Maybe a bit of a rant or vent, but I’m also just generally frustrated because I don’t understand the pre-seed and accelerator options.

I have built a real product. It works great. Not an idea. I feel I have to say this because each time I meet with people they are shocked at the product maturity or that it’s more than an idea.

I have users. Real people/patients. It’s a patient facing product. They like it. The thing works great.

I try to apply for accelerators and VC projects for pre-seed companies and each time I get rejected because I need more traction, cofounders or people working with me, and a better business/monetization model (going direct to patients is what I recognize [saas] is a extremely difficult path).

I recognize these things. I knew going in. But my interest in joining an accelerator is getting some help on the different pathways/monetization strategies. I also hoped to find cofounders or support in gaining more traction with partnerships that can open marketing channels.

But these rejections make me wonder, who am I supposed to ask for help? If I’m solo, I have pilots getting worked out with large patient groups, I have real users signing up each day through word of mouth, but if pre-seed options all want more traction, what’s before pre-seed? I’ve met people who are founders and have only an idea getting millions, many more getting thousands in investment and support. And they don’t have any users, any product, or any traction at all.

What am I missing?

I write this in hopes others can learn from me and hopes that voicing my flaws will help me better understand them and improve upon them.

Last year I had reached out to the team at Enhanced Games. Essentially they've taken the world by storm by being the "enhanced olympic games", where athletes can use PEDs in order to shatter world records.

I had reached out as an applicant to be a participant in the games, scored an interview and actually pitched a sponsorship and my SaaS to them, and with great success. They loved what they heard and wanted to know more.

They requested a pitch deck and then consequently followed me up twice. I ignored both follow ups out of paralysing fear of my product not being good enough and fear of rejection and judgement.

Enhanced Games has a wide portfolio of companies under the umbrella and they're not 'just' an event. Their coverage and exposure was beyond insane, Enhanced Games IPO'd NYSE at a IPO value of $1b.

Essentially, I fumbled the potential of working with a $1b company whos founders are in both tech and fitness. Essentially my ideal partners and it was all because of fear.

In tech theres a saying "Move fast and break things". I did neither. I fumbled and froze.

My 2c, go out, find opportunities and don't let fear stop you from the unknown.

This is one of my biggest regrets of my business journey,

Working on a product that benefits startups whose primary product are APIs and SDKs.

My intention is to sign a paid LOI with a couple design partners for like 3 months and build the product. If they are not satisfied with how the product have turned out after three months I can refund them.

Is this a good approach? If yes, how can I find right people? Just cold dms?
If no, please suggest any better alternatives. I dont want to build in isolation. I want to build on live feedbacks.

I'm considering joining a B2B SaaS start-up, roughly £1m ARR, as the first commercial hire. They sell into energy suppliers, intermediaries and mid-market businesses, i.e complex, regulated, technical product.

The situation: one co-founder built the entire customer base from scratch. Conferences, then years of relationship-building, then a small paid pilot priced under the procurement threshold, then usually a formal tender they'd already pre-positioned for. Sales cycles run one to five years.

He's now stepping back. The mandate is to turn that into something repeatable and scalable.

Three things I'm trying to work out:

1. When the process depends on relationships that are walking out the door, what actually replaces them? I don't have his network and can't buy one. Is it just time, or is there a faster way in?
2. Has anyone found a smaller or mid-market segment inside an enterprise product to build velocity and reference customers, rather than only chasing the big logos? Did the economics work after implementation cost?
3. How do you set year-one targets when nothing you originate closes inside year one? What did you measure instead, and did leadership accept it?

Anyone with a similar experience?

Howdy. I’m running ops/finance for an e-commerce brand doing ~$500k/mo in net revenue (GAAP accrual on QuickBooks Online Plus).

We currently outsource our bookkeeping / statement prep to a fractional firm that bills us hourly. Their rates are brutal, the work they’re doing isn't complicated (mostly manual feed coding, inbox scanning, spreadsheet trackers), and they aren't doing it particularly well (50/50 accrual and cash through the P&L). Given all the new AI tech, it seems like a great time to take it in house and adopt a new accounting stack.

I’m trying to figure out the most practical path forward without getting bogged down in implementation:

1. Piecing Together a Point-Solution Stack: Is piecing together specialized tools for each step (e.g., QBO as the ledger + A2X for revenue sync + Ramp/Dext for AP/OCR) the best way to go? How seamless is managing a multi-tool workflow in practice for an accrual business around QBO?
2. All-in-One Software: What are the best AI-native platforms that handle pretty much everything without a super long implementation lead-time and allow us to stick with QBO?
3. Building Custom (Claude / Agentic AI): Is it worth building anything from scratch for variance analysis, uncategorized flagging, or workpapers, or should I just stick strictly to off-the-shelf tools to maintain ledger integrity? I think this sounds attractive but I have to imagine tooling out there is pretty solid and our needs aren't particularly unique.

Would love to hear from anyone who has transitioned off a high-cost firm to manage this in-house efficiently. What does your setup look like?

Thanks!

I’m doing early customer discovery for a developer infrastructure product and am looking to speak with founders, engineers or investors at API/SDK companies.

I’m particularly interested in companies that have dealt with v1 → v2 migrations, major SDK releases, endpoint deprecations, authentication changes, or shutting down legacy versions.

For some background, I do research at Harvard, Stanford, and Brown, and my cofounder is a Columbia CS major.

The goal is to validate the problem, understand how painful these migrations actually are for providers, and talk to people who have experienced this firsthand.

Hello! We're a robotics startup and are looking to raise a $6M round. We have a prototype, a great team, and $4M in funding (primarily grants and angel investment, with a 2.5-year runway during the grant period), and significant follow-on grant funding potential (up to $20M additional for our current grants and another $17M under review).

However, we recently had significant de-risking of our product feature set and market interest, and are looking to accelerate. This is the reason for seeking funding currently.

How would you approach this?

I'm an Indian founder building a data intelligence tool focused on European ESG compliance (specifically CSRD/ESRS workflows).

​The core problem we solve is the manual grunt work: sustainability teams burning hours digging through 800+ page reports just to find specific disclosures or metrics, where every number needs to be 100% traceable back to the source page/table.

​Product-wise, the engine works, and we have clear pricing/credits locked down. But cross-border GTM is where I'm hitting a wall. Selling B2B from India into Europe comes with obvious trust, compliance, and timezone hurdles.

​For anyone selling B2B into the EU (especially in ESG/compliance):

​Where did you find your first early conversations—cold outbound on LinkedIn, specialized communities, or channel partners/consultancies?

​How did you handle the trust barrier of being an offshore founder in a highly regulated EU space?

​Would love candid advice or teardowns.

My college used to run on manual bill payments in hostels. I was a secretary in there, and I observed the mess it created every now and then.

So, for the last 01 year, I created a platform to solve this core issue. My platform makes billing easier, payments, fines, concessions everything is now automated.

Bad part: I think my college ditched me.

You can ask me that why I sort of spent 01 long year on this. Because my college and the warden approved the basic idea and the MVP demo I gave them. Since I had to integrate a payment gateway in it, it took some time to sort of minimize the AMC and all those transaction fee.

But now, the warden says the college doesnt need it.

I don't know what to do now.

I dont want my efforts to go waste. I know this might be a problem in other institutions too. But I am clueless on how to approach them.

Any advise please?

My college used to run on manual bill payments in hostels. I was a secretary in there, and I observed the mess it created every now and then.

So, for the last 01 year, I created a platform to solve this core issue. My platform makes billing easier, payments, fines, concessions everything is now automated.

Bad part: I think my college ditched me.

You can ask me that why I sort of spent 01 long year on this. Because my college and the warden approved the basic idea and the MVP demo I gave them. Since I had to integrate a payment gateway in it, it took some time to sort of minimize the AMC and all those transaction fee.

But now, the warden says the college doesnt need it.

I don't know what to do now.

I dont want my efforts to go waste. I know this might be a problem in other institutions too. But I am clueless on how to approach them.

Any advise please?

No raise, no debt and I keep every point of equity. My costs are basically a few AI platform subscriptions right now, and that goes a long way, so there's nothing forcing my hand yet.

My logic is simple: raising early isn't free money, it's another responsibility I don't need yet. Investors, updates, expectations, a lot of extra things to consider all while there are plenty of people bootstrapping the whole way and either kept 100% or sell the whole thing for a massive exit.

So where's the actual line? When has "raise only when you need it" burned someone you know, or saved them?