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I coach early-stage tech founders in niche markets who aren’t seeing the traction they expected
— and who need deep customer insight and a practical, real-world path to product–market fit and repeatable sales.
You started with a strong premise. What matters now is understanding how your prospects actually think, evaluate options, and make decisions.
Where niche-market tech startups get stuck
The symptoms:
You’re building a solid product — but the market isn’t reacting
You’re hearing polite interest, or having enthusiastic calls, but there’s no follow-up and contracts are slow to close, or stall out.
Early marketing produces little or nothing
You haven’t found messaging that actually works with real buyers.
Investors want traction you can’t yet demonstrate.
They invested in your potential... but they’re now pushing for results
The Cause
Niche markets don’t behave like mainstream SaaS buyers. But, too often founders rely on intuition or pitch feedback instead of real buyer conversations — which means they never learn how their customers actually think, decide, or buy.
A practical, insight-based path to product–market fit.
My Approach:
My approach is a practical, real-world process — built around a structured technique I’ve developed over two decades of selling into niche markets. It’s a disciplined, conversation-led technique that helps founders reveal what their buyers value, how they make decisions, and what truly drives traction.
Talk to real buyers
Surveys and pitch feedback offer signals, but real learning comes from live conversations with the people who feel the problem and can describe how they think, decide, and buy.
Ask for advice — not the sale
When you stop pitching, buyers open up. They share their priorities, language, objections, and what they’d realistically pay for. My technique gives you the structure, prompts, and sequencing that consistently lead to useful, actionable information.
What you walk away with
Clarity on your ideal niche customer
You’ll know exactly who is most likely to buy — and why.
A repeatable customer-conversation process
Scripts, templates, and a structure you can use for discovery, pricing validation, and exploring new markets.
Messaging that resonates
You can more easily develop website copy, sales language, pitch narratives, and content that reflects the words and themes customers actually use.
A sales story and process your team can use
We turn your insights into a practical sales process your entire team can follow — making every conversation clearer, shorter, and more effective.
Is this coaching right for you?
For Pre-seed to Series A Founders
This coaching isn’t for everyone. I only work with founders who have a clear need, a real buyer-insight gap, and a niche market they’re finding difficult to break into.
You're a strong fit if:
You’re an early-stage tech startup (pre-seed through Series A).
You’re building, launching, or trying to regain traction in a focused market.
You’re selling into a niche, specialized, or non-obvious market.
Your customers don’t fit a generic “SaaS buyer” profile — and you need to reach them effectively.
You’re struggling with marketing and sales.
Whether it’s understanding customer needs, sharpening your positioning, setting pricing, or building a repeatable sales process — you know something isn’t working.
You want real-world founder experience, not theory.
You want practical, honest, experience-based guidance — not frameworks pulled from a book.
You’d benefit from a calm, direct, high-touch coaching relationship.
You want someone steady, experienced, and available on a schedule.
About Gene
I’m a serial tech entrepreneur who started my first company in the late 1990s and have spent the decades since building businesses in one of the hardest markets imaginable: selling high-tech solutions to cultural nonprofits — organizations with limited budgets, limited technical capacity, and long decision cycles. I learned quickly how to reach buyers who don’t respond to broad outreach or generic messaging; success required precision, patience, and deep customer understanding.
That’s the mindset I bring to coaching — decades of niche-market experience combined with a current, real-world approach to helping early-stage founders gain traction.
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How Coaching works
Every founder and every niche market is different — so I don’t offer a one-size-fits-all program.
Here’s how we begin:
01
Diagnostic Call
We talk through your market, your product, your customers, and your biggest obstacles. I learn where you’re stuck, what you’ve already tried, and whether I’m the right person to help.
02
Tailored Engagement Plan
Based on that conversation, I craft a short proposal outlining how we can work together. Most engagements involve weekly calls, structured customer-conversation work, and ongoing updates as you gain insight.
03
Practical, process-driven coaching with consistent engagement.
We’ll work closely together through weekly meetings and updates, with clear next steps and milestones.
“Gene taught me to think like a strategist: measure every stage of the pipeline, understand exactly where momentum builds or fades, and stay disciplined about the numbers that actually drive growth. That mindset doesn’t just create a strong pipeline — it builds long-lasting customer relationships rooted in alignment and measurable success.”
— Erica Salm Rench, CMO, Sidecar.ai
“From day one, Gene has shown incredible patience and an open mind. This translated into countless hours of brainstorming and consultation that helped me make smarter decisions as an early-stage founder. On top of that, his connections in NYC were vital for building our network in the US—his introductions directly led to us securing amazing investors and clients.”
Jakub Fiebig Founder & CEO Onstageai.com
“But it wasn’t just your faith that made a difference; it was your guidance. From helping me design my first survey to validate market demand to providing invaluable advice on navigating venture capital fundraising, your insights played a major role in my journey.
It was a long road from being an international student in the U.S. to becoming a venture-backed founder raising institutional funding in both New York and California, and your mentorship was a constant anchor through that transformation.”
Hassan Bin Fahim, Founder, HBF Capital
When we first started working with Gene, we were extremely early stage. We had a strong idea and the underlying technology was already taking shape, but we were honestly lost when it came to turning that into a real company. We were pre-revenue, had no sales motion, and no clear sense of what to do next.
Gene met with us consistently, usually once a week, and helped us build momentum in a very practical way. He did not operate at the level of vague advice. He helped us identify exactly what we needed to do in the near term to move forward. In our case, that meant getting out of our own heads and into the market.
He guided us through a structured approach to early outreach that focused on learning rather than selling. We identified who we needed to talk to, where to find them, and how to reach out in a way that invited conversation. Those interviews kept us personally connected to the people we were building for and taught us the language of the market. They also surfaced real gaps in our thinking.
Several of those conversations led directly to a significant pivot, one that became the foundation of the company we are building today. As we learned, Gene helped us translate that insight into clearer positioning, a more mature product, and eventually a more intentional sales motion.
Looking back, it is hard to imagine getting to where we are now without that period of close, tactical guidance. Our company has grown into a market-leading platform with meaningful revenue, and that trajectory traces directly back to the work we did with Gene early on. His ability to bring clarity, focus, and forward motion at exactly the right stage made a lasting impact on our startup journey.
Gene brings clarity and momentum to early-stage startups by helping founders take concrete, market-driven steps at exactly the moment they need it most.
Thomas Altman
Co-founder, Tasio.co
What founders say
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