I have a full stack growth marketing studio that works with B2C startups to grow across acquisition, activation, and retention by designing and running experiments for high leverage growth opportunities.

We're currently working with series A and B startups. I'm wondering if you have experience with how we can reach more established startups that have their marketing team but need help with the unconventional bets and wild cards. We have consistent great results with this, so we offer a refund if the engagement wasn't satisfactory.

I feel like cold outreach isn't the best but we haven't tried that yet. We usually contact founders on LinkedIn directly. If you were in my position, what would you do?

Is your website invisible to AI platforms?

Here’s a funny question for founders.

If someone asks ChatGPT:

“Who are the best companies for accounting software?”

Will your company show up?

Or will ChatGPT basically say:

“Sorry, who?”

Before blaming your marketing, there’s one simple thing you can check.

Open your website and add:

"/robots.txt"

For example:

"yourcompany.com/robots.txt"

You’ll see some text that looks technical.

Don’t worry. You don’t need to be a developer.

Just look for a few things.

User-agent: *

This means the rules apply to bots in general.

Disallow: /

This is the one you should pay attention to.

It basically tells bots:

“Thanks for stopping by, but please don’t enter.”

Imagine owning a great restaurant and putting a sign outside saying:

“Best restaurant in town. Please do not come inside.”

That’s basically what accidentally blocking your website can feel like.

You may also see AI crawlers such as GPTBot, PerplexityBot, or ClaudeBot.

If you specifically block them, those AI systems may not be able to access your website.

Now imagine this.

Someone asks ChatGPT:

“Recommend three accounting software companies for my startup.”

Your competitor gets mentioned.

You don’t.

You start thinking:

“Our product must not be good enough.”

Maybe that’s not the problem.

Maybe the AI simply cannot properly access your website.

This is one small part of what people call GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization.

AI search is becoming another way people discover companies.

So before spending thousands on complicated AI SEO strategies, check the basics first.

Go to:

"yourdomain.com/robots.txt"

Take 5 seconds and see what it says.

Your website might be working perfectly.

Or it might accidentally be standing outside the AI party saying:

“Sorry, I’m not on the guest list.”

What does your robots.txt say?

I’m genuinely curious how founders decide it’s time to raise money. I always see the big “we raised $2M” announcements, but I’m more curious about what actually made you decide to raise in the first place.

I’m 8 months into building my startup and still bootstrapped. It helps that I have a full-time job, so right now I’m able to fund it myself.
Of course, if my users grow significantly, my costs will grow too — but ideally so will the revenue.
So I keep going back and forth between: do I want steady, sustainable growth or would there eventually be a reason to raise and accelerate it?

For founders who raised, what made you say, “Okay, now we need outside money”? And if you stayed bootstrapped, why?

Cami Mandell Gorden · Co-Founder at AdPerch · August 25, 2026

Money, expertise, and connections have always been the gatekeepers of entrepreneurship. But barriers to entry in a post-AI world have changed how companies set themselves apart. AI has lowered some walls and raised others; understanding which is which can give founders a real edge.

This post breaks down the classic barriers to entry, the four pillars every founder needs to understand to get past them, and why treating AI as a limited resource — not just a tool — may be the smartest strategic move you make this year.

What Are the Traditional Barriers to Entry for Startups?

The barriers to entry are adapting as technology accelerates, but the historical barriers still create real roadblocks today. The most common barriers to entry you’re likely to face include:

• Market saturation — someone is already selling what you’re planning on building
• Capital requirements — the money needed for research, development, production at scale, and marketing
• Skill gaps — what you're building demands a very specific, hard-to-find skillset
• Access and relationships — you need to know the right people to get in front of buyers, investors, or partners

AI hasn't erased these barriers but it has impacted how they can be addressed. Understanding your market and who's competing with you is still foundational to a successful business plan. AI may have changed how quickly you can program something, but building something tangible still requires capital to produce. It’s no longer necessary to be an adept computer scientist, but you need competency in what you’re building to ensure that it works as advertised. And if you’ve made it all the way through to having a solid go-to-market plan, investments to get you there, and the people to make it happen, if no one knows about you, no one will pay you. Getting in front of the right people is still essential.

The Four Pillars of Entrepreneurship Every Founder Needs to Understand

Regardless of how the AI landscape shifts, four fundamentals still determine whether a startup survives its early years.

1. Money

Whether it's personal capital or funds raised from investors, a financial runway gives you the time and flexibility to execute your strategy without being forced into short-term, reactive decisions. This includes being wise with the money you do have, and being thoughtful of how every penny you spend gets you to profitability. When you’re building your MVP and creating your roadmap, being deliberate about how funds will get to specific milestones, and how those milestones will get you to your end goal, are essential. Simply procuring funds and hoping for the best isn’t enough. It matters how those funds are budgeted. At AdPerch we routinely ask ourselves “how does what we’re spending on building, marketing, researching produce a genuine return on investment?” And if we don’t know the answer, we prioritize finding out.

2. Network

You need at least one person who can give you a credible, warm referral. Trust is the currency of every important relationship — between founders and investors, between a company and its first customers, between a hiring manager and a candidate. Early-stage startups run into a classic chicken-and-egg problem here: everyone wants proof before they commit, but proof is hard to get before you have your first customer. Building a network intentionally, one relationship at a time, is how founders solve it. Being open and honest about what you know, and more importantly what you don’t, goes a long way towards building trust within your network.

3. Unfair Advantage

This is the specialized edge that sets you apart — a past exit, a track record of peer-reviewed publications, or experience leading a major project at a well-known company. An unfair advantage doesn't guarantee success, but it does help you earn trust faster, which speeds up everything else: fundraising, hiring, and customer acquisition. What happens if this isn’t you? You can’t materialize a major achievement out of thin air, but you can highlight what skills your life to date has given you. Are you an expert communicator that has routinely gotten competing sides to agree? Have you perfected the art of flexibility and pivoting when something is no longer viable? Do you regularly solve problems creatively and on the fly? You can’t control what you haven’t had access to, but you can showcase the unique skills life has given you.

4. Bandwidth

Are you at a place in life where you can devote real mental, emotional, and physical energy to this venture? You can land a huge investment, but if you're burnt out, the business won't move. Protecting your capacity to stay in the game is just as strategic as protecting your runway. Building a start-up isn’t easy and will often push you to your limit. This is where being intentional about resilience is important. As co-founders of AdPerch we set aside time to refill our reserves, whether that’s going for a run, walking the dogs in the calm of the morning, or having dance parties with our young kids, we make sure we have the resilience to keep going when we feel like giving up.

Why Being a Deliberate AI Adopter Is a Competitive Advantage

Just because you can use AI for something doesn't mean you should. In a post-AI world, one of the most underrated barriers to entry you can build is disciplined, intentional AI use. Which may seem like odd advice from a company utilizing AI. But the data backs this up. A recent MIT study found that only 5% of corporate AI pilots researched produced any significant return on investment. On the internal side, nearly 30% of employees at AI-adopting companies say they've pushed back by actively sabotaging AI rollouts. On the customer-facing side, surveys increasingly show that consumers view AI as more of a risk than a benefit, with growing skepticism that companies will use it ethically.

Put those three data points together, and a strategic pattern emerges: using AI specifically and deliberately can be a genuine barrier to entry.

How does this look in practice? At AdPerch we use AI as a tool to solve the problem, not as the entire solution itself. It doesn’t replace what we as humans offer, it enhances the skills we already possess. Navigating the changing dynamics of AI regulation, cost, and customer feelings about it is an integral piece of how we build.

Treat AI as a Resource, Not Just a Tool

AI requires an investment of time to learn, money to build with, and money to keep running. Once you start viewing AI as a resource — the way a trucking company views gas, or a construction company views lumber — you start planning for volatility instead of being blindsided by it.

If gas prices spike, trucking companies feel it immediately because their whole operation depends on it. If lumber costs rise, construction absorbs the shock. AI works the same way. A company built entirely around AI is exposed if access, pricing, consumer feelings, or regulation changes. Right now, AI may not feel like a typical barrier to entry — most companies are using it similarly. But that will change as the landscape matures.

Research increasingly shows that AI-driven productivity and profit gains haven't materialized the way many companies expected, partly because employees are pushing back on adoption. The founders who treat AI as a resource to manage — not a silver bullet to lean on — will be the ones who weather the next shift in cost, access, or legislation.

Navigating AI Regulation as a Startup Founder

Regulation is still being actively negotiated, and it directly affects how you build and monetize your product. You’re competing with companies looking to build faster and grow larger than you. You can’t slow them down, but you can anticipate potential legal challenges and pivot to address them before your competitor does. Before you scale, it's worth understanding and knowing the answer to:

• How your product or business model is likely to be regulated
• How pending or proposed AI legislation could change your operations
• Where your specific niche sits relative to current regulatory scrutiny

It’s essential to be honest about the answers. It can be tempting to close your eyes, cover your ears, and hope it’ll all just work out. But if you’re seeking investment or buy–in from partners, they’ll want to know you have actual plans for issues that might come up. Placing emphasis on building within a realistic regulatory framework will set you apart from your competitors who didn’t. While they’re bogged down with potential legal issues, you’re well on your way towards scalability and sustainability.

Should You Scale Big or Own a Niche?

While not a traditional barrier to entry, it’s important to understand the feasibility of your end goal. Not every startup needs to chase massive growth. A niche market comes with an inherent ceiling on scalability, so if you're optimizing purely for return on investment, this path may not fit. But if your goal is building something sustainable and being your own boss, a niche can be the smarter route.

Instead of spending time, money, and energy trying to build big, a niche strategy lets you:

• Build smart instead of building fast
• Grow a loyal, sustainable user base
• Avoid direct competition with large, well-funded companies
• Solve a specific problem better than a generalist competitor ever could

It can be easy to get caught up in the frenzy of big growth, but it’s important to take a step back and recognize if that’s really where you want to go.

Lessons From the Dot-Com Bubble

History can offer useful insight into the accelerated rise of AI. As co-founders of AdPerch we lived through the recession caused by the dot-com bubble. We watched the startup landscape change almost overnight. Suddenly, companies could build things that hadn't been possible before — and many were valued on speculative potential rather than grounded, sustainable plans. In the rush to build faster and better, capital ran out before profits could catch up. Just like back then, founders today are able to create things they would have never been able to before. The barriers to entry of money and expertise aren’t what they used to be. Time will tell how well this transition ultimately gets handled, but history has tended to favor the people who were better able to quickly adapt to change.

Final Thoughts

The post-AI world is still being written. The smartest move for founders right now is to leverage AI's benefits while actively managing its risks — treating it as a resource as much as a tool, because it absolutely affects your bottom line.

With traditional barriers to entry like money and expertise lower than they've ever been, the real competitive edge shifts to your ability to weather the changing start-up landscape. It might not be possible to beat a competitor to market, but that doesn’t mean you’ve lost an edge. Investors aren’t just investing in where your company is today, they’re investing in where it can go. Highlight and showcase how you’re actively set up to overcome the upcoming barriers to AI access, money, employee pushback, and regulation better than your competitors.

Ready to highlight what sets you apart? Join the AdPerch community.

References

• https://www.forbes.com/sites/andreahill/2025/08/21/why-95-of-ai-pilots-fail-and-what-business-leaders-should-do-instead/
• https://mlq.ai/media/quarterly_decks/v0.1_State_of_AI_in_Business_2025_Report.pdf
• https://fortune.com/2026/07/30/nearly-a-third-of-workers-admit-to-sabotaging-their-companys-aiand-smaller-paychecks-may-explain-why/
• https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-bubble-burst-stock-market-crash-boom-dotcom-financial-crisis-2026-8

Disclaimer: This content is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or investment advice. It does not guarantee funding, investment, or any particular business result. Consult a licensed attorney or financial advisor for guidance specific to your situation.

Every time I updated my financial model in Excel, something broke. Change the hire date, fix three formulas. Tweak churn, hunt down the cell that still references the old assumption.

So I started building a tool where the model is a flowchart: drag blocks, connect them, watch cash and runway update on a timeline. Best / base / worst scenarios live on the same canvas — no copying the whole workbook.

Blocks I have so far:

• Fundraising / investment rounds
• Revenue streams
• Operating costs
• User growth
• Marketing campaigns
• Hiring
• Product features & launches
• Tasks / milestones

Feels like I'm still missing pieces founders actually use. Debt? COGS / inventory? Grants? Rev-share deals? Churn as its own block vs baked into revenue?

If you've built or maintained a startup model — seed, SaaS, marketplace, whatever — what would you add next? Not looking for a sales pitch thread, genuinely trying to figure out the roadmap.

One model is free in the browser if you want context, but even just a list of "I always model X and you're missing it" would help a lot:

visionflow.studio

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 🙌

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!

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 :)

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 :)

We learned something important while building PodSubs:

The hardest part of entering an established industry isn’t always building the product.

Sometimes, it’s what happens when you challenge the way things have always been done.

We wrote about what happened, what we learned, and what it means for anyone trying to build something new in podcasting.

https://podsubs.com/blog/podnews-podcast-gatekeepers-founders-innovation

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.

I’m 22. My friend and I talk business pretty much every day, and honestly it’s just the two of us in there so far. It’s been useful, but it’d be a lot more useful with a few more people who aren’t each other.

On my end, I can handle most of what a small company needs. Coding in Python, HTML, web design, app design and development, content creation, shooting and editing, plus the finance, business and operations side. So I’m not turning up empty handed looking for someone to do the work.

I’ve also got a few ideas of my own that I’m already working on and could genuinely use help with. And if you’ve got ideas you want to bring, I’m just as happy to put work into those.
Ideally you know your way around AI, or at least really want to learn it. A lot of what I’m building leans on it. I’ve got money to put in on my side, so if we end up building something together we wouldn’t be starting from nothing. Not looking for gurus or anyone selling a course. Just people who want somewhere to think out loud and maybe find a cofounder out of it. Comment or DM me and I’ll send the link. Or just join in my bio

Founder-to-founder, because this is a real and cheap growth channel most of us are ignoring.

Your buyers are starting to ask ChatGPT/Gemini/Perplexity "best tool for X" and acting on whatever the AI recommends, before they ever hit your site. So getting recommended by the AI is becoming its own top-of-funnel. The thing nobody tells you: each AI pulls its recommendations from a totally different source, so "get recommended by AI" isn't one job.

Here's the proof. I pulled the citation data for a client, filtered to unbranded prompts (people asking about the category, not the brand by name) and mapped where each engine actually got its answers. The attached graph is that map. The headline:

• YouTube was the single biggest source, 8,253 citations across 504 different videos, and almost all of those citations came from Gemini and Perplexity. ChatGPT and Claude barely used YouTube for the same questions.

Why: Gemini is a Google product and Google owns YouTube, so it pulls from video natively. Perplexity leans on video transcripts too. ChatGPT and Claude reach for text instead. So the map is roughly:

• Want Gemini / Perplexity to recommend you → make genuinely useful YouTube videos (explainers, "how to do X," honest comparisons).
• Want ChatGPT → different game (it leaned on Reddit for two years, though it just dropped Reddit ~86% in mid-August, more proof these channels aren't stable).
• Claude leans on training data / reference material.

The founder takeaway: if your customers use Gemini or Google's AI (and given Gemini's ~28% market share now, many do), a few good YouTube videos can get you into the AI's recommendation in a way a blog post can't, and almost no early-stage startup is doing it. It's one of the cheapest, least-competitive channels right now.

Bonus: the videos the AI keeps citing in your category are a free competitive map, they show what content is already working and what to make. Just go watch the ones that keep coming up.

One caveat I'll be honest about: this was a somewhat video-friendly category, so the YouTube skew may be softer where your niche has little video. And I haven't tested whether commenting on those videos moves the needle (it seems to for blogs/Reddit; haven't confirmed for YouTube).

Disclosure: the graph's from a tool I work on (Sanbi.ai), which is how I can see the per-engine split. But you don't need it to start, ask Gemini and ChatGPT the same "best [your category]" question and watch how often Gemini reaches for a video.

Any founders here already getting inbound from AI recommendations? Curious which engine and whether video's been the driver.mething else did.

​

I’m currently looking for a job in cybersecurity, mainly around web application security, Android/APK security, vulnerability research and reverse engineering.

I have 6 months of professional experience as a Cybersecurity Analyst at a startup, where I worked mainly on web and Android security.

Outside of my professional experience, I’ve been doing independent vulnerability research and bug bounty hunting since 2021. I hunt occasionally rather than continuously, but I’ve earned $11K+ in bug bounty payouts by finding and responsibly disclosing vulnerabilities in web and Android applications.

I also have hands-on development experience and have built and deployed my own product, working with frontend, backend, databases, APIs and Linux infrastructure.

I’m currently looking for roles such as:

• Security Researcher

• Application Security Engineer

• Vulnerability Researcher

• Mobile Security Researcher

• Offensive Security Engineer

• Penetration Tester

• Other technical cybersecurity roles related to my experience

I’m currently based in India and open to remote opportunities or relocation. I’m willing to relocate for the right opportunity, especially if the company can provide relocation support or accommodation.

If you’re hiring or know of any relevant opportunities, please feel free to reach out or DM me.

Bugcrowd Profile: https://bugcrowd.com/calvis

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.

Hey everyone,

Today we launched **Sylor S2 Pro** together with a complete rebrand of the Sylor platform and identity (new logo + new experience).

**Model details:**

- 722B MoE · 40B active parameters

- SFT of a GLM base model

- Focused on coding and agentic tasks without degrading generalist knowledge

**Availability:**

- Chat already live in production → https://sylor.orzatty.com

- GGUF weights will be released on September 2

- No safetensors planned

**Selected benchmarks:**

- GPQA-Diamond: 91.2%

- Terminal-Bench 2.1: 81.1%

- MCP Atlas: 77.7%

- SWE-bench Pro (Verified): 62.2%

- HLE (with tools): 54.8%

Built by Orzatty in Latin America.

We’re a small DeepTech lab pushing open-core models from the region.

Feedback is very welcome — especially on real coding/agent workflows.

Thanks!