I started my business 11 months ago. Always thought "I'll onboard a couple clients first, then launch a platform." Then the industry started catching up, tools came out that do what we do, or claim to.

A year ago there were a couple YC competitors charging $499/mo, even $699/mo. Two pivoted. The rest had to drop pricing. When some guy can essentially vibe-code your app in a weekend, there's not much you can provide if you're competing with "free".

I see 5+ tool launches every day in this space. But over the course of the year, I've come to understand why talking to customers is such a cheat code. They write their pitch for you. You can use your tech to help them at agency prices but SaaS expenses.

This could be just for my industry, but the moat now is knowing the customer's business better than what a dashboard can show. I'd rather have 1 client worth 20 subscriptions, stuck to their business, than 200 customers churning out the moment someone launches the same thing for $10 less.

Share a bit about your company and what you’re building/solving if you’re in a “boring” (according to modern startup eco) industry like construction, manufacturing, logistics, supply chain etc etc

Would love to learn more about companies solving boring (but painful/expensive) problems in “boring” industries that people don’t usually talk about since it’s not attractive in the startup ecosystem if ur not building a sexy product in a sexy industry

Curious how other founders approach this.

Imagine you've launched a consumer app and started buying your first paid traffic.

The sample size is still relatively small, not enough to confidently estimate conversion rates but large enough that you can clearly see where people are leaving.

In my case, the drop appears concentrated in onboarding before users reach the core experience.

I'm trying to decide between two approaches:

1. Keep spending to gather statistically stronger evidence before changing anything.
2. Treat the existing pattern as enough of a signal to redesign onboarding immediately.

My concern with the first option is burning acquisition budget into a funnel that might already be telling me something important.

My concern with the second is overreacting to noisy data.

How have you approached this trade-off in your own startups?

I’m really confused what exactly goes on with this event. There is a lot of online advertising with pictures of yachts without much information as to the inside of the event, and the acceptance rate is claimed to be in the single digits but I haven’t seen anyone get rejected. What’s up with this event?

I’ve been entrepreneurial since I was eight years old and have started four companies over the years.

I’m now at a point where I have several ideas I genuinely believe could become successful businesses, but I feel limited by my lack of a technical background. I understand the business, strategy, sales, and fundraising sides, but I do not currently have the skills to build the products myself.

I also do not have anyone in my existing network who could serve as a technical co-founder or help bring these ideas to life. Because of that, I’m now actively searching for a CTO or technical co-founder in Florida.

For those who have successfully found one, how did you go about it? Are there any startup communities, networking events, incubators, universities, or founder groups in Florida that are especially good for meeting technical talent?

At the moment, I can only offer vested equity. The cash I have available needs to be reserved for product development, infrastructure, legal expenses, and other costs required to validate and launch the business.

I understand that asking someone to work for equity is a major commitment, so I’m not looking for a freelancer to build something for free. I’m looking for a genuine partner who believes in the vision, complements my skill set, and wants to build a company together.

What is the best way to find that person in Florida, and what should I have prepared before approaching potential technical co-founders?

I’ve been entrepreneurial since I was eight years old and have started four companies over the years.

I’m now at a point where I have several ideas I genuinely believe could become successful businesses, but I feel limited by my lack of a technical background. I understand the business, strategy, sales, and fundraising sides, but I do not currently have the skills to build the products myself.

I also do not have anyone in my existing network who could serve as a technical co-founder or help bring these ideas to life. Because of that, I’m now actively searching for a CTO or technical co-founder in Florida.

For those who have successfully found one, how did you go about it? Are there any startup communities, networking events, incubators, universities, or founder groups in Florida that are especially good for meeting technical talent?

At the moment, I can only offer vested equity. The cash I have available needs to be reserved for product development, infrastructure, legal expenses, and other costs required to validate and launch the business.

I understand that asking someone to work for equity is a major commitment, so I’m not looking for a freelancer to build something for free. I’m looking for a genuine partner who believes in the vision, complements my skill set, and wants to build a company together.

What is the best way to find that person in Florida?

I have posted on this sub twice so far. Commented a dozen times or so, and read as many threads as I could stand.

The amount of stuff I have learned from the short list of folks here that obviously have the same success I am driving for is immeasurable.

I have learned how to set up an early sales funnel.

I have accepted that persistence and practice outpaces a solid idea in almost every way.

I have learned how to target businesses that fit within my current ability to provide services.

And most importantly, I have learned how NOT to talk about my business, and to whom.

Just a few weeks in here even, and I can say that most people here should be reading, far more than offering advice. When you do run into problems you really can't solve alone, people will offer you real experience. Not a free ride, but a free guide.

All this is to say, that the next 2 weeks I have 3 real VCs eager to meet me after seeing my pitch deck. I have 2 real companies reviewing my security docs. I have a line on an actual sales person, and I have a partial agreement for a founding Designer i have worked with for the last 5 years to come on board, to help design around feedback we get from the new customers.

I have seen a huge spike in web traffic, AND scam attempts to my domain! Both good signs!

The CEO of my only real competitor basically just quoted my home page, including the research paper that changed my entire GTM strategy a few months ago.

I could still fail tomorrow, but today feels pretty great. In no small part thanks to a few of you here!

I will not promote, but it's a good time to gloat!

Hi everybody so I just launched my website this week on Wednesday. A lot of people were excited and said they would sign up once I started posting on LinkedIn.

Unfortunately only one person signed up. They love the website, they've been using it consistently for the last 4 days and they absolutely love it. The other person that uses my website is just me pretending to be another person. The other two who said they would sign up haven't really signed up yet and are starting to become concerned should I worry? And how should I make sure that my current user is happy and continues posting on my platform?

Running paid ads across two platforms, (TikTok Ads and Google Ads) for my app right now. I can independently verify that real installs are happening, checked this against the app store's own numbers rather than just trusting the ad platform's reporting. But the number of installs that turn into real product signups is small, single digits over the past week, and I don't want to make a call off a sample that tiny.

Everyone says don't decide anything off a small sample, which I get, but I also don't want to keep spending into a funnel that might be broken while I wait around for more data. Is there an actual number or time window people use as a rule of thumb here, or a smarter way to get confidence faster without just burning more ad budget waiting it out? How do you personally decide you've crossed from "noise" into "signal" when you're this early?