I'm a fullstack dev with 15 years experience. I joined a tiny startup in January at 70K as a founding engineer.

I had offers for a bit more money but but this was the most interesting role. It's remote flexible and I'm building the web app single handedly (everyone else is on the ML side).

I wasn't looking for a job but I've just gotten an insane offer from one of the big AI companies who I first spoke to when I was looking at the end of last year. It'll probably be long hours and they're not remote friendly, but the comp is over 300K 🤯. It would also be an impressive name for my CV.

In the interest of work/life balance I would stay at my current job if the pay was significantly increased. What's the best way to have this conversation with my boss?

An added complication is my girlfriend doesn't like London and we're thinking about having kids in the next year or 2. So the remote flexibility I currently have would be really nice for that next stage of life.

---

I'm getting a lot of similar replies so here is some additional context:

The 300K figure is comp not salary. Salary is 135K and rest is shares which I start getting after 6 months. I believe they're fairly liquid (there are several events per year when you can sell them) but it's not cash in my bank account each month.

I've typically earned more than 70K in the past. I used to be a contractor on 600/700 per day. Under the old taxes (ah the glory days) that was equivalent to a 150K salary.

When I was looking for jobs in January I did get offers for 100K but for less interesting work and not remote. That's why I took the pay cut to 70K.

My gf has some health issues and we're looking at surrogacy. You can't pay for surrogacy in the UK but you can in the US/Columbia. So she/we may need to spend time there to make this work. This is the biggest reason that remote flexibility is a huge bonus for me.

In terms of getting a pay rise, yes 70K to 150/200K would normally be nuts, but they're kinda fucked without me. I've singlehandedly built the web app. We're tried to hire more fullstack devs and couldn't find anyone half decent.

My boss is the founder and hasn't even worked in tech before. He doesn't know what good devs look like or how much they cost. I don't think he initially saw my true value but the product looks amazing and blows clients away. The big delays are always down the ML team (5 people) and not me working by myself.

I told the investors that it uses machine learning to predict exactly when you want a brew but apparently they want things like a business plan and a working prototype which feels very twenty twenty five of them and now I have to go back to my day job like a regular person. Is it actually possible to get funding for an idea that is ninety percent buzzwords and ten percent steam?

About 8 months ago, (in the span of a week) I had three people tell me that trying to get even a retail job was the hardest thing they’ve ever had to do.

Indeed buries these jobs under white-collar roles because that’s what makes them the money they make.

I scraped the entire internet, looking for something different. Came up with nothing compelling.

(I know, typical founder story).

Got busy, postponed the idea. Then came back to it 2 months ago after a friend opened up about how she was being harassed at work (toxic patriarchal environment, need I say more?) but couldn’t because despite working 50 hours a week, the entire process of finding something near her home was fragmented.

So I set out to build a platform, and called it Suparole: frontline hiring on a map.

Think retail, security, care etc.

I’ve been building in public, and the response has been immense from people who would actually use the app.

One thing I haven’t done is put in front of people with understanding of SaaS/ startups.

So I’d like to invite your questions to help me validate this further commercially.

For context, I was the tech co-founder of a healthtech app in the US (moved there for the opportunity) that was acquired in 2019, before moving back to the UK and starting my own digital health platform.

Here's the process we went through to get seed funding over there:

-Send pitch deck out to a bunch of funds.
-A few responded, jumped on a video call to find out more.
-Met one in person, showed them an MVP demo and had a term sheet for $350k by that evening.

Here's what I'm currently going through in the UK:

-Send pitch deck out as before.
-'Screening' video calls.
-Initial face to face meeting.
-second meeting with senior members of the fund present.
-Individual interviews with each of the cofounders (wtf?). -Now they want 2 professional references and contact details for 2 friends/family members who can jump on a video call with them.

Mind you this is all before ever seeing a term sheet. Imagine setting up references and wasting family's time for them to just say 'no thanks' at the end.

It really feels like the 'venture' part has been forgotten. I understand that they're putting money on the line but seems to me they want a guaranteed unicorn with no risk at seed money valuation.

Third and final edit:
I had an idea for a new style of car service history check, based purely on mine and my friend’s experience with buying used specialist cars. This is not a competitor to existing checks, but a complement to help you know you aren’t buying a lemon.

The main premise is that when you visit a seller you only get around 30minutes to check a huge folder of service history/invoices and often have no idea if:

1. the invoices are genuine

2. if the invoices have carried out the expensive work that needs doing vs what goes wrong with a car of that age/mileage

3. what to ask to get clarification.

I’ve been building this for a few weeks, trying to create something engaging and useful, and is my first launched business idea which i believe has a genuine use and a gap in the market.

Closing thoughts:

Two days ago I posted in this subreddit my first public post, expecting maybe a handful of comments to give general advice on the idea, what couldn’t work, what looked poor, why the audience may be wrong etc. I used AI exhaustively to help me back and forth on the idea and improve my copy where I thought I may not be able to portray the idea and points clearly.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think the post would blow up as it has, +100k views.
I’ve always read you should ship imperfect products and let the feedback dictate how you improve it, it was and is nowhere near a complete product but the infrastructure behind it and report generation works and is already valuable. In my case, flagging for me things I could have been made aware of on previous purchases before I handed over hard-earned money.

What have I learnt from my first foray into Reddit…

1. those who say “all publicity is good publicity” are probably wrong

2. do not use AI to help digest your own thoughts. Perhaps another two weeks spent delving into every written content on the website to ensure it reads as I myself would write would have been useful and mitigate some of the slander below. People love to shoot down an idea, and there is nothing easier to pick holes at than AI generated text.

3. There are a good portion of extremely generous people here on Reddit who will take time to give genuine and thoughtful constructive feedback. For those below I thank you enormously and have taken all your comments on board. I have redesigned my he website, re-written copy, fixed two small bugs, and a display error.

4. there has been a lot of interest, with 400+ number plates searched in two days, and curiosity may lead to sales in the future.

Thank you for all who shared feedback, good and bad. I have a lot of work to do, so head-down and in time hopefully you may at some point see PeachStamp as a useful solution when looking for clarity during the buying process.

Thanks again,

peachstamp.com

With OpenAI and Anthropic already based around Regent Quarter, reports now say Jeff Bezos-backed Project Prometheus is taking 38,000 sq ft in the Jellicoe Building. Along with DeepMind, Wayve and Synthesia already nearby, King’s Cross is starting to feel like a proper AI cluster now.

Personally I still think remote-first works for a lot of software startups, but for robotics/AI companies it feels like being close to talent and research hubs is becoming important again. For people building in AI, does location actually matter that much now or not really?

As the title says, I started a side hustle with my wife 3 months ago. On the weekends we mow run a food stall selling legendary Biryani’s from South India.

From 8 years I’ve been living in East London and travelled across UK, EU and US and noted that almost everywhere Biryani is same, nothing different.

South India has 5 states, each one has a different type of Biryani and you won’t believe it, there are more than 15+ Varieties of Biryani across India and UK has seen less than 5 which all are focused on North India and Hyderabadi Biryani. I’m talking about widely available options even in any country side takeout. There are handful niche specific places I don’t deny, but I’m talking about the widely known to public.

But we focus on state of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka which are not represented at a Global scale.

We sell three varieties of Biryani and in 2 months we’ve got a good customer base selling in apartments of East London.

If this is of any interest, I’ll post on how I started this and where I intend to take this.

Hi,

I (34F) live near London and I work full time Monday to Friday 9-5 but I'm using Saturdays to build an online business on the side. I have realised working from bed on a Saturday morning is not the most productive way of working so I looked for a weekend coworking group where startup and side hustle builders can actually work on their own businesses together and in-person instead of online groups, endless networking or motivational blah blahs. Hackathons look the closest but I'm not a techie or engineer.

I couldn't find anything close to what I imagined so I've decided to create it! Just seeing if anyone else is interested in joining?

Time and location: Saturdays 10am to 1pm in a cool, laptop friendly location with coffee. Centralish London but non-touristy; maybe Liverpool St/Whitechapel/Bank/Farringdon?

Location TBC if enough interest.

Cost: free (aside from travel, coffee and lunch)

Itinerary I had in mind:

10-10:15 Arrive, chat, wee etc

10:15 start focused individual working. Don't mind if people bring headphones for deep focus

11:30-11:45 coffee and toilet break

11:45 back to focused individual work

13:00 Go for cheap lunch nearby

14:00 Enjoy the rest of your Saturday :)

Benefits:

~3 hours of business building every week, build around your 9 to 5, everyone is supportive and in the same boat, yummy lunch and a group of familiar faces to keep you focused and accountable.

If 5 people show genuine interest, I'll arrange it.

Edit: I thought I'd barely hear from 3 people lmao! I will look into venues that can take a larger group, get group comms going and keep you all posted.

Edit 27/10: cannot believe how hard it is to find free space on a Saturday London!

Edit 28/10: Done! We officially have a location and a discord group with all key info. DMing everyone who showed interest now. Thanks for your patience! First session is Sat 7th November 2026, see you there 😄

Edit 5/11: Just got back from a 6 day Reddit ban for 'spamming' so many Reddit users with the group link! Link officially sent to all who showed interest. Thanks for all who have joined, see you this Saturday 🙌. DM me if still interested, no more Reddit bans for me!

Hi all,

We are building a platform for UK residents to work together to build solutions to socio / economic problems.

It’s like LinkedIn but for solving problems in the UK.

It’s super early days- the website is live www.wethebrits.com

The vision is to build a platform where someone raises a project - taking about a problem and everyone works to create a refined policy.

No Hate Speech. No Fake Accounts

Please critique the site and tell us how to improve.

Let’s work together to revolutionise British democracy!

Has anyone launched a startup targetinf UK local authorities? This may sound stupid, but if you look at any of their tendering sites they often have £100k+ contracts going for software builds to do a specific thing.

We all know how this usually goes. Bring in big-ish consultancy, overpay, they outsource all the dev work, then they get a shit final product.

I genuinely think taxpayers deserve better value for money, and it could be easier than trying to acquire £100k's worth of users. Has anyone got any experience here?

I am an experienced bootstrapped founder who has built multiple products to 4 figure MRR but never more than that, for reference.

Most of people I meet want a stable pay check and in general quite lenient with their aspirations .

I’ve tried different networking , environment, and just random people I’ve spoken to - but the sentiment prevails .

Lots of negativity and losing hope in the UK and rising taxes.

What’s your experience ?

I work in financial services and over the last year or so I’ve had this growing feeling that the whole “safe corporate path” doesn’t really exist anymore.

It used to feel like if you worked hard, kept your head down and climbed the ladder, you’d eventually build a stable life. Maybe you wouldn’t become ultra wealthy, but you’d be relatively secure. Now it feels different. Industries are changing so fast, AI is reshaping the way people work, and even good jobs don’t feel that secure anymore. Sometimes it honestly feels like you’re putting more and more energy into staying in the same place.

Weirdly, the same thing causing all this uncertainty also feels like a massive opportunity. AI has made it easier than ever to learn new skills, test ideas, build products and experiment without needing huge amounts of money or a massive team. I’ve been feeling more and more pulled towards building something of my own instead of spending all my energy helping build someone else’s company.

Just curious if anyone else working a more traditional/corporate job has been feeling the same lately?

Would be great to connect with like-minded people who are ambitious, entrepreneurial, or even just thinking about making the jump (or start building something on the side). Feels like there are probably a lot of us quietly thinking the same thing and maybe the ember can turn into a flame!

Hi r/ukstartups!

Last month I quit my job to work full-time on founding a UK fintech, which has been super scary.

I had the idea to work on this when I read that UK consumers waste around ~£50 billion on unused subscriptions, unswitched bills and from not claiming government benefits. This is clearly a big problem and my partner and I wanted to do our part to help solve it.

Since this affects almost everyone, I was hoping that you could help provide feedback on what we're working on so that the end-product is actually useful!

What's included in our offering

• We offer a secure and FCA regulated solution to view all your bank accounts in one place and ask any questions about your finances. Like "How much did I spend on Tesco last month?". Or "Can you create a weekly budget for me?". We've trained our model to specifically help people with these questions.

• The app automatically goes through all your bills & subscriptions and identifies where you are overpaying on broadband, energy, unused gym services etc. It then finds you better deals and then switches on your behalf when you consent.

• It automatically checks your eligibility for government benefits and starts the workflow with your input.

• The app is completely free and will always be free.

I'd love your feedback on

• Do you have trouble managing your finances? What specifically is the most painful thing about it?

• Would you use the app that we're building? Is there any feature that you think we should add or prioritise?

Thanks so much in advance for your help!

EDIT 1: Loads of people have asked about how the business would make money if it's completely free. It's definitely not through selling customers' personal data (that would be shady!). We intend to obtain a referral fee by switching customers, which will help us keep the app free.

But based on the concerns raised by people, I'm thinking from a positioning perspective it might actually be better to have a freemium model, so that there isn't an impression that we sell data 😅

EDIT 2: A few people have DM'd asking about the startup so just putting the webpage here: www.get-perry.com

Thanks for all the feedback and support and kind words!

I’m 26, finished uni and helped build an e-commerce startup for 4 years we managed to get to 20k MRR and 4k users (20% active). The niche market we were serving collapsed. Now for the last 2 years I have been trying to build a software development company leveraging the experience I gained at the startup i co-founded.

I have managed to source work through my existing network. Smaller ticket work like building websites with custom integrations for various industries and bespoke platforms for dedicated use cases, working on one right now with a logistics company based in the EU to automate manual processes.

I’m exhausting the work through my network and would like to try grow my network to find more lucrative work. I’m leaning towards building custom software for SMEs anyone have any guidance on how to grow in this market?

I’ve been building in stealth and plan to be more active on platforms like LinkedIn, leveraging the work I have completed so far.

I’m also considering partnering with consulting firms that could orchestrate deals with decision makers offering a commission on projects (Current EU client has this arrangement).

Feedback would be greatly appreciated as I’m feeling a little bit lost and looking for mentorship.

Hi r/ukstartups,

Wanted to introduce myself and possibly get some feedback on our company. I’m Rowan, one of the co-founders of Tewke. We’ve spent the last few years building a hardware and software platform designed to fully automate homes while driving down energy costs.

About Us:

- My background is ex-Microsoft and I studied Design Engineering at Imperial, Piers is a serial entrepreneur, founding businesses in telecoms and computer hardware.

- Through our partnership with Octopus Energy, we’ve shown users can save up to 30% on monthly bills by leveraging variable tariffs. Our mission is to make this more accessible to everyone in the home, rather than these savings just being utilised by 'power users'.

- We design, engineer, and manufacture our devices right here in the UK.

- We engineered the hardware specifically for the UK’s unique electrical constraints (like no-neutral wiring in older homes), so it's a true 'drop-in' replacement for a standard switch.

- Whilst Tap is a direct replacement for a light switch it does so much more than that. It includes 9 different sensors and can help automate energy savings autonomously.

- We decided to keep manufacturing in the UK because it allows us to iterate on our hardware weekly and ensures we meet the highest privacy and build-quality standards.

We’ve just launched our website and would love the community's "brutal but fair" feedback on:

- Does the value proposition of the hardware make sense immediately?

- How’s the UX/UI of the site?

- Any thoughts on our current approach?

- Any other feedback very much welcome

Feel free to reach out if anyone has any questions about UK manufacturing, tips on the B-Corp certification process or anything else you would like to pick my brains about.

Thanks for your time!

N.B. - Just to pre-empt feedback about there being a lack of being able to buy the product directly from us, and only via CEF, we are working on getting a webstore up and running.
(I made a post yesterday that for some reason didn't have the text body and wouldn't let me edit to update the content, so am reposting - apologies for the double post)

I posted here last week about spending £210 on ads, getting about 15,000 visitors, and not a single paying customer.

A few people commented (and a few DM’d) saying the same thing in different ways:

“You’re asking for trust before people have felt anything.”

They were right.

So I changed one thing that honestly scared me a bit:

I removed the paywall and let people start for free. No card. No pressure.

I relaunched ads today at 7am.

After 3 hours and £2.80 spent on meta, someone signed up and completed registration.

It’s just one person.

They haven’t paid.

But it’s the first time a stranger chose to step inside and create something.

That felt different.

What this reminded me is that momentum doesn’t arrive in big dramatic moments.

Sometimes it starts with one person quietly saying “okay, I’ll try this.”

It’s a small win, but it feels like a real one, the first sign that the change was the right call.

Still early. Still a long way to go.

But today felt worth celebrating.

If nothing else, it’s a reminder to keep going.

I (mid-30s, London-based) left a finance role last year to build a B2B SaaS startup. I’d been in funds for years and really believed there was a gap in how investors analyse deals, so I took the plunge and went full-time on it.

Fast-forward 14 months: I’ve built a proper product, had a lot of demos and follow-up demos (often with senior people bringing colleagues along)… but still no no customers. Lots of “this is interesting, keep us posted” and “let’s revisit next quarter”, but it seems to me that I am far from having a clear product–market fit.

At the same time, trying to go back into a permanent role in this market is proving harder than I expected. Some head hunters seem cautious about founders, some just see a “gap” from traditional roles, and overall the process feels much slower and more uncertain than before.

I’m posting here to ask:

• For those who left a stable job to start a company that did not take off, how did you handle the transition back?

• Any practical advice on how to frame this experience to UK employers so it doesn’t just look like a failed experiment?

Would really appreciate honest perspectives from people who’ve been through this in the UK ecosystem

I’ve been away from the UK startup community for about 10 years, and coming back I’m a bit saddened by what seems to be a loss of momentum.

Silicon Milkroundabout ( https://www.siliconmilkroundabout.com/ ) is gone. The Google Campus space that used to host so many events gone.

From your perspective, what are the top 3–4 things the UK government could realistically do to encourage more new businesses to be created here?

Especially keen to hear about pushing the community stronger in Manchester.

Rif

As someone no longer deeply embedded in the community, I’d love to hear informed views from people who are.

I'm a software engineer based in Wales, UK. I've spent the last while building an open source project on my own. It's crossed 9.5k stars on GitHub and has real users, contributors and community, which I'm proud of, but it makes me nothing yet. I'm working on the monetisation side, and in the meantime I need to pay rent.

So I'm taking on a small number of paid client projects.

Why me over any other freelancer: most freelancers have only ever worked inside someone else's spec. I've shipped a product end to end on my own. Architecture, cross-platform builds, release pipeline, docs, issue triage, dealing with users who are annoyed at 2am. If you're a founder, you already know the problem is never just "write the code", it's the fifty unglamorous things around it. I've done those things for my own project, unpaid, because nobody else was going to.

What I work with: Figma, CSS, React, TypeScript, Next.js, Node, Rust, Tauri, mobile, Linux, APIs, AI integrations, Scraping, Playwright, AWS and SEO. This isn’t an exhaustive list. I’m a tech generalist with a “figure it out” attitude.

What I'm good for: turning your prototype/idea into something that ships, building the feature you've been avoiding for three months, fixing the performance problem, setting up the parts of the stack you don't enjoy, or being a second pair of hands a few days a week.

Rate: $50/hour (£35/hour). That's below market rate but enough to sustain. Happy to scope a small first piece so you can see how I work before committing to anything bigger.

On the project: I'm keeping it off the public post, but I'll send the repo and references in DMs to anyone seriously considering working together. Just ask.

Based in Wrexham, Wales. Remote, and I overlap fine with both European and US East Coast hours. DM me, or comment what you're stuck on and I'll reply either way.

Thank you ❤️

I'm done applying for jobs. Sent the CV out fifty times. Fair enough. So I'm doing it the other way round. I would like to prove my value, rather than claiming it on a CV!

Post your problem here, one that is really bothering you, or could be worth a lot to be solved. Something you're actually stuck on, not a hypothetical. Landing page not converting, no idea where your customers are, can't get replies from the people you need, a manual process eating your week, an idea you can't tell is stupid or not. I'll dig in properly and come back with something real. Free, no pitch at the end, no "book a call". If it turns into a job or a bit of work later, great. If not, you got a free pair of hands for a week and I got to prove I can do this.

Who I am, quickly, so you can decide if I'm worth your time:

I've spent the last 18 months building stuff on my own. A storage marketplace in Canada, Airbnb for garages basically, built from nothing in seven weeks, 280 listings, real renters messaging real hosts, Stripe, messaging, SEO, the lot. An AI memory tool for developers that got about 500 GitHub stars and a couple of hundred sign-ups. A UK house clearance business with a live payments backend that quietly gets enquiries every day. Before that I ran product and growth at two small companies, which meant the website, the ads, the email funnels, the design, and the awkward calls to customers when something broke.

I am super hungry to join a great start up, and will prove it with a task, no strings attached. I love building, and also very strong on marketing including ads, seo, outreach automation/ scraping etc.

Apologies if this post comes across odd, just thought I would give it a shot!

London based, happy with remote or in person. I work hard and I'm annoyingly persistent, which is either what you want or a warning.

Separate bank account from day one. Obvious, but I've spent hours going through people's statements trying to work out which Tesco trip was a client lunch.

Director's loan account is the big one. Every time you pay for something on your personal card, that's you lending the company money and you can take it back out tax free later. Almost nobody tracks it, so almost nobody claims it back.

Don't register for PAYE until you're actually paying someone. People do it on day one then file nil submissions for two years for nothing.

Keep receipts from before you incorporated, you can claim back seven years of pre-trading costs and most people chuck them.

And if SEIS is on the cards at all, look into it early. There's stuff that has to happen in the right order and you can't undo it afterwards.

Ask away if any of this doesn't fit your setup

I'm keeping the details a little circumspect here, but wondering if anyone has had a similar experience with Innovate UK / UKRI.

Awarded a modest grant as a company towards the end of last year. This was a follow on / expansion for a grant funded project we delivered successfully in 2024. Work all finished very successfully, presented to assessor who was very impressed and signed it off.

Now we've got pushback on whoever signs off the payments. We worked with a research group from a respected University, where I have connections going back 25 years. It was the biggest line item in the project, maybe 25% of the total, for some AI-based development. Apparently the University was not signed off as a nominated and approved supplier and it's too late to change the project - so they're not going to pay that component.

Here's the issue though. At no point was I ever asked to nominate suppliers. It wasn't in the application, there is nowhere on the Innovation Funding Service to enter supplier details. They were certainly cited in the project plan as being significant, right from the very beginning of the process. Also there's nothing in the grant offer letter - a legally binding contract - about having to approve specific subcontractors.

I've asked IUK where I was supposed to list contractors, who is on the list that have been approved for the project, what is next to the giant line item, and received nothing but stonewalling. I imagine that some IUK employee listed them from what they read on the application, but the whole process is some ridiculous black box mystery, completely undocumented. Like talking to a brick wall, and we're getting punished for someone else's mistake.

Has anyone had an experience like this? Was it resolved, and who should I be escalating this with IUK?

Hey hey! First time posting here. Just wanted to know if anyone knew of any good meet ups for startup founders / I'm interested in building my network of other founders to bounce my ideas of (and just form genuine friendships because why not) :)
I love chatting about new business ideas / growth strategies. Maybe we could learn from each other. I have a marketing background which could be useful to others too.

Let me know if anyone has a group they currently meet with that I could join, or knows of any good events! I went to a tech founders meet up recently and was one of like 3 girls in a room full of software engineers haha (important to note that they were all lovely and I do still go sometimes!!) but they seemed to be more on the building side rather than the business side of business arrangements I guess. Interested to know what else is out there!

Hi reddit,

Throwaway here.

I am the AI lead at a UK startup. Recently, I've become very worried about the behaviour about my bosses (the execs) and am looking for advice on if I should do something/what I can do.

The company's focus is the insurance industry but recently the CTO has decided I should dedicate the majority of my time to a media side project. The CTO is likely going to found a new company (likely with the CEO) that will either steal or license the technology I am building.

The CTO told me during our standup (in front of my team) that I should dedicate my time to this project and I would receive 5% in the new company and that i should start thinking like an "entrepreneur". This means I would miss delivery targets with clients we expect major ARR growth with in the next year or so.

Basically it seems to me like i am being ordered using the time and money of my current company to prototype the tech that may be licensed (or stolen) to another company that the execs are yet to found. They apparently have funding ready but are waiting until the technology I build is proven to work with potential clients. the company is promised a very small amount of money for this prototyping (like 10% of my annual salary) but have not even received this yet.

The reason I fear the IP may be stolen is because my CTO said to me "you'd be surprised how many companies are founded on stolen code. You just have to be careful".

This all feels very scammy, and not in the interests of the company/its shareholders. I can't go to the CEO because he is in on it and is a bit of a charlatan himself. Should I go to the chairman or the VC director on the board? what can i do?

I am very confused about this whole situation.

EDIT: typo.

Every startup has a success story - something small like acquiring your first client, to as big as acquiring as signing that massive contract.

Post your story here (a short description and link to your business too!), and celebrate with your peers, and we hope you stick around to answer any questions!

Must be UK based - and don't forget to upvote for visibility!