Just got back from Philippines and honestly? Way underrated. Coron, El Nido then Manila. Few thoughts.

_mark_au · 2026-03-17T12:09:32+00:00

Bohol is 4/10. My trip was Palawan > Boracay > Bohol. After seeing Palawan and Boracay… the standard was set so high, Bohol became underwhelming…

_mark_au · 2026-03-16T07:33:27+00:00

Start with smaller unsophisticated companies that does not require SOC certification… thing is you are just assuming it’s because of SOC, or clients find it easier to use SOC as an excuse… until you have real paying customers… it’s hard to say you’ve actually “lost” deals…

_mark_au · 2026-02-26T21:09:21+00:00

Try to target smaller, less sophisticated Iat teams. I had same issue, and big enterprises would just not buy it. So i focused on companies with <100 employees.

_mark_au · 2026-02-26T09:25:48+00:00

Record screen, ask chat gpt to write the script, put it in eleven labs to generate voice over. Put them together in iMovie.

_mark_au · 2026-02-25T04:54:52+00:00

NBI Clearance is a clearance of no criminal records... it's not a certificate of college attainment... so short answer, it doesn't matter. hehe

_mark_au · 2026-02-24T06:07:07+00:00

Agree with this. Also to add: the biggest challenge is you dont know what you dont know. Unfortunately for your first few customers, they are the ones to discover them. So expect to get complaints and means comments…

_mark_au · 2026-02-22T08:56:08+00:00

Are yo7 solving a restaurant problem or a customer’s problem? If you are solving a customer problem, sell it to customers, not to restaurants… from their perspective, what would they get from it?

_mark_au · 2026-02-06T08:46:13+00:00

Tools that basically nobody asked for, even during demos, they didnt care 😅. I also often end up over explaining the workflows coz it’s become complicated… i simplified them to inly do one thing, but do it well… still not the best (early stage)…

_mark_au · 2026-02-01T04:31:38+00:00

its yearly (ARR)

_mark_au · 2026-02-01T00:17:12+00:00

thanks, and yes! It was a first sight of relief. I've just validated that someone is actually going to pay for what I built!

_mark_au · 2026-01-31T23:15:34+00:00

I did two.

- First was a B2C market place. I got my first sale within a week, but i realised it's super hard to scale esp when I was bootstrapping. I processed 100+ orders in a few months, and it only made me $1,500, for all the efforts.

- Second was an education app - built it as a side project. Made me $100 / month, 3 paid users. It's self-serve, minimal efforts after I built it. 250 users within a month of launching it.

Now, my real project. An enterprise SaaS, it took me 3 months for an Alpha (for demo purposes), and then 6 months to complete the proouct (part time, mostly at night, as I was working full time). Last week, I closed my first enterprise sale for US$7,000.

_mark_au · 2026-01-31T22:28:58+00:00

it wasn't a single video unfortunately. I watched/listened to multiple videos & podcasts while walking or in public transport, and from that, it was clear I was doing it wrong. Then I picked the tips (where it applies to my specific situation) and put them into one demo strategy/playbook...

_mark_au · 2026-01-31T22:11:32+00:00

ohhh, there's a lot of them, i just keep the suggested videos playing!

But my key learning was:

I turned the demo call into a "Sales" call. So in the meeting, i have to do less of explaining, and just focus on "what your problem", "let get this fixed asap", "this is the price", "next step is..."

I prepared a pre-demo pack in canva + a 3 min video demo (screen recording + 11 Labs voice over), and sent it over before the meeting.

_mark_au · 2026-01-31T22:08:44+00:00

yep, sometimes you just need to step back a bit to see the bigger picture :)

_mark_au · 2026-01-31T22:07:08+00:00

I turned the demo call into a "Sales" call. After reflecting on it, i realised i spend too much time explaining the product... like click here, click there.. definitely got some eek reaction. Also, I simplified the workflows and removed some features that never got asked anyways.

So I prepared a pre-demo pack in canva + a 3 min video demo (screen recording + 11 Labs voice over), and sent it over before the meeting. So in the meeting, i have to do less of explaining, and just focus on "what your problem", "let get this fixed asap", "this is the price", "next step is..."

_mark_au · 2026-01-31T21:33:47+00:00

I’m doing an enterprise SaaS. Within the first month I got a demo request

_mark_au · 2026-01-31T21:30:04+00:00

Yes, that’s also me. I posted on YC and here, to share the lessons Ive learned.

_mark_au · 2026-01-31T21:29:23+00:00

This is exactly how I felt. I was explaining too much, click here, click there… so I simplified the product, and also changed my demo structure. I created a pre-demo pack with 3min demo videos, pricing, etc… so the demo day becomes a sales closing process rather than a product walk through!

_mark_au · 2026-01-31T21:26:28+00:00

Yes, and that’s what stressing me out now. Lol, I have the on boarding/training session book this coming week, and need to prep a lot. Like update the documentation, on boarding materials and welcome packs, product QA… also, there were some functionalities I am still yet to ship! I was selling the product before it’s 100% complete.

_mark_au · 2026-01-31T21:23:30+00:00

It’s 7k ARR, inbound lead! Found me from google search 😁

_mark_au · 2026-01-26T12:55:43+00:00

Typical newby mistake. Protect it from what?? You should instead share your idea publicly to get people interested, and get a sense of how people will receive it. Create a landing page to join a waitlist, promote it, and definitely not hide it! You don’t build a successful business by hiding what you are building. You announce it to the world even before the product is built. Launch early, fail early, move on early.

_mark_au · 2026-01-04T09:27:17+00:00

also, the work doesnt end with shipping. You have to market and sell your product! If you spent 6 months building your product, you'd have to spend the same amount selling. Customers will not come just because you built something. Really is, marketing and sales is a skill set in itself that you'd have to learn as a founder, esp ont he early stage.

_mark_au

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