I'm completely out of the loop on AI video generation, I wanted to know if anyone has experience using it for demo's of their sass products or if you still are better off going with someone of fiverr?

Hello my name is Keith and I'm from Uganda.

Currently I'm working on Apsurn.com, which is basically an AI store builder that is customized for underserved markets since services like Shopify and Stripe only work perfectly well in countries within Europe and the Americas.

This one is to also include people and merchants that are in other places of Asia and Africa and basically anyone in the world with support of local payment methods that are not available in the big industry players.

Currently we have started with integrations with mobile money and career payment providers in Africa like MTN and Airtel, which alone support almost 50% plus of payment methods in Africa.

Soon later we shall be expanding to Asia. For those from countries of Europe and America those ones are already settled with integrations like Stripe and Dodo payments.

Our main focus is to make things simple for someone to go from idea to having a ready and working online store in just a few minutes with the help of AI instead of having to do everything in days.

In other services I recently read an article about how something like Amazon FBA eats up over 50% of merchants' revenue.

The other endeavor that we are trying to explore is for merchants that take orders from their stores that are built and managed on Apsurn.

We are also trying to engineer a delivery service that would work like something like Uber Eats whereby the app itself helps in routing deliveries for our merchants.

Our app or software connects to the nearest delivery service that could help in picking up the packages and delivering them to the person next to them and delivering them to the customers in some sort of arbitrage way.

Though all of this is still on the drawing board, we are trying to first get the initial product, some users.

And in our enterprise services we help anyone to go from selling locally to operating a fully online business.

If this feels interesting to you, you can shoot me a DM or leave a comment. We can discuss.

Early-stage products usually benefit from simplicity. But as usage grows, different models can make sense for different tasks, whether that's speed, quality, cost, or availability.

The downside is obvious: more APIs, keys, billing, integrations, and infrastructure to maintain.

I'm curious what other founders have experienced.

Did you start with one provider and later add others? If so, what made you decide it was worth the extra complexity?

Just shipped Meso, built for busy entrepreneurs/founders that “don’t have time” for the gym. Syncs with your Google Calendar and workout split, and schedules in your workout slots. If meetings get scheduled, Meso reschedules your workouts, making sure you still get in all your days, or recommends adjustments to make your split work.

joinmeso.com

would any agency or clipper use something like this?

I have found good art to be innovative so I would conclude that innovation is art. What do you think?

Anyone run into issues with prospects / clients / users asking why don't I just use an OOTB LLM (e.g., chatgpt) instead of your product?

If so - curious how you handled it

I launched a product in the last 2 weeks, and the launch went pretty well. Got thousands of visitors on the app's page and many people registered.

However, I got 0 paid customers. Thousands of visitors and 0 paid customers is a strong signal to ignore. I can tell that this product is not a profitable business, which is totally fine. Im used to pivoting.

But during the launch an early stage VC from the US reached out and scheduled a call with me. They are interested in the product and the call is for next Tuesday.

How do I frame the fact that from all the metrics I have gathered I can see this cannot make money easily or fast, and I decided to pivot? Without losing them as a contact.

Thanksss

I love mesuring things so much, that the citation up there is on my all time top 3.

I was curious if names could be scientifically scored, so I started working on a method :

1. You enter a company, startup, product or service name
2. Select a sector : hardware, technology, ecommerce, ....
3. Hit 'Audit this name'

Then the program assesses the length, pronounciation, ethymology and a few more criterias to come up with a score card and detailed explanations for each dimension.

Could you please try and tell me :

• if it's fast, slow or acceptable
• does the score make sense
• are the comments clear enough
• what do you like
• what would you add

The audit is free : https://knowris.com/services/name-audit/

Thanks for your time and feedback.

I’m looking for an operating co-founder to help build a new early-stage project in the education space from the ground up.
This is not a salaried job opportunity at this stage. I’m looking for someone interested in building and owning the project alongside me in exchange for equity, subject to the right fit, contribution, responsibilities, and vesting structure.
Location is a hard requirement: UAE only.
I am not looking for a remote co-founder.
Being based in Abu Dhabi is a strong advantage, as I prefer working closely and in person, especially during the early stages.
The profile I’m specifically looking for:
Current or former teacher, tutor, academic coordinator, or education professional
Based in the UAE
Ideally has experience working directly with teenagers
Has an existing network or direct access to students and parents
Access to other teachers, tutors, schools, or education communities is a major advantage
Understands how students and parents actually behave outside of theory
Comfortable speaking directly with parents and students and conducting early research
Has enough available time to actively build, not simply advise
Interested in entrepreneurship and taking real operational responsibility
Comfortable working in a very early-stage environment where we will validate assumptions before building heavily
What I bring:
The original concept and initial project foundation
Early research and strategic groundwork
Continued involvement as a founding shareholder
Participation in major strategic and company decisions
I am not looking to be the day-to-day CEO/operator of this project.
I want to find someone capable of gradually taking real ownership of execution, while we make the major decisions together.
The detailed concept will not be shared publicly at this stage. I’ll discuss it privately with shortlisted people after establishing that there is a serious potential fit.
If interested, please DM me with:
Your current location in the UAE
Your education/teaching background
Age groups you have worked with
Whether you currently have access to students and parents
Your current role
How many hours per week you could realistically dedicate
Why you’re interested in becoming a co-founder rather than an advisor or employee
UAE-based candidates only. Abu Dhabi preferred. No remote co-founder arrangements.

And if you actually do this seriously, I’m pretty sure you’ll find something worth building too.

Start by picking a domain. Then pick one specific topic inside it. Just start talking to people relevant to that topic.

Don’t pitch them anything. Don’t ask, “Would you use a product that does X?” You’re not trying to validate your idea yet. You’re trying to understand how they work.

Ask them things like: What takes too much time? What keeps breaking? What do you hate doing? What are you still doing manually? What have you already tried fixing?

And while they answer, pay attention to something most people completely ignore: their expression.

If they casually say, “Yeah, that’s a problem,” I probably wouldn’t get too excited. But if their tone changes, they lean forward, start complaining, and suddenly tell you three stories about the same issue, that’s where you dig.

Because you’re not looking for just any problem. You’re looking for a pain-in-the-ass problem.

Once you find one, go deeper. Ask how often it happens. What happens if they don’t fix it? How do they solve it today? How much time or money does it cost them? Have they already paid for something to solve it?

Then repeat this again and again.

Pick 5 domains. Talk to 20 people in each. That’s 100 conversations.

If you do this properly, I’d be shocked if you don’t find at least one problem worth building a startup around.

The mistake is sitting alone and brainstorming startup ideas.

Don’t brainstorm ideas. Collect painful problems.

The ideas will come from there.

I’ve also figured out a way to automate a big part of this problem discovery process using Claude. If you want, I’ll share that next.

Stop working for free, people.

Only continue coding when you find people willing to use whatever you are building.

Introduce yourself, show them a mockup and ask: would you use this?

Do that 100 times.

You’re welcome.

Howdy, I sold my last startup for 100m. Starting over is super hard. has anyone here done this?

scrolled this sub for ten minutes today and counted three separate posts looking for a cofounder, an operating partner, or a "builder to join early stage." none of them have shipped anything. one wants someone in a specific city for equity only, one wants a teacher specifically, one's recruiting devs into a discord for a security product nobody's used yet.

i get why it happens. finding a cofounder feels like the next logical step once you've got an idea and a deck in your head. but posting publicly for one, before there's a product anyone can touch, kind of gives away that the hard part hasn't started yet. the actual first cofounder test isn't "can i convince a stranger on reddit to work for equity," it's "can i get this far enough alone that someone with real skills wants in without being asked."

i went the other way on my own thing, just built the ugly version by myself first, mostly because nobody i pitched wanted to join a company that was still a slide deck. took way longer solo and it sucked in specific ways i won't get into, but by the time i actually needed help the ask was way smaller: here's a thing that works for 40 people, come make it work for 4000.

not saying cofounder posts never work out. just feels like a lot of people are doing the recruiting step before the proving-it-works step, in the wrong order.

anyone actually landed a real cofounder this way, from a cold post with no product to show?

I’m looking for a Founding Product Designer to help build a new crypto wallet.

You’ll shape the product from the ground up—from how the brand looks and feels to how users experience every interaction.

What you’ll own:

• Brand identity, logo and guidelines
• End-to-end mobile UX and user flows
• High-fidelity UI and design system in Figma
• Product animations using Rive or Lottie

This is a revenue-share collaboration rather than a salaried role. I’m offering 20% of the wallet’s net earnings, capped at a cumulative payout of $1M USD.

You should have strong product judgment, excellent visual craft and experience designing consumer mobile products. Fintech, crypto or wallet experience is valuable but not essential.

If you’re interested, send me your portfolio and a brief introduction.

Thanks

I spent way too much time thinking we had a product problem when the real issue was how we were executing around it.

The product itself was getting decent feedback. People understood what it did. But things were moving slowly because every small decision kept coming back to the same few people.

It made me realize that sometimes the bottleneck isn't the product, the market, or even funding. It's just that too many things depend on the founder.

Curious if other founders have had this happen. What looked like a product problem in your startup but turned out to be something completely different?

Like my competitors are all fucking ex quant , harvard grads too.. I wanna fucking wanna die in minecraft.

I've been thinking about how people actually figure out if someone will be a good cofounder. I used to think it was mostly about complementary skills. If I'm technical, find someone great at sales. If I'm weak at product, find someone strong there. That still matters, but I'm starting to think skills are the easiest part to evaluate. You can usually tell within a few weeks whether someone can code, sell, recruit, or understand customers. The harder stuff only shows up much later, usually when changing it becomes expensive.

The first thing I'd want to know now is whether we actually want the same company. Everyone says they want to build something big, but "big" can mean completely different things. What happens if someone offers us $10M after two years? What if we're doing $2M ARR but growth has slowed and one person wants to keep going while the other wants out? Would we move countries for the company? Work without a proper salary for 18 months? Raise venture money and accept the pressure that comes with it? Spend 8 years on the same problem? I think a lot of cofounder conflicts that look like execution problems are actually two people quietly optimizing for different outcomes.

Then there are shared beliefs and what I'd call the combined edge. How quickly should we ship? When is something "good enough"? Do we solve problems manually first or build systems immediately? How much risk are we comfortable taking? How do we split credit? How transparent are we when something goes wrong? And beyond getting along, why are these two specific people unusually good together? Maybe one has spent years inside the industry while the other can build the product. Maybe one has distribution and the other has deep technical insight. Maybe one is great at creating opportunities and the other is great at turning them into something real. If you replaced either founder with another reasonably smart person, would the team lose something important? That's probably a better test of complementary skills than simply saying "business + technical."

The thing I'm least convinced you can test through conversations is character under pressure. Someone can seem like the perfect cofounder over coffee, brainstorming sessions, or a weekend hackathon. I'd rather know what happens after six weeks of something not working. Do they still show up? Do they communicate bad news early or hide it? When you disagree, do they try to win the argument or solve the problem? Can they admit they were wrong? Can you? Do they take responsibility when there's no obvious person to blame? Do they become more useful when things get messy or become another problem you have to manage? I'm increasingly convinced the best cofounder test is to actually work together on something real before committing. Talk to customers. Build. Sell. Miss deadlines. Get rejected. Make a few uncomfortable decisions. You probably learn more from one difficult month together than from twenty conversations about values.

For founders who've been through this: what did you test before committing to your cofounder, and what red flag do you wish you'd taken more seriously?

I've been thinking about this a lot while building my latest product.

The idea started with a problem in the dating space that kept appearing in different forms. People were trying to understand conversations, changes in tone, response gaps, inconsistent effort, and what those details meant when viewed together.

The more I researched it, the more interesting the problem became.

What started as a simple observation turned into customer research, product questions, and eventually something I could actually build.

There's a big difference between having an interesting idea and becoming curious enough about a problem that you want to spend months working on it.

Founding Developer / Co-Founder Wanted (B2B SaaS)

We are a lean, ambitious team preparing to launch a B2B SaaS platform that solves a massive pain point we experienced firsthand. We scratched our own itch, built the solution, and are now ready to commercialize it.

The product is 90% complete, and we are currently building out our core Human Resources and foundational team prior to our upcoming launch.

💼 The Opportunity

Role: Founding Developer & Co-Founder

Compensation: Equity-based (Co-founder level split)

Location: Remote (Canada / USA / UK)

Status: Pre-revenue, near-launch phase

🛠️ What We’re Looking For

We need a technical co-founder who is ready to take ownership of the codebase, help us cross the finish line, and scale post-launch.

Full-Stack Capabilities: Ability to jump into a nearly completed product, audit the architecture, and ship the final 10%.

Startup Mindset: You thrive in a lean environment, value execution over perfection, and want a true seat at the leadership table.

Localization: Based in or authorized to work within ENG / CAN / USA time zones for seamless collaboration.

🎯 Why Join Us?

No "Idea Phase" Stall: You won't be building from scratch for 12 months hoping for product-market fit. The foundation is laid, the validation is there, and the runway to launch is short.

True Partnership: You aren't just an employee; you are a founding pillar of the business with a matching equity stake.