Built what I wished existed. Validated it. Can't sell it. What now?
A year ago I was the customer. Needed a proper AI chatbot for documentation (thousands of pages, complex product, users needing answers fast).
Two tiers existed. Enterprise providers with quality I was happy with and pricing locked behind sales calls (~$1,500/mo when the number finally came). Or cheaper self-serve tools where basic questions came back wrong, and support's answer was always some version of "your content is the problem". Hours of recrawling and switching models later. Passable, never reliable.
The middle didn't exist. So I prototyped it. 9 months, 6-8 hours a day. The result is better than I expected.
Now (2 months from launch):
2 paying customers who actively love it
A trial more generous than competitors offer
Almost nobody signing up. Nobody even using the free trial.
Costs higher than I can sustain long-term
Domain was effectively unindexed on Google for months. Both paying customers came from direct outreach, not search or organic discovery. So the middle-ground positioning has never actually been tested. The funnel above it is empty.
The trap: customers I have are heavily using it and clearly trust the product. Pulling the plug feels like a betrayal of someone who took a chance on it. But "I would buy this" doesn't scale to "others will buy this" or even "others will try it."
For anyone who's been at this decision point: what pushed you one way or the other?
A few specific things I'd find useful:
B2B SaaS folks: how did you get your first 10 paying customers?
Anyone shipped a middle-tier alternative to expensive enterprise tools, how did you find your audience?
When did you decide to keep going vs. cut losses?
I am literally 24 hours past where you are — launched Neural on Product Hunt yesterday. Built it from scratch (PHP 8.3, no frameworks, Stripe subscriptions, Groq API). Two paying customers. Same feeling: "I would buy this" does not scale.
What I am learning is that the middle tier is real, but it does not sell itself. Enterprise buyers expect a sales call. Self-serve B2C expects virality. The middle? You have to hunt manually before organic kicks in.
A few things I am testing right now that might help you:
→ Direct outreach to people already complaining about the expensive alternatives (Reddit, LinkedIn, niche Slack groups). Not cold email — showing up where they are already frustrated.
→ A generous free trial is good, but a "bring your own documentation" demo where they see it work on their actual content before signing up converts better (learned this the hard way).
→ Your two happy customers — can you ask them for an introduction to one similar company? One warm lead is worth 100 cold ones.
Do not pull the plug. You have 2 people who love it. That is signal, not noise. The distribution problem is solvable. The product problem is harder — and you already solved that.
Rooting for you.
After many years in B2B I can say that cold calling/direct reach followed by a demo meeting with the mid level decision making will get you were you want. I kind of having the same issue here but on B2C model. I was under the impression that B2C is more easy but now I discovered that B2C is hard because you cannot talk to 10 people directly If you don't know them. However, calling to a company and talk to a manager in order to sell them something is a common practice, so they would be more open to listen to you, watch a presentation or a demo, check the financial offer and so on. On the other hand, doing this with a person, on a B2C model is quite unusual and somehow awkward, so I think you are in a better position than you think. Keep calling them.
Don't pull the plug just yet! Having 2 paying customers who heavily use and trust the product means you have product-market fit you just don't have distribution yet. Relying on SEO or inbound for a new B2B middle-tier tool is a slow death.
To get your next 10 clients, you need to double down on what worked: Direct Outreach. Figure out the exact tech-stack or industry of those 2 happy customers, scrape a highly targeted list of 200 similar companies (specifically targeting CTOs/Product Managers facing heavy docs support loads), and hit them with personalized outbound value. The middle-market is real, you just have to go hunt it manually before organic kicks in. Rooting for you, keep pushing!