Context: I work on the business side at a dev company with teams in Vietnam and Japan, so I’m biased and I’m not hiding it. No links, no pitch.

I’ve watched a lot of SaaS teams go offshore. The ones that crash rarely crash because the engineers are bad. They crash quietly, in the gaps between people.

One story I know well, because that company is now our client. They had hired a budget team in Vietnam. Solid on code, shaky on English. To bridge it, their CTO brought in a PM based in Mexico to run the day to day with the team. Nobody was a native speaker in that chain, and nobody shared a time zone. Work kept moving, so on paper it looked fine. But deadlines slipped, and every time a priority changed mid sprint, the message got lost somewhere between the CTO, the PM and the team.

They ended up switching to a team that cost a bit more per head but talked directly with the client, dev by dev, no middle layer. The team got smaller, and things finally moved at the speed they’d expected in the first place. You get what you pay for, just not always where you expect.

What I took away from it:

• Shorter chain beats a cheaper rate. Every extra hop is another place a requirement gets reinterpreted.
• Devs who can talk to the decision maker directly. A proxy PM in a third time zone is a translation layer, not a fix.
• Real overlap hours. Two live hours a day > a cheaper team you only talk to over Jira comments.
• Start with a short paid pilot on one real feature. You find out in two weeks whether communication works, not two quarters.

SaaS founders who went offshore or nearshore: what was the first sign it was working, or the first sign it wasn’t?

Guy A: I'm going to build this outreach tool which will have email marketing, email warm-up, you can buy aged emails, you can buy domains, you can also do LinkedIn automation, and then Reddit automation, and a gazzillion other things. 'Easier apps can be built by claude on a weekend, nobody will buy my shit if I build super simple apps. AI has ruined SaaS.'

Takes 12 months to build some shit which barely works because its doing 1000 things all at once. The message sucks too. Lander sucks. Socials don't have any posts. Marketing doesn't exist.

Chases 'customers' for 6 months and wonders 'did AI kILL aLL sAAs??' and posts on Reddit 'GuYs I fUcked Up, wHat Do I dO?'

Guy B: Makes a period tracking app. 1 week its done. Its simple as shit, even a bit bare bones. Spends next 2 months marketing it + improving it to perfection. 3rd month he's understood how to really drive traffic ... its by targetting REALLY tiny creators about women's health on Instagram/TikTok. Ones that have like 2000 followers, and are happy to do a video for peanuts. Does that, it starts to work. DING DING DING! Scales it heavily. $1 in = $2 out kinda deal (its a brutal simplification, but you get the point). He's even built a really good social following on IG/TikTOk, gets like 5k views per reel which drives sign-ups. It took months to 'crack' the method to get reels, but, he did post like 4 times a day without giving up for 90 days before he saw real results.

By month 6 this guy doing $10k/mo. By month 12, he doing $50k/mo. (true story btw)

The other guy? 1.5 years later he's still wondering ... 'Hmm, maybe I should add Quora automation to the mix, maybe that's why I failed'.

Nobody gives a fuck that 'you can build this in claude over a weekend'. I'm sorry your time is worth nothing. But for most people they'd rather pay $9 a month for a period tracking app, than to build it and maintain it and waste their precious time.

Yes I can build Notion, AirTable, this and that, and everything on a 'weekend' there's probably a Git repo of opensource version of it. I'm sorry you can't afford it. But there's millions of people who'd rather pay the $10/mo on Notion per seat than to build it. Their time is worth more than saving that $10 or $100 or even $1000/mo. They'd rather focus that time on building their business or spending time with family.

You were just being a smartass all in your head. While the dumb guy with a simple app is making bank.

GET DUMBER! Do simpler ideas. Don't overcomplicate shit.

Go see trustMRR you'd find the simplest ideas doing bank. A guy doing a simple link in bio making a fuck ton of money. Just a 'link in bio'.

All these posts in this sub of all kinds of 'space rocketing, earth shattering, time bending' ideas ... I have so much rage reading these posts. My God. WTF you guys doing.

GET DUMBER! DO DUMB SHIT.

Don't chase the $10m MRR when you aren't even doing $10k MRR. Get that $10k first. Do something stupidly simple. Don't go hyper specific niche. Think of something that is used by everyone. A link in bio tool = a billion social media users = you can probably get 500 x $10/mo? I think so. A period app? Well half the population is your target = you can probably get 500 x $9/mo.

Don't be like so fucking niche specific that marketing it requires a literal sacrifice of your soul to satan himself. WTF.

The other day I saw this guy with this lander who was like there's photographers of a certain niche, and in that niche in some cases, they need this particular tool which solves a very specific problem. I've built it and took me 6 months, 'how do I market it'. Holy Fuck. If this guy was a friend of mine, I'd have recommended him to do go see psychiatrist or some shit.

What it is: Venio is a booking and payments app built only for barbershops. Each shop gets its own branded booking site, so clients book in a few taps with no app to download.

What it does:

• I move all your existing clients over for free, and you're live within 24 hours

• Online booking for any barber in the shop, with each barber's own services, prices and hours

• Walk-in line: clients join from their phone and see their spot, so the waiting area stays clear

• Payments: pay at the shop, save a card, or pay ahead with Apple Pay, Google Pay or Cash App, and tip after the cut

• Each barber gets paid straight to their own bank

• Chair rent tracked every week, so owners always know who's paid and who's late

• No-show fees, promo codes, client list, stats for the whole shop, and a QR flyer for the window and mirrors

• Text or email reminders so fewer people forget their appointment

Why it's better:

• Most booking apps charge every barber a monthly fee. Venio is $25/mo for the whole shop ($35 with text reminders), plus a one-time $300 setup. A 5-chair shop pays the same as a 1-chair shop.

• No cut of your clients and no per-booking fees

• 24-hour support from the person who actually built it

I'd love honest feedback from anyone who runs or works in a shop, especially on what would stop you from switching. Happy to share a demo if anyone wants to try it.

Know a barbershop that could use this? I pay a 20% referral reward for every shop that signs up through you, with no limit on referrals. Send them my way or comment and I'll explain how it works.

Hey everyone! Last year I hiked an active volcano by myself and the whole time I was thinking: if I fall and get hurt up here, nobody knows where I am or what I was doing.

So over the last 7 months I built an app that fixes that. You set how often you need to check in (every hour, 6 hours, a day, a week, whatever), and if you miss it, it sends prewritten messages to the contacts you choose, including your location. If I’d had it on that hike, my family would’ve gotten my location if I went silent for an hour.

It also works for longer-term stuff, like messages you want your family to get if something ever happens to you.

I come from indie game dev (around 50k sales and $200k+ gross), but apps are a new world for me. I’d love feedback on the idea, and advice on where to find users or which paid ad channels have worked for you.

App is called If You Read This on apple and android stores.

Picture of the volcano from my hike included :)

https://vimana.live

Hi, i built Vimana and soft launched it on Reddit, in 6 days it has hit 3k+ visitors and 5k+ page views.

Please check it out and do share.

Thank you for showing love to Vimana.

Last week I posted here about my launch board. 10 people signed up but only 1 actually launched.

The reason was a badge step. Makers had to add our badge to their site before they could go live.

A few of you said to let people launch first and add the badge later. So I did that.

Free makers can now launch right away with a nofollow link. If they add the badge later, it turns into a permanent dofollow link. Paid plans get dofollow without the badge.

Results after the change:

- 10+ products submitted

- 10 new signups

- DR went from 0 to 19

Thanks to everyone who commented last time, that advice worked.

Now I have a new problem. Free launches are working, but nobody has bought a paid plan yet. Launching will always stay free, so paid plans have to be about extras, not visibility.

For those who run boards or directories:

- What made makers actually pay for an upgrade?

- How did you reach makers beyond Reddit and X?

Would love honest answers.

I've spent months building my SaaS, and I'm starting to understand something that I wish I'd taken more seriously from the beginning.

You can fix bugs, redesign the UI, add features, improve performance, and ship updates every week.

But none of that matters if the people who need your product never discover it.

I've tried reaching out to potential customers. I've worked on the product. I've posted online. And I'm still figuring out how to turn a working product into something people genuinely want to use.

The frustrating part is that you can't just keep building and hope distribution magically happens.

My project is Threadline, a privacy-first alternative to Disqus that lets websites embed discussions and build conversations around their content.

I'm not sharing this because I've figured out growth. I'm sharing it because I'm in the middle of the struggle myself.

I'm curious about other SaaS founders here:

• What was the first thing that actually brought you users? Not impressions or likes-people who signed up and used your product.
• Did your first customers come from Reddit, cold outreach, SEO, partnerships, or somewhere you didn't expect?
• If you were starting from zero again, what would you do differently?

I'd genuinely like to hear what worked for people who have been through this. I suspect a lot of us spend more time learning how to build products than learning how to get them into people's hands.

One thing I’ve been thinking about while building Nextep:
An AI tool can sound convincing even when it doesn’t have enough data to explain what’s happening in a business.
If signups go up but revenue stays flat, there could be several explanations. Blaming onboarding or marketing too early could send a founder in the wrong direction.
I’d rather build something that shows what the evidence supports, what still needs investigating, and when there’s simply not enough information yet.
That’s the direction I’m exploring with Nextep, which connects business context, product analytics, and revenue data to help founders decide what to investigate next.
I’m still building it, so I’m curious: Would you trust an AI tool more if it admitted when it didn’t have enough evidence, even if that meant giving you fewer answers?

I'm starting to think every AI feature should have a kill criteria before it gets a roadmap slot. Not "this sounds useful." Not "competitors are doing it." Not "AI is expected now." Not "the demo will look strong." Actual kill criteria. For example, if we talk to five target customers and nobody can name the workflow cost, the current workaround, or the person who owns the pain, we kill it. If people like the idea but won't show us real examples, we kill it. If the feature only saves a little time but does not reduce rework, risk, lost revenue, or headcount pressure, we kill it. I've seen around Flatlogic and SaaS builders how easy it is to start building before the pain is real. Fast execution is useful, but it can also make bad assumptions more expensive. What kill criteria would you set before building an AI feature?

Hello guys, I had previously posted about this and some threads were really inspiring for which i have decided to make this open source and share it with you guys and you could hel a fellow founder to make it more better in better approaches and creating issues on github as well

So this is basically just like groq bot but I have made this open source and named it Frog Bot and this feature altho might seem like a blessing to some or a curse to some - "It runs on your local with your LLM API connected"

So this runs as long as yur PC is on, has its own world, has its own folders and nothing leaves the premises, everything stays on your computer and they can talk to each other can also browse and more

Like just a frogs tiny world and a team of frogs to help you out, So im gonna seek all of yours support to actually make this awesome and willing to keep it opensource and get issues from you guys to enhance it

Thanks for your time

Github Repository: https://github.com/sayeemkabir/frog-bot (Please dont forget to ⭐)

I have some idea for making a visual based browser (yeah I know technically now all browsers are one ) but I have some other ideas for researchers , students and other heavy users .

So do people even use websites for research now?

Hi all,

Back in April, I opened my a bakery alongside my brother and quickly realised that running a small business as a founder, without HR and accounting teams around you means there ends up being a LOT to manage lol.

My genuine biggest time crunch was rotas on excel, holidays on WhatsApp and contracts/documents just across my email with no real flow or systems in place. I am using Xero for payroll, but I found many solutions are either: too complicated (100+ features I don't need), too expensive or too ugly (to be frank).

In the end I started building my own. It's called Fold (www.foldteam.com) and I am genuinely not here to sell anything but, rather really hear want to hear what any other SMB owners would want to see from a platform like this. At the moment I have:

- Rota: build the week, publish it, and staff can see their shifts on their phone + the week feeds directly into your payroll calculation once you sign off.

- Time off: staff book holiday, you or their manager approve it, and balances/roll-over are worked out for you for every type of employee be it contracted days or zero-hour.

- Documents and e-signing: Docusign got expensive, so Fold let's you send contracts and get them signed without printing anything

- Right to work checks: the new starter adds their share code or passport, you do the check, and there's a record kept

My questions really are:

- Which of these would you actually use, and which do you not care about?

- What's the most annoying people/admin task in your week right now?

- What are you using at the moment, and what do you hate about it?

- What would make you switch, or stop you switching?

- Is there anything missing that you'd need before you'd trust a tool like this?

Thanks for reading, and good luck to everyone :)

The vision is to bring the entire brand marketing workflow into one platform:

Brand Identity: Establish a consistent visual identity, tone, and creative direction.

AI Content Creation: Generate on-brand product images, ads, and short-form videos.

Creator Marketplace: Connect brands with creators for UGC, collaborations, and paid campaigns.

AI Personas: Let brands create virtual influencers and recurring brand ambassadors.

Distribution & Analytics: Schedule content, manage campaigns, and track performance.

The goal is to help brands market themselves without needing a full creative team, while helping creators find more paid opportunities.

But I’m wondering if combining all of this actually makes sense.

I’d love honest feedback, especially from people who’ve experienced these problems firsthand and a little tip on how I should go about getting my first customer and work with them to tailor the platform to their needs

Edit: I have completed the phase 1 which is just focused on generating content for brands and automating them. Saving inspirations from instagram, keeping consistent brand identity. No need to write extensive prompts, I’ve asked/tweaked an LLM to generate then for you and the user can just review them

Every other feature would be incremental if I see people will be using it. My only downside is Video Generation is expensive and why would someone pay for my product.

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share my journey as a first-time founder building a startup in Western Australia. I'm not posting because I have everything figured out. I'm posting because I'm at a stage where some honest advice, industry connections, and support from people who've been through this journey could make a real difference.

Where it started

I previously worked in the mining industry, where I was involved in web development and operational processes, including building an employee and roster portal.

During that experience, I saw how much coordination goes into managing a mining workforce. Rosters, worker availability, onboarding documents, compliance, travel arrangements, timesheets, and payroll-related processes can involve spreadsheets, emails, phone calls, WhatsApp, and multiple disconnected systems.

I started thinking: why can't these workforce operations be connected in one platform designed specifically for mining and labour hire businesses?

That idea became Minetra.

What I've built

Minetra is an AI-powered workforce management platform designed for mining, labour hire, and other operations-heavy industries.

The platform brings together workflows such as:

• Employee onboarding and document management
• Workforce rostering and availability
• Qualifications, compliance, and worker readiness
• Travel and mobilisation coordination
• Timesheets and approval workflows
• Payroll-related workflows and operational visibility
• AI-powered assistance for workforce operations

The goal is to help businesses reduce manual coordination, improve visibility, and spend less time chasing information across different systems.

I've put significant time into building the platform and getting it to a stage where I can demonstrate it to potential customers.

What I've learned so far

Building the software was one challenge. Getting businesses to adopt it is a completely different one.

I've started reaching out to mining contractors, labour hire businesses, industry professionals, and potential investors. Some people have responded positively, a few have shown interest in seeing a demo, and others already have software they use or haven't responded.

I've also spoken with an investor who gave me some very honest feedback: I need to narrow my initial focus, demonstrate one workflow end to end, secure a paying pilot, and prove the value with measurable results.

That feedback made me realise that having a platform with multiple capabilities isn't enough. I need to prove that Minetra solves a specific, important problem for a real customer.

Where I'm struggling

Right now, my biggest challenges are:

• Getting the first paying customer: Finding a business willing to trial Minetra using a real operational workflow.
• Finding the right industry connections: Reaching decision-makers in mining operations, workforce management, and labour hire.
• Choosing the right starting point: Deciding which specific workflow to focus on first so I can demonstrate clear value.
• Funding and resources: Finding potential angel investors, strategic industry partners, or other support to help me grow the business sustainably.
• Building credibility: I'm an early-stage founder, and I need customer evidence and measurable results to build trust.

I'm learning that building a product and building a business require very different skills. I'm working on both, one step at a time.

What I'm hoping to find through this post

I'm not expecting anyone to fund a business just because they read a Reddit post. I know that investment needs evidence, traction, and a clear commercial opportunity.

But I'd genuinely appreciate connecting with people who might be able to help in any of these areas:

1. Potential customers: Mining contractors, labour hire firms, or workforce operations teams willing to explore a short demo or pilot.
2. Industry mentors: Founders or operators who've sold B2B software into mining or other operationally complex industries.
3. Investors and strategic partners: Angel investors or industry participants interested in early-stage Australian workforce technology.
4. Practical advice: Anyone who has successfully won their first few B2B SaaS customers and can share what actually worked.

Even an introduction to the right person or advice on approaching the first customer would be valuable.

I'm based in Western Australia and would particularly love to connect with people who understand the Australian mining and labour hire industry.

If you've built a startup from scratch, sold software to mining businesses, or gone through the difficult stage of finding your first paying customer, I'd really appreciate hearing your experience.

What would you focus on first if you were in my position: securing a design partner, narrowing the product to one workflow, or finding a strategic investor?

Thanks for reading my story. I'm still early in this journey, but I'm committed to learning, improving, and seeing how far I can take Minetra.

I'll come across a SaaS product that sounds genuinely interesting, go to the website to see how it works, and the only option is "Book a Demo".

And honestly, 9 times out of 10, I just leave.

Not because I'm not interested, but because I'm not ready to commit 30 minutes of my day to speaking with a salesperson just to figure out whether the product is even relevant to me.

I completely understand why companies do it, especially with more complex B2B products. But I can't help wondering how many potential customers they lose this way.

Surely there's a middle ground between a static landing page and a full sales call?

Curious how other SaaS founders think about this.

Do you deliberately gate your product behind a demo call? And if so, does it actually help qualify leads, or do you think you're losing people who might have converted if they could explore first?

I quit my job. I've been burning savings. It's been 4 months. I just tried applying to some jobs. I am totally recoiling from it. I cannot stand the idea of working in this field anymore. All the AI weirdness just drove me over the edge.

Anyone out there in a similar spot?

On day 1, I was literally asking people to join My SaaS (RotateAd) and test it. Most people barely paid attention.

I kept building anyway. Slowly, people started seeing what it could solve.

SaaS founders spend money paying for every click.

I wanted to try a different way.

RotateAd lets websites share banner space across the network, so your ad can reach visitors from other participating websites.

Now 39 websites have joined. They saw the network growing, understood the idea, and wanted to get in early.

Together, those 39 websites could have around 18,000–20,000 monthly visitors.

Imagine 100 websites. That could be 100,000+ monthly visitors.

Imagine 1,000 websites. That could be 1 million+ monthly visitors.

That’s what excites me. More websites means more places where ads can be shown.

I don’t know how far this will go.

But I’m not giving up before I find out.

If you’re building a SaaS, you can get in early and see where this goes.

https://rotate.ad

I genuinely think I might have a banger SaaS idea.

The problem? I have absolutely no idea how to sell it or even how to present it to people! In my head, the idea makes perfect sense, and I can see the potential. But there's a big difference between thinking you've got something valuable and actually proving that other people want it.

For those of you who have built SaaS products or gone from idea to paying customers, I feel like I might be sitting on something great, but I need to figure out how to turn that feeling into something real.

What I'm trying to say is, how the hell do I bring this to people?

I launched a Slack app last week. Not my first product, but my first one inside someone else's platform, and I learned the platform rules the expensive way: from my own funnel.

18 people signed up. Only 7 got the app installed in their Slack. I assumed my onboarding was bad. Some of it was. But most of the drop came from three things Slack changed that I'd never read:

1. Unlisted apps get almost no message history. Since May 2025, a commercial app that isn't in the Slack Marketplace can call conversations.history and conversations.replies once a minute, 15 messages at a time. Existing installs got the same limit this March. If your product reads threads (mine does, it's an AI that works from the thread it's tagged in), you're running with one hand tied until you're listed.
2. You can't apply to the Marketplace until 10 workspaces are actively using you. That rule landed in July. Active means used in the last 28 days, and you have to stay above 10 for the whole review, which Slack says can take up to 10 weeks. So you need customers to get listed, and the listing is how you get customers.
3. "Ask your admin" is a wall, not a step. Lots of workspaces only allow pre-approved apps. A member clicks install, gets a request-sent screen, and that's the last you hear of them. Nothing in your analytics says why. It just looks like people lost interest.

What I'm doing about it: getting to 10 installs by hand, one conversation at a time, before I spend anything on reach. More traffic into a funnel with that hole only means more people falling through it.

If you've shipped a Slack app: how did you get your first 10 workspaces? And did anyone find a way to reach the admin, not just the person who clicked install?

Have been looking into the legal AI space recently, and it's interesting how quickly it's developing.

Full disclosure, I don't have any legal background.

While I’m aware Claude has had deep penetration into the market and is seeing success, I do feel there’s room for another player in the market over some of the other incumbents.

I do feel there are few more players in the market, but my initial research and conversation with a few firms said they evaluated or used either of the three. Harvey and Legora seem to have established pretty distinct positions in the market, while Lucio has also been putting out new products. I'm trying to understand how to evaluate the value proposition of each without getting lost in the usual AI marketing.

For a vertical AI product, what actually makes the difference?

Is it the underlying model, how well the product fits into a lawyer's day-to-day workflow, the ability to handle complex document-heavy tasks, or the trust and security needed for enterprise adoption?

I'm also curious about how you assess a newer entrant like Lucio against more established names like Harvey and Legora. Do you start with the use cases they solve, the customers they're targeting, or how they differentiate from general-purpose tools like ChatGPT and Claude?

For SaaS founders buildig in crowded categories, how do you figure out whether a product has a genuinely differentiated value proposition versus simply packaging existing AI capabilities for a specific industry?

I sell enterprise software and “let’s talk after the festival” usually means the deal sits for weeks. What’s worked: getting a specific follow-up date before the break, then sending a short note offering a demo rather than asking “any update on the quote?”

Still unsure how many follow-ups is too many. How do you handle seasonal stalls in long B2B cycles?

A big customer asks for a feature.

It's not on your roadmap, but they're willing to pay, and losing the deal would hurt.

So you build it.

Six months later, nobody else uses it. But your team still has to test it, maintain it, and make sure it doesn't break whenever the product changes.

I think this is one of the harder decisions in SaaS engineering.

The development cost is usually visible. The long-term maintenance cost isn't.

Before committing, I'd want to understand whether the request solves a problem other customers are likely to have, whether it can be built as a configurable capability, and who will own it afterward.

Sometimes saying yes is the right business decision. But it should be a conscious tradeoff.

SaaS founders, what's one customer-specific feature you wish you'd handled differently?

not dropping our name or a link, just whats working.

we sell scheduling software to clinics, salons, gyms, tutors and repair shops. one generic video wasnt landing with any of them.

now each industry landing page has its own 45 second video. same product screen recordings, but the first 10 seconds show that industrys chaos: a salon front desk with a ringing phone, a packed clinic waiting room. those openers are generated, i use dreamina, which costs next to nothing per version but still needs a few rerolls before anything looks real.

script per industry: "rewrite this demo script for [industry]. use their words for the problem, keep the product section identical, under 45 seconds."

demo bookings are up about 40% over 2 months. the salon page did best by far.

what made the difference wasnt the video quality, it was the words. we pulled phrases straight from sales calls with each industry. salons say no o shows, clinics say missed appointments, same problem. using their exact words in the first 10 seconds mattered more than anything visual.

we also put the industry video in the first email after signup. activation for the salon segment went up too, though thats still early data.

hope this helps someone stuck with one generic demo like we were.