DealForge autonomously sources, scores, and writes investment memos on venture deals. Stop manually hunting.
1,180+ deals tracked · 22 AI investment memos · Updated daily
Finally launched after 3 years. Now I have no idea if it actually works.
We soft launched this week. Three years of building. Dozens of setbacks. Pushed the launch date back more times than I want to admit. And now it's live. The feeling is strange. Relief mixed with complete uncertainty. **What we built:** Interactive video for lead capture. Creators embed polls, quizzes, galleries, and lead magnets directly on their video timeline. Viewers engage without leaving the video. No landing pages. No forms. No context switching. **The problem:** YouTube creators need 1,700-5,000 views to get 50 email signups. That's the industry benchmark for educational content at 1-3% conversion. The reason? Eleven friction points between interest and signup: Watch video → hear "link in description" → leave video → scroll description → find link → click → wait for page load → remember why you clicked → fill form → confirm email → check inbox → click confirmation link. Research shows each step loses 30-50% of people. By step 11, almost everyone is gone. **Early results:** We tested with two creators: * Creator A (52k subs): First lead at \~150 views * Creator B (1.6k subs): First lead at \~180 views Both did something that turned out to be critical: they announced the interactive moments from inside their videos. "I'll link a poll here." "Take the quiz when it pops up." Made it feel like part of the content, not an interruption. **But here's the thing:** Two data points isn't validation. It's a hint. Maybe even luck. I have no idea if this holds up across different niches, audience sizes, or content styles. No idea if we've actually solved something fundamental or just built a feature that happened to work twice. Most SaaS founders spend years adding features. We spent years removing steps. Still don't know if that's the right bet. Anyone else ever realize the solution wasn't adding more, it was taking away everything nobody wanted in the first place?
The product addresses a high-friction pain point in the massive creator economy, but a three-year development cycle for an unvalidated MVP suggests significant execution and agility concerns. While early anecdotal conversion data is a positive signal, the high platform dependency and founder's own uncertainty indicate a high-risk, early-stage profile.