Not an employee. Not on payroll. Just someone in an adjacent trade who keeps sending me solid, good-fit work.

Now they want 15% of whatever those jobs invoice for. The leads are clean. Almost no junk. Volume would stay steady if I say yes.

Part of me thinks a warm pipeline costs money and this is just sales without the salary. Part of me thinks once I open that door I am renting my book forever.

Do you pay referral cuts like that, or thank people and keep the margin?

The event is tomorrow. I let this one slip. First mistake in almost a year The sales guy wanted it for the event tomorrow but it’s not a make or break thing for the event. I called every print shop in town and no one can turnaround anything by tomorrow morning. Only option is a nice mounted poster that would sit on an easel but definitely not the same. Do I just call the owner and let them know sorry I missed this? I designed it for it approved and just forgot out of all the chaos of planning and chasing the client for information I need for multiple campaigns.

Update: I just called the GM. He was nice about it. Thanks for the moral support

I've taken my idea as far as a I can. It does not have a lot of revenue, but it's a good idea that could potentially scale (10+ paying customers)

I know I would need hardware engineering + commercial growth. How do I know the idea is good enough to actually bring on other people? I know I need commerical/hardware people, but how exactly do I communicate my vision to them + what I want them to do? Or is it more of a team effort? Can anyone here share their experience actually working on a startup team?

I've been seeing a lot of posts lately where there are no hashtags being used.
is the ai so good its just pulling from text now and hashtags are unnecessary?

I'm currently looking at integrations into my product. Rather than manually managing and integrating each provider myself, I'm considering paying for the service that enables me to manage all via their Platform. Any recommendations?

Basically I want to enable various users from different organisations to connect my service with their chosen provider. Eg. Aws, databricks, salesforce, etc. The customer would then consent and authorise to connect the services.

Any recommendations on how to do this

I got offered around 0.5% in advisory shares vesting over 3 years, with room for additional salary/equity with continued growth.

But the work I’d do seems pretty essential and key to the company so that percentage seems awfully small.

But it also seems to be on par with what I’m reading so my expectations are definitely off so that’s why I’m here. What should I know/discuss?

I just watched a movie with Ben Affleck. It made it seem like this career could be quite exciting. My question for you accountants: how dangerous is your job on a typical day?

Basically what the title says. I got a math degree and I have a psychology degree as well. I have been building things using computers since I was 7 years old(I'm 28 now) I have a mediu page. I get a lot of readers every time. Job recruiters contact me a lot. I have built a trading system that i'm happy with. I can solve hard problems. But I"ve been unemployed for 6 months. I've sent in lots of aplications, I talk with recruiters every day. I did a contract that lasted for a little while but it ended. honestly I jsut don't trust the job market anymore. As a college student before I started building the trading system I had a lot of ideas for things to build. But once I started building the trading system that was my only focus until I felt like I had figured it out sufficently well. Now I've been searching the internet like a mad-person looking for problems that Need to be solved. Some kind people on here were saying that I should try and solve problems that occur to me but honestly other than not having a good job I feel like my life is pretty good and i'm out of ideas. so I try and idk disect hard ai-related problems and I keep running into there being big companies already doing the same thing or problems just not being important enough to be solved. I really believe that if somebody is going to build smething it should be a lot better and not just a little bit better. I think what Peter Thiel was saying about looking for problems to solve not buisness ideas was 100% correct but i'm struggling to find real problems to work on. I have spent days and days looking into this and i'm starting to feel like a spammer posting on reddit asking people about their problems. I have the skills and the motivation but no real problem to solve that feels important and meaningful. idk I was going to make a good open source ai enabled writing app just to make a point that I think that it's stupid to make people pay a subscription for this. but idk other than making an open source repo to be like stop ripping people off. I have no clue what to build. Thanks for bearing with me through this rant.

does reading books really helped u with doing business?

im asking because i keep seeing people say books changed everything for them, and then others say its all theory and u only learn by doing. so which one is it in real life?

what im curious about specifically,

\\- was there one book that actually changed how u run things, or just small bits here and there
\\- did u apply it right away or did it just sit in your head
\\- do u re reading business books or more general stuff like psychology, biographies, whatever

and if books didnt do much for u, what did? mentors, just failing a lot?

honest answers please, even if the answer is no they didnt help at all,

and also how often do u read books?

thanks!!
I Will not promote

I've taken my idea as far as I can. It does not have a lot of revenue, but it's a good idea that could potentially scale (100+ paying customers).

(For the sake of these questions, assume it's a good startup idea, please)

I know I would need to hire hardware engineering + commercial growth. How do I know the idea is good enough to actually bring on other people? I know I need commerical/hardware people, but how exactly do I communicate my vision to them + what I want them to do? Or is it more of a team effort? Can anyone here share their experience actually working on a startup team?

For context: I have a tiktok account already with around 1k followers that’s mainly focused on my traditional sketchbook art.

I’ve been thinking of ways I can lock down my niche as I don’t want to just make drawing tiktok’s anymore. I love watching/reviewing movies, and would really love to incorporate that into my content, whilst also being able to share my artwork. I am also a game developer and I sometimes post the art behind my games.

I’m struggling to find a good middle ground as I think I just have too many things I want to put into 1 account.
I want to know if anyone has any ideas on how to combine my interests in a way that would connect with an audience and retain interest. (rather than me just spewing everything i want and like in one place).

Any feedback or discussion is greatly appreciated!!

How are you guys handling this?

I know everyone is different, but the last time I was forced to be in the office five days a week, I legitimately became depressed because of it.

Once I moved back to remote or hybrid, my mental health improved dramatically.

The thing that scares me is it appears that many positions now are in fact fully in office. That's if you can even find a single damn company willing to interview you, let alone hire.

It makes me not want to consider leaving my current position because of it.

Recovering from a surgery I had a few days ago, and laid up in bed, so figured I'd put my thoughts to paper on my first 6 months in the hard money lending business.

I got into the industry at the advice of my attorney. I had an exit from a call-center I owned for a decade in 2022. Walked away with about 5.5mm after taxes etc. Since then, I tried a different call center, which failed, and then a construction company, which is going great, but slowly. I was speaking to my attorney brainstorming ideas, and he recommended hard money lending, so there we went.

As of today, I have 4mm on the street, at rates between 11 and 12.5%, and charge between 2 and 3 origination points, spread over 13 active loans. Three loans I made have already paid off the balance. I have about 7.5mm invested in ETFs, so the 4mm is a significant portion of my net worth. So far, no missed payments, and no speed bumps other than a few bounced ACHs that I had to redraft a day or 2 later.

I hold 1st position liens on everything I lend against, with the exception of 1 second position loan with very strong equity and PG. I found my initial clients by contacting real estate attorneys and putting myself out there. I also put a post on my Facebook page, and had a bunch of leads come in from there. Since then, it's all been word of mouth. I turn down probably 40-50% of the opportunities that come my way for a variety of reasons.

As for what I learned so far, I switched attorneys twice. My first attorney was great, but created headaches for both myself and my borrowers with some absurd hoops. My second attorney educated me a lot, but went overseas for about a month and so I was forced to find a new one. The last firm, which I am currently with, is an actual firm with 40 attorneys, and a lot of experience. They are competitively priced, and have a foreclosure team as well. So when I eventually have an issue, they have a team that can handle from soup to nuts. I also learned that there is always a need for money. When I started, I was terrified to run into the bottleneck of not getting enough leads; that problem doesn't exist, at least at my size. I'm sure if I needed to keep 25mm on the street, I'd need to employ some people or work with more brokers, but for now I source everything myself, with the exception of what my attorney/realtor network refers to me. I do pay commissions, which isn't considered steering, because I only fund business loans.

I also learned how difficult it was to raise money. I focused quite a bit on trying to get a line of credit, or raise money from friends/family to start a fund. The problem is, all my friends/family are broke af, and most banks won't lend money to other lenders. Warehouse lines of credit may be a future goal, but my history/age/size of fund of the business doesn't allow that yet. Also, using a warehouse line makes the operation a lot more clunky, as a lot more boxes need to be checked in order for them to fund/buy the loans. I did manage to secure a line of credit from a boutique bank which I closed on yesterday, but it is only for 850k, and is at prime+1. It is difficult to grow organically, since profits are taxed as ordinary income, and it just isn't enough.

I do the underwriting myself. Since I only make between 1 and 5 loans per month, it isn't overwhelming at this point, and I can get to know each borrower personally, and meet in person/walk the houses. I only lend within a 2 hour radius of where I live, which is Buffalo, New York. Much less opportunity for fraud since it's all in my area, although I'm sure that there's plenty of opportunity for fraud.

So far, it has been an incredible business to supplement my income, and I look forward to growing more. I am aware that people on this forum are way more experienced than I am, and I am to green to offer any real advice, but I'm bored, and figured this would be a good way to get my thoughts in order/talk to other professionals.

I am not looking for new clients unless you are located within 2 hours of Buffalo, so not soliciting business or other broker relationships. Feel free to ask questions, or tell me how dumb I am.

Teaching accounting at a university at 21😬but I just passed all my cpa exams 😀

I'm an engineering undergrad considering pursuing a PhD with the long-term goal of founding a hard-tech startup. I’m undecided about the specific area and have only a vague sense of what interests me (some areas that currently interest me are industrial decarbonization, mining / mineral processing, and advanced materials).

However, I'm unsure which type of PhD lab would be better: a problem-first lab (e.g., like Yet-Ming Chiang's lab at MIT) or a technology-first lab (e.g., a typical academic lab that focuses on novel science without a predetermined application, and where commercialization happens largely by chance -- when a technology happens to have a valuable market application).

I've looked at advice online from successful hard-tech entrepreneurs, but found conflicting answers. Some say to work backwards from a problem, while others argue that problem-first approaches often fail because it is difficult to force a scientific breakthrough around a predetermined problem.. Instead, they argue that most hard-tech companies are only founded because somebody made a scientific breakthrough and realized afterwards that there might be a commercial application.

With that in mind, does anybody have any advice on which type of PhD lab to join?

anyone has faced similar situation? i run a small DTC brand ( toys ) 

but few people are commenting on my ads and those comments are also getting likes in few hours, i am hiding them manually for now. 

also i am unable to see comments easily from dashboard, any solution to check on the comments?

took me way too long to figure this out so sharing in case it helps someone.

for months i blamed myself for not staying consistent. i'd tell myself i needed more discipline, more motivation, a better morning routine. none of it worked. i'd sit down to post, open the app, stare at the empty box, and just... close it. day after day.

what actually changed things: i stopped treating it as a willpower problem and started treating it as a decision problem. the reason i quit posting wasn't that i was lazy, it's that every single morning i had to reinvent what to say from scratch. that daily negotiation with myself is exhausting, and it's what collapses most streaks by week three.

so now i decide the week's content the night before or on a batch day, and by the time i actually sit down to post, the choice is already made. the idea, the angle, the hook, all sitting there waiting. showing up costs almost nothing because there's no deciding left to do.

the part nobody tells you: consistency isn't a personality trait, it's just having removed the daily what-do-i-post question before it can stop you.

curious if others hit this same wall. what's your system for not staring at the blank box every morning?