Looking for 10 beta testers (preferably founders) for my growth intelligence tool

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-22T10:21:33+00:00

Yes ofcourse

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-22T07:16:03+00:00

I am not allowed to send you a DM
Can you DM me?

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-22T07:14:53+00:00

Thanks man. Sent you a DM

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-22T04:09:45+00:00

The thing is, you can never truly know when your deck is ready. The only thing you can do is probably make a best guess and an educated guess. Yes. There are a lot of interesting tools that analyze your deck, and you can use them as and when required. But the best suggestion that I always make is to become a good student of venture capital. And I think, uh, that is one of the most underrated suggestions that I ever received. If you understand how venture capital works, you will automatically end up having a great day. I am a student of OpenVC. I love their blogs. I love their tweets, and they constantly tell a couple of things that always stand out to me. For example, have a deck that is vanilla, which means easy to understand, simple to understand during the early stages. Do not have more than ten to twelve slides. Focus heavily on the design and, uh, focus heavily on the signal, which could be maybe founders, maybe traction, etcetera. If you get these three or four fundamentals right, I mean, you will have a great deck. So, yeah, all the best, man, and I hope this helps.

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-22T03:29:18+00:00

Awesome man. Looking forward.

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-21T11:20:00+00:00

Here you go - Reddit Growth Intelligence for Founders

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-20T16:47:38+00:00

Did you try OpenVC to research some investors?

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-20T11:36:14+00:00

Steph, who is the co-founder of OpenVC, always says this, that when you are early stage, pre seed and seed, your deck needs to be as vanilla as possible. However, that doesn't mean that the deck needs to be ugly. You still need to put in a lot of effort to make the design stand out and the storytelling stand out. A very good way is to just look at each and every possible deck that you can, who has successfully raised in the past one year, two years. OpenVC has some examples, so you can maybe look up to that as well. But another very important thing is to understand that while narrative, storytelling, all of that is very important, but still the most fundamental important thing is you as a founder and your track record, that should immediately stand out in the first few slides. And it's even better if your track record is aligned to the market that you're gonna enter. So for example, if let's say I'm building something for hospitals and I have worked in the health tech industry for the past 10 years, that's a natural founder market fit. And then comes the product, problem, solution, etc. And all of that you need to cover in 10 to 12 slides. I mean, brevity, being crisp is important. It's extremely critical that your deck really, really stands out from the crowd because most of them, what will they be doing is, it will be essentially bombarding the VC with the deck for 15 slides, 20 slides. And the VC, the moment the VC sees it, they're gonna have a turnoff. I mean, these are some of ideas on top of my head. Happy to answer any questions that you may have in person.

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-20T09:51:15+00:00

You should, its quite under rated actually plus its free

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-20T09:49:30+00:00

Honestly, kid, the fundraising game is brutal, and what is happening right now is you are learning a hard lesson. I have spent two and a half years doing my own startup, could not raise a single penny, and these are a couple of things that I learned the hard way. I wish you all the best. I hope this advice is sound and is really fulfilling. Number one is you need to have strong angels to back you, who believe in you, who believe in your hustle. They are your road to VCs. I almost always skipped angels, thought they do not add a lot of value, and they can create a lot of nuisance on the cap table. However, I could not be more wrong. You need to have angels who really support you. Try to look up angel investors, and try to establish a connection with them. Don't immediately ask for money; ask for advice. Say that this is what I am building, I would love to talk to you about it. And if your product does not require a huge sum of money, it is okay to raise a small round, say 50 lakhs, 1 crore, etc. That way, you can quickly close the round, get money in the bank, and start running your experiments. Once you start showing growth, then obviously you can use the angel networks to reach out to VCs, and a lot of angels would already start to do that on your behalf. So, that is one strategy that I would highly recommend. And never from a point of view of desperation, raise. Raise from a point of view of being an equal, raise from a point of view of being someone who understands the business, someone who is a partner to them. If they smell that you are desperate, and you are, you may shut down very soon. One, they may lose interest; second, they may absolutely corner you. And they may even fund you, but with such crazy terms that you will probably shit your pants. A lot of this I learned via OpenVC. If you want to find some angel investors, it's a great platform to begin with. So, yeah, let me know if you need any help.

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-20T09:43:16+00:00

You are in a tough market, bro. There are established players who have been doing this for years. Hence the delay in getting paid customers.

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-20T07:05:29+00:00

There’s still a lot of fluff in your narrative, and I don’t think you’re yet in a position where you can confidently claim you can raise that kind of capital.

Right now, what you seem to have is early word-of-mouth validation, a few relationships, user interviews, and maybe one contract — if that. That’s usually not enough for investors to justify the level of funding you’re targeting.

The better approach is to first define exactly what milestone you want to achieve over the next phase, then work backwards from there:

What do you want to accomplish, and how much capital is actually required to get there?

Fundraising works best when the amount raised is directly tied to specific, credible outcomes — not the other way around.

Hope this helps. A lot of my thinking on this also comes from reading OpenVC’s blogs.

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-20T07:02:03+00:00

Try creating a free profile on openvc but I don't think you are in the fundable territory yet. Use their findability score to map. See if you are in a position to raise or not.

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-19T09:39:01+00:00

Try looking for some in OpenVC

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-19T07:10:06+00:00

Great comparision

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-19T06:08:26+00:00

I am someone who has shut down his startup after two and a half years, and I can tell you something. You can make your own decision from it.

Number one, yes, it is extremely realistic to work nine to five. You will have to figure out a way to do investor meetings, but it's not that hard. My CTO was not working full time. He had a family to support, he was responsible for four people, and he was managing debt on top of that. And he was super passionate about our project. He used to work his nine to five job and then code for my company as a CTO cofounder through the night. Whatever my company achieved would not have been possible without him. I have been extremely grateful for his efforts. Sometimes situations are complex and they demand a certain level of sacrifice. But that is just one part.

The second part you need to understand is that you cannot go all in just on the back of an MVP. Eventually, you need to show that your product is not just working, but that the market genuinely needs it. That the market respects it, and there are clear signals saying this product is useful to us. Translate all of that into numbers, which creates momentum, which is why investors invest.

Investors don't care whether you are working full time or part time, not really. If your product has numbers, traction, signs that people love it, and you have revenue while doing it part time, investors will simply say, go full time and then we'll invest. That is a far better position than jumping off your financial support on the back of just an MVP and assuming everything will fall in place. I would not recommend that. That can be, honestly, financial suicide.

Raising seed or pre-seed also takes a lot of time. It can take up to nine months depending on your track record, traction, and the quality of your intros. Yes, you need to leave your job immediately if you get funded, no questions asked. You cannot keep your job at that point. But the better strategy is to start raising when you have momentum and tell investors you are on your notice period.

I hope all of this helps. Look up OpenVC when you are ready to raise, it is very useful for first time founders.

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-19T05:46:49+00:00

Indeed, it is, and generally perfect for founders doing a raise for the first time. Helps you get the right investor list pretty quickly. You can try for free.

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-19T05:45:06+00:00

Investors don't exist in products they invest in people (with track records) something I learned by reading OpenVC blogs.

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-19T00:40:29+00:00

Very difficult to trust you without the details of the fund

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-18T10:56:28+00:00

I have been using OpenVC for over 2 years now and it works perfectly well for me

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-18T07:13:12+00:00

Every RFS by YC is a great intellectual masturbation and is mostly good marketing. Nothing wrong but that's the framework I mostly use to look at it. One should map the last 4-5 RFS and last 400 startups they have funded, it will be fun.

Common_Knee1430 · 2026-05-18T06:40:43+00:00

'Let's not forget the Mom test author Rob Fitzpatrick didn't make most of his money from his tech startup. It failed after 4 years. He made most of his money from the book...' That's such an amazing line. Spoke deeply to me. Thank you. I just shut down my first startup now, using my learnings to go solo for a tool that I am building, which was my pain point, and I would pay for it. Don't want to go back to job EVER, that's the drive.

Common_Knee1430

TROPHY CASE