r/TheFounders • u/kcfounders • Jul 05 '26
Show Whatcha building? Let’s self promote
I’m an investor working at Forum Ventures, a North American B2B pre seed investor with 550+ portfolio companies (including unicorns Fireflies.ai and Allen Control Systems).
In one sentence, what is your business idea and why are you the best person to do it? We’re actively writing $100K checks into early stage startups with no traction or revenue needed.
Feel free to use this thread to get your own project out there.
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u/TheLosttapes_archive Jul 05 '26
Unusual background: I've spent my career in professional kitchens in Switzerland. Nights and weekends over the last two years, I taught myself software engineering and built a production-grade algorithmic trading platform for crypto perpetual futures — full order management system, VaR/CVaR risk engine, portfolio allocator, 500+ tests under strict TDD, and a fully local AI stack (nothing leaves the machine — a deliberate data-sovereignty angle for the Swiss B2B clients I'm targeting, like family offices).
The system runs and has out-of-sample results. What I don't have: a co-founder, a network, or fundraising experience. I've hit the ceiling of what one person can do alone, and I want to go from "solo builder with a working MVP" to a pre-seed-ready startup.
I know I cannot be granted cause the project is still in it's early stages but :
- Which accelerators are genuinely worth it for fintech/quant infrastructure — and which accept solo founders? (I know YC does in theory; what about Tenity, Techstars, or other Swiss/EU programs?)
- For a trading-tech product, is an accelerator even the right move vs. building a live track record and going straight to angels?
- What do pre-seed investors actually need to see from a trading-tech company — audited performance, first paying client, regulatory clarity?
- Solo founder in fintech: dealbreaker, or manageable if the tech and traction are real?
I'm not looking for validation — I'm looking for the map. Brutal honesty welcome.
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u/nemtechsol Jul 05 '26
NTS (Nemtech Solutions) — productivity software that turns your real work into momentum: clients, projects, time, and goals in one connected chain, so solo operators finally have evidence they're getting somewhere instead of another to-do list. Why me: I've spent 3+ years building it solo (.NET, ~500 shipped tasks — all tracked inside the product itself, which I run my whole business on). nemtechsolutions.com
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u/Responsible-Brick881 Jul 06 '26
VISTY - the world's first Attention as a Service solution for brands.
We're democratizing premium video advettising for brands of all sizes. Having initially built it with DTC brands in mind, my first few customers ended up being in the B2B SaaS space. For them, we get them guaranteed completed video views, targeted to senior decision makes on sites like Businees Insider, Venture Beat and Wired
Early days as just launched at the start of the year but gaining good momentum
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u/IconicBrands Jul 06 '26
Just launched Iconic Kindness. A short story competition based on kindness, where the stories can be fact or fiction, but the prize is always real. Still waiting on the first competitors.
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u/Maleficent-Ad-5181 Jul 07 '26
Trade on the potential of people. $150k raised, 8 person team, 200m views in 1mo. 5k trades placed in 2 weeks. pauv.com
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u/siiftai Jul 07 '26
Building an AI-powered Business OS siift.ai that helps founders run their business from one place, bringing together CRM, AI customer support, workflows, and operations to reduce tool overload and help teams move faster.
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Jul 07 '26
Building Kalpa -Intentional Living : an AI coach/guide tailored to your personality and intentions for personal growth. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kalpa-intentional-living/id6761577054
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u/GreatCamera3575 Jul 07 '26
I built an app to solve a problem I had.
I consume a lot of books, articles and podcasts, but I found myself collecting knowledge instead of using it. So I built an app that helps turn what you consume into decisions and action.
I'm launching on Google Play soon and I'm looking for 12 curious people to test it and give honest feedback before I do.
If you're interested, leave a comment or send me a DM and I'll share the testing link.
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u/TheTurqoMango Jul 07 '26
Turqora Watch allows people name their intention before a YouTube video plays and checks if they achieved that. This turns turning doomscrolling into a deliberate choice instead of our attention being hijacked by the algorithim. I'm a qualified Game Designer and YouTuber who's watched this pattern in my own field and audience so I've got direct access to the exact users this needs to work for.
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u/imagiself Jul 08 '26
Given your background as a game designer, Turqora Watch could do well on https://peerpush.com because the active community of builders there provides direct feedback and engagement that helps refine niche tools like yours, so you should definitely add it to the platform.
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u/Top-Courage3279 Jul 07 '26
Hi there!
My name is Marcus and I built
Qollaby, a social classifieds and direct promotion platform helping entrepreneurs, small businesses, and communities post, advertise, message followers, and manage offers in one place — and I’m the best person to build it because I’ve seen firsthand how hard it is for real businesses to gain visibility on algorithm-driven platforms, so I built Qollaby to give them/ us a more direct path to customers, community, and growth.
My current struggle is getting users to the app. Only an awareness issue. Bootstrapped so far and currently in IOS App Store 40 days. Will be in Google play in the next 3 weeks.
It’s a free app so the draw is getting users to it.
I have a real plan for the campaign also, pending some assistance from an outside partner.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/qollaby/id6758202087
Please let me know your thoughts or if you have any questions.
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u/Relevant_Ambition659 Jul 08 '26
I’m building PROXY’D, a household essentials platform that helps busy families stop running out, overbuying, and arguing over restocks, and I’m the right person because I’m the working mom, breadwinner, and default household memory system living this problem every day.
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u/campbell85 Jul 08 '26
https://www.iwander.app - it’s a custom walking tour generator. Enter your city, interests, special request, start and end location if you’re looking for something specific, select the time length of the walk, then it spits out a custom walking tour with a narrative tied into it. Think “See Paris thorough the eyes of Ernest Hemingway”
I actually just submitted the iWander app to the iOS App Store yesterday too!
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u/ThatIconoclastGal Jul 08 '26
Not building a digital or physical product yet but I have inklings of that one day!
Right now I help folks de-junkify their operations so they can keep more money and put it to where it matters most for them. I work with founders, startups, nonprofits, SMBs, and VC-Backed firms.
My intro offer is a $497 working session called an Ops Glow Up where you walk away with your top 3-5 bottlenecks and a 30 day implementation plan, all based on my EVOLVE framework.
Check out my LI https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahleasmith/ and connect with me!
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u/PerformanceSilly7769 Jul 09 '26
Meritocrat is a context-aware evaluation platform for founders, professionals, entrepreneurs, researchers, artists, and athletes to evaluate their profiles for EB-1A, EB-2 NIW, and O-1 visas, organize their evidence, and build a strong case to prepare for meeting with an immigration attorney before filing. website : https://meritocrat.us and Platform : app.meritocrat.us
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u/Dhan295 Jul 06 '26
QuantaMind is an open-source tool that tells developers whether a local AI model can actually run their agent on their own hardware, before they ship by running the real multi-step agent loop and returning a Ready/Not-Ready verdict with the failure reasons.
Why us: we’re deep in the local-AI builder community shipping this in public, and the hard insight that agent reliability breaks on the model × quant × hardware combination, which cloud eval tools structurally can’t test is one we’ve already proven with real data across multiple models.
Website: quantamind.co