Technical founders can usually get pretty far with founder led sales but there seems to be an awkward point where figuring everything out yourself stops working and hiring a full sales team still feels premature.

You might need help tightening the ICP, figuring out outbound and building something repeatable but that doesn't necessarily mean you're ready to hand sales off completely. Feels like there should be a better middle ground where founders can get hands on GTM expertise while still learning and owning the motion themselves.

...otherwise you're probably building something useless. You must be in contact with the problem deeply. Ideally it's your own problem. I believe many people are building some solution they hope someone will eventually want like some kind of sky castle. It has to be real!

So far, I've avoided cold mailing prospects. I've never tried it and don't know if it really works. I didn't send cold email because almost all cold mails I received were bad; and didn't solve any problem.

All my current customers came through Reddit and organic SEO and LinkedIn content. However, everyone says in B2B, you need to do cold mailing as it gives you clients fast.

Open to tips, suggestions and any advice you may have.

Our internal SDR team is struggling to hit their numbers and the overhead is killing us. the turnover is insane and we spend more time training new kids than actually selling. I'm thinking about just firing the whole department and hiring an agency. Has anyone made the switch from internal to external? i need someone who can scale fast without me having to babysit them.

Looking for feedback on a Brazilian B2B SaaS for early fire detection in rural areas

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a Brazilian B2B SaaS called SAMA, focused on early fire and smoke detection for rural, agricultural and forest areas.

The system is already being used in two farms in Brazil, and we are now looking for ways to improve it, add more value, and understand which tools or features could make it more useful for rural operations.

Today, SAMA combines live cameras, AI-based smoke/fire detection, real-time maps, weather risk data, event history, satellite imagery, and nearby fire hotspot updates from public data sources such as INPE in Brazil.

The target customers could be farms, forestry companies, cooperatives, municipalities, civil defense teams, or companies responsible for large rural areas.

I’m especially interested in feedback from people who have experience with B2B SaaS, AgTech, ClimateTech, GovTech, IoT, monitoring systems, or selling software to traditional industries.

A few questions:

• What tools, integrations, or features would you add to make this system more valuable?
• Would you position this more as AgTech, ClimateTech, GovTech, or Safety/Security SaaS?
• Who do you think would be the strongest first customer segment?
• Would this kind of product work better with monthly subscription, installation fee + subscription, or monitoring-as-a-service?
• Have you seen similar B2B SaaS products selling into rural/agricultural markets?

For context, this is the system website: https://ceosecotec.com.br/

I run a small family entertainment business. We opened with 6 employees so we kept things simple. I remember when payroll was one app, scheduling was another and the rest was straight spreadsheets. It wasn't perfect but it worked for some solid time

Fast forward a few years and we're over 20 employees now. We're having new hires every month, more locations to keep track of and more admin work . The cracks in our back-office tools are becoming obvious as the days go by

For those who've been through this stage, what was the first back-office tool you replaced as you grew? What made you decide it was time?

How we got there

Here's how we managed to land our first paying customer for our B2B SaaS.

I've been running a (very) small software development company in the logistic niche for around a year and a half.

Last march I hired my first employee which helped me spend more time on sales + product development

In march I started working on a small proof of concept that uses AI in the logistic niche.

I was already doing cold calls for my software development business, but I quickly figured companies weren't looking for custom solutions but off-the-shelf one.

So I decided to create our own while leveraging AI to differentiate ourselves. (AI is a core part of our product)

Afterwards I shifted my cold call efforts from custom solutions to our new product.

First interests

I was able to find interested customer right away in March.

However, the product was far from ready at that point.

I still showed up at the interested customer for a Proof of Concept demo

PLEASE DO IN-PERSON MEETING IF YOU CAN, THOSE ARE MUCH BETTER TO CONVINCE AND GAUGE INTEREST

They were very interested but were reticent because we didn't have any customer yet.

From proof of concept to MVP

We managed to get a working proof of concept we were happy to show our potential customer in around 30 hours.

We then adjusted our software to their feedback.

It took us a total of 123.25 hour of dev time to get from zero to our first paying customer.

We compromised quite a bit on price to get our first customer.

Both parties saw it as a win-win, they pay less and we get our first customer which we can use as social proof.

Implementation sucks

Even after we closed our first client, we still had a lot of tweaks to do for the software to fit their needs.

This is a tedious part and since we didn't want to charge implementation fee we're working a lot for what seems like marginal gains at the moment.

We're now at 284.25+ hours of dev time for a single 500$/m client.

This is why SaaS sucks early.

I could've made ~50K if I spent that time billing a client instead.

Why common advice is bad

"You should post on social media and be involved in communities"

This doesn't work necessarily work for a lot of niches, and while it might work, I find it disingenuous to get involved in a community because you want to sell something.

Just call your ideal customer

"I'm not a sales guy I can't do sales"
I'm a software developper at heart, entrepreneurship requires growth, if you can't do that, find a partner that can or give up. (or don't build a B2B SaaS cause sale is core to any B2B SaaS)

Closing Thoughts

Business is fun, take it one step at a time. Use it as an opportunity to grow. Success doesn't happen overnight.

Work on things that you are passionate about, don't do it SOLELY for money.

Online gurus are going to tell you do X and Y and you'll earn 10K a month. Yet I feel this is missing the point. I've been there in the past running a stupid cold email agency even if it didn't align with who I was at all. Know yourself.

I failed countless time to get here and while this success might not seem like much so far. I'm confident this single customer is the building block we need to land higher paying customers that are going to make this all worth it.

Running LinkedIn as my main prospecting channel for a few months now. Pre-revenue, B2B, selling into software companies.

The pattern I keep hitting: people accept the connection request, then the follow up message goes nowhere. Not rejected, just never opened, or opened and left. I get replies, and the ones I get are good conversations. But the ratio feels rough and I cannot tell if it is rough because I am doing something wrong or because this is just what the channel looks like.

Worth saying, the message is not a pitch. I do not lead with the product. It is usually something specific about what they have built or something they posted. I keep it short and I do not ask for a call in the first message.

What I am trying to work out:

Is a low reply rate on first message normal even when the connection was accepted, or does accepting usually signal enough intent that a good message should convert better than I am seeing.

Did anything change your numbers meaningfully. Timing, length, following up versus not, warming up through comments for a few weeks first.

How long did it take before LinkedIn actually produced pipeline for you rather than just conversations. I am trying to figure out whether I am early in a slow channel or wasting effort in the wrong one.

For anyone who eventually gave up on it, what did you move to.

Happy to share what has worked on my side too. The one thing I am fairly sure about is that a comment on someone's post before the DM changes the response, but my sample is too small to trust that yet.

We are building a B2B SaaS and starded evaluating Docusign, but before commmiting, I would like to compare it with other european friendly options. Integration quality matters more than having hundreds of features. What would you recommend ?

Soo many people on Reddit and other socials claiming they’re making $10k, $20k, sometimes even $50k+ a month from apps they built with AI tools. (A lot of the times it seems to be some ads from the vibe coded tools themselves, or at least they like to push those stories)

I’m curious how common this actually is outside of the posts that go viral.

Has anyone here personally built an app with Claude, Cursor, Codex, etc. that turned into a meaningful income stream? Or do you even know someone who has?

If so I'm curious, please mention:

What the product actually does

How you got the first users

How long it took to build

Roughly how long it took before it started making real money

I’ve literally been in the industry since before AI and now specialise in bringing vibe coded apps to production and revenue and I have never personally seen those examples

I compared 4,814 SaaS landing pages against public revenue signals(TrustMRR).

I expected “better headlines” to be the big split between $0 pages and pages with revenue.

Turns out it wasn’t.

The boring structural gaps were bigger:

• Product/output above the fold: 15% → 67%

• Proof near the CTA: 14% → 64%

• Visible metrics: 13% → 58%

Correlation, not causation. And sales-led pages are a different game.

But it changed how I look at a self-serve homepage.

Before rewriting the headline, I ask:
what promise are you making… and is there one concrete proof for it before the click?

If you’re staring at your B2B homepage tonight, check the CTA first.
is there proof next to it, or just vibes?

Drop your URL if you want. I’ll reply with the first proof gap I’d fix.

ps: I built LandingBoost while doing this mapping. happy to share the method if useful.

I recently had a very good chat with a prospect. Centered around their current system and aimed at convincing them to switch loyalties.

We're not there yet,...they "seem" to be happy with their current setup. BUT it wasn't all a bust. I was able to tell:

\- We have a pretty good product. We might not be where we want to be yet but yeah, we're doing very well in comparison.

\- The hero in our category actually isn't all that. Yet they seem to have the Lion's share of the market.

\- Frustration seems to be increasing, fast!

I haven't given up on my prospect. I'm restructuring my approach to position our offering better. I think there's a solid chance here...

What’s your proven workflow for creating SEO content with Claude or other AI tools?

• What process do you follow from keyword research to the final article?
• Are your AI-assisted articles ranking consistently in Google?
• What have you found works best, and what should be avoided?

Would love to hear from people who have tested this at scale.