I stopped looking for validation. Now I'm looking for one paying customer.
Over the last three weeks, I've spoken with founders about TaskRelay, a service that handles the repetitive operational work that keeps piling up.
I also completed two practical workflow tests, including CRM cleanup with duplicate detection, merge decisions, and exception handling. Both were completed successfully.
What I realized is that I made a classic mistake.
I kept offering free help instead of answering the only question that actually matters:
Will someone pay to have this problem solved?
So I'm changing the experiment.
If you're a founder with one repetitive task you've been putting off—CRM cleanup, lead research, spreadsheet organization, data formatting, documentation, or another operational task—I'll complete it for $25.
No subscription.
No long-term commitment.
Just one task delivered professionally.
If you don't think the result was worth $25, I want to know exactly why. Honest feedback is more valuable to me than polite encouragement.
I'm not looking for validation anymore.
I'm looking for evidence that this solves a problem people are willing to pay to remove.
This is the right shift. The next useful move may be narrowing the $25 offer even more for the first 10 buyers.
Instead of "CRM cleanup, lead research, spreadsheet organization, data formatting, documentation," I'd pick one painful task and make the before/after artifact very concrete. For example: "send me a messy CRM export, I'll return a deduped file plus a short exception log within 24h."
The real signal is not whether founders like the idea of operational help. It's whether they show up with messy data, pay before the cleanup, and can say afterward, "I would not have done this myself this week." That sentence is probably more valuable than generic validation.
Agreed, and the exact phrasing helps 'send me a messy CRM export, get back a deduped file plus an exception log in 24h' is a lot more concrete than my current 5-category list. Adopting that specific version for the first 10. And that closing line is the real test 'I wouldn't have done this myself this week' is a much sharper bar than 'was this useful,' going to ask that directly after every delivery.
The paid test is the right move. A $25 sale is real validation; enough one-off tasks at that price is a business. The question is whether the task, buyer, and acquisition path repeat.
For the first five or ten buyers, I’d keep one task and one segment constant. Before delivery, ask: When did this last happen? What did you do instead? How long did it take? What broke or got delayed? Why solve it this week?
Take payment upfront, capture the before-and-after, then ask whether they would buy the same outcome again or refer someone with the same problem.
That will show whether the offer has urgency, a clear outcome, and a repeatable path to customers.
This is the piece I was missing, I was ready to just bank the $25 and move on. Structuring it as 'when did this last happen, what did you do instead, would you buy it again' turns each sale into actual data instead of just proof it can be sold once. Going to build that into every delivery from here.
This is a good pivot. I'd make the $25 offer even narrower for the first 10 buyers: one named task, one before/after artifact, and a 24h delivery promise so the buyer is not deciding between six vague service categories.
Fair, and probably overdue right now I'm offering too many categories at once (CRM cleanup, lead research, formatting, docs), which puts the decision on the buyer instead of making it obvious. Narrowing to one named task with a 24h promise for the first 10 is the right move. Going with CRM/data cleanup since that's what I've already stress-tested twice.
Brutal honesty is welcome.