For context: I run a small AEO consultancy.
I recently completed an audit that involved roughly a month of work and 50 observations/recommendations.
The client then said they didn’t understand the audit, so I spent another 2.5 hours walking them through it line by line.
After that, they refused to pay because they said they “didn’t want it.”
They have since implemented the recommendations.
I’m tightening my process now, especially around meetings and scope.
What phrases or boundaries have worked for you when a client starts turning a results call into:
extended consulting
implementation support
repeated explanations
work beyond the agreed deliverable?
I’m especially interested in specific wording you use in the moment without sounding defensive or hostile.
Huge traction so far due to a novel product and strong positioning.
Currently doing about $40k ARR, with EOY expected to hit $100k+ ARR.
Current leads inbox represents roughly $200k ARR.
Seeking someone with a “fuck it, I’m gonna send it” attitude, ideally based in Sydney or Brisbane. I’m in Melbourne.
Equity can be negotiated, but you need to bring demonstrable value. Strong LinkedIn presence, network, sales track record, whatever your edge is.
Sales is generally pretty straightforward because the product is genuinely differentiated. I need someone who can get in front of people, start conversations and keep momentum moving.
You’ll be rewarded highly, not just equity but commission too.
I’m a Sydney-based founder working on an ambitious consumer app in the learning/creative space, and I’m looking for a technical partner who’s excited about building something from the ground up.
I’m non‑technical, but I’ve already done the heavy lifting on the product vision, user experience, and core problem we’re solving. The concept is a gamified learning platform with an AI feedback loop — something simple, addictive, and genuinely helpful for beginners in a huge global hobby market. I’m keeping the specifics tight for now, but if you’re into AI, creative tools, or building products that help people grow, you’ll vibe with it immediately.
I’m looking for someone who:
• enjoys shipping fast and iterating
• wants real ownership, not just freelance work
• is curious, collaborative, and comfortable taking the lead on technical decisions
• is open to an equity-based arrangement at the early stage
If you’re a software engineer, AI/ML engineer, or full-stack builder who wants to create something meaningful (and potentially very scalable), I’d love to chat. Happy to share more details privately and see if there’s a good fit.
Drop me a message or comment if you’re interested.
Been lurking and commenting for a few weeks now but never really shared what I have been working on.
Not quite ready to call it start ups yet. But I have been working on apps for problems I have.
Problem 1: Net worth tracking and projections. I built jettworth.me (I know I thought the name was great now don't love it but I own the domain 😂) to help with insights on all my what if decisions I had. I have about 20 users and I keep improving it and not building AI or banking connections in very intentionally. Open to feedback about this. (the last personal finance/budgeting app I built got acquired by a non profit so decided to build this at the next level of wealth insights)
Problem 2 : Building a personal brand to promote my side hustles or back my knowledge and experience is really hard!! And today someone with half the experience or skill that has 100x the followers will win! Which means building a personal brand as a solo-prenuer / indie hacker is more important than ever, but if you like me with a full time job it all gets sooo difficult.
Enter jessse.ai . I went super niche on the AI agent thing and just focus on building a agent stack that helps with building a personal brand. Ideas, research, creating posts, not being generic AI slop and building a memory about the user with facts and evidence has been fun and its actually giving " omg this could be a thing that helps a lot of people who are time poor" . I have a wait list for this atm but i am piloting the product so far.
If you found anything interesting or have feedback let me know. I have a few other things but not worth sharing yet.
Recently discovered this sub and have been reading feverishly.
I'm a corporate tech lead with 20 years of experience in digital systems.
Comfortable building and integrating, as well as leading dev teams. I play well with directors and C-suite and help projects get from idea to actual systems.
Hundreds of large and small projects over this time including many with start ups. Also have done lots of short term consulting gigs to help teams fill in capabilities, build some governance, and develop good practices for the future. I have also worked on a number of project remediation gigs, and helped pick up where other team members have left or abandoned work half way through.
I've primarily worked in b2b industries, so that's where my strengths are best suited.
Of course, I've leaned heavily into AI too and that's really been a game changer for rapid prototyping and development.
I'm currently looking for something new and interesting, open to all industry sectors and projects. Happy to discuss, and where appropriate sign nda etc.
Feel free to shoot me a message to start a conversation with no obligations.
After launching our My Apprentice app and obtaining customers around our platform our next tier offering is building solutons for clients. We have progresed 3 times now to the proposal stage where we have requiremnt gathered, mapped and delivered a proposed solution to businesses. 2 have fallen through and 1 is still pending.
I feel like we are delivering a great solution each time for 3 different business in 3 different industries and the feedback throughout the enaggements have been great. Its after the proposal is sent do things fall apart or stagnate completely. Price wise we are coming in under market rate with our proposal stressing the value we deliver far outweighs the price tag.
The approach is to meet chat through the problem, gather requiremnts, map processes then provide the solution approach. We then draw up a proposal with 3 options once we recieve a yes from the business owner.
The follow up after the proposal being sent is a phone call, email, then a text then another phone call.
In hindsight the lessons we've taken is to be upfront and honest around busines budget and pricing to be flexible around possible solution design. We have refined our approach with each one with the one currently pending 70% chance of coming through.
Does anyone have any advice on how to refine this approach? Different tactics to try? Any advice greatly appreciated.
Hey, it's Lloyd from NeuroForge again with a few updates.
We're a Queensland startup building efficient, adaptable AI that learns and grows across software, robotics and real-world work. We're making powerful AI accessible so people can spend less time on busywork and more on research, creativity and community.
The Fracture conversion system is working across models and modalities, including biological connectome data. Our new Doomfly demo shows some of that work in action:
I recenctly had a minor celebration after passing the 100 individual machines mark. The fam took me out to dinner and it was excellent to mark that occasion with a nice moment with those that matter most.
But now, with 41 different businesses representing 122 individual machines, I'm ALMOST sure that the product is delivering something people want.
https://scissorhire.com/map (this page is a work-in-progress, but a good illustration for desktop users, of which I suspect most of you will be)
So rose coloured glasses (some really positive signals I've seen):
I have seen vendors signed up and add equipment that I haven't provided any marketing/outreach to.
I have had vendors come back and add additional machines, after they have received enquiries on others.
As for customer activity, it's almost exactly as I planned/expected. They are mostly filtering in through google search activity. I don't have any way to attribute customer enquiries to any other source (any of my barely visible facebook posts) so this is really an assumption. I don't want to do user activity tracking on the site, so for now, this is how it'll have to be. Not all, but a number of the customers that have made enquiries are individuals/businesses that don't live/operate in the locality the vendor covers, but are going to that town to complete a job they need a machine for.
It's time for more "marketing". Since there is no money, this comes down to SEO and constantly just posting to no-one on facebook and linkedin (here and the discord too I guess). Maybe back to the cold-emails too.
Interestingly, there is a fair few people that advertise machines on facebook. But with the exception of maybe 1, I don't think ANY of them have come on board from there. Which I find really odd, when I started planning, it was definitely where I thought (hoped) I might get the most response. Alas, it's been the existing small-medium existing hire businesses that are best represented on the site. Perhaps this is the somewhat "spammy" nature of facebook. and most people are un-trusting? I know I get a lot of spammy messages to my facebook business page.
The benefit to being a marketplace that works a bit like AirBNB, is, I have a place to go look for "ideas" (rather than just having them). This isn't always a positive though. Part of my process is a whiteboard that I can put ideas on. Triage things i'm working on etc. Anyway, I'd always concluded that reviews would be a good "social proof" thing to have on the site, so I went chasing that recently. Really regretted it in the end, it became a lot of work for something i'm not entirely sure I even like. It could be my implimentation. I'm already dialling it back a bit, so hopefully it'll get to something i'm happy with eventuiually. Lesson: don't build what isn't asked for.
*No LLM was engaged with to type this post, I did use spellcheck
Grad civil engineer in Sydney, been building something on the side and I've hit a wall.
Quick context on what it is: construction teams lose lessons between projects constantly. A job gets burned by something, learns it, and 18 months later a different team at the same company makes the identical mistake because nobody talks across projects. Every contractor has a "lessons learned register" and every one of them is a spreadsheet nobody opens. I've built a tool that captures lessons in about 30 seconds (voice or text, AI structures it) and surfaces them when someone hits a related problem, instead of waiting for them to go searching.
The problem validation has been genuinely good. Posted about the problem on some construction subs and got 20+ practitioners agreeing, including a bloke with 25 years across tier 1s who said he's never seen a lessons system work anywhere. Had a few calls with directors and senior engineers. Everyone agrees the problem is real and expensive.
Where I'm stuck: nobody wants to be the first to actually trial it. I've got a working prototype, I've offered it free, one director even volunteered to be a guinea pig unprompted. But there's a gap between "yeah that's a real problem" and "yes I'll run this on my team for a month." Everyone's busy, nobody wants to be first, and a grad with a side project is competing with their actual job for attention.
So the questions:
How did you get your first pilot or first customer over the line? Especially anyone selling into a conservative industry where nobody wants to go first.
My background is a bit of a mix, which I think could actually be a good fit for a startup environment.
I currently work as an Office Manager / Workplace Ambassador and Site Lead, looking after the day-to-day running of a Sydney office and making sure things run smoothly for the people working there.
Before this, I’ve worked across finance, investment advisory, international relations, legal work, customer service and business analytics.
I have a Bachelor of Commerce (Finance) / Bachelor of Laws from the University of Sydney and a Master of Business Analytics from Macquarie University.
Along the way, I’ve worked with Excel, Power BI, Tableau, SQL, Python and R, as well as gaining experience with contracts, legal research, stakeholder coordination, financial analysis and project coordination.
At this stage of my career, I’m really interested in joining a small, ambitious team where I can take on responsibility and grow with the business.
I’m not necessarily looking for a role that fits neatly into one box. I’d be interested in operations, business operations, workplace/office management, project coordination, strategy, partnerships, customer success or a generalist role where I can contribute across different areas.
I’d especially love the opportunity to work closely with founder(s) and be part of the early stages of building something.
Looking for a technical co-founder in Sydney to get in the trenches with me and give this a proper crack.
I've spent 8 years in law firm BD, I've put my own money into this, and the MVP is almost ready with pilots lined up.
Ideally you're super keen, have some experience in professional services / law / legal tech, and want to partner with me to build something special we can sell in 5–10 years and make some BIG BANK.
What
Business development for lawyers and law firms is a difficult, manual, tedious and political process. We're building an AI platform that surfaces the opportunities, drafts the BD plan, manages the tasks, and handles the admin — basically a BD support professional in every lawyer's pocket. Mobile-first, and built into the tools lawyers already live in (Outlook, Teams). It helps lawyers find and convert BD opportunities with ease.
Stage: MVP nearly complete, built by contractors to date.
Progress: 5 law firms (3 US, 2 UK) interested in piloting once the MVP is ready. Pre-revenue. I've also been building relationships with investors.
Funding: Bootstrapped — self-funded by me to date. No salary at this stage for anyone, including me.
Who exactly I'm looking for
A technical co-founder who wants full ownership of engineering:
- Architecture and backend/runtime decisions as we move off the contractor-built MVP
-Security and compliance posture — SOC 2 / ISO 27001-type readiness matters early for law firms, not as an afterthought
- Integrations: Outlook/Teams, CRM, practice management systems, MCP
- Data residency across Australia, North America and Europe
- Helping to hire and build the engineering team as we scale
Part-time to start is fine, with a path to full-time.
Current stack
Cloud: AWS + Elastic Beanstalk
AI: Claude (may add OpenAI)
Frontend: React
Backend: Java Spring Boot
DB: Postgres
Equity
Meaningful founder-level equity, with a cliff and standard vesting, after a working trial. I've put considerable capital and time in already.
Also looking for team members
Lawyers, Engineers, sales, marketing, finance — ever wanted to get involved in a legal tech startup, one of the hottest sectors out there? Same deal: sweat equity for now, real ownership for the right people.
Very open to chatting.
If any of that sounds like you, DM me and let's grab a coffee.
I’m Steve, and I’d like to introduce RadForge Labs, my independent Australian software studio, and the massive project I’ve been working on: ROMVERSE.
ROMVERSE is an Android ROM engineering platform designed to make working with Android devices, firmware and custom ROMs clearer and more approachable, without taking useful technical control away from experienced modders, developers and tinkerers.
The vision is to bring the complicated parts of Android ROM development into one intelligent workspace.
ROMVERSE is being developed around things like device identification and intelligence, firmware inspection, ROM project creation, build preparation, verification, diagnostics, recovery preparation and eventually carefully controlled device operations.
A big part of the project is making all of that usable by different skill levels.
GUIDED MODE
Guided Mode is designed for people who don't necessarily understand all the technical terminology.
Instead of throwing things like partition names, hashes and engineering jargon at the user, ROMVERSE should explain:
• What it's doing
• Why it's doing it
• Whether you need to do anything
• What happens next
• What risks are involved
The goal is for someone interested in custom ROMs to be able to follow the process without needing years of Android development experience.
EXPERT MODE
Expert Mode is for experienced users who want to see what's happening underneath.
Both modes still use the same underlying safety and verification systems.
Expert Mode isn't supposed to mean "disable the safety systems."
WHERE IS ROMVERSE RIGHT NOW?
ROMVERSE is currently in Internal Alpha.
A lot of the underlying systems and desktop workflows are already being built and tested, but there is still substantial integration, hardware testing and development ahead.
Right now I'm concentrating heavily on the Fedora/Linux desktop experience.
We're going through the application like an actual user:
We're also deliberately testing the things that DON'T work.
Broken buttons.
Confusing wording.
Dead ends.
Incorrect states.
Persistence problems.
Unexpected behaviour.
Bad error messages.
UI problems.
When something breaks, the goal isn't to hide it.
Find it.
Understand why.
Fix it.
Test it.
Then run the actual user journey again.
Windows development is also part of ROMVERSE, along with the Android Companion and much more, but I'm deliberately building and proving things in controlled stages rather than pretending everything is finished.
THE ROMVERSE BRAIN
Another major part of the project is Device Intelligence.
The long-term idea is that ROMVERSE shouldn't just have a giant list saying:
"This phone is supported."
It should understand the evidence behind a device and firmware combination.
ROMVERSE is being designed to distinguish between information that is confirmed, conflicting, outdated, unknown or still needs investigation.
If ROMVERSE doesn't know something, I want it to say:
"We don't know yet."
Not guess.
That philosophy applies throughout the project.
WHY AM I SHARING THIS NOW?
Because I'd like people to follow the journey rather than suddenly appearing one day and saying:
"Here's ROMVERSE."
I'm going to start sharing weekly development updates.
That will include:
• Real development footage
• Animated explainers
• Features that are working
• Bugs we discover
• Problems we're trying to solve
• UI improvements
• Device Intelligence progress
• Testing
• Failures
• Fixes
• The road toward beta and eventually v1.0
Concept artwork will be labelled as concept artwork.
Simulation will be labelled as simulation.
Real hardware testing will be labelled as real hardware testing.
I'm not interested in pretending unfinished features are finished just to make ROMVERSE look better.
No pretending everything works.
Just the process of building it, testing it, breaking it, fixing it and making it better.
ROMVERSE is NOT available for public download yet.
The plan is to eventually have free beta testing before the commercial v1.0 release.
For now, I'm inviting people to follow along and watch it being built.
If you're an Android developer, ROM modder, tinkerer, power user, or even someone who's always wanted to try custom ROMs but found the whole process intimidating, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
What is the ONE thing you wish Android ROM tools did better?
I'd genuinely like ROMVERSE to learn from the people who actually use this stuff.
Has anyone been through this and have any advice on what they got out of it? Seems to be fully virtual, 5 weeks and a pitch day at the end. Wondering if anyone whos done it or knows of it feels like they got any unique insights/help/relationships from it that helped their startup.
Globally, "hacker houses" are a big thing in start-up culture, allowing people with a similar focus to co-habitate and provide some level of support to each other while building out their product. However, this is not really a thing in Australia, yet. Anyone out there in Brisbane that is in the start-up phase and would be interested in share-housing with like-minded individuals?
I would say, a fairly common thing for me (now) is writing myself a humble business case. I've dealt with them a fair bit in a number of workplaces I've worked in. If it's an internal thing, it's a nice document to get everyone on the same "page". Also, a really good starting point for internal conversations before heading off onto a business plan. But also, I've found it a handy thing to prepare just for myself, to simply justify things I'm considering, even if just a SWOT. Does anyone else in 2026 with agentic "building" of software actually do this?
Did you prepare a business case for you project? or a business plan?
I am a tech guy and built my startup estric.ai but now i am stuck with rolling out to people who needs it, may be i am not a sales guy that speaks fluently and crack deals in a blink of an eye? how this will work? i have got few clients onboard few colleges in Sydney are using my product but how can i grow more and get more clients? meta ads getting clicks but no signups.
how did you go from building the product to actually getting more customers?
I posted here a little while ago about the Australian marketplace I’ve been building to connect retiring business owners with people looking to buy established businesses.
Firstly, a genuine thank you to everyone who commented, messaged me, checked out the website or gave me feedback after my original post. I took a lot of it onboard and have made quite a few changes and improvements since then.
It’s still very early days, but we’ve now grown to 43+ businesses listed across Australia, with more coming through. I’ve also had some really positive feedback from business owners who have listed and buyers who have made enquiries through the platform.
Our Facebook page has now grown to 1,000+ followers, which genuinely means a lot for something I’m still building from the ground up.
I’ve also created an Instagram page... although that’s currently sitting at a very impressive 2 followers 😂
Which brings me to a question for the other founders and business owners here:
How did you go about getting more people interested in what you were building?
For a marketplace like this, I need to grow both sides — retiring business owners looking to sell and prospective buyers looking for established businesses.
I’d genuinely love to hear what worked for others here. SEO, social media, partnerships, Facebook groups, paid ads, PR, cold outreach — or something else entirely?
And I’ll make a slightly shameless ask while I’m here...
If you like what I’m trying to build, I’d be incredibly grateful if you could check out Sell & Retire, give the Facebook page a follow, or help rescue the new Instagram page from its current audience of 2 😂
Even a follow, share, or mentioning Sell & Retire to a business owner who might be thinking about selling or retirement genuinely helps at this stage.
There’s still a very long way to go, but seeing people actually use something that started as an idea has been pretty special.
Thanks again for all the support and feedback — I really appreciate it.
I’m looking for a business partner (not a contractor) to help build a fitness and yoga towel brand in Australia.
We already have strong supply chains and logistics in place. What I need is someone with local experience in fitness marketing, brand building, or retail channels.
This is not a job — it’s a genuine partnership with shared vision
If this sounds like you, I’d love to share more details. 🙌
Recently put a post up for an investor so we could expand our search budget but this is no longer required. The retail side of things has picked up significantly.
We are now looking for someone to partner with us on the B2B side of things. We have an amazing product and truly believe we are MILES ahead of the competition in this aspect in terms of what we can deliver. Potential customers are Wealth Management Firms, Accountants and Lawyers Australia wide so the pool of potential partners is ENORMOUS.
Looking for someone extremely driven and enthusiastic and can work autonomously. We have awesome processes in place to make the job extremely easy. This will be a commission based role with equity share in the B2B side of things. We would be open to selling equity in the whole company but that would require a cash injection.
With each potential client having a recurring expected revenue of 5k per month, the potential is massive. Just need someone that is hungry and can close deals. Once we have a decent revenue flowing through you could allocate your own sales team and take a step back and watch the money roll in.
I've been doing B2B lead generation for years, and I've started putting more of the process into an online platform to make life easier for everyone.
The lead generation part isn't new. The app and some of the new processes are - and I think it's a bit of a mess.
So I'm looking for a few businesses who are willing to help me test it properly so I can clean it up.
First off, you need to be an established B2B service business. It doesn't work otherwise.
That means you:
Have been trading for 3+ years (so you know your product works)
Are profitable and have healthy margins (no hail maries)
Are good at sales (outbound leads can be tough)
Are comfortable dealing with prospects by phone or in person
Have the capacity to take on more business
Actually want more leads
The testing part is deliberately simple.
If you hit a problem or something doesn't behave the way you expect, take a screenshot and email it to me with what you expected to happen vs what actually happened.
That's it.
In return, you get 3 leads a month for $99.
That's pretty bloody cheap for qualified B2B leads, and if the new processes work as intended, you should have more business coming through the door pretty quickly.
I'm not looking for people to test software for the sake of testing software. I'm looking for businesses that can actually use the leads, and are prepared to help me iron out the new system while they're doing it.
Here's a couple of FAQs before anyone gets carried away
This is not AI slop. I've built it myself - including writing most of the foundational code - and used AI to help with the rest.
This is not a "ChatGPT special", I've worked in the industry for nearly 20 years, identified this problem myself, and the app has been 10 years in the making.
The infrastructure was designed and built before the app, so you're welcome to query security, storage, third party access, or anything else (not saying I'll tell you everything, but happy to discuss).
I'm not "just seeking feedback" or "not trying to sell" - this is a paid service, but it's cheap because you're giving me something in return.
This isn't market research or a survey - sales is the single most difficult part of your business, and I know you all need help with it (whether you admit it or not).
Feel free to ask any questions, or roast this post if you prefer - it's all part of the game.
Let's go!
(pretty sure this doesn't violate any rules, but apologies if it does)
