I had messaged and called this guy six times. There was no reply (but no clear rejection either)...so what did I do? Well we were working with his associates and I figured I might as well get rejected face to face. So right then and there I knew I would go knock on his door in his office. I had never been this bold ever. My heart was beating, I was too desperate to quit. I put my best poker face on and took the risk.
I knocked on his door as I saw him typing away on his computer. He looked up at me:
"Are you having a meeting right now?" I asked
Of course I knew the answer to this question because the room was empty. :-)
"No" he replied, I walked in and it was sales time.
After exchanging formalities I stated I was working with his colleagues and booked a meeting to see if we could really provide value for him. With the group of clients I have, if I don't provide value for them I feel horrible. We met the next week and I was in trouble! He thought my product did something else...My partner looked at me and said: "I don't think we can...", I quickly interrupted with "I can run some tests on it we will come back with results soon!"
As we left the meeting I was the only one optimistic about the situation. You think my co-founders quickly agreed and said: "this pivot is perfect lets do it Vlad" because the answer to that is HELL NO. My co-founders said something like: "Not a good idea, waste of time, knock yourself out go test it". One of them actually left, although I don't blame him, I might have done it myself. So the semi-non-technical guy, which is me, did it all myself. I basically did everything our software does now by hand. We were lucky, however, because we weren't making money back then. Turns out when your original startup feels like you are putting your arm in a snake pit, it's pretty easy to convince people to join you.
So anyways back to the story. Two weeks later, and after spending hundreds of my own dollars I met back up with our first pivoted client. Showing him the work I had done seemed interesting to him. Before handing him my results for free, I made him promise me to call his boss. "Sure, ok I'll do that" he said. "When?" I asked. "I can do it right now" he answered, so we watched him call his boss to arrange another meeting then and there. The next week we met with the owner and went through the test results while putting on a show of confidence. They were happy to give us a shot. They then gave us a check for $1200 dollars, and the rest is history.
Later we would schedule a meeting with another client who completely blew us off. Luckily enough, their competitor wanted to do business with us first. That second client turned into a power user and here we are today with a much improved product. What about our first client? What is he doing? Well he ended up leaving us. However, by that time we moved so quickly it didn't matter anymore, because we had others on board.
An extra little tidbit is that our second client was ALSO willing to give us another shot at doing business together even though our first product burned him (If you're reading this thank you very much for everything). What happened after he gave us another shot? Well we got him a great return on his investment and exclusivity in the region, but it was well worth it. As they say risk is an entrepreneur's best friend. If you take risks and move fast past the failures you’re on the right track.
If you have any questions feel free to ask. :-)
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