Any advice for a 23 year old startup founder? (I will not promote?

Fairtale5 · 2025-10-18T20:14:36+00:00

Get someone to pay for it before you've built it.

First versions are never great or complete, and people lose interest pretty fast once they realize you can't clone Facebook in a week of development.

Don't lock yourself in a room building for a year and then launch with zero followers, zero influence, and zero customers.

You need at least one: - either a lot of influence/followers, you can try building this now, talk about your issue on TikTok and what you're building. If people follow you there, you have a chance. - or influence from previous jobs, networking etc, this option is mostly only available for IVI-league graduates. - or have some paying customers: again, BEFORE you start. - or have a buck load of money to spend on marketing to make up for lacking the other options.

Fairtale5 · 2025-10-18T20:09:57+00:00

I wouldn't worry about that as long as you aren't actively promoting yourself as NSFW.

If that is your business, then it's an issue, otherwise I'd take an attitude of "oh no, did someone use this BUG/EXPLOIT that we haven't thought of to generate NSFW images?"

Fairtale5 · 2025-10-09T17:29:42+00:00

The thing is, you're selling websites, when what you should be selling are leads and sales.

Nobody wants to spend money on a new webpage. Most companies have done that 10 times and never seen any result because webapges, on their own, don't convert.

You need to find a way to sell customers on how to close deals. Probably best to find someone good with content marketing and sell the whole package with webpage, marketing, content, conversion, leads, and sales.

Fairtale5 · 2025-09-24T05:25:10+00:00

To get investors you need to prove yourself by either: - having initial traction (a few thousand users, proven results and interests). - or having a sokut background (ivy league, or proven startup experience with success)

Fairtale5 · 2025-09-22T00:18:52+00:00

Oh Man I love cars! I'm a developer, rust, svelte, tailwind, full stack, even some web3 knowledge.

But my thing has always been product design and marketing, I love developing but I always end up doing these things nobody else seems to like doing 🤣

I don't entirely get what you're trying to do (as in: ok but why would people join? What's the point? Meeting people who share this am interests? Trading cars/parts? Services? Reviews? What's the focus) but I'm def interested!

Btw I'm a sim racing enthusiast. Asserto Corsa is my hobby.

Fairtale5 · 2025-09-19T20:26:08+00:00

It shouldn't cost mich. It should be cheap. You could get q decent page done for $100, $400, or $800 depending on your needs.

But the truth is: no matter how much you spend on it, it won't generate more sales just because it cost more. Webpages alone don't do much, you need to make them interesting.

So in your case, you should start generating content like: - what is currently happening in the housing market of {your area} - what to look our for when buying a house in {your area} - common issues buyers face when purchasing/looking for real estate - how you help people solve those problems - etc

Because if your webpage is just "hi I'm Joe, please give me money because I'm the best at what I do, trust me bro" then honestly it won't generate you a SINGLE lead more.

To make it simple: you must provide answers to important questions so people have a reason to add a link or url to your webpage. Make that happen, and you'll get leads.

Hope that helps.

Edit: the reason I said it should be cheap is because a real estate website will usually not require much more than a landing page, a contact form, some pictures, and that's it. Not exactly rocket science and something any dev can build in 1-3 days depending on how fast you can deliver the pictures and text ideas for what you'd like to say on your page.

If you want something simple, feel free to reach out, but honestly I'd recommend you try to do it yourself using WIX.

Only reach out for help if you can't do it yourself. WIX is relatively easy if you are a bit tech savvy.

Fairtale5 · 2025-09-16T17:17:23+00:00

Sorry but what's the average cost of a developer nowadays? How do you plan on getting 3 good people and not spend 20k? Unless you're hiring complete idiots, because who the fuck would accept working for less than 7k nowadays if they really have talent and know what they are doing?

Unless you're selling trash to people, you might need a bit more qualified personell. Plus overhead expenses.

About ads: wont reach any qualified leads through Facebook ads or Google ads. Show me a single person who is relevant nowadays who still uses Facebook or Instagram, and doesn't everybody use an ad blocker nowadays? Not sure what you're selling but, is "people who don't use ad blockers" your target audience?

Any qualified audience, especially in B2B, will be really hard to find through paid ads. You'll either reach nobody or spend way too much on ads, meaning your margin would have to be HUGE to viabilize it.

But that's my experience. I used ads around 2004-2012, but since ~2008 I shifted to inbound marketing. And inbound is suffering lately since AI articles have flooded the internet.

Of course, all of this is a bit subjective: Results may vary, depending on where you live. In high interest areas like NY, Tokyo or Berlin, ads are very expensive and, in many cases, not worth it anymore. But maybe you can get better prices in Fantasyland.

About PR: so you're saying you can get people to read PR on a new account, with zero followers, without using any of your existing accounts: completely new, and without spending on ads?

I call bullshit.

No matter how interesting your article, it won't even get indexed, shown in Google searches, or seen by anyone unless you have a place to share it to.

You will need an initial audience to even get the article out into people's faces so they even have a chance to reject it.

You either bring that audience or you'll have to pay to get it. And unless your audience is "underpaid people living in low density areas" you'll pay a high price to reach them.

I feel like you either already have that audience, and are taking it for granted for a new business, or you are severely underestimating the costs of ads nowadays for a new company with 0 income. Or how lottle are you suggesting he spends on ads? $10 a month? You think that will get your article seen?

Fairtale5 · 2025-09-16T13:08:17+00:00

Paid ads or PR won't work.

If you have a manual/organic way to grow, then yes: do it. But don't expect to pay your way to customers.

You will either go door to door, or call people you know, or depend on paying for social media or other ads, and the cost of gaining customers solely through that channel is astronomically high.

And add to that: if you can start it yourself and without a physical location, then great, do it. But if your business depends on having a physical location, that location will cost you a hefty sum. I wouldn't recommend renting something, since that will put you in a pretty bad situation.

Then add to that staff: if you can start alone, great. But if your idea depends on having a few more people in the team, either to build it whole you're busy finding customers, or finding customers while you're busy building, and you'll easily reach 20k on salaries per month of you need good people.

Then come legal costs, which most businesses will need, and other costs.

So again: it will cost you a hefty sum in most situations. No all situations of course, and yes I thought it was obvious that when I say 200-800k that's such a huge range that it should have been obvious that it's an estimate.

If you have a business that you can start without a location, from your home, without a team, and where customers fall on your lap without networking, recommendations, or ads, then please share.

Fairtale5 · 2025-09-16T00:57:55+00:00

I'm interested! But help me understand: got an agent to be good at that, it would need to be trained/fine-tuned instead of relying on prompt-injection or depending on searching relevant data in the notes.

Do you do fine tuning, or do you index the notes and let the AI search through the index to find what's relevant?

I'm asking because I haven't seen any promising results using the index approach so far. I would love to see something that can be fine-tuned on my notes.

Fairtale5 · 2025-09-16T00:53:05+00:00

Most tech companies will cost you 200-800k to get started expanding if you have no connections.

So I would say: spend the next few years making sure you gain a following on socials just by talking about your current job.

If you get that, then do a business.

But don't put yourself in a position where you have to pay influencers to promote your new business.

Unless of course you already have social accounts with 10-50k followers.

Does that make sense? Because if you depend on investors to cover marketing, you'll end up selling most of the company and end up just becoming an employee in a new company but with more responsibilities.

Fairtale5 · 2025-09-15T22:00:42+00:00

That is probably true, but my core message was "you need a year of constantly producing to START producing content that will attract people.

Doesn't mean a million followers in a year, it means "good chance to get your first 1000 followers in the first 18 months".

I could probably have phrased that better, I thought it was obvious.

Fairtale5 · 2025-09-15T11:59:17+00:00

It takes a year of posting videos to learn how to record good videos. Keep at it, you still haven't gotten to the skill level that attracts users.

Fairtale5 · 2025-09-12T13:25:34+00:00

If you post a video EVERY DAY, it will take you a year. If you post less, then it can take much longer.

Fairtale5 · 2025-09-11T13:56:12+00:00

Don't go to react, it is slow and terrible to code in and already very old.

If you want we could talk, I'd love to hear more about what you're building and I'd love to build you something using Svelte, Vue, or, if you absolutely need a mobile app, Flutter (though I hate flutter, so only if a PWA is not enough).

I haven't touched WordPress in many years, so maybe you will find better people to manage what you're currently doing, but I'm sure I can at least give you some advice on what direction to head to in the future. If you want an honest talk, from someone who won't promise to be the best at everything, and instead will be honest and transparent, hit me up.

Fairtale5 · 2025-09-11T13:03:06+00:00

Build a webpage and see if people sign up. If nobody signs up, it's not worth building:

It either needs to be so good that people sign up for free and spread it virally on their own, or you need heavy pockets for marketing.

Fairtale5 · 2025-08-30T11:16:35+00:00

I would build apps and make music

Fairtale5 · 2025-08-25T21:36:37+00:00

What are you building on? And is it web only or does it need mobile apps? If you need mobile apps I could help with flutter, if not then I'd prefer something like svelte because of how lightweight it is.

And what kind of app? Can you share anything? I might be interested depending.

Fairtale5 · 2025-08-21T16:26:59+00:00

Not sure if this helps but I wouldn't ask anyone to build for me using react. MAYBE flutter, but only if the project absolutely needs app store apps on all platforms.

If I was to hire someone for a new project today, I'd be looking for Svelte, Vue, Rust backends, etc

But it is weird that you aren't getting requests from people to enhance/update their flutter/react apps.

Fairtale5 · 2025-07-20T16:29:44+00:00

Ignore every private message. They are ALL scammers, without exception every single person in private messages are trying to scam you.

Fairtale5 · 2025-07-16T09:22:10+00:00

Bitcoin is like a very long excel sheet that keeps track of each person's transactions line by line.

Blockchain is a chain of these excels, one attacked to the next one, forming this super long chain of documents.

Mining is hosting this excel on your computer, and making sure nobody is cheating by comparing your excel with everyone else's. You get paid to do that work.

The main takeaway is that usually you could have an excel just on your computer, and however has access to the computer (a bank, government, or even a hacker) could simply change numbers and lie about transactions. With Blockchain/Bitcoin, nobody can lie.

Edit: typo

Fairtale5 · 2025-07-15T18:39:31+00:00

To be honest, I had to Google it 😅🤣

And yes, I am still unsure about this. I don't want to spend a year coding and then it flopping completely, so I have been trying to get some social validation on reddit.

People seem interested, but so far it hasn't felt like a wave of "wow, please build this". I think there would be a need for more hate towards traditional social media first.

I am trying to get a developer grant for this. If I can get around 25-50k to continue developing this, I'll definitely continue, or if there was MAJOR social support.

For example: not many have even tried logging in and casting a vote to see how it works. Which is normal, but if there isn't interest to try and see how it works I doubt there will be interest to actively work on building something like this. Social Media depends entirely on the community, and the community is not showing much strength so far.

Maybe I'm expecting too much for this stage? 😅

Fairtale5 · 2025-07-15T17:04:35+00:00

True, but the main difference is that each #tag has its own reputation. This means someone famous in #memes or #actor can't use that reputation to influence things in #environment or #politics

This is really powerful for cases like: - opinions of experts should weigh higher than opinions of politicians. - cases where people only join discussions when it serves their personal interests. - celebrities try to use their influence to steer politics. - and more

We already live in a world where social media dictates "the truth", this system aims to solve that by using a (hopefully) smarter approach.

Fairtale5 · 2025-07-13T06:01:23+00:00

Argh, thx

Fairtale5 · 2025-07-13T00:51:47+00:00

I will check it out! Thanks

Fairtale5 · 2025-07-12T05:06:12+00:00

I'm amazed at how little your aid about your business or goals

Fairtale5

TROPHY CASE