Latest / The Founder's Journey with Fexingo: First-Time Entrepreneurs, Failures, and Lessons Learned / How a Founder Turned a Single Phone Call Into 100 Customers
Transcript
- Lucas: So we talk a lot on this show about founders who used cheap tactics to validate an idea. A 50-dollar website, a tweet, a free library card. But one of the most overlooked tools is also the oldest — a telephone landline and a list of numbers. Luna: You mean cold calling. In 2026. That still works? Lucas: It does if you do it the way Sarah Chen did. She was a former sales rep at a logistics company, and in early 2025 she wanted to start a SaaS tool for independent freight brokers. Instead of building anything, she spent three days on the phone. Luna: Three days? That's it? Lucas: That's it. She identified 400 freight brokers from public directories — LinkedIn, industry association lists, trade show attendee rosters. Then she called every single one. No email, no LinkedIn message, no demo. Just a script that lasted about four minutes. Luna: What did the script say? I'm imagining an elevator pitch, but for the phone. Lucas: It wasn't a pitch at all. She opened with: 'Hi, I'm Sarah. I'm not selling anything. I'm researching a tool for freight brokers, and I'd love your opinion on one pain point. Do you have two minutes?' That's it. She just listened. Luna: So she was doing customer discovery, not selling. That's smart — lowers the guard. Lucas: Exactly. She asked three questions: What's the most frustrating part of your day? How do you handle it now? And what would an ideal solution look like? By the end of the call, she'd say: 'I'm building exactly that. Can I add you to a waitlist? No commitment, but you'll get early access at a discount.' Luna: And how many said yes? Lucas: Out of 400 calls, she reached 280 people. 112 said yes to the waitlist. She closed the first 100 within a week. And here's the kicker — she hadn't written a single line of code yet. Luna: So she had a waitlist of 100 potential customers before she had a product. That's extreme validation. Lucas: Right. And she used that list to get a small angel check from a former colleague — just 50k — to build a minimum viable product. Launched three months later, and 80 of those 100 converted to paying customers. Luna: Eighty percent conversion from a cold call waitlist? That's remarkable. What was her secret besides the low-pressure approach? Lucas: Personalization. She'd note something from each call — the broker's name, their biggest frustration, a detail about their business. Then when she emailed the waitlist, she'd reference that detail. 'Hi Mark, you mentioned the problem with carrier verification. Our first feature addresses exactly that.' Luna: That's the difference between a generic list and a real relationship. She made each person feel heard. Lucas: And she followed up with everyone who said no. She asked if she could check back in six months. Several of those eventually became customers after launch. Luna: So the total cost was her time plus maybe a hundred bucks for a phone plan and a list. Compared to building a product nobody wants — that's a fraction of the cost of failure. Lucas: Exactly. And I think this story is a good reminder that sometimes the most effective tools are the ones we already have. A phone, a script, and the willingness to hear 'no' a hundred times. Luna: Honestly, if today's conversation was worth a coffee to you, that's the link — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It keeps the show ad-free and helps us share more stories like Sarah's. Lucas: Yeah, listener support makes a real difference. And we appreciate every single one of you who chips in. Luna: Alright, back to the call. So after the waitlist, what was the biggest challenge in building the MVP? Lucas: She said the hardest part was deciding what not to build. The calls had surfaced a dozen feature requests, but she had to pick the one that solved the most urgent pain point. She went with carrier verification, because that was the number one frustration across all her calls. Luna: That's the power of talking directly to customers before building. You don't guess — you know. Lucas: And she kept the feedback loop going. After launch, she called every customer within the first week to ask how it was going. That's how she built a net promoter score that was off the charts. Luna: So the phone wasn't just for validation — it became her ongoing customer success channel. Lucas: Exactly. And now, 18 months later, her company has over 500 paying customers and a team of 12. All starting from a landline and a list of 400 names. Luna: I love that. It's a reminder that you don't need a flashy website or a viral tweet to find your first customers. You just need to pick up the phone and have a genuine conversation. Lucas: And be ready to hear no. Sarah told me she got rejected on 168 of those calls. But she learned something from every single one. Luna: That's the real founder's journey — not the success stories, but the willingness to fail in public and keep going. Lucas: So if you're sitting on an idea today, maybe the cheapest validation tool is already in your pocket. Try making ten calls this week. See what you learn. Luna: And if you do, let us know how it goes. We might feature your story on a future episode. Lucas: That's all for today. Thanks for listening.