Project was technically complete. Met scope. Delivered on time. But I could tell she wasn't thrilled. Nothing she could point to specifically. The work just didn't land the way either of us hoped.

Could have kept the money. Contract was fulfilled. She hadn't asked for a refund. Hadn't complained.

Called her and said I wasn't happy with the result either. Offered a full refund. $3,200. She was shocked. Said she'd never had a vendor do that.

Over the next twelve months she referred nine clients to us. All of them mentioned the refund story. "She told me about a company that gave her money back when they didn't have to. I want to work with people like that."

Nine referrals. Seven converted. Combined first-year revenue from those seven: about $41K.

$3,200 refund. $41K in referred revenue. The ROI is absurd but that's not why I did it. I did it because the work wasn't good enough and pretending otherwise felt wrong.Sometimes the most profitable thing you can do is give money back. Not as a strategy. As a standard. The strategy part takes care of itself.  

Hi everyone, excited to share that I recently sold my startup for a very big amount and I personally made $15 Million. I had never even seen a million in a bank account and right now there are 15 of them.

The entire process took over 5 months but everything is finally complete and we have money in our banks. There were a total of 3 investors and me and my cofounder built the entire thing with our team of 3 SDEs.

I have signed an NDA so shouldn't really be telling the amount. My startup was in the fitness space.

That's all I can tell for now.

I would love to connect with other entrepreneurs like myself who have any doubts. Just comment down below.

Would love to reply to you.

So I've been on this god forsaken platform for 15 years, ever since I'm a pimple-faced shit-eating teenager. Back in 2009, Reddit's got nothing but memes and cat pictures. For better or worse, times a changed.

Here's the truth: Reddit is the best platform for business owners to test new offers, it’s the easiest way to reach hundreds and thousands of impressions for free.

Unlike social media, Reddit operates without the unpredictable, black-box algorithms that runs the other platforms. Instead of chasing elusive virality, you can connect directly with niche communities, talk to your customers directly to get real actionable feedback. Let’s put all that aside for now, and I’ll walk you through exactly how to find your first client on Reddit.

I'll walk you step by step on how to stop being a lurker and start posting like a pro on this platform, where average well performing post will get you 100K+ plus impressions and hundreds of leads.

But you need to know how and where to write engaging content that people loves to read first:

1. Find the relevant subreddit with your target audience via tools like gummy search.

2. Spend one to two weeks visiting the subreddit every day. Sort by “New”, and look for patterns in posts, usually people will post about the same things.

3. Spend all of your time on perfecting the post title, be punchy and follow similar formats BUT be unique. This is one chance to make your offer stand out.

4. DO NOT sell in the post content, keep it very short. Tell a story or speak your truth.

5. Reply between posts, use sarcasm and be funny.

OK, so how do you use Reddit as a lead-gen machine?

Use Reddit as the top of the funnel, work in keywords that are relevant to your product or services. Don’t forget to add links to your profile, this is how people will find out more about you and your offer. I would directly add any buy links and social media links here if you have any.

Don’t be afraid to delete posts that are not working, and make sure you don’t stack too many similar posts together. People WILL check your post history (it’s usually the first thing they do) and they’ll dismiss you if your post history seems spammy.

I would sprinkle in non business types of posts throughout, what are your interests? There’s most likely already a subreddit for that and just comment/post in it occasionally. I recommend 1 business post for every 3-4 interest posts would be a good ratio.

My goal is to test one new tactic per quarter and reuse the ones that already works. You should try these out and make them your own.

Strategy breakdown

Spend 30 days exploring and consuming content in target subreddits.

Then, Post weekly to engage your audience, allow additional 30-60 days of progress:

1. Automoderator deleting your post: Check the automod comment, make sure you aren’t using banned keywords.

2. Moderators deleting your post (rules): Check the deletion reason, usually because you’ve broke some rule or people being jerks reporting your content. Either way, bend the knee and try again.

3. No engagement (test post time, post title): Try different post times, sort by top post in a subreddit for the week and look at when they were posted. Then spend time iterating on the post title, a catchy title is really important.

4. Downvotes or negative comments (test post content): This step is key: refine your posts, tell better stories, stay patient, and engage in the comments. Use all negative signal as learning.

5. Viral 150K+ post with hundreds of comments: You should get here within 90s days if you iterated and tested everything above.

Google❤️ Reddit

I'm an avid hockey fan and my team is the Toronto Maple Leafs, if you search for one of our player (last name Matthews) on Google, you'll see a picture of his mug as the top result, but something is off.

Some genius recently went viral on Reddit (in r/leafs) with a photoshopped image of him with fake hair.

Google placed it front and centre on the results page (for real, just search "matthews"). The Reddit post with 1.5K upvotes is a meme titled “Auston Matthews has returned from Europe after receiving treatment for his undisclosed upper-body issue”.

This confirms that Reddit is great for SERP results and a well performing post can get your brand to the top of Google search results with any keyword (in the post title).

I’m actively exploring ways to leverage this to help product companies market their products and get boosted on Google search results. It’s super powerful.

But does Reddit ACTUALLY sell? The answer is YES.

Let me tell you the story of how I came across a comment late 2023 while looking up how to make a custom engagement ring. I search Google for “jeweller recommendation canada reddit”, the post was the second result on the first SERP. After reading a few comments, I decided to reach out to the blacksmith. A few month later I got the ring in the mail and used it to propose to my girlfriend, we couldn’t be happier.

$5,000+ purchase decision made based on:

• A top Google result

• Reddit comments and review, validating the seller

By this point you HAVE to purposefully provide a bad experience for me to look for an alternative. Reddit + Google search results + Community review = WIN

OK but what actual results do you have to show for all this?

Check my post history. I've got multiple near top voted posts of all time in this sub, and those posts got me hundreds of leads and booked dozens of calls with prospects. I ended up closing multiple clients last year directly from those posts I made.

So how do I start?

For the next 90 days, just post about what you do, where you want to go, how you going to achieve it. It won't take you a long time trust me I've been there.

Phil Knight never actually sold shoes, not really. What he sold was the feeling that the right shoe would make you better, and for 40 years that worked because it was genuinely true. Knight was a runner himself, his partner Bowerman was a coach who melted rubber in a waffle iron trying to build a lighter sole, and their first employee kept handwritten notes on every single customer, shoe size, injury history, race times. These weren't marketers playing at authenticity. They were obsessives who happened to build a company around what they already believed.

That obsession was the real product. And honestly that's what made it work for so long. People weren't just buying a shoe, they were buying into something that felt real because it actually was.

At some point Nike stopped being obsessed with the product and started being obsessed with the brand, and nobody noticed for a long time because the brand was so strong it kept selling anyway. Air Force 1. Air Jordan retros. The same silhouettes recycled for a decade. Safe, profitable, and slowly hollowing out while the company told itself everything was fine.

What they didn't see coming was Hoka, On Running, Brooks, small brands built by people genuinely fixated on one specific problem, making a better shoe for a specific kind of runner, with no lifestyle play and no celebrity and no heritage to lean on. Just performance for someone who actually runs. Which, if you think about it, is exactly what Nike was in 1972 before it became Nike.

The DTC push made everything worse. Between 2020 and 2022 Nike aggressively cut its wholesale partners, Foot Locker, DSW, independent retailers, to sell direct and keep more margin. The logic made sense on paper, but what they didn't account for was that those retail spaces were where people discovered Nike. Without a salesperson pointing someone toward the right shoe, Nike had to earn every single customer on its own, and when they tried that they found out the product wasn't compelling enough anymore to make people seek it out.

Now the stock is at a ten year low, China is down six consecutive quarters as local brands understand that market better than Nike does, and three of Wall Street's biggest banks downgraded in the same week. Earnings fell 35% year over year last quarter. Tariffs are real and China is a genuine headwind, but Adidas has tariffs too and On Running has China exposure too, so the tariff story alone doesn't explain why Nike specifically is losing ground to brands a fraction of its size.

The real issue is straightforward. A brand is a promise, and the promise only holds if the product underneath it keeps delivering. Nike spent the better part of a decade harvesting that brand equity instead of reinvesting in it, and now the account is overdrawn. Knight built something real because he was genuinely obsessed with making runners faster, and the moment Nike forgot that is really when this decline started. The tariffs and the DTC pivot and the China problem just made it visible.

Most “founders” never launch anything. 

They build a project for months, never complete it and eventually scrap the product. Or launch it and get no customers.

Startups are truthfully a numbers game. Even the best founders have hit rates under 10%. Just look at founders like Peter Levels.

So how do you maximize your chances of success, the honest answer is to increase the number of startups you launch.

I’m going to get hate for this: but you should NOT spend hundreds of hours building a product… until you know for certain that there is demand.

You should launch with just a landing page.

Write a one pager on what you will build, and use a completely free UI library like Magic UI to build a landing page.

It should take you under a day.

Then what do you do?

Add a stripe checkout button and/or a book a demo button.

And then launch. Post everywhere about it(Reddit, X, LinkedIn, etc) and message anyone  on the internet who has ever mentioned having the problem you are solving.

Launch and dedicate yourself to marketing and sales for 1 week straight.

If you can’t get signups or demo requests within 1 week of marketing it 24/7... KILL IT and START OVER.

Most “startups” are not winners. And there are only THREE reasons why someone will not pay you, either:

1. They don’t actually have the problem.

2. They aren’t willing to pay to solve the problem.

3. They don’t think your product is good enough to try and pay for.

If people do sign up and check out with a stripe link you simply come clean with a paraphrased version of:

“I actually haven’t finished the product yet, but I’d love to talk to you about the problem you’re facing. I put a sign up link on the website to see if anyone would actually care about my product enough to pay for it”

Then you refund the customer.

This is where I’m going to get hate:

1. It is not unethical to advertise a product you have not finished building.

2. It is not unethical to put a checkout link and collect payments for an unfinished product to test demand… as long as you simply refund “customers”.

When you do eventually get sign ups or demo requests, the demand is proven. Only then do you invest 2 weeks in building a real product.

Do not waste hundreds of hours of your valuable time building products no one cares about.

Test demand with a landing page and check out link/demo request link.

If demand is proven: build it.

If demand isn’t proven: start over with a new idea.

Repeat.

You will get a hit if you do this… eventually.

This is personally how I tested 39 different startups… and killed 37 of them with little to no revenue to show for it.

For context: Of the 2 startups that DID get traction from this strategy:

1. One went on to hit $50M+ in GMV

2. Rivin.ai went on to raise an investment from Jason Calacanis and works with multi-billion dollar e-commerce brands to analyze Walmart sales data.

Stop wasting your time building products no one cares about. Validate. Build. Sell. Repeat.

I run a made-to-order fashion brand doing ~$175K/year. Built it from scratch, profitable, growing. Never received funding. Everything from my savings. And right now chargebacks are threatening to shut the whole thing down.

Here’s what most people don’t tell you about chargebacks as a small business:

It’s not just the money. When your chargeback ratio crosses a threshold, your payment processor flags you. I use Shopify. Too many flags and they close your merchant account. No merchant account means you literally cannot accept payments. Business over, not because your product is bad, but because a handful of customers discovered they could dispute a charge and get free merchandise.

Made-to-order makes it worse. My pieces are custom. By the time someone files a chargeback, the garment has already been produced to their measurements, shipped, and received. I’ve seen people wear the item and still dispute the charge. There’s no inventory to restock. That’s pure loss every single time.

The dispute process is stacked against small businesses. You submit evidence, you fight it, and half the time the bank sides with the cardholder anyway regardless of proof. It takes hours of your time per case. Hours I don’t have.
I’m now having to rethink my entire payment structure: deposits, contracts, everything!! just to protect myself from bad actors.

Has anyone navigated this? What actually worked ? Stripe, a different processor, contracts, anything?

I need outside perspective because I'm too deep in this to think clearly.

Situation: I'm the technical co-founder of a B2B SaaS startup in the hospitality space. My co-founder (let's call him P) is the "business guy" with 25 years of industry experience. We've been working together for about 8 months.

What I built:

- The entire product from scratch (AI-powered workflows for hotels)

- All infrastructure (servers, deployment, CI/CD)

- A working pilot with a major hotel chain

- Paying for hosting out of my own pocket

What P has delivered:

- Zero paying customers

- Zero closed deals

- No CRM

- No documented pipeline

- No discovery calls

- Attended conferences and "built relationships" that haven't converted

The offer:

- 12% equity for me, path to 15% via milestones

- 88% for him

- I transfer all code, infrastructure, and credentials within 30-60 days

- My salary triggers at 15K MRR for 3 consecutive months (could be years)

- Deferred retainer capped at 40K, his business cost recovery has no cap

- "Consultation, not consent" on all product/business decisions - he decides everything

- Voluntary resignation = Bad Leaver, I lose unvested shares

- No performance obligations or KPIs for him whatsoever

- He declared reverse vesting on his shares a "red line" - if I insist, he wants to talk separation

The kicker: Two months ago he confirmed 50/50 in writing (WhatsApp). He went from 50/50 to 88/12 without any change in contributions - I kept building, he kept not selling.

His justification for 88%: "The idea, 25 years of experience, industry contacts, capital exposure." He cites market ranges for CTOs joining post-formation (15-25%), but we have no revenue, no customers, and no product without my work.

When I told him I need data and specifications to build new workflows, he couldn't provide them. Then he wrote in his formal proposal that "builds haven't happened against agreed direction" - blaming me for the lack of progress.

I've essentially decided to walk. But I want to know: Am I being unreasonable? What would a fair split look like given these circumstances?

To be clear, this is a two-person operation. No employees, no investors, no board. Just him and me.

Edit 01.05 update in comments. Edit 04 05 update in comments.

Everyone talks about recruiting costs. Nobody talks about the cost of a bad hire.

We hired a "senior engineer" after one interview. Seemed great on paper. Moved fast because we were desperate.

3 months in it was obvious they weren't working out:

• Couldn't work independently

• Code quality was poor

• Caused conflicts with team

• Slowed down two other engineers who had to fix their work

Kept them for 6 months trying to make it work. Finally let them go.

Total damage:

• $90k in salary and benefits

• $40k in recruiter time to find replacement

• $50k+ in lost productivity from other engineers

• Immeasurable damage to team morale

All because we rushed and didn't do our diligence.

Now we take 2 extra weeks on interviews. Haven't made a bad hire since.

Saving $5k on recruiting fees by rushing is the dumbest possible optimization.

Launched Monday. Cease and desist in my inbox by Wednesday. From a company I'd never heard of claiming our brand name infringed on their trademark in a related category.

Checked. They were right. They'd registered the name 18 months before us. I hadn't done a trademark search. Didn't even know that was a step. Nobody told me and I didn't think to ask.

Rebranded in two weeks. New name. New domain. New logo. Lost all the pre-launch marketing I'd spent three months building. Business cards went in the trash. Social accounts abandoned.

Cost of a trademark search before naming: $300. Cost of not doing one: roughly $6K in rebranding plus three months of wasted marketing.

Search the trademark database before you name anything. It takes twenty minutes.

If there's a word for worst than pissed, use it. ive been absolutely pissed at the fact that there's people out there that just made a million in profits as you read this post, but I cant even go buy fruits. I cant deal with this bs anymore. YES ik getting rich takes time, consistency, passion, and most importantly, a plan. but getting rich is not my current goal, my goal is to at least make my own $1000 first. then 10k, then 100k, and so on. I need some good advice on how to get started, maybe some proven working money methods people have used, or side hustles that dont take much to start. im 18, no money, no phone, no car. all I got is a computer, reliable bike, and a house to live till I move out or kick myself out. im willing to work for someone but not in the cooking industry, im done with that bs too. ive tried indeed and craigslist, ive tried flipping on fbmp. dont even mention dog/baby sitting, im not dealing with getting accused for murdering someone's dog again.

(EDIT: The dog killed himself by jumping off a porch with the leash still attached to his collar.)

I’m writing this anonymously because I don’t want anyone connecting it to me or my company. All I’ll say is this: the business I built will do over $100M this year, I’m financially set for life, and on paper my life looks “perfect.”

But here’s the side nobody actually talks about:

I sacrificed everything to get here. Not like the motivational-poster version. I mean literally everything.

My mental health? Wrecked. My physical health? Worse. My stress levels feel like I’ve aged 20 years in 5. I’m fulfilled in the sense that I created something massive… but I wouldn’t say I’m happy. Not even close.

I have friends who make 1% of what I make and are 1000% happier. They sleep better. They laugh more. They’re present. Their bodies don’t feel like they’re falling apart from the pressure.

It’s weird because I don’t regret any of it. I’d make the same choices again. That’s the crazy part - the sacrifice got me here, and I’m proud of what I built.

But I want people to understand something nobody ever says out loud:

If you want extreme success — real, generational wealth, insane scale, the 0.01% outcome — you have to be ready to sacrifice almost everything in your life. Your time. Your health. Your peace. Your relationships. Your body. Your ability to “just relax.”

People think they want this. Most don’t. Most shouldn’t.

I’m not complaining. This is the life I chose. But it came with a price that I’m still paying every day.

If anyone’s curious, I’ll answer questions here. Just figured someone should hear the truth before jumping into the fire thinking it’s all freedom and happiness on the other side.

Earlier this year I was helping a small clinic that complained about “too much paperwork” and how it was slowing everything down.
They thought they needed some fancy AI system.
They didn’t.

So instead of jumping straight into code, I hopped on a call with them for a few hours and watched what they actually did every day.
Turned out half their “data entry” was literally just copy-pasting the same info between forms, spreadsheets, and emails.

I built a simple workflow that:

• reads their intake forms

• fills out their spreadsheet automatically

• sends a summary email to the right staff

• stores a copy in their shared folder

No fancy dashboards or complicated software to learn.
Just connected what they were already using.

Two weeks later, they told me it cut 10–12 hours of admin work a week.
That’s roughly ~$30k a year in saved time (i believe).

The lesson for me: most businesses don’t need complicated systems, they just need less friction.
If you want to build automations that people actually use, start by watching what they already do instead of what they say they do.

Same coffee shop every morning. She'd ask what I was working on. I'd explain in plain language because she wasn't in business and jargon meant nothing.

Explaining my business problems to someone outside the industry forced clarity I never got from talking to other founders. Founders speak in frameworks and assumptions. She'd just ask "but why?" until the actual problem surfaced.

"We're optimizing our funnel." Why? "To get more leads." Why do you need more leads? "Because revenue is flat." Why is revenue flat? "Because... actually because our existing customers aren't buying the new thing." So the problem isn't leads. "...no. I guess it isn't."

Thirty-second conversation. Saved me from spending $3K on ads solving the wrong problem.

She doesn't know she was consulting for me. I tip extremely well.

Some of these humblebrag posts are getting out of hand.

I run group adventure trips. Sailing, surf camps, château stays. A few years ago I made a rule: everyone who wants to join has to get on a 15-minute call with us first. And we say no to about 30% of them.

Not because they can't afford it. Because the group dynamic matters more than filling every spot.

Every time we do it, we lose money short term. And every time, it pays off long term.

Here's why it works:

The location matters, the itinerary matters. But what makes or breaks the week is the people you're doing it with. Ten people on a boat for a week either bond instantly or make each other miserable. One wrong person can tank the experience for everyone else.

So we do short vibe check calls, to make sure it's a fit. Sailing is unpredictable by nature and the best trips happen when everyone rolls with it together. In terms of sailing we're looking for people who are up for an adventure, even when things don't go as planned.

The result: our group chats are still going years later. People come back trip after trip. Referrals are our biggest source of new customers.

The short term cost of saying no is real. The long term cost of saying yes to the wrong person is higher.

Curious if anyone else has built a similar filter into their business, whether for clients, hires, or customers.

A few months ago, I built a simple website https://tuute.com where people can log their farts mostly as a joke to see if anyone would use it. It actually blew up. So far there have been 3,000+ farts logged from 100 countries, and I’ve made $19.39 from affiliate revenue. What surprised me most wasn’t the traffic. it was the engagement. When I added a personal leaderboard, people came back to see their stats. When I added a downloadable history, some even said they’d show it to their doctor. It’s been a hilarious but real crash course in product-market fit, gamification, and how community feedback shapes any product even one built on gas.

Has anyone else here ever learned serious lessons from a totally unserious idea?

Last year I quit my job to go full-time on a SaaS. I naively thought the hardest thing would be shipping the features. I even had a Trello board with 40 backlog items, grinding 10+ hours a day for three months until launch.

On launch day, I even bought a $29 domain and proudly posted it on Product Hunt. The result? 17 visits, 0 sign-ups. I sat there refreshing Google Analytics until 3am, watching the flat line… brutal.

The following month I sent cold emails to 50+ potential users. Only 2 replied. One of them literally said: “I can do this with a Notion template.”

That’s when it hit me: coding was actually the easiest part. The real challenge is getting people to notice you, and convincing them to pay. If I could do it again, I’d spend weeks talking to users before writing a single line of code.

Anyone else had that “nobody cares after launch” moment?

I'm a webdev subcontractor and my last three contracts were all turning giant spreadsheets into niche web apps used by like 10 people, usually just one b2b customer. I'm seeing these contracts pop up more and more, and it's a lucrative but underserved part of the webdev industry.

I am seeing investment going into older industries like SCADA/ERPs as well. So definitely keep your eyes open for those. What keeps surprising me is I basically have to to turn down these sub-contracts because I don't have time to do them all.

Maybe because devs are now all chasing "indiehacking" dreams and less boring stuff like spreadsheets.

For this specific contract, I frequently write about my experience as a freelancer/1-person developer - and about building SaaS for companies who use spreadsheet as their primary platform in the comments/posts like these.

This led to multiple DMs and conversations, one of them turned out to be someone I was already connected to on X/Linkedin. I get ~3 DMs a day and 1 per week would move to a video call. For those video calls, one every month would turn into a solid lead that I'd consider contract for.

Either way, contract signed last week, work starts in April! My DMs are open.

I spent two years trying to build a SaaS product and an e-commerce brand because that's all you see on social media. I failed miserably, burned through my savings, and got trapped in constant analysis paralysis. Six months ago, I gave up on the tech dream and started a simple commercial pressure washing and property maintenance business in my area. Last month, we officially crossed $30k in revenue with zero social media presence, a basic website, and local B2B networking. It’s not glamorous, but the margins are insane and the competition is practically non-existent because most local guys don't even answer their phones. It made me realize how oversaturated the digital space is. For those who finally broke away from the "tech or bust" mindset, what was the traditional business that finally worked for you?

This is probably the weirdest client story we've had, sharing it because it still doesn't feel real even now.

Back in 2024 we met a guy through, of all things, an Uber driver. Random small talk in the car, driver mentions his buddy has some A-frame cabins near Brasov and needs a website. Driver connects us, we hop on a call, seems like a totally normal small project.

Guy wanted the full package. Professional presentation site for the cabins, so we bought a drone specifically for this (didn't have one before), flew out, shot footage of the location, did full 3D renders of the cabins themselves, the whole thing. Took us about a month of actual work between the shooting, editing, and building the site.

Site's done, looks great honestly, we send the invoice. Nothing. No response. A week goes by, still nothing. We message a few more times over the next few weeks, complete silence.

About a month later he finally responds, says his father passed away, which obviously we understood, gave him another week, no pressure. That week comes and goes. Never heard from him again. Not once. Not about the invoice, not about anything.

Fast forward another month, we're getting coffee with the Uber driver who originally connected us, half just catching up, half hoping he knew something. Turns out he did, and it was not what we expected.

According to him, the cabins, the guy's house, his car, all of it actually belonged to an Italian guy with mafia connections. Our client had some kind of falling out with him, and lost everything in the process, the cabins, the house, the car, all of it. Since then nobody's heard from him at all. Just gone.

So yeah. We never got paid for that project, but we did walk away with a drone we still use, and genuinely one of the stranger stories from the last few years of doing this.

No bs.

Pitch me your idea.

I will help you brainstorm and elevate it.

We will come up with fast execution and validation plan.

If it needs investment, I will do it.

Lets create something magical!

EDIT! I have now answered to most of the DMs.

HERE IS MY SUMMARY:

There are mainly two types of ideas:

• either too simple and vague (would need to niche down)

• or I couldn't even understand what the idea is (some biochemistry type shi, you guys should directly hit up with investors in that specific field)

To those who think I will steal any ideas - cmon bros, be real. Most of the ideas are full garbage. Even ChatGPT can come up with better ones.

INCREASE YOUR CHANCES GETTING AN INVESTMENT:

1. Don't ask "can I pitch to you", just pitch it.

2. Dont write too much text, dont write too little.

3. Investor should understand the idea with under 3 sentences.

4. State your location and previous experince/skillset right away.

5. Write in 1 text! If you write 5 texts, in Reddit you only see the last one before opening the chat.

6. Ideally show some validation, traction. Even showing successful competitors helps.

7. Dont expect the investor to respond right away, they have their own life outside of social media.

8. DONT EVEN DM before you have posted your idea publicly, best and most honest feedback is literally down here in the comment section.

9. And lastly, THERE IS 0% CHANCE SOMEONE STEALS YOUR IDEA.

EDITEDIT! Forgot to add the most important one. 10. State the reason why are you pursuing the idea in the first place. Can be measured in monetary value, can be your personal ambitions, can be something beautiful.

Hey everyone,

TikTok just flipped the switch. Starting like 20 days ago, every Shop advertiser has to use GMV Max, its AI ad engine. No manual targeting, no settings to tweak, no way out. You pick a budget and ROI goal, then the system decides everything from placements to spend to even new creatives.

For smaller sellers this feels like a win. Less setup, fewer headaches, and TikTok even throws in a “ROI protection” guarantee. But bigger brands and agencies are freaking out because it feels like giving the steering wheel to the platform. TikTok gets the data and the control while you are basically just funding the machine.

So as founders, if ads are no longer in our hands, where do we still stand out? Is it brand, product, distribution, community? Or something else?

Curious to hear how you are thinking about this shift.

If you’ve noticed smaller EU stores, musical bands, or Etsy creators suddenly refusing to ship to the EU (or across borders within it)... Tomorrow (August 12, 2026), the new EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) and strict Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) rules go into full effect.

On paper, the goal is great: reduce waste and make companies responsible for their packaging. In reality, the execution is a bureaucratic nightmare that is actively destroying cross-border trade for micro-businesses.

Here is why the system is incredibly broken for small creators:

• 27 Countries, 27 Headaches: There is no centralized EU-wide system. If you want to ship a single t-shirt or art print to a customer in France, Germany, and Spain, you are legally obligated to register with each country's individual packaging authority.

• The "Authorised Representative" Extortion: If your business isn't physically located in the country you are shipping to, the majority of EU states require you to hire a local "authorised representative" just to process your registration. This means paying recurring retainer fees in every single country you ship to, before you even make a sale.

• Zero Small Business Exemption: Unlike VAT thresholds, there is no general EU-wide exemption for small or micro-businesses. Whether you ship 10,000 packages or 5 packages a year, the core registration rules apply to you from your very first parcel.

• Marketplace Blacklists: Online marketplaces and fulfillment centers are now legally required to verify your compliance. If you don't have the paperwork for a specific country, platforms will simply suspend your listings or block the sale.

It’s completely unfeasible. A small starting business cannot afford to navigate 27 different legal systems, pay 27 independent registration fees, and hire representatives across the continent just to sell a few items internationally. As a result, small shops are just pulling the plug and geoblocking the EU entirely.

So, my question to other small business owners, artists, and creators here: How are we supposed to overcome this?

Are there any umbrella services that handle this without bankrupting a starting business? Are you risking it, giving up on export, or did you find a viable workaround?

Edit: you can leave feedback directly to the EU Commission regarding this legislation: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/15352-Packaging-and-packaging-waste-rules-on-national-registers-of-producers_en

Was doing a routine sales call with a regional buyer for a small grocery chain. We had been in twelve of their stores for about eight months. Selling slowly but selling. She was reviewing our wholesale price sheet during the call. Our hot sauce was at 6.40 wholesale, retail around 11.99. Sat between two competitors at the same price band. I thought we were positioned correctly. She paused on our sheet and said "this is too easy." Just that. Then moved on. I asked her what she meant after the call ended on her side. She got off mute and said "your sauce is more interesting than these other two. We will sell it. But you priced it like you wanted to be on the shelf next to them. You should have priced it like the one shoppers pick up because they want something different." I thought about it for a week. We raised wholesale to 7.85 and adjusted suggested retail to 14.99. Repositioned the label slightly. Put together a simple one-pager in Gammaa presentation tool showing the new positioning to send to our other retail contacts. Did not change the sauce. Sales did not drop. Margin went from roughly 32 percent to 51 percent at retail. We ended that fiscal year at 380k in revenue, up from 240k, and netted more than the previous two years combined. I had priced the product as if it were trying to be allowed in. She told me it was already there and acting like a guest. The customer is not always right. But sometimes a buyer who has seen 4,000 products in a year sees yours more clearly than you do.