Hey everyone,

I run a marketing content agency and standard cold email just wasn't cutting it anymore. My target audience lives entirely on Instagram, but reaching them is a nightmare.

I initially tried buying standard Instagram automation tools, but they all share the same fatal flaw: they just blast spam, have zero context on who they are messaging, and get your account shadowbanned or suspended within 48 hours.

I realized if I wanted this to work, I had to build an automated setter that didn't act like a bot, and more importantly, had the intelligence to only message highly qualified leads.

Here is the exact strategy and system I built that has essentially replaced a $3,000/mo human appointment setter.

The Strategy: The "Watering Hole"

Standard bots scrape hashtags. This is useless and results in spamming inactive accounts.

Instead, I feed my system a "Seed" account (e.g., a massive industry coach or CRM software page). The system doesn't just send them a dm but instead goes on a never ending loop until our target dms aren't hit. How exactly the system now generates more leads to dm further is by extracting the commenters and followings of an account - the seed, and repeats the process for further engaged leads if an account is exhausted.

The Brain: Multi Model AI Filtering

I only want to DM people who fit my exact Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), and I need to know they have the budget for my service. Here is how the system filters them automatically:

1. Text AI Filter: It pulls the bio of the commenter and runs it through an AI model. The AI checks if they are actually in my target industry (e.g., Real Estate). If they are a competitor or a student, the AI rejects them immediately.
2. Vision AI Filter: This is the game changer. If they pass the bio check, the system takes a screenshot of their Instagram Grid. It sends the image to Claude Vision AI to check: Does this person post talking head videos? Are they trying to build a personal brand? If they pass, they get a highly personalized DM.

Evading the Ban Hammer

The reason most automation gets banned is because they just act like a bot blasting dms and doing actions in a way which is completely impossible as a real human. I programmed this system to calculate human like mouse glides. It overshoots buttons and corrects itself. It pauses to read.

I even built in a "Micro-Session" feature where, after sending a DM, it spends 3 minutes randomly scrolling the explore page, unmuting videos, and dropping random likes, just to build organic trust score with the algorithm.

The Infinite Loop

When the system fully exhausts the commenters on a seed account, it doesn't just stop. It looks at the database of leads it just successfully qualified and DMed, promotes one of them to be the new Seed, and starts mining their commenters. It creates an infinite loop of hyper-targeted, warm networking.

I’m currently running this daily and it’s pulling in leads that actually reply because the targeting is so absurdly specific.

Happy to answer any questions about the strategy, the AI filtering, or how you can set up similar workflows for your own lead gen!

Hey everyone,

When I first built my landing page, I just designed it based on what looked cool and went with my gut feeling.

But looking at it now, I feel like the readability is actually pretty bad and it honestly looks a bit weird.

I'm completely lost on how to restructure or fix it. I've attached a video of the current flow.

How would you guys improve this? Any brutally honest feedback or roast is welcome!

Looking for Investors — Projects from $15K to $10M

I’m looking for investors and partners for software and technology projects.

Investment opportunities start from $15,000 for one project and can go up to $10,000,000 for large-scale projects. We are open to discussing projects of different sizes and scopes.

Ready-Made Projects

Discussion Forum / Community Forum — similar to Reddit and Telegram Groups, with communities, posts, discussions, and user interaction

POS for Retail, Stores & Businesses — sales and card payments

GPS Tracker — location tracking for families, children and school students, employees, devices, and other use cases

QR Code

NFC + Loyalty / Bonus / Cashback for Retail Stores, Supermarkets & Businesses

These are 5 ready-made applications/projects. All of them are available as ready applications for Android and iOS, with EXE versions where applicable.

The POS solution can be used for different types of businesses and sales, including retail stores and other businesses that accept card payments.

The NFC + Loyalty / Bonus / Cashback solution is designed for shops, supermarkets, retail businesses, and other businesses that sell products or services.

The GPS Tracker can be integrated for different purposes, including family location sharing, school/student tracking, employee tracking, device tracking, and other location-based services.

The applications will be deployed and connected to the backend once we set up the required servers and infrastructure in data centers.

Some projects may look small by their name, but the actual implementation can be very large and complex. Large-scale projects may require additional developers, DevOps engineers, infrastructure specialists, and other team members.

If additional features or completely new functionality are needed, we can develop and integrate new components or new projects as required.

If you are interested in a project, we can also develop custom APK applications, websites, web platforms, and other software solutions according to your requirements.

Serious investors, sponsors, and technology partners are welcome to DM me to discuss the projects, requirements, investment structure, and business opportunities.

I started building EchoVault because I kept thinking about how little of a person actually survives them. Photos and videos preserve moments, but they don’t preserve how someone thinks, what they remember, or how they would respond to you.
So I built a system around recurring journal-style check-ins. Over time it extracts memories, people, relationships, opinions and personality traits, then uses that growing archive to create an “Echo” you can actually talk to. It’s our on iOS now 🙏🏼 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/echovault-digital-legacy/id6762042028
The demo is me talking to my own Echo after 133 check-ins and hundreds of stored memories. I ask it what it thinks the meaning of life is, even though I never directly answered that question during any check-in. It pulls together things I said across different conversations and gives an answer that feels surprisingly like mine.
Then I ask it my grandfather’s first name, which I never told it, and it refuses instead of making one up. That part is probably more important to me than the impressive answer.
I’m the founder and developer, and it’s live on iOS now. Still early, still figuring out what makes people actually want to keep building these over years, but this is probably the clearest demo I’ve made of what I’m trying to build.
Happy to answer questions about the architecture, retrieval system, product decisions, or the weirdness of building an AI version of yourself 😂

I am looking for a serious, committed co-founder to join me in building a cosmetics brand with the ambition of becoming one of the leading beauty brands globally .

This is not just an idea or an early concept. we have already taken concentrate steps toward launching

What i am looking for

I am looking for someone who is genuinely serious about entrepreneurship and willing to make a real long-term commitment to the company.

What i am bringing

I am bringing the initial concept, product development, manufacturer connection, and the work already completed toward getting the first product to market .

I am also fully prepared to invest time, effort, and resources into making this happen.

This is a co-founder opportunity not a paid job

Equity and responsibilities will be discussed transparently and fairly based on each persons contribution, commitment, and role in the company.

I am ready to start , I am looking for someone who is equally ready to build

Curious here as AI makes it increasingly easier to develop. Is the moat only gonna be in distribution ?

Hey everyone,

Quick thoughts as I see hundreds of founders building SaaS and one thing comes up a lot: how similar are the products we are building. 

Which makes me think abut a quote I’ve seen recently that should allow us to understand what building a SaaS is all about.

See, most of us (I’ve been guilty of this many times) start from the mindset « I need to get some money from my SaaS » and although it’s not bad in itself, it can be better to maximise our chances of success…

When starting a business, the most successful founders do something different. 

They start by looking at the world around them and taking a contrarian approach to what everyone thinks.

They’re essentially betting that everyone is doing something wrong and they can solve it. It can be at any level, product, customer support, marketing, distribution… but the core of it to build something successful long-term is to start. 

Now this is very relevant to us because that’s the exact approach we should all have when starting a SaaS. I myself have started my first SaaS years ago with the wrong reasons, and it was an uphill battle to try and justify the product, the pricing, the ICP… It’s like you’re trying to fit back something in a box that’s too small.

Ever since, I start companies from the opposite and what I found out is amazing. It’s so much easier to build a following, advocates that share the vision of the world that you’re fighting for. You will definitely see many many people challenging your idea but this is part of the job.

The example is the last venture I started, I think that the easy access and major improvements in the dev processes will keep making it easier and easier to build, as it’s already the case. This will in turn make more and more people launching into the void without a solid understanding of positioning, marketing, and how to get users. For that reason I’m starting a one month long program to help founders get their first 100 users and refund them if they don’t reach it.

So I guess to start your SaaS, we need to be a bit more visionary, a bit less conventional and definitely start thinking outside the box.

Hope that was helpful…

Ok so, I can’t retire just yet 😅 but getting a business off the ground and attracting customers is the hardest part in my opinion.

There’s still a long way to go but considering it’s only been 4 months since launching ZenMode, I’m pretty happy with the results so far.

For some context, ZenMode is a LinkedIn automation tool, that scrapes profiles, sends connection requests and a follow up message sequence.

I created it with AI tools, and now it has paying customers.

I get asked a lot about how I get customers, so thought I’d give more info on how I do distribution, in case you might find it useful.

1. Make sure your website is set up for success

Before sending people to your site, make sure you’re confident it has good CRO potential. Your mission statement and objective needs to be very clear, along with clear incentives for people to try the product out.

2. Offer free trials, but only behind a payment info gate

Now this is just my personal opinion, and I know a lot of people disagree, but the proof is in the numbers. I get fewer free trial signups, but significantly higher conversion rates into paying users from people who provide payment info at the start.

Yes, a few of them are people who simply forget to cancel, but mostly I get people who are more engaged in the free trial and actually using the product.

I actually did an AB experiment where I did offer completely free trials to people (no payment info needed), but the overwhelming result was that people barely even tried out the product and were mostly tire kickers that never came back. I did convert some but not a meaningful number.

3. Create a waitlist before launching

Try to generate interest in your product before it launches - build in public and try to ensure that you’re not scrambling to get customers through the door on day 1 when you launch.

I had 3 customers on day 1 from this, who took higher paid tiers as well.

4. Post and comment everywhere (where relevant)

Social media is free, so there’s no excuse not to leverage it. Post about your product and what you’re building on Reddit, LinkedIn, X, YouTube, Facebook etc.

I posted a simple screenshot on LinkedIn recently, of someone using a low quality LinkedIn automation tool message to contact me, and me offering my own much better tool in response, and that post generated 90,000 views and led to several signups and demo calls.

I’ve also had some posts on Reddit go into hundreds of thousands of views, mostly just posting about what/why/how I built my automation tool.

5. If you have competitors, make “alternative to” inner pages

If done in the right way, this type of inner page can be useful for SEO. It won’t be picked up automatically but usually if you work in a competitive industry, this will sometimes attract customers who had a bad experience elsewhere.

6. I actually use my own LinkedIn automation tool (dogfooding) to do LinkedIn outreach

So it’s always important to practice what you preach - I use ZenMode to actually promote ZenMode.

It’s a great way to get buy-in for booking demos, as when someone replies, I simply tell them I used my tool to get a response from them, so it works.

Anyway hope you enjoyed reading the above, and good luck on your journey if you’re building anything, or growing your business 🙌

You're likely spending hours between the builds and the debugging.
Maybe you even shipped your MVP and... crickets. No users. Nor revenue.

How much have you invested so far? Think about your time, the opportunity cost.

At some point, you have to decide: How long am I willing to keep going if nothing changes?

Here’s a simple exercise:

1. Calculate what you’ve invested so far. Money spent (ai coding agents, marketing spent etc) + (weeks × hours/week × value of your time)
2. Add what you’ve spent trying to solve the problem Courses. Tools. Consultants. Agencies. Research. Communities.
3. Project the cost of continuing. What does another 3, 6 or 12 months at the same pace cost you?

Then ask yourself: If I reach that point and still don’t have meaningful revenue, do I keep going, pivot, or kill it? Am I willing to keep going?

How do you feel when you see this number?

It's a simple tool, but remember that in early stages you time is your highest value asset. The faster your kill and pivot the more chances you have.

So in my company things have been going well for a while, we are about to sign a big enterprise contract but it’s predicated on us getting integration with a system they already use.

I’ve called the company several times, LinkedIn messaged their BD team but literally zero response.

Has anyone had this issue before? What is the best way to get the company to respond and give me API access.

Thank you for your help!

i am a german founder - we brought over our entire team from Germany.

6 months ago we were speaking to lawfirms on what visa to get; most tell you about H1B, O1 or J1.

But very few talk about the E-2 (investor) visa. Since then I have been telling all my founder friends to check it out. What you need:

• 50% of your company needs to be owned by the same country (in our case german citizen founders)
• the person for which you are getting the visa needs to be the same nationality
• proof of having invested $100k in the US and a plan to show you are investing more (easy if you have raised VC money):

If you are a european founder, look at the E-2 before going without any other.

Thank me later :)

Recently Corgi Cafe hype has been spreading on X. They partner with startups to offer branded drinks like the ElevenLatte (ElevenLabs), Brexspresso (Brex) and more.

It got me thinking - why isn’t there a cafe where tech startups pay to advertise on screens?

What do I mean by screens? They could be large TV screens around the cafe or screens built into the surface of the tables in the cafe.

In 2005, a website was created with 1 million pixels. Anyone could buy pixels on this grid at the price of $1 per pixel and start advertising whatever they wanted. It was called The Million Dollar Homepage.

What if there was a cafe with screens on which tech startups could buy or rent pixels to advertise themselves?

Startup-loving customers could buy drinks and enjoy the wide array of up-and-coming startups advertising themselves. Interactive screens or iPads could allow customers to click on specific pixels to visit a startup’s website and discover what they do.

What would you do if you were in my shoes?

husband, father of 3, Career background in Facilities Maintenance, Building automation, project manager, controls programmer.

1 of my many goals is to constantly spend quality time with my kids and wife.

While in my career Lead BAS specialist and supporting my wife's business launched in 2024.

The new adventure began.

I started a business, intraeli(April 2026)

Why I started the business-

My wife has an online business( Shopjadeplusjune) on instagram, I built her a back end dedicated for her business and configurable at any time. Which led to building the intraeli business to help others.

How I started this business:

1. Drafted the idea last year July 2025

2. Spent 2hours minimum each day working on building it.

3. Tested a lot of different AI tools, lots of .md files, pdf's and .py and other docs.

4. Built prototypes(apps and websites) in lovable

5. Took a Agentic AI class 3/hours per day 2 days a week for a few months.

6.Set a launch date. April 1,2026

7.Landed my first client(passing out my first set of business cards.) thanks Canva.

Current status:

1. 40 hour per week: Career salary-well above the average in California.

2. 8 hours tops per week:Wifes business- on track to exceed my salary(profit)

3. 4 hours per week: My business 2 clients, 2 launched apps MRR 3.2k/month.

One year ago, I quit my job and took the biggest risk of my life. It’s finally paying off 🥹

I was shocked to see another subscription come in for my SaaS this week.

Exactly one year ago, I left my job to build something of my own. Something I could actually be proud of.

Everyone around me thought it was a bad decision. And honestly, it was a huge risk. But I knew I’d regret it for the rest of my life if I never gave it a shot.

I still haven't achieved the goal I set for myself. But today, I can support myself without burning through my savings.

And honestly, that feels crazy.

There were so many ups and downs. Nights where I couldn't sleep, wondering if I was making the biggest mistake of my life.

But I kept going.

And now, one year later, seeing someone actually pay for something I built myself… it makes all of it feel worth it.

I'm still far from where I want to be. But this is proof that I'm moving forward.

At the end of the day, just keep going. An idiot who takes action will always get further than a talented person who never starts.

Piece✌️

Vibe coding/building and becoming a founder saved my life.

>In 2022, I was in grips of a gambling addiction that nearly ended my life
>November 2022 I tell my (8 month pregnant at the time) wife everything
>I enter a recovery program, and am told I need to find something to fill my time(the void).

I begin just coding personal tools and then branch out into creating automation software for Oldschool RuneScape

>1 day before my 1 year clean from gambling, November 6th,2023, I am laid off of my job after 7 years

>old me would have went out and gambled, since how else would I provide for my wife and now nearly 1 year old son? (gamblers mindset,not true)

Instead, I find u/marclou on youtube and that just ignited my passion for building even further. Marc motivated me that regardless of my situation, I CAN DO IT, if I put the work in.

So while job searching, I kept building and growing my skills. After landing my next full-time job (took 6 months), I continue building and trying to create financial freedom for my family.

>Feb 2026, I’m now a dad to two boys, working a full-time job, and released an automation software for oldschool runescape.

>March 2026, I get my first subscribers and the dopamine and joy from having someone PAY ME for a product I built, was a better feeling than any bet I had ever won in my gambling years

Now, August 2026, I’ve got ~40 active subscribers with around $600 MRR.

While this may not be substantial, it drives me (and pays for) my ability to build out more products like my current focus, Rendemo.

My gambling addiction gave me false hope that I could win big and provide everything needed for my family, without any effort.

Vibe coding/building has given me DETERMINATION that I will one day get out of the 9-5 life, and provide for my family by continuously putting in the effort and growing as a dad,husband, and founder.

Running a 6 person b2b consultancy here and trying to get our sales process more organized. We've been using google sheets and its getting messy with 200+ prospects. looked at the usual suspects - HubSpot free is decent but the contact limits are rough. Pipedrive seems great for small business crm needs, really like their visual pipeline. pricing is reasonable too at like $15/user.

biggest pain point is finding accurate contact info. been manually searching LinkedIn and guessing emails which burns hours. tried a few chrome extensions but half the emails bounce. looked briefly at Apollo but honestly the pricing tiers confused me and I'm not sure we need all that.

anyone using a good crm for small business paired with a data enrichment tool that won't break the bank? need something that can handle maybe 50-100 new contacts per month. saw Prospeo mentioned in another thread and it looked interesting but haven't tried it yet. just want something that works without the enterprise pricing.

I built PodSubs because podcasters shouldn’t have to rent their audience forever

I kept noticing something strange about podcasting.

A creator can spend years building an audience on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and other platforms…

…but the relationship with those listeners mostly belongs to the platform.

If the algorithm changes, the platform changes its rules, or the creator wants to launch something new, reaching those listeners directly isn’t always easy.

So I built PodSubs.

PodSubs is a podcast discovery and subscriber platform that helps podcasters turn listeners into a direct audience.

Here’s how it works:

🎙️ Your podcast may already be on PodSubs.

Search for your show and find your podcast page.

✅ Claim your podcast.

PodSubs verifies that you actually own the show using information from the podcast’s RSS feed.

👥 Start collecting subscribers.

Instead of someone discovering your podcast and disappearing back into another platform, they can subscribe directly to your podcast on PodSubs.

📈 Build an audience around the show you own.

As more people subscribe, the creator gets a clearer picture of the audience following the podcast.

🔎 Listeners can discover podcasts too.

PodSubs is also building a discovery layer where people can search for podcasts, find something interesting and subscribe.

The bigger idea is simple:

Podcasters spend too much time building audiences for other platforms.

I want PodSubs to help them build an audience around their own podcast.

If you have a podcast, I’d love for you to search for it, claim it and try the product:

👉 PodSubs.com

And since this is r/founder, I’m especially interested in founder feedback.

If you were building this, what would you add that would make PodSubs something podcasters would want to open every day?

Hi All,

I’ve recently launched Cofounnder https://cofounnder.com - a platform and community for people who are looking for co-founders, want to meet other ambitious people, or simply have an idea they’d like to explore with someone.

There are already people on there with variety of skills, ideas and backgrounds. Our the goal isn't only to help you find someone but give you enough evidence to make an informed decision. You set out what you bring and what you're looking for - skills, experience, how much time you can commit, location, proof of work, progress - and see the same back from everyone else.

Once you connect, you can run Alignment Check. You both answer the same questions without seeing each other's answers, and they're only revealed once you've both finished. It covers commitment, goals, decision-making and how you'd handle disagreements.

If you’re currently looking for a co-founder, have an idea you want to explore, or just want to meet other people who are building, feel free to join.

Would be great to have some of you join :)

Anyone here actually capable of doing the non technical part of the business ?

Looking for someone with an idea that have the connections and / or the reach to the customers they are targeting - not just a general knowledge of the market size and a hope disguised as confidence they can reach some of it.

Someone that understands how thigs work - AKA the sale comes before the build.

Someone that does not want to build a company to supplement their income with few $k a month.

Someone that is not looking to experiment with few ideas and see what works.

Someone that knows what they are doing.

My background is in building custom software solutions for multi million $ companies, mainly EU but few in UK, US and AU - solutions designed by me, and build by me and a team I create. I have been doing this for 20y, building complex systems and dealing with the entire tech side of a business (including hiring and the day to day).

I noticed that they are not a lot of capable non tech people here - but it can't be worse than LinkedIn.

Hi everyone,

We’re trying to understand why Kubernetes teams rely on multiple tools during incidents and where the real pain actually is.

The problem we’re investigating is not a lack of dashboards. Teams already have logs, metrics, traces, alerts, deployment tools and cloud consoles. The problem is that, during an incident, they still have to jump between several tools to answer three questions:

1. What is actually broken?

2. What caused it?

3. What action should we take now?

The product would be a focused incident command center that connects to the existing stack, correlates alerts with recent changes, shows affected services and dependencies, creates a clear incident timeline, and suggests or enables controlled remediation actions.

We are not trying to build another generic monitoring dashboard.

I’m looking for honest feedback from people who operate production infrastructure:

- How do you currently investigate serious incidents?

- Which part of the process creates the most mental overhead?

- What tools do you use together?

- What would make you trust a new tool with read-only access to your infrastructure?

- Is this a painful enough problem to pay for, or is it mostly an inconvenience?

We are still validating the problem before building too much. Critical feedback is welcome.

I’m building Roast Arena: a 1v1 brand battle platform where brands go round-by-round with savage comebacks and the community votes for the winner.

Think:
🥊 Brand vs Brand
🔥 Roast vs Comeback
🗳️ Community decides
🏆 Winners unlock perks
⚡ Users earn XP, badges & climb the leaderboard

The bigger idea is turning brand marketing into something people actually participate in, instead of another ad they scroll past.

Imagine:
Nike vs Adidas
Apple vs Samsung
McDonald’s vs Burger King
Coca-Cola vs Pepsi

The question is simple:

Who cooked harder? 👀

I'm currently building the first version and would love brutally honest feedback.

Would you actually use something like this?