u/Bills_08

It's been 4 months or so since i started building a website , Made it work , integrated payments and all , changed the landing page , fixed bugs and all a lot and still working on it.

I don't understand a lot of things and one important thing i am not getting is how to complete it and find clients for it.

I may seem impatient or anything but i seriously wanna want it to work , I have a good idea or so i have been told but are you guys getting any traction because i am not and i am surely lacking somewhere and i want to understand this Distribution thing.

If you guys have made something - Which works well - Generate some Good MRR can you share your stories and thoughts and i would love to read and get some ideas out of it !

I am trying to Email everyday and wondering at the same time if it works or if it’ll work.
Procuring the Right Email
Creating a short and to the point template
Subject
And all takes time plus you don’t know if you’re doing it right
I really want to understand if there’s a way I can automate this Email thing
Or if I can’t then how can I do it better.

Everything was going smoothly today.

The website was up.
Payments were working.
The landing page looked decent.

I genuinely thought I was finally getting somewhere.

Then I ran the scanner.

It's broken.

Not in a "there's one bug" kind of way.

More like... if someone paid for this today, I'd actually feel bad.

That hit harder than I expected.

When you're building alone, every problem lands back on your own desk. There's nobody else to blame, nobody to hand it off to. You just open the editor again and start digging.

The annoying part is that the code mostly works.

The output doesn't.

And that's a much bigger problem.

Some days this whole startup thing feels stupid. You spend weeks building something, only to realize you've been solving the wrong problem.

Anyway...

I'm making coffee, rewriting a big chunk of the pipeline, and pretending today never happened.

I've been trying to finish my build for the past few weeks, and today I finally got the whole pipeline running. 😗

The funny part?

I discovered my Python scanner has been collecting the wrong data all along. 🤨

The code works. The automation works. Nothing is actually broken.

It's just pulling information that's technically correct but completely useless for the people I'm trying to help.

I've rewritten the filters two or three times already, and somehow it still finds its way back to the same noisy data.

So... back to the terminal.

I guess this is what building a product really looks like.

When I started building my product, I was convinced coding would be the hard part.

It wasn't.

The hard part has been getting people to notice it.

I can lose myself building for six hours and actually enjoy it.

Spending six hours trying to get one person to reply to a message? That's exhausting.

The funny thing is everyone says "just do outreach" or "post consistently."

They're not wrong.

They just skip over the part where you spend weeks feeling like you're talking to an empty room.

I'm still trying to get customer #1.

Definitely didn't expect distribution to teach me more than development.

I expected bugs.

I expected feature requests.

I didn't expect the silence.

You publish something.

Nothing.

You send a few messages.

Nothing.

You refresh analytics more times than you'd ever admit.

Then one person says, "This is actually useful."

And somehow that one comment wipes out three days of frustration.

I'm still chasing customer #1.

I don't think people talk enough about this stage because most founder stories start after things begin working.

For me it hasn't even been close.

Building was predictable.

Customer acquisition wasn't.

I've learned that every piece of advice sounds obvious until you're the one sending cold messages, posting content, trying communities, and wondering if anyone actually has the problem you built for.

I'm curious where everyone else struggled more.

Product?

Marketing?

Sales?

Or simply getting the first person to trust you?

I've been building a small B2B product over the last few months.

Still no paying customers yet.

Here are a few things that surprised me more than any startup advice did:

• Building the product was easier than finding people who cared.
• "Just do outreach" sounds simple until you actually start doing it.
• A website with zero visitors is basically invisible.
• The first 20 messages can all get ignored and that's completely normal.
• Distribution has taken far more time than development.
• One thoughtful reply is worth more than hundreds of anonymous impressions.
• Every rejection has taught me something my analytics never could.
• The biggest challenge hasn't been building software. It's earning trust.

I'm still figuring it out.

Curious what lesson surprised you most while getting your first customers.

One thing I've noticed is that by the time a role reaches LinkedIn, dozens of recruiters already know about it.

Lately I've been experimenting with looking earlier.

Instead of job boards, I've been watching things like engineering blogs, funding announcements, leadership hires and major infrastructure changes.

Sometimes nothing happens.

Other times those companies begin hiring a few weeks later.

I'm curious whether anyone else here uses similar signals for agency BD.

What's worked best for you?

I've been experimenting with a slightly different approach to agency business development, and I'm curious whether others have seen similar results.

Instead of building prospect lists from active job postings, I've been spending more time looking for signals that suggest a company is entering a growth or transition phase.

For example:

• Recent funding announcements
• Engineering blog posts about infrastructure migrations
• Public announcements around cloud expansion
• Technical leadership discussing platform rebuilds or scaling projects

The thinking is pretty simple.

Those events don't necessarily mean hiring has started, but they often suggest the engineering team is about to face new challenges. Sometimes that's before HR has even written a job description.

That changes the outreach.

Instead of asking:

"Are you hiring?"

the conversation becomes:

"I saw your team recently migrated to Kubernetes. We've worked with engineers who've supported similar transitions, so I thought I'd reach out."

Obviously, this doesn't always lead to business. Plenty of conversations go nowhere.

But I've personally found those discussions feel much warmer than reaching out after a role has already been advertised.

I'm interested in hearing how other agency recruiters approach this.

• What early signals do you pay attention to?
• Have engineering blogs, funding announcements, or leadership changes ever led to new business for you?
• Or do you still find traditional job boards to be the best starting point?

Would love to compare notes.

I've been spending time looking at how recruiting agencies identify companies that might be expanding engineering teams before roles appear on LinkedIn or Indeed.

Some of the public signals they watch include:

• Funding announcements
• Engineering blogs about migrations (Kubernetes, Snowflake, microservices, etc.)
• Major product launches
• Infrastructure expansion announcements

None of these guarantee hiring.

But they can sometimes indicate that a company is investing in engineering or entering a growth phase before new roles are widely advertised.

From a candidate's perspective, that made me wonder:

• Has anyone here ever reached out to a company before they posted a role?
• Did it lead anywhere?
• Are there other signals you watch when you're looking for your next opportunity?

Curious to hear how other engineers approach this.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately and wanted to get some opinions from other agency recruiters.

Like most agencies, we used to spend a lot of time chasing companies that already had open roles.

The problem is that once a job is public, every recruiter knows about it. You're one of many agencies reaching out with essentially the same pitch.

Lately we've been experimenting with starting much earlier.

Instead of asking, "Who's hiring today?" we've been asking, "Which companies look like they might be entering a growth phase?"

Some of the public signals we've been watching include:

• Funding announcements
• Engineering blogs describing major migrations (Kubernetes, microservices, Snowflake, etc.)
• Product launches
• Public infrastructure or platform expansion announcements

Obviously none of these guarantee hiring.

But they can provide useful context before a company posts a role.

For example, instead of emailing:

>

we might reference something they've already shared publicly:

>

Even when the answer is "not yet," it often leads to a better conversation than referencing a job posting everyone has already seen.

I'm still experimenting, so I'm curious what everyone else here has found.

For agency recruiters:

• What are the earliest signals you pay attention to?
• Have engineering blogs or funding announcements ever led to new business for you?
• Are there other indicators you've found more reliable?

I'd love to hear what has (or hasn't) worked for others.

Hey everyone,

I spend a fair amount of time following public company updates, and I've found it useful to look beyond job boards when researching potential hiring activity.

Things like funding announcements, infrastructure investments, engineering blog posts, major product launches, and strategic partnerships can all provide useful context when deciding which companies are worth keeping an eye on.

A few companies that stood out this week:

• Netris
Recently announced a $15M Series A focused on AI cloud networking. Worth watching if you recruit Kubernetes, networking, or platform engineers.

• General Intuition
Announced a major funding round focused on AI agents. Large investments like this often coincide with growth across platform engineering, ML infrastructure, and distributed systems teams.

• Rippling
Continuing to expand its enterprise platform capabilities, making it an interesting company to watch for backend engineering and data infrastructure roles.

• Mistral AI
Recent product launches around document intelligence suggest continued investment in AI infrastructure and backend engineering.

• Mindstone
Growing its AI platform and developer ecosystem, with ongoing technical expansion around AI tooling and model orchestration.

I'm not suggesting these companies are actively hiring for specific roles today—just that they're showing public signals that may be useful when prioritizing research and account mapping.

Out of curiosity, what early indicators do you find most useful beyond job boards?

I've had decent success tracking funding news, engineering announcements, and product launches, but I'm always interested in hearing what other recruiters pay attention to.

I spend quite a bit of time following public company updates, and one thing I've found useful is looking beyond job boards.

Funding announcements, infrastructure investments, major product launches, engineering blog posts, and strategic partnerships can all signal where technical teams may be expanding—even before dozens of similar job ads start appearing.

A few companies that caught my attention this week:

**• Netris**

Recently announced a $15M Series A focused on AI cloud networking. Worth keeping on the radar if you recruit Kubernetes, networking, or platform engineers.

**• General Intuition**

Announced a major funding round to build AI agents. Large investments like this often coincide with growth across platform engineering, ML infrastructure, and distributed systems teams.

**• Rippling**

Continues expanding its enterprise platform capabilities, making it an interesting account for recruiters covering backend engineering and data infrastructure.

**• Mistral AI**

Recent product launches around document intelligence suggest continued investment in AI infrastructure and backend engineering.

**• Mindstone**

Growing its AI platform and developer ecosystem, with ongoing technical expansion around model orchestration and AI tooling.

I'm not suggesting these companies are hiring for specific roles today—just that they're showing public signals that may be useful when prioritizing research and account mapping.

Out of curiosity, what early indicators do you find most useful beyond job boards?

I've had decent success tracking funding news, engineering announcements, and product launches, but I'm always interested in hearing what other recruiters pay attention to.