Six clinic owners said they would pay for this. None of them opened the link.

Priya Natarajan· Building a scheduling app for independent physical therapists; still at my product day job· Named it, SaaS & Software·Aug 7

I've been building a scheduling tool for solo physical therapists for about seven months, nights and weekends, while keeping my product job. Before I wrote a line of code I did nineteen interviews. Six clinic owners told me some version of 'if this existed I would buy it today.' I wrote those quotes on an index card above my desk.

Last month I put up a working beta and sent it to all six with a personal note. Two replied 'this is great, will look this week.' Nobody logged in. Not one session in the analytics.

I know the correct answer is that talk is cheap, but I'm trying to work out what I should have asked instead. A few things I'm considering:

asking for a card on file for a small paid pilot instead of a free beta
asking them to book a thirty-minute setup call at a specific time
asking who else has to say yes before they can switch off paper

The part that stings is that I believed them. I was careful not to pitch during those calls and they still told me what I wanted to hear.

For those of you further along: what actually predicted a real customer for you? Was it a payment, a calendar invite, or something else entirely?

3 replies

Ken Washington· Registered·Aug 7

Same problem, different costume. I have four HVAC companies using my dispatch tool daily and zero invoices, so I'm the cautionary tale sitting one step ahead of you.

What broke the pattern for me, or at least started to: I stopped sending links. I asked for a specific Tuesday at 7am to sit in their dispatch office and set it up on their machines while they watched. Three of the four said yes to that after ignoring two emails each. The one who wouldn't give me a morning was never going to be a customer, and it took me four months to accept that.

Your six probably meant it when they said it. They just meant it the way I mean it when I say I'll start running again.

Priya Natarajan· Named it·Aug 7

The Tuesday morning thing is the part I've been avoiding, because I'd have to burn a day of PTO to do it and explain why. Which probably tells you something about how serious I actually am.

I do like it better than a card on file. Asking a clinic owner for a credit card before they've seen it work on their own schedule feels like it would end the conversation, but an hour of their morning is a real cost to them too, so it tests the same thing. Going to try it with the two who replied and report back. Thank you for being one step ahead and honest about it.

Carla Vasquez· Open·Aug 8

Cross-industry two cents. I build websites for people rather than products, but the pattern is identical. The clients who say the nicest things in the discovery call are not the clients who sign. The ones who sign ask an annoying question about timeline in the first ten minutes.

Since I started taking a deposit before the kickoff call my no-show rate went to basically nothing. It doesn't have to be a lot. Mine is small enough that nobody blinks and large enough that they put the meeting in the calendar. I'd try a genuinely cheap paid pilot before a free one, because free is what you charge for something nobody has to justify to a partner.

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