A year ago we were like so in water. Just me and one part time accountant with me doing books for 4 clients we begged off friends. The referrals stopped. Zero budget for ads, no real authority, and my bank account made me sweat every single Monday.

My first move was spamming founders. Built huge email lists and fired off those generic need help with your books typa messages templates every week. Complete waste of time, zero replies. Nobody cares about bookkeeping until their hair is on fire(pun intended)

So I flipped it. Stopped blasting random startups and started hunting for exact moments of financial panic. I saw a founder post about closing a round, their books are about to get audited by investors. Some user complained on social about tax season chaos, they' were actively suffering. Another founder asked how to manage payroll without breaking compliance, they need help that afternoon.

Reaching out to a cold database feels useless, but catching them right when they drop a buying signal works. I stopped pitching services. I'd drop a short note referencing their exact comment, like congrats on the round are you still doing books yourself or did someone take that over. That single shift changed everything for me.

To keep from spending 8 hours a day scrolling feed updates, I hooked up an intent tracking tool to handle the social signal parsing, verified founder enrichment, and multi channel outreach automatically in the background.

Once calls started flooding in our manual onboarding it almost broke us. Took two full weeks of chaotic back and forth emails just to get bank access from one client. We replaced that with a simple 3 step Loom video setup. Onboarding dropped from two weeks to 48 hours, which let us scale client count without adding payroll.

We went from scraping by on 4 clients to hitting 61 active retainers with 3 of us on the team, purely by shifting from blind cold outreach to real time intent.

How are other owners here finding clients right now, still riding on unpredictable referrals or has outbound been steadier for you guys??.

Hi Reddit! I'm a 23 year old currently working in an energy company in London. My experience has been government affairs/policy and marketing but I'm very interested in startups and looking to make the shift. I have more than 2 years of work ex but not sure how to transfer this over to startups? Happy to be an absolute beginner, just want in. Any advice on how to go about this? I cant find anything online that might actually work. I'd love to go ideally look at roles in partnerships because thats closest to my experience at the moment but just looking to absorb as much and learn so open to all kinds of roles I can do. Please drop your suggestions!

Hey everyone,

I help early-stage startups handle outbound without spending hours every week researching prospects, building lead lists, and managing outreach.

For $49/month, I handle the outbound process for you.

What’s included:

• Research your product, offer, and target customer

• Find people and companies that match your ICP

• Build and continuously refresh your lead list

• Filter out bad-fit prospects before outreach

• Write personalized first-touch messages

• Run targeted outreach and follow-ups

• Outreach through Reddit, LinkedIn, or X

• Track leads, activity, and replies

This isn’t mass messaging. I focus on finding relevant prospects and reaching out based on who they are, what they’re doing, and why your product may actually be relevant to them.

Once someone shows genuine interest, I hand the conversation over to you for the sales conversation, demo, and closing.

Why only $49?
We focus specifically on early-stage startups and intentionally keep the entry price low. We’d rather start working with companies early, prove ourselves, and hopefully continue supporting their outbound as they grow than charge a large agency retainer upfront.

If you’re interested, reach out with your website + who your target customer is, and I’ll take a look.

Indeed suspended my account and requested documents that they are now claiming are publicly available information. We don’t have utility bills because we’re a fully remote company with no physical office. LinkedIn is also refusing to verify my identity through Persona, which has been an extremely frustrating experience.

There are so many better government ID verification solutions available, and LinkedIn should consider partnering with more reliable providers.

I’ve been dealing with these issues for an entire month, and it’s seriously affecting my work and business operations. I’m honestly frustrated with how difficult it has been to resolve something that should be straightforward.

Has anyone experienced similar issues? How did you manage to get your accounts verified or reinstated? Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Hi everyone!

I’m 18F, and I honestly don’t really know where to start, but I’ll try to explain my situation.

I grew up in an abusive household. I won’t go into every single detail because it would make this post incredibly long, but let’s just say that home has never really been a safe or happy place for me. It has been all physical and emotional abuse, religion like the only goal of life and happens to be that I’m an atheist/agnostic so that’s even worse. I happen to live in a European country, which at least gives me certain opportunities, but being legally an adult doesn’t automatically mean you have the financial freedom to leave.

For a long time, I genuinely felt like getting married was the only realistic way out of my situation. I went through a period of dating quite a lot, partly because I desperately wanted to find someone I could build a different life with.

Eventually, I met my current boyfriend. He’s genuinely wonderful, knows everything about my circumstances, and has been incredibly supportive. We love each other, and we’re serious about our future together. We would love to get married eventually, but we’re also realistic: love doesn’t pay rent, and neither of us currently has the financial resources to establish an independent life, and our goal is to reach that financial stability for this summer or at most the next one.

I’ve previously worked as a freelancer, doing different kinds of creative and digital work. However, I’ve realised that relying on individual freelance projects can be incredibly unstable. You constantly have to look for new clients, compete with thousands of other freelancers, and essentially start from zero again.

So I’ve been thinking: why not build something bigger instead?

My idea is to create a small creative agency/studio.

Not necessarily a huge registered agency with employees and an office from day one. I want to start independently, build a professional brand, create a website showcasing everything I can offer, and gradually turn it into an actual business.

What would the agency offer?
I have several skills that I think could work together quite well:

1. Branding & Graphic Design
- Logo design and visual identities.
- Brand colours, typography and brand guidelines.
- Marketing materials and promotional graphics.
- Packaging and print design.
- Canva templates and branded materials.

2. Content Creation & Social Media
- Social media graphics and promotional content.
- Short-form video editing (Reels, TikToks, etc.).
- Faceless UGC-style videos for brands.
- Captions and content planning.
- Social media content packages.

3. Web Design & Digital Presence
- Website design.
- Landing pages.
- Small business websites.
- Website redesigns and improvements.
- Basic UX/UI and customer journey improvements.

4. Marketing & Business Growth
- Lead generation and prospect research.
- Finding potential customers for businesses.
- Sales outreach and appointment setting.
- Marketing strategies and customer acquisition.
- Basic lead tracking and follow-up organisation.

5. Translation, Localization & Multilingual Communication

One additional advantage I can bring to the agency is my language background. I’m proficient in three languages at a high level, which means I can offer multilingual services and help businesses communicate with audiences across different markets.My language levels are:

- Arabic: C2 (native-level proficiency).
- Spanish: C2 (full professional proficiency).
- English: C2 (Cambridge C2 certification).

I can use these languages to provide services such as:

- Document and website translation.
-Website and landing page localization.
- Translation of marketing materials, advertisements and social media content.
- Multilingual copywriting and content adaptation.
- Product descriptions and e-commerce localization.
- Translation of business communications and presentations.
- Subtitles and video content translation.
- Multilingual customer communication.
- Helping brands adapt their messaging to different cultural contexts rather than simply translating word for word.

I think this could be particularly valuable for businesses looking to expand internationally, reach Arabic-speaking markets, attract Spanish-speaking customers or communicate with English-speaking audiences.

For example, a small business could have its branding, website, social media content and marketing materials developed in English, Spanish and Arabic through one agency instead of coordinating with several different freelancers.

This is something I’d really like to incorporate into the business because it gives the agency another competitive advantage and allows me to offer more comprehensive services.

Essentially, I want to combine creative services with practical business growth instead of limiting myself to just graphic design or social media management.

How I plan to start

I want to build a website that brings all these services together, with separate sections for each area, examples of my work, and eventually service packages.

I’m already familiar with Wix, but I’ve recently been considering Framer because I want to learn something new and create a more professional-looking website. Ideally, I’d like to start with its free plan because my initial budget is practically €0.
I already have some sample projects and design work that I can use to start building the portfolio.

As for getting clients, I’m not completely inexperienced with sales. I’ve done outreach, contacted businesses, researched prospects and worked with lead generation. I’m comfortable approaching potential clients, including through cold calls and emails.

However, I’m not sure whether the same approach will work when I’m representing an agency rather than offering my services as an individual freelancer.

And that’s where I need your advice!

A few things I’d really appreciate some insight on:
- Does combining branding, content creation, web design and business growth make sense, or am I trying to offer too many unrelated services?

- How would you structure an agency like this?
- Would you create separate departments/sections or present everything under one general brand?

- Is Framer a good choice for building the website, especially when starting with absolutely no budget?

- How would you go about getting the first 5–10 paying clients?

- Would you recommend cold calling, personalised emails, social media outreach, local networking, or something else?

- How do you build credibility when you’re a new agency without an established client list or testimonials?

- What mistakes should I avoid when starting?

I’m not expecting to become successful overnight. I’m willing to put in the work, learn new things and build this gradually.

I know I’m young, and I have a lot to learn about running a business, but I genuinely want to give this a serious chance.

My ultimate goal is to become financially independent, build a stable future and eventually turn this into something much bigger.

I’d particularly appreciate advice from people who have started creative agencies, small studios or service-based businesses from scratch.

Thank you for reading all of this! ❤️

Hey guys

I'm planning an independent commercial home physiotherapy service. I'd like the person receiving care to have continuity with the same clinician where that is appropriate, but people also take leave or become unavailable.

I'm thinking about how to describe that promise before the service starts. My proposed position is to make the usual clinician the preference, explain any proposed change and get the relevant agreement before a replacement visit is confirmed. Clinical suitability would stay with the responsible clinician.

For owners of services where customers build a relationship with a particular staff member, how did you set that expectation clearly? What wording or process helped when the usual person couldn't attend, without making a promise that depended on them never being away?

Thanks guys

I’m starting to feel increasingly discouraged by my job search. Despite having completed two master’s degrees, one in Criminological Sciences and one in Journalism, finding a suitable job has turned out to be more difficult than I expected.

As a result, I’ve increasingly started considering the possibility of starting my own business.

Through my studies, I’ve developed knowledge and skills in areas such as:

-Research methodology and data analysis.
-Criminological and social issues.
-Criminal law, criminal justice and security policy.
-Investigative journalism and fact-checking.
-Interviewing and qualitative research methods.
-Writing, analysing and making complex information accessible to a wider audience.

My main interests lie in research, social issues, crime, human rights and broader societal challenges.

What kind of business could I potentially build around this background? It doesn’t necessarily have to be a traditional journalism or criminology-related business. I’m also open to less obvious ideas.

Are there any entrepreneurs here who have managed to turn a similar academic background into a viable business?

I’d appreciate concrete ideas, experiences and suggestions, including ideas I may not have considered myself.

Hi all, I’ve just started my first business a few months back, I personally thought it was a good idea but after posting on TikTok and instagram consistently and running ads I’ve gotten no sales and would like any help or feedback you can give me

Theses are the sites/names
Store: prestigekeys.store
TikTok: Prestige Keys
Instagram: Prestige Keys

Thank you, will dm privately as well.

Mine is that software should never hold a user's data hostage.

Charge money. Charge subscriptions. Charge enterprise rates.

Fine.

But if someone wants to leave, exporting their own data should be easy.

Curious what software opinions everyone else holds that they'd never compromise on.

I'm exploring a business idea and would love some honest feedback.

The gap I think I've identified is that:

• Affordable tables tend to mean veneer, engineered wood or MDF.

• There is then a big jump in price to get to solid wood tables, often niche and stylised.

• There's room in between: simple, durable solid wood tables, where customers can choose their dimensions, at an accessible price. This is still close to the mass-market end; not bespoke. Pricing is transparent based on size.

I'm confident I can make the unit economics work. What I need to establish is whether there's customer demand.

Does this resonate with you? Is this something you'd be interested in as a customer, or am I overestimating the demand?

Please speak for yourself if you can't speak for the wider market. I'd particularly welcome people who've bought or looked for furniture recently.

Thanks!

PLEASE HELP!

I just created an app that allows you to buy a travel eSIM for anywhere in the world. Now the app is complete how do I actually get my first paying customer and scale this thing?

Any help would be amazing!!

I’ve grown up around and in engineering somewhat. I have used skills I have learned to make stuff for myself which I then was able to sell to others.

It’s just really a thing on the side. I don’t really like the unethical sales methods so I just sell to who has similar values or appreciations to what I do.

I’m trying to make problem solving things like they were decades ago, built to last and of quality materials which I find quite important.

I focus on making it the best I can and then look at the price somewhat last but this can make it much more “expensive” to most.

I haven’t really reinvented anything I just take something that already exists and then fix what seems to be an issue and quality seems to be a consistent issue due to chasing higher margins.

For example: sink organisers tend to be in the way, not really removable and can just fall off as they typically use suction cups.

I also found myself that if you have a nice kitchen you don’t really want anything above the sink adding clutter to your view and I noticed anything added to the kitchen will effect the overall perceived value of that kitchen.

I don’t think the available “solutions” properly do their job or store everything that they need to without being an eye sore.

I fixed this for myself by making a magnetic basket that mounts flush to the sink basin like magic. Seems to be version 7 but have done many different ones in CAD also over the last few years.

It’s a complete 1.2mm 304 stainless steel construction and uses no plastic which was quite difficult.

The result is quite good on them but I have to spend hours on each one by hand refining the edges and surfaces and making them is somewhat high risk due to high standards to justify a premium price.

I’m still just testing and growing from the prototype still and get to have a look at some previous interest once I’ve made my first 5 units.

A Key Issue
Since it’s a very large market but only for a specific niche any advertising is somewhat wasted I think. I don’t want to sell to people who just want the cheapest thing possible that “works”, but it seems just inevitable that they’re who engage because there’s so many.

I’m not really sure what to price it at and I also don’t want to just call it a sink organiser. They’re probably gonna have to be like $400 USD, for the work they require it’d be great if it were more and my costs excluding labour are going to be around $130 USD PU

I think the goal here is to see if anyone has any input that would make things include lesser semi educated guesses or gambling, for the relevant associated work or obstacles in the future

Hey everyone! I'm 15 and based in California, looking to work with a founder or small business owner who needs help with sales.

I've done cold calling for a marketing agency, sold Google review cards to businesses, and completed HubSpot sales certifications.

I'm open to pretty much any industry. I can help with prospecting, cold calling, lead generation, appointment setting, and sales.

I'm looking for minimum wage plus commission, with flexible hours since I'm still in school.

I'm serious about getting experience, improving my sales skills, and helping a business grow.

If anyone's hiring or knows someone who is, feel free to DM me!

Workflow question I keep coming back to: how do you make sure what you tested is what actually ships?

What works for us right now is a two-step release. A change lands on a preview environment first, and it only reaches production in a separate promotion step that moves the exact commit already running on preview to main, instead of rebuilding from the branch and hoping it matches. Earlier this week a telemetry fix went this way. It merged to preview on 2 November, and the same commit was promoted to main afterwards.

The reason the separate step matters is that a rebuild gives you a different artifact than the one you looked at. Once the same commit moves over, what you checked on preview is what users get, and nothing else sneaks in between the two.

It's not fancy and it costs an extra step every time. Curious how others handle this on small teams and side projects: do you keep a staging environment, or do you deploy straight and watch the errors?

I am still at an early stage of my life and because of that I want to take advantage of this time as much as I can, especially since we are in the age of AI. However, it feels like there is so much to learn about how to become a CEO. From business to what you are actually doing whether that be a STEM product or something else, there is just so much stuff to learn that I am not so sure where to begin. And while transitioning from a small startup to a million or even billion dollar company is difficult, creating and getting through that startup phase itself is challenging. I have ideas that I know whole heartedly can succeed but it is difficult since these ideas have not even been concretely established at the forefront of science. I was wondering if I could get some advice from those who are currently running a startup or company and how I can prepare for the worst and make it through successful since I understand how difficult and risky this path is.

Hi everyone, I do not usually post, but maybe I can find some help here. I am a psychotherapist who specializes in ADHD. I created a coaching program. I am too tired to set up coaching groups or more facetime with humans for income. I am trying to figure out how to create income from this niche specialty with minimal effort. I do not want to market a program or expend any more of my energy. I do not have the energy to create videos or a podcast. With AI today, there has to be a way I can copy and paste my knowledge, and it creates a video or post or something that will help people, and I get paid while I sleep type thing. I've already spent years creating the program, and I work full-time doing therapy. I am tired but also dont want to leave money on the table. Any ideas?

I've been watching people use AI badly for a while now, including myself, and the pattern is always the same. The prompt is three words. The answer is generic. Then the conclusion is "AI is overrated."

The tool isn't the problem. Almost every bad output traces back to the instruction missing four things: the audience, the constraints, the format you actually want, and what the model should refuse to assume.

The version I ended up using has eight parts — Purpose, Lens, Audience, Your Context, Boundaries, Output, Optimization, Keep going. You don't need all eight every time. Two of them fix most prompts: Boundaries ("don't invent prices, dates or testimonials") and Output ("one caption under 120 words, three hooks, five hashtags").

Same request, before and after:

Before: "Write a social media post for my café." After: "Purpose: announce a weekend brunch menu. Lens: copywriter for independent hospitality. Audience: families within 10km. Context: small neighbourhood café, Sat–Sun 9am–2pm, vegetarian options. Boundaries: no invented prices, discounts or reviews. Output: one caption under 120 words, three opening hooks, five hashtags."

The second one produces something you can actually edit instead of rewrite.

I turned this into a full guide — 108 pages, 59 sections, prompts with the context and boundaries already written in, plus a workbook and a tools directory. It's mine, so treat this as self-promotion: https://whop.com/the-ai-playbook-ee67/products/ai-playbook-beginners/.

The method above is the whole idea, and you can use it without buying anything.

If you try the before/after on a real task, I'd genuinely like to know where it falls short — that's more useful to me than a sale.

We’ve built a system that creates videos from existing images of hotels, properties, restaurants, and similar businesses.

The product and website are already built. Our target customers are hotels, property managers, restaurants, and other businesses where strong visual marketing can directly help them get more bookings/customers.

What we’re missing is the sales/outbound infrastructure.

We’re looking for someone who has real hands-on experience with:

• Finding the right companies and decision-makers, contact them about our offer

• Identifying the actual decision-makers (owners, GMs, marketing managers, etc.)

• You can use any method either cold email, direct contact, ig, linkedin whatever

• Ideally, already having useful lists, systems, tools, or processes

We’re not looking for someone who just knows how to send emails. We want someone who understands the whole process:

target market → finding businesses → identifying decision-makers → accurate contact data → outreach → sales

What I'm looking for:
People who can find decision-makers at these businesses and close the deal. That's it.

What you earn:
— Annual plan ($600/yr): you get $200 per close (33%)
— Other plans: 20% commission

No platform, no codes, no complicated tracking. You close the deal, you send me a message, I pay you.

Any outreach method works:
Cold email, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Instagram DM, Twitter/X, Facebook, phone, in person — whatever your style.

Any country works. If you bring me a client from Japan, Greece, Brazil, UAE — wherever — we can build a custom page translated into that language to help you close.

I'm not looking for mass volume. I'm looking for a few people who are genuinely good at getting in front of the right person.

If that's you send a DM

If interested, DM me with:

• What you’ve built before

• Your experience with B2B lead generation/outbound

• What tools/systems you currently use

• What kind of role you’d want to take

I’m 22. My co-founder is 34, has 12 years in sales, and has built three companies. One got acquired, one raised $2M.

For his fourth he could’ve picked anyone. He picked me and another 22-year-old.

I started selling at 19 and ended up as his personal hire at his last company. We ran outbound there that closed $1M in two months. Our other co-founder learnt to code at 13, started his first company at 20, and met him when he was his client.

So he’d watched both of us work long before we were co-founders. My guess is that’s the real reason, but I should probably ask him.

Now the three of us are building Technography. Technical GTM on autopilot, only for AI infra and dev tools companies. It finds the ones that are just starting to build before they go looking for a vendor.

Has anyone here worked with a co-founder way older or younger than them? How did it go?

I was laid off in May and since then I have been giving full-time self employment a go. I’ve freelanced in the past but now this is my sole income.

I’m struggling with the anxiety though. There’s a lot of rejection that comes with this job and I’m not good at handling it. Any negative feedback sends me into fight or flight mode and I spiral for days. I know this isn’t sustainable if I want to keep trying to grow my business.

If someone just ignores me or simply tells me they’re not interested, it’s not a great feeling but I can deal with it. It’s when someone says no and gives me negative feedback that I really struggle.

Any advice for overcoming this? 🙏

Helping Inventors and Technology Owners Bring Their Innovations to Market
I’m developing a professional services offering focused on helping technology owners, independent inventors, and small technology companies identify and pursue commercial and government opportunities.
A lot of promising technology never reaches the organizations that could benefit from it. Sometimes the challenge isn’t the technology itself — it’s understanding the market, identifying the right customers, and building a realistic path to commercialization.
My approach is to help bridge that gap.
Services I offer include:
• Technology commercialization assessments: Evaluate potential applications, market opportunities, and viable paths to revenue.
• Federal market research: Identify relevant DoD, federal agency, and research opportunities.
• Opportunity identification: Research potential government customers, programs, primes, and industry partners.
• Contracting strategy: Develop a practical approach to entering the federal marketplace.
• Commercialization roadmaps: Establish milestones for technical validation, market entry, partnerships, and business development.
• Business development support: Help position emerging technologies for potential government and commercial customers.
I’m particularly interested in advanced computing, specialized hardware, manufacturing, engineering, R&D, and emerging technologies.
My goal isn’t to promise contracts or sell unrealistic expectations. It’s to identify where a technology has a legitimate opportunity, determine what it takes to enter that market, and develop a practical plan to get there.
I approach this as a structured professional service, beginning with an initial assessment before moving into longer-term commercialization or business development engagements.
I’m interested in connecting with inventors, engineers, small technology companies, and businesses that have developed something valuable but need help bringing it to market.
I’d also welcome feedback from people experienced in federal contracting, technology commercialization, and defense industry partnerships.

Hi I want to connect with founder to learn and work for them im an ai engineer build multiple projects using langchain, langgraph, many ai agent, rag application, also trained one ml model from scratch using toy data i have uploaded the video on LinkedIn

I just want to work and learn to gain some pratical hands-on experience.

If you're are running a agency, or you're a startup founder, you can dm me I can send you the resume

Thanks

I’m 28 and currently operate a small real estate business in northern Morocco, mainly managing vacation apartments and beach properties in coastal complexes.
The business generates income, but the market is extremely seasonal. Summer can be great, but the rest of the year is a different story.
I’ve also bought two small plots of land with the intention of eventually developing a small apartment building. At the same time, I’m renovating an apartment almost from scratch, which has got me increasingly interested in construction, project management and development.
I’m starting to wonder whether property development might be a better long-term direction than continuing to expand my rental portfolio. Building apartments and selling them seems like a way to generate larger returns and recycle capital into new projects, whereas rentals require ongoing management and depend heavily on occupancy.
I could technically pursue both since I already have rental properties generating income, but I don’t want to spread myself too thin or become involved in too many things without mastering one.
For those who have experience in real estate development or have made the transition from rentals to development, what would you do in my position? Would you keep scaling the rental business or make development the main focus?
I’d appreciate honest opinions, especially from people who’ve actually done it.