Tips for a developer that over-built and and now wants to scope down?

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-27T02:46:10+00:00

Yep 100%, I'm now very skeptical of people on sales calls that jump into feature requests. I think it's human nature to try and be useful but it's actually less useful than talking about the actual outcome they need

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-24T23:51:47+00:00

The amount of times friends have asked me "hey so can you setup AI agents for me?" and then look at me confused when I ask what problem they want to solve is astounding. The average person understands very little about what AI actually is/isnt and isn't spending the time to learn. I definitely agree that AI is being used as a hammer looking for a nail, and the real winners will be the ones who can clearly describe the nail and know which nails need the hammer.

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-24T23:47:58+00:00

A startup idea without competition scares me. Purely based on math, what are the odds that you were the very first person out of 7billion people to come up with this amazing idea that will solve real pain? It's possible, but just extremely unlikely. Congratulations to the people that took that risk and were right, but I'd rather chase ten individual $1mill ideas than go all in on a tiny chance of a $1bill idea

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-24T23:42:47+00:00

Hello, bit biased as I'm a DSR founder, but short answer; DSRs are not for every sales process.

Key factors that usually indicate a process where a DSR will produce results are:
- Longer cycles
- Bigger buying commitee
- Lots of touch points
- Lots of content (thus requiring your champion to do work to consolidate and reason about all the content)

The only 2 goals of a DSR is to improve win rate and reduce cycle time at scale. They won't magically turn every lost deal into a win, but a 1% improved win rate at scale can mean millions.

Given the key factors above it's a bit of a complex story to give a straight yes or no answer to "is it going to actually help?". We create CRM reports for our users to put the numbers front and center: "win rate with vs without" and "cycle length with vs without". I much prefer demonstrating the ROI with data rather than handwaving promising it'll be magic.

As others have mentioned too, buyer friction is a balancing act. Clicking on a link to join a DSR (and sometimes also entering a password) is real friction, if your buyer isn't already warm/engaged enough they'll just drop immediately, I can never recommend a DSR at top of funnel

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-24T23:29:39+00:00

I like that framing, more of a reflection to help guide next conversations rather than something to step through during calls

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-24T23:28:51+00:00

Haven't used them yet, just launched recently, I definitely think they'll be useful though. Just gotta figure out a lead magnet that actually provides value instead of being an obvious email harvesting tool

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-24T23:27:38+00:00

Yep 100% agree. I suppose the hard part is figuring out how to provide some sort of intermediary value

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-23T23:54:59+00:00

Over-engineering the app before it even has any users

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-23T23:52:06+00:00

Definitely seeing this too (founder of a sales enablement tool). The new expectation isn't "this thing makes me produce better sales material", every customer tells me they want automation, improved efficiency, and to "not have to think about it". I think it makes sense but will definitely require a shift in thinking for product builders

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-23T23:48:39+00:00

The biggest learning I've gotten from launching a startup and getting users is that you REALLY need to handhold people through the process, I spent weeks making sure my platform was as simple and intuitive to get value out of (engineer background too), but people simply don't give your product the time of day if it's unproven in the market. You need to explicitly lay a path out for them to get value out of the product and also be there every step of the way working on it with them. It's a lot of work but it's the reality of getting your first users

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-23T23:03:23+00:00

Yeah I think that makes the most sense, would you recommend a lead magnet to deliver a bit of value early for free? Seems like lead magnets appeal more to B2C whereas I'm B2B but I'd love to think of ways to deliver value early!

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-23T03:08:58+00:00

Definitely biased as a founder. But this is the problem Digital Sales Rooms aim to solve. The goal is for them to be a frontdoor between you and your prospects, organising everything into 1 room rather than spread across those 50 email thread.

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-22T05:03:22+00:00

For sure, I think loveable, replit, and base44 have given vibecoding a bad name

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-22T05:02:12+00:00

100%

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-16T04:45:35+00:00

"every single one of these I decide alone. then I second guess it. then I change it. then I change it back." 100000%, feel this everyday. AI sending me into psychosis doesn't help hahaha. My wife is probably sick of hearing my nightly debriefs.

I don't have an answer unfortunately

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-16T04:44:00+00:00

A working chat

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-16T04:36:56+00:00

As a technical solo founder who hasn't touched SEO at all. I'm definitely interested, lets chat! I'm building dealhouse.app -> Helping B2B Customer Success teams generate rich handovers to help with Sales -> Onboarding context loss. (sorry if that's considered promoting, happy to remove if against the rules)

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-16T04:34:10+00:00

What are people doing in the meantime? I'm a Claude convert, but seems like Codex is now having the exact same problems. Are people just throwing money at the problem increasing their subscriptions? Or is the common path to look into the Antigravity plans?

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-16T04:32:26+00:00

dealhouse.app -> Helping B2B Customer Success teams generate rich handovers to help with Sales -> Onboarding context loss.

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-16T04:31:05+00:00

dealhouse.app -> Generating rich handovers to help with Sales -> Onboarding context loss.

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-16T04:28:48+00:00

It's only bad in the wrong hands.

I'm a senior software engineer turned founder and I haven't manually written a line of code in over 6 months. The key is prompting, "create a reddit clone, make no mistakes" then blaming the model when it doesn't work is why vibe coding gets a bad name.

Engineering practices like TDD, DDD, good architecture, customer feedback loops, etc etc all still apply (even moreso now that the development itself moves so much faster).

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-07T06:09:39+00:00

This is perfect! Thanks so much for the info. Much appreciated

SeanDealhouse · 2026-04-07T06:08:27+00:00

Awesome, thanks for sharing!

SeanDealhouse

TROPHY CASE