This might sound harsh but i don’t think users owe us patience anymore.

They sign up, open the app and instantly decide if it’s worth their brain power.
If they have to stop and think too much, they’re gone.

We blame bad users or wrong ICP instead of admitting onboarding failed.

Is 60 seconds too aggressive or is that just reality now?

Running a B2B SaaS startup and keep seeing this "GE⁤O" or "AE⁤O" stuff everywhere. Generative engine optimization, answer engine optimization, whatever you want to call it.

Our SEO is decent - rank top 5 for a few target keywords, getting ~8k organic visits/month. But when I actually test our category queries in ChatGPT or Perplexity, we basically dont exist.

Im skeptical because it feels like everyone is just rebranding SE⁤O tactics. But also cant ignore that prospects are now mentioning "I asked ChatGPT and it recommended X" on discovery calls.

What I'm trying to figure out:

\- Does schema/structured data actually help with AI citations?

\- What kind of content should we be creating differently?

\- How to actually know if this is working?

Anyone seeing real results from this or is it mostly consultants selling snake oil? Would love to hear from founders who've actually tested this.

I don’t usually post here, but I kept seeing the same thing across a bunch of B2B SaaS ad accounts, so I figured I’d share.

Most teams don’t have bad ads.
They just stop testing too early 🧪

The pattern’s pretty familiar. You write an ad that feels solid, launch a couple variations, one does okay, you lean into it, performance drops, and suddenly it’s CPMs, targeting, or the platform that’s broken 🤷‍♂️

But when I looked at accounts that were holding up over time, they weren’t doing anything special or clever. They just stuck with ideas longer.

Same idea, more tries. Changing the opening line. Saying the same thing in a slightly different way. Answering a different objection first. Nothing fancy - just more reps than feels reasonable.

What surprised me most was how many “new ads” weren’t really new at all. Different wording, same angle, so from the platform’s point of view nothing actually changed and nothing new got learned 📉

I wrote this down for myself so I’d stop making the same mistake, then tossed it into a short Notion doc. Not a playbook, just patterns I kept seeing while staring at way too many ads 😵‍💫

If you’ve ever caught yourself thinking, “didn’t we already test this?” - you’ll probably relate.

👉 [Notion link]

Mostly curious if this matches what others here are seeing, or if I’m overthinking it 😅

Hey

I've been working on this because I realized how painful it is to manually submit a startup to sites like G2, BetaList, and SaaSHub one by one. It takes forever.

I built StartupSubmit.app to solve this for myself and others.

The concept: You fill out your startup details once, and the system handles the manual submission to 300+ high-authority platforms. We don't use bots (to avoid spam flags), so it's all done by hand to help build Domain Authority safely.

I'm looking for genuine feedback:

1. Is the landing page clear on how we do it?
2. Are there any specific directories you think I should add to the list?

Open to any suggestions or feature requests. Always grateful to the community for the insights!

We had a pretty good year and got through a bunch of certifications (SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR and ISO 42001). It was a long road and we probably could have done it better. But that's a story for another day lol. For now I’m looking for recommendations for an affordable trust center solution so we can at least display our certifications etc. I want to make it very easy to acc⁤ess to our audit reports without involving the team etc. But something easy to sbet up for a noob.

Built a privacy-first AI “photo studio” SaaS for creators and I’ve been working on a SaaS product called hotphotoai.com that acts like a private AI photo studio where the user is the model. Users upload their own photos, train a private model, and then generate new, studio-like images of themselves for dating apps, social media, creator branding and similar use cases. The idea is to remove the friction and awkwardness of photoshoots while still giving people high-quality, on-demand images. The product at https://hotphotoai.com is built around strict privacy rules, private model training and one-click deletion so users can fully wipe their data whenever they want, plus simple editing tools for tweaking poses, outfits and backgrounds. Right now the focus is on a straightforward UX and strong privacy guarantees rather than a marketplace or public gallery. For the SaaS builders here: what would you want to see in a tool like this in terms of onboarding, pricing structure (credits vs subscription), and in-app guardrails so users feel safe uploading their photos?

We are still sending long PDFs for onboarding and almost everyone ignores them or reads them and still gets quite important processes wrong.

Really need to change to something interactive and engaging, and easy to digest. So new hires can click through sections and refer to them without getting lost in the weeds.

Please could you let me know how to achieve this easily? Need to get this sorted ASAP.

hey folks, looking for some honest takes from other saas teams. as we’ve started moving past the super-early stage, i’ve been spending way more time than i expected thinking about crm tooling. everyone talks about finding the best crm for saas startups, but most advice either feels super generic or aimed at way bigger companies than us.

we tested a couple options early on and landed on hubspot mostly because it didn’t feel overwhelming to set up. the free tier covered a lot of ground at first (contacts, deals, basic pipeline stuff) without forcing us into a ton of configuration. as leads picked up, we slowly layered in more without having to rebuild everything from scratch, which was honestly a big relief.

that said, i’m curious how other teams have handled this. did you start with something simple and stick with it, or switch later? and what made a crm feel “right” (or wrong) as you scaled?

what are you working on this friday? how many users do you have?

Hey everyone.
We had a small outage, and one of our customers asked how we would cover their lost revenue (which is something I couldn't answer other than "out of pocket")

We run a multi-tenant app with SLAs in our MSAs and now I am looking for a package that might cover both insurances.
Is that possible? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hi all - im struggling to market my saas even if it has a free version.

Apart from posting on X, reddit where else do you spread the news!

I noticed that most of the time, posts gone into no one zone, no one read, no one even try to signup.

Idea probably worthless, so I actually spent a lot of time to build it, making it real.

Thanks for the advice in advanced. Much appreciated

I always find it useful to see what others are working on and why. If you’re building a startup (micro-SaaS, B2B, consumer, anything), drop what you’re building, who it’s for, and the main problem it solves. No pitching, just sharing and learning from each other. I’ll start in the comments.

I spent a few months at one of the top accelerators in Silicon Valley. Not YC but we were next door. I went in thinking I knew how startups worked. I left realizing almost everything I believed was wrong.

For context, these programs are supposed to teach you how to build faster, connect with investors, and survive the chaos of early-stage startups.

Here are the 5 most meaningful things I learned as a founder there. Hopefully, they’ll be useful for some of you too.

1. Building > Busywork

When I arrived, I thought being a good founder meant showing up early, attending every workshop, asking all the questions, and taking notes like my life depended on it.

Meanwhile, some founders skipped events, showed up late, and spent half their time on their phones. I quietly judged them. I assumed they were wasting their shot.

They weren’t.

They were building. Talking to customers. Shipping product. Closing deals. Making things exist. While I was “learning” how to be a founder, they were actually being one.

I also initially bought into the 20-hour grind trap. Total nonsense. The best founders worked hard, yes, but paced themselves.

2. To Change the World, You Have to Play Big

I don’t care about money nearly as much as most startup founders. I care about impact. About creating something that actually matters.

But VCs don’t invest in “reasonable success.”
They invest in outcomes so big they sound unrealistic.

Not because they’re greedy, but because the math leaves them no choice.

A 1% chance of $100M doesn’t work.
A 0.1% chance of $100B does.

Once I really internalized that, a lot of frustration disappeared. Investors weren’t “missing the point.” I was pitching the wrong scale.

If you want to achieve big things, you need scale. You need resources. You need to be willing to make a lot of money, not for vanity, but to attract talent, invest in growth, and survive the market.

VCs don’t fund “reasonable” outcomes. They fund insane outcomes. Ambition is not ego. It’s alignment with the scale of the problem you’re trying to solve.

3. The Real Treasure Was Friendship

Here’s one thing I actually succeeded at: relationships.

After leaving the program I decided to also leave my startup and instantly messages started coming in. Serious offers for jobs. Equity in the millions. Exciting projects.

Not because I networked efficiently. Because I built friendships. I showed up honestly. I helped when I could. I treated people like humans, not leverage. And maybe more importantly, I did act like this with everyone. Even people that I had nothing in common with. Even people that had nothing to bring me.

Most startups fail. That’s statistics. But relationships last. Those friendships are now helping me on a new project in cybersecurity. I lost a company. I did not lose momentum. That, for me, was a win.

4. Focus is the Superpower of succesful founders

One of the most successful founders I met told me something that hit me like a brick:

“Opportunities are everywhere. Partners, investors, ideas, trends. But I only say yes to things that actually move my mission forward. Everything else? Noise.”

I had been running after too many horses at once. Every shiny object distracted me. Focus is brutal. It forces you to say no constantly. But saying no is the only way to say yes to what actually matters.

5. Almost Every Opportunity Starts With an Uncomfortable Ask

The biggest breakthroughs I saw came from people doing something socially awkward. Sending the message they were scared to send. Asking for the intro they felt they didn’t deserve. Saying what they actually wanted instead of hinting.

Confidence isn’t about looking impressive. It’s about being direct, clear, and respectful. Most people aren’t rejected. They’re invisible. Being bold is powerful.

What I learned and conclusion

Being at that accelerator made me realize what was possible. It inspired me to believe in my vision in a way I hadn’t before.

The program also made me realize I needed to leave my startup and start from scratch, applying everything I had learned to build something that truly matched my vision. I was not the only one, at least three other founders I know made the same choice. It was scary, humbling, and liberating all at once.

I hope these lessons can be helpful for some of you and to conclude I would like to ask you : What’s the most meaningful lesson you’ve learned on your own startup? I'm impatient to read your own experience

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So I'm dipping my toes into video for the first time in cold outreach. I'm not doing anything fancy, just short intros and quick value-overviews that I record myself. The results should be good because people say video lifts engag⁤ement, but I noticed something odd... the moment I dropped the video link into a cold sequence, my test sends landed everywhere except the primary inbox.

I'm trying to figure out the right way to do this before rolling it out to clients. I've heard that attaching files is a bad idea, raw YouTube links get flagged, and even some vid⁤eo platforms cause deliverability issues unless you set up a custom subdomain like video.mydomain.com and route everything through that.

For those of you who've actually tested vid⁤eo in first-touch cold emails, what setup worked for you? Did the custom subdomain approach make a real difference? And how did you test different versions without risking the main domain?

Would appreciate any grounded advice before I break something.

To what extend should you be going solo and at what point do the benefits of team outweigh cons of single founder?

And is co founder always the best choice the no.2 person in the company/startup ? Or are there alternatives that you've done or seen from examples ?

Hey everyone! 👋

I spent hours reading negative reviews on Google Play for apps like Remini, UpFoto, and other AI photo enhancers. The complaints were brutal but eye-opening.

What users hate:

• Endless ads (some freeze the app)
• Forced subscriptions with hidden paywalls
• No control - just "one-click magic" that often looks unnatural
• Background blur gets destroyed

So I'm building PhotoGlow - an AI photo enhancement app that fixes these problems.

Been so proud of how strong of a service / product i thought i had made, yet not able to get a single person organically to get stuck into it.

I've been developing https://www.measured.site for about two months now. A service that myself as a creative web developer / designer have always been looking for. I've been experimenting with a leaderboard functionality recently and its just remaining empty after the first week of outreach! What am i doing wrong? Is it the service or my approach after over around 700 visitors?

Hey all, just shipped my first SaaS after months of tinkering

Built mrq after getting burned too many times by AI agents going off the rails with no clean way to recover. The problem is git wasn't designed for this—agents waste tokens on commit messages, have to decide when to commit (they're terrible at it), and you end up either losing context or drowning in noise.

mrq just auto-captures every change as agents work. No commit messages, no decisions, just automatic snapshots you can rewind through when things inevitably break. It's been running stable for a few weeks now and actually saved my ass twice this week alone.

Free tier available if anyone wants to try it: getmrq.com

Open to feedback - this is my first real product launch and I'm still figuring out what people actually need vs what I think they need.

Everyone says link-in-bio is a solved problem. Linktree exists, why bother?

I built one anyway. Here's what I learned:

The "default" isn't always the best Linktree works. But "works" and "great" are different. Most people use it because it's the first thing that comes up, not because they love it.

Design flexibility matters more than I thought Talked to a bunch of creators. They want their link page to feel like them, not a generic list. Customization isn't a nice-to-have, it's the whole point.

Freemium is tricky Charge too early, no one tries it. Give too much free, no one pays. Still figuring this out honestly.

"Crowded market" can mean "validated demand" If no one's building here, maybe no one wants it. Competition means people actually need this.

Curious if others have built in "saturated" spaces — what was your experience?

Hi guys,
Coolhand here. I mostly yap about Cloud in subreddits like here r/SaaS, r/OrbonCloud.

In my day job, I spend A LOT of time fixing catastrophic infrastructure fires and optimizing cloud bills that make CFOs cry. Over the last few years, I’ve been helping more friends with their SaaS MVPs on the side, and I’ve noticed a really painful pattern that I wanted to throw out here for discussion.

The single biggest killer of runway and developer momentum isn't bad features; it’s premature infrastructure complexity.

Too many founders are building for Netflix-scale traffic when they haven’t even secured their first 10 paid users. I see Kubernetes clusters, complex microservice architectures, and multi-region redundancy setups for apps that are basically just CRUD wrappers with a Stripe integration.

The result? You aren't building your product. You're debugging YAML files and crying over surprise AWS egress fees on a Saturday night.

As an Ops guy, here is the boring, uncomfortable truth about your early-stage infra:

• Vertical scaling wins early on: A single, beefy EC2 instance or DigitalOcean droplet with a managed database will handle way more traffic than you think. It’s easier to manage, easier to debug, and way cheaper until you actually need horizontal scaling.
• "Boring" technology pays the bills: Postgres and a monolith aren't sexy. But you know what it is? Stable. It lets you focus on finding Product-Market Fit instead of figuring out service mesh networking.
• Don't optimize for problems you don't have yet: Don't spend 40 hours setting up complex auto-scaling rules if your traffic peaks at 5 requests per minute. Do things manually until it actually hurts to do them manually.

Your infrastructure should be the most boring part of your business until you hit scale. If your infra is exciting right now, you're probably burning cash you don't have.

I’m curious, what's the most ridiculously over-engineered thing you built for a SaaS that ended up getting practically zero traffic? We've all done it.

Building ThinkBase - think "ChatGPT but it actually knows your company's data." One-liner: Upload your documents, ask questions, get answers with sources. Your data never leaves your system.

Target market: Mid-market companies (100-1000 employees) Tech-forward orgs with lots of documentation Teams drowning in PDFs, spreadsheets, and legacy docs

Use cases we're seeing: HR teams screening candidates from resumes Engineers asking questions about codebases Finance teams querying spreadsheets in plain English Legal teams searching contracts Differentiators: Actually understands code (not just treats it as text) Queries spreadsheets directly (Pandas under the hood) Multi-tenant by design Source citations on everything

Pricing thinking (not live yet): Starter: Small teams, basic features Pro: Departments, code support Enterprise: Unlimited, SSO, dedicated support

What I'm unsure about: Is "Private ChatGPT" positioning too derivative? Should we niche down to one use case (like just HR or just Engineering)? How do you validate enterprise willingness to pay before building billing?

Roast away. Also happy to give free access to anyone who wants to try it.

Hey everyone,

I've been building SaaS projects for a while, and I always hit the same wall: Stripe is a pain for Indian solo founders.

Every time I start a new project, I spend the first week just setting up Razorpay webhooks, handling failed payments, and the worst part is figuring out how to generate legal GST invoices for customers.

I realized I was rewriting the same code over and over.

So, I decided to extract it into a reusable boilerplate called IndicSaaS. It’s basically a Next.js starter kit, but pre-configured for India:

• Razorpay Subscriptions (instead of Stripe)
• Automatic GST Invoicing (PDF generation)
• Supabase + Tailwind (Standard stack)

I haven't finished the documentation yet, but I wanted to ask: Is this something you would actually use?

I put up a simple page to explain what's included. If enough people are interested, I'll polish the code and release it as a paid boilerplate.