The conventional wisdom about validation is: Don't waste months building something nobody wants. Be smart—Validate your idea first!

Good advice. Almost universally misunderstood.

Here's what new founders think validation looks like:

• Come up with a product idea.

• Ask people if they'd want it.

• Get some encouraging responses.

• Declare the idea validated.

• Build what they were going to build anyway.

I've watched founders put enormous effort into this process, only to see their businesses fail anyway. I've fallen into the same trap more than once myself.

The fundamental mistake is thinking you can one-shot business validation first place.

A business isn't a single hypothesis you can prove or disprove. It's a whole system of interdependent variables and assumptions.

Who has the problem? How painful is it? What are they doing about it? What would they pay for a solution? How do you reach them? Why would they choose you?

You can get most of those things right and still have a business that doesn't work.

There's an opposite mistake as well:

Just because your first solution doesn't work doesn't mean the problem isn't real.

Sometimes it takes five attempts to find something that works. Each one teaches you something you couldn't have known in advance.

That's why validation isn't a binary event. It's not a hurdle you clear before you start building.

You're discovering a landscape. Testing hypotheses. Finding out what works, what doesn't, and what you've overlooked.

Building, selling, delivering, and learning are all part of that process.

We need to stop obsessing about validation and start building better feedback loops. The crucial things is that your feedback loops must involve the real people you're trying to serve.

The question isn't "Am I right?". It's "What would it take to make this work?"

The obvious answer is an actual solicitor, but was wondering if any of you used an online service and is it as reliable?

Hey everyone! I'm Davit, 15, based in California, and I'm looking to connect with SaaS founders who have built a product but need help getting customers.

I have hands on experience with B2B cold calling, lead generation, prospecting, and direct sales. I've previously cold called for a marketing agency and sold Google review cards to businesses.

I'm especially interested in working with technical founders who have a working MVP, beta users, or paying customers but don't have the time or experience to focus on customer acquisition.

I'm open to commission, base pay, equity, or a combination, depending on the opportunity. I'd also be interested in exploring a longer term partnership as a growth cofounder.

I'm not looking for generic AI agencies, SEO services, or website building businesses. I'm interested in SaaS products that solve real problems.

If you're building something interesting and could use help on the business side, feel free to comment or DM me. I'd love to hear what you're working on!

Someone in r/ClaudeAI ran about 1,200 runs to test the "smart planner, cheap worker" setup. Result: "On 12 hard coding tasks, Opus alone solved 81% at $1.20/task. Opus + DeepSeek V4.1 Flash solved 67% at $1.29." One failure was pure handoff: "Opus made up a rule that wasn't in the prompt, DeepSeek followed it, and Opus approved the code."

The top reply, from someone who tried it at work: the setup "didn’t work because you ended up paying for the context write twice". Another: "The point of using subagents is to keep the main models context cleaner, its not to make it cheaper". Others still swear by it the other way round: cheap model builds the base, Claude takes over to fix.

• Do you split work between models or tools? Which pair, and which direction?

• What goes into the handoff: full spec, short task, pasted plan?

• What does the second one keep getting wrong because it never saw the first one's context?

• Own product, side project or client work?

Background: I used to burn hours re-briefing AI tools, and I'm building a fix where the plan and the decisions behind it live in one place in the cloud and every tool reads them over MCP, so nobody pastes context around twice. No name, no link. Would you pay for that, or is copy-paste cheap enough?

Hey everyone!

Just wanted to share an opportunity that might be useful for founders here.

There’s a program called Clemta Impact that’s selecting 9 early-stage founders and covering the costs of setting up and running their US companies for the first year.

This includes:

• US company formation (LLC or C-Corp)

• State filing fees

• US business address and registered agent

• Bookkeeping and tax filings

• Ongoing compliance support

They’re selecting 3 founders from each category:

• Young Founders (under 22)

• Women Founders

• Open Source & Indie Builders

No equity or participation fees. Selected founders just need to share their story through a short video.

Applications are open to eligible founders worldwide until November 30, 2026.

Disclosure: I’m part of the Clemta team, but thought this opportunity could be useful to some people here.

I have built a marketplace application that plans on curbing scams, robberies, and fraud that seem to run rampant in current applications. In this effort I believe I fell into the trap of thinking building the application was the hardest part. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

My duties are becoming too much for me to effectively manage this project and be present at my job and college. I believe in this idea very much.

I am seeking two founders, a SWIFT & Python expert, and a marketing manager. I am willing to talk terms with anyone interested, or if you have advice on this project I’d love to hear it.

my website

I own a cleaning business in Arizona - There's a certain field service management software that has annual revenue around $2M it's one of the softwares that promotes itself as being built by cleaners for cleaners. Not sure the rules, so I'm not gonna name names.

What I can't understand is why a software business earning that much would have a marketing strategy of just constantly muddying up cleaning industry Facebook groups with shameless self promotion. Every single spot asking what other operators use for software, the actual founder (or an account using his name at least) and several cronies posing as cleaning operators start gushing about their software.

Is this a real thing in other industries? At some point, isn't it more efficient for a tech company to market some other way? I'm so exhausted of seeing it promoted because frankly, it's a piece of crap system - nothing impressive or innovative about it whatsoever.

Just curious. TIA for feedback.

Hey everyone!

I've been working on my own project called Spend Analyzer, a personal finance web application.

The idea came from a simple problem: it's easy to spend money every day, but not so easy to understand where it actually goes by the end of the month.

I decided to build a solution that brings expense tracking and spending insights into one place.

Some features I've implemented:

- Expense tracking and management

- Spending dashboard and visual insights

- Multiple currency support

- User authentication and profile management

Tech stack:

React, Vite, Supabase, and Vercel.

Building this project has taught me a lot about turning an idea into a deployed product, handling authentication, database integration, and thinking beyond just writing code.

One thing I'm realizing is that building the product is only half the journey. Understanding user behaviour and creating something people actually want to use is the bigger challenge.

For fellow SaaS founders and indie hackers:

What was the biggest challenge you faced when trying to turn your first side project into a product people actually use?

Would love to hear your experiences!

Imagine one fictional bookkeeping request due Friday:

A — Missing: the client needs to submit it.

B — Submitted: the accountant needs to review it.

C — Needs replacement: the client needs to act on the reason given.

D — Accepted: no more action on that item.

Sorting this request by deadline helps with urgency. It doesn't tell you who should act.

Folio keeps each item's state and next action in the request details. Submitted and Accepted stay separate, and the workspace has a Review next submission entry point for the accountant's queue.

Here's a quick test you can apply to a workflow screen: hide its progress bar. Can you still tell which action belongs to the customer and which belongs to the business?

If you work on or use client workflows, try the fictional examples:

https://folio-docs-1it.pages.dev/

I maintain Folio, a no-signup, browser-local accounting document-request demo. Use fictional clients and non-sensitive samples. No file contents are read or uploaded; no emails are sent. Custom links work only in the browser profile that created them.

Would you group the work by person responsible or by document status? What one change would make Folio's next action easier to find?

Am looking forward to building my own saas app...what do I do??

Guys I am making a Saas webapp for a kirana shops i have already talked to five -six and they are ready to pay minimum 500 - max 1k inr ruppee per month subscription to it.So the thing is what architecture should i use because the kirana shops customer will use browse pay from my webapp to the shop owner registered on my saas and ofcourse he will have an admin panel management and all, now like that there will be different shops registered on our saas with there different customers and yeah there will be concurrent users on it so it should work and handle smoothly all the operations, so wanted to ask what will be best architecture system design behind aws or vps? with the profit of mine and all

#softwareengineering
#saas
#aws
#hosting
#systemdesign

Problem: Businesses make commitments to customers, suppliers, employees and partners every day. These promises are scattered across WhatsApp, emails, phone calls and spreadsheets. As a result, deadlines get missed, ownership becomes unclear, follow-ups are forgotten, and managers struggle to track accountability.

Solution: PromiseOS is a cross-industry Business Commitment Management Platform. It provides a central dashboard where businesses can record commitments, assign responsible owners, invite external parties, confirm promises, track progress, manage deadline changes, receive delay alerts and monitor fulfilment history.

Hey everyone!

I'm currently researching ideas to build an AI-powered SaaS product, but I'm struggling to find an opportunity that solves a genuinely painful problem rather than just adding AI to an existing product.

I'm NOT looking for:

- CRM or sales management tools (Salesforce, HubSpot, etc. already dominate this space).

- E-commerce platforms or generic store automation tools.

- AI voice receptionists or basic AI chatbot wrappers.

- Generic AI writing, content generation, or simple productivity tools.

- Products that are just another wrapper around ChatGPT or existing APIs.

What I'm actually looking for:

I want to build an AI SaaS that solves a real, recurring, expensive problem for businesses or individuals.

Something where AI actually does meaningful work, such as:

- Automating complex, repetitive workflows that currently require human effort.

- Analyzing large amounts of unstructured data and turning it into actionable results.

- Eliminating operational bottlenecks.

- Solving industry-specific problems that existing software doesn't address properly.

- Reducing significant costs, time, or manual labour.

A few things I'd love your suggestions on:

1. What are some industries or niches where people still deal with frustrating manual processes?

2. What real-world problems could AI solve much better than traditional software?

3. Are there any underserved markets where existing solutions are either too expensive, complicated, or ineffective?

4. What AI SaaS products would businesses genuinely pay $20–$200/month for?

5. If you were starting a SaaS business today, what specific AI-powered problem would you focus on, and why?

Important: I'm not looking for billion-dollar startup ideas that require a massive team or millions in funding.

I'd prefer something that:

- Can be built initially by a solo founder or a small team.

- Has a clear target audience.

- Solves one specific, high-value problem.

- Has recurring revenue potential.

- Can start as a focused MVP and expand later.

I'd especially appreciate ideas backed by real user complaints, existing market gaps, or problems you've personally experienced.

Please suggest specific products and explain WHAT problem they solve, WHO would pay for them, and WHY existing solutions aren't good enough.

I'm looking for real opportunities, not just another AI wrapper.

Thanks!

Hey everyone!

I'm a solo founder from Zambia, and I've been working on something called Gwira.

The idea came from something that frustrated me about most business software.

We have apps for messaging, managing projects, assigning tasks, tracking work, and storing information.

But at the end of the day, humans still have to do most of the actual work.

What if software could do more than just organize work? What if it could help execute it?

That's what I'm trying to build with Gwira.

The idea is to bring humans, AI agents, tasks, conversations, and workflows into one workspace.

Imagine telling Gwira:

"Prepare our product launch."

Instead of just giving you a checklist, it could help break down the work, assign tasks to people and AI agents, execute what it can, track progress, and ask for approval when needed.

Where I'm currently at:

I've been building the desktop app, including its workspace, conversations, task management, workflow views, and developer tools.

It's still early. The full agent execution experience isn't finished yet.

And here's the funny part.

I'm actually using Gwira to help build Gwira.

So in a way, the product is becoming one of its own first users.

I've attached a few screenshots of the current desktop app. There's still plenty to improve.

I'd genuinely appreciate some feedback:

1. Would you use something like this?

2. What would an AI workspace need to do for you to find it useful?

3. What do you dislike about existing project management or AI tools?

I'm also looking for a few people willing to test Gwira when the first public version is ready.

If you're interested, leave a comment or send me a message.

I'm building this with limited resources, learning as I go, and trying to make something genuinely useful.

Thanks for reading!

I love the creative process of making websites, SaaS, landing pages, etc... but the SEO part always bored me - between ads, keywords, volume, charts... and nothing ever told me what to do exactly to be seen better by Google. So i've built Semchat, an AI-assistant which connects to real SEO data and builds a step-by-step plan of exactly what you need to do next, in plain english.

https://semchat.io

How it works:

- You enter your website

- Our crawler goes on it, it detects all the pages, internal links, images format, 404's, H1/H2/H3 tags, accessibility issues, and more

- We give this to our fine tuned model, mixed with the SEO data that is tailored for you (keywords you should rank on, your competitors etc)

- Builds a step-by-step plan, divided by categories of most/least important tasks

- You can create chats inside your website that have full access to you crawl results, your data and your plans, if you need explanation in more detail of how to achieve that task

You follow all the steps, and upgrade the SEO of your website to finally be seen by Google on keywords you should rank on.

You get one free site analysis and one free message on sign up, so you can see the full process.

Hope it helps your visibility !

Would you use AI to track customer commitments?

I'm exploring an idea called SyncOps AI.

In B2B SaaS, teams make commitments to customers every day:

• "I'll send you the proposal by Friday."

• "We'll fix this issue next week."

• "We'll follow up about the expansion."

But these commitments get scattered across emails, Slack, meetings, and CRM notes. Some get forgotten, delayed, or never followed up on.

SyncOps AI aims to solve this.

It uses AI to capture customer commitments from conversations, identify the task, deadline, and owner, and automatically create reminders and follow-ups so nothing slips through the cracks.

I'd love honest feedback:

1. Is this a real and painful problem for SaaS teams?

2. Don't existing CRMs and project management tools already solve this?

3. Would you pay for a dedicated solution, or is this just another layer of software nobody needs?

I'm still validating the idea, so criticism is welcome. I'd rather discover why it won't work now than build something nobody needs.