James Kennedy

And that gave us enough to verify that there was a market.

And then after that, there was a long period of no sales.

So we actually started off with three partners.

But one of those partners gave up on us before we got to our next customer.

They were all paying.

So we charged them like a couple of grand each.

If we build this, will you buy it?

And they gave us the money, a down payment.

That gave us enough confidence just to say, okay.

Yeah, two or three months, I think.

One of our partners pulled out before we actually got to our real first customer, our non-warm customer, if you like.

So there were three partners in the business.

But in your first three months when you're toiling away, nothing but bugs and customer issues and requests, it's a long, long three months.

Generally speaking, I was doing the sales, so I was pitching people on the business.

I would get them to do a demo, I would show them the product, and then it would be woefully obvious how many features we were missing in those first three months.

It was like a continuous cycle of slamming up against the wall, trying to see if anyone was interested.

But the good news is in that three months, we really understood, like it was a great customer development experience.

So I really started, I talked to hundreds of CFOs, operations managers.

And, you know, after about sort of, you know, after we got our first, thankfully we got one really good big customer early on called Holloman Corporation based out in Texas.

They cut us a check for 20 grand, which I didn't believe was even possible at the time.