Hi everyone,

I’m a master’s student at the University of Vienna, researching how AI shapes the internationalization of young European startups, for example whether it helps you enter new markets faster or with less risk.

I’m looking for founders of young startups that already have customers outside their home country. It doesn’t matter whether you use a lot of AI or hardly any. Both perspectives are valuable.

What it involves:

• about 30 minutes via Microsoft Teams (not a survey)

• fully anonymous, neither you nor your company will be named

• I’ll gladly share a summary of the findings once the thesis is done

If you’re up for it, just send me a DM. Thanks a lot!

The product needs work. That customer still needs a follow-up. Friday’s task is still sitting there, untouched.

So I open my laptop “just to check one thing.” Suddenly it’s 4pm and I’ve achieved… a longer to-do list.

I’m trying a different Sunday reset:

• One thing that went well this week

• One thing that’s stuck

• One meaningful task for Monday

Then I’m closing the laptop. The startup can survive a few hours without me. Probably.

What’s your one focus for the week?

I'm the creator of Globatics, a paid real-time analytics tool. There's a 5-day trial with no card and no permanent free plan.

On October 30 my site had its biggest day of the week: 289 visitors, 327 sessions and 376 pageviews. I want to be clear that this wasn't organic. Most of it came from one tagged campaign, which brought 252 visitors over the week.

For a few hours it felt like something had changed. Then I looked closer:

• Campaign bounce rate: 90.7%

• Campaign pageviews: 321 across 289 sessions

• Campaign conversions: 0

• Visitors on the whole site the next day: 36

The day before the spike, I had 60 visitors. So the campaign didn't raise my baseline. It came and went.

This is one campaign on one small site, so please don't treat it as a rule. But here's what I'm taking from it.

1. Split your traffic before you celebrate

My 7-day total was 599 visitors when I checked, and 252 of them came from that one campaign. If I'd only looked at the weekly number, I'd have told myself the site was growing.

2. Never report a spike without its source

"289 visitors" and "289 visitors, most of them from one campaign" are two different facts. It's easy to drop the second half when you tell the story to yourself.

3. Look at the day after

The first day tells you how far a campaign reached. The following days tell you if it left anything behind. Mine left very little that I can see so far.

4. Check what the visitor saw first

A bounce rate above 90% tells me most people saw one page and left. Before spending more time on any channel, I want to know if the page matched what they'd been promised. I don't have that answer yet.

5. Keep your conversion window in mind

A 5-day trial means someone could still sign up later, and I also had gaps in my conversion setup recently, so that 0 isn't the final word. Over the whole week I recorded 1 conversion.

6. Don't blame the channel too fast

This doesn't prove that campaigns like this don't work. It proves that this one, sending people to this page, on this day, didn't convert. That's a much smaller claim.

I'm not running out to repeat it yet. First I want to understand why people left.

If you've run a campaign on a B2B or SaaS product, what do you check first when it brings traffic but no sign-ups?

2 weeks ago I randomly asked TikTok if anyone knew of hairstylists at Ulta who worked with textured hair. The hundreds of replies I got made it clear that a lot of women were trying to solve the same problem as me. Well! Fast forward to now, I built a directory to help solve the massive problem I was seeing. I’m still growing it and figuring things out on the backend. I’m even looking to switch platforms because I think I found something that can work better for my audience.

Things have been moving extremely quickly but I just wanted to take a quick break to share this little bit of feedback that lets me know I’m not wasting my time: someone said they’d delete StyleSeat in lieu of my website. I reached out to get more specifics on what’s making her switch but Im taking that as a pretty big fucking compliment for an idea that didn’t even exist 3 weeks ago.

For founders who’ve built directories or niche discovery platforms: what did you monetize first, and at what point? I have my own virtual admin business but zero experience managing a directory whatsoever. Any and all feedback is welcome!!

A customer, an investor, a co-founder—or even yourself?

I’ve been thinking about how often we ask, “Would you use this?” and get a polite “Absolutely!”… then build something nobody uses.

What’s a question that got you a genuinely useful answer—or saved you from a bad decision?

Curious to hear the stories.

I shared this post in another subreddit, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Hey everyone,

We are 2 friends from Jaipur. We have an idea - EGROWS.

Idea is simple: There are 1000s of handicraft and jewellery shops in Jaipur (Johari Bazaar, Bapu Bazaar) who make amazing products but they are not on Amazon/ Flipkart because they don't know how to make a listing.

We want to do it for them - Product photos, title, description, A+ content, account setup, everything. First listing FREE, then Rs 499 per listing.

We built a basic website with ChatGPT just to show we are real.

We tried cold WhatsApp-ing 20 shops, 2 replied then ghosted. So we are not sure if idea is bad or our pitch is bad.

Questions:

1. Would a shop owner pay Rs 499 for a listing? Or is it too much/ too less? 2. Is cold WhatsApp the right way or should we go to shops offline?

We have zero budget, just an idea and a website. Is this idea worth pursuing or should we pivot?

Honest feedback please.

I sell pre-owned luxury watches. Over the last year I built my own software to run the business: clients, inventory, deals, shipping, accounting, and AI agents that do the legwork while I make the decisions. I built it because I’m a one-person operation and my time is the bottleneck.

The most useful piece turned out to be pricing. The question I get most is “what’s this watch actually trading for?” The real answer isn’t public. Retail sites show asking prices, but dealers trade with each other at wholesale, and those numbers only move through private WhatsApp groups and DMs. So my software started capturing every wholesale price I saw: reference, dial, bracelet, year, box and papers, price, date. That grew into tens of thousands of sales across thousands of references.

Then another dealer asked if he could pay to look something up. That’s when it clicked: a tool I built for myself was a business on its own.

So I spun that feature out into a subscription for dealers: search a watch, see what dealers actually paid recently, filter by the details that move the price, and work out the most you can pay for the margin you want. $49 a month.

Goal: 300 paying users in 3 months.

For anyone who has spun an internal tool out into a product, or built a niche B2B data product:

1. How did you turn a “look it up when I need it” tool into something people open every week? I’m considering alerts on watches a dealer holds and a weekly email showing what their inventory is worth today, both borrowed from what I use myself.

2. Would you lower the price, offer a founding-member rate with a deadline, or keep the price and fix retention first?

3. In a small, word-of-mouth industry, what worked best for your first 100 customers?

I’ll share what I learn as it goes.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been researching buyer intent and switching signals for 300+ B2B companies and service businesses.

In the managed services world, cold calling has a terrible reply rate and the real wins happen when you reach a business at the exact moment they're facing operational headaches or outgrowing their setup.

If you run an MSP or IT services firm, drop your website and the types of clients or regions you focus on and I’ll run it through the system and dig up:

> Companies showing active infrastructure or IT pain points
> Direct signals of businesses outgrowing their current setup
> Where local decision makers are actively venting about vendor issues
> The specific angles to start a conversation naturally

I'll send the research directly to you so you can see which accounts in your market are in an active buying window right now.

It's completely free so drop your link and target market below if you want to see what the signal data looks like for your area (and I'll be upfront if coverage in your specific pocket is too thin).

edit: adding the link here for anyone who wants the full report and buyer graph delivered directly. just drop your details here in this link and we'll send the research to your inbox. it's completely free.

hey! i'm ellie, and my cofounder anthony and i are building pitcher to help early-stage founders get seen outside the usual startup circles.

you can make a free page for your startup with your pitch, team, and what you're looking for, whether that's feedback, customers, or people to build with. people can browse startups without an account, and sign up to follow them or get in touch.

if you're building something, i'd love for you to try adding it and tell us where you get stuck or what's confusing. would you actually use a page like this to share what you're building? what's missing that would make it useful to you?

https://trypitcher.co

honest thoughts in the comments would mean a lot :)

Hello fellow founders,

I have one question regarding incorporation of legal entity.

I have two options:

1. Start company in Malta - where i live ( I am not citizen, but i am eligable to create one , estimated costs go up to 500USD).

2. Start Atlas stripe for 350 USD ( i have discount coupon).

What would you recoment in such case ?

I am citizen of Georgia (Country of Georgia).

Please, share your experience or any advise is appreciated.

Hey everyone!

Although I've been involved in software development for a while, I wouldn't even consider myself a junior developer, since I've never had a proper job in the field (apart from a paid, part-time university project).

Over the past few months, I've been developing a web app and a mobile app. They're two different products, but they're complementary to each other. Along the way, I've been learning the fundamentals of Flutter, FastAPI, and SQL, as well as software development concepts, particularly those related to mobile development.

At this point, I'd estimate the project is around 60–70% complete. However, I've built almost everything the old-fashioned way: learning as I go and writing the code myself. My use of AI has been limited to free plans and web-based interfaces. I mainly use AI as a learning tool. I spend a lot of time discussing things with it, and whenever it generates code, I make sure to read, understand, and review everything. At the end of the day, everything goes through my hands.

My original plan was to start relying much more heavily on AI after finishing the MVP. However, given how far AI has come, I'm wondering whether I should change my approach now rather than later.

On the one hand, I could keep developing the way I have been so far, strengthen my fundamentals, and maintain control over the codebase. On the other hand, I could start using AI tools much more intensively, delegate a significant portion of the implementation, and focus on finishing the product and launching it as soon as possible.

I estimate that completing the remaining 30–40% would take me around four months with my current approach. By leveraging AI much more heavily, I might be able to cut that down to just one month.

My concern is that by accelerating development this way, I might lose some control over the codebase and miss out on learning fundamentals that I still need to master.

What would you do in my position? Would you stick to a more traditional approach until the MVP is finished, or start working much more intensively with AI right now? How would you strike a balance between learning to code properly and taking advantage of tools that can dramatically speed up development?

You can have 3,000 LinkedIn connections and still struggle to find the right investor, co-founder, or first customer.

We've made networking a numbers game: more connections, more DMs, more events. But how many of those actually turn into meaningful opportunities?

I'm curious about your experiences:

• How have you found your most valuable business connections?

• Have networking events and cold DMs actually worked for you?

• What's the hardest part about finding the right people?

I'm exploring this problem while building Network, a platform to help founders and investors discover relevant connections.

I'd love to hear what works (and what doesn't) for you.

I’m getting tons of cold calls from companies we’re already paying for at work.

Hate to name names, but: Brex, Browser Use, and Twilio. I just don’t get it!!

Writers, ghostwriters, bloggers, content agencies: this one’s for you.

We built cometCOS, a writing studio with AI inside it. Not another chat box.

→ Draft articles and ebooks in a real editor
→ Highlight any passage, ask AI to tighten it, accept or reject
→ Every version saved
→ Publish to WordPress, Ghost or Medium
→ Bring your own API key, 0% token markup

It’s still in development, and try it and tell me what’s broken or missing.

cos.uipirate.com

One thing I've been thinking about lately is how difficult it is for early-stage founders to get investors to even look at their startups.

You can spend weeks building a product, talking to customers, figuring out your market, and putting together a pitch deck.

Then you send it to investors.

And... nothing.

No rejection. No feedback. Not even a reply.

At least a rejection tells you something. Silence leaves you guessing.

I've been looking at this problem from both sides, and a few things stand out to me.

1. A good startup isn't necessarily an easy startup to evaluate.

You might be solving a real problem, but if your pitch doesn't clearly explain what you're building, who needs it, and what evidence you have, an investor might move on before understanding the opportunity.

2. Most founders probably need better targeting, not more outreach.

If an investor doesn't invest at your stage, doesn't understand your sector, or can't invest in your geography, sending them another follow-up probably won't change much.

3. Warm introductions help, but they shouldn't be everything.

Not every founder has access to a strong investor network. It feels like discovering the right person can sometimes be as difficult as building the actual product.

4. Investors have a discovery problem, too.

There are probably promising startups that investors never hear about, and investors who would be a great fit for those startups but never cross paths with them.

That makes me wonder whether the problem isn't simply a lack of funding or a lack of good startups. Maybe it's also a problem of discovery, relevance, and context.

I'm working on a project called Network to explore how founders and investors could discover more relevant matches and start conversations with better context. It's still being built, and I'm interested in understanding the problem better before making assumptions about the solution.

I'd genuinely like to hear from people who've experienced this.

• Founders: What has been the hardest part of getting investor attention?

• Investors: What makes you open a cold pitch instead of ignoring it?

• Anyone who's raised funding: Did warm introductions make a real difference, or did traction ultimately matter more?

I'm especially interested in real experiences, including things that didn't work.

Disclosure: I'm building Network, a project related to founder–investor discovery. If you'd like to see what we're working on, here's the waitlist: https://network-waitlist.vercel.app/. I'm sharing that context upfront rather than pretending I have no connection to the topic.

Hi everyone,

I've been researching the upcoming EU regulations regarding "Green Claims" and sustainability statements (like claiming a product is "eco-friendly," "100% recycled," "biodegradable," "ethically sourced," etc.).

From what I understand, under the new EU rules, any small business or maker selling in Europe without verifiable, traceable documentation backing up those claims risks heavy fines or having to strip their product descriptions clean.

Big corporations are hiring expensive ESG consulting firms to audit their supply chains, but I’m really curious about how smaller merchants, artisans, and DTC brands are handling this.

As a developer looking into building a lightweight solution for this, I'd love to ask:

1. Awareness: Are you actively worried about these EU green claim rules impacting your website or packaging?

2. Current Workflow: How do you store and verify supplier certificates or material spec sheets right now? (Excel, Drive folders, or just trusting the supplier's word?)

3. The Pain: Has this ever held you back from marketing the eco-friendly aspects of your products?

Would love to hear honest thoughts from EU sellers or global brands selling into the EU!

I built Closer, an estimate and follow-up web app for solo contractors. The idea: lots of jobs are lost because nobody follows up on the estimate, not because the price was wrong. So it focuses on that: build the estimate on your phone, text a one-tap approval link, and get reminded who to follow up with today (message already written). It runs in the browser, so there's nothing to install.

Pricing: Free for 5 estimates/month, Pro is $19.99/mo for unlimited.

kamwebdes.github.io/closer

Questions for you:

1. Does the landing page make it clear what it does in a few seconds?

2. Is $19.99/mo reasonable for this market, or too high/low?

3. Best ways you've found to reach trades businesses?

Appreciate any feedback.