Weeks 4-6: The Reality of Validation
When Cold Outreach Falls Flat
In my previous updates, I shared how I come up with startup ideas and do early customer development. I talked about the frameworks, the competitive analysis, the discovery calls. It all sounded organized, methodical, strategic.
This week? Not so much.
Weeks 4 through 6/7 have been a humbling lesson in what happens when reality doesn’t match your plans. I had goals. I had timelines. I had a landing page I wanted to launch before SaaStock (the conference). Instead, I got overwhelmed, context-switched, and watched my outreach efforts fall flat this week.
But here’s the thing: I’m still showing up and doing the updates.
The Pivot That Never Happened (On Time)
A couple of weeks ago, I was at SaaStock with a goal: to validate a new idea for a customer intelligence platform that connects with your data so you can chat with it.
I built a landing page for the idea. It looked good. But before I could show it to anyone at the conference, I got early feedback that invalidated the whole thing. The response was lukewarm: “Looks cool”. The issue was that it didn’t show specific examples and use cases.
After talking to a startup that has implemented this solution in-house in Slack, I decided to pivot.
The new idea was similar but narrower: instead of a broad customer intelligence platform, why not focus specifically on AI agents for Slack. Position it as a tool that connects to your sales, product, and marketing data, and lets your team ask it questions directly from Slack without context switching.
My goal was to launch this new landing page before SaaStock, show it to people at the conference, have real conversations, and get validation signals.
Life got in the way. Tasks piled up. The landing page didn’t get built in time. I went to SaaStock empty-handed, which frustrated me because I knew I wasn’t maximizing the opportunity. I did manage to get one potential lead out of it, but I left a lot on the table.
I beat myself up over it for a while.
But I came back from the conference, spent about a week properly building the landing page, and started validation this week. You can check the latest landing page at Tarsis.app:
Here’s what I learned: sometimes delays happen. What matters is what you do next.
The Validation Plan
Before I started reaching out, I created a structured validation plan with Phase 1: Discovery (small-scale validation through oubtound) and Phase 2: Pre-launch marketing. Check the plan here.
And quickly did an ICP persona based on the little info/interest pull I have available so far. I needed this to narrow down the outreach target:
The core questions I needed answered in Phase 1 were simple:
Is this a real problem for GTM teams?
Are people willing to spend time working with me on this?
Will they provide feedback and potentially become early users?
I decided on a phased approach to outreach:
LinkedIn outreach to my network (30 people, including the “hot lead” from SaaStock)
Direct outreach to my close network (people who know me, including past customers)
If all else fails, inbound marketing through micro-campaigns and content
The messaging I crafted was fairly soft: discovery-focused rather than salesy. I mentioned I was working on something new for GTM teams, shared the link to the landing page, and explained the core idea.
The Results Were...
I reached out to 30 people on LinkedIn.
I got essentially zero responses.
One person said they don’t see it as a problem. The rest either didn’t see my message or didn’t respond.
This is the part where you question everything. Is the idea bad? Is my messaging off? Are people just too busy on LinkedIn? Is there “sales blindness” where people automatically filter out anything that looks like an attempt to sell them something?
Probably all of the above?
Thing is: poor response rates don’t necessarily mean the idea is bad. They might just mean the channel is wrong.
LinkedIn is saturated with outreach. Everyone is pitching something. People are overwhelmed and defensive. The signal-to-noise ratio is terrible.
Cold outreach in general is extremely saturated right now.
But that doesn’t mean the problem doesn’t exist or that people don’t need the solution. It might just mean I need a different approach.
The Path Forward
I’m going to try a few different things:
Less salesy messaging: My next batch of outreach won’t mention the app or the domain name.
Tap my close network again: Past customers and people who actually know me might be more receptive.
Shift to inbound if necessary: If outbound doesn’t work, I’ll need to try micro-campaigns, content, or other channels that pull people toward me rather than pushing my message to them.
The goal is simple: get a few conversations in the next couple of weeks. Not hundreds. Not thousands. Just conversations with people who might have the problem I’m solving.
The Thing About Building in Public
I’m sharing this because it’s real. This is what actually happens when you’re validating an idea. You don’t get overwhelming enthusiasm. You get silence. You get one person saying “I don’t see the problem.” You get overwhelmed by your other commitments. You build something you thought would take three days in seven days.
And then you keep going.
The previous idea (customer intelligence platform) didn’t work. The messaging approach didn’t work. The cold outreach didn’t work. But the journey itself is working. Every failure is giving me clearer signals about what might actually resonate.
Key Takeaways
If you’re doing your own validation right now, here’s what I’m learning:
✅ Don’t assume the channel is the solution: If your outreach isn’t working, it might not be the idea. It might be that LinkedIn, email, or cold outreach in general isn’t the right channel for your audience, or maybe you are not targeting the right ICP.
✅ Narrow your messaging over time: My first messages were too focused on the product. My next ones will be more focused on the problem and the conversation.
✅ Accept that validation is messy: There’s no clean path from idea to validation to traction. There’s a lot of iteration, a lot of failure, and a lot of learning in the gaps.
✅ Keep moving even when momentum stalls: I didn’t get my landing page up in time. I got poor responses to my outreach. But I’m still moving forward, adjusting, and trying again.
✅ Show up when you don’t feel like showing up
What’s Next
I’m launching another batch of outreach this week, this time with less focus on selling and more focus on understanding. I’ll update you on whether this approach moves the needle.
If you’re interested in the idea, you can check out the landing page at Tarsis.app. I’m building this in real-time, so feedback — even negative feedback — is incredibly valuable.
Thanks for following along on this messy, beautiful journey of building a startup. See you in the next one.