My first SaaS took 826 days to get a paying customer. My second took 61. The difference wasn't the product.
December 2018: I launched Reetro, a retrospective tool for agile teams.
March 2021: First paid customer. 826 days later.
In between: 40,000 users. Zero dollars.
May 2026: First paid customer for Sekorti. 61 days after starting.
Same founder. Different outcome. Here's the honest breakdown of what changed.
What Reetro taught me about why first customers take forever: I offered too much for Free (unlimited teams, unlimted users, unlimited boards) and I confused users with customers. I built feature after feature based on feedback and thought, since I am providing so much value, all users will switch to paid plan as soon as I release it. But it was opposite, they stayed on the free plan.
Secondly, I picked a problem that was nice-to-have, teams can always do retrospectives with sticky notes. No urgency means no urgency to pay.
What I did differently this time:
With Sekorti the problem has genuine urgency. The lack of professional trust center and a security questionnaire from an enterprise prospect is a deal on the line right now. Not eventually. Now. That changes everything about the sales conversation.
I started with the unfair advantage, not the product. I spent two years reviewing vendor security assessments at my corporate job and personally answered 25+ questionnaires as a SaaS founder with Reetro. I have been on both sides. That experience opened conversations no cold email template can open.
I ran outreach with real evidence, not a pitch. Every email included actual domain scan findings for that specific company. Not personalisation. Diagnosis.
I started commercial conversations before the product was perfect. The first customers shaped the product. Not the other way around.
What stayed the same:
The work ethic. The consistency. The willingness to do uncomfortable things every day. Those don't change.
I still offered Free stuff (anyone create a professional trust center but to publish on custom domain they have to upgrade, and anyone can run 3 questionnaire automation per month, not unlimited)
If you are on month 6 of your startup with no paying customers but real users, you are not failing, just missing something to encourage users to switch to paid version.
This is a much stronger founder-market fit story than the usual “I built a SaaS and waited” post.
The sharpest part is that Sekorti is attached to a real deadline: enterprise prospect asks for security evidence, trust center, or questionnaire answers, and the deal can stall immediately. That is a much better buying trigger than “better documentation” or “save time.”
I’d probably make that urgency even more central in the positioning. Not just security questionnaires, but helping SaaS teams remove trust friction from sales before it costs them deals.
One thing I’d still pressure-test early is the name. Sekorti points in the right direction, but it also feels a bit like a security-word variation. If the product expands into trust centers, evidence automation, vendor readiness, and deal enablement, the brand may need to feel less like a feature tool and more like a serious trust/security layer. A harder, cleaner name like Vroth.com would probably carry that enterprise-security direction better.
Yes. thanks for the feedback.
Makes sense.
The main thing I’d watch is whether Sekorti stays as a security-questionnaire tool or starts becoming the trust layer behind enterprise sales.
If it stays narrow, the current name can work. If you move into trust centers, evidence automation, and deal-readiness, then the name starts mattering much earlier because enterprise buyers will judge the category before they understand the workflow.
No need to force it now, but worth deciding before the product gets too baked into sales material and customer memory.