Just got invited to Web Summit Lisbon. Now I need 5 more clients in 13 days.
OpenWeb360 just got an official invite to exhibit at Web Summit Lisbon's ALPHA startup programme this November. Booth, pitch competition, the whole thing.
I don't want to show up with just a pitch deck. I want to show up with real customers.
Right now: 2 paying clients. Deadline to book the package: August 10th. Goal: 7 by then.
13 days. Will update here either way it goes.
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The deadline is doing you a favor, a public countdown forces focus most founders never get. After 20 years running Henson Group I learned conferences reward the pipeline you build before you land, so book the meetings now and treat the booth as the close, not the intro. Five clients from warm outreach to lookalikes of your two paying customers is a doable 13-day sprint.
Client #2 coming through your own product is the best booth asset you have — not the 7th logo. "We used OpenWeb360 to book the call we're having right now" beats any funnel screenshot. ALPHA judges smell dogfooding a mile away, lean into it instead of tidying it into a deck.
Two to seven in 13 days is a real jump, not a rounding-error goal. What's converting the two you already have, referral, cold outreach, something you posted? If there's a repeatable thing that got you those, doubling down on exactly that seems like a better bet than spreading effort across five new channels this close to the deadline.
Following along either way, good luck with the booth.
Both outbound. One was urgent request that came through direct reach-out. Other closed faster, same cold outreach channel, just different prospect who had the problem acute enough.
So the repeatable is clear: cold outreach where the pain is real. Not warm network, not inbound from posts. Direct to people who are losing money right now.
Doubling down on that. That's the play.
Congratulations! Hope you find those last five customers. Looking forward to hearing what worked best after the event.
Thanks. Will post the update.
Web Summit ALPHA with 2 paying clients is actually a stronger position than most exhibitors — you have proof someone paid, not just a pitch deck. The people who matter at WS will notice that.
Getting 5 more clients in 13 days is a product of two things: how many qualified conversations you can start, and how tight your "yes" moment is. For my Shopify tutorial, I got 7 checkout starts from 262 views — but 0 paid because of a broken PayPal gateway. The lesson: test your conversion path before you pump traffic through it.
Tactically: find 20 people who match your existing 2 clients, DM them "I'm exhibiting at Web Summit and building specifically for people like you — can I show you what we're doing?" No pitch deck. Just a 10-minute call. 5 yeses from 20 DMs is realistic. Scale until you hit 7.
Good luck — the ALPHA programme is exactly where bootstrapped founders should be.
Exactly this. Already testing the conversion path, that's where the gap was. 20 people who match the pattern, 10-minute call, no deck.
Thanks for the math. Makes it concrete.
Rooting for you — 13 days is tight but real customers beat a polished deck every time investors actually talk to. If you get stuck on the last couple, sometimes a direct "we're prepping for Web Summit and want three case studies before we go" pitch converts better than the usual outreach — gives people a real reason to say yes now instead of later.
Good angle. That's the move if the direct asks aren't converting, turn it into a real ask. Case studies, not just customers.
Thanks.
Congratulations on the Web Summit invitation! That's already a huge milestone. Showing up with real customers instead of just a pitch deck is definitely the right mindset. Wishing you the best of luck reaching your goal before August 10. Looking forward to the updates!
Appreciate it. Will update after the 10th.
Strong position to be in. Honest question: how do you know those 5 are the right 5 vs just the easiest 5?
I just launched on Product Hunt and made the mistake of chasing every signup instead of focusing on the 3 strangers who left thoughtful
comments. The 3 comment-leavers are now my beta testers. The other 30 signups churned in week 1.
If I were in your shoes: pick the 5 most likely to give you a brutal case study ("here's what broke when we tried to integrate"), not the 5
most likely to sign a contract. A reference customer who'll tell the Web Summit audience "yeah it kinda worked but here's the 3 things that
sucked" is worth 10x a paying customer who'll just say "fine product."
What's your current outreach looking like — inbound from the invite announcement, or outbound to your network?
Good question. Right now it's split: one came through direct outreach, the other through our own lead-finding system. That second one closed faster.
But honestly, I'm not optimizing for "easiest to close." I'm looking for companies where the problem is acute, they're losing revenue daily. Those are the ones that'll use it hard, find the friction, and talk honestly about what works vs. what breaks.
100% outbound right now. That's what's converting.
And yeah, the reference customer angle is the real one. Web Summit audience doesn't want to hear "works fine." They want to hear "here's what I fixed" from someone actually using it in production.
That's the unlock — "here's what I fixed" beats "it works" every time. The hardest part is finding 5 customers willing to be that honest in public, though.
How are you qualifying the "acute pain, daily revenue loss" angle in your outreach? I'm guessing it's not just "are you losing money?" —
there's a specific signal you're listening for in the first 30 seconds of the call.
Curious what your conversion rate is on the "100% outbound" approach — feels like that gets expensive fast unless your close rate is
significantly higher than inbound.
Getting customers before the event is probably the stronger milestone than just having a good pitch.
Curious what channel you’re prioritizing for these next 13 days — warm network, outbound, partnerships, or something else?
Honestly, three things, in order of priority right now:
Outbound through our own product, focused narrow: SMB and staffing companies in the Baltics specifically, not casting wide.
Being loud publicly. I announced on Friday that we're building this in public, and the same day a potential lead reached out and asked for a meeting. Met in person, eight-figure revenue company, and honestly I went in treating it as feedback more than a sales call. Product ran through the whole demo with zero errors. That single data point told me to lean harder into visibility, not less.
Personal network is basically tapped, I've already offered this to everyone in it who made sense. Still one deal moving there, but the pace is slow, so it's not where I'm spending fresh energy.
Right now it's mostly #1 and #2 compounding on each other.
Thanks for sharing that. I'd enjoy continuing the conversation. What's the best email to reach you on?
Appreciate that, [email protected]
Thanks! I’ve just sent it over.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts whenever you have a chance.
That is a great problem to have this close to the deadline. Are the two clients you already have coming through one channel more than others, or has it been pretty scattered so far? Curious what is actually working before the countdown really kicks in.
Good question. Honestly pretty scattered so far: one came through my personal sales channel (direct outreach), and the other came through our own lead-finding system, so we're literally using OpenWeb360 to find OpenWeb360 customers. That second one is the more interesting signal to me, means the product can source its own growth, not just close deals I bring in manually.
Also in the pipeline: one company started a free trial week yesterday, and another said they'll circle back in September once their own clients are back from vacation. So the funnel's moving, just need to compress the timeline before August 10th.
That is a smart split to notice. If the lead finding channel keeps outperforming personal outreach, that is worth writing down now while it is fresh, most founders only look back at what actually worked once the deadline pressure is already gone. Good luck compressing the timeline before August 10th, five clients in 13 days is a real sprint.
Good call, actually writing it down now.
Real example: the first client I closed personally started using our system, and by week two they'd landed their own client through it. It was an urgent request, which probably helped speed things along, but it turned into a 3-month contract for them. That's a better proof point than anything I could put in a pitch deck.
On the funnel side, our self-sourced lead also closed faster than the one I chased manually. One data point isn't a pattern yet, but if it holds with the next few, that tells me where to put more of my own energy over these next 13 days.
That is useful to see written out. The lead finding channel closing faster is the detail worth watching over the next few days, if that pattern holds under real deadline pressure it says a lot about where compounding effort actually pays off versus where it just feels productive. Rooting for the five in thirteen days.
Appreciate that, will report back either way it goes.
Appreciate you closing the loop either way. Rooting for the five in thirteen days, and genuinely curious whether the self-sourced channel keeps outperforming once you lean harder into it.