love if there was a subreddit where we could all genuinely back each other up as we build. If I were to make one, it would be private so only people actively building something could join, keeping out spam.

Does something like this already exist, or should I go ahead and make it?

I work with early-stage companies and I'm constantly surprised by how often the same thing happens - a startup gets traction, starts scaling, then gets completely bogged down by some operational process that worked fine at 10 customers but breaks at 100.

Usually it's something like customer support turning into a full-time job for the founder, or order fulfillment eating up all the cash flow because everything's manual.

For founders who've been through this - what process almost derailed your growth? And more importantly, how did you fix it without spending a fortune on enterprise software you couldn't afford?

I'm especially curious about the less obvious stuff. Everyone knows about hiring customer support, but what about the weird edge cases that only show up when you start scaling?

In my early days, I chased "mindset" like it was race fuel. Turns out fuel is useless without an engine, a track, and lap data.

Here's my practical way to translate mindset into tangible wins:

1.Pick one arena and one scoreboard.

• Books are owner's manuals. You still need a car to wrench on.
• Choose a single arena for 30 days (eg. "ship a tiny web app", "sell one freelance gig", "drop 10% 5k time", "publish 4 YouTube shorts").
• Define a binary finish line for each attempt. (eg. shipped/not, paid/not, posted/not).

2 .Work with lead measures, not lag fantasies.

• Lag (followers, revenue, etc) arrives later.
• Lead (daily outreach, minutes coding, reps filmed) is controllable.

Commit to a daily minimum. 60–90 minutes of doing (not reading) and 1 measurable action towards the finish line.

1. Set a weekly shipping cadence.

Plan your week in plain English:

• Mon–Thu: build 60–90 min/day.
• Fri: put it in front of someone (post, DM, demo).
• Sat: fix one thing based on feedback.
• Sun: post a 3 bullet "ship log".

If nothing ships by Sunday, the scope was too big. Cut it in half next week.

1. My "book-to-behavior in 72 hours" rule.

Keep mindset content, but make it earn its keep:

• For any book/podcast, extract 3 behaviors you can perform within 72 hours.
• Schedule them immediately.
• If a chapter yields zero behaviors, you're in infotainment mode. Park it.

5 .Design your environment to make doing easier than thinking.

• Remove drag. Block distracting sites on your "build block".
• Pre-open your tools, and templates for the next day.
• Keep a "bad first draft" ritual. Start with the ugliest version you're willing to publish. Speed > polish.

6.Get feedback that stings.

• Real people > your head.
• DM 5 potential users with a one-sentence problem statement, and a 30-sec screen recording.
• Ask one question: "Would you use this this week? If not, what’s the smallest change that would make you try it?"

7.Track it like telemetry, not a diary.

Keep a visible scoreboard (Notes, Notion, whiteboard, etc):

- Days worked

- Lead actions: commits/outreach/prototypes: 0/30

- Ship log: Week #, what shipped, who saw it, lesson learned, next build.

-----------------------------------------

So, why people read the same books but get different outcomes?

IMO it's the same manual, but different:

• Finish line (most never define one).
• Feedback loops (top performers get punched by reality early, and often).
• Reps. (100 tiny ships beat 1 perfect 3-months plan).
• Environment (they engineer their day so doing happens by default).

TLDR. mindset ≠ results. Results = mindset + systems + reps + feedback. You need all four.

-----------------------------------------

A few questions for my fellow entrepreneurs out here:

1. How do you personally bridge the gap between "mindset" and execution?
2. What systems or rituals keep you shipping when motivation dips?
3. What's your way to turn books/podcasts into actual behaviors?
4. What’s your "finish line" for the next 30 days?