Share your startup story! Would love to hear.

Senthilnathan RM
22 replies
Everyone's origin story of starting up is very different from others. But they all have one thing in common. They are all inspiring. So share yours and inspire others. 😊

Replies

AndrΓ© J
Quit my job at Tidal.com One of the best places I have worked at. But there was a sudden culture change, that didn't fit with my goals. After I was free of obligations. I wanted to do something that would not suddenly turn on me after investing X amount of time and effort into. So I wanted to build a place that had more long term values that fit with the people working there. And so I started a startup. I went through the accelerator program Antler and got funding. And then got add-on gov grants etc. Now we are raising again soon. We just launched 1.0 a few hours ago so be sure to check it out. https://sentry.co πŸ˜‡
@eonpilot , leaving a good job takes guts! Kudos for that and building something worthwhile! Btw, just checked your site, this is super cool. You must have said a bit about what you are actually building! Haha. Anyway, memorizing all the passwords or saving via chrome and all that is something I don't like much. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people like me. :) So yeah, all the best!
AndrΓ© J
@senthil99nathan Thanks. Building my own startup has been to most fun and hard thing I have ever done. The universe really dont want you to win, but always gives you some hope to keep going πŸ˜‚
Vlad Zivkovic
I never had a real job for more than few months, always been on the move to build my own startup, started my first company when I was 17 and failed, started another one few years later and failed again, started 3rd one and scale it to $10M company but failed again, sh..t happens :) While failing at the last one the idea of the 4th one basically built itself and started generating some decent revenue, that's how I came to the point where I am now :)
@vladimir_zivkovic , now that's some career. Taking bold risks is quite a characteristic to have. :)
Zelal Hossain
My startup journey is still ongoing. I created the website https://jstemplate.net/ to provide developers with useful resources such as full-stack themes, HTML/Tailwind templates, and UI components. I was very confident in the last two years that we will create a lot of good resources. After lot of struggle, I am stage where I have few templates, themes, and ongoing UI components. But for the last 2-3 months very afraid to continue. The reason for my fear is twofold. Firstly, I've been working on side projects through Upwork to generate income for my team's salaries. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to secure any projects in the past few months. Secondly, our main focus has been on creating our own products instead of taking on client projects. As a result, our funds are running low, and I'm very close to the point of leaving the team. I find myself reflecting on the significant amount of time and effort I've invested in building this team. I've spent all of my money to keep the team going and develop these products. If I have to leave the team due to a lack of funds, it would be a difficult situation for me. It's 2:30 am here, and I find myself reflecting on the mistakes I've made: 1. I focused too much on creating products instead of taking on ongoing client projects. 2. I initially had ambitious plans, but after developing two MERN stack solutions, I realized it would be challenging to maintain them with a small team. 3. I neglected marketing efforts from the start, which hindered the generation of visitors to the website. 4. I spent less time with my family and more time on my computer. and a lot more... However, I still believe that I can recover from this setback and continue working towards creating good resources. Note- I have taken chatGPT help to fix grammar and sentences
Zelal Hossain
@deds3t Thanks for your suggestions. Yes, we designed and developed those templates.
Dennis Zax
@zelal_hossain1 A very productive use of time in my opinion! I have also come to similar conclusions for the development of my own product, the implementation of a product becomes addicting especially if you love programming; it allows your creativity to flow and grow soooo much as a developer. So while it's definitely not ideal from the business perspective, the lean startup approach is much better, it's definitely not a waste of time but allows you to learn so much about development. In my case, I was stuck in the loop of overengineering and attempting to attain perfection which led me to essentially ignore the business side. In the end, I was able to get out of that cycle by adding more perspectives to my team, specifically the addition of business-oriented people that understand what is needed to pull off a product that customers would actually use. I checked out your guys' product and it is really cool! Do you guys make the templates yourselves? They look really good. I think there's a lot of potential, I'd suggest doing what I did and building a team with a wide range of perspectives from both development and business standpoint to end up being successful!
@zelal_hossain1, as a fellow startup person, I can understand you. It's hard. Hope you find your way and get everything settled soon. All the best.
Dennis Zax
@zelal_hossain1 That’s really impressive they look really nice! However, I fear it’s not very scalable. There are services out there that have much more resources to create these templates, so I would suggest having some sort of source you can get extra templates from to have a larger list. Leave the custom ones you guys made to be like premium/handmade or something
Max Krasilov
I'm Max, co-founder of https://romichi.com. Frustrated by the scattered nature of knowledge, we embarked on a mission to create a sanctuary for professionals seeking growth. Our platform is a treasure trove of 70+ carefully curated growth hacks designed to empower marketers, product managers, entrepreneurs, and designers. We want to eliminate the frustration of searching through countless sources for the best practices and insights needed to thrive in your field. We've done the legwork for you by gathering valuable knowledge and organizing it into one convenient place. Our goal is to provide professionals like you with a centralized hub where you can discover, learn, and apply the knowledge that will drive your success. We're at the MVP validation stage, so check it out and share feedback πŸ™ we're all ears
Mei
I built two fintechs previously. One worked out and one didn't. I now write about lessons from failure for founders: sunsetclub.substack.com
Laetitia Boden
Hi everyone :) Thanks @senthil99nathan for starting this conversation :) We have just launched https://gatheroo.io/ a system that allows a business to gather content and information from their clients in a safe and efficient way. We are website designers at heart, and our biggest pain-point was always during the collection of information from our clients. They had already made the decision to work with us, and paid their initial invoice, but getting information from them - stuff they already had, was sooo painful! My beautifully crafted email would result in at least 10 emails back, each with some of the information they had just found. And then came the worst email of all "I think I've given you everything now, let me know if anything is missing"... Basically read: "I can't be bothered searching my emails to see what I'm up to, you waste your time and let me know what's left..." Gatheroo takes all this away. Clients get a list of all the information they need to provide, each with a red dot beside it. As they answer and submit their information, the dot turns green. THEY KNOW they still have red dots to fill out. And the automated reminders prompts them to get back to the portal and fill out the information. We built this for ourselves. And then thought other digital agencies would benefit. As we talked about it to our contacts, more and more people said they wanted to use it - accountants, lawyers, book keepers, day care centres, mortgage brokers, financial planners... So we have opened it up for the general public now. The whole journey - design & build, has been a huge learning curve - very different to websites! But the psychology of people when it comes to SaaS and free trials has been massive. If you are thinking about launching - forget the "gentile, gentile" approach - go large from the start - you won't have too many people jump in all at once!
After enduring numerous setbacks and learning hard lessons from a ruthlessly competitive industry, the lay-off season this year compelled two friends to reach a tipping point and seize control of their own destiny. Rather than resigning themselves to being mere statistics in a corporate spreadsheet, they resolved to face failure head-on, embracing the possibility of failure resulting from their own shortcomings.
If all goes well, our first product is going to hit open beta in 3-4 weeks!
Brian Deen
In a humble garage, a passionate team ignited a revolution. With unwavering determination, they crafted an innovative product, fine-tuning every detail. Users quickly embraced their solution, and positive word-of-mouth propelled their growth. Investors recognized their potential, injecting vital funds for expansion. Strategic partnerships boosted their market presence, while their commitment to customer satisfaction built a loyal following. A game-changing moment arrived when a prominent influencer endorsed their product. Media buzz ensued, amplifying their reach and attracting a global audience. Today, that garage startup is a force to be reckoned with. Their groundbreaking technology has reshaped industries, touched lives, and inspired the next generation of innovators. This startup's journey Internshipies is a testament to the transformative power of vision, resilience, and unwavering dedication. It proves that from humble beginnings, remarkable success is within reach.
Utkarsh Choudhary
Hi everyone, I am Utkarsh the co-founder of https://www.cashvisory.com/. I graduated with a Mech. Eng. degree from NTU Singapore and started working with Micron Semiconductors, managing automation projects. With no background in finance, nor having learnt about money in school, I didn't know what to do with my paychecks. So i just let it sit in the bank for the first 4-5 years of my career. When I look back, this is my biggest regret. I missed out on the biggest compounding opportunity of my life. I eventually educated myself on personal finance and started working as a financial advisor (Yes, I tend to overcompensate for my mistakes). Working with clients day in and day out was an eye opener. I saw that even folks from the banking sector weren't necessarily good with their own money decisions. The aha moment for me and my co-founder @arpita_sinha1 was that the entire process that we followed with our clients was very plug and play. So this was the perfect opportunity for me to combine my experience in finance and automation to try and solve the problems for a much larger audience. This is how https://www.cashvisory.com/ was born. It's a financial GPS to bring wealth planning to every single young professional, through our automated, scalable solution. We will be doing our Product Hunt launch in the coming weeks. Look forward to all the support and genuince feedback. This is a great initiative @senthil99nathan ! Kudos to you! Would love to hear your story too.
@arpita_sinha1 @utkarsh_choudhary92 , that's great! I'm not sure whether something like Cashvisory exists in the market now. But it will be surely very useful if done right! I'm rooting for you guys! And all the best for your launch!! πŸ™ŒπŸΌ Btw, we are building Wylo - https://www.wyloapp.com/ - a highly customizable and powerful community platform for brands and creators to lead community-led businesses. We started out Wylo as we ourselves have been working on communities from scratch and scaling communities for the last 3+ years and even scaled to 100K+ members. So we exactly know what it takes to create and build a community. That's also when we saw this market gap. Since then, there was no turning back! :)
Utkarsh Choudhary
@arpita_sinha1 @senthil99nathan that sounds very interesting. Kudos on building a community of 100K+ people πŸ™Œ Will be happy to connect with you offline to discuss more!
Kalyani M
Hi @senthil99nathan , First off thanks for initiating this discussion, it will help all of engage and help each other to grow our business. I would like to introduce everyone to www.Kiitos.app, an AI Playground. This start up started as a Farewell card creation website, the idea came over the time period of 2021 when lot of companies were facing attrition and lot of our colleagues were moving to other companies. When a colleague leaves its customary to create a farewell card for them that's where the idea came from. Then it evolved into creating AI generated Farewell messages that's when ChatGPT hit the internet. Then we expanded the whole website into an all-in-one AI platform providing loads of features starting from content creation tools, travel planners etc.. and our latest feature, first in place Whatsapp-ChatGPT integration. We are planning to launch our Product next week on PRODUCT HUNT. We need all your support :)
@kalyani_madhu , interesting, I really like how you guys panned out later. And all the best on your launch! πŸ™ŒπŸΌ