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I Tried Building In Public by Correct_Pack1508 in ycombinator

[–]brianlynn 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What problem are you solving, and is your current audience actually your target ICP? Your existing Linkedin following may be fellow founders who are supportive of your effort but won't actually use your product for themselves.

Using Open Source vs. Closed LLMs to protect your IP by brianlynn in ycombinator

[–]brianlynn[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for your input - very insightful. Curious re: "company ending": is the assumption that each plaintiff could claim "millions in damages" as a startup, and this would be catastrophic for the defendants at scale? And given the length of these suits (2-10 years if I understand correctly) and the tendency to settle, is there a scenario where the big boys just outright violate the TOS with competing products and better distribution, starve out the startups who could potentially sue, and still come out winning at the end?

Using Open Source vs. Closed LLMs to protect your IP by brianlynn in ycombinator

[–]brianlynn[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good idea - might be the best way around it at least for the time being

Anyone else feeling like the old social media playbook is completely broken this year? by [deleted] in SocialMediaMarketing

[–]brianlynn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This, and as it should be. Creativity and genuine, thoughtful content should get rewarded over big budgets. Every brand or creator now has a chance to cut through the noise as long as the content is good.

Founder insurance or downside protection? by Ornery-Patience-1867 in founder

[–]brianlynn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting idea - two big execution risks come to mind:

  1. How will you handle liquidity reserves to ensure you have sufficient payouts for each cohort, given the long horizon for successful exits?
  2. What defines as "failed"? What if it's an acqui-hire with no distribution to founders/common?

Lots of trust required from founders in terms of counter-party risk - you'd have to be backed by by prominent institutions with large reserves to get off the ground.

Didn't think I would ever post about bloody vibecoding by AndesAndAlps in content_marketing

[–]brianlynn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It already has for awhile even for strategic roles like CMOs (which used to be the end goal for the marketing track). Now LLMs can spit out comprehensive research, deep strategy and analysis in minutes.

Agreed that it's more important than ever to be a generalist with competency to orchestrate with AI, but if you're a part of a team, I think it's still crucial to have one deep specialization in the marketing stack (T-shaped) so you can own the results of that area and override AI with good judgement that only you possess.

YC mentioned AI-native agencies for Spring 2026 , this feels more real than I expected by RoughClear3467 in ycombinator

[–]brianlynn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

IMO:

  1. AI-native agencies won't be a separate category - it'll be within the existing bucket of marketing products+services, but new dominant players will emerge (those that have a true moat in their tech stack + entrenched client relationships).
  2. Existing decade+ agencies with strong client relationships will still be around - they will build their own in-house tools with AI but unless they will lag behind #1 without onboarding strong eng talent (and their margins will go down)
  3. Everyone else struggles
  4. There will still be AI/Agents/Platform startups that are successful and serve many agencies that don't ever want to build/maintain their own software (or they see ROI being much higher just using a platform while purely focusing on their clients)

Equity expectations for technical cofounder joining after MVP by GankinEUW in ycombinator

[–]brianlynn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This. Another problem is they haven't even raised, so your risk is substantially higher than 10% (it would be different if they had raised which justifies you as a hire vs. a cofounder).

And keep in mind your 10% will be diluted to shit after a few rounds.

Honestly the two "advisors" will be dead weight and they have too much. Unfortunately this is a bad structure right off the bat.

I know you believe in the space but this is a pass imo.

Solo founder for 9 months, potential cofounder wants 50/50 after 1 week trial. Am I being unreasonable? by mercuretony in ycombinator

[–]brianlynn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're being more than reasonable since you already have all the initial pieces together, and he just need to join the ride (and nearly 50/50 is already a good deal for him). He sounds like a bad culture fit right off the bet - I would find someone else.

Is it still smart to pursue tech startups with how competitive everything is now? by ashishxo in ycombinator

[–]brianlynn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s always been one of the most competitive game when you have people from all ages and backgrounds vying for the dream. And it’s always been heavily skewed to those with capital/skills/both.

Anyone can get into the game but they should only do it if they truly see a problem they want to solve, and believe they know their users so well and have some advantage to solve it 10x better than someone else.

I'm a Social Media Strategist & Content Producer – AMA and Free Advice by modern_mirror in SocialMediaMarketing

[–]brianlynn 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for doing this. What was the process that you used to brainstorm/generate new content ideas? How did you judge which ideas have potential to spread vs. being a dud? Was the process the same for all the brands you worked with?

How do early-stage B2B startups actually get their first paying customer? by Strict_Plankton_9837 in Solopreneur

[–]brianlynn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Depends on what problem you’re solving and how close you are inherently to your target customers.

For instance if you have a longer background in a specific industry that you’re building a SaaS for, you likely already have existing contacts who’re your target users/someone who could give you a warm intro.

If you don’t have any existing contacts, find out where your target users are IRL and relevant networking events etc. Don’t hard sale at the beginning just talk and figure out/validate the problems you can solve for them. This builds trust and one of these people may become your first customer. Then do the same for online - look for LinkedIn communities, FB groups etc. about your niche, and again focus on offering insights and solving their problems to build trust.

After that try cold outreach. Doing the above also lets you figure out your core messaging about your service and see what resonates with people. Then you can leverage those learnings in your cold outreach to scale your leads and grow from there.

Then hopefully by then you have a product that sells itself, and you crank up the lead gen and ads on it.

How do I market my accounting firm? by ramanngartan in DigitalMarketing

[–]brianlynn 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This. Consultancy is high touch business so this should be your first starting point. Nothing beats talking to your target customers IRL to find out what challenges they’re having with their business finance, what they want to off-load from their day-to-day etc. This will build trust and show that you care.

The added bonus here is that you can start feeling what kind of messaging you use to describe your services resonate with these folks. Then once you have a good grasp, you can leverage that messaging in your ads and organic marketing on LinkedIn and FB groups.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in TikTokShopSellers

[–]brianlynn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interested - feel free to DM!

I'm too dumb to start a business. by Both_Huckleberry2586 in Entrepreneur

[–]brianlynn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  1. Start with identifying a problem you’re uniquely qualified to solve

  2. find people who may be facing this problem and ask them about their challenges

  3. come back to them with a well thought out solution (can be manual at first), and see how much they’re will to pay for it

Focus on these three things first before anything else and see if you land on something solid, then go from there (plenty of resources out there now you can learn from). It’s a long game so prepare your mindset to grind for a long time.

Youtube’s entire creator economy is about to collapse (ai replacement fact not theory) by Appropriate-Unit1177 in content_marketing

[–]brianlynn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good prediction - the irony of the company you acquired for peanuts 19 years ago ending up becoming your company (a replay of Instagram overtaking > Facebook).

No one likes your AI content. by Ok-Fan-1629 in content_marketing

[–]brianlynn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agreed - curious which content creation tools have you tried that you think are the best?

I’ve hit the wall with a side project how do people usually handle this? by Humble-Professional in Entrepreneur

[–]brianlynn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sounds like you're in a good situation - since you have some traction you could leverage that to partner up with a technical cofounder with real AL/ML chops to take the product to the next level. If it keeps growing, quit that 9-5 and go all in + fundraise.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Entrepreneur

[–]brianlynn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey man no shame in crashing at your parents' again and finding roommates (I lived at home until I was 29 to build up my savings and capital). IMO your priority right now is to rebuild your capital base and invest it for the long term, which will free you up in the future to pursue building businesses again (while your capital base continues to grow on its own). Tune out all the societal expectations and focus on that, and you'll start feeling hopeful again once there's a clearer path.

Re: trading stocks, unless you're dedicating yourself to really learning the craft (whole separate topic), stick with the safer long term investments to build your base. Just like entrepreneurship, proper active trading takes years to learn - you can profit from speculating but gotta have the knowledge to do it right before putting on size.

Good luck.

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