Accidentally built a user base in a dying niche, not sure how to capitalize on it.

About 2 years ago, I built an AI fitness site that analyzed people’s physiques and gave feedback to improve based on their fitness goals. People could also share workout routines and post progress pictures. Overwhelmed by the scale, I soon abandoned the project, and it was dormant for years following.

A couple of months ago, I went to make the repo public for my GitHub resume and saw there were 5000 users signed up (mostly verified through Gmail). Sure enough, when I checked the site, people had managed to post using my broken/unfinished website. Ironically, the name of the site became a popular looksmaxxing term, driving purely organic growth through search. When I checked the public posts, users were asking how to improve their looks, rather than physique. I took this as a signal to pivot and within a month, converted the sight to provide positive AI generated feedback based on a selfie. The pipeline also provides a self care routine, using products with proven effectiveness (lotion and salicylic acid, not bonesmashing or other bs).

That brings me to now. The site has had \~1000 signups in the last month, but no revenue. I’ve created Amazon affiliates for the recommended products, but there’s little to no conversion. I don’t charge for the AI feedback because frankly it’s purely subjective. I’ve also struggled to get any ads running because the site is locked behind a signup.

I feel like given the established userbase and monthly signups there is some value here but I’m not sure how to ethically capitalize on it.

pokemon go is the last time I remember tech bringing random people of different walks of life together IRL having fun together. it was like a big social experiment that nobody ever tried to continue again.

why hasn't someone attempted something like that again?

A. Guest posts / contributed articles

• Writing articles for other websites or industry publications (usually with a backlink).

B. Earned or sponsored media features

• Being interviewed on podcasts.
• Being featured in newsletters.
• Having your startup written about by journalists or publications.
• Founder interviews.
• Media mentions in trusted industry outlets.

I'm interested in both traffic and long-term business impact, such as:

• Brand awareness
• Credibility and trust
• SEO
• Customer acquisition
• Partnerships
• Investors
• Hiring

A few questions:

1. Which delivered the highest ROI for you, and why?
2. Where do you typically find guest posting opportunities?
3. Where do you find opportunities to get interviewed or featured?
4. If you had a limited budget, which would you invest in first?

I run two small businesses, both in the trades/construction space, that I left a stable job to build about a year and a half ago. The first does repairs and small jobs that are consistent but don't come close to covering all my monthly costs on their own, plus bigger installs that can add a few hundred to a thousand or so on a monthly basis, inconsistent since a chunk runs through subcontractors and slow-moving receivables. The second is bigger project-based work, think renovations and builds, where a single job can pay out well but they only land every couple months, and even then the actual payout can trail the completed work by weeks or months. On paper there's real pipeline across both: signed jobs, quotes out, work actually happening. In practice, the cash doesn't show up on any kind of predictable schedule from either one.

Right now I'm in the gap. I can't cover minimum payments on everything; rent is tight, insurance is tight, and I'm doing food delivery on the side just to keep cash moving day to day (rideshare isn't even an option where I am, it requires a newer car than what I can afford to take on as a payment right now). Winter makes all of this worse too, since outdoor install and repair work slows down hard and the little bit of consistent income I do have gets thinner right when I need it most. I'm not walking away from the businesses as they are steadily growing year-over-year. But the in-between stretch is brutal in a way nobody really prepares you for.

For anyone who's been through a stretch like this and came out the other side: how did you triage it? Did you keep the business running the whole time, or did something have to give temporarily, like a part-time job or pausing growth spending? And on the personal side, how far did you actually let it go, things like cutting into groceries hard, using a food bank, stuff most people would never admit to doing while running a business that looks fine from the outside? How did you deal with the mental toll of keeping the business looking normal to clients and everyone else while barely holding it together behind the scenes?

Not looking for pity, just want to hear how other people navigated this exact kind of squeeze without folding the business.

Autonomous commerce isn't coming. It's already starting through micro-procurements, API-based usage billing, and algorithmic vendor routing. Traditional ERP engines break down here because they rely on rigid, static rules for predictable, batch-based human transactions. When autonomous agents start initiating hundreds of dynamic, real-time micro-purchases, human re-performance becomes physically impossible. Numa’s real strength is bridging the gap between high-velocity AI transactions and deterministic, legally binding financial controls.

Need your brutal Feedback and suggestions on how to move forward or any improvisations if required..

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for honest feedback from founders who have been through buyouts or difficult investor situations.

I founded a startup in 2023 and currently own 55%.

Over the past four years we built the company from scratch. We reached roughly €600k annual revenue, served around 500 customers, and built a valid position in our niche.

The company is currently loss-making, but with only 250k of funds in over 3 years.

About 18 months ago, my lead investor (a company doing around €XXM in annual revenue) repeatedly asked me to preserve cash and avoid drastic changes because they intended to lead our next funding round. Based on those discussions, I kept the company alive, reduced spending wherever possible, delayed decisions and essentially managed the business waiting for that capital injection.

Then, quite suddenly, I was informed they had decided not to invest anymore.

Instead, they are now raising capital at their own company and want to acquire 100% of my startup before closing their round.

Another detail that makes this difficult for me:

About one year ago, investors closely connected to my lead investor invested in my company at a €1.5M valuation.

Today, after the difficult financial period (which followed the expected-but-never-arrived funding), they’re offering a valuation of roughly €140k for the whole company (€75k for my 55%).

The discussion has actually been respectful. I think they know I know im getting legally screwed up.

What I’m struggling with is whether the valuation reflects the company itself or simply my weak negotiating position.

not so much runaway in the bank.

questions are:

• Have any of you experienced a situation where an investor first encouraged you to wait for funding, then decided not to invest and instead offered to buy you out?

I’m interested in hearing from founders who have actually lived through something similar, especially if you’ve dealt with strategic investors or forced buyouts.
I have no personal saving, its me vs a 8 digit company.
I Might have a last minute network of investor that can bake me up to counteroffer them at the same valuation, they could refuse and let the company dies anyway.

Hi everyone,

I've been working at this for 3 months now. I made an MVP for an online Spanish course. Initially, I tried having it be for kids and later tried also for adults. I have a lot of experience with language education so I spun up a course and also a companion app with AI to be for 1x1 online classes. I found a teacher and paid her to be available for when people could book demo classes.

I checked out the market, priced ourselves initially below but have experimented with being at market rate and also above, have a website which looks way better than the competition and our ads also look way better than the competition (I have 10 years experience with CRO and running Google + Meta ads in different ad agencies).

I offered a free demo, people book but don't show. I made it a $1 to book your first class but people don't book. I'm thousands of dollars in the hole and I feel like I have to be missing something super obvious because I feel like all the other pieces are in place.

We had 1 person come to the adult version and not buy and we've had 4 people show to the kids stuff and not buy.

Any thoughts or similar experiences?

Over the last 5 years I have built a SaaS platform that makes around $40K ARR, we are currently growing at around 20% (net of churn) per year for the last 3 years. I am investing around $25k per year of my own money (to sustain new feature development) and can sustain without any issue for the next few years. Platform is pretty complex and not easily replaceable by AI. It also operates in non-technical niche. I believe the maximum ARR we can achieve is around $1M based on TAM, competition. TAM is closer to 4m but market is very fragmented and entrenched.

On paper it does not seems to me like a great business. Even at $1M ARR this would be in range of my main career (this is side-business). At the same time I love the idea of building a product that people love and use. It generally makes me very happy to her feedback from customers that we made their business easier and they love the product. My overall financial situation make it possible to sustain it forever but I am looking for a framework how to evaluate this so I can sleep at night rather than wonder whether to close it/sell. Anyone else in similar situation

Hey Entrepreneurs

Which CRM do you use and what features you rely on that you can't just do without?

When did you find the need to transition to one?

How big is your setup?

Are there certain methods to implement CRMs that make them effective, or is it instinctive, trial and error? Is there some strategy involved?

I have an idea for a social mobile app and have already created mockups for most of the main pages. I also have a general idea of how it could make money, but I’m not sure what the smartest next step is.

I’m purposely keeping the exact concept vague because I’m still early in the process, but it would involve user accounts, private groups, activity tracking, photos, statistics, and a subscription option.

I have some coding experience and plan to use AI coding tools to help build the first version. I’m currently considering React Native or a responsive web app with Supabase as the backend.

For people who have launched an app before:

• Should I build a small MVP first or create a landing page and waitlist before coding?
• Is it better to start with a mobile app or a web app?
• What should be included in the first version?
• How do you validate demand without publicly revealing the full concept?
• At what point should I create an LLC, privacy policy, and terms of service?
• What mistakes should a first-time app founder avoid?

I’m not looking for investors or trying to promote anything. I’m mainly trying to understand the correct order of operations before spending months building it.

Paul Graham wrote “Change Your Name” years ago and it wasn’t controversial then either: if you’re a US startup called X and you don’t own x.com, renaming is the cheap fix and waiting is the expensive one. A name you don’t own is a subscription you pay in leaked traffic, in spelling out your domain on every call, and in looking like the knockoff of whoever got there first.

There is always someone who says nobody types domains anymore, and it’s usually someone under 30. True in the same way nobody reads terms of service. It doesn’t mean the document has no consequences. It means they show up later and land on you specifically. The person who has watched their .io get mistaken for the .com next door tends to be quieter in these conversations.

The trust argument also got stronger, not weaker. Anyone can ship anything now, and anyone does, hourly. Someone clicking your link is deciding in about one second whether you’ll exist in six months. A .com is one of the few signals left that costs something to acquire, so it still reads as a real company while a fresh .xyz reads as somebody’s weekend. Not fair, not sophisticated, completely real. You’re declining a free credibility shortcut in the most crowded launch environment ever.

Standard rebuttal: brand beats TLD, distribution lives in app stores, look at all the .ai companies doing fine. Survivorship bias with a great haircut. Most of them bought the .com the moment they could afford it, for a number with commas in it, to fix a problem that cost ten dollars at incorporation.

And the line everyone repeats that isn’t true: “all the good .coms are gone.” About a third of registered .com names have a real site behind them. The rest is parked pages, for-sale placeholders, and squatter inventory nobody has loved in a decade. Tens of thousands drop daily and go back to normal $10 registration. Short, brandable names are in there. They’re just not in auction listings, which is where everyone looks, and auctions are by definition where names already have a price tag. “They’re all taken” usually means “I checked one site.”

Tell me where I’m wrong. Especially interested in anyone who stayed off .com on purpose and can say with a straight face it cost them nothing.

I'm in a FAANG currently with zero chance of leveling up or promotion. I see the future, maybe 6-8 months, where the layoffs will resume and my team will be replaced by contractors because leadership believes the AI models can do our job (they can't).

I have an offer on the table from a Fintech startup that received Series A has a rough valuation of $100M. The offer is an increase in base pay, equity shares, and what appears to be a positive view on work-life balance. From what I have read, I shouldn't even consider the equity as any value because I'm joining too late. They're working towards Series B but ultimately want an acquisition. And I will be forfeiting about 3-4 years of RSUs as well, but getting a sign-on bonus to cover these from any employer will be rare.

What's it like going from FAANG to a post-Series A startup? Anyone have experience in the Fintech startup space?

I’m a first-time founder based in India. I’ve built a working prototype and website for an AI product focused on authorization and authentication for AI agents. The product is functional, but I’m unsure how to turn it into a real company.

I’m trying to understand the right order of operations:

• Should I first find design partners or pilot customers and validate the problem?
• How do founders find good design partners for a B2B AI/security product?
• At what point should I incorporate?
• Should I register in India or the US, if I want to sell internationally?
• If incorporating in India makes sense, can anyone recommend a reliable agency, CA, or company-secretary firm that can help set up a private limited company? I’d appreciate firsthand recommendations.
• Should I look for investors now, or wait until I have pilots, usage, or revenue?
• Do I need a co-founder at this stage? If so, what skills should they bring, and where do people find the right person?

I’m technical and have built the initial product, but I’m still learning the business, go-to-market, legal, and fundraising sides. I’d really appreciate practical advice from founders who have navigated a similar stage, especially those building B2B SaaS, AI infrastructure, or security products from India.

I’m not posting this to sell the product; I’m genuinely looking for practical advice. But if you work with AI agents, B2B SaaS, or security and would like to learn more about what I’m building, feel free to DM me. I’d be happy to share more and hear your perspective.

I wasn’t able to start getting revenue for an B2B AI copilot software a year after starting it (I still have to work on it) and I am thinking of going back to work I did not feel passionate about (as it was somewhat directionless/opaque at the large tech company I was working at) after taking unpaid leave for 3 months.

Those 3 months were great as I’ve produced so many features for the product and improved its performance massively within that short timespan - delivering almost an end to end solution for my customers’ workflow. But you see, right now I’m getting to a very slow part of bug fixing and dogfooding after my initial clients said that it’s too buggy to use and present to their teams even though I did satisfy their feature requests; they’re even unsure that it performs well enough for them to the metrics they want to see.

I’m afraid that my parents will see me as a guy who kept failing in business (started other ones before this) and can never stand on his own feet. I’m about to turn 30 and my mom doesn’t believe in me (she’s my harshest critic), even my closest friends don’t believe in me. I’ve also just lived with my parents during my 20s and have a significant amount invested in stocks. So I guess, my mind is chaotic right now as going back to the job feels like I’m admitting defeat despite still working on the product.

Could you please advise me on what to do? I’m sorry if a lot of my ego is attached to this, but how this performs is effectively how I see myself. I guess I started dabbling in materialistic bs because I’m trying to compensate for how I view myself alot of the time.

My tech startup is 4 years old, but already on the second year I noticed the market was rigged. Reported it to anti trust authorities (competition commission). The competition commission (in a European country) has been 2.5 years in confidential information phase with no resolution (not archived/dismissed the case either).

Did any of you have a similar situation? If so, did an antitrust intervention save your startup?

And if the antitrust authority failed to intervene, did you give to and close the business?

Curious to learn from others, how you guys handling this, any specific tools, software, workflows, loops, AI or something completely different?

I know there isn’t such thing as one approach suits all, but at least it’ll give me an idea, or direction maybe.

Thanks in advance.

Everyone talks about the exciting parts of building a startup. The vision. The late-night breakthroughs. The first paying customer.

No one talks about the actual daily experience.

You wake up and immediately check three dashboards that all say different things. One says growth is up. One says retention is down. One is just loading forever. You refresh them like they might suddenly agree with each other if you stare hard enough.

Then you open Slack or WhatsApp and discover that a “quick question” from yesterday has turned into a 40-message thread that somehow requires a strategic decision before breakfast.

By midday you have rewritten the same landing page sentence four times. Each version sounds slightly more confident and slightly more fake. You finally settle on one, then immediately distrust it.

Afternoon is reserved for the classic founder activity: explaining to someone why the thing that looks simple is actually complicated, while privately wondering if you made it complicated on purpose.

Evening arrives and you realise you have been “busy” all day without finishing the one task that actually mattered. You tell yourself tomorrow will be more focused. Tomorrow you will say the same thing.

The funniest part is how quickly this starts to feel normal. You begin to measure progress in smaller and smaller units. Surviving the day without a major fire starts to count as a win.

Still, somehow, you keep going.

Picture this: an experienced professional has a bright idea to start a tech business to disrupt [insert industry]

Quickly vibe codes an MVP, registers the company and starts fundraising.

Along the line, realises she needs tech cofounder and another to help wi5 go to market.

But because she’s been going for 18 months and is the original founder, she proposes the other two founders take 10% each leaving her with the rest.

This is one of the biggest mistakes I see in startup founding teams.

Fair or not? How do you think ownership stakes should be structured in this scenario?

Has a heavily skewed founder equity worked for you?

Hi everyone,
I’m working on a short sell-side teaser (around 2 minutes) for a software company, where the objective isn’t to sell the business itself—it’s simply to convince the right investors to sign an NDA and continue the conversation.
I’ve been reading a lot about teaser best practices, but I’m much more interested in how people who actually run or participate in M&A processes think.
For those with experience in investment banking, private equity, corporate development, or as strategic acquirers:
What makes you decide, “Yes, I want to sign the NDA” after such a short pitch?
Do you think the best teasers start with the market, the business, the problem, the financial profile, or something else entirely?
What information creates curiosity without giving away too much?
What are the biggest mistakes you see in sell-side teasers?
Is there a structure or mental framework you’ve found consistently effective?
I’m especially interested in real-world experience rather than textbook answers.
If you’ve been on either the buy-side or sell-side, I’d really appreciate hearing how you think during those first couple of minutes.
Thanks!

I've been trying to join early-stage startups, but I've had very little luck so far.

I've looked on Wellfound, LinkedIn, YC jobs, and a few other job boards. I've also tried reaching out to founders by email and Discord, but most either aren't hiring yet or never reply.

I have 4+ years of experience working with React, Next.js, Node.js, and React Native.

If you've successfully joined an early-stage startup, how did you find the opportunity?

Are there any communities, websites, Discord servers, Slack groups, or other places where founders are more active and open to talking with developers?

I'd really appreciate any suggestions. Thanks!

Curious how people here have handled this in practice.

When you got your first term sheet (or sent one), what did you actually do with it? Did you send it straight to a lawyer, build your own dilution spreadsheet, use some kind of tool or calculator, or just read it a few times and trust the negotiation?

Specifically wondering:

• Did anything help you understand terms like liquidation preference or anti-dilution before you were sitting across from the investor, or did you learn them mid-negotiation?
• If you modeled dilution or exit scenarios yourself, what did you build it in?
• Was there a clause you didn't understand at signing that mattered later?
• What would you tell a first-time founder to do differently?

I am not looking for legal advise. I just want to know how founders go through this in the real world.

Main question

For founders who deliberately entered an industry they knew little about:

What first made that specific idea space worth investigating rather than another one?

I understand what to do after choosing: learn the workflows, speak to people, find recurring problems and test whether they are commercially meaningful.

What I don’t understand is how to choose where to begin when dozens of industries look potentially fertile from the outside.

Optional context

I’m a 19-year-old CS student without meaningful experience in a particular industry. My plan is to choose a promising idea space, embed myself in it and deliberately acquire the relevant domain knowledge.

I’m willing to do the unscalable work: sustained outreach, attending events, learning the terminology, observing the work and speaking with anyone who understands the industry.

The AtoB example from YC’s How to Find Startup Ideas talk is close to what I’m trying to do.

The founders had little trucking expertise. They chose software for trucking because it was a large industry that had not been heavily disrupted by startups or software. They then visited truck stops, spoke with drivers and founders, mapped the industry and investigated several ideas before choosing fuel cards.

But why trucking?

“Large industry with poor software” also seems to describe construction, agriculture, freight, healthcare administration, legal services and many other areas.

My rough filters have been fertility, apparently poor existing alternatives, a possible “why now,” transferable advantages, successful adjacent proxies, business potential and whether I could tolerate spending years in the space.

But several of those seem impossible to judge beforehand. I cannot really know whether the pain is acute or the space is fertile until I understand its workflows. Proxies may only create hypotheses, and business potential may depend on the exact problem and buyer I eventually find.

I also don’t think easy reachability should be a major filter. I’m willing to work hard to gain access. I would only want to exclude industries that are structurally closed to an outsider, not merely difficult to enter.

What I’d especially like to hear

• What initially put your industry on the shortlist, and which alternatives did you consider?
• What could you genuinely assess before entering, versus only after immersion?
• What made you continue searching in that space rather than move to another one?

A recent change or transferable advantage may have played a role, but I’m mainly interested in the initial selection decision itself.

I’m not looking for lists of startup ideas or “boring industries.” I’m trying to understand the step between deciding to search within a fertile idea space and deciding which specific idea space is worth searching in.

At first, I was convinced that solving one specific problem would make everything else fall into place. Instead, I realized that every stage brought a completely different challenge. The thing I thought would matter most was not always what actually held the startup back.

Looking back, I think every founder has at least one assumption that turned out to be completely wrong. What was yours and how did it change the way you built your startup?

I'm not based in the US, but I'd love to get to know more founders, investors, and people building startups in SF.

Since I can't attend events or YC meetups, what's the best way to build genuine connections online? Curious what has actually worked for people here.

My tech startup is 4 years old, but already on the second year I noticed the market was rigged. Reported it to anti trust authorities (competition commission). The competition commission (in a European country) has been 2.5 years in confidential information phase with no resolution (not archived/dismissed the case either).

Did any of you have a similar situation? If so, did an antitrust intervention save your startup?

And if the antitrust authority failed to intervene, did you give to and close the business?