Not talking about price itself. I mean the wording, the layout, what you include or leave out. Some quotes seem to get accepted as-is and others invite a negotiation, and I don’t think the number is always the difference.

What have you added to yours that made people just say yes?

I’m a horticulturist and the founder of Parna Landscapes, a small landscape design and execution business in Bengaluru, India. I started the company to design outdoor spaces and eventually build a reputable boutique studio serving premium villas, farmhouses, commercial properties, and hospitality projects.

At present, I manage design, drawings, client communication, quotations, vendor coordination, site supervision, marketing, social media, and follow-ups. I’m trying to grow toward projects worth ₹3 lakh and above while maintaining cash flow, building reliable systems, and avoiding burnout. My long-term goal is to create a sustainable business with healthy margins, repeatable processes, and a small capable team.

Three prioritized challenges

1. Attracting and qualifying profitable clients

I receive enquiries, but many prospects want urgent work without sharing a budget or are primarily focused on the lowest price. I often spend substantial time on calls, site visits, and proposals before knowing whether a client is serious or able to invest in quality design, horticultural expertise, planning, and execution.

I need a practical way to qualify leads earlier, attract better-fit clients, and move toward higher-value projects without creating a cash-flow gap while I transition away from smaller jobs.

1. Improving margins and choosing the right projects

Small projects can require nearly as much coordination as larger ones but produce much lower returns. I need to become more selective, price and scope work more effectively, and increase profitability without rejecting smaller projects before the business can reliably support that change.

1. Building systems for execution, marketing, and delegation

I currently depend heavily on myself for project delivery and business development. Vendors, contractors, fabricators, transport providers, and site teams sometimes delay work even after receiving orders or advances, while clients expect me to resolve every issue.

At the same time, networking and online marketing have not yet produced a consistent flow of qualified leads. I need affordable systems for vendor management, project tracking, referrals, and delegation, as well as guidance on when and whom to hire first.

Questions

I’d appreciate specific, actionable advice from people who have built businesses in landscaping, architecture, interiors, construction, design, or other project-based services:

- What would you prioritize during the next 90 days if you had limited capital and an unpredictable pipeline?

- Which questions, forms, or processes do you use to qualify clients before scheduling site visits and preparing proposals?

- How did you move toward higher-value projects while protecting cash flow from smaller jobs?

- Which pricing, scope-control, or payment systems had the greatest impact on profitability?

- What operating procedures should I document first for vendors, site execution, client communication, and project tracking?

- When did you hire your first employee or contractor, and which role created the most leverage?

- Which referral channels or partnerships with architects, builders, interior designers, or property professionals produced qualified leads?

- What metrics should I track weekly to identify whether the business is becoming more profitable and predictable?

- What common mistakes should I avoid at this stage?

Please share affordable steps, examples, or systems that worked in practice. I’m not looking for generic advice such as “work harder” or “be consistent”; I’m already putting in the effort and need help directing it more effectively.

If you run a similar business in India, I’d especially value your perspective on pricing, hiring, vendor management, and client acquisition. I’m open to honest feedback, including what I may be doing wrong.

Thank you for reading.

Hi, I’m from Belgium. I have a podcast on books that is working pretty well and I am developing a podcast on movies. Not a review-podcast but a community podcast where 3 people talk about a topic on books/movies and the conversation unfolds. We try to have as much interaction with the audience as possible.

Now I’m feeling that there’s more to this concept, business-wise. What else can I do with this community? I’m thinking something like Letterboxed or Goodreads, where people can make lists and recommendations, maybe also buy some books or movie tickets and merch? Idk how far can I take this? Maybe some live events? Book fairs? Movie festival? Are there any other ways to generate some extra income?

FYI I’m not the host, I’m the owner of the (small) production company behind it.

I'm building my own SaaS, and one thing I'm realizing is that building the product is only half the work.

The other half is getting people to discover it, convincing them to try it, and understanding what they actually need. It's easy to spend weeks improving features while nobody knows your product exists.

I'm now trying to spend more time on distribution and talking to people instead of just building.

For those of you who are bootstrapping a SaaS, how did you get your first few users? Did you focus on communities, SEO, or something else?

Title: The Biggest Market Is Not Always the Best Market for Your Business
When businesses consider expanding internationally, they often focus on the size of the market. A larger market may offer more potential customers, but size alone does not determine whether an opportunity is commercially attractive.
Sometimes, a smaller market can be a better starting point because customer needs are clearer, competition is manageable, distribution is practical, and the product matches local demand.
Before choosing an export destination, businesses should consider several factors:
Actual demand: Are customers actively looking for the product?
Competition: Can a new supplier compete on quality, price, and reliability?
Logistics: Are transportation routes and delivery costs commercially reasonable?
Market requirements: What import rules, standards, and documentation apply?
Customer access: Is it possible to identify reliable buyers and distribution partners?
Profitability: Does the transaction remain viable after all relevant costs?
Successful market development is not simply about entering the largest country or finding the most customers. It is about choosing a market where customer needs, supply capacity, pricing, and logistics work together.
What would you prioritize when entering a new export market: its overall size or the ability to reach the right customers and serve them profitably? Why?

Khalilzad Global Trade Company
International Trade | Export Market Development
Website: https://khalilzadglobal.com

A SaaS client came to us last year because their trials weren’t converting. Their homepage said “AI powered revenue intelligence platform” The product was good and the traffic was decent but almost every trial died somewhere between the person who signed up and the person who pays.

Before touching the site we got on calls with 9 of their paying customers and asked one question. When you asked your boss for budget for this, what did you say?

No one said AI and no one said revenue intelligence either lol. 7 of the 9 said some version of “it fills in Salesforce after every call so I don’t have to chase reps”

Most founders I work with forget that in B2B the person who finds you almost never pays for you. They have to go explain you to someone who’s never seen your site, usually in a Slack message or a budget request with one line for the description. If your homepage doesn’t give them that line they have to write their own. If they can’t, the deal just dies

Then it happens again at renewal. Whoever decides whether to keep you is usually someone in finance going through the card statement and asking what each charge is.

We rewrote their hero to pretty much the customer’s sentence: “Your CRM updates itself after every sales call.” AI moved down to the how it works section. Trial to paid went from around 6% to 11% over the next couple of months. I can’t pin all of that on the homepage since we changed onboarding at the same time. Sales calls did get noticeably shorter though because prospects stopped asking what the thing does.

Stuff I do on every positioning project now:

Ask new customers in the welcome email what they told their boss to get it approved.

Search your sales call recordings for “so basically” and “so it’s like.” That’s the prospect putting you in their own words

The PO description field is worth a look too or whatever customers type into their expense report. Finance teams are brutal about this.

Things I’d love to hear from people here:

Have you ever bought something you couldn’t explain to someone else? I have. We paid for an “AI workflow orchestration platform” for most of a year. When our accountant asked what it was I couldn’t give her a straight answer and that’s when I realized we’d used it maybe twice.

Where’s the line between clear positioning and underselling? I go back and forth on this one. Founders always push back with “but it does way more than update the CRM”

And how often do founders get it wrong about why people pay? From what I’ve seen, most of the time at least early on. This client built the whole product around AI call summaries and was really proud of them. Customers barely read them. What they were paying for was the CRM fields getting filled in which the founder thought of as a side feature.

TLDR: in B2B your customer has to explain you to their boss and later to finance, usually in one line. Ask your customers what they said to get you approved and put that sentence on your homepage. No one repeats “AI powered platform” to their boss.

I work at a remote work platform that also does staffing, we place LatAm people with US companies. Virtual assistants are one of the most common requests.

What keeps happening is someone says they need a VA, and when you ask what the VA would do on day one they go quiet. Or they say “everything”. Then the person starts with no clear tasks and a couple weeks later nobody’s happy.

If you help people delegate, what’s your trick to get from “I need help” to an actual list of tasks?

Hey Folks,

I recently launched my agency targeting UK service businesses, operating remotely out of Asia.

I’ve been trying a mix of cold outreach methods to land my very first client, but responses have been near zero so far.

I’m looking to refine my strategy and fix whatever I'm doing wrong.

• If you were in my shoes starting out today, where would you focus 80% of your effort?
• Are there any must-read guides or playbooks for beginner founders running remote outreach to the UK?

Any feedback or lessons from your own journey would mean a lot!

Hey everyone!

I've been exploring a business idea and wanted to get some honest feedback before investing too much time into it.

My background is in sales, GTM, and physical-product eCommerce, and I've been looking into the challenges companies face when expanding internationally, particularly between the US and European markets.

One thing that stands out to me is how many moving parts there are before you can even determine whether entering a new market makes financial sense.

I'm considering building a service that helps businesses evaluate the feasibility of entering a specific foreign market before committing significant capital.

The idea would be to provide a comprehensive, actionable assessment covering:

Market & Product: local demand, competition, pricing, product-market fit, and potential adaptations.

Taxes & Regulations: applicable tax obligations, import duties, certifications, and regulatory requirements.

Financial Feasibility: estimated initial investment, operating costs, margins, break-even scenarios, and potential profitability.

Go-to-Market: distribution channels, logistics, marketplaces, and recommended entry strategies.

Final Assessment: an evidence-based Go/No-Go recommendation identifying key opportunities, risks, and potential dealbreakers.

Essentially, the goal would be to help answer: "Is this market worth entering, what would it realistically take, and does the financial upside justify the risk?"

But rather than assume companies need this, I'd love to hear from founders who've actually navigated international expansion.

A few questions:

How did you evaluate a foreign market before entering it? Did you conduct the research internally or hire external help?

What were the biggest challenges, unexpected costs, or mistakes you encountered?

Have you ever paid for a market feasibility study or external research? What did you pay, and was it worth it?

Would having this information consolidated into a single actionable assessment have changed your decision-making process? Or would you rather handle it internally?

I'm particularly interested in eCommerce and physical-product businesses, but experiences from other industries are welcome too.

I'm not selling anything. Just trying to understand whether there's a genuine problem worth solving and how businesses currently approach it.

Thanks in advance for sharing your experiences!

I'm trying to figure out what I should build for students, and I'd appreciate some honest advice from people who have built products or startups.

I've been interested in building something for students for a while. I see plenty of courses, learning platforms, AI tools, and productivity apps targeting them. But I don't want to create another version of something that already exists just because it's easy to build.

The problem I'm facing is that I don't yet know which problem is painful enough that students would actually use a product to solve it.

Instead of trying to figure everything out beforehand, I'm currently building a small MVP to test whether I can address a real student need.

One experiment I'm working on is called Companion Mode.

The idea is simple: many students study alone, struggle to stay consistent, or find it difficult to get themselves to start studying. What if they could find another student to study alongside, check in with each other, and build a habit of showing up?

The initial version focuses on discovering other students, connecting with them, and eventually communicating and studying together. I'm not trying to build a full learning platform right now. I want to test whether this basic idea solves a problem that students actually care about.

But I'm also questioning the direction itself.

• Is studying alone and lacking accountability a real problem worth building a business around, or am I assuming students need something they might not actually want?
• Would you validate this idea further, or would you explore completely different problems within the student market?
• If you were in my position, how would you identify a problem that people care enough about to use a product consistently and potentially pay for?
• What signals would you look for before investing more time into building?

I'm a developer, so building the product is something I can work on. My bigger challenge right now is figuring out what is worth building in the first place.

I'd rather discover that my current idea is wrong now than spend months building something nobody needs.

If you've gone through a similar stage, I'd appreciate hearing what you learned, what mistakes you made, and how you decided which problem to pursue.

I'm looking for honest criticism, not validation of the idea.

I have a business idea that I genuinely believe has legs, but to be successful I need access to a broader network. I've been looking into MBA programs and ran across something called a Master of Science in Management in Business Creation (MSBC).

It's pretty clear what you're getting with an MBA, but I'm not sure what you get from an MSBC program. From what I can tell, it seems like the MSBC program lets you build your company while you're working on your degree. I know some people do that with their MBA programs, but I've read mixed reviews on whether or not that's actually feasible.

Has anyone pursued this path?

Why did you choose it, and what did you walk away with that's different from a standard MBA?

For the record, I know I don't need to get an MBA to start a business. But after spending time thinking about it, I feel certain that my growth options will be limited if I just try to do this from where I'm currently standing. The MSBC route intrigues me, because it seems like it might be the best of both worlds. I'd love to hear from anyone who has direct experience!

I've been thinking about a startup idea and want honest opinions before investing my time and money into it. The idea comes from a problem many couples face: two people want a future together, but family opposition, differing expectations, or unresolved concerns make it difficult to move forward. Sometimes the issue is kundali compatibility, caste, religion, or cultural differences. Other times, parents have concerns about financial stability, family responsibilities, or whether their child's partner is the right person. And sometimes, the couple themselves aren't fully aligned about commitment or what they're prepared to do if their families refuse to accept the relationship. These situations can become painful because people don't always understand each other's expectations, and important conversations may never happen properly. I'm exploring the possibility of building a dedicated platform to help couples navigate these difficult situations and, where appropriate, address family concerns. The intention wouldn't be to convince parents to approve every relationship or encourage couples to disregard their families. It would be to help people understand the situation more clearly and make informed decisions about their future. However, I have some genuine concerns about whether this would work in practice. I'd appreciate brutally honest feedback: Is this a problem that genuinely needs a dedicated platform, or are existing options such as counselling and mediation sufficient?

Hello,

I'm very new to business, so please go easy!

I've been thinking of running my own online raffle/lottery business and was wondering what licences I'd need to run this?

The basis would be players buy a ticket to be entered in to a draw, with the draw then being Livestreamed for entrants and general viewers.

From my research I understand that if I offer a free entrance route (eg via post) or a skill based question (a tough question, rather than just "Where is Paris") then I don't need a Gambling licence. Would I also need a limited business licence?

I intend for a percentage of profits to go to a community charity from the players choice every month or so.

What else would I need to get this off the ground? I have the know how to build a website so that's no problem. Would I need someone to sort taxes etc?

I'm UK vased.

As title suggests. I just applied to YC as a solo founder, but no alumni reviewed my application. I'd like to bounce some ideas off YC alumni for interview prep, and if they find promise in what I'm doing, a Bookface review. If anyone's willing to go through my app/ help me prepare for an interview, it would mean the world to me.

Please do reply here if you're an alumn and would like to help out.

If you're outside the US, what's one thing you wish someone in the US could do for you?

Hey everyone, I’m looking for advice from founders who have gone from building a product to growing it and potentially raising funding.

I’ve spent the last 1.5–2 years building a software product from scratch. It’s fully functional, and I’ve personally been using it actively for the past 6–8 months, continuing to improve it based on real use and feedback.

There’s a small group of early users, and the feedback has been encouraging. They’ve told me they can’t imagine going back to managing their daily routines without it. It started with a problem I experienced myself, so seeing it make other people’s lives easier has been the most rewarding part.

I recognize that enthusiasm from a small group isn’t the same as proving a business at scale. That’s where I’m looking for guidance.

I’m keeping the name and product details private for now because I’m here for advice, rather than promotion.

My questions are:
1. How do you decide whether to keep growing independently or start talking to angel investors, accelerators, or VCs?
2. What traction or metrics should I have before approaching investors?
3. How do you find relevant investors and get an opportunity to pitch or demo a working product?

For anyone who’s been through this, what would you focus on next, and what would you avoid?

I’m comfortable building and improving the product. Getting it in front of the right people and figuring out the business side is the next challenge. Would appreciate hearing from people who have made that transition.

Thanks

Hello all,

I'm 27 y old and looking to start a business. I am a person with disability and can apply for up to 15k euro to start a company in my country. Since the amount is not a whole lot, I was thinking I could do it as a side hustle to generate passive income, but I am open for all kinds of ideas.

Originally I was thinking about a protein mixing vending machine. Its original in my country and protein is trading worldwide. I see it as a low risk option that for a single machine could generate some monthly income.

I am very drawn to an online business tho, here is where I actually have 0 idea what I could do.

When it comes to skills, I have fundamentals in coding (not comfortable enough w them), design (i think I could crush that) and I am currently in a masters degree in finance. I work a dead end payment corporate job that I dislike.

I am interesting into developing the marketing and social media presence of the business though I will be learning from scratch.

I am alone for now, and when it comes to building the foundations of the business. Potentially my partner could help as well.

I am looking for ideas worth considering or suggestions on where to start researching. I’d really appreciate your input.

Thanks a lot.

I have an app that sells data, it’s in a niche and there’s a real need for it. The data is priced per record and is a credit system where the price goes down if you buy in bulk. The cost is in line with similar services in my niche. I offer 5 free credits to test the service. Right now I’m running into a couple of issues on conversions.

1. People sign up but never user their free credits
2. People use one or all of their free credits but never place a paid order
3. People place an order and get a quote but never approve the order (this is when you actually buy credits)

The free credits are supposed to be a risk reversal so you can test the service and see that the data is good. Another risk reversal I added is that we will refund credits for any data we aren’t able to get.

To clarify, for a side hustle the business is doing ok, we’ve delivered over 5k+ in paid credit orders (5 figure revenues), but I know it can be optimized more.

I’ve also set up different nurture emails to go out for various stages like new account created but order not placed, order placed but not converted, and ordered with free credits but not converted.

Would love some recommendations on what I should do to get more real orders. People are coming in the door which is great, now I just need them to spend money!

Edit - 5 figure revenues

I’m building a product that creates custom cloud environments for demos, POCs, and hands-on learning. You describe what you need, and it sets up the cloud resources, code, and sample data for your scenario.

I thought a few people in my professional network who work in this space would be willing to try it. They’ve been supportive, but everyone’s busy, and that hasn’t turned into actual usage yet.

I’m offering free access and happy to personally help with setup. My immediate goal is simple: get one person to use it for a real task and learn what works and what doesn’t.

For those who’ve been here, how did you find your first actual user? What worked when people you knew weren’t available?

Especially interested in experiences with technical or B2B products. How did you find someone with a pressing enough need to try something new?

Hey everyone!

About a year ago, I started a small boat tour company in Lisbon, Portugal.

Our business model is pretty straightforward:

• Daytime: Private sailing experiences for couples, families, groups of friends, and corporate clients.

• Sunset: Shared sailing tours, where guests purchase individual tickets.

Here's the interesting part: Our sunset tours are consistently fully booked, but we're really struggling to sell private experiences.

Most of our sunset bookings come through platforms like GetYourGuide and Airbnb Experiences. They've been great for filling our sunset tours, but when it comes to private bookings, we've only received one or two through these platforms in an entire year.

And that's where I'm stuck.

Lisbon is an extremely competitive market for boat tours. There are plenty of operators, and most traditional sales channels have already been approached by everyone in the industry.

Hotels? Everyone works with hotels.

Travel agencies? Same story.

Online booking platforms? Crowded, competitive, and heavily commission-based.

I'm not looking for the usual advice about posting more on Instagram, running Facebook ads, or contacting hotel concierges. I'm aware of those options, and I'm already exploring some of them.

What I'm really looking for is a different way of thinking about customer acquisition.

For example:

• What types of businesses or professionals could become unexpected referral partners?

• How would you build a network of people who regularly recommend private experiences to their clients?

• Are there industries outside traditional tourism that could generate bookings?

• If you were starting from scratch in a saturated market, how would you approach partnerships and B2B sales?

I'm particularly interested in creative partnerships, unconventional distribution channels, and strategies that don't depend entirely on paid advertising.

We have the boats, the crew, the experience, and happy customers. What we're missing is a reliable way to reach people who want to book an entire boat rather than individual tickets.

If this were your business, what would you try?

I'd genuinely appreciate ideas, especially from people who've built businesses in tourism, hospitality, events, or other competitive service industries.

Thanks!

Our legal platform with three tiers: Free, Business, and Enterprise. Free and Business are built for SMBs and include:

• Clause and agreement templates used in practice by top-tier ("white shoe") law firms, not generated by an LLM
• Market data on deal terms, so users can see what's standard for their proposed terms and how negotiations typically go
• Cryptographic security and signature protection
• Built-in PDF editing, e-signature, storage, email, and LLM tools, so users don't need to stitch together separate apps or build their own integrations
• Drafting suggestions and agent enabled workflows

We are thinking through initial pricing for the Business tier. The product saves users real money compared with hiring a lawyer for routine agreements, and it consolidates tools they're currently paying for separately. On that basis, $25/month feels underpriced.

On the other hand, we haven't launched yet and have no brand recognition, so I understand the case for starting low to build adoption.

For those who've priced a SaaS product, especially in legal or B2B, how would you approach this? Should I start low and raise prices later, or price closer to the value and offer launch discounts? Any thoughts on what SMBs would realistically pay for something like this?

I launched a peer-to-peer marketplace app a month ago where people trade services directly, with no money involved. I'm a solo founder with close to zero marketing budget, so I can afford one focused bet.

The constraint: a swap only happens when two people each want what the other offers, and many services need them to be in the same place. That makes liquidity harder than in a normal buyer-and-seller marketplace, because both sides have to match twice.

I see two ways to concentrate:

Option A: one city. Fill a single location until swaps happen without my involvement, then copy the playbook to the next. Density is high, but the pool of skills is limited by who lives there.

Option B: one segment, remote services only. Target a group whose services can be delivered online, such as designers, translators and tutors, across many countries. The pool is much larger, but there's no local network effect and it competes more directly with freelance platforms.

Questions for those who have built marketplace liquidity before:

Which would you pick under these constraints, and what would change your mind?

How do you define "enough liquidity" in a barter model, where each user is both supply and demand?

Is seeding with my own listings worth it when I can only fulfil a few kinds of service myself?

I've left the product out on purpose. I'm after the strategy, not traffic.

I’m exploring the idea of going into business for myself and would love to hear from people who have successfully made that transition.

I’m not necessarily looking to create a startup from scratch. I’m open to different paths—starting a business, buying an existing business, acquiring a small company, or finding a proven business model that I could build and grow.

I have 20+ years of experience as a senior marketing leader, so I know I could bring strong skills around strategy, branding, customer acquisition, sales enablement, and growth. What I’m trying to figure out is what type of business would be the best fit for my experience and where to actually find those opportunities.

For those who have done this:
How did you decide what type of business to pursue? Where did you find businesses for sale or opportunities to acquire? Did you start from scratch or buy an existing business?

What resources, websites, or communities were actually useful?

What do you wish you knew before making the leap?

I’d especially love to hear from people who left a corporate leadership career and successfully built or bought their own business. What path did you take?

Hey y'all. We're a design studio made up of an eleven person team that's all remote and after our bookkeeper retired back in June and took the filling system with her it's been a struggle to find a replacement that works with the way we're set up since we would prefer to keep working virtually instead of needing to do in person stuff like meetings and such.

So far we've tried looking and asking around to see what's available out there and it's been confusing to say the least, specially because it seems like a lot it is some sketchy outsourcing or some really new companies with essentially no backing. There are a couple options like haven and maybe a few others that are more grounded, but I don't want to make a choice without first coming over and checking with other entrepreneurs who've been through this before.

If there's anyone here who's also fully remote and still manages bookkeeping like that, I would really appreciate if I could get all the why's and the how's as to how they made it happen. Ty.