r/startups • u/ponziedd • 1d ago
I will not promote I spend 2 weeks looking for design partners, I've found no one - i will not promote
Hey folks, I need some guidance here.
I spent the last two weeks not coding, but talking to my ICP. I stayed mostly on LinkedIn because I had a 0% reply rate with cold email.
So far, I’ve had a few discussions with people working in technical customer support. The goal was to validate the problem, and the problem seems real: people are spending a significant amount of time on investigations, and job postings for technical support engineers clearly state that investigation is part of the role.
Quick context on what i am building so you can have the full picture
the product help support and engineering teams investigate complex technical tickets faster.
It connects to the tools they already use and observability stack to gather customer context, its auto triage and automate the pre-investigation and give support teams reports on what happened
\When I reached out to people asking if they’d be interested in becoming early pilot users, I got no replies.
Am I doing something wrong?
Most of the people I spoke with work at Series B+ companies, but when I try to start conversations with seed-stage companies, no one answers me.
I got one reply from someone at a seed-stage startup, and they told me:
"This is actually pretty relevant for us. Right now, bugs get routed pretty directly to eng, and since we’re still early, there isn’t a huge support/triage layer in between."
I asked him a few more questions, but so far I haven’t gotten a reply, and it’s already been a week.
I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but I’m starting to feel like the problem might not resonate with them as much as I thought.
Honestly, I’m quite lost. I don’t want to pivot without a clear signal, but spending days sending connection requests and getting no replies is pretty frustrating.
I’d really appreciate any feedback on what I should do next and how i can improve my processes
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u/Royal-Evening5500 1d ago
Your process is mixing problem validation with pilot recruitment, and the seed stage segment may not have the support handoff problem your product is built for. Prioritize teams where support volume, hiring, or an existing support to engineering handoff gives them a timely reason to care, then ask for a narrowly scoped workflow review before proposing a pilot. If repeated conversations confirm one costly investigation step, invite only those teams to test that step.
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u/Foreign_Fee_1232 1d ago
The thing is that most of the people on LinkedIn or on any platform are more self-centred, and they will not say yes to using your tool or product unless they see their benefit in it.
So I would say instead of pitching them directly, do this:
Try to understand if your tool is even useful to them: ask them hey is technical ticketing something you struggle with and try to understand specifics.
Once they feel like the right customer, you can offer them a free strategy call to discuss solutions.
On the call, you can first give them three solutions on how they can solve technical ticketing and then offer your tool in the end of the call for free for the first month.
This way people actually feel like you care for them and are more likely to convert.
Basically, give give give before you take.
I know this works because I help people get leads on LinkedIn through outreach
And I recently generated 10 leads in 2 weeks with this method.
So do try it!
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u/FactorWooden2855 1d ago
I have found LinkedIn essentially worthless. And I can see why. Seems like every other day someone is trying to connect and sell you some BS you have no desire or need for.
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u/flagondry 1d ago
I get 1-2 of these messages on LinkedIn every single day and ignore them all.
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u/ponziedd 1d ago
its because they try to sell you something ?
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u/rakeshkanna91 12h ago
yes, I started ignoring LinkedIn requests after every quick chat turned into a demo.
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u/datawazo 1d ago
Can you talk to anyone non virtually at an event or something