We collected 300,074 comments from under the videos of 10 founder and startup YouTube channels. We kept the 24,000 that scored highest for questions, problems and requests, and sorted those requests into 22 themes. Three themes had the most requests behind them. First, the founder's own head: burnout, working alone, and knowing what to do but not doing it. Second, pricing, mostly charging too little. Third, getting an app built with AI coding tools to work in production.
Sorted by how many requests fed each theme. Counts a few apart are too close to call.
1
Mindset
Founders say they already know what to do and still don't do it. Burnout and working alone come up in the same comments.
30 requests
· Trend: rising
· Comment volume: very high
“after listening to you for hours, my biggest takeaway is we all know deep down what we need to do. most of us have enough information to take our next step, but still don't cause we don't know what our twentieth step will be.”
“"I read 14 self-help books and nothing changed until I actually did something" should be printed on the cover of every 'motivation' channel. You're not learning if your behavior doesn't change. A lot of people in these comments aren't students… they're addiction-level content consumers.”
Most of it is charging too little: pricing off cost or off competitors, and fear of losing customers after a price rise.
28 requests
· Trend: rising
· Comment volume: very high
“My wife teaches guitar online for $30/lesson. Someone asked her for an in-person lesson and I said, "Cool, charge $75." She goes, "No way anyone would pay that!" And that's the moment I realized… she hasn't watched enough Hormozi.”
“I started a solo cleaning business this year. I started charging £15ph because I thought thats the most I could charge. Why? Because that's what everyone else was charging. I started to change my strategy and now I charge by the job. I did a general clean in just under 4 hours and I worked out at £52ph.”
“I haven't find any youtuber in tech an AI space that teaches how to market, how to distribute, how to engage with customers, how to go from 0 to 10 paying customers, WITH real actual numbers and results.”
Technical and introverted founders hate selling, feel fake on a script, and have no process to close.
24 requests
· Trend: steady
· Comment volume: very high
“As a technical founder, I suck at this big time. Eric Migicovsky, a YC partner who ran startup school told us to pivot if we can't charge for our product. That did it. Now, we have 4000 paying customers. But, at that time it felt exactly like Brad mentioned: "the look of fear on our faces that we have to charge".”
“I've worked in sales as a rep, door-to-door lead generator, a manager of a sales team... always hated sales - because I felt like I was trying to pull the wool over the Mark's eyes... But! that's because, I never had the right perspective. Alex is the dude that reminds people like me why sales are not slimy, and are actually incredibly mutually beneficial...”
Founders spend months and real money building before one person pays, and mix up shipping an MVP with proving demand.
24 requests
· Trend: rising
· Comment volume: very high
“Wasting money comes from the lack of focus on validation. It's too tempting for early-stage founders to compare their startups with mature companies... once founders realize they must prioritize validation, they're able to question: "how much do I need to validate?"”
“"Validate before you build, before you write a line of code" - but on the other hand, developers were already working and there was a month of teasing the new customers.... So I'm confused, is it one or the other?”
Founders accept they need an audience to sell, then stall at zero: what to post, which platform, how views turn into revenue.
24 requests
· Trend: steady
· Comment volume: high
“Greg, I am loving all of the content. I really think the biggest gap in your content right now is the building an audience. It feels like such an assumed part of every conversation. Would love to have someone who speaks about getting that initial momentum without an existing audience. Ads? Paid traffic? TikTok & pray?”
“But how do you reach your target audience then ? That's the problem... if you only do that, nobody will find your videos because it won't ever be recommended to people feed as a small YouTuber.”
Solo operators want agents to run marketing, operations and content. They ask how to run more than two or three at once before cost and errors pile up.
23 requests
· Trend: emerging
· Comment volume: very high
“this started off great but turned into a commercial for orgo. im still left wondering how to use all this, and what the benefit for the business is.”
“How are you using 20 agents at a time? (Would be nice to hear more detail). The most I've managed at one time in parallel is three and that is more than what most at my company are doing (I need to follow each agent fairly closely, approve plans and guide them when they go off track and I can't do more than three at once very easily)”
Founders fear anyone can copy a product in a week, or OpenAI can ship it, and ask what is left to defend.
22 requests
· Trend: rising
· Comment volume: high
“As a startup founder the thing that concerns me is less OpenAI itself, and more how easy it is for the existing players to add this stuff to their products. If you are at the application layer, how do you break into a market with such a low barrier to integration.”
“It is extremely empowering to see the entry to get ideas into production is lowered. At the same time it is challenging to differentiate yourself because everyone is capable of doing what you are doing.”
A working product, no audience, no ad budget, no network, and no repeatable way to find the first 10 paying customers.
21 requests
· Trend: rising
· Comment volume: very high
“This video needs to give some strategies and examples of HOW you find early adopters if your network isnt teeming with them. Like, what are the most effective ways to get the word out?”
“Hi, I listen to all your podcasts... We created a website with free ebook to download it and we got 1000 emails and still building the list. We actually managed to create really good ebook, but the problem is we have no clue what to sell and how to monetize these emails.”
Founders say ChatGPT and Claude give generic advice with no source, and some already prompt them to play a named mentor.
20 requests
· Trend: rising
· Comment volume: high
“Most of the product management contenting existing on the Web is of terrible quality. Most of Product Managers do not understand what their title even means. LLMs were trained on all of that data, and, therefore, produce very poor product decisions.”
“When you said you never use ai like that, i thought damn, i thought we all used ai like that. My spin on it is ill tell ai my basic idea, ill then ask it to pretend to be Greg Isenberg or Y Combinator mentor and give me some feedback on my idea. Or ill ask ai, pretend you are a successful entrepreneur that has deep knowledge on this topic, what am i missing, what should i consider regarding my idea.”
Viewers doubt revenue claims and success stories, and call out people who make their money selling courses on making money.
20 requests
· Trend: rising
· Comment volume: high
“I stopped counting how many vids i watched where someone made living with some crazy profitable idea implementation and ended up selling how-to courses.”
Non-technical founders pick between a technical co-founder, outsourcing the build, or building alone with AI. Technical builders complain about lopsided equity.
20 requests
· Trend: rising
· Comment volume: high
“My 2 cents if you're a non tech founder looking for a tech founder - learn to code. Even if you just get a surface level understanding, it'll be easier to evaluate potential cofounders, discuss technical challenges, and tech people will respect you more when you can truly appreciate their trials and tribulations mastering the craft.”
“I have been looking for a co-founder on YC for 3 years on YC co-founder matching platform. It feels like looking for a GF for who will never say yes no matter how good the idea is.”
Founders with early revenue are torn between raising money and bootstrapping. Many feel the advice leans toward venture capital.
18 requests
· Trend: steady
· Comment volume: high
“Great perspective! I would also add a hybrid approach - bootstrap, find product market fit, then ask for VC money to scale. Most VCs want some form of traction to begin with.”
“The real issue is being VC backed is seen as "success", so founders spend all their time pitching VC's and trying to raise, instead of talking to customers and building their start up.”
Engineers, designers, product managers and new graduates worry that AI will take their jobs faster than they can learn new skills.
18 requests
· Trend: rising
· Comment volume: high
“I do not doubt new jobs will be created after implementing AI, what concerns me is the speed of change. Most people will not be able to transform their skills to fill the new job vacancies as fast as old jobs are automated away.”
“i dont like this changes, i dont know what to do right, just finished college, 23 years old. dont know where find job and wich skills people needed from me. maybe im stupid for that, i dont know, im lost”
Founders ask whether SaaS survives agents, which categories are safe, and how to price an agent once per-seat pricing stops making sense.
18 requests
· Trend: emerging
· Comment volume: high
“Yeah, but what is preventing SaaS companies from just pivoting their tech stack or integrating vAIs into their offering? Like trying to sell into these categories is extremely hard, even if the tech is cheaper, faster, better. These customers are exhausted.”
Founders polish in private for months or years and have no rule for when a product is ready. Some push back on launching early.
16 requests
· Trend: steady
· Comment volume: high
“I can't express how incredibly true this advice is. I kept stopping myself from launching because I thought the onboarding wasn't ready. The product itself currently doesn't work without me manually going and editing the database. So I waited and kept working and kept working... eventually a colleague at my incubator said just shut up and get someone to try it manually.”
“"launch right now" isn't always the answer. This leads to subpar products that fall through the cracks getting launched. Launching isn't just about the product, it's about marketing, positioning, onboarding experience etc. It is not 2010 any more and people have expectations.”
Founders past early revenue are the bottleneck in their own company and don't know whether to hire, delegate or build systems first.
15 requests
· Trend: steady
· Comment volume: high
“Can you do a video on how to recruit people and when? We've been stuck for 4 years with pretty good profits, but just recently realized that if we want to grow, we need to recruit people.”
“You just nailed my problem. My company started making a few million dollars and I started outsourcing stuff without using that saved time to do or learn something of higher value... Now I've outsourced the majority of my workload and I've been just kinda coasting.”
Requests the channels rarely answer, each with one comment that asks for it.
Advice for businesses that aren't software. E-commerce, trades, local services and physical products say startup advice assumes SaaS.
“As an e-commerce guy it's great to see you also talk about e-commerce very specificaly. I love your stuff, but due to your own experiences in business it often times is harder to apply to e-commerce.”
Churn and lifetime value for businesses where customers buy once, like roofing or windows.
“How would you recommend calculating churn or using this same model for businesses that really focus on products that tend to be once every never purchases like windows/roof/garage door etc…”
First customers for consumer products. Most first-customer and sales advice assumes a business buyer.
“I wish you asked April about her opinoins on B2C. Seems like the YT world is very biased towards B2B. A lot of these ideas are great, just wondering if they are all applicable to B2C as well?”
An AI assistant that remembers the business between conversations, so founders stop re-explaining it.
“I want a system where I can share project details as one time context that stays in memory of the AI engine and then build a library of prompts to get the desired output in desired shape and form.”
Source: 300,074 public comments from 3,562 videos on 10 channels: Lenny's Podcast, Y Combinator, a16z, 20VC, Greg Isenberg, My First Million, Starter Story, All-In, Alex Hormozi and The Brett Way. Mined on June 6, 2026.
Filter: a script dropped 27,161 comments as noise, bots or too short. It scored the rest for questions, stated problems, requests and founder context, with a small bonus for likes and length. 48,913 comments scored as high signal after removing duplicates. The top 24,000, with no channel above 22% of the set, went to the next step.
Extraction: 20 model runs, one per batch of about 1,200 comments, pulled out 769 distinct requests, each with the comments behind it.
Themes: one more model run merged the 769 requests into 22 themes. 470 requests landed in a theme. A theme's count is the number of requests merged into it, not a count of comments.
Order: themes are sorted by that count. The first pass also ranked them with a weight for how well Gavel could answer each one. We dropped that weight here. Counts a few apart are too close to call.
Quotes: every quote on this page was checked by a script against the saved comment text and links to its video. Quotes the check could not find were dropped. Commenters are not named.
Trends: about two thirds of the comments carry no date, so trend labels show a direction only. They lean on the 10,755 selected comments that do have one.
Limits: the channels skew toward software, AI and venture-backed companies, so this is what their audiences ask for, not all founders. The themes and counts come from model runs and were not hand-coded.
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