A first-time founder had a thesis about helping freelancers manage irregular income. We validated the market, prototyped in code, and built the MVP that secured their $2.1M seed round.
Based on your invoicing pattern, expect $6,800 next month. Consider increasing your tax vault by 3%.
You've set aside $12,400 for estimated taxes. You're on track for Q2.
Your SaaS subscriptions increased 22% this quarter. Three tools overlap in functionality.
The founder, a former freelance designer, experienced the pain of irregular income firsthand: feast-or-famine cash flow, tax surprises, and the constant anxiety of not knowing what next month looks like. She believed an intelligent "income smoothing" tool could solve this for millions of freelancers.
The problem was clear, but the solution was not. Should it be a banking product? A budgeting tool? An AI advisor? She had no technical co-founder, limited runway, and needed to get to a fundable MVP fast.
We ran a focused validation sprint before writing a single line of product code. The goal: figure out what freelancers would actually pay for, and what was just a nice-to-have.
Talked to freelancers across design, dev, writing, and consulting. Income anxiety was universal, but the trigger to act was tax season, not daily budgeting.
Mapped 18 competitors. Most were generic budgeting tools. None combined income smoothing with automated tax vaulting for freelancers specifically.
Built a one-page site describing the core concept. 1,200 email signups in 10 days from targeted Reddit and Twitter posts. Conversion rate: 14.2%.
Surveyed waitlist. 67% said they'd pay $9-15/month. The income smoothing + tax vault combo was the highest-rated feature pair by a wide margin.
With validation data in hand, we scoped the MVP to two core features: automated income smoothing (analyzing deposit patterns and distributing a steady "paycheck") and smart tax vaulting (auto-setting aside estimated taxes with each deposit).
We built a working code prototype in week one that the founder could demo to potential investors. By week four, the beta was live with 50 waitlist users providing daily feedback. We iterated through three major pivots based on that feedback before locking the v1 feature set.
User interviews, competitive analysis, landing page test, willingness-to-pay survey
Working prototype with mock data, investor-ready demo, core UX flow validated
Plaid integration, income smoothing algorithm, tax vault logic, 50-user beta
Three major pivots from user feedback, AI insights feature, App Store submission
$2.1M raised with live product, 1,200 waitlist, and 89% beta retention as proof points
"I came in with a thesis and some sketches. Signal Labs helped me figure out what was actually worth building, then built it with me. The code prototype in week one is what got my first investor meeting. The live beta is what closed the round."Priya Sharma, Founder & CEO, Vaultline
Vaultline launched on the App Store with 1,200 waitlist users converting at 34% in the first week. Thirty-day retention hit 89%, well above the fintech benchmark of 25-30%. The income smoothing algorithm reduced users' self-reported financial stress scores by 41% in the first month.
The seed round closed at $2.1M, led by a top fintech-focused fund. The founder credited the speed of validation and the quality of the working product as the two factors that differentiated her pitch.