Reflections from my first company
For about 5 months from late 2024 - early 2025 I tried to take a B2B software startup in the IT space from 0 - 1 . In that short span of time we went from nothing --> brand + technology deployed in large MSP's --> finding out our particular offering wasn't as valuable as we thought.
I learned a lot in several domains, despite ultimately winding the business down. Here ill do my best to summarize some key learnings.
GTM:
If your customers congregate in a particular corner of the internet, go there and become a SME, this worked well for us on reddit and became a funnel.
SEO is great for TOFU and so is social proof. When others heard their peers were working with us, they reached out and setup demos / pilots. Idea maze / throwing the towel:
I think here is where I blundered the most. Let the market tell you what is needed and understand that it takes time to validate / invalidate, and be prepared for 3 go's at this. I threw in the towel after the 1st, which leads me to my next point.
Be all in and gritty, but have capital! Ideally seed funding or 1yr of savings. In order to be creative and identify a true gap in the market it takes time, you do not want financial insecurity to cloud your operating judgement.
Team / Recruiting:
Team is everything. I had a cofounder for 1.5 month's who helped on engineering, but due to his own personal reasons he was not fully committed.
I can only imagine how different things could have been had I have had a sparring partner and true teammate, and 6+ months of capital. Engineering:
Because we didn't get too far in product dev most of my learnings are in other places, but track usage / metrics, this will tell you the raw truth of how valuable your offering is. We used Posthog. Sales:
To get an initial feedback loop going it is ok to do ~ 2 week pilots to prove value, but then always ask for payment. It is the only way to truly gauge if your product solves a problem, and how much people are willing to pay for that problem solved.
There are more tactical things I learned like pricing, positioning value, and anchorning but I'll leave that for another time.
When will I do it again? I am an entrepreneur at heart with a bit of a chip on my shoulder 😆 . I intend to learn and see what great looks like for the next 1-3 years, expand my network and develop as a person. You can absolutely be entrepreneurial within a company, and I intend to land at a place that lets me do that.
I believe with the pace of progress in foundation models + physical AI the world will look different in 3 years, but inevitably there will be problems that emerge or new technologies that enable very compelling new products.
When there is an idea that keeps my up at night, or a person who seems like a natural partner to innovate with -- I will take the plunge.
Until then :)