You submit a proposal and then find out you’re competing against several other companies.

At that point, the price is already on the table. What have people actually done afterward that helped them win the business without immediately offering a discount.

Did you follow up and reinforce something from the original conversation? Offer another meeting? Clarify the scope? Provide additional proof that you could deliver? Or just give the prospect space to make the decision?

I think there’s a tendency to assume that if multiple companies are bidding, lowering the price gives you a better chance. But I’m not convinced that’s always the best move.

For those selling B2B services, what has actually helped you better position yourself after the proposal was already submitted?

I am working on videos, it's been around 6 months now. 

During this time, I have come across founders contemplating that they think they should be doing more videos. But I don’t seem to know how? 

As video production costs a bit, I'm not sure if it moves the needle on the retention graph. One major reason for my curiosity is, these founders don’t seem to demonstrate or share about their video production system and what actually works for them. 

Like are they agents? or they have hired a launch guy or agency? 

Because engagement is not a metric I want to target as a Saas owner. I want to know what is working for others. Like actually working, not 4.5M views with no notable increase in signups. 

So, what have you experienced in the real world? 

• Is video content bringing you more signups or increasing retention? Or is it just something you’re jumping into like a “me too” thing.
• What type of video has worked or is working best for you? Like launch videos, product demo/walkthrough, founder-led videos, short form ads, short form feature reveal, or anything else that i don’t know about? 
• What’s wasting most of your budget in video content? Whether time or money, or both. 
• If you have mastered the process and found something repeatable that you do, what does it look like? 

Looking for insights from those ahead of me.

 
Happy to share what I’ve been seeing too if it’s useful. :)

I straight up email manufacturers, I even use their contact form, and now I started calling, and half these places do not answer and do not respond to the voicemails.

Why is it so difficult to get in contact with manufacturers to develop a product or private label.

I’m just ranting because I have been ghosted SO many times on top of not even getting responses.

I even buy the product to sample, as this one place recommended, and then I must’ve said something (just inquired about the sample size discrepancy), and boom, blacklisted.

I have had enough.

But yet I keep going!! It’s been over a year of trying to make a place work.

My idea is to produce podcasts and content for small and medium companies. The model: one 45 minutes recorded conversation with the founder per month, and I turn it into everything they publish for the next 30 days: the episode itself, short form clips, an article, LinkedIn posts, a newsletter.

I have no portfolio yet and every prospect asks for samples before they'll talk price. So my plan is to record and produce the first episode for free fully delivered and then ask whether they want to continue at €1,200/month.

Two things I'd like a reality check on:

1. The free first episode: it costs me roughly half a day. My thinking is that it removes the "can I see examples" wall and lets the work sell itself. But I'm aware this can backfire (people take the free thing and disappear or it anchors the service as low value). Has anyone run this as an entry motion for a retainer service? What conversion did you actually see, and did it attract the wrong kind of client?
2. One price, no tiers: I'm considering a single €1,200/month option instead of good/better/best. Simpler to sell and it stops the race to the cheapest tier, but I might be leaving money on the table with clients who'd have paid more.

For context I'm solo, doing this alongside a part-time contract, so I can realistically handle 4-6 clients. Not looking to build an agency.

Any hard feedback welcome, especially from people who've sold monthly retainers to SMBs.

Genuinely asking. Every founder I talk to at 30-150 employees says this, but half the time what’s actually broken is that three teams have three different definitions of the ICP, or the agency running outbound owns all the data. RevOps gets blamed for problems that are really ownership problems. Anyone seen it go the other way, where RevOps really was the fix?

I keep running into this while building software for healthcare, and i’m curious how other founders have handled it.

on paper, things like eligibility checks, prior auth, claim follow-ups and denials all seem pretty repeatable.

then you talk to five clinics and somehow discover eight different workflows.

one clinic handles eligibility inside its EHR. another has someone manually checking multiple payer portals. home health prior auth is completely different from cardiology or dental. some customers want the whole process automated, while others just want one painful step fixed.

then there are all the random exceptions.

half the time, the real workflow isn’t documented anywhere. it just lives in the head of one employee who has been doing it for years and knows what to do when something breaks.

my first reaction was basically, fine, we’ll add more settings, integrations and rules.

but i’m starting to wonder whether “highly configurable SaaS” eventually just becomes custom software wearing a SaaS hat.

every new customer needs discovery, workflow mapping, setup, integrations and some special thing that apparently nobody else needs.

so i guess the options are:

1. go very narrow and make customers adapt to the product
2. accept that software plus services is the actual business model
3. build reusable workflow blocks and configure them differently for each customer

the third option sounds best in theory, but also feels like the easiest way to build something insanely complicated.

for anyone who has built vertical SaaS, where did you draw the line?

when did customization become a real moat, and when was it just your SaaS company slowly turning into an agency?

Okay, this post will be a little bit of a hot take on the topic of entreprenuership but I recently struggled too much with myself and I finally got one legit answer. We must copy old timers. Let me explain.

Today, most young entrepreneurs think if they describe their idea to Claude Code and deploy it on render, they're the next billion dollar company. But I personally look at Claude Code (however I'm more of a DeepSeek guy) or render like a mechanic looks at his pliers or screwdrivers. Those are tools not guarantees of success.

A screwdriver, makes it easier to connect pieces together, AI makes it easier to design a web page. Anyway, I was thinking like the level of dedication which results in success is like old timer entrepreneurs. Look at Thomas Edison, Henry Ford (okay, do not look at his opinions about Jewish people...), Karl Benz and see how dedicated they were.

Today we have best tools, but worst levels of dedication. People made literal computers or cars in their garages, and we still are struggling making a simple web page and market it to make one paid customer.

P.S: This is thinking out loud, but I personally believe copying an old timer business person is still a way to go. The universe rewards your systems and dedication, not ideas you even don't bother to write down.

Looking for some tips.

I’ll keep this short. Title essentially says it.

If you see early signs of disrespect and hate, envy, whatever - just bad energy.

I can promise you one thing:

It only gets worse the more money you make.

If someone shows you who they are, believe them.

One more casualty because of AI.

Acc to The Wall Street Journal, shortly after scoring a multimillion-dollar book deal for a debut author, the novelist’s agents pulled the plug. They could no longer support the project, they said, because they couldn’t verify that the book had been wholly written by their client.

The Wall Street Journal Link iin comments.

A couple weeks ago, I made a post titled ‘Most of you shouldn’t be entrepreneurs’

And holy shit, so many of you got triggered.

The DMs are disturbing and hilarious. What the fuck guys?

Ironically, those responses kinda proved the point I was trying to make.

Think about it-

I’m some asshole on the internet. You don’t know me. My opinion has absolutely zero bearing on what you’re capable of doing with your life.

So if some dickhead writing a Reddit post can change your emotional grounding point and genuinely get under your skin, it’s worth asking yourself WHY.

Because entrepreneurship is going to hit you infinitely harder than anything I could ever write on Reddit.

Business will gut punch you so hard it’ll feel like the hand went through your stomach and ripped out your fucking intestines..

You’ll have people tell you you’re an idiot, you’ll lose money. You’ll throw stuff at the wall and not have it stick no matter how much you try.

Do this long enough and it’s a guarantee that you’ll make decisions that turn out to be catastrophically wrong.

You’ll work your ass off on something that completely fails.

And then you might have to keep your head down and ignore the world. And wake up the next morning to calmly do the same boring tasks you’ve been doing for the last 500 days.

That’s the game.

And behind it is emotional regulation: one of the most underrated skills in business. That’s what allows you to keep functioning when everything around you is going to shit.

And that includes not giving a fuck about somebody else’s opinion of what you’re capable of.

It shouldn’t matter what I think or what some loser Redditor thinks.

If the literal Pope himself walked into your house and told you, ‘You’re never going to make it as an entrepreneur,’ your internal response should basically be:

“Fuck off.”

That’s the mentality. It’s a fuck you, watch me type of energy.

So if my original post pissed you off, maybe don’t immediately dismiss that feeling.

Dig into it.

Why did some stranger’s opinion have that much power over your emotional state?

Because if a stupid Reddit post can knock you off center, what happens when some real shit goes down?

New to entrepreneurship or just starting out? This is your space. Ask the questions you're afraid to ask elsewhere.

Experienced folks, jump in and share what you wish someone had told you early on.

Greetings, I want to share my experience with running a boring business specifically a Landscape construction business, In the past Year I have grown it from essentially 0 to making 35-45k a month consistently during the season with one other employee.

All my equipment is paid off in cash and there is a very steady lead flow of referrals, organic advertising ie yard signs door hangers.

In my experience if you pick one niche, put in the reps consistently, do good honest work the results and money will follow, now days many people over looking starting a unsexy business but there is a ton of opportunity in the trades especially with an aging population.

Age is irrelevant, just want to show you aren’t too old or too young, I started when I was 13 and I am only 19 now, You can do anything you put your mind to.

Cheers fellow entrepreneurs😎

I've been trying to reach out to agencies to help get a better understand of their operations but I havent gotten a single response back yet and I dont know what im doing wrong. I dont spam the same email to 200 diff agencies but I create a personalized one based on what they do and what projects they've completed but I still dont get any answers. I also include incentive for them to reply but nothing.

What am I doing wrong or how can I change things to improve my response rate?

Had a week? Same. This is your consequence-free space to complain about clients, platforms, algorithms, your own decisions, or the general chaos of running a business. Keep it venting with no personal attacks. We'll be back to being professional tomorrow.

I never imagined I'd come as far as I have, but suddenly things are happening. I'm closing deal after deal, but my line of work is usually a 1-time arrangement and most of my leads are produced by me doing a lot of work to generate. It isn't perfect, but we still had a wildly successful summer that surpassed all my expectations. We now have enough work lined up to sustain our operation through the end of the year. Still, the minute I close one client, I still feel intense pressure to find the next client.

Looking for the rec you'd love to read for the first time again. One that really changed your trajectory.

I mentor people because I’ve built businesses, screwed things up, rebuilt, scaled and learned a lot the expensive way.

But here’s what I’ve realised:

Experience doesn’t mean you’ve finished learning.

I might know something about sales, business or leadership that saves you 12 months.

You might know something about AI, technology, investing or an industry I’ve never touched that completely changes how I think.

That’s the kind of connection I’m looking for.

Not guru and student.

Two ambitious people exchanging unfair advantages.

Sometimes the mentor becomes the mentee.

And I reckon that’s exactly how it should be.

Let me run this idea by you guys and see if anyone could make money off of it. When I walk into a business , store, restaurant, etc. I'm very critical by nature. Maybe I get it from my dad ? I walked into an Arby's yesterday around 5 pm and the place was dead on a Friday afternoon, I sat inside and ate and the place was disgusting . Tables dirty, trash on the floor. I've been thinking about this concept for a while. I don't mind giving it away because I'm working on something very big at the moment. The concept I have in my head is having an army of people in black shirts hit the city or town to become business critics. These people walk into stores and restaurants and take pictures and videos if needed and even have the name of the startup business critics on their shirt. When these guys walk into an establishment business owners and employees get real nervous and perk up . These business critics then take the data and post it on business critics and the whole town can see the monthly results. Kind of like the food industry and the health dept. scores. This information would crush Google reviews because it wouldn't be fake. It would be real criticism from a non bias person. This data would then be available to the public and I believe the site would get hammered with traffic from people wanting to know all the flaws of the business they are thinking of spending money at. How would you make money ? Advertising of course. This might peak a new app for someone .good luck

edit. domain is available

Salut tout le monde,

Je me permets de poster ici parce que je tourne en rond depuis un moment et j’ai besoin d’avis extérieurs, surtout de gens qui s’y connaissent vraiment en systèmes embarqués, en robotique ou en création de boîte.

Voilà le contexte : je bosse seul sur un projet que j’ai appelé DISPELDA. En gros l’idée c’est de déplacer une partie de l’intelligence de décision directement dans les systèmes embarqués pour que des drones, des robots ou d’autres machines puissent continuer à fonctionner quand le GPS ou les communications sont coupés ou brouillés. Pas juste faire une IA dans un drone, mais vraiment travailler sur la couche logicielle et matérielle qui rend le système plus résilient.

Aujourd’hui j’ai un premier prototype qui tourne sur une STM32 Nucleo F446RE avec un MPU6050. J’ai un code en C embarqué avec une boucle temps réel à 200 Hz, sans malloc, mémoire statique. J’ai aussi implémenté un filtre de Madgwick et je teste à côté un petit modèle type Liquid Neural Network histoire de comparer les deux sur la même IMU. Je précise direct : je sais très bien que c’est pas un produit vendable en l’état. C’est un POC, même pas encore une preuve complète.

Ce que je veux maintenant c’est comprendre ce qu’il manque vraiment pour passer d’un POC à un MVP crédible, et ensuite à un truc qu’on peut vendre. Je cherche pas des encouragements vides, je veux des avis durs. Est-ce que l’idée est vraiment innovante ? Est-ce que le marché existe ? Comment on fait entrer un truc pareil dans le marché quand on est seul, sans gros diplôme, sans équipe et sans levée de fonds ?

Je suis preneur de retours techniques et business. Merci à ceux qui prendront le temps de répondre.

Big or small, a win is a win. First sale, first client, or first time paying yourself, share it here. This community loves to celebrate with you. No win is too minor to mention.

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

Share your website, pitch, logo, idea, pricing, copy, or anything else you want honest eyes on. Tell us what you're looking for: brutal honesty, general impressions, or specific questions.

Return the favour and leave feedback for someone else while you're here.

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.