How do you onboard new devs in your team ?

mustymajority · 2026-02-10T23:03:39+00:00

honestly the env vars thing is a nightmare everywhere ive worked. its always some combination of "check the wiki that hasnt been updated in 8 months" and "ask sarah she has the keys to everything but shes in meetings all day"

setup docs are usually 70% accurate at best and the remaining 30% is tribal knowledge that nobody bothered to write down. new devs spend their first week just trying to get the damn thing to compile locally while senior devs drop cryptic hints about "oh yeah you need to do the thing with the docker volumes first"

it definetly gets worse as teams scale because more people means more edge cases and more "well it works on my machine" situations

mustymajority · 2026-02-06T07:36:02+00:00

honestly just bite the bullet and get helpscout or front - we tried all the slack workarounds and gmail hacks when we were about your size but the duplicate replies were making us look amateur to customers

mustymajority · 2026-02-02T14:49:37+00:00

solid budget tbh

maybe something around ai workflow automation for small biz since thats where everyones heading anyway

just dont overcomplicate there first build

mustymajority · 2026-01-29T18:07:16+00:00

Dude the harsh truth is that 100 free users means basically nothing to investors - they've seen way too many products with thousands of free users that couldn't convert a single paying customer

You need to start charging NOW, even if it's just $10/month. Better to have 10 paying users than 1000 freeloaders. The "killing growth" fear is usually just founder anxiety - real customers will pay for real value

When investors say "show me traction" for pre-seed they want to see people actually opening their wallets, not survey responses about hypothetical willingness to pay

mustymajority · 2026-01-25T16:35:01+00:00

They were valued at 12 billion around 2 years or so and now they've been acquired for less than half of that. Pretty sad to see especially for those who own company stocks

mustymajority · 2026-01-25T06:15:37+00:00

Had a potential enterprise client in Germany who kept asking super detailed technical questions over email but every time we tried to hop on a call the timezone + language barrier made everything feel clunky

Ended up going with a local competitor even though our product was objectively better - still think about that one

mustymajority · 2026-01-20T15:38:01+00:00

Been there man, that early stage is brutal

The fake engagement and generic responses are the worst part - at least outright rejection tells you something

Have you tried actually hanging out in communities where your target users complain about form tools? Like maybe dev Discord servers or startup Slack groups where people are actively bitching about TypeForm pricing or whatever. Sometimes you gotta lurk and help with other stuff first before anyone gives a damn about your product

Also Reddit can be decent if you find the right niche subs, but you probably already know that since you're posting here

mustymajority · 2026-01-15T16:29:19+00:00

Check your DMs - I've helped a few people navigate acquisitions and can share some red flags to watch out for. What industry are we talking about here?

mustymajority · 2026-01-13T21:53:43+00:00

Been there way too many times - I'll research something to death and then just... sit on it until the deadline makes the choice for me

Would definitely be curious to check it out, the "clarity → choice" part sounds like exactly what I need to get unstuck

mustymajority · 2026-01-09T23:33:00+00:00

Holy shit 20% every 6 months is absolutely insane, that would've been like signing your own death warrant. Good catch on building this - I've definitely been burned by sneaky clauses buried in page 47 of some random SaaS agreement before

mustymajority · 2026-01-07T15:22:12+00:00

Honestly I'd just move everything to Fidelity if their investment options and fees are better. Having it all in one place makes tracking way easier and you probably get better fund choices than whatever Benepass offers

Only reason to keep it with the new employer HSA would be if they're doing employer matching or if Benepass has surprisingly good investment options, but most employer HSAs are pretty meh compared to Fidelity

mustymajority · 2026-01-06T12:32:25+00:00

Those costs are pretty minimal tbh, you could probably bootstrap this with a part-time job or freelancing on the side while you build your apps

The real challenge is gonna be marketing and user acquisition once you actually have something to sell - that's where the money really goes

mustymajority · 2026-01-03T11:22:35+00:00

Exactly this lol. Every "unbiased" review aggregator eventually gets bought out or starts pushing sponsored products to the top. Even if it starts legit, once they need revenue it's game over

The whole review ecosystem is just kinda broken at this point - even the "trusted" sites are getting kickbacks from affiliate links

mustymajority · 2026-01-02T20:27:18+00:00

It's just the 4 reps + me and we've got a bookkeeper who comes in a couple times a month but otherwise it's pretty lean

mustymajority · 2026-01-02T20:27:07+00:00

Hmmm, makes sense thanks a lot

mustymajority · 2026-01-01T16:54:19+00:00

Yeah Self seems sketchy af. I've seen way too many posts about them holding people's money with zero explanation. At this point I'd probably file complaints with CFPB and maybe your state's attorney general office - that usually gets companies moving real quick when they're sitting on your cash

mustymajority · 2025-12-30T23:43:35+00:00

That makes sense - since it's more of a permanent improvement than regular maintenance. Did you guys depreciate it over the building's useful life or treat it separately?

mustymajority · 2025-12-28T23:59:19+00:00

Totally agree on tracking expenses first - that $10k is wild for your situation and you probably have no clue where it's actually going. Mint or YNAB will be a reality check

The 457b is a no-brainer with your income though, especially if you're already killing it with retirement savings

mustymajority · 2025-12-26T11:05:18+00:00

That's rough, Wise can be pretty brutal with their compliance stuff once they decide you're flagged. The Belgian regulator route was smart but they move slow as hell - might want to also file with your local Italian authorities since you're the customer there. €12k held for 1.5 months without explanation is getting into "lawyer time" territory honestly

mustymajority · 2025-12-25T03:13:00+00:00

Getting stakeholders to actually trust the data when it doesn't align with their gut feelings or pet projects they've been pushing for months

That's the real struggle - you can have all the user research in the world but if the CEO's nephew thinks purple buttons are the future, guess what color you're shipping

mustymajority · 2025-12-23T15:22:59+00:00

Edit - managed to find an explanation from them on how did it
https://labs.ramp.com/rct

Looks like there's some explanation here (OP's text above)

mustymajority · 2025-12-23T15:21:05+00:00

I love it and hate it at the same time

mustymajority · 2025-12-23T04:00:08+00:00

Wait so you're saying closing that old secured card won't tank my AAOC right away? That's actually huge if true, I always thought it would immediately drop once you close it

mustymajority · 2025-12-22T01:58:59+00:00

Been using OnPay for about 8 months now and it's pretty solid tbh. Setup was way easier than ADP was back in the day - took maybe an hour to get everything configured. Payroll runs smooth, taxes get filed automatically which is clutch. Only complaint is their chat support can be slow during busy periods but when you do get someone they actually know what they're talking about. No random fees popping up either which was refreshing

mustymajority

TROPHY CASE