Philipp

@DominiqueCAPaul 💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼 let’s goo!

Sales September Day 20 Nine out of ten cold company visits can be pure rejection, but sometimes you just meet an absolute legend. Today was such a day. I started the day by setting goals for the week. Even though I’ll be at a conference in Hannover, I still want to hit at least 30 door visits. An improvement over last week: I began in the morning. The downside was that most responsible people were in meetings. Are cold visits maybe something that works particularly well in the afternoon? Not enough data yet. I used lunchtime (when visits are pointless anyway) to drive from the Zurich area to Basel for a call with a friend of a friend working on microchips in Berlin. It didn’t lead to a direct use case, but I sent demo videos, and we‘ll stay in touch. In Basel (on my way to Hannover), I visited three companies. Two were irrelevant because their products weren’t suitable for AI-based robotics. At the third, the owner was in a meeting, but it might still be relevant, so I followed up by email. Then came the big visit of the day: a foundry producing cast parts from copper alloys, things like outdoor faucets, pipes, and fittings. Normally, I have to push hard just to get a short chat past reception. This time was the opposite. The reception desk was empty except for a phone and an internal contact list. After some online background checks, I reached an operations manager who had been at the company for 15 years. Ten minutes later, he came down. I started my pitch, ready to convince, but his third sentence was simply: “Shall we just grab a coffee and go to a meeting room?” On the way, he handed me goggles, a vest, and steel-capped shoes - asking only afterwards whether I even wanted to see production. (In my head: Hell yes I do, that’s the whole purpose of the trip!). He was incredibly open from the getgo, sharing his experience, showing me around, and encouraging me take photos and videos (with the caveat that I can’t post them publicly, sorry 🥲). I showed him my demos, which he thought were “super cool,” and he explained use cases I only fully grasped once we were walking the production lines. The tasks matched patterns I had seen before: machine tending, manual leak testing for the components (similar to PCB inline testing with green/red lights), and packaging. Again, and I cannot stress this enough: watching the real processes being done and being in the production floor is so important to understand what the requirements for automation are. Visits like today make me so happy I’m doing this trip and remind me that it’s not something calls could come close too. While they are not important insights two things stood out to me: (1) The sheer number of machines. Probably the most impressive collection I’ve seen so far. (2) The huge amount of custom machinery built for their top SKUs. The investment of time and money for custom-built, single-task machines is staggering. I could also take some production items with me to work with as props back home. This ops manager is a legend! By the end, I realized we’d been talking and walking for three straight hours. I didn’t hit my target of ten visits today, but who cares, successes like these are what I’m doing it for and those were 3 hours well spent. I left very happy and drove eight hours north to Hannover for the conference. Unlike thus far, I don’t have friends to stay with here - but I came prepared: sleeping mat, sleeping bag, and a rental car with a big trunk. A fantastic start to the week. Lots of energy for tomorrow.

@DominiqueCAPaul 💪🏼💪🏼 let’s gooo

Last fall, I stopped building and focused entirely on freelancing. It was simple: save up enough to build for >9 months without needing to stress about money. Now I’ve saved €45,000 - enough for 12 months. And the question returns: what do I actually want to build? 🧵

@ParikPatelCFA @FTX_Access I will donate it to Cathy Wood.