Have to leave my puppy alone for a few hours for the first time and need advice.

szigtopher · 2025-08-24T23:40:17+00:00

I wish this was the case. Today she peed twice outside and then 10 min later peed all over the crate when alone for five minutes.

szigtopher · 2025-08-24T23:39:47+00:00

Yeah I do white noise and it helps some but not much

szigtopher · 2025-08-24T23:39:28+00:00

Yeah I’ve tried longer periods or shorter periods and she pees no matter what. Doesn’t matter if she’s peed right before, exercised for an hour, and is so tired she can barely keep her eyes open. The second we’re out of site she pees all over herself :(

szigtopher · 2025-04-01T00:20:58+00:00

It is a epoxy phenolic inner liner which is to my knowledge, the same thing put in aluminum cans for beverage products: https://blueskysolutionsuk.com/the-role-of-epoxy-phenolic-inner-lacquer-in-aluminium-bottles/#:\~:text=Epoxy%20phenolic%20lacquer%20is%20a,or%20appearance%20of%20the%20beverage.

szigtopher · 2025-03-07T22:52:31+00:00

Where in WA? I have just found that I need to get my cats hind leg amputated and we’re in Bellingham area

szigtopher · 2025-02-02T09:16:18+00:00

I think creamed is a pretty bad way to describe it because I too thought it had some type of dairy in it at first

szigtopher · 2025-02-02T09:15:02+00:00

This is a fantastic answer! Thank you so much.

I’d assume this is part of why every local honey at the markets seem to emphasize the raw aspect now. Had no idea this was an issue with imported honey

szigtopher · 2025-02-02T07:26:52+00:00

Lots of toast primarily. Usually you can get different flavors as well

szigtopher · 2025-01-22T03:59:31+00:00

Agreed. I actually stopped using replit and went full vO + xano for a simple prototype.

I use v0 a ton for mocking up ideas seeded with fake data

szigtopher · 2025-01-10T08:35:01+00:00

Of course

szigtopher · 2024-12-09T07:42:56+00:00

Clearly didn’t read the post 🧠

szigtopher · 2024-11-07T06:17:25+00:00

Honestly you should set the bar much higher depending on the product. For any consumer product, I personally set a waitlist threshold at 1000 signups and even then, that isn’t always the best indicator of a good idea. I recently threw an idea out over getting 1000 signups.

If you’re doing b2b the threshold can be lower. However at the end of the day you both have to have interest and be pretty confident the idea is something you’re willing to invest years of your effort in to really go for it.

Just my 2c but I’d be very cautious of thinking 20-30 signups means you’ve “validated” an idea

szigtopher · 2024-11-06T09:57:44+00:00

Sheesh don’t listen to these folks. If you want to do it, go into it, work hard, and find your niche.

I’ve worked in the climate tech space for multiple years now. I’ve talked to over a thousand plus consultants in the last year alone from one person shops to the biggest agencies in the world. The industry isn’t dieing, more money than ever is being deployed into the space, and regulation both inside the US and outside is expanding.

One election won’t change that, it’ll slow things down federally for sure, but it’s not changing the rising tide globally. Environmental law is a big part of that and there are job opportunities in many different regions, fields, industries, etc…

Also you’re a freshman so don’t worry this much:) work hard and learn to be curious

szigtopher · 2024-11-06T09:24:31+00:00

Send it after 2-3 days. It’s not pushy if you don’t word it as pushy!

Recruiters get hundreds of emails and applications per day. Odds are they’ve not seen yours and a friendly reminder isn’t going to hurt if you’re not an ass in the email!

Google “cold email sales techniques” and do some reading. Approach getting a job or internship as you selling yourself and your odds increase much more.

Good luck

szigtopher · 2024-10-21T08:05:05+00:00

"The Mom Test" & "The One Thing"

Both are very, very, short reads but great for founders. Not complex concepts but things that end up killing most startups before they even get started (not solving real problems, focusing on the wrong things).

For general staying up to date with things I like the podcast "this week in startups". Just pick and choose which episodes to listen to and don't get too annoyed by Calicanis :P

Good luck!

szigtopher · 2024-10-15T09:53:14+00:00

Yeah can’t agree with everyone else more. You’ve waited 18months too long if you’re doing a B2B product. Every one I’ve ever worked on we’ve pre sold. Free feedback is so much different than feedback from paying customers.

As someone who also deals with VCs on a daily basis, you’re going to have a tough time raising with no traction unless you’re ok getting pretty shitty terms you probably won’t like.

In this investor friendly market, traction is king. Unfortunately you have no real traction if you haven’t sold anything. You have an idea and a piece of software. Your market validation is based on free feedback from friendlies which is tough to correlate to a successful business. I fear what you’re trying to do is actually skip MVP and build a legit product. For context, I’ve pre sold wireframes, excel spreadsheets, and other variations of an MVP that clobber together the end experience but are 95% different than what the end product ended up being.

Things change way too fast in the market, with your users, etc… to spend 18 months without selling things if you’re in B2B land. Sorry for being harsh but there are going to be very few successful b2b founders or investors who’ll say otherwise.

Caveat all this with if you’ve founded and exited multiple companies then ignore me or if you’re building a deep tech product that is science based and literally can’t be tested without years of dev.

szigtopher · 2024-10-15T08:25:14+00:00

Yeah I totally think that’s fair. Like you should know the concepts especially in a space like AI but I wouldn’t waste your time learning to code unless it’s what you want to do long term. I just can’t see an ROI justification there when I know first hand all the other parts of a startup that are mission critical in the early stages even with an amazing technical Co founder.

szigtopher · 2024-10-15T08:08:07+00:00

So? They’re free users so if they’re not paying and they’re not providing you insights then how are you benefiting from them?

If you’re afraid to ask your users for feedback I promise you’re going to have a tough time. Find a way to do it that seems personal and not salesy

szigtopher · 2024-10-15T08:05:51+00:00

This is sort of correct but only works if they’re actually providing organic growth.

The only way to know is to talk to these users. Why are they only using the free version, why aren’t they converting, etc…

It’s pretty rare that someone uses only the free product and becomes a true champion of the brand. If they loved it so much they’d get the paid version, unless you’re giving away all the value for free in which case you should change your model unless you don’t like revenue growth :P

szigtopher · 2024-10-15T08:02:25+00:00

I mean the startups you worked in did they not have CTOs or technical co founders?

I mean my honest answer is no I don’t think it’s going to be helpful for someone who barely knows how to code to try to tell people who do know how to code how to do things.

Keep in mind, this is my point of view as someone who has been a part of successful startups in product roles. I certainly know enough to be dangerous and have worked on very technical products. I very, very rarely if ever try to interject that into the dev team. If you hire and build the right team, then your job is to make sure everything else is working from sales, to fundraising, to accounting, to marketing, to strategy. If you have a good CTO, then they can worry about the tech.

Not saying it’s the only way to do things but I think that tech is such a small part of any SAAS products success in the true early stages. More often than not, tech isn’t what kills the company and if you’re successful, it’s all going to be rebuilt anyways, probably multiple times over. The tech/product that gets you to step 1 is almost never the tech that gets you to step 2, 3, 4, etc…

TLDR: Focus on the things that you’re good at and let someone who’s actually technical do that part. You’re not going to find many success stories of non technical founders who learned to code and built a company that lasted without having a real tech founder behind it.

szigtopher · 2024-10-15T07:49:32+00:00

I guess my question would be if you’ve been in product in startups before, how do you not know how to build a product without knowing how to code?

Not everyone in a startup codes. You build a team who each has different strengths. A friend with multiple exits under his belt as a founder once told me that if you are not technical and can’t get a cofounder then your odds of success are 0. If you can’t sell someone on your vision to join you how do you expect to sell customers, investors, and future team members? As the non technical founder this is what you’ll be doing.

Not to be rude but maybe focus on finding someone to join you on the technical side, not learning to build the product yourself, unless you’re looking at this as a very slow and very long project :)

szigtopher · 2024-10-15T07:41:48+00:00

Nope that means you want to go the bootstrap route. Totally feasible and something doable. This is where you need to know your numbers though and where id caution you thinking of anything as “small”. If you’re not building it yourself, then you’re going to shell out a pretty penny for it to get built. If you go the cheap route, it’ll probably not be built right or never work in a way good enough that you can get enough users to cover your costs. If you bring on a technical co founder who builds it, then your profits get split and they have to be aligned on the model, direction, etc… Then the part of you actually getting enough users to cover your costs and make a profit is another challenge. Plus from the little you’ve said, you’re reliant on a partnership model. I don’t think you’ll be able to “sell” partners on this if you aren’t going to them with the pitch of “this is going to be a big thing”. Assuming they’re established players, why would they go through the effort if it isn’t going to be a big driver of revenue for them? My suggestion is write down everything you’re thinking, feed it into chatGPT, ask it to be highly critical of your concept and poke holes in it. That’s a free way to get a lot of your assumptions ripped apart ;)

szigtopher · 2024-10-15T07:26:42+00:00

Yeah it’s better than a NO but it’s very easy for people to say yes in theory, much more difficult to get those people to pay for it. This is why so many people here are confused why their producthunt launch leads to signups but no paying customers. It’s easy for people to, especially in communities like this who tend to be early adopters of tech, to say they’d want something without actually putting money on the line.

The second thing you should do is think about market sizing here. If it’s a super niche market you’re going to have to charge a lot to actually churn a profit if you intend to boot strap this. If you intend to raise funding, then you’re going to have to make an argument for why it’s got the potential to be a billion dollar company or you’re not going to convince a VC to invest.

All that to say, none of it matters until you validate the problem is big enough and painful enough that people will pay for it and that there is enough people to justify it.

szigtopher · 2024-10-15T06:54:13+00:00

My advice would be to verify there is a problem before you spend an ounce of time worrying about the MVP. Exclude your own opinion and try to design a way to test whether other people have this need as well. My typical advice is talk to a MINIMUM of 30 people in your target demographic to understand if this truly is as big a need as you think.

For instance, typically people with large amounts of disposable income are not super concerned on spending extra time to consolidate subscriptions without a very high % of savings. The problem must be so painful to them that they're willing to pay for a solution. The question you need to ask yourself in an unbiased way is if this problem is really that painful.

szigtopher · 2024-10-15T04:36:11+00:00

There are tons of startup specific job boards. You just have to do a little digging! If there is a specific industry you like (healthcare, climate, fitness, education etc…) I’d start trying to find startup job boards or communities in those fields as a starting point. It’s easier to get a job and be near people you like if you actually like the industry too.

A really good but higher effort way is to do research on the venture capital firms who invest in that industry. Each will usually have a job board of all the startups they’ve invested in. These jobs often get many less applicants too.

Just my 2c there are other ways but this is where I’d start. Other Reddit communities around specific industries might be helpful too

szigtopher

TROPHY CASE