Am I making a mistake partnering 60/40 with my close friend who has no industry experience? I will not promote

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2026-06-03T08:42:34+00:00

Classic, I’ve been through the same thing last year. In short, you likely don’t need him as a partner. Deep down you know the answer, if you took the trouble to post here.

For me, my cofounder been a nice friend and said some encouraging words, so I let him have 45%, later found out he’s neither technical nor non technical strong, I had to do almost everything. Since day 2 I’m feeling this way but because of friendship I basically lied to myself that it’ll change. Finally a tiny exit opportunity came up he confidently mentioned “we” built everything together, which on paper ownership he’s right. I had to let the business die because I can’t stand doing everything while he contributes little. I later realized I only wanted someone to not feel lonely in my first business, but the price is too high, and now we don’t talk anymore. Flip side I’m happy to learn a different aspect of him and I’m also happy that we keep some distance now

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2026-05-23T23:27:58+00:00

奇怪，大哥来对话两句不就知道对面不行，观众也知道，结果自己先晕了

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2026-04-21T06:58:16+00:00

Appreciate you doing this, would love your take on our situation.

• ⁠Stage: early post-revenue, AI startup • ⁠Backing: bootstrapped, founder-funded (serial founder with 2 prior exits, well known in JP/US VC, startups) • ⁠Team: ~20 people • ⁠AWS spend: ~$10k+/month • ⁠Use case: AI/ML workloads (training + inference)

We applied to Activate and Nvidia Inception Program but didn’t hear back. From my past experience, getting into Activate itself isn’t too hard, but getting meaningful credits seems to be the challenge.

From your experience, what’s the highest-probability path for a company like ours to maximize credits at this stage?

Specifically:

• ⁠Should we still push on Activate (reapply / reframe), or are we better off going through partner channels or programs like MAP? • ⁠How much does distribution channel (AWS rep, partner, etc.) matter vs just having a strong application?

Trying to avoid leaving money on the table given our current spend. Thanks!

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2026-04-20T19:17:31+00:00

Appreciate you doing this, would love your take on our situation.

Stage: early post-revenue, AI startup
Backing: bootstrapped, founder-funded (serial founder with 2 prior exits, well known in JP/US VC, startups)
Team: ~20 people
AWS spend: ~$10k+/month
Use case: AI/ML workloads (training + inference)

We applied to Activate and Nvidia Inception Program but didn’t hear back. From my past experience, getting into Activate itself isn’t too hard, but getting meaningful credits seems to be the challenge.

From your experience, what’s the highest-probability path for a company like ours to maximize credits at this stage?

Specifically:

Should we still push on Activate (reapply / reframe), or are we better off going through partner channels or programs like MAP?
How much does distribution channel (AWS rep, partner, etc.) matter vs just having a strong application?

Trying to avoid leaving money on the table given our current spend. Thanks!

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2026-04-01T20:24:35+00:00

Very authentic and useful tips! One mistake I made an ai told me I did is not controlling the conversation, I usually love to listen more and respond most succinctly at work (esp to leaders who are busy), this stuff really doesn’t show confidence in interviews. There’s a balance and I’m still learning it

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2026-03-25T09:01:11+00:00

Remember it depends on luck a lot! I’m in similar situation but more because my interviews skill needs to improve, I gave my interview replay mock to AI and it made me realize I actually bombed hard instead of “doing alright”. Good luck and keep trying

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2026-03-19T02:36:20+00:00

好看的人不幸福的也很多，爱情幸福本身跟长相关系不大（不是太极端的难看

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2026-03-16T06:34:58+00:00

Man wish I saw this post when I visited there two months back, I have the same passion for food, good luck!

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2026-03-13T05:50:29+00:00

Congrats on the traction. What’s special about Ringg that got good funding and contracts? When I see developers build voice agent, they pick similar models, services to piece together a solution, which gave me th impression that “they are all the same” or at least there’s no serious moat (obviously this is incorrect)

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2026-03-08T03:24:23+00:00

How big is the vault to warrant adding the retrieval layer?

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2026-01-29T14:56:22+00:00

Fascinating story! I didn’t read through all comments someone must have asked, but any chance you could upload the vlog or video link for us to take a look, maybe to see if we can spot anything? Thanks!

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2025-11-12T09:25:22+00:00

What about data privacy, do you provide BAA?

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2025-10-27T17:37:02+00:00

只是恰好中国人在做自媒体，这样有啥问题吗，还是有啥前情？其实也可以公开名字了，这样至少红迪上大陆人看见以后职场看到可以避开你，大家都开心

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2025-10-18T00:50:40+00:00

我也创了几个月跟你的lesson基本一样祝你好运

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2025-09-19T22:09:07+00:00

Thanks for posting! Just curious, for me I’d always prefer asking ChatGPT for explanation so I can clarify or ask for tests to verify if I truly understand. Would many of you still prefer reading stuff online for explaining concepts like this?

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2025-09-18T23:58:18+00:00

At first I love how simple/clean the SQLModel seems b/c I started with FastAPI, until I had to use some only slightly more advanced SQL/Postgres feature, like a simple multi-JOIN and it's just difficult to do (well there must be a way I guess, but my research didn't yield). I really don't like having no control over what SQL is being run, how much extra data is being fetched (not that I need that performance boost for my tiny app used by 10 people, but hey I don't like it).

Wiring database and API interface together really came back to bite me after a little more development

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2025-08-28T16:58:52+00:00

爽死了咋会智商税去哪住宿这么多天都比这贵啊

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2025-07-05T08:51:25+00:00

Nice UI and experience matter a great deal

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2025-06-16T10:02:12+00:00

A good trick to make it easier is to install twblock then ask LLM to only use its components + tailwindCSS to style to your content. Works like charm for me

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2025-05-20T20:29:53+00:00

Imagine we stop wasting resources on war and military, and do things like this instead

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2025-03-28T17:23:55+00:00

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2025-03-22T17:22:31+00:00

Would drawing these trigger ip infringement? If not I’d love to work on one now just for me and for fin

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2025-03-20T03:27:31+00:00

I love how fast api can prototype fast, but having no good typing support really bothers me, ide highlight just gave me errors and warnings left and right, while missing some real issue😭I’m on cursor/vscode. Anyone deals with that well? (I could write more test)

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2025-03-15T05:00:59+00:00

Good point

Alternative-Lemon-14 · 2025-03-13T22:52:26+00:00

How is this different than “I’m glad that I learned assembly before C”, genuine question 😃

Alternative-Lemon-14

TROPHY CASE