My 6 weeks in SF
Reason for the trip
We were basically at a "do-or-die" stage with the company, so CEO wants to inject life into the company again.
So the plan was, we go to SF, work hard for 6 weeks on the new idea, and if by the end of the 6 weeks, we have no traction, we shut it down.
How it went
The first 2-3 weeks, we spent on building up a full GTM pipeline from a seed list of companies we want to reach out to, qualification, lead research, and cold emailing.
Over 3 weeks, we managed to automate the pipeline and this allowed us to reach ~500-1000 personalised, cold emails a day. This allowed us to put the product into the hands of a few interested parties.
Learnings: Market feedback is key. Whenever we build something, we should aim to fail as fast as possible, and the way to do that is to get real feedback. It doesn't matter what you think, all that matters is what other people think of the product.
At the end of 6 weeks, we are in the process of closing some pilots (nothing signed yet, have a few kinks to work out, but positive signs).
Thoughts on SF vs SG
As of the current time of writing, the meta in SF is 996, where people work as hard as they can to get their product to work. There's a bit of whiplash when you see people in SF working so hard, and you see people in Singapore complaining on reddit if their employer enforces a 5 day in-office policy.
My take is, if you really want to "make it" in a tech startup, you must spend some time in essentially the tech capital of the world. You get to see how people work, and what it takes to win in tech.