We Built the MVP. Then We Hit Pause — Here’s Why

Over the past month, I’ve been building a marketplace for residential painting services. Think: homeowners get free quotes, painters pay a fee per closed job. Classic lead-gen twist on a home services platform.

As a second-time founder, a few things become more obvious!

🚀 We launched fast:

I used what I learned in 5 years (plus some ChatGPT magic) to create a high-converting landing page for Pinturas Lisboa.

🧪 We tested manually:

Even before our MVP was ready, we started running ads and sending leads to painters via WhatsApp.

🤔 But then came the hard truth:

You can build the slickest tech in the world, but if customers aren’t buying, none of it matters!

But one thing that took me a while to figure out was how to do User Research! Most people try to create amazing persona profiles, fancy PowerPoints and customer journeys

📞 Turns out, “user research” is code for: pick up the phone and call someone!

That’s when we realized what was missing.

Most people don’t want to book a painter without speaking to a human.

They want to know:

• “Can you fix this humidity problem?”

• “Will you break my grandmother’s lamp?”

• “Can you match this weird old paint?”

So now our challenge is – can we answer all of these questions in an easily scalable way?

I’ll keep sharing what we learn as we try to turn quotes into real jobs