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