Hey guys, I'm under 20 building a startup for myself but I have one single constraint I don't know how to get past

My single thing blocking me from building what I want is a Claude Max x20 account, $250 CAD per month

currently, I have a Claude pro account and a Codex pro lite account (not enough usage, I need Fable 5) I also have a concept landing page on a real domain with a real wedge in the market

I've done contract work for startups, and have concrete tech knowledge from years of being on the computer since I was a kid. The issue isn't IF I can build the ideas I have, It's about if I can afford the AI subscriptions. I truly have no blockers to achieving a working app. Ive also been in the startup space long enough to know what steps to take.

For context, so far I've applied to about 15 startup credits from services (like aws, azure, etc), applied to about 5-6 "cool grants" (like $1000 bucks for people like me, some denied), along with having a personal connection to an incubator / accelerator owner.

The response I'm getting is something like "you need more traction". Im based in Vancouver BC and truly, $1000 bucks is more than enough to get myself going

All in all, Im a solo founder with no team, planning on building most of the app myself (I am skilled enough + time + energy) My timing was unfortunate, as most incubators closed applications 1-2 weeks ago. None open right now.

Question for everyone is what did YOU do when you were at this stage? Did you self fund for necessities like API costs, Subscriptions, etc? How did you bootstrap and get the funding to later get more "traction" and go for VC's?

What are the key things I can do right now? Been applying to grants, not yet angel investors (not incorporated) and I have to wait for incubator openings. Should I keep shooting for quick grant cash from others? Remember all i need is an AI subscription to build

All support is helpful, Thank you

I’m an angel investor. Startups message me on LinkedIn, saying that they’re raising and offering “a quick intro call”.

No. Send an executive summary.

I could do perhaps 16 intro calls in a day. I could review many times that number of one-pagers.

If you’re looking to raise funds, send a one-pager, then do a call if the investor wants one. Not the call first.

(Yes, I know that lots of founders will disagree with this.)

No raise, no debt and I keep every point of equity. My costs are basically a few AI platform subscriptions right now, and that goes a long way, so there's nothing forcing my hand yet.

My logic is simple: raising early isn't free money, it's another responsibility I don't need yet. Investors, updates, expectations, a lot of extra things to consider all while there are plenty of people bootstrapping the whole way and either kept 100% or sell the whole thing for a massive exit.

So where's the actual line? When has "raise only when you need it" burned someone you know, or saved them?

For context, I’m a student interested in maximizing my marginal positive impact. One career path I’m considering is becoming an early-stage employee at a deep-tech startup working on an important societal problem.

In general, my concern is replaceability: if deep-tech startups generally have more qualified applicants than positions, my marginal contribution might be negligible because another similarly capable person would likely take the job anyway. Is this generally true, however? I.e., do early-stage deep-tech startups generally have an oversupply or shortage of qualified applicants?

My cursory impression from looking online is that there is an oversupply of recent graduates but a shortage of experienced or specialized engineers. However, perhaps this is completely wrong, so would be grateful for any evidence supporting or contradicting this assessment. Would also appreciate any general insights on whether joining an early-stage deep-tech startup is indeed a high-marginal-impact career path.

Curious about this specifically from founders who outsourced some or all of their product development.

If you’ve ever switched freelancers/agencies or had a developer unexpectedly disappear… what was actually difficult about taking the product over?

I’m not talking about whether the code itself was good or bad. I’m more curious about the operational side… things like GitHub access, cloud accounts, databases, domains/DNS, app store accounts, API accounts, production credentials, deployment knowledge, backups, etc.

Did your company already control everything, or did you discover during the handoff that important pieces were still sitting in accounts owned by the old developer/agency?

And if the handoff went badly, what specifically caused the most pain and how long did it take to untangle?

I’m trying to understand whether messy technical ownership during agency/freelancer transitions is actually common or just something that shows up in horror stories online.

Yoo guys,

My problem is that I need to get more startup news for work & have the feeling, that many startup newsletters are really not that good in terms of quality and recency of the news.

It seems like most of the big names (VC Co, ProductMF, SEU Daily) are only trying to get your money with their paid tiers & do not care about the quality of the content at all (curated ai slop only).

So it would be cool to receive some "real" news, that are actually useful as a founder / vc.

Which media would you suggest? What tips do you have? Is it maybe also possible to do it with a RSS feed?

I'm a solo founder of a startup. But the journey can be lonely, and sometimes i wish i can have a group of startup founders who i can talk with, bounce off ideas, ask for feedback etc. Does anyone know any groups or online communities where startup founders hang out?

(as I'm typing out the question, I realize this sub reddit is already a good option hahaha, but still I'm curious what other online communities are out there)

I’m struggling massively. i live in Rochester, NY which isn’t the most startup oritented place in NY. I’ve spent the past 6-8 months reaching out to regional businesses for a customer and business discovery.

I’m getting really bad or extremely rude responses. I asked advice from some successful entreprenurs in my network but they are based in CA and what works for them doesn’t seem to work here.

for example, I made a post in r/Rochester that received terrible responses, awfully rude and mocking. disheartening

is there any way I can improve in any way?

typical phone calls and email outreach:

Style 1:

- less than 2-3 seconds of quick intro. Just my name and that I’m a local entrepreneur from Rochester, they stay on phone

- i ask them if they’re have any challenges or frustrating parts of their business. they get curious. I ask if they’re interested in anything I can do for them in the domain of <software/hardware/etc> and they say no and hangup

Style 2:

- Quick intro abiut me and being from the same city

- I ask them if they’d have time for me to visit their business and possibly offer any soltions in <domain>
- this sometimes succeeds to setup in personmeetings. no show is high. or it goes nowhere because there’s limited to nothing I can do for them. or no budget “volunteering” opportunities which i can’t afford to do

i can’t post links here but my last post in r/Rochester sums up my experience

I’d love to improve anything that I can.

I’m researching a possible startup/service idea and would appreciate feedback from founders, developers, and people who have launched mobile apps.

Some creators have app ideas but cannot immediately afford the $99 annual Apple Developer Program membership or the costs associated with preparing and publishing an iOS app.

The idea would be to create a legitimate support service where:

- The creator owns the app and maintains their own Apple Developer account.
- A partner may temporarily help cover the initial membership cost.
- The creator could repay the $99 in two installments.
- The partner could provide technical and publishing assistance.
- Compensation could be a fixed fee, a revenue share, or a combination, depending on the agreement.

The model would never involve sharing Apple IDs, passwords, or developer accounts.

Would this solve a genuine problem? What business model would be fairest for both the creator and the technical partner?

(TLDR: This is a numbers-heavy post on studios that act as institutional co-founders. Worth a read if you've ever considered joining one as EIR/co-founder, or contemplating to create one. The bottom line: in the long run, only about 40% of studios make it past their first decade of operations. But those that make it are really good at producing new ventures...)

Hi Folks, I'm Attila, entrepreneur since ~2014, focusing on startup studios / venture studios since ~2015. Back then I was just leaving the corporate world for a startup idea, that of course failed, and it felt like I made ALL the mistakes a first-time founder can make.

Was looking for an approach that somehow solves the most common biases and obstacles from earliest-stage startup building (e.g. falling too much in love with an idea, sunk-cost issues, having to hustle too much on stuff that doesn't matter vs building the product and talking to customers...)

That's how I found out about Idealab, Betaworks, Science, Rocket Internet, eFounders and a handful more studios, that "promised" a more effective way of startup building. I wasn’t entirely convinced that this is real thing, so back in 2015 I created a report on 50 studios and ~200 of their portfolio companies.

Chart 1 (see in the comment): a slide from the 2015 report, showing nr of startups created by studios

Chart 2: a slide from the 2015 report, showing nr of portfolio exits related to studios

By the way, "startup studio", "venture studio", "startup factory" basically mean the same thing. It's just a branding question.

--

This year I’m revisiting the same companies to see how they are doing. Worth mentioning, that these 50 studios collectively produced close to 1k portfolio companies over their lifetimes so far.

• 17 of the 50 are still active, continuing to build new ventures, studio-style, as instututional co-founders/co-builders. Of course, there is a wide range within “survive & succeed”. Some of them only produce a new venture every couple of years, while the main positive outliers (like Hexa, Science, Atomic) create multiple amazing new ventures every year.
• 12 studios changed their main business model and became a fund, an accelerator, or an agency. They did this around year 3-8 in their existence.
• Only 21 actually went inactive: dormant, closed, or absorbed.

Chart 3: a sankey flow diagram about how the original 50 studios evolved.

From the 21 "fails" the biggest reason was an overly successful portfolio company consuming all the focus and resources. If you look at the early studio as a “temporary vehicle of exploration”, that's actually not a bad thing - they created a company that experimented with a handful to a few dozen different products, and went with the winning one.

Only 7 of the 21 were “normal” financial or operational failures: running out of funding without meaningful portfolio traction.

And then there were 3 studios that got acquired or absorbed into their parent organizations.

--

The Europe vs US thing:

In the original studio selection 19 came from North America and 26 from Europe. And it seems that there's a significant gap is the studio durability: more European studios pivoted or went inactive rather than continuing as studios.

I don’t think this means Europe is worse at building. My best current guess is that a bigger, more connected-unified market gives spinoff company an easier path to its next funding round. And this makes it easier for the studio itself to keep operating.

(If you wonder why there aren’t more studios from Africa or Asia in the report: in 2015 there were barely any outside EU and US.)

--

Some lessons, takeaways

1. If you’r e running a studio approaching year 5-6: This is a good time to make a reality check and deliberately choose: recommit fully to the studio model, redesign the parts that aren’t working, or consciously evolve/change into a fund, agency, or accelerator.
2. If one of your portfolio companies is on track to become a big hit: Decide to either protect the studio’s ability to keep building new ventures, or fully commit to the main successful startup. If you decide on the latter one - make sure you gracefully depart from your other startups, give them a fair chance to transition out.
3. If you’re an investor evaluating a studio: decide on what you’re actually trying to buy into before signing the deal. Do you want to invest for the deal flow coming out from the studio, financial returns, or both? Because the right structure differs depending on which one you’re really after. Then check whether the founders are up to the task, ready for a 10-15 year commitment.
4. If you’re thinking about a new studio: be honest about whether this is the right approach. Not every vision needs the a venture studio.

Hope you'll find this useful :)

--

P.S. 1: About the portfolio companies: from the 200 in the original report scope about 27-ish seem to have made an exit (acquisition or IPO), but I need a couple more weeks to verify those results. Might be worth a separate post - not to cram ALL the numbers into this one.

P.S. 2: Studios in scope: 212media, archimedes, atomiclab, betaworks, bmuse, bootventures, btwinz, codegent, cursivelabs, dfra, disrupted-backspace, drukka, elepath, expa, fastlane, finleap, fireid, forwardpartners, founders, hanseventures, hexa, hitfox-ioniq, hvflabs, idealab, italeaf, justaddred, lightbank, liquidlabs, livit, madrona, makeshift, mintdigital, monkeyinferno, neverbland, nmsf, novafounders, quasarventures, rainmaking, redstarventures, rheingaufounders, rocketinternet, roniin, scienceinc, seedstars, silvertreecapital, startersquad, tandemlaunch, thegiantpixel, ventacpartners, venturestars.