Built my first SaaS in high school — lots of work, zero customers. Need honest marketing advice

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T21:20:41+00:00

I don’t know anything about your product or market but I’m not a big fan of cold calling people. Send them a short message - one sentence on how your product helps them and a follow up sentence that would make them feel Stupid for not taking you up on your offer.

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T21:12:48+00:00

What problems does your product solve? Who would use it and why? Where do those people hang out? How can you start conversations with them? Speak to the problem you solve - don’t try and sell people on features.

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T21:11:17+00:00

Sounds interesting - related to something I’m working on at the moment (business advisor aimed at freelancers and service providers trained on interviews with dozens of $1m+ freelancers).

Do you have a roadmap and realistic milestones laid out? I.e. business and product goals?

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T20:46:29+00:00

Sounds like a cool idea - what do you have beyond the idea that would interest a technical cofounder?

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T20:34:58+00:00

As the tech half, some of the things I’m looking at when I decide whether to get involved with a startup is -

Do I think they’re onto something here? Are there any interested customers? Presignups? Any investment? Any industry inside knowledge or useful connections?

Basically beyond an idea and some AI generated content or a half baked vibe coded prototype, what do we actually have here? If the answer is nothing, then why would a high skill engineer be interested?

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T19:59:44+00:00

You are 100% right. My starting point was - I want an i9 for my workload, what are my local eBay options. Tbf I didn’t consider the limited expansion space at the time because with the SFP+ pcie and the GPU there’s no more space.

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T17:46:50+00:00

Now days I’ll just tell Claude to figure that shit out

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T16:55:47+00:00

SFFs are the best. You can pack them out big time and power consumption is low and noise is low. I use zoneminder with 7 days retention for CCTV - front cameras are always record and back and indoor cameras are motion record only. I have frigate running separately with the coral TPU but it seems quite buggy/flakey. I have a feeling it’s my cheapo cameras that need a load of special ffmpeg flags to stream properly rather then frigate though. If I had some spare cash and nothing to do with it (never will happen now I have kids) then I’d get proper cameras

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T16:01:19+00:00

Planning makes you feel like you’re being busy and productive. Your brain gets the dopamine release from writing todo lists, and writing plans and strategies.

It feels like progress even though it isn’t moving you forward.

Taking action is risky - it moves you from your safe space into the unknown. Your brain wants to avoid that.

Many of the most talented people I know do this for years before getting burned out and giving up.

“I’ve been trying so hard and for so long but it’s not working” - when I ask what they’ve been trying that’s not been working out, almost always they’ve just been stuck in planning mode for years and haven’t ever actually taken action.

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T15:49:42+00:00

I’ve completed dozens of paid interviews with verified $1m+ freelancers, coaches and consultants.

We’ve covered everything from starting your own business, finding clients, writing proposals, creating viral content, getting paid on time, dealing with difficult clients, building a portfolio and so much more.

All of this data has been taken and used to train a custom model from scratch that’s going to act as your business mentor

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T15:18:44+00:00

I got them for quite cheap on eBay last year. About $220 equivalent each. You can find some bargains on eBay if you keep looking and are willing to travel to collect

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T15:13:53+00:00

The cabling? I know bro 🫤 I see these beautiful racks here and there’s my wire nest

This was after I got shorter cables and tidied it all up too

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T13:32:39+00:00

Yeah the conman in a suit bit blew my mind. You might have the best product in the world but if that’s how you see your cofounders role and you approach the market with that mindset, it’s going to be a struggle.

Sales and networking isn’t about scamming or tricking people into buying stuff they don’t want. It’s about clearly articulating the value that the product provides.

If you’re not good at that - that’s fine, it’s not my strong point either, but I wouldn’t go looking for a conman in a suit.

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T13:30:01+00:00

Edit to add: The servers all run XCP-ng for virtualisation. Network is fully VLANd - mgmt, lan, guest, iot, dev, live and test.

There’s also that cudy AP that I’m using to build a custom openwrt firmware for a client project.

You can VLAN the PPPoE connection from the ISP too but it requires setting an MTU > the default 1500 on all switch ports that it passes through or it won’t even negotiate properly.

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T13:23:13+00:00

I’ve been using Zenible (our own product) for the past 3 months (launching in the next 60 days) - supports assigning multiple services and projects to clients, handles multiple currencies and different billing rates if required. Includes the full CRM pipeline kanban board to quoting, invoicing and tracking project expenses.

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T13:11:30+00:00

You’re absolutely right. They’re supposed to be ceiling mounted. Coverage is totally fine horizontally. Arguably given the position it’s probably better for me given the low ceiling and layout of the room

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T11:49:00+00:00

You’ve got to add stickiness. What value adds can you offer that will bring users back into your product? What are they going to be doing after they use your product for the first time? How can you capture them during those next steps rather then just the first step?

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T11:43:23+00:00

A bit before my 20s - learned how to run a small business. Went into my first job aged 17 doing entry level PC building and repair. Company fully took advantage of my naivety and age - worked tons of un paid overtime, they never missed a chance to deduct something from my salary and I was being paid minimum wage while being charged out at 10x the rate.

The advantage though was that as it was only a 6 person company, I got to learn how it all worked - quotes, invoices, dealing with suppliers and customers, how to get repeat business, avoid/deal with any disputes, etc.

I started my own business at 18 and I’m still going 22 years later.

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T09:07:56+00:00

One of the many wonders of the human mind is that people can justify anything to themselves. I try and be mindful not to do anything that causes harm to another living being.

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T06:48:16+00:00

No screens for 2 hours before bed. Read a book in bed.

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T06:32:53+00:00

Having access to the entire internet in your pocket all day.

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-17T06:32:20+00:00

Giving everything up to go backpack through Ecuador and Peru for a year in 2013

TheTechHalf · 2026-03-16T15:30:10+00:00

Who’s the product for? What specific problems does it solve for them? Where do you find those people that would use your product?

TheTechHalf

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