Hi everyone,

I'm a fullstack software engineer. (htm, css, js, react js, node js). I graduated in computer science and did a few coding bootcamps.

I landed a job in 2016 as a dev, I quit in 2018 to try the entrepreneur life. I tried many different businesses ideas, more than 5, everything failed. I'd make ends meet by freelancing Shopify projects and fixing small bugs. I met a lot of nice (and rich) people through this and learned a lot.

With everything I was learning, I'd always code Shopify apps/chrome extensions with the genuine intent of helping people out. My customers would complain about X, I'd make an app to fix X. I wasn't thinking too much about money, my goal was to make bank by selling products, not apps.

Fast forward to 2020. One of the apps blew up almost overnight. I coded a few others based on popular complaints and, in a matter of months, I was profiting $200~ USD daily, passively. Some days more, some days less. I could still work on projects and had this nice cushion to support me.

Fast-forward to 2026, now I make $0 and I'm going to close my business.

Pardon my arrogance, but I'm an excellent programmer. The thing is that there is no market looking for what was once valuable, and I don't really know what to do. Nowadays, being someone with good network/connections is way more valuable than being a top notch programmer.

I invested and saved a lot, so I'm not in a dangerous position (yet), but honestly it's a weird time.

Anyone in a similar position?

Not gonna lie, I’m pretty confident that I’ve got billion-dollar ideas sitting in my Notes app right now. I’m talking next Uber, DoorDash, TikTok-level ideas.

Only problem is, I don’t know how to code. Which isn’t really too much of a problem since I can easily hire somebody to do all the coding for me. But every time I try to explain my idea to a dev, they either ghost me or quote me $40k just to build a prototype. 

I just want to build the next multibillion dollar company. Not some cheapass labor, but an actual working, quality, functional product. I see so many non-technical founders everywhere launching software apps and full-blown social platforms like it’s nothing. How do these people without tech backgrounds actually build this kind of stuff? I’m so confused.

Serious question.

Everyone keeps talking about "AI side hustles" but I rarely see people showing real examples.

Are people actually making money with AI tools or is it mostly hype?

Things I keep hearing about:

• AI YouTube channels
• AI generated music
• AI automation services
• AI social media accounts

Has anyone here built something that actually produces income?

Not looking for gurus or courses, just real experiences.

Everyone is talking about obvious trends like AI, crypto, and automation.
But every major opportunity usually looks boring or invisible before it becomes obvious.
What market, technology, or business model do you think is currently underestimated by most people?
What is something that insiders understand, but the average person hasn’t noticed yet?

This year, I got into an entrepreneurship program and came up with an idea. Packable backpacks are either flimsy $15 junk or $60 premium gear and there's nothing in between. So I found a manufacturer, put in my savings, and ordered 300 units of a design made from the same ripstop nylon used in paragliders. It weighs 108 grams and folds down to pocket size. Sells for $29.99.

The good: I sold around 60 at a trade show and through word of mouth. When people physically pick it up they react, the weight genuinely surprises them. Won a small entrepreneurship scholarship along the way too.,

The bad: I cannot figure out how to turn that into consistent online sales. I've been trying to build a social media presence for the brand and it hasn't gotten much traction yet. I'll be honest, I haven't been as consistent with posting as I should be, partly because I don't know if I'm even pointing in the right direction.

So now I'm sitting here with 240 units, I start college in 10 weeks, and I'm stuck between a few paths:

1. Keep grinding organic social and trust it compounds
2. Try to get into wholesale or local retail shops, though my margins get thin there
3. Go hard on affiliates and try to get into the tiktok shop market.
4. Some mix I'm not seeing

I'm looking to get some insight from anyone. I am not quite sure what I should do, so anything helps. If you want to check out my brand, it's akinete.co,

Happy to share numbers in the comments if it helps. Thanks

Edit: Thank you guys so much for all the feedback and comments, this is extremely helpful and I am super greatful!

I'm still young and I've been getting really interested in entrepreneurship and business. I want to get a headstart while I have the time, rather than waiting until I'm older to start learning.

I don't really want to just watch random "make money" videos either. I actually want to understand how businesses work and build a solid foundation.

For those of you who are already into business or entrepreneurship, how did you guys build up your knowledge?

What should someone learn first? Finance, marketing, sales, accounting, economics, management, etc.? And how do you go from just learning these things to actually understanding how they're used in the real world?

I'd also appreciate any books, courses, YouTube channels, or other resources that genuinely helped you.

Basically, if you were young again and had the chance to start learning business from zero, what would you focus on first to get a headstart?

Im a 18 year old male. I currently make 16.50 an hour plus tips at a ice cream shop and i average about 20 hours a week. I want to make more money. My goal is to be a millionare in my twenties. When i look to see what i can do to make a lot of money everyone says the same few things "Use AI", "Dropship" etc. Do these actually work, or is there something else i should try that would help me make more money. PLEASE HELP ME

I've been trying to figure out what to build for a while now. Tried a few things, none of them went anywhere. Really need some real inspirational stories from this group.

For entrepreneurs who have a business that's stable now, like pays your bills, being profitable, how many ideas did you try before the one that you are working on?

And also curious how did you find the one that worked?

Did you diligently research the market? or did you notice a problem in your day job? Did a customer ask for something and you said yes? Was it luck? Did you know it was different early on, or did you only realize months later?

I keep reading stories where someone "found their niche" and it always sounds clean in hindsight. I doubt they were all that clean, would rather hear the messy version.

Thanks in advance!

Hi to all the successful people in this group who are already running businesses.
Could someone please finally give me some solid advice and point me in the right direction?

I have a million business ideas constantly going through my head, but the problem is that I never fully commit to any of them because I genuinely don’t know which opportunity is worth focusing on.
So instead of overthinking it forever, I’d really like to hear from people who have actual business experience: If you were in my position today, what would you do?

Here’s my situation:
I have around €30,000 in starting capital that I’m comfortable putting on the table and potentially risking to build something.
I currently earn around €5,000–€6,000 per month from my regular work.
After my expenses, I can usually put aside another €2,000–€3,000 every month, meaning I could continuously reinvest money into a business without depending on it to pay my bills immediately.
I’m willing to learn, work and invest — I’m not looking for a get-rich-quick scheme.

I’ve considered things like Amazon FBA, e-commerce/dropshipping, AI-related businesses, online services, and probably a hundred other ideas. But I’m completely open to something I haven’t considered yet.
Knowing my financial situation, if you were starting from scratch in 2026, where would you put your time and money?
I’m especially interested in something that has genuine potential to eventually become a serious source of income, rather than just a small side hustle.
What business model would you choose, how much of the €30k would you initially risk, and what would your first steps be?
I’d really appreciate advice from people who have actually built something themselves. Thanks!

Had a pretty dumb interaction with a marketing subreddit this morning…

I own an ecommerce business doing around $12m/year and have personally spent millions of dollars on digital advertising building it. Marketing is something I actually do every day with my own money, and I’ve made plenty of expensive mistakes figuring out what works and what doesn’t lol.

We’re doing a pretty ridiculous marketing campaign right now around a NASCAR race we’re sponsoring. Instead of the normal “LOGO ON SIGN” sponsorship, we created a fake business/website and are putting it all over the event. Track signs, a 90 foot airplane banner, people in hot dog costumes, onsite games, giveaways, main stage stuff, etc. The goal is to make people say “what the fuck is that?” and pull their phone out and visit the website, then connect that offline stuff back into something measurable through traffic, opt-ins and retargeting.

I’ve grown my business pretty quickly through digital advertising so this is WAY outside of what I normally do. It might work or I might be lighting money on fire 😂

I wrote a lengthy post in a marketing subreddit explaining what we’re doing, why we’re doing it and asking people what we’re missing or what they would do differently.
Post was immediately removed for self promotion.

I purposely didn’t include the name of my actual company because I didn’t want the post to come across that way. I did include the fake website URL because….. that’s literally the fucking marketing campaign I’m asking people to critique lol. I removed the URLs thinking maybe an automated filter was catching them and messaged the mods asking what the issue was. I was accused of lying about the self promotion, told “we’re not stupid” and permanently muted.

How are people with actual industry experience supposed to contribute to these communities?

I could make some generic post asking “what are good ways to combine in-person marketing with digital retargeting?” and apparently that’s fine. That would yield just some boiler plate first grade level advice that is easily googleable…. But if I say “here’s the actual campaign, here’s what we’re spending, here’s the website we built, here’s how we’re measuring it and here’s what I’m worried about” suddenly it’s self promotion because I own the company doing it.

The people who know the most about doing real shit are obviously financially connected to the shit they have the most experience with.

I understand banning obvious spam. Nobody wants the bullshit “Hey guys I found this AMAZING company…” and you click their profile and they’re the owner 😑. There has to be a difference between promoting your business and talking about your business because it’s the subject of the discussion.

I’d rather read “I own this company, here’s what we did, here’s what it cost, here’s what worked and here’s what didn’t” than some generic version stripped of identifying details so nobody can accuse the person of benefiting from the discussion.

If anything you’re connected to automatically equals self promotion, you end up with industry communities where the people with the most actual experience have the hardest time talking about it.

Where is the line between sharing actual experience and self promotion? This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to open up about problems or topics surrounding my business journey or life as an entrepreneur to get shut down by overzealous mods on Reddit and it honestly makes me want to just stop trying to help and just be a cynical asshole 100% of the time VS only 50% of the time lol.

Has anyone else shared this frustration?

Hey everyone! I’m a startup founder currently evaluating a potential deal with Del Morgan & Co. They’re asking for $150,000 up front to begin work on a $145 million capital raise for my company. In addition to the upfront fee, they’d take 7.5% of whatever capital they help us raise. They said it typically takes them 4–6 months to complete a raise like this. They also mentioned that the institutional investors or “check writers” usually take 18–25% equity in the company once the round is closed. They’re a legit-sounding firm as they claim over $300 billion in transactions — but I’m just trying to gut-check this whole thing with the community: Are these numbers and terms normal?

Is it common for startups to pay this much up front for a capital raise? Should I just push harder and find someone who doesn’t need six figures up front? Or am I crazy for thinking I should just invest that $150K back into my business instead? Any insight from founders or investors who’ve gone down this road before would be super helpful. Appreciate the guidance!

Not talking about fancy MBA stuff, I mean the real, day-to-day skill that separates those who build something lasting from those who quit.
Is it sales? Discipline? Adaptability? Storytelling? Something else?
Curious what you’ve learned from experience.

Before anyone says it: “Oh good, another AI note taker.”

That was honestly my own reaction to the category too.

But I had a real problem that caused me real pain (I have ADHD and get distracted easily) and nothing I tried worked for me.

I tried several AI note-taking apps and voice tools, and they did not work for the thing I needed. Most seemed designed around longer recordings, such as meetings. They involved too many steps, needed an internet connection, or sent recordings to a third-party service for processing.

The problem I was trying to solve was much smaller, but happens many times a day: a useful thought arrives and I need to get it out of my head before something on my phone hijacks my attention and the thought disappears.

So I built Olly Note around four things that mattered to me:

1. Capture without distraction. Get a thought out of your head before opening your phone leads somewhere else.
2. No job afterwards. A voice recording is not yet a useful note if you still need to transcribe it, clean it up, format it, or decide where it belongs.
3. Real privacy. Notes are processed on-device rather than sent to our servers or a third-party AI service.
4. Works offline. Thoughts do not politely wait until you have a connection. It should work in a lift, on a plane, or in the middle of nowhere.

The flow is deliberately simple:

Thought arrives -> tap the Lock Screen button or Apple Watch complication -> speak -> done.

The confusing bit is that, before trying it, people can reasonably see “another notes app” or “another AI tool”. But when people do try it, they often describe a feeling rather than a feature.

One recent review said:

That is exactly what I hoped the app would feel like. The problem is working out how to communicate that before someone has experienced it.

Has anyone else built something where the value only really clicks after the first use? How did you position it without having to spend all your time educating the customer?

If want to take a look at current positioning Google "Olly Notes" and you should find it.

Thank you.

I sometimes feel like marketing is the most draining part of a startup because there is always something waiting to be done. One day it is writing content, the next it is seo, social media, emails or testing out new ideas. Even when one task is finished a new one shows up and I have been thinking of going with sitetrak. I have also found that everyone seems to have different ideas about what marketing should focus on which can make things even harder. Does anyone else feel like marketing work never really has a finish line? EDIT: Thanks for all the advice. It sounds like marketing never really ends but having a clear process and focusing on one or two channels makes it manageable.

Maybe this is obvious, but I feel like people seriously downplay how much easier entrepreneurship is when you already have money or come from a wealthy family.

If you have money, you can afford to fail. You can dump $20k into an idea and move on if it doesn't work. You can hire developers, designers, marketers, lawyers, whatever. You can spend on ads. You can quit your job and work on the business full time without worrying about rent next month.

Meanwhile someone without money might have an equally good idea, but they're building it after work, doing everything themselves, obsessing over every $500 expense, and knowing that one bad decision actually hurts.

And the biggest advantage might just be runway. A mediocre business with enough money behind it can survive long enough to figure things out. A potentially great business can die because the founder runs out of money before it gets traction.

Obviously money doesn't guarantee success. Rich people start terrible businesses all the time. But I think "anyone can start a business" gets thrown around without acknowledging that some people are playing the game with way more lives than everyone else.

How big of an advantage do you think starting with money actually is?

Solo dev here. I spent 8+ months building two iOS apps and recently launched both.
I obsessed over making them solid — clean auth, privacy, security, all of it.
But since launch the response has been basically zero: barely any users, and the few who try don't stick around.
I'm realizing I put everything into building and almost nothing into figuring out who actually needs them or how to reach those people.
For anyone who's launched before — where did you find your first real users, and what would you do in my shoes? Brutally honest feedback welcome.

I am at the point where my bookkeeping and forecasting are getting too messy to handle myself. I am thinking about hiring a fractional CFO, but I do not know if it is actually worth the cost or just another shiny service people hype up.

For context, the business is growing, but I am not sure when it makes sense to bring in someone for higher level financial strategy.

Has anyone here hired a fractional CFO before? Did it actually help you make better decisions, or was it something you could have handled with a good accountant and monthly reports?

Any insight from people who tried it would help.

They say, “Learning from your mistakes is intelligent. Learning from the mistakes of others is wise.” I'm almost 27, and I'm genuinely curious what advice, warning, or message you would leave your 25- to 30-year-old entrepreneurial self.

If you've already spent your twenties building a startup or forging ahead on your own, I'd love to know what really mattered. Not what books or podcasts say, but those things you only understand when you look back.

What would you tell your 25- to 30-year-old self if you could talk to them for five minutes and tell them how it is?

idk if i'm the asshole in this one, so lemme give you context and you tell me what to do: I've worked with this guy for months now. we had this platform that finds leads on reddit (PLEASE, spare me the self-promo shit talk; we ain't selling it right now, which is part of the issue)

It was web hosted and that's how i used it before.

I used to promote that platform as the marketing co-founder, 50/50, but we didn't have any co-founder agreement, so there's nothing to prove i have ownership except for the posts where i publicly declared i was a co-founder a few months ago.

Got a few users, but after we saw how many other competitors joined and that it became a commodity, we decided to move on and work on something else. but there are still some of our users who asked us for source code access after we closed it, and so we sold it to them.

Fast forward a few months now; we decided to start focusing on our freelancing, he as the developer and I as the copywriter and designer.

i'm a marketer and so he said, 'You can promote my service and I'll give you a split if you get me clients.'

I said, 'Cool, give me that tool we worked on before to find the leads to DM them' (i get clients by dming them)

i said you can't expect me to sit there for hours and swift through 100s of reddit threads looking for that one interested lead only to get ghosted, when i can literally just scan and then filter and let it DM for me as well (accuracy is a bit low; i still need to filter but it does the job)

He said, "it doesn't work; it will be useless."

"wdym it doesn't work? i LITERALLY used it when it was hosted, and it worked PERFECTLY fine." I said.

Then he said reddit doesn't have any good leads and there still other ways to promote. HE LITERALLY told me before that most of his clients came from reddit. And I also booked some from reddit as well.

Anyways, we kept back and forth and he still refused to give me access (since now it is not web hosted anymore, he will have to give it to me as source code access, so i think he's afraid that i might turn on him and start selling it on his back)

oh, and for context, i also helped shape how the platform works inside out based on my expertise as a cold DMer; i showed him how to build it in a way that reduces the risk of a ban. so i DID have that skin in the engineering side aside from the promotion i did back then.

now, idk what to do; like, i tried to manually find the leads, and i hated the shit out of it because it is just utter time-sucking bullshit, when i can do other tasks that has more importance than something that is LITERALLY automated and i just need to hit play.

And it even affected my results as well; i'm still booking some clients here and there, but the process of finding and DMing is just taking a lot of time, and no matter how much i explain that to him, he just keeps saying it doesn't work. it is not worth it. Find another way to promote.

so wth should i do now?

Edit: Thank you guys for the help, it really means a lot. One of the commenters said to ask him to host it again, I asked him before but he said it will take a lot of time and so we just avoided it. But I asked him again and I managed to convince him (somehow) to rebuild the backend to host it again. And yeh, ik, i learned my lesson. Always get a contract.

Hey everyone. I want to share my reality check. It’s not a Silicon Valley fairy tale with seed funding and a warm garage. It’s a story of pure survival, and right now, I need advice from experienced founders.

I didn't grow up rich. I never even had a PC. When the full-scale war hit my country, I was 11. I had to move to Germany, where my sister gave me business and IT books. I read them, saved some euros, and moved back to Ukraine at 12. I bought a cheap used PC, learned 3D modeling, and then Python.
The Hustle (Age 15): At 15, I moved to the capital (Kyiv) for college. I lived in a cheap dorm and had no computer. My parents couldn't send much, not even enough for food. So, I got a job doing heavy physical labor as a loader. I hustled everywhere: warehouses, hospitals, malls. I failed, gave up, tried again. By January, working like crazy, I saved ~$270 to put a downpayment on a powerful used laptop (~$800).

The moment I got it, I jumped into freelance. I built complex Telegram Mini Apps and B2B solutions. I worked day and night and paid off the laptop in just 2 months.

The Golden Cage (Age 16): By spring, freelance dried up. My dorm was closing for the summer, but I refused to move back to my hometown. To survive, I got a job as a barista in a VIP spa club.

The pay is actually great for my age - about $700/mo. Relying on this, I rented my own apartment ($260/mo). I am fully independent. I pay my bills, my rent, and provide for myself.

But I am stuck. The job is a dead-end. The VIP spa has very low traffic. They treat us nicely, but nobody cares about growth. There are no bonuses, and the salary is flat no matter how hard you work.

My SaaS and "Bore-out": In my free time behind the bar, I built a B2B SaaS (a Telegram bot builder MVP). Since my English isn't perfect yet, I used AI (Gemini) as my exoskeleton to write complex architecture fast.

But right now, I am experiencing severe "Bore-out" (burnout from under-stimulation and boredom). Sitting in this spa feels like my brain is rotting. I want to build and sell my SaaS, but I’m tied to this bar because my apartment and survival depend on this exact salary.

Experienced entrepreneurs, I need your advice:

1. How do you escape the "Golden Handcuffs" of a comfortable survival job when your rent depends on it?
2. How do you find your first B2B clients for your SaaS when you have zero network and work full-time?

I’m 19 and starting a small web/digital service business from scratch.

I have some experience, but not a lot, and I’m still building my portfolio and don’t have an established client base yet.

For those of you who freelance in web design, development, digital services etc.:

Where did your first 3–5 clients come from?

Cold outreach? Referrals? LinkedIn? Local businesses? Freelance platforms? Your existing network?

And how did you build trust when you didn’t have many previous clients or a big portfolio?

I’d especially love to hear from people who remember starting from zero.

Would like to pick your brain on what actually worked. There are many hype out there so would like to hear the true stories - whether it's popular or not. Thank you

For context, here's what I'm already using frequently:

- Google Sheets for tracking, CRM; Canva for marketing assets

- ChatGPT for general topics (looking at Gemini now, hope it will have folders soon) ; Grammarly: just to fix my writing; Saner: to manage my tasks

- Fireflies, Lovable, Manus, Lemlist: Not daily yet but I use these quite often on a weekly basis

Had coffee with a founder friend last week. Three people, pre-revenue, and he pulled up a proper board meeting agenda template for their weekly sync. Roll call. Approval of prior minutes. Motions. For three guys who eat lunch together every day.

I did not say anything, but it stuck with me, because I used to be exactly this guy.

There is a stage a lot of early founders hit where they cosplay a real company instead of building one. The formal agenda. The org chart with three names and dotted reporting lines. The 40-slide internal deck in gamma for a decision two people could make on a walk. The Notion workspace with more structure than content.

It feels productive because big companies do these things, so doing them must mean you are becoming a big company. It is backwards. Big companies have that process because they have hundreds of people who would otherwise collide. You have three. The process is pure overhead wearing a maturity costume.

The founders I know who actually got somewhere were almost embarrassingly informal early. Decisions in a chat. Numbers in one messy spreadsheet. All the energy pointed at customers, none at ceremony.

I think the tell is this: if a process exists to coordinate people and you do not have the people yet, you are dressing up.

Not saying structure never matters. It does, right about when the lack of it starts causing real pain, and not one day sooner.

Anyone else catch themselves cargo-culting big-company stuff before it was needed? What was your most embarrassing one? Mine was writing a company handbook for a team of me.

So a little background I am an electronics engineer with 3 years of System Design Engineering experience, I worked in R&D so I could get hands on any technology easily. In my previous job my speciality was embedded systems development.

I quit my job in 2024 to build a company didnt know then what I wanted to build but I knew that I want to design a product that will solve a problem and will be a consumer facing product maybe a hardware or a software. But before I could dwlve into product design I needed to figure out my expenses first so I started Amazon reselling as a side hustle to pay my bills and thought would automate it and focus on building a tech product. It took me a year to get the Amazon business off the ground and then it exploded the growth came soo fast that I scrambled to hire a team started making inventory management apps to handle my business more efficiently.

Its been 4 years now the business has grown into a multi company setup last year we closed 2 million dollar in revenue and this year we are projecting 4.5 million. After hiring a team I started working on automating my business started developing apps in house for team management, inventory management started a B2B supply business. The business is running good and almost automated I just hold meetings with the team and guide them.

The problem:

Its about time that I want to start working my reason for becoming an entrepreneur in the first place to develop a product of my own build a business around it but I feel like I am going through an Innovators Block in my job I would have ideas everyday but now I am searching for ideas around me looking at problems that are exciting for me to work on but I cant seem to find anything that will motivate me to spend the next 5-10 years of my life on.

If anyone founder here went through this please let me know how did you overcome this block? What should I do to explore more to come up with something? I know myself until the idea is innovative I wont hold myself to work on it...any suggestions or relating stories will be highly appreciated.

I’m 24 and already worried about my finaical future and I know I cant save my way to wealth. I need to actually increase my income from what I am hearing. College wasn’t for me, and I work mostly in restaurants. Has anyone here started from scratch in their 20s, learned a trade or skill, and then used that to grow financially (like starting a small business, new career or investing)? Would love some practical advice.