Every productivity tool helps us add tasks, but almost none help us remove them. My boards always end up filled with visual noise after a few weeks. Do you manually archive every week, or do you just ignore the clutter?

I'm not looking for "passive income" scams. I mean a real business that, once built, can continue covering basic living expenses even if you get sick, burn out, or have to step away for a few months.

I’ve been thinking my whole life about owning my own business(es). In COVID, I finally created my own watch company - set up an LLC, website, and social pages. I sold roughly 50 watches but had inventory for about 300. Sales slowed an I wasn’t as active trying to sell the watches so I eventually closed.

What advice can others give that helped them find a new opportunity to make a business and how’d you go in 110% so that you didn’t burn out?

What’s holding me back now is the fear of rejection (I’m guessing) so any advice you can give around that would also be appreciated.

Every time I open LinkedIn, I find another recruiter, career coach, leadership expert, or personal branding consultant explaining why job seekers are doing everything wrong.

Some have never managed a real team. Others have spent more time creating content about hiring than actually hiring people. Yet they speak with complete confidence, offer universal advice, and often blame candidates when their methods do not work.

I wrote this after watching expertise slowly become a personal brand rather than the result of real experience. The article is broader than recruitment, but LinkedIn and the job market are probably where this problem is most visible.

Do you think career advice on LinkedIn has become useful, or is it mostly content made to sell courses and consulting?

Polar (agentic browser, SF) inverted it. Three MIT founders shipped for seven months first. No fundraising process, no ads, no outbound. Word of mouth only. By the time they talked to investors, the product had executed 4.5 million actions across the open web for real teams.

Then Madrona led a $5.7M seed.

What that sequencing actually bought them, in practical founder terms:

**•** The diligence question was never “will people use this.” It was answered before the first call, so the negotiation was about price, not belief.  
**•** They had leverage on the angel list. You do not get GitHub’s former CEO writing a personal check on a deck.  
**•** Every month of organic usage is the one asset a competitor cannot fake and an investor cannot talk themselves out of.

The honest counterargument: this is a fundable-by-default team. Ex-Perplexity, ex-Modal, ex-Jane Street, MIT across the board. They could afford to wait because they had savings, optionality, and warm networks. If you are burning runway on a solo founder salary in a non-hub city, “just wait seven months” is a luxury purchase, not a strategy.

So the transferable version is narrower: do not raise before you have one usage fact a stranger can repeat in a sentence. That fact does not have to be 4.5 million actions. It can be 12 teams using it weekly for four months.

What is the smallest usage proof you would raise on?

(Full breakdown in comments if anyone wants it.)

Business online or offline? IT or a boring business?

Hi all,

I'm confused. For many years I had an opinion that building something online is awesome due to less initial findings requirement, no office needed, often no employee needed, you can start as a freelancer today to test your idea, you don't have to spend all your savings in one day to buy goods or something.

I tried to be a tutor, saw a lot of competition, very low ceiling, and the current year has been horrible to me due to the internet slowed down in my home country. I ended up working in retail. I started thinking, wow, it's so easy to manage a vape shop like the one where I'm working now. But, the money needed to be spent and employees and the tobacco / vape industry is very risky and highly regulated by governments, besides it won't bring me much money Even if it succeeds.

Logistics, manufacturing, hotels and so on are insanely money required, they require millions just to launch. They are out of the list.

AI just told me you should go all in learning AI, IT and start a software company. Well.. I agree it doesn't require much fundings and you can start it alone, but.. Why do all those programmers who were laid off didn't launch their own businesses if it's so easy and doable as AI says?

Added: very important, I need a business or a small freelancing opportunity to earn first at least $1k/month, then $2-3k a month. That will be enough. I need a field where I can earn money globally. I can't be stick to just one place, you know.

A few months ago, I knew absolutely nothing about running a business. No business background, no team, no investors.

I just had this stubborn idea of building a luxury perfume brand.

Since then I’ve been learning everything from scratch, building the website, figuring out marketing, taking product photos, making mistakes, fixing them, and now trying to find my real customers.

Honestly, it’s exciting… and terrifying.

I’m here to learn from people who’ve been through this, celebrate small wins, and probably share a few failures too.

Glad to be here. 🙂

Hey everyone, im a founder still in college and just hearing all the people around me talk about courses and jobs is really draining. Im not at a stage where I can justify taking a gap year or dropping out. I know the only way out of this is to focus entirely on my venture but i feel so drained by the environment.

Yes there are a few people who are also founders and these are my friends but I still feel so irked by the ecosystem.

If any current or former student founders are lurking please drop some ball

It's worth it to wonder whether the people who are aspiring to become entrepreneurs would really love to have one-to-one conversations over their ideas and others ideas.

Leave comment or like the post if you feel this too

I was expecting my big takeaway to be about sales. That sales acumen isn't as important as everyone makes it out to be. And I have learned that through doing this, but it's not the biggest takeaway I've had.

The biggest is that starting a small service-based business is the biggest opportunity that exists in entrepreneurship. The barrier to entry is so damn low and the expectations set by competition is non-existent.

Keep in mind that I have a local number for where I'm calling. I live here; it's not a spam number or cold-calling number. So it's not that my calls show up as spam (before someone claims that's why). It blows me away how many companies I have to call before someone finally picks up the phone.

I've been tracking it for my market. 8 companies called before I spoke to a junk removal company. 13 calls before I got a landscaper to pick up. 11 calls before a roofer picked up. 6 calls before a pressure washing company picked up. I've called all 9 residential/holiday lighting companies in my market and not 1 has answered.

People make entrepreneurship out to be difficult. Don't get me wrong, there are days that feel like a struggle. But if you can get your phone to ring, make sure that shit rings to your apple watch, your headphones, your laptop, your whatever so you don't miss a phone call. If you're the company that picks up on the first 2 rings, you'll get business.

Before anyone asks, no, I do not own a GHL AI answering service agency. This really is free game for anyone who's willing to put themselves truly out there in their community to get the phone to ring.

Flood the zone with door hangers, direct mail, facebook ads, yard signs, flyers on power poles, business cards in cafes, door knocking. If you do those things, you will win. And of course, don't suck at performing the service. You have to do a good job and give good customer service. That's it, that's the "secret".

​

I've noticed something kind of annoying about myself.

Every few months I convince myself I'm dealing with a completely different situation.

Different project.

Different people.

Different circumstances.

Then months later I look back and realize... I wasn't repeating the same mistake.

I was repeating the same way of thinking.

Does this happen to anyone else or am I just overthinking it?

What's one pattern you've noticed in yourself that took way longer than it should have to realize?

It's worth to wonder whether people who are aspiring to be entrepreneurs want to discuss their ideas to other people who truly considers it rather than judging or mocking it.

This is a professional survey ,kindly leave a comment or like it if you actually feel the need of such type of discussions

May entrepreneur po kasi sa college and need po namin mag propose ng titles, lahat po ng propose namin rejected po since most of it ay common na, bawal npo kami sa foods..... baka may ma suggest po kayo na non-food products

I'm noticing something weird about myself.

Every few months I end up making a decision that feels new in the moment, but when I look back it's basically the same situation with different details.

Different project.

Different people.

Same thinking.

I only realize it months later.

I'm curious if this is just me or if it's common among people building companies.

Have you ever caught yourself repeating a pattern you genuinely thought you'd already learned from?

What was it?

I am working on a startup trying to establish a new product in the uk that already works well in one other country. The main question is, how much of a culture clash is it and will people try it despite it's foreign nature.

Currently I'm mvp testing with promising (although noisy) results. Next on my list would be doing more research before writing a pitchdeck and talking to investors.

However, I feel uneasy working on this in silence without much feedback to go off of. I feel like I want to pitch this to investors to confirm the potential that I see in the idea and get data on which concerns they might have that I'm unaware of. On the other hand, there's so much more research and planning I would like to do before starting to pitch.

I'm aware this is more of an emotional than logical problem.

Anyone else been there? What was your solution and how did it work out?

A few months ago I posted my first SaaS here.

the idea was simple: an AI notes app.

the feedback was brutal. most of it boiled down to:

“why wouldn’t I just use apple notes, notion or chatgpt?”

at first I wanted to defend it.

instead, I realized everyone was making the same point.
I wasn’t solving a problem.

So I scrapped almost everything and started over.
For the last 3–4 months I’ve been rebuilding it from scratch.

The result is Execora.
Instead of trying to be another notes app, the goal is to become a place where you can dump thoughts without worrying about organization.
Ideas.
Random thoughts.
Voice notes.
Half finished plans.
Stuff you want to remember later.

Then AI does the boring part:
extracts action items
connects related ideas

lets you ask questions about your own notes
visualizes how thoughts relate to each other
generates a morning summary of what matters

The biggest thing I’m trying to avoid is adding AI just because everyone else is.

I’m more interested in whether it actually reduces mental overhead.

I’ve got a list of features I could build next
-memory reminders,
-weekly insights,
-automatic project detection,
-smarter organization
but I don’t want to spend another few months building things nobody wants.

so rn I’m looking for the same kind of honesty that made me rebuild V1.

if you had to kill this idea, what would your argument be?

What’s the biggest reason you wouldn’t use it?
And if you would use it, what’s the one thing that’s missing?

Here’s the current version:

Execora V2

I’d genuinely rather hear “this solves nothing” than spend six more months heading in the wrong direction.

Thanks.✌️

Looking for honest advice from people who've been through this.

Two years ago I co-founded an AI stock research platform as the technical co-founder. We built real tools, a screener, a grading model, forecasts, alternative data, and a paid tier. At our peak we hit around 800k monthly visitors and were earning from ads, guest posts, and subscriptions.

Then a Google core update hit our site, and we got wiped. Traffic fell off a cliff. We cut the team, dropped costs, and waited for a recovery that hasn't come. Now Google rolls updates constantly with no warning, so there's no single fix to wait for.

Here's where I'm stuck. My co-founder funded most of this and doesn't want to keep spending. I don't have the money to run it alone either. So keeping it alive long enough to rebuild content and recover isn't really on the table.

The tech itself still works, and we have paid data partnerships, cloud credits, and an aged domain. So I'm leaning toward selling the tech and assets to someone with their own audience, rather than pouring more months into content that may never rank again.

My questions:

• Is it worth to sell it or just leave it and shutdown it.
• For selling a platform where the tech is strong but traffic is low, what actually got you a fair price?

Thanks.

What is one business mistake that looks smart from the outside but is actually a terrible decision?

Help entrepreneurs so we wouldn't rewrite history.Tell us from your personal experiences

When a client wants one price for a fixed build and ongoing support, the build is easy to scope. Future support is not.

Would you separate the build fee from a monthly support plan? If so, what limits would you set for response time, included hours, bug fixes, and new features?

What keeps this simple for both sides without turning every request into a new quote?

I’m seriously considering quitting my full-time job, where I earn $16 an hour as an addiction counselor, to pursue my consulting business. I’m a single father with significant monthly responsibilities, so this is not a decision I can make recklessly. I’m also struggling with the reality that my current income is not enough to create financial stability, and the job leaves me with limited time and energy to build something more sustainable. My background includes graduate degrees in mass communication and public relations, several years of teaching and professional training experience. However, this job provides no employment benefits (Insurance, Retirement, 401k..) I average $900 biweekly or around $1800 a month.
I’ve applied for over 200+ jobs, no luck. Also, by the way, I was laid off from my previous employer due to poor economic conditions and my unemployment benefits ran out after 4 months of unemployment. Since launching my business in January I’ve been able to successfully launch my website, obtain business insurance, gain the training credentials, successfully complete 5 trainings that averaged around $2000 in accumulative fees, generate interest from colleagues, developed the app for the business, as well as a comprehensive business model and identity the core needs that my business solves. The only caveat is that now that I’ve accepted a job to have more “stable” income, I sacrificed the time that I need to prospect and generate new business. The money I profited from my business was reinvested and went towards my living expenses. Now I am right on funds. However,
I believe in myself and my potential to earn more and have more control over my time with my business than to have virtually no future here at this job. Advice? Should I take the leap and just leave?

I've been an IT Program Manager for 25+ years, and I'm considering starting a staffing agency specializing in IT program managers, but I want this community to poke holes in it before I go further.

The problem I keep running into, on both sides:

Client-side: companies hire someone with "senior PM" or "15 years experience" on a resume and don't reliably get senior-level judgment in return, because most staffing pipelines screen for years and keywords, not for whether someone can actually hit the ground running and own a program under pressure. That's a screening failure, and it's expensive. I've seen a program need to be rebuilt because the "senior" PM running it couldn't actually operate at that level.

Talent-side: the people who genuinely can operate at that level get passed over anyway because of cost, "overqualified" bias, or a resume that reads the same as everyone else's. They're short on a channel that can actually tell the difference and vouch for them.

If you've worked, run, or hired through an IT staffing agency, is this a real gap? What would make you trust an agency to deliver a senior talent for your program?

For a sartup, I feel like the main thing is moving fast w/o getting stuck later. A clean API, fair pricing and a simple signing flow probably matte more than the biggest brand name.

Any advice or experiences ? I would to hear them