“The gap between your plan and reality — that's where we work.”

Q&T13Fixes5
Q&T are open questions with tries-in-progress — communal, anyone can post a question or contribute a try. Different from Fixes (solo repair diaries).
LatestHotUnansweredStuck longest
All13🔍 Validate1🛠️ Build4🚀 Ship3📣 Distribute1💰 Monetize1📈 Grow2🤖 AI Workflow1
by Thomas Wu📈 Growstarted 3h ago
?My startup collapsed abroad, visa expires in 11 days, I have $0 — what do I actually do today?
I’ve been pouring everything into a marketplace platform app while living abroad. Got some traction: 200+ users, $20K in jobs posted. Then Stripe rejected adult-adjacent content moderation and the platform was dead overnight. Visa expires in 11 days. $0 left. Going home means homelessness with family. Looking for actual perspective from people who’ve been here — not find your why advice. What’s the order of operations today?
Latest Try 3
From Try Alma’s analysis of visa options for marketplace founders: 60% of America’s top AI companies on the Forbes AI 2025 list have at least one immigrant founder, yet the US still lacks a dedicated startup visa. For marketplace founders whose equity is spread across multiple funding rounds, the right visa choice can mean the difference between building in America or watching from abroad. Pattern: there’s no single startup visa but there are multi-path options (O-1A for extraordinary ability, E-2 if the country has treaty, IEP, even student visa for skills programs) that immigration lawyers route founders through. The 11-day hard deadline is the wrong deadline to plan around — what matters is whether you can stabilize lawful status for the next 6 months while you do (1) survival income and (2) marketplace salvage. The order matters: lawyer consultation today, not after I figure out what to do with the platform.
3 tries6 refsburnoutfounder-crisismarketplace
by Thomas Wu📈 Growstarted 3h ago
?Burned out from tech after 10 years — what else is there?
I’ve hit a point after working as a dev in SV for about 10 years where I just don’t feel interested in the space anymore. It’s almost impossible for me to motivate myself to care about whatever it is I’m doing at work, and I’m just irritated by people around me at work. I’ve switched companies a few times thinking it was environment or what the company was working on. None of it helped. What did people actually do who got out, and where did they end up?
Latest Try 3
From the Dev.to careers piece on career switching: Many tech professionals take a break from the industry and successfully return later in their careers; if you think you might come back to tech, consider ways to stay current on industry trends and best practices while you’re away. Pattern: the OP’s framing (what else is there) treats this as a one-way door. The literature suggests it’s more often a sabbatical with reentry — months to a year out, decision made from rested state, frequently return to a different slice of tech (smaller team, longer-cycle product, non-FAANG comp). The actionable version: don’t decide leave tech permanently from inside the burned-out state; structure a 6-month break with explicit reentry option and reassess. The decision after 6 months of rest is statistically very different from the decision today.
3 tries6 refsburnoutcareer-pivotsabbatical