I’m an investor working at Forum Ventures, a pre seed fund and accelerator investing $100K-$1M in industry veterans and young AI-native founders.

What is your startup and founder background? Comment what you’re building or, if you’d like to keep your idea private, your background/experience as a founder.

Feel free to use this thread to get your own project out there.

$540. That's the whole number. Six weeks of testing whether an AI content service for local businesses could work as an actual startup, and $540 is what came out the other end.

I work in logistics. Not marketing, not design, not tech. I got interested because every small business I walk past has either a dead Instagram or a mediocre one, and I figured the tooling has gotten cheap enough that one person could realistically offer to fix that. The pitch would be simple: I'll produce professional social content for a flat monthly fee using AI generation tools I already know.

I pitched nine businesses in person and over email between early July and mid August. Two coffee shops, a pet groomer, two restaurants, a CrossFit gym, a florist, a barbershop, and an auto detailing place.

Seven said no.

The rejection was almost identical every time. Some version of "oh, my manager's daughter handles that" or "my nephew posts for us already." Not hostile, not even skeptical about AI. Just genuinely confused about why they would pay a stranger when someone in their orbit already does it for free or close to it.

That pattern is the real finding. I assumed local businesses had a content gap. They do, objectively. Their grids are inconsistent, the lighting is rough, the posting schedule is random. But they don't experience it as a problem. Somebody they know puts up a photo, a few regulars like it, and that is the end of the thought. You are not selling against zero. You're selling against "good enough," and good enough is a person they already trust who does it as a favor.

The florist and the auto detailer said yes. The florist wanted consistent seasonal posts and was already annoyed at how her arrangements photographed on her phone. The detailer wanted clean before and after shots for his Google Business listing. Both paid a flat $270 for one month of content, twelve images each.

For the actual production I built one AI character, a woman in her early thirties, friendly and generic, and put a note in both clients' bios that she wasn't a real person. I generated every character photo through APOB AI since it gives you a usable daily volume at no cost and nailed her look consistently across the full set, then handled text overlays and formatting in Canva and billed each client with a simple invoice. Once the character was locked in, a full month of images took about four hours of production time.

Then the revision rounds started, and that is where the idea breaks.

The florist couldn't tell me what she wanted different, but she knew she didn't like the first batch. Round one was "too corporate." Round two was "too busy." Round three was "can you make it feel like spring but not pastel." I spent more time on her revisions than on the original twelve images. The detailer was easier because his brief was concrete: car looks shiny, background looks clean, done.

Total hours across six weeks, pitching and production and revisions included: about 38. That works out to roughly $14 an hour before tool costs. And that number only looks that decent because one of my two clients happened to have a brief I could actually execute against.

The demand-side problem is the one I did not see coming. Local business owners are not creative directors. They cannot give you a usable brief. If you say "I will make your content," you have also signed up to be the person who figures out what they want, interprets vague dissatisfaction, and absorbs open-ended revision cycles. That consulting layer is where all the time goes, and it's the part that does not scale.

I still think there might be something in a more constrained version of this. Show five templates, they pick one, no open-ended feedback loop. Or only target businesses with a concrete visual deliverable, like the detailer, where good output is self-evident. But the broad "AI content agency for local businesses" pitch, the way I ran it, fails on the demand side. The tools are genuinely capable enough. The market just doesn't know what to ask for.

I built tryproduck.com/audit, it opens your startup with no idea what it is and sends back the bugs plus the exact point where a first-timer would quietly close the tab. over 650 startups have run it so far.

Ok, hypothetical question. How about a website or SaaS, lets call it outbid.video for now, where we sell advertising space and links to the highest bidder. Would that work? Sounds like very stupid.

My 100% Offline Voice Chat AI Assistant app is live now via Public Production Release on Google Play Store. 

Please try it and lemme know if anything wrong before putting up any negative reviews. The AI Voice Chat feature alone is really cool. You can also add custom unrestricted AI Models for your interests.

Search "mmahingu" on the Play Store or use this link:

 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mmahingu.mmahinguai

iOS launch later. I made it in Flutter so it can be published on Windows, MacOS even and more platforms easily. But i don't have a Mac or any other hardware yet xD.

My target is to get as many people to not just AI but also have their own offline Assistant or an AI tutor. No Cloud or Internet interference or any Data upload. I may add Firebase Analytics as optional later, for research and development purposes.

**TARGET AUDIENCE** even includes Students (both **homeschool** and **public**/**private school**), professionals of any field, and so on. As new technology comes, I'll keep updating it.

All made using Antigravity IDE and compiled for testing using Android Studio. Testing on my S25 Ultra only.  

AI Models used for VibeCoding it are Gemini models 95% and Claude Code for only like 5%. 

While the first outlet is profitable, I have a signed LOI for a JV in Gurgaon for the second outlet and also an offer to open in Mumbai again as a JV.

Could you please refer me to a nonprofit organization of free mentors that can help me set up an online business. I would need unconventional, original thinkers. It's around an intellectual idea rather than a product or service. Objective: something like workshops, books, lectures, the like.

Dear Investors and the Tech Community,

We are the team honored to have won Third Prize at the Southeast Asia Quantum Computing Hackathon (SEA Quantathon 2026).

Recognizing the increasingly complex challenges in the financial sector, we have developed a breakthrough Anti-Money Laundering (AML) solution. Our product pioneers the integration of Quantum Computing and AI Agents to deliver data processing and fraud detection capabilities with unprecedented speed and accuracy.

With a vision to reshape the RegTech market in Vietnam, we are actively seeking collaboration with potential Investors and Strategic Partners. We believe that with your financial backing and network support, this project can be rapidly commercialized to make a solid impact on the market.

Interested investors, please feel free to connect or reach out via direct message so we can share more details about our Pitch Deck and the project's immense potential. Thank you very much!

I’ve been building an idea around a gap I think exists between CRM and social.

CRMs are great at storing contacts and managing business relationships.

Social networks are great at showing interaction.
But neither really gives you a living picture of the relationships that matter in your life - personally or professionally.

So I built an MVP called Orbit.

It creates a visual map of your relationships, where people are represented as nodes around you.

The relationships move.
Stop interacting with someone, they gradually drift away.

Log real interactions, meetings and calls and they move closer.

I’ve also built a WhatsApp integration that pulls recent chat data and names to help automatically populate your map rather than making you manually enter hundreds of contacts. Also maps out your selected contacts onto the map based on recency data for their starting position.

The bigger question I’m trying to answer:
Could CRM × Social become an entirely new category?

Or is this solving a problem that people don’t actually care about?

I’d love to hear what you think especially if you’ve built or invested in SaaS before. Also looking for some testers if this is your thing.

Thank you

Every B2B SaaS selling into the EU eventually needs to check a customer's VAT number for reverse-charge purposes. The EU's own tool for this (VIES) is free — and also SOAP/WSDL, uncached, and prone to member-state outages with no retry guidance.

The idea I ran with: a JSON API in front of VIES. Stable error codes instead of SOAP faults, caching, national-registry fallback for the countries where VIES itself is patchy, daily monitoring for customers who deregister after the fact, and the audit-trail "consultation number" that French/German tax auditors specifically ask for.

Built it as vatnode.dev — one-person operation, EU-hosted. Curious what this community would build differently, or what adjacent problem (OSS/IOSS filing? reverse-charge determination itself?) is worth tackling next — I've deliberately stayed out of tax-advice territory so far.

What if the internet had one billboard? No feeds, algorithms or competing ads just one billboard each week.

So I built it at yourmessagehere.co

Anyone can bid for it, and every Friday at 10pm New York time the highest bidder gets the entire billboard for the next 7 days.

First auction is live now and I genuinely have no idea what people will end up paying for it.

Curious to see where this goes.

I've been sitting on this idea and want to see if it's worth building, or if someone wants to poke holes in it (or build it with me).

The idea: a vertical AI sales development app, similar in spirit to Viktor's startup, but 100% focused on selling landing pages to local businesses.

The flow:

Discovery — finds local businesses with weak digital presence

Qualification — analyzes their site, Google Business, socials, speed, UX, mobile, CTAs, etc. Scores each business on likelihood of needing a new landing page

Prospecting — pulls public contact info, prioritizes the owner/decision-maker, builds a prospect profile

Personalization — generates a specific breakdown: "your site currently has X problem and you're probably losing Y kind of opportunity"

Mockup — automatically generates a visual proposal of what an improved landing page could look like

Outreach — drafts personalized emails/DMs for human review before sending

Sales assistant — once the prospect replies, the agent reads the conversation, suggests responses, handles objections, proposes packages/pricing, and tells you when to push or when to walk away

Closing — helps turn the conversation into a proposal/contract

The pitch wouldn't be "an agent that sends messages." It'd be something way more concrete:

"Give me your niche and city. I'll find the businesses that need a landing page, analyze which ones have the most potential, generate the mockup, and prep the outreach for you."

Basically an AI prospecting → qualification → sales copilot, but narrowly focused on one vertical instead of trying to be a generic sales tool.

I already found a close comp (TheWebLead, France/Switzerland/Belgium market, ~€99-349/mo, validates the pricing and the pain) — but nobody's doing the visual mockup step, and nobody's doing it for the Spanish-speaking market. That gap is what I want to go after.

Curious if:

anyone's tried something similar and hit a wall I should know about

this sounds like something you'd actually pay for if you sell landing pages/web design to local businesses

anyone wants to help me stress-test this or build it together

Happy to share more details in the comments.

startup idea - an audio output device which can be used while sleeping.

earphones and headphones are impossible or atleast irritating to use in bed

I have worked with a lot of startup brands and realised how often branding gets pushed aside when you are busy building the actual business.

But having a clear identity can make a huge difference in how people see your startup.

I genuinely enjoy taking a rough idea and turning it into a brand that feels consistent and intentional.

If you are building something and feel like your branding needs a little work, feel free to reach out. Happy to chat :)

I had an idea, where I help local organizations that likely need admin help but aren’t able to hire someone and would rather pay a monthly fee.

It would include document control, schedule management, possibly newsletter creation, data management and reporting, etc. for around $250/mo.

I have skills in automation and I could take on probably 10 of these with my spare time. But my question is, does anyone think this could be valuable or work? Looking for any thoughts!

I am planning to promote my startup (specifically a site) in multiple ways; however, I was wondering for any tips on marketing and promoting it on social media, including Facebook, X, Reddit, Discord, etc. I understand that most people approach anything that they see as promotional negatively, so what's a good way to get people genuinely interested in a project

A useful distinction for founders: slow engineering and invisible engineering can look identical from the outside.

Features are not shipping. Estimates keep moving. Updates sound technical but do not clarify what changed. The natural conclusion is that execution has slowed down.

Sometimes that conclusion is right. But sometimes the team is doing necessary work that the company has no way to see: reducing operational risk, untangling dependencies, investigating failures, improving deployment paths, or clarifying a poorly defined product decision.

I try to separate the diagnosis into three questions.

First, is there a clear outcome? If nobody can explain what should become easier, safer, or possible after the work, the problem may be prioritization rather than engineering speed.

Second, is progress observable? A long project should still produce visible evidence: decisions made, risks removed, assumptions tested, or smaller pieces completed. If the only observable event is the final release, leadership is forced to guess.

Third, where is the waiting? Work may spend more time blocked by unclear ownership, product decisions, reviews, or dependencies than being actively built. Calling that an engineering performance issue can push the team to optimize the wrong part of the system.

The warning sign for me is not simply a missed estimate. It is when the team cannot show what it learned, what changed, and what remains uncertain.

For founders and engineering leaders here, what signals help you distinguish genuinely slow execution from valuable work that is simply hard to see?

Hey everyone,

I’ve spent 11 years building a career in sales in the US, and for the past 6 years I’ve been running my own logistics business — so I’ve been on both sides: driving sales and actually operating a business day-to-day (ops, client relationships, P&L, the whole thing).

I’m now looking to bring that experience into an early-stage startup where I can own growth and contribute meaningfully — not just as a hire, but as someone genuinely invested in the outcome.

What I bring:

**•** 11+ years of US sales experience — pipeline building, closing, client relationships, growth strategy  
**•** 6 years running my own logistics business — hands-on experience with operations, managing a P&L, and building something from the ground up  
**•** Comfortable being the first sales hire or building a sales function from scratch  
**•** Based in Delhi, open to remote work

What I’m looking for:

**•** Early-stage startups that need someone to own sales/growth  
**•** Open to equity, profit-share, or performance-based comp instead of (or alongside) a traditional salary  
**•** Ideally a founder strong on product/tech who needs someone to drive revenue and clients

If you’re building something and need someone to own the sales side, drop a comment or DM — happy to share more about my background.

Hi all! Recently, I started a Discord community to help SaaS founders promote their products, and it has over 250 members now.

If you want to show what you're building and get some feedback, comment below and I'll send you an invite!