Hi,

Just wanted to share my own personal experience as a senior full stack developer. Loads of experience across different stacks and architectures and here are my concerns with Supabase, having actually rewritten a commercial project to use it. Regretted it hard.

Supabase is a weak choice to build a clean codebase with proper separation of concerns and CI/CD.

Especially in this day and age with AI, there just aren't any reasons why one would use RLS and Edge functions to define critical business logic and not own the auth schema. An after insert trigger on auth.users and surfacing every failure as a vague 500? Never again am I buying into these awful anti-patterns.

Personally, found even a stack like PHP Symfony with Doctrine to be a way better developer experience in 2026, although my go-to these days is a monorepo using nestjs, ts-rest, nextjs and react native.

Expect a lot of hate for this, but Supabase is a massive marketing charade and SQL was never meant to go this far. PostgREST is an interesting experiment but c'mon any serious company will use Spring Boot or .NET. Literally anything but this.

There is no gain in velocity, you're building a house on weaker grounds for absolutely no reason other than a lack of experience and/or understanding the consequences.

I will get downvoted by supabase fanboys and people that don't understand what I'm saying and that's okay, but if I convince at least one founder not to use it, I've done my job.

Thanks for reading and happy coding.

I run a hotel consulting agency in Thailand, and 12 months ago I launched a sub-brand organizing corporate retreats for international, remotely distributed tech teams hosting their offsites here.

The backend synergy is great, we can feed to our hospitality partners and can command really attractive rates for our retreats because of it. But the frontend is messy. We have separate LinkedIn and Facebook pages for both brands, but knowing how to brand between the two is confusing. Example, last week we finished a 50 pax retreat and I’m unsure whether to share this on my main business page or specifically on the corporate retreats page or both.

Should I keep the socials completely separate and treat the consulting firm as a hidden engine, or is there a better way to structure two brands like this?

Hi everyone! I'm 25F, graduated a year ago, and l've always wanted to start a business with my sisters and build something of our own. We believe that now is the right time to do it.
We don't currently have the funds, and for personal reasons, we don't want to take out a loan.
What advice do you have for us? How should we get started? What things should we look out for or be cautious about? What about licenses and permits? How does renting a space work and what should we know before signing a lease? Any negotiation tips would also be greatly appreciated.
We're also thinking about finding an investor. If you have experience with this, I'd really appreciate any advice on how to approach investors, what to expect, and what we should be careful about when accepting outside funding.
Any advice or resources would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you 😊

Hi,

I'm pretty new to YC and recently created a Co-Founder Match profile just to see what's out there. I didn't really spend a lot of time filling out my information as I wanted to quickly create a profile (to browse) and then edit it later. So I didn't really expect anyone to reach out to me as my profile contained very little substance except for where I graduated and that I want to be the technical guy.

Yet I already got over 10 messages from other founders in a matter of days. I'm quite surprised. I want to know how legit those founders are and how to best judge them.

It's almost like creating an empty profile on a dating website and have a bunch of people reach out to you. It just feels fishy.

Thanks

We're a remote startup of 6, each working with our own assistant agents (hermes, codex, cc).

Discussions and decisions are made in slack & each of our assistants has read access to slack. We've seen Shopify (River), Ramp (Ingest) & Paradigm (Centaur) all praise the benefits of having a multiplayer agent in Slack.

Has anyone tried this?

How do you deal with permissions (does the agent have team-wide credentials or individual credentials)?

Do you host your own agent or use a hosted version?

Hey all,

For the past several months, I been in contact with an potential B2B Client. The long story short, I meet the executives of this organisation via an warm lead (friend) and I pitched them an AI Saas product that will automated a lot of their pain points. The pain points beeing essentially document ingestion, and extracting metadata and organising it to structured data.

This is not a brand new idea, it has been done before many times. But I have this wedge in a nieche but yet very lucrutive industry here in UK.

I built the product, and in 2 days we are starting an 2 week pilot where they will use it extensively in their organisation. From demo days, to early feedbacks, they want to use this tool to replace their entire process. I am very excited about this.

I am anxious about this pilot launch, I been an engineer for the last decade, and I worked in many startups. But I never managed to build something on a side that took this much interest from someone, and it is an B2B client.

It has been hard sorting everything out whilst being fully employed, but the grind never stopped (AI helped so much).

For founders who’ve run early B2B pilots, I’d really appreciate advice on:

1. Defining success: What should I agree with the client before day one so that, at the end of two weeks, we both know whether the pilot has worked? What did you measure beyond “they liked it”?
2. Feedback and scope: How did you get honest feedback from the people actually using the product? I am setting up posthog to measure my own KPI's
3. Converting to a paid customer: What would you establish about pricing, the buying decision and idea about pricing?

I am not a salesman, but I have to be now. And the next part is eating me. I want to make good money on a side on this and have an light at the of the tunnel that will allow me to quit my full time job and pursue this.

How would you go about Enterprise pricing?

I want to pitch 3 tiers (or more?) something basic like: Starter, Pro, Ultra... whatever

The highest tier I want to be around £8,600 a month (I still think this is a crazy number). But I genuinely think they would consider paying this.

Each tier will have its own limitations or feature lock ins. Each tier comes with pre-paid credits for usage, so even if they went in Pro, and managed to use the software so much, they would need to pay extra on their invoice, if they go over their usage.

Any wisdom from this subreddit be very much appreciated!

shipped an open source dev tool a few months back. tried one of the smaller launchpad sites: $40 for the launch slot, $50 for a newsletter addon they upsold alongside it.

the launch itself brought almost no traffic. about 100 views, no bump in github stars. fine, that was a bet and it didn't pay off.

then the newsletter ran and did the same, basically zero clicks. emailed the guy running it and said straight up, the post barely moved the needle and that's a risk we took, but it left me with little to no faith the newsletter would do any better. asked for a refund on just that part.

he refunded it, no argument.

net spend ended up $40 for the whole thing.

anyone else run into these launchpad plus newsletter bundles? worth it for you or same story?

Already built a startup over 4 years and exited it in less than a year of operations, noticed I prefer building and managing early stage of the startup when its more product-led vs later stage where it is people-led.

Is it possible to perpetually build and sell startups as MVP after few months of operations? Think 2-5 years.

Any example of famous founders that do exactly that?

I launched a product before, and it failed.

Afterwards, I started trying to understand where exactly I went wrong. One thing I realized was that I was giving too much weight to my assumptions instead of looking at facts and validating them.

Someone recommended The Mom Test, so I decided to start there.

Even though it's only around 80 pages, it took me almost four weeks to finish. I learned a lot from it, especially how to ask better questions and dig into facts instead of opinions.

I didn't just read the book and move on. I put the concepts into ChatGPT, created simulation tests, and practiced them repeatedly. That helped me actually see the mistakes I was making instead of just thinking, "Yeah, I understand this."

After reading it, I could also see many of the same mistakes in companies I'd previously worked with. I keep thinking that if they had understood these concepts earlier, they could have approached many things differently.

It also made me realize that I don't want to learn everything through trial and error. There are people who've already spent years making mistakes, figuring things out, and documenting what they learned. I want to learn from that.

What's one book, documentary, course, or any other resource that made you think, "I'm genuinely glad I found this"?

​

Hi all, I will not promote. After two startup failures where I was dependent on other technical engineering i decided 9 months ago to go my own way with a new startup as solo founder. The idea was born out of frustration from my previous startups and started to pour in all my experiences from the previous failures. I learned a lot from it so I was confident to make it work now.

And today I want to say YES I DID IT. From the initial plan, creating the first draft, interviewing people and started to engineer my SaaS platform. It has been long days and nights building my startup and fortunately I had some funds left to keep my self alive also without having distractions. (Thanks to my wife for standing by me.)

After 6months of intense building, testing, feedback and networking I was ready to jump into stealth mode and began to attract my first customers. I had in stealth mode 5 customers now and some testers.

Just finished the latest updates and I am now going out of stealth with 8 paying customers. Everything setup from wizards to guide clients to stripe payments and trial setups all ready to go. Fully automated client handling and ready to expand. Exciting times are now ahead as I have 2 bigger clients who are going for a pilot and if they jump onboard I foresee a lot of positive noise within the marketing and sales segment.

Like I said, I will not promote. But if you are a founder, dont give up, did you fail? Get up and try again, learn from yesterday to succeed tomorrow.

Keep you posted how the next phase turns out.

Greetings from founder of a hyper personalized SaaS software.

I’m non-tech and I know with the amount of AI tooling out there there’s probably an argument that I should just be able to go and build something myself.

The thing I’m struggling with though is knowing what I should be building.

Once I start thinking about an MVP it gets overwhelming, I’m thinking of things like: What should be in it? What shouldn’t? What’s the user flow? How should each screen interact? Is the journey even right? Am I solving the right thing? etc etc...

I’ve done some early user research and spoken to a few people and I’ve spent a lot of time using ChatGPT to basically think through the product, what I want it to be, how it could work and all of that.

But then when I tried to move that into Codex and plan/build it feature by feature, it just started feeling like AI slop. Individual bits technically made sense, but it didn’t feel like one coherent product or like there was proper thought behind the experience.

What’s the process for getting to an MVP?

For context, I’m building something in the consumer nature/wellbeing/walking space and I’m part of an accelerator atm. I’d ideally like to get an MVP in front of investors, other founders and some early users in the next month, preferably in the next couple of weeks, although this maybe ambitious.

Mainly trying to understand the logical process people follow to get from “I’ve spoken to users and have an idea” to “here’s a relatively robust MVP users can use”.

Appreciate any advice and kindness as well - not everyone is proficient at everything and I’m very much learning the technical side as I go.

Hi! Does anyone have a recommendation for a startup lawyer who can advise founding teams where one of the founders is on a U.S. work visa? We’re looking for guidance on incorporation, founder equity and vesting, and structuring the founder’s involvement appropriately from an immigration perspective. Ideally, someone practical, affordable, and familiar with early-stage startups. Thank you!

This is one I still feel a bit stupid about. I was setting up the ecommerce side for a small product with a monthly plan, and I tested the checkout, I tested the emails, I tested the thank you page, and I did not test what happens the next month. The subscribe button worked fine on the surface. What it was doing underneath was a one time purchase with a label on it that said subscription.

Nobody noticed for a while because the first charge looked right. Then the renewals didn't come and I went digging, and there was nothing to renew, there was no subscription object anywhere, only a list of single orders.

The fix wasn't clean. I couldn't turn those orders into subscriptions after the fact without charging cards people hadn't agreed to be charged on again, so I wrote a one off batch job that flagged every affected account and put a message in front of them the next month. Pay by hand this once, and set the subscription up again from your side. Some did. Some didn't. A few wrote in and asked why they were being asked to pay for something they thought was already recurring, which was a fair question and I didn't have a great answer.

I'd done the same kind of integration before on other systems and I think that was the problem, I trusted the part I'd built before instead of the part I was building now. The renewal was the whole point of the product and it was the one thing I never ran end to end.

Still don't know how many I lost to it. Anyone else shipped a payment flow where the first charge worked and the second never came?

Hey everyone, I'm 25 years old. I have a degree in CS and 3 years of experience as a software developer, and I've worked with 2 startups in California. One of them was YC-funded, and I built their entire system, which was difficult because they were processing large amounts of video data for AI training. So, I know I'm very good at what I do.

The only issue is I live in a low-cost-of-living country, but I have the required skills and verifiable proof of my skills. Anyway, I'm looking for startups based in the EU or US that are willing to hire remotely with decent salaries, the type of startups that can't afford a local developer but can afford a lower salary to someone with the same skills abroad (literally how the free market works, it's all legal).

The issue is, I don't know where to find these startups. Those two startups I worked with came from a freelance gig that turned into a full-time job after I demonstrated my skills. One of the best jobs I had, but eventually, they got acquired and ended up laying off all the remote teams they had, which is common, I understand. I've been told so by many startup owners.

To summarize, I'm looking for recent startups needing to hire software engineers and okay with hiring remotely globally, where can I find those specific startups? I tried the YC website but it's limited to 5 applications a week and most companies really don't tell you if they're willing to hire global talent.

Thinking of building a free tool to collect reviews/testimonials for any business, would you use this?

Problem: reviews and testimonials end up scattered everywhere, a Google review here, a WhatsApp text there, a screenshot saved on your phone somewhere. No easy way to bring them into one place and actually show them off as proof on your website.

Idea: get a public page for your business where any future customer can leave you a review, text or video, so it's one centralized place going forward instead of scattering again. Just send customers a link to ask for a review, collect everything in one place, then embed it on your website with a simple widget.

Not just for SaaS, for any business: salons, trainers, photographers, freelancers, agencies, local shops, etc

Would be completely free.

What are you currently using to collect and show off reviews? Trustpilot, G2, Senja, something else, or just screenshotting DMs and hoping for the best? And would something like this actually get used, or is this solving a problem nobody has?

Hi all,
I am a Legal Engineer, I've spent the last few years working for a legal consultancy firm building custom AI tools and automations for legal practices which saves them tons of hours per week.

During my conversations, I realized there's a huge gap between the rise of AI today and lawyers understanding of it.

Lawyers still don't know they are spending their hours on something that a custom (built for their firm) tool could have done in minutes.

I started my own agency a few months back and have relentlessly pursued this- cold outreaching, ads, and plenty of experimenting with different offers and positioning. . So far I haven't got any business.

Im having trouble understanding what I am doing wrong- is it my service? Or my offer? I can't make sense of it.

Im even willing to go on a limb and work- first automation free, to build connections and referrals.

Thanks for listening, all help appreciated

We're a seed-stage startup ($4.2M in funding) hiring a systems engineer and/or technology lead. Our team is highly technical. Currently, I am doing "double duty" as CEO and CTO.

I'd like to hire a systems engineer and make sure my expectations are properly aligned. We recently made an offer to a senior BME systems engineer (130K, 0.5% equity), and he shared that the equity/salary was too low for him.

We have a strong technical team that, given priorities, will execute them well. However, they currently need someone to help set and review priorities and acceptance criteria.

The product is in the robotics space, and the team comprises 3 Robotics PhDs (including myself), 1 BME PhD, 1 MechE PhD, 2 robotics MS, and 1 BME MS. The team has currently become organized around people coming to me for high-level guidance and quality checking, which is unsustainable. Our advisory board is also highly technical (MDs/PhDs in this space, billions in exits as executives).

What are reasonable equity and salary levels, and how would you approach hiring at this point? Writing this out, it feels like our team has enough expertise that someone internal should be open to "rising to management". However, it currently feels like most prefer to remain as ICs.

I have an upcoming interview with Z Fellows. It’s hard to find info on what the interview is like, who they’re looking for, how long after the interview it takes to hear back, etc.

Has anyone gone through the interview process and is willing to share their experience? Thank you!

First round of outside capital. Small startup with growing revenue. Vibe of company seems to strike an immediate chord with a certain class of people.

Thing is, these are people without big "name brand" reputation. I like that in many ways. Possibly a big advantage in that they are faster to wire and hungrier and willing to help more. They are sharp, and clearly know a lot of things I don't about the world of capital and the behind the scenes game of thrones, but I'm wondering if there are things to be wary of? Like, should I do diligence on where they got their money from? Or is it better to not ask questions and just take the money?

I can't think of a way it could go south, but I've never raised more than 5 figures of capital before, and that was from known names, so my experience is very limited. Talking to some traditional VCs too, but I have a bit of a polarizing reputation so that could be a waste of time, whereas the anons seem ready to send.

Anyone point me to interesting reads/horror stories/success stories?

Thanks!

I'm entering an industry I have strong conviction in, but have no formal experience in. I understand challenges from the buyer side, but want to validate/learn more on the seller side.

How do you practically find out? Obviously I've read up Claude research pieces etc, but whats the proposition to get them on a call/phone?

I've pulled up in person, cold called, sent messages, and it's super hard to get a foot in the door without a clear value proposition (I'm just 'learning' / trying to validate some pain points). The industry is not secretive, but is very intense. No time for messing around if that makes sense.

I've had some success doing things cold (in-person in particular), but it's not giving the answers I want at scale, and practically I need much more than a 15 minute conversation to understand the true workflow.

For starters,

I have a 95% finished product, that is marketer friendly (saas with affiliate marketing links)

I also have a full time job & while i have built out the platform, i need someone to driven & own the marketing side.

I’ve looked through LinkedIn. My connections aren’t great for that & cold messaging is not doing it

I’ve also posted on wellfound.

I will admit half my problem is I’m not ready to share the product with the world until launch. So talking about it is me saying a brief

‘I’m building a new way to experience live crypto markets through dynamically changing scenes’

The other problem is not many marketing people understand the stock market. AND also have the ability to create content.

Perhaps in looking for a unicorn?

I guess on top of that to start it will be commission based, until the company gets its feet on the ground.

Any thoughts or suggestion would be highly appreciated

Hey guys! I’m a college student and built a course scheduling app for my university. You enter your preferred days/times and it generates schedules for you, and I’m also experimenting with RMP/crowdsourced data to help pick better sections.

Recently I figured out a way to aggregate course data across a huge number of U.S. universities, which made me realize this could potentially be much bigger than the original campus app.

The thing is, I’m graduating soon and going into finance/accounting, so I’m not sure I want to run a consumer startup long-term. I started wondering whether something like this could realistically be acquired by a larger tech company and folded into something like Google Calendar/Workspace rather than kept as a standalone app.

Is that even realistic? And if so, how would you go about exploring it? Reaching out to product/corp dev people directly? Build traction and wait for inbound, or something else?

Would especially love to hear from anyone who’s sold a small startup/product or worked on the acquiring side.

I’m leading a VERY early stage startup as a business founder and am actively interviewing potential technical cofounders. I feel incredibly lucky that after only a month of asking around, I’ve gotten high-quality referrals who are seriously interested in building with me.

The issue is that I think current candidates would make great first eng hires, but technical cofounder would be a stretch for them. They have great technical chops, but haven’t worked in startups. I get the strong impression that bootstrapping and deviating from the traditional SaaS playbook would be an adjustment for them.

Since I do intend to split equity evenly, I want to be really, really sure that I make the right choice and everyone is positioned to be happy.

I have an inkling that the very best fit person for the technical cofounder role is not someone I know personally. Any guidance on recruiting someone great who might be outside of my network?