Meysam - Engineer | Father | First-time Founder

Hey PH – I'm a new father who refuses to work for someone else anymore

I turned 30-something recently, had my first kid, and something snapped.

I looked at my past: 8+ years as an SRE, climbing ladders, waiting for raises, asking permission.

And I thought: "I can't do this for another 30 years."

So I'm building my way out. FindForce is my first SaaS – a Chrome extension that verifies emails from LinkedIn. But honestly? I'm here because I have no idea what I'm doing on the business side.

The technical part is easy. I write code all day (mostly AI-assisted in 2025). I can ship features. I can scale infrastructure. I know my way around all the cloud providers.

The business part is destroying me. PMF is my nightmare. I tried customer interviews and bombed them. Either my ICP is wrong (sales teams at 50-500 person companies), my outreach was garbage, or both. I've read The Mom Test twice and still can't tell if people are being polite or actually have this problem.

What I'm learning the hard way:

• Customer interview without audience is an uphill battle

• Market complexity is 10x what I expected

• "Build it and they will come" is a myth

• Every business term I search for leads to five more I don't understand

• hunter.io has 6M users and I'm just some guy with a Chrome extension

Why I'm really here: I need to meet people who've done this before. Founders who've gone from "I have a product" to "I have a business." People who've figured out PMF without venture backing or a co-founder who knows how to sell.

I'm not looking for cheerleading. I need the truth:

• Am I solving a real problem or chasing something that doesn't matter?

• Is my ICP wrong? (Sales reps waste 15 hrs/week on email verification – seems real to me)

• Should I pivot, double down, or learn sales before building more features?

Current stats: zero users, $49/month unlimited pricing, ~24 hours saved per rep monthly. Profitable on paper but can't crack the growth code.

If you've been here before – first-time founder, technical background, trying to validate a B2B product – I'd love to hear your story. What worked? What didn't? What would you do differently?

Also: what's everyone else building? Always down to trade feedback or just commiserate about the chaos of startup life.

Cheers,

Meysam.

P.S. – If you're also a new parent building a company while functioning on 4 hours of sleep, we should definitely connect. Misery loves company. 😅