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.

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 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?

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?

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for a co-founder to build an early-stage travel-tech platform with me, starting in the Philippines.

I’ve worked with travel platforms for the past 3 years, and that experience has shown me several gaps in how international travellers discover, plan, and book local travel in the Philippines.

The concept is a local-first travel marketplace connecting international travellers with trusted local specialists and independent tourism businesses.

The platform itself will not create itineraries. Instead, travellers will be matched with local specialists who know the destination and will personally build their customized trip.

The platform would eventually bring together:

• Trusted local travel specialists
• Independently owned inns, homes, villas, and unique stays
• Self-drive car rentals
• Cars with private drivers
• Transfers and local services
• Creator-led group trips

For the initial launch, I’m planning to test the market through three travel-influencer-led group trips. These will help us validate demand, supplier operations, creator acquisition, and the overall customer experience before investing heavily in the full marketplace.

The creator side is also part of the longer-term opportunity: influencers could eventually create and host their own trips, while local specialists and suppliers handle the destination operations.

We’ll start in the Philippines, but the model is intended to be expandable to other countries.

What I bring

I bring the travel-industry experience, understanding of the customer journey, supplier operations, product concept, creator-trip strategy, and knowledge of the Philippine travel market.

Who I’m looking for

Ideally someone who complements me in areas such as:

Technology / marketplace development • Product • UI/UX • SaaS • Growth • Creator economy • Startup strategy

I’m not looking for someone to simply build a website for me. I’m looking for someone who wants to help make product decisions, validate the model, build the MVP, and potentially grow the company together long term.

I’d particularly like to hear from other founders: what would you want to know about the business and the founder before considering joining something like this at the pre-launch stage?

Stage: Pre-launch
Initial market: Philippines
Industry: Travel Tech / Marketplace / Creator Economy
Looking for: Technical or Strategic Co-Founder

For Reddit specifically, that last question helps make the post a discussion about finding a co-founder, rather than looking like an advertisement or investor solicitation.

It’s easy to keep adding features because an idea sounds useful.

But sometimes the better decision is to leave something out, test the core idea first, and see if people actually care.

I’ve started thinking that every feature should answer one simple question:

What problem are we solving by building this?

If the answer isn't clear, maybe it shouldn't be built yet.

How do you decide whether a feature is actually worth building?

would any agency or clipper use something like this?

One thing I've started noticing with early-stage startups:

Building the product is often the comfortable part.

You can spend weeks improving the UI, adding features, fixing small things and making everything feel more "ready."

Talking to potential customers is much harder.

Because customers don't care how clean the code is or how many features you've shipped if the problem isn't painful enough.

A simple conversation can sometimes tell you more than a month of building.

Something like:

"What are you doing today to solve this?"

"How often does this problem happen?"

"What does it cost you when it happens?"

"Have you already paid for something to solve it?"

Those answers can completely change what you should build.

I've also noticed that founders sometimes interpret interest as validation.

Someone saying "that's a cool idea" feels good, but it's not the same as someone giving you money, introducing you to a buyer, agreeing to a pilot, or actually using the product.

Tbh, I think early validation should feel a little uncomfortable.

If everyone immediately loves the idea, you're probably not asking hard enough questions.

Build less.

Talk to more people.

Then let what you learn decide what deserves to be built next.

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for a US-based co-founder to join me in building an early-stage B2B SaaS startup.

I’m looking for someone who can take ownership of the US market, customer validation, and sales.

Who I’m looking for

Ideally, you:

• 🇺🇸 Are based in the US
• Have experience talking directly with US businesses and decision-makers
• Know how to validate SaaS ideas through customer interviews
• Can identify real business problems and understand what customers are willing to pay for
• Have experience with B2B SaaS sales
• Know how to find and reach potential customers
• Are comfortable with cold outreach, sales calls, demos, follow-ups, and closing
• Understand how to acquire the first 5–20 B2B customers
• Have an entrepreneurial mindset and want to build something from the ground up

What I’m looking for you to own

Customer discovery → Market validation → Outreach → Sales → Customer feedback → Growth

You would be the person helping us understand the US market, speak with potential customers, validate the product, and turn those conversations into paying customers.

Compensation

This is initially a sweet equity co-founder opportunity.

I’m looking for someone who wants to genuinely build a company together rather than take on a short-term sales role.

Equity would be discussed based on commitment, responsibilities, and contribution.

If you have real experience selling B2B SaaS in the US or working directly with US businesses, I’d love to hear from you.

DM me with:

• Your location
• Your B2B/SaaS sales experience
• What type of customers you’ve worked with
• Any products/services you’ve previously sold
• Your experience with customer discovery or validating ideas

Looking for someone who is serious about building, not just brainstorming.

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.

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

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.

I’ve been building something called TouchWorkstation, and it’s finally at the point where I’m looking for people willing to beat it up and tell me what sucks.

The problem I wanted to solve is pretty simple:

I have a powerful Linux workstation at home. My code, repos, development environment, terminals, tools, and compute are already there.

But the second I walk away from that machine, everything becomes fragmented.

SSH works, but it sucks for anything beyond terminal work on a phone.

Remote desktop works, but most Linux desktops are terrible on a touchscreen.

Cloud development environments work, but now I’m moving my workflow, paying for cloud compute, dealing with usage limits, or rebuilding an environment I already have.

So I built TouchWorkstation.

It turns your own Ubuntu machine into a mobile-first development workstation you can access from your phone, tablet, or browser.

The goal isn’t to replace your desktop.

It’s to put your desktop in your pocket.

Right now I’m focusing heavily on the things I personally wanted:

Persistent terminals that don’t disappear when you close your phone
Touch-first interface instead of trying to cram a desktop UI onto a 6-inch screen
GitHub/repository management
Codex/Claude/CLI tools running directly on your own machine
Local development servers and app previews
Access to Docker and your existing development stack
One place to jump between projects
Your machine, your credentials, your compute
No AI credits or tokens sold by TouchWorkstation
No rebuilding your development environment in somebody else’s cloud

Basically:

Your workstation stays home. Your development environment goes with you.

I’m getting close to opening an alpha and I’m trying to figure out whether I’ve built something only I desperately wanted or whether this is a real pain point for other developers too.

I’d love some brutal feedback:

Would you actually use something like this?

What would it absolutely HAVE to do before you’d trust it?

And what would make you choose this over SSH, Tailscale + remote desktop, Codespaces, or just carrying a laptop?

I’m also looking for a small group of alpha testers who actually develop on Linux and are willing to break things.

TouchWorkstation.com

I’m not looking for compliments. I’m trying to figure out if this deserves to become a real product.

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.

When we decided to ramp up outbound, I thought it was purely a math and volume problem.

If 500 emails got us 4 calls, sending 4000 would get us atleast 25+ so I bought secondary domains, set up warmups, scraped huge lists on Apollo and plugged AI into our sequencer to rewrite opening lines so every message looked personalized.

For first two weeks, I felt like we were crushing it and sequences were firing with metrics then reality hit, within 6 weeks, our reply rate dropped from 1.2% down to 0.4%. Almost every reply we did get was either an unsubscribe or an angry lead saying, "we can build a script for this internally in an afternoon, stop emailing us." Even worse, two of our secondary sending inboxes got spam-flagged and putting our main domain deliverability at risk.

I had burned through 2500 fresh contacts in our core niche and generated almost 0 real pipeline.

The problem was that we were reaching out to companies when nothing was actually broken for them so we had to pause everything and instead of high volume, we stripped our list down to 40 accounts a week and changed the logic entirely:

1st, we stopped scraping static title lists and only looked for active triggers (specific tech stack migrations, key engineering departures, open bottleneck roles).

2nd, we moved Claude upstream to evaluate the context: "given this specific event, what operational pain point exists right now that they cannot easily script away?"

If there wasn't a clear acute operational headache that week, we didn't send the email and that tiny cohort of 40 accounts got an 8.9% positive response rate and booked more demos in three weeks than our previous 4000-blast month combined.

Scaling outbound is about not sending anything until there was an actual reason to reach out and so we decided to put a free 30-min practical session breaking down this exact setup if you want to see how to build this exact pipeline here on signal based outbound with AI.

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?

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

hey everyone!

I’m building Guidr, a travel app that helps you discover new places, organize your plans, and keep your entire trip in one place.

Guidr is coming soon. Joining the waitlist will help us a lot, and you’ll be notified when the app launches.

Join here

Thank you for your support!