u/mickypaigejohnson

TLDR: Indian agency hired me to break them into US market with paper thin resources and no patience. After 90 days we couldn't agree on how to move forward even though there were positive signals. They wanted me to take all the risk so I said no.

I was hired by an international company that wanted to break into a very niche fintech sector in the US Market. They were organically getting inbounds from this niche looking for offshore dev support, and spent about 18 months on their own trying to become an official partner in this software without success. None of those customers would agree to provide a case study unfortunately.

In May, they sent me to an event that the software throws for partners and customers to do some recon and see what is possible.

After the event I proposed 5 paths to revenue for them in the market, and only 1 required them to try and be a partner. For context, the software was not going to likely accept their bid for partnership.

We decided to target the highest tier of existing partners and offer white label dev support and staff augmentation. They didn't want to apply a lot of resources, so we agreed to do a 90 day pilot with me acting in a mix of market research and sales to go after these named 32 accounts. The inbounds they had gotten were from mid tier partners, but they dont get as many projects and like I said, weren't willing to give us testimonials or a case study.

I updated their website in a 2 week sprint to match this play, used blinded case studies, and got started on LinkedIn with a mix of warm and cold outreach. I engaged on targeted account pages and posts, I had a budget for gifting, and it was a tiny ABM play without any ads. Each target had their own landing page, etc.

I had a 9% conversion from cold to conversations with me, and closer to 25% connection acceptance rate. 2 meetings where I was told they must have US based devs due to the sensitivity of their financial data. After the website update, organic search from the US went up 53% in the 90 days, and direct traffic from the US went up 104% bc ppl I pinged looked up the agency I was representing. I also earned them a referral partner channel that was promising, but would be lower volume and wasn't the whale they were after.

Some things were working, not enough though and the metrics I had initially set were not on target from a pipeline perspective.

At 90 days I refreshed my proposal to actually launch a US based company they could own, but it would be fully staffed and ran by the US team I build for them. People were interested in me, but not the agency from India.

They said no, they had already sunk so much in their first 18 months on their own and didnt think having a US based company would improve their chances of getting accepted as an official partner (I disagree).

They tried to get me to pivot to another one of their brands, an agency that works with early stage founders as a fractional CTO/technical foudner for startups and asked for me to put together a budget.

So far, they had paid me about $19k and I had done work that I would have billed $27k for one of my standard contracts, but times are tough and they aren't a US company and I understand their budgets aren't the same.

I asked for $22k for a pilot for this other brand, as it ia essentially a startup itself and I would need an assistant and promotions budget to launch it and get meaningful traction.

I also didn't want to burn the relational equity I had developed in the fintech software space so I offered 10% of my time to keep working that too, outside of the $22k bc the commissions on those contracts are super healthy. Even though they weren't on target, I don't think its a dead end we just need more time to build trust.

They said no, they wanted an agreement that is purely funded by revenue I generated, and for me to come out of pocket for the assistant and promos.

I told them no. If I'm putting sweat equity and promo budget in out of my own pocket it is going to be for a startup I have meaningful equity stakes in, not just commissions.

Did I make the right call? Should I have done something different in my first 90 days?

What would you have done differently? I hate walking from something thay could be great but I can't do it for them all by myself.

Edit: typos

I live in Frisco TX and am starting a meet-up group for founders and co founders to meet monthly for networking, accountability, and bashing each other's stuff. Let's share demos and talk shop, maybe your co-founder will be there too and you can meet.

I am looking for a technical co-founder and hope doing something like this will stimulate that.

There are lots of curated startup events, but I'm hoping this will be more casual and more direct, for founders and potential co-founders only.

Cheers. DM for an invite, tomorrow will be my first meet-up.

I live in Frisco TX and am starting a meet-up group for founders and co founders to meet monthly for networking, accountability, and bashing each other's stuff. Let's share demos and talk shop, maybe your co-founder will be there too and you can meet.

I am looking for a technical co-founder and hope doing something like this will stimulate that.

There are lots of curated startup events, but I'm hoping this will be more casual and more direct, for founders and potential co-founders only.

Cheers. DM for an invite, tomorrow will be my first meet-up.

Hi I'm not looking for investors yet. I am still testing the prototypes and MVP so we can get a proof of concept beyond the theory and get through our first 1k users (bare minimum sample size to test tech in the wild).

In the meantime, I am facing a whole other challenge.

I have gotten messaging down to 6 sentences, which is still too many as a whole, but this business and startup idea is a lot of things for just a few words to convey.

I'm open to all questions and feedback.

Target is US Market, pilot is in TX. B2C 18+

1. TALU is the company name, we have the vision to connect humans with the people, places, and things that bring them joy in their daily lives.  TALU stands for Turn Around, Look Up.

2. We have 2 products. The TurnAround App, and LuNotes. 

3. LuNotes funds the TurnAround App, and in return TurnAround App consumes LuNotes. 

4. Users of the TurnAround App have a forever free app to make it easy to meet people based on vibes x proximity, and gamifies interactions.

5. Users of LuNotes are retailers needing a marketing platform with crystal clear ROI and access to deep customer and target audience analysis. 

6. Together we face the loneliness epidemic, the degradation of third spaces, depleting access to funds in economically questionable times, and of course the wasted resources lost as local businesses and retailers spend billions collectively trying to find their customers too.

 

Bonus: TurnAround App users get paid for their opt in data and never have to view ads. Ever.

We have a small team and a very strategic roll out and testing plan, but also don't want to build in a bubble.

Thanks to anyone that takes time to respond or provide feedback.

I have been tasked with getting my messaging clear in 3 sentences (I get some grace bc of complexity).

Please rate my 3 sentences and ask questions, let me know if you get it or not.

Here they are:

TALU is an ambient social connection platform that helps adults find personal and professional matches through gamification and rewards connections made with the world's first free currency.

We are simultaneously solving for clear advertising attribution with a trojan horse marketing platform for retailers.

The circular ecosystem that is derived by TALU will disrupt multiple billion dollar industries, meaning we can address the loneliness epidemic at scale through sustainably funded means.

Thank you all for any insights, questions, and comments.

EDIT: Challenge expanded, make it make sense in 12 words or less.

TALU pays adults to meet strangers through digitally prompted serendipity.

This is all about mental meal prep. Making everything from scratch, all the dishes, and the constant effort to figure out how you want to feed yourself is A LOT so trimming it down by a third by making the meal plan in advance is particularly helpful.

I've used this strategy all 4 years, and by year 4 we go a bit more freestyle bc we know our faves, but I still make a plan in case we need it. Also, not everyone in our home does the whole30, so we try to make things everyone still likes and don't feel restricted. We also love to cook.

The repetition is for when you batch cook or have leftovers. We try not to do that too much, we like variety.

The color coding is based on the whole getting to "tigers blood" and feeling great.

It goes all the way through the reintroduction days.

It links to recipes from all kinds of people. I do not have any affiliate associations, this is just my personal resource.

I DMd it to a couple of ppl in another comment thread, and I have received a lot of requests for it so I'm sharing it for whoever could use it.

This one is the 2023 year bc it was the most strict to the rules.

Happy eating, friends.

Link is in the comments.

The thing that's always bothered me about networking event advice — "just put yourself out there," "everyone's nervous," "fake it till you make it" — is that it treats the discomfort as the problem to fix.

But the discomfort might be signal, not noise.

Meaningful connection requires psychological safety and common ground. You need to feel comfortable enough to be real, and you need something genuine to talk about.

Networking events, structurally, provide neither. They give you: strangers, artificial small talk prompts, alcohol as the lubricant, name tags as the icebreaker, and a room full of people who all feel the same low-level pressure to seem valuable.

That's not a safe environment. That's a performance environment. And for people who don't perform well under those conditions — not because they lack social skills, but because their social wiring requires something more genuine to engage — the advice to "try harder" is just noise.

Anyway. For what it's worth: if you've left a networking event feeling like you were bad at it, it's possible you were in a room that wasn't designed for how you connect. That's not the same thing as being bad at connecting.