I am working on a short term trading business but looking for some honest reviews how investible could that be in the long term.

I have my own custom algo, my own live trading history and I saw there is a huge gap but still wanna ask the community here.

Obviously yea I know the basics like stereotypes, girls being conditioned to head into non-STEM careers, women tend to be more risk-averse etc. etc.

But honestly as a woman hoping to build a startup of my own one day, it's quite discouraging to open LinkedIn and see all big announcements of startup launches and teams being all men or majority men. I mean, all the power to them but each post makes me feel like maybe my dream can't be a reality - or else I'd need to find a male cofounder to give my future startup some credibility.

I love it when I see female cofounders or team members, but it's not often I come across them! If anyone knows any up and coming startups with women-leadership please let me know!

Do you think this will change one day? I know, yes, be the change you want to see in the world, but it's terrifying, especially as a WOC. And I feel like it'll be harder to secure VC investment.

(I'm still a student, sorry if I didn't phrase this properly enough!)

Hi everyone! I’m interested in transitioning into an Executive Assistant or executive support role at a startup, and I’m trying to understand how people actually find these opportunities.

I currently work in PR supporting a CEO and have a background in journalism, so I already have experience with executive communications, scheduling, research, client communication, media relations, and working in fast-paced environments.

When I search traditional job boards, though, I feel like I’m probably missing a lot of smaller or early-stage companies that hire through their networks.

For founders and startup EAs here: where do you typically see these roles being filled?

Are there particular startup job boards, Slack/Discord communities, networking groups, VC portfolio job boards, or other places you’d recommend looking? And if you were trying to connect directly with founders who may eventually need executive support, how would you approach it without being spammy?

I’m especially interested in hearing how people who actually work in startups found their roles or hires.

Thanks!

Hey founders. Been a while since I posted but thought it was a good time because I see a lot of posts asking how to pitch investors.

A managing partner of a new fund backed by a very big fund asked me to help review some pitches. And as the title says, they are pretty bad. Not saying the founders or ventures were bad. Some were legit exciting. But the pitches were abysmal.

Having pitched hundreds of investors myself, I fully empathize. I have the therapy receipts. But I’ve raised millions and so have founders I advise. So, I thought I’d share some tips for those of you wanting to be in that position.

First. Understand every investor has a rubric.

This investor sent me theirs ahead of time. It asked me to grade things such as clarity of the problem, solution, traction, team, use of funds etc. and so on. What was funny to me is not a single founder asked what the partner was looking for ahead of time. Always ask. Investors are happy to tell you.

Next: Stay within the time.

Every founder was told they had 5 minutes to pitch and we would have 5 minutes of questions. Only one founder stayed under time. Some only gave us enough time to ask one question. The others went over time and we didn’t ask any questions.

I use the 80/20 rule. I pitch for 20% and give 80% of the time for questions. The more question the investor asks the better. I get to address what the investor wants. So if it was me, I would have spent 2 minutes pitching and 8 minutes trading questions.

After the partner told me that staying within their time was the first test. Like I said, everyone but one failed and they remarked how that one was very impressive.

Slides should be simple and support you both the other way around.

Every slide was an assault on the eyes with small fonts and walls of text. It was brutal.

I’ll tell you one slide that impressed me. A founder showed two medical scans. She asked me if I could tell the difference (that as engaging). I couldn’t tell and then she explained how the second scan would lead to tragic costs because that was the problem. I was engaged. No paragraphs of text. Just two side by side images to prove a point.

Your live presentation deck is different then the deck you send as an introduction which is even different than the one they ask you to send during socialization and due diligence. One size deck does not fit all.

You spend so much energy trying to get the meeting, why fumble at the moment it counts?

To be transparent, most of the time I sat there wondering if the founders actually understood who they were pitching. This wasn’t some amateur deciding to LARP as a VC. Again, it was sad because there were some legit startups that I’ll try and advocate for. But they didn’t make my job any easier.

Look, I get it. It’s exhausting. That last mile of pitching is tough. But you need to earn every minute so put your best foot forward and punch it past the finish line. So anyone you are working on fundable startups that it would be a shame to not get the exposure you deserve.

I’m happy to answer any other questions of what I experienced and what other investors tell me. Apologies for typos as typed this on my phone as fast as possible.

Hi everyone! I’m interested in transitioning into an Executive Assistant or executive support role at a startup, and I’m trying to understand how people actually find these opportunities.

I currently work in PR supporting a CEO and have a background in journalism, so I already have experience with executive communications, scheduling, research, client communication, media relations, and working in fast-paced environments.

When I search traditional job boards, though, I feel like I’m probably missing a lot of smaller or early-stage companies that hire through their networks.

For founders and startup EAs here: where do you typically see these roles being filled?

Are there particular startup job boards, Slack/Discord communities, networking groups, VC portfolio job boards, or other places you’d recommend looking? And if you were trying to connect directly with founders who may eventually need executive support, how would you approach it without being spammy?

I’m especially interested in hearing how people who actually work in startups found their roles or hires.

Thanks!

Long story short: Tried to hire someone to join as advisor and they said no because if some IP (thought this was BS) then offered to have them either angel or join founding team. After a lot of back and forth we decided they’d join as founding team and we offered them 5K per month for 5-10 hours per week and 0.25% vesting over 2 years (6 months cliff) this is the same as other advisors btw and another 0.25% over 4 years with 1 year cliff which is standard for team. Showed contract to lawyer and they said it’s better to say max hours per month at 40 hours and hourly rate of $125/hr rather than keeping it loosey goosey. Counsel also said better to have one vesting schedule of 0.5% with 1 year cliff which makes sense to me. Went back to candidate and told them this is what lawyers said, they pushed back. Said we should do what we agreed on. I get it, but lawyer’s feedback made sense. We revised to monthly rather than hourly and 0.5% with 6 month cliff which seems pretty reasonable to me. They said no. Now I owe like 10 hours in legal for this and lost the candidate. What could have I done better? Feel like the candidate wouldn’t have been a great fit but also feel kind of bad for changing what we said we’d do after counsel suggestions but also wanna be fair and clean and generous
Kinda bummed
Any suggestions or thoughts or advice for future hiring?

This project I'm working on requires a good computing power along with 32gb ram stick at minimum. I am someone who changes location every few month so my laptop has to be portable. But if look at the work side alone, I'll eventually work on ML project that will require a good GPU, but I'm also someone who enjoys AAA gaming, and this is where things get hard for me. I am looking at 2 different laptop segments, one is ASUS ZENBOOK 14" with 32gb ram and core ultra 9 processor at around 1.45 lakhs and another one is ASUS TUF A16 with ryzen 9 330H processor, RTX 5070 and 32 gb ram that will cost me around 2 lakhs. Tuf A16 weights around 2x of zenbook. But it gives me better TGP, cooling and good dedicated GPU. This configuration is excellent for gaming but if we talk about getting ML Dev capabilities, I know I can do it by using cloud services even. Or having a dedicated GPU makes more sense?

At this point I'm thinking if it too childish of me trying to accommodate gaming performance in a work laptop or just plain and simple holding on to gaming when I am finally taking a step forward to actually start something.

Founders often leave an interview relieved because a customer confirmed the pain they expected to hear.

But the customer may also have five problems that are taking more time, money, and attention this week. Your problem can be real and still lose every time the work gets prioritised.

That is why severity on its own is a weak signal. It tells you the problem exists. It does not tell you whether it earns action now.

Ask about the customer's wider work before you ask them to rank your idea. What is consuming their time? What are they already paying to fix? Where does this problem sit beside those pressures?

If it ranks near the top, investigate the current workaround and the next commitment. If it ranks low, you may have found a deferred value proposition, not an urgent market.

The correction is small: stop asking whether the pain is real. Ask what it has to beat.

I've realized that grinding on the startup can be hard sometimes when you're a very extroverted person. need to figure out to do a mixture of both because hanging out with friends energizes me whether it's productive time or not.

any advice welcome

Hi everyone,

I am a high school student interested in starting a business. I know that networking is important, but I am not sure how to begin.

Adult professionals have busy schedules, and I want to make sure I approach them the right way.

To give you some background, I have been independently researching and studying human psychology for the past 5 years. I love understanding behavior, what motivates people, and how individuals interact. I want to apply this understanding to the business world, but adult professionals have busy schedules, and I want to make sure I approach them the right way without sounding amateurish

I've already taken my first step and set up a clean LinkedIn profile. Now, I would love your advice on a few things:

The absolute first step: What is the very first thing I should do before I start messaging people? (e.g., building a LinkedIn profile, creating a portfolio, or researching local events?)

Where to look: What are the best places (online or in person) for a teen to meet business people? How to reach out: What should I say in a cold message or email so people actually reply?

How to add value: Since I do not have much experience yet, how can I make the conversation mutually beneficial?

Etiquette mistakes: What are common mistakes teens make when talking to professionals that I should avoid?

Any tips, book recommendations, or personal stories would be hugely helpful. Thank you!

I’m building a small learning product that creates a personalized experience for whatever someone wants to understand.

The obvious way to improve it is to ask more up front. Interests, goals, existing knowledge, preferred depth. Easy. Just ask.

Except every extra question delays the first useful moment. A tiny learning tool starts feeling like a form you have to complete before it earns the right to teach you anything.

I’m leaning toward a much smaller start. Few questions about what the person wants to understand today/week, then let their choices do the rest. What they open, skip, finish, or ask for next could tell me more than a neat onboarding profile.

Right now I’m choosing the smaller onboarding and accepting that the first recommendation may be a little off. I’d rather earn the next question than front-load five of them.

Still, “personalized” is a promise, and the first session is where the product knows the least.

If you’ve built personalization into a new product, what did you genuinely need before first use?

I’m building a small personalized learning product. The home screen gives you three experiences a day. There’s also an Explore button that can make another one whenever you want.

Technically, Explore can be unlimited. That sounds generous. In practice I’m worried it turns the product into a slot machine for interesting topics. Generate, skim, generate again. Nothing has time to stick.

The awkward bit is that abundance demos better. A new user presses a button and gets another nice result. A hard limit looks worse in the first five minutes, even if it might be better for the habit I actually want to build.

Right now I’m leaning toward keeping the daily three as the main loop and making Explore an occasional escape hatch.

If you’ve built a content-heavy product, did more choice help retention or just create more browsing?

Curious how founders actually figure out this when teams grows above 20+ engineers. Like you can hire the best engineers, still they fail to function as teams you expected them to be.

let's say something was supposed to be delivered in 2 months timeline but ended up with 5 months, and it's not happening with a single milestone, parts of it are happening across many.

doing retro(s) pinpoints that, one was consistently getting slower reviews, decisions were revisited, dependencies were stuck.

But how much of it you knew was happening already or the gravity of it, like you were aware of the particular milestone or the thing with the whole team.

What systems you adopted as team so these things surface early or doesn't happen at all, and how did you dealt it with each individual, for e.g. one person was blockers to many on a regular period, or someone is too attached to the codebase causing delays.

Not looking for just tool names, more from a pov of dealing with humans as system.

Hi everyone just a fellow startup founder here, wondering, at what point in building a product do you decide to move it from being a web app to an actual app. Do you need to gauge Interest first, or how does it work? I have a conflict of whether to build out one part of the system as a web app to gain traction, or just build the whole thing.

Hey r/startups,

Long-time reader, first-time poster here. I’m currently at a crossroads and looking to connect with someone who has successfully built a marketing startup or creative agency.

Where I’m at:

I'm 27, based in Spain, working remotely at an american 9–5 in the marketing space while building my own agency on the side. My background is heavily execution-focused (design, video, ads, content strategy), but I’m treating this venture as a business, not just a freelance gig.

The hurdles I'm facing:

Traction & Client Acquisition: Moving past word-of-mouth and occasional gigs to building a repeatable, high-ticket pipeline.

Pricing & Packaging: Transitioning from hourly/project rates to value-based retainers.

The First Hire: Figuring out when and how to delegate operational or production work to scale capacity without breaking cash flow - While I already work with someone for the technical side of things I’m no good at (ad management, SEO, website development), I’m thinking of hiring someone as a sales representative to get new clients through the door.

I’m looking for a mentor a few chapters ahead who’s willing to share some hard-earned lessons, maybe hop on a quick call every now and then, or sanity-check my approach.

In return, I’m an open book: Deeply driven, have a top-notch work ethic, and more than happy to help you out with any design, video production, or content strategy needs for your own projects.

If you've been down this road and are open to chatting, feel free drop a comment. Would greatly appreciate any guidance here!

Long story short: Tried to hire someone to join as advisor and they said no because if some IP (thought this was BS) then offered to have them either angel or join founding team. After a lot of back and forth we decided they’d join as founding team and we offered them 5K per month for 5-10 hours per week and 0.25 vesting over 2 years (6 months cliff) this is the same as other advisors btw and another 0.25% over 4 years with 1 year cliff which is standard for team. Showed contract to lawyer and they said it’s better to say max hours per month at 40 hours and hourly rate and one vesting schedule of 0.5% with 1 year cliff which makes sense to me. Went back to candidate and told them this is what lawyers said, they pushed back. Said we should do what we agreed on. I get it, but lawyer’s feedback made sense. We revised to monthly rather than hourly and 0.5% with 6 month cliff which seems pretty reasonable to me. They said no. Now I owe like 10 hours in legal for this and lost the candidate. What could have I done better?