SillyJellybean
SillyJellybean

Got pitched by a startup with no MVP 😂

Was looking for automation solutions for my startup, came across an early stage AI startup that had 3-4 meetings with us and showed us screenshots of their product, but delayed product demo and signup.

Few days later said they're shutting down because they couldn't raise funds and had no MVP ready to use. But they didn't tell us that earlier, all they said was "we are in early stages, still working on product, need info from you"etc.

While their vision seemed good enough, not having an MVP while pitching for clients is weird and a waste of time tbh. No one will know or learn anything unless they try using an actual product, including themselves. And it isn't hard to build one either, i think I have the gist of it and might already be in production by other startups in this space. Decent low hanging fruit in SaaS with good long term potential.

Doing things that don't scale doesn't mean you don't put in the required amount of work before approaching clients. Don't want to name them, they probably learned as much by now.

16mo ago
Talking product sense with Ridhi
9 min AI interview5 questions
Round 1 by Grapevine
ZestyQuokka
ZestyQuokka
Hinge16mo

You know what, you have a great product idea, know market exists for the product, and a competitor just died.

🙂

SillyJellybean
SillyJellybean

But I have no time, money or team 🤷🏻‍♂️

SleepyBanana
SleepyBanana

Tell us the idea :)

SparklyNoodle
SparklyNoodle

Looks like they are still stuck in zirp days 😂😂😂

SillyJellybean
SillyJellybean

Even I'm planning to apply AI in my platform but it's not really worth advertising much. It's a basic gpt wrapper for internal operations.

FloatingWalrus
FloatingWalrus

@Rorschach can you give more details around the product they were pitching beyond the accounting automation you have mentioned

I know some startups with working product in the accounting automation space.

But need to know the exact requirements first

SillyJellybean
SillyJellybean

Exact requirements were being figured out in the meetings, we wanted something that could classify our Zoho accounts under different categories to make statement generation faster and easier. We mostly do it monthly and were considering hiring someone for accounts reconciliation only every day because day to day transaction records can get lost and we forget sometimes.

SillyJellybean
SillyJellybean

This seems pretty close to what they were trying to build for the Indian market

https://siliconcanals.com/crowdfunding/datasnipper-raises-100m/

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