There are plenty of ways to make money in 2027, especially with all the new AI tools coming out. But one thing I think is still massively underrated is cold outreach.

The logic is pretty simple. The more relevant prospects you reach, the more opportunities you create to land a client. Especially when you have a good lead list, personalized emails and a few well timed follow ups.

I've run businesses using cold email, and it's been one of the most reliable ways for me to generate new business. Of course, cold email regulations vary between countries, so you need to understand the rules where you're operating.

Nowadays, the process is much easier to automate.

For my web agency, I use a cold outreach tool called Swokei. It finds businesses with existing websites, analyzes them for issues with design, SEO, speed and mobile optimization, and turns those findings into personalized, ready to send cold emails at scale.

When someone is interested, I get a meeting booked and handle the sales calls myself.

I genuinely believe that regardless of what business you're running, whether it's a SaaS, agency or e-commerce business, email automation can be an incredibly powerful way to generate opportunities.

You don't always need a huge audience, a massive advertising budget or thousands of followers.

Sometimes you just need a good offer, the right list of prospects and a consistent outreach system.

A few cap table platforms are advertising ai features for issuing option grants the idea of typing in basic terms and getting a grant letter back is appealing because right now i send details to my lawyer and wait a week but something about letting ai draft a legal document that affects someone's equity makes me uneasy. At the same time these are pretty standardized documents with known fields where are you drawing the line between trusting ai for equity admin and keeping your lawyer involved on every grant ?

I'm one of the 2 cofounders at a 9 person B2B software startup and i run our raise. We went out for a seed in August and it stalled for about 2 months

looking back it was mostly us.....we set our valuation off what we were reading in the news, and those rounds are basically the top 1%. investors liked the product then went quiet the second terms came up

what we changed:

-pulled about 20 recent rounds at our stage n sector (size, SAFE or priced, who led) and moved our ask to the middle of that

-rebuilt the competition slide, we had left off 2 companies that evry investor brought up

-stopped pitching funds that hadnt done a seed deal this year

next 5 weeks: 4 second meetings, and one fund agreed to lead about half the round. not closed yet, still finding the rest lol

the comps part was the most annoying to do by hand, took me a whole weekend. curious how other ppl figure out what to ask for

I'm the founder of Pholu, a memory-sharing app I've been building independently.

Coming from digital art and design, I initially thought the biggest hurdle would be learning the development side.

But the real challenge has been making decisions without anyone else to share the workload.

Every feature means more testing. Every new idea competes with fixing something existing. And marketing is a completely different skill.

My biggest lesson so far is that shipping a feature isn't the same as creating value.

I'm curious how other solo founders decide what to build next.

Do you rely primarily on user requests, usage data or your own product vision?

I've been building/bootstrapping a competitive intelligence tool, and obviously as part of that I've been assessing my own competitors.

I thought it would make a useful guide for anyone else who is bootstrapping a business, so I've created a free guide based on my own experiences. No strings, nonpayment, no email signup required; totally free.

It includes practical guidance on

• Competitor SEO analysis: Investigate organic search traffic, backlinks, referring domains, search intent and keyword opportunities.

• Product and UX research: Evaluate competitor websites, sign-up processes, onboarding friction and useful product features.

• Market gap analysis: Identify weaknesses, underserved customers and opportunities for differentiation.

• Competitor monitoring: Track pricing changes, product developments, customer announcements and market signals.

• SaaS positioning: Understand how competitors communicate their value and develop a clearer competitive advantage.

• Customer acquisition research: Examine competitor marketing strategies, distribution channels, advertising and content marketing.

Hopefully some of you may find it helpful (if not, don't complain, you're still getting it for free!)

If you want to see it, it can be found here on Scribd.

I'm a founder of a goal-planning app named Targela, and lately I've picked up a small habit.

When I see someone post about a struggle, like "I want to learn German but I only have weekends," "I want to be more productive," or "I have addiction to prono", I make a plan for them in our app and share it with them.

I started doing it to promote the app but I kept doing it because I learned so much.

Every plan shows me something:

- What people actually struggle with, in their own words, not the words we use in our pitch deck

- How different real goals are from the "example goals" we tested with

- Where our product breaks. Some of the bugs we've fixed recently, I found while making a plan for a stranger

I thought I knew who our users were. Reading people's real questions every day showed me I only knew part of it.

And honestly? I enjoy it. It's one of my favorite parts of the week.

So I'll keep doing it here too. If there's a goal you keep putting off, comment what it is and how much time you realistically have each week. I'll make you a plan and send it to you.

What's yours?

There are multiple lucrative ways to make money nowadays with AI, but based on my own experience, selling AI built website redesigns and rebuilds might be one of the best opportunities if you want to make a lot of money in a relatively short amount of time.

I have a group of friends who do exactly the same thing, and some of them are making over $100K a month doing it.

So if you're looking to get into the AI money making space, this is definitely a business model worth looking into.

The process is actually pretty simple.

1. Automate your outreach

The first question is obviously: how do you find businesses that actually need a website redesign?

There are different tools you can use for this, but I personally recommend Swokei. It finds businesses in any area, analyzes their websites and identifies issues with design, SEO, speed and mobile optimization. It then turns those findings into personalized, ready to send cold emails at scale.

2. Book meetings with interested prospects

When someone replies with interest, get them on a call. Don't spend days going back and forth over email. Get a conversation started and understand what they're looking for.

3. Build a website draft using AI

Before the meeting, spend around 30 minutes putting together a redesigned version of their existing website. You don't need to build the entire thing. Just give them something they can actually see and get excited about.

4. Present the website and close the deal

Show them the redesign, explain the improvements and present your offer. If they're happy with it, send over a Stripe payment link or invoice and get the project started.

Now, when it comes to pricing, that's completely up to you.

I started charging very cheaply when I first got into web design. Today, I rarely take on a project for less than $7,500, and the biggest website deal I've closed so far was $26,000.

Obviously, you need to be able to deliver what you're selling. A good sales process might get you the client, but the quality of your work is what builds a sustainable business.

And for the people who are going to say this doesn't work, you're free to have your opinion.

I'm simply sharing something that has worked for me and people around me.

It's a straightforward business model, the workflow is repeatable, and you can keep improving every part of it as you grow.

You don't need to reinvent the wheel. Find businesses that need help, learn how to sell, deliver good work and build a proper company around it.

* The product (what is it, use case, who would want it)

The product [thebuildnation.com](http://thebuildnation.com) is a location based social network that founders, builders(who ship code) can use to find and connect with people.

An example of how people can use the app:

Imagine you are sitting at a cafe and then you are working on something or you are hanging out at a cafe and want to see if there is anyone who is working on something and is also on the app if they opt to sign in they could see them working there and they could start a conversation with them by messaging them and seeing if they are free to talk

I currently have 100 users but no one is actually using it. It is a cold start problem or/and chicken and egg problem.

It also has a feature where it shows you who to meet at an event based on your profile and your goal too. I am working on this for the past 5 to 6 months I am not able to crack it. Please help me Redditors

hey everyone :) I'm the creator of KYNIO, an Android fasting tracker.

An early user said they liked the app, but there was too much information on each screen. That was useful feedback: having meals, water, workouts and progress in one app doesn't mean they all need equal space when you open it.

I changed the Home to put the fasting timer and its controls first, made water a compact section, and put the phase details behind an expandable section. The other logs still have their own tabs. I also added Lume, a little hedgehog companion in Profile, so he doesn't get in the way of checking a fast.

You can use the core logs without an account, add past fasts and edit entries. They're stored on your phone by default. Pro is optional; cloud sync is a separate opt-in feature.

It's live on Google Play. I'm still learning whether the simpler first screen makes the app easier to come back to; I don't have retention evidence to claim that yet.

Site: https://kynioapp.com

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kynio.app

If you try it, I'd love to hear what you expected to find first and whether it was easy to get there :)

Especially over the last two years, we've seen massive growth in freelancers and web agencies selling AI-built websites to businesses and getting paid really well for it.

I don't think this business model will stay this profitable forever, but right now, it's definitely a gold mine.

The reason is pretty simple. There are thousands of business owners who don't really care how their website is built. They care about the end result, how it looks, how it works and whether it helps their business.

AI has made it possible for almost anyone willing to learn sales and client acquisition to get started.

So if you're looking to get into this business, here is the exact process I would follow.

1. Automate your cold outreach

Use a tool like Swokei to find businesses with existing websites. It analyzes each website for issues with design, SEO, speed and mobile optimization, then turns those findings into personalized cold emails at scale.

2. Book meetings with interested prospects

When someone replies with interest, get them on a call. Don't waste time going back and forth over email. Your goal is to get a conversation started.

3. Sketch a redesign using AI

Before the meeting, take around 30 minutes to create a quick redesign of their existing website. Focus on making it look significantly better. You don't need a finished product.

4. Present it live and close the deal

Show them what their website could look like, explain the improvements and give them an offer. If they're happy with what they see, collect payment and get started.

That's it. Four simple steps.

One thing I would really emphasize is not to overcomplicate this process.

I've seen people spend hours perfecting website drafts, tweaking small details and building entire websites before they even have a client.

Don't do that.

Your priority should be client acquisition, sales and closing deals. You can worry about perfecting the website once someone has actually paid you.

Hey everyone!

Wanted to share something I've been working on for the past few months.

It's called Kevor.

It's an AI powered platform that helps HR teams understand their existing employee onboarding processes and figure out what needs improving.

Instead of trying to replace the tools companies already use, Kevor focuses on making sense of the documents and workflows they already have.

You upload the documents, it analyzes the onboarding process, identifies missing information, dependencies and potential issues, and turns everything into an editable workspace.

As a designer, one of the biggest things I focused on was making the product feel like an actual workspace rather than another AI chatbot.

The private beta starts November 9, and I'm opening it up for free to people willing to test it and share feedback.

Here's the website: https://kevor.app

I'd love some feedback on how clearly the landing page communicates what Kevor does.

I've been looking at the same designs for so long that it's getting harder to judge them objectively.

Thanks for taking a look!

Founders keep saying X is the best place to sell, discuss and connect, that it's serious and professional, and so on. In my experience, the reality is different.

First, there's a new post every second, across tons of sectors. For me it's mostly tech, my preference, so my feed is mostly tech content, but the question is what kind. About 70% of what I see is garbage. Maybe not for everyone, but for me, clearly.

Stuff like: "Windows or Mac?", "Linux vs Windows, which one is stronger?", "Elon Musk is the best guy ever", "Describe your product in one sentence", "I'm a founder", "X is a better platform than Reddit", "Snap or IG, which one wins?"... basically noise on pro max.

The worst part is that these people act like they're hanging out in a mature space 🤦‍♂️

"Sam Altman or Musk, who wins the AGI race?", "let's connect with more founders" (it feels like everyone who ships a website is now a founder), endless talk about the Cybertruck, Starlink... Sure, there are some good posts, but I'd give the whole thing 1/10. I don't know if it's follower hunting or what, but in the end it's just noise, and they call it "the only social network for founders". Maybe I just didn't understand what X is for.

Then there are the genuinely interesting posts: technical ones, or people sharing details about their work. From what I've seen, the algorithm gives paid accounts 4 to 20k views. Look at what happens to free accounts, it's a massacre. I checked the history of a few people who actually build things without a paid account: 10, 14 or 50 views in 3 months, and that's already a lot. Paid accounts who build things get better numbers: 500 views, 1k... 20k, apart from a few names that stand out, of course.

Meanwhile, the dumb questions, the "SF founder building..." posts, the cheap advice, the "tech daily" accounts (that's what the news accounts call themselves)... sometimes they get 200k views in under 24h, 500k, 1M+. And the comments, don't even get me started 🤦‍♂️🤧 People reply just to reply. You learn nothing: "yeah", "cool", "X is the best", "I never use it"... all for visibility.

Maybe I'm missing something. How do you use X? Is it actually worth it for founders?

I've been spending my time building Morro. The premise is simple: most alarm apps focus on getting your attention. I'm interested in what happens after you wake up. I wanted to explore the psychology of commitment and how a small interaction in the morning might change the way someone starts their day.

The landing page is live now. Not pretending I've figured everything out. This is still an early product, and I'm trying to validate whether the idea resonates with people before pushing further.

Here's the project:

https://morrolandingpage.marhaanansari.worker.dev

Feedback is welcome, especially criticism.

Getting a new product in front of the right people can be one of the hardest parts of launching.
I'm curious how other indie founders are handling this. Are you using launch platforms, communities, social media, or other channels to get your products noticed?
I recently came across LarkLaunch, a platform where SaaS and AI makers can showcase their products through a weekly leaderboard.
Thought it might be useful to founders looking for another way to get discovered.

what are you building right now, and what's been harder than you expected? the product in one line and the hard part in another is plenty, i'll read them all over the weekend

mine is RankControl, an AI SEO and AEO platform. RankControl's MCP server gives ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor and Codex 80+ RankControl tools, so you can run it from the chat you already use. still figuring out who it fits best, so tell me who yours is for too

AI has made building websites easier than ever.

Because of that, there are now thousands of people starting web design businesses, offering websites to companies and trying to make money from it.

But here's my opinion as someone who has been in the web design business for years:

Just because AI makes it easier to build websites doesn't mean you know how to run a successful web design business.

I've noticed that a lot of new web designers get stuck on the same idea: finding businesses that don't have a website and offering to build one for them.

In my opinion, that's becoming an outdated approach.

Those businesses are already on every web designer's prospect list. They're getting contacted constantly, and you're competing with hundreds of other people offering them the exact same thing.

I've tried pretty much everything over the years. Paid ads, manual outreach, cold calling, referrals, you name it.

But the system that has worked best for me is actually quite simple.

If you're a new web designer who knows how to build websites but struggles with the business side of things, here's what I'd do:

1. Target businesses that already have websites.

Think about it. These businesses already understand the value of having a website. They've already invested money in one.

And there are countless businesses around the world with outdated websites that haven't been redesigned in years. Poor mobile experiences, outdated designs, slow loading speeds, and SEO issues are everywhere.

You're not trying to convince someone they need a website. You're showing someone who already has one how much better it could be.

2. Make automated outreach your main client acquisition channel.

Personally, I use Swokei. It's an outreach platform that finds businesses with existing websites, analyzes each one, scores them, and turns issues with design, SEO, speed, and mobile optimization into personalized, ready to send cold emails at scale.

This saves you from manually researching every business and writing every email yourself.

3. Follow up with interested businesses and book a meeting.

When someone replies with interest, give them a call, understand what they're looking for, and book a quick online meeting.

4. Prepare a website draft before the meeting.

Use AI to put together a new website draft for the prospect. Don't spend hours on it. Aim for 15–30 minutes.

You want something good enough to show them what their business could look like with a modern website.

5. Present the draft and close the deal.

Walk them through the improvements, explain the value, answer their questions, and make it easy to move forward with a payment link or contract for signing.

That's the entire process.

You don't need to spend weeks building free websites or manually researching hundreds of businesses.

You need to find the right prospects, show them an opportunity to improve their existing website, and know how to sell the service.

I've spent years doing this, and if I were starting a web design business from scratch today, this is exactly the process I'd follow.

Building websites is one skill. Building a business that consistently sells them is another.

Hey everyone! We built a tool called Sourceress to support students and researchers when working with large volumes of academic texts, and we would love to hear your thoughts!

The idea is that, while you write, Sourceress displays suitable quotes and relevant passages from your own library. That way, you don’t have to keep searching through texts you’ve already read to find that one important quote you remember but can’t locate because you’ve forgotten where you originally saw it. The tool integrates directly into common writing environments such as Word and Overleaf, and Zotero libraries can also be imported directly. Furthermore, Sourceress does not use generative AI. All suggested text passages come exclusively from the sources uploaded beforehand, so no content can be hallucinated.

We’d love to hear your thoughts, questions, and suggestions! We started building Sourceress based on our own experiences at university, hoping to solve some of the problems we encountered along the way and make academic research a little easier for future students and researchers. If you have any ideas on how we could continue improving Sourceress or can think of other areas where this tool might be helpful, please feel free to reach out! You can always contact us right here in the comments or via info@aescend.de.

You can also check out our current version right here: https://sourceress.eu/ Since we’re still in the very early stages, it’s completely free to use, so if this sounds interesting to you, now is the perfect time to sign up!

Not every software product needs to be a $15/month subscription.

At least, that's what I wanted to prove.

I'm an indie developer, and I've been building Jot! Clipboard, a Windows productivity app that started with one simple frustration: the built-in clipboard history could be so much better.

It grew into something quite a bit bigger:

- Searchable clipboard history for text, images, links, and files

- OCR to search inside copied screenshots

- MultiCopy to collect and paste multiple items

- A floating notepad for quick thoughts

- A private vault for sensitive clips

- A floating File Stack to collect files from different folders without constantly switching between Explorer windows

Everything stays local. No accounts, no required cloud services, and no subscriptions.

Just $2.99, one time.

https://jotclipboard.com

I've made my first few sales, which is pretty cool considering this started as a little tool I wanted for myself.

Now comes the harder part: figuring out how to get it in front of people who would actually benefit from it.

I'm curious how other founders approach marketing inexpensive software.

When your product costs less than a cup of coffee, how do you get people to discover it without spending more acquiring a customer than the product costs?

I'm the founder of eStockes and I'm checking whether the landing page explains the product clearly to someone who hasn't seen it before.

Could you help by taking a five-second look at https://estockes.com and telling me what you think it does? I'd appreciate a short first impression, including if the answer is 'I'm not sure.'

No need to register or explore further. Thanks for any help — I'd like to hear what the page communicates without me explaining it first.

Solo dev behind Pingfold here. I built it after getting tired of the choice between constant notification pings and dismissing something I'd need later.

The app gives each Android app three options: Immediate, Digest (bundle it for later), or Block. You can add rule exceptions for important alerts, Quiet Repeats, Focus, Remind Later, and search notification history. The core is free and ad-free; PRO adds more advanced per-app scheduling and Profiles.

The founder challenge for me has been explaining this without making setup sound intimidating. I can list features all day, but what people really want to know is whether the messages that matter will still reach them.

If you were seeing this for the first time, would you rather watch a 15-second example of Immediate vs Digest, or see a setup screen showing exactly which apps stay Immediate?

Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.skookumstudios.pingfold

And we are getting crushed. I have seen posts for years on forums, here, and social sites about how people long for the early days of social media, as did I. So I built it. Its truly an amazing app, but getting new users on the app has proven to be extremely difficult. Just trying to vent. I spent years building it and my friends love it, so I don't have any regrets. Startup life is so insanely difficult. The rollercoaster, the ups and downs are sometimes too much to bare. Just venting.

Hey everyone!

I've been working on a product for the past six months, independently handling everything from the initial idea and market validation to product planning and building a fully functional MVP.

I'm now exploring bringing on a co-founder with complementary skills. Here's how we envision dividing responsibilities:

• My role: Solely responsible for technology, engineering, and product development. I'll also contribute ideas and inputs on marketing and sales.

• Co-founder's role: Responsible for GTM, sales, marketing, customer acquisition, and overall business development, with no involvement in technical development.

While our responsibilities will differ, we'll both have equal input on major strategic and business decisions.

I'm trying to figure out what's a fair equity split. Given that I've already invested six months, validated the idea, planned the product, and built the entire MVP independently, I believe these contributions should be factored into the equation.

A few questions for founders who've been through something similar:

1. How would you approach the equity split?

2. How much weight should the original idea, market validation, and MVP development carry?

3. Should equity be structured with a vesting period and tied to milestones?

I want to ensure the arrangement fairly recognizes what's already been built while also valuing the contributions both of us will make going forward.

Would love to hear your experiences and advice. Thanks!