There are different ways to start a startup, but they mostly boil down to this:
You are either coding shit, selling shit, or doing jack shit
Coding Shit
My stack is mostly VS Code + Claude Code.
Selling Shit
At the moment, my main channels of talking to customers are cold calls, walking unannounced into customer offices, and referrals.
Here are my customer discovery questions, I try to use techniques from the "Mom Test" (still havent read the book though) so I try to get the customer to speak as much as possible.
I don't use all of these questions, but I am putting them all in the blog
Discovery Questions (updated 5/3)
What does a good month look like for you? What numbers do you actually look at?
Where do you feel like you're the bottleneck?
If you were starting the practice over, what would you do differently on the marketing side?
Walk me through what happens when a parent calls for the first time. Who picks up, what do they say, what's the goal of that call?
Do you ever pull calls and listen to them, or is that not really a thing you have time for?
When a parent calls and doesn't book, do you know why? Or does that call just kind of disappear?
Pivot Questions
What is the biggest headache in your office right now?