>>31692875
What are you building? What are you selling?
Who is your target audience?
How much sales experience do you have?
What was your market research like before you started?
Where are you getting sales leads from?

>>31692875
Nah man
Being a wagie or a "entrepreneur" its the same shit, you are still rat racing.
At least as a wagie you can live a life the shift is over

>>31692961
My little pony themed dildos and lingerine for plus sized models (mostly men).

>>31692875
>Left a prestigious corpo job last year to build a startup
you have to do them at the same time becos of the rocky road at the beginning

this struggle is all regular and expected

>>31692961
> Building
Cloud security software
> Audience
Small businesses in the US, typically using Azure
> Sales experience
None, been in cyber security my whole life
> Market research
Experience from work plus messaging people on forums (but they are never comfortable talking about buying from me). Obviously aware of the major vendors in this space but want to focus on smaller businesses
> Leads
Signed up to Apollo because someone recommended it to me and have been using that to find IT managers. The list is big but nobody seems to respond.
>>31692967
I don't mind not being able to switch off, I just hate the fact that as a wagie my reward for good work is just more work. There's no incentive to work hard and so I feel like I'm wasting my time.

>>31693081
To add, part of my issue is that I'm working hard now (12+ hrs 6/7 days a week) and have nothing to show for it apart from a bunch of code and thousands of ghosted emails & DMs.
Meanwhile one former colleague just closed $3m in ARR like it was nothing

>>31692875
I'm a serial entrepreneur.
>I was very fortunate to get that job in the first place (I come from a poor family and didn't go to a target school)
Your background has nothing to do with employment. And school is largely meaningless, too.
If you got a job like that once you can get another.
>I have really high ambitions so get really annoyed by the prospect of being a wagie
'ambitious' isn't the word. Ambitious men know that "being a wagie" can be essential to success.
> I so badly want to move my family into a higher class but I know that needs a lot of money.
>Any other anons who tried to start businesses been in this situation?
I have no idea, you told us a little bit about yourself and essentially nothing about your business.
Describe your BUSINESS and I can give you advice about it.

>>31693069
My corpo job was pretty brutal since I was on call a lot and didn't have time to balance both. I guess I was also feeling very confident about my skills and thought I'd be winning quite quickly...
Have you been on a similar journey? How long did it take for things to feel right? Is there a certain amount of time you should endure before giving up?

>>31693095
See
>>31693081
It's a fairly standard B2B SaaS idea to help small businesses manage cloud configurations/roles/licenses to reduce cyber risk.
What kind of things have you built? Would love to hear what the early days were like for you

>>31693081
>>31693093
Security software is a VERY crowded field with some huge names to push up against. Many of them focus on the SMB space.
No sales experience *and* no market research? That's a tough pair of gaps to bridge! You essentially lack the skills to do anything with the leads you are paying for and Apollo is ok enough, but there are much better tools - that you also can't use, probably.
>Code
is your security product done? Or is it being made?
>thousands of ghosted emails
welcome to sales
>DMs
please, please, please don't tell me you are texting/DMing to sell!
First, you need to do research on the market to see if there is a need you can meet and confirm the need + market is big enough and buys fast enough to make a business make sense.
Then, you need to have a completed product that stands out from the competition so you can penetrate the market you've ID'ed.
Then you need a marketing plan you can execute to get visibility in that market.
Then you need to have a sales plan to penetrate that market.
Here's an example of a mistake you are making, a bad one.
> have been using that to find IT managers. The list is big but nobody seems to respond.
The average IT manager at an SMB received about 40 unsolicited sales emails every weekday and about 20 unsolicited sales calls a week because every lousy salesman and every wannabe salesman thinks they are the ones to contact. These managers have filters and gatekeepers to get rid of that stuff.
I'll wait for the responses from you to go on

>>31693093
>one former colleague just closed $3m in ARR like it was nothing
Oh, and an aside.
So?
What was his margin?

>>31693160
Thanks for your points.
The product is being made; I'm doing most of the coding myself.
I'm sending emails and DMing on Reddit/LinkedIn (either based on relevant posts or job titles). Other founders I've spoken to told me they did it this way, how else should I be getting conversations?
I might be being stupid here, but how does someone "research the market to see if there is a need"? I know that the market exists (there are existing products that have done very well). I know it's growing fast (any market research report will show cyber as a priority for SMB IT teams and a CAGR >15%)
Am I missing something? How else am I meant to get information about the market without asking potential customers (who I can't seem to get a hold of)?

>>31693167
I'm super happy for him, don't get me wrong, but if he's closing millions in ARR and I'm struggling to get $1, what does that show about my ability to found a company? Re: margin, I'm not sure but he's also doing B2B SaaS (AI stuff) so it's presumably pretty high (~80%).

>>31693368
>The product is being made; I'm doing most of the coding myself.
So you started up with nothing to sell?
Probably a damn good thing you haven't sold it yet.
>I'm sending emails and DMing on Reddit/LinkedIn
So you're paying for Apollo to go to LinkedIn?
WHY?!
>how else should I be getting conversations?
Marketing; networking; cold-calling; cons; L&Ls; CoC; local tech groups; local business associations; The CC.
>I know that the market exists (there are existing products that have done very well). I know it's growing fast (any market research report will show cyber as a priority for SMB IT teams and a CAGR >15%)
I'll give you a separate example.

>>31693368
Let me give you an example from a business I made in 2020 and sold for a net of $450k in 2022 as a one-man show.
A company i consulted for sold bar code labels and bar code readers as a "side" then switched to it because $$ (they had the existing expertise and tools to repair electronics, deploy solutions, etc.). I checked and the label market is growing at $2 billion/year and was about $35 bn/year then.
"Just sell labels"! is wrong and bad. There are existing massive label companies with online portals, existing clients, economies of scale, etc that can ALWAYS undersell a small provider. So I called several employees at label *manufacturers* as well as a business prof in California that studied the label market and tried to find where there was an unmet need.
It was the Cold Chain. The Cold Chain is the part of the logistics system that deal with frozen items, mainly food, and is called that because everything has to remain cold in the entire logistics train. Turns out that when pallets go into warehouses the cooling process involves huge fans and the winds tear off about 60% of the labels and another 20% fall off in the below-freezing storage areas so a major delay and expense is re-attaching labels.
I made contact with a label manufacturer and talked to their engineers and signed a contract with them for wind-resistant labels that can withstand temps below 20 F. We tested 4 versions and found one that worked great.
more

>>31693485
Then researched and found the 7 newest cold chain warehouses within 100 miles of me and cold-called them all, looking for the operations manager. Made contact with 5, got meetings with 3, got a deal to test them with 2, 30 days later sold to both at about $2k/month to both at a 50% margin because it is unique.
Offered them a 10% discount and they wrote testimonials and gave me figures and I started a targeted ad campaign to the cold chain within 100 miles telling them how these new proprietary labels saved the average warehouse over $6k/month in labor, material, and cleaning costs and within 6 weeks prospects were calling me so much I hired a screening/appointment service.
In the face of larger companies aggressively coming after my clients I cut margins to 20% and increased sales calls using an appointment setting agency and still increased profits for 2 more quarters when one of the big dog label sellers came to me and offered to "but my client list and label source".
My net net for 22 months of work was $600k.
If I had just "sold labels" I would have starved

>>31693479
>>31693485
>>31693534
Thanks again for your insights anon.
> Nothing to sell
I didn't want to invest a bunch of time creating a product that nobody wanted, so my plan was to speak with potential customers and build a solution with their input (so that it was actually useful).

> Called employees at label "manufacturers" & business prof
I think this is where I'm stuck. I have been trying to find an unmet need by getting meetings with my target customers (IT managers) but I'm really struggling to even get 1 call in a week. On these calls, I try to ask about unmet needs but I always get asked to be more specific. When I asked about finances & security, I got to the problem of building a resource inventory (which is what I'm trying to solve).
Your story is incredible. It seems so natural for you to find problems and devise solutions to them! I thought I was doing the same thing (cyber risk is always a big deal and saving money is always good).