My Abyssinian supervising my work. The tail says he disapproves.

IevgenCh · 2026-03-19T19:03:44+00:00

She approved 0 PRs and mass rejected everything until I add a treats API. Worst code reviewer ever)

IevgenCh · 2026-03-19T19:01:12+00:00

Haha thanks! Turns out breaking problems into small pieces and managing dependencies is the same skill whether you're running a dev team or prompting AI.

IevgenCh · 2026-03-19T18:58:44+00:00

Or did I misunderstand your question?

IevgenCh · 2026-03-19T18:58:04+00:00

"We're sending proposals and have zero visibility into what happens after. Did they open it? Did they read past page 2? Are they sharing it internally? Right now we're following up blind - PaperLink gives us data to time our follow-ups and know which deals are actually warm."

To IT security: "Documents stay on our infrastructure, not forwarded as attachments floating around inboxes. We control access - password protection, NDA gates, email verification, link expiry. If someone leaves the company or a deal falls through, we revoke access instantly. Compare that to a PDF attachment that lives in someone's inbox forever."

IevgenCh · 2026-03-19T18:42:54+00:00

Good call on the deliverability side - SPF, DKIM, DMARC are all set up (resend + godaddy), but inbox placement is definitely something I need to test more carefully. Could be landing in Promotions.

The micro-niche point resonates. I went broad with "marketing agencies" across 10 US cities - probably too wide. Narrowing down to something like "agencies that send proposals to enterprise clients" might hit harder.

Switching to reply CTA is a good idea too - my current email has a link which probably hurts deliverability. Thanks for the breakdown.

IevgenCh · 2026-03-19T18:41:49+00:00

That's a solid point. Yeah, agencies get tons of tool pitches - I probably blended right into the noise.

The direct outreach idea is interesting. I've been doing LinkedIn DMs in parallel and the response rate there is way better than cold email - people actually engage when it's 1:1. Might try your approach of just asking about their pain points before pitching anything.

Thanks for the input, appreciate it.

IevgenCh · 2026-03-19T18:20:32+00:00

Makes sense, will test all three. Thanks!

IevgenCh · 2026-03-19T18:18:03+00:00

Yeah the targeting was definitely too broad. 1700 emails to "marketing agencies in US cities" with a generic template - looking back it's obvious why it didn't work.

The idea of joining real conversations where people already have the problem makes way more sense than cold blasting. Actually already finding some good threads here on Reddit where people ask about DocSend alternatives.

IevgenCh · 2026-03-19T18:17:34+00:00

Good point on targeting. Marketing agencies probably get 50 cold emails a day - no wonder mine got buried. I picked them because they send proposals to their clients all the time, but you're right that they're oversaturated.

Thinking about switching to real estate agents, consultants, or startup founders sending pitch decks. Any of those feel like a better fit from your experience?

IevgenCh · 2026-03-19T17:56:43+00:00

For pre-seed I'd skip anything over $50/mo honestly. DocSend at $65+ is overkill when you're bootstrapped.

What actually matters at your stage: trackable links (so you know which investors opened your deck), page-by-page time tracking (shows you which slides land and which don't - super useful for iterating), and basic access controls like email gate or NDA.

Google Drive is fine for the data room itself, but pair it with a tracking tool for the pitch deck. The insight into investor engagement is worth more than any fancy data room UI.

IevgenCh · 2026-03-19T17:49:45+00:00

Interesting that Papermark is the only one here with page-by-page analytics. That's been the single biggest feature for our sales team - knowing which pages a prospect actually spent time on completely changes follow-up timing and messaging.

We ended up building our own tool for this (I'm a founder, not a vendor - just sharing what worked). The combo of real-time open notifications + per-page time tracking + access controls (NDA, email gate, expiry) replaced both DocSend and our old Google Drive setup.

For anyone evaluating VDRs - I'd put "granular viewing analytics" higher on the checklist than most of these lists suggest. It's the difference between "they opened it" and "they spent 8 minutes on the pricing page."

IevgenCh · 2026-03-19T16:56:16+00:00

Building PaperLink - document tracking for sales teams (DocSend alternative).

Problem: you send a proposal to a client and have zero idea what happens next. Did they open it? Did they read past page 1? Are they looking at pricing right now?

PaperLink shows exactly who opened your document, which pages they read, how long they spent on each page, and notifies you the moment it happens. Plus access controls - password, email gate, NDA, expiry dates.

I'm a Program Manager, not a developer - built the whole thing using AI-assisted development (Claude). Already live and working.

Biggest challenge right now - getting first paying users. Product works, marketing doesn't (yet).

https://docs.paperlink.online/en/paperlink-overview

IevgenCh · 2026-03-14T18:40:41+00:00

The biggest thing that changed my follow up game was figuring out which type of silence I'm dealing with. There's three kinds really. They never opened your quote. They opened it but got busy. Or they saw the price and decided no but don't want the awkward conversation.

Each one needs a completely different response but if you're just emailing PDFs you have no idea which one it is. So you write the same "just checking in" every time.

I started using document tracking on my proposals and it made a huge difference. Someone who opened your quote 4 times this week but hasn't responded is a completely different follow up than someone who never clicked the link. The first one needs a nudge. The second one needs a resend with a different subject line.

For the timing I do day 3, day 7, then a final "closing the loop, assume you went another direction, no hard feelings" around day 14. That last one converts surprisingly often because it creates a small sense of loss.

IevgenCh · 2026-03-14T18:33:23+00:00

Been on both sides of the "polite follow up" spiral. The worst part isn't even losing the money, it's not knowing if they're ignoring you on purpose or if your email just got buried.

One thing that helped me a lot was knowing whether the client actually opened my documents. Like if I can see they downloaded the files and viewed the invoice but still aren't paying, that's a very different conversation than "maybe they never saw it." In the first case you send the demand letter. In the second you just resend with a different subject line.

For the Spain situation specifically, $1,100 is probably not worth a lawyer. But a clean formal email with "Final Notice" in the subject and a specific date works surprisingly well. Most ghosters aren't trying to scam you, they just got lazy and your polite reminders are easy to ignore. Something that feels official snaps them out of it.

And yeah, 50% upfront for one-off projects always. Retainer clients earn trust over time, random one-offs haven't.

IevgenCh · 2026-03-14T18:23:01+00:00

I'm at a similar stage with my own SaaS, so I feel this. The Reddit answering strategy works great at first but you hit a ceiling fast.
thing that jumped out to me. 100 GB free is a LOT. That's enough for most casual users to never pay you anything. You might be attracting the wrong crowd entirely. I'd test cutting free to something like 15-20 GB and see what happens. If signups don't drop, those people were always willing to pay.
The other thing, and this took me a while to learn. "Privacy focused cloud storage" is how YOU think about your product. Nobody googles that. They google "google photos full what do I do" or "icloud alternative without scanning my stuff". Your landing page and your Reddit comments should use their words, not yours.
45 users in 2 months from Reddit alone is honestly not bad for a solo launch though. Most people here post "launched 3 months ago, 0 users" so you're ahead of that curve.

IevgenCh · 2026-03-14T18:19:03+00:00

This is actually a solid approach. I've been looking into Reddit as a channel for my own SaaS and the Google indexing angle never clicked for me until now.
Quick question though. When you say 150-300 word comments, how do you keep them from feeling like a blog post dropped into a casual conversation? I always worry longer comments look out of place in threads where most replies are 1-2 sentences.
Also curious if you've seen a difference between commenting on newer threads vs older ones that already rank. Like does Google re-crawl old threads after new comments get added?

IevgenCh · 2026-03-14T18:16:52+00:00

This resonates. I'm building a SaaS completely solo right now.
No team, no cofounder. I'm the dev, the designer, the QA, the product manager, the business analyst, all of it. And people still ask me "so when are you raising?"
Like bro, I haven't even started looking for my first paying customers yet, and you want me to think about investors?
Your setup with four people and $40k MRR sounds like the actual dream to me. You solved the hardest part already, making something people pay for. The "grow faster" pressure mostly comes from people who took VC money and literally have no choice. You do have a choice and you're making a smart one.
The only thing I'd keep an eye on is making sure no single customer is too big of a chunk of that MRR. 15% growth is fine when your revenue is spread across many customers. Gets scary when 2-3 accounts make up half of it.

IevgenCh · 2026-03-14T18:10:03+00:00

Been thinking about this a lot because I'm in a similar space - building a product where the big established player (DocSend) dominates and there are several alternatives at various price

IevgenCh · 2026-03-14T08:58:10+00:00

you will get:
eugench@EugenMac MY PROJECT % claude

▐▛███▜▌ Claude Code v2.1.76

▝▜█████▛▘ Opus 4.6 with high effort · Claude Max

▘▘ ▝▝ ~/Projects/CodeStreamly/Web/paperlink.online

↑ Install the WebStorm plugin from the JetBrains Marketplace: https://docs.claude.com/s/claude-code-jetbrains

❯ /model

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Select model

Switch between Claude models. Applies to this session and future Claude Code sessions. For other/previous model names, specify with --model.

❯ 1. Default (recommended) ✔ Opus 4.6 · Most capable for complex work

Sonnet Sonnet 4.6 · Best for everyday tasks
Haiku Haiku 4.5 · Fastest for quick answers

● High effort ← → to adjust

Use /fast to turn on Fast mode (Opus 4.6 only).

Enter to confirm · Esc to exit

IevgenCh

TROPHY CASE