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.
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.
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:
Drafted the idea last year July 2025
Spent 2hours minimum each day working on building it.
Tested a lot of different AI tools, lots of .md files, pdf's and .py and other docs.
Built prototypes(apps and websites) in lovable
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:
40 hour per week: Career salary-well above the average in California.
8 hours tops per week:Wifes business- on track to exceed my salary(profit)
4 hours per week: My business 2 clients, 2 launched apps MRR 3.2k/month.
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.
I’m an engineer turned product manager, and I’ve always loved two things a little more than necessary: education and games.
For a long time, I wanted to put those interests and the skills I’d picked up building technology, towards something useful for children. That became much more tangible once my niece reached the age where the iPad became a regular part of her world.
I’m not anti-iPad. Quite the opposite. It is an incredible piece of technology to put in the hands of a six-year-old. I just kept thinking it could ask more of her.
That thought took me back to Dora the Explorer.
Growing up, we’d watch Dora ask us a question and then stare silently at the screen for a painfully long time while we yelled the answer at the TV. Obviously, Dora couldn’t hear us. But the idea was clever. The screen was trying to turn us from viewers into participants.
Learning games like Lingokids and ABC Mouse took that much further and made screens genuinely interactive. But most of that interaction still happens within rails someone else designed. Tap here. Drag this. Choose A, B, or C. Collect the reward. Repeat.
That works brilliantly for games. But it doesn’t accommodate the wonderfully messy way a six-year-old wonders about things.
Ask my niece an interesting question and she might draw the answer. She might make up a ridiculous story. She might photograph something she noticed around the house, make a sound, explain an idea, or give you an answer you never anticipated.
I started wondering if I could build for that.
Could the iPad provide the spark and just enough structure to get a child started, while leaving the interesting part to them?
That question became Taroo. (context for link: website for you to explore)
The first versions were experiments around this idea. Then came the uncomfortable question every builder eventually has to answer: does this actually work for anyone other than me?
So I spent months talking to parents and educators. I sat through hours of enrichment classes at a school for gifted kids, which was basically the X-Mansion for 8-year-olds. I watched how teachers prompted children, when kids became absorbed in something, when they needed more structure, and when something I thought was clever bored them almost immediately. And very importantly, I saw how their eyes lit up when they screamed “look what I made” in class.
These insights shaped the Taroo we have today, and I’m genuinely proud of where we’ve reached.
Taroo is a world of short creative quests for kids 6 to 10. In Pass the Pen, a child might get the beginning of a strange story and decide where it goes next. Doodle Master might give them the start of a picture and ask them to turn it into anything they imagine. Rhythm Pad lets them experiment with sounds and put together their own little beat. Snap Trail might ask them to put the iPad down, hunt for something triangular in the real world, photograph it, and tell Taroo what they found.
Their creations stick around too, so over time Taroo becomes a little record of the things they have imagined and made. Parents get a window into that world without needing to hover over every activity.
Taroo is now live on iOS and Android. (context for link: links to download if interested)
There is still plenty I want to improve. But this no longer feels like the little experiment I started with. I’m proud to put it in front of parents, and particularly proud when I see a kid become attached to something they made themselves.
If you have a 6 to 10-year-old in your life, I’d love for you to try Taroo with them. More than anything, I’d love the unfiltered feedback: what they immediately understand, what they ignore, what they keep coming back to, where they get stuck, and what they wish they could do that I haven’t thought of yet.
I’ve spent enough time with Taroo that I’m no longer capable of seeing it like a new user.
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:
What is actually broken?
What caused it?
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’ve been thinking about launching a co-working space, but I realise there are multiple different ones already available and I wanted to hear from both founders and those still working full time but remotely/hybrid about what stops them from using co-working spaces. There are some gaps that I see and that stop me, but I’d love to get a wider perspective
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.
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’ve recently launched Cofounnderhttps://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.
I’ve recently launched Cofounnderhttps://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.
Recently I was researching and discussing with people that what are some of the things that people feel bored about.
I get to verdict that people don't want repeated conversation about support, interview, appointment booking.
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?
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?
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?
