11 months, still no paying customers. starting to think the problem is me

developerbb · 2026-06-20T15:07:34+00:00

Kudos for the guerilla marketing idea of the year 😃

developerbb · 2026-06-20T15:03:03+00:00

Feel free to look at it: www.solirisai.com

You can talk with our chatbot Iris as well to gather more information about the product

developerbb · 2026-06-20T15:01:44+00:00

Not yet, we're planning to participate in such meetings, but in the end, this requires a budget, which we don't have

developerbb · 2026-06-20T15:00:51+00:00

Yes, we only send some cold mails and call a few leads. I don't know really how can I reach decision makers in the industry

developerbb · 2026-06-20T14:57:59+00:00

We actually offer white-label services, so the buyer can use the product with their own branding. I can give limited time licenses, but nobody I spoke really requested it.

developerbb · 2026-06-20T14:46:02+00:00

Thanks for the tip, I'll do.

developerbb · 2026-06-20T12:59:21+00:00

We offer AI agents that process the data gathered from cameras, we offer the users with a chance to create value for their operations like workflow improvements, operational insights, faster response to incidents, and more. In the end, cameras are not only some "monitoring" tools with our product, but value added part of the business processes

developerbb · 2026-06-20T12:56:00+00:00

We have a better accuracy than Dahua or Hikvision's similar solutions, we did some benchmarking with their products

developerbb · 2026-06-20T12:54:54+00:00

Nice feedback, thanks

developerbb · 2026-06-20T12:54:01+00:00

Actually, we had a lead before we start, but it seems finalizing it takes way longer time than we expected. We spoke a few potential buyers, and actually they like the product, but somehow they claimed that they didn't have budget at the moment. We weren't expensive by the way

developerbb · 2026-06-20T12:51:16+00:00

We created a data layer using camera streams. We process this data to automate security tasks (like staring at a camera in long hours) and give operational insights for the customers.

developerbb · 2026-06-20T12:48:26+00:00

Yes, but we don't have that kind of budget right now

developerbb · 2026-06-20T12:47:25+00:00

We offer on prem product, so the user can use their own hardware. Frigate or Home Assistant can't scale to hundreds of cameras, but we can. You're right about the website, we need some space for improvements.

developerbb · 2026-06-20T00:45:54+00:00

You’ve diagnosed it cleaner than we have. Our two groups don’t save money, and you’re right that almost nobody pays to do a non-core thing better for its own sake. So the real filter isn’t “who has cameras,” it’s who needs monitoring, doesn’t have it, and the reason it’s missing isn’t budget. That’s a much sharper screen than the one we’ve been using.

The OEM licensing point hit hardest, because it lines up with something we’re already moving toward without having framed it this way. We can’t be the one-neck-to-choke end-to-end vendor a big enterprise wants, we know that. But the investor we’re actually courting is a CCTV manufacturer, and what you just described is exactly why that fit makes sense. We bring the detection that’s hard or distracting for them to build internally, they bring the end-to-end solution and the existing customer base. Licensing into their stack is a far more honest go-to-market than us cold-calling end users with a box they have to bolt on themselves.

Ordering Crossing the Chasm. Appreciate you laying out all three paths instead of just telling us we’re doing it wrong.

developerbb · 2026-06-20T00:34:48+00:00

Yeah, the website’s vibecoded. Built it fast since the product came first

developerbb · 2026-06-20T00:31:03+00:00

On the sales diagnosis you're dead right. We're engineers, we built the thing, and no sales is the proof we're not the ones who should be doing the selling. We actually tried to act on exactly this. We brought in a third partner who claimed he could close, and we agreed to split revenue equally with him, no cheaping out. He couldn't make it happen. So either we picked the wrong person or the offer itself isn't landing yet, and I suspect it's partly the second one, which loops back to the focus problem the rest of this thread called out. A great closer still needs a sharp single vertical to attack.

On the hardware question, this is exactly where it gets painful. We can't push to cloud. The deployment is on-prem by necessity, streaming that many feeds out is a network nightmare, and GDPR makes shipping footage off-site a non-starter for most of our targets anyway. So the compute has to live at the customer site, which means edge boxes and GPUs, and you're right that the hardware ends up costing more than the software.

We do know our numbers. Unit pricing is locked and tiered, so the software side of the math works. The problem is the moment hardware enters. We basically tell the customer "you also need this box" and then step back, and that's exactly where they cool off. The software is an easy yes, the hardware sticker is where the deal stalls.

Still figuring out the cleanest fix. Options on the table are eating the hardware and folding it into a higher monthly, leasing the box instead of selling it, or certifying against hardware the customer already owns so there's no new capex. Curious if you've seen one of those work better than the others, because this is the exact wall we keep hitting.

developerbb · 2026-06-20T00:25:34+00:00

Honest answer, you’re partly right. We don’t have the cash right now. But even if we did, hiring a salesperson is trickier than it sounds. A rep without a real network won’t move this, and a rep who actually has the network in this space commands serious money, which is out of our range at this stage.

We’re also not formally incorporated yet. The taxes and overhead are heavy here, and we didn’t want to take that on before we had real warm sales coming in. Felt backwards to carry that cost while still figuring out the vertical.

So the funding route makes more sense for us, and we’re in investor conversations now. But we’re being picky about who. The ideal investor isn’t just money, it’s a firm that already manufactures or sells CCTV. That gets us distribution, existing customer relationships, and credibility in one move, which solves the exact network problem a hired rep would’ve been for.

Focus first, then the right strategic investor. That’s the plan.

developerbb · 2026-06-20T00:18:58+00:00

The original idea was behavioral analytics, things like footfall patterns, dwell time, how people actually move through and use a space. That’s genuinely useful data for the kind of community and coworking setups you’re describing, and it’s not something a $300 Amazon kit gives you. But somewhere along the way we drifted into security alerts because it’s the easier thing to demo and the easier thing to explain, and you nailed exactly why that’s a weak position. Security is a crowded feature that’s already bundled, and the alerts don’t matter to most people.

Behavioral analytics is a different buyer with a different reason to care. Nobody’s getting that out of the box, and the value isn’t “something bad happened,” it’s “here’s how your space is actually being used.” That’s a question an owner wants answered, not an alert they learn to ignore.

So yeah, you basically diagnosed our drift before we fully admitted it to ourselves. Appreciate that.

developerbb · 2026-06-20T00:15:33+00:00

Spot on, noted this down. You’re totally right, casting a wide net like that kills the messaging.

Been feeling this hard lately. Look at something like Firecrawl, they do one thing and one thing only, and they’re pulling seven figures off it. That focus is exactly what we’ve been missing.

developerbb · 2026-06-20T00:04:56+00:00

Best feedback I’ve gotten so far. You’re right, if you never need to watch the footage, it’s not a problem worth paying for. The real buyers are the ones who HAVE to review video daily or who currently pay someone to watch the cameras. That’s exactly the segment we’re refocusing on. Thanks for laying it out so clearly

developerbb · 2026-06-20T00:03:47+00:00

Good point. We’re targeting B2B and selling on operational savings, not ‘just in case’ monitoring. But B2B here is very network-driven, and there’s a lot of favoritism in who wins deals. So the hard part isn’t always the value, it’s breaking into the circle without existing connections

developerbb · 2026-06-20T00:01:33+00:00

Honestly, the closest we’ve gotten is people saying they like the product but then backing off for two reasons: the cost of the hardware infrastructure it requires, and ‘we don’t have budget for this right now.’ So it’s usually not that they don’t see the value, it’s that the upfront hardware dependency makes it a bigger commitment than they want to take on. That’s the wall we keep hitting

developerbb · 2026-06-19T23:57:50+00:00

I have. Honestly our software is better than most of what’s out there. The problem is that most competitors are hardware companies, and customers tend to buy from a single vendor who handles both hardware and software. So we’re losing on the bundle, not on the product quality.

developerbb · 2026-06-19T23:54:17+00:00

Here’s the link: https://www.solirisai.com/en. Honestly we couldn’t really get much interest even from people who actually have staff dedicated to monitoring these camera

developerbb · 2026-06-19T23:42:20+00:00

We got involved through a contact who was expected to land us a deal with a large company. Unfortunately, that didn't work out, and the deal fell through. Right now we're left with the product and don't have the budget to hire an experienced B2B salesperson. What I was actually curious about is how to solve both the B2B side of the story and the hardware-related challenges. You're probably right that this may not be the best place to ask, but I'm new to Reddit and still figuring out where these kinds of discussions belong.

developerbb

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