Why

Hi IH — first post here. I'm Bela, a solo founder from Hungary building

LettingGuru, an all-in-one platform for UK letting agencies (the people

who manage rental properties for landlords).

The product is genuinely big: property + tenancy management, tenant

onboarding with AML checks, maintenance workflows, Xero-integrated

finance, e-signing, 7 role-specific mobile apps (tenant, landlord,

contractor, inspector…), and an AI receptionist that answers the

agency's phone 24/7. UK lettings is going through its biggest

regulatory shake-up in decades (Renters' Rights Act, Making Tax

Digital), so the timing for "compliance built in" is real.

Here's the uncomfortable part. This week I finally sat down and looked

at every number I'd been avoiding:

- 1 paying agency (a founding customer on a discount — ~£200 MRR)

- Google position ~37 for "letting agent software" (page 4 = invisible)

- 8,480 search impressions in 3 months → 68 clicks (0.8% CTR)

- A handful of real backlinks, mostly launch directories

- My homepage demo video: 96 plays, 3 people watched to the end

- Sign-up conversion tracking: didn't exist. I literally could not

answer "how many people started the trial form and gave up"

- Bonus: my marketing site's deploy pipeline had been silently broken

for a month. I was "shipping" fixes that never went live.

The pattern is obvious in hindsight: I treated marketing as a thing to

do "after the product is ready", and the product was never ready,

because products never are. Classic builder trap — I just hit it with

unusually high production values.

What I changed this week instead of adding another feature:

1. Rebuilt the money-keyword landing page as a proper pillar page

(mine ranked below my own blog posts — I was cannibalising myself)

2. Fixed 90 pages of template-generated titles that were ~95 characters

long (Google truncated all of them)

3. Added funnel events so I can see where trial sign-ups actually stall

4. Shipped two free tools (rental yield calculator + a Renters' Rights

Act compliance checker) as linkable assets

5. Wrote a 30-day plan that's 80% distribution, 20% code — directories,

UK trade press pitches tied to a real regulatory deadline, and

review platforms

The part I can't shortcut: authority. Directories are done in an

afternoon; genuine editorial links and reviews take months.

So, question for people who've sold B2B SaaS into a traditional,

regulated industry (agents, brokers, clinics, accountants): what

actually got you your first 10 customers? SEO compounds too slowly

to live on, cold outreach feels wrong for a relationship industry, and

I'm wary of burning cash on ads before the funnel is proven. What

worked for you — and what was a waste of time?

(Happy to share any number or detail — ask away.)