I went to Miami thinking I was there to sell software services. The funny thing is, I came back realizing I was mostly there to learn how people buy trust.
That sounds a bit dramatic, but it is honestly the simplest way to explain the trip.
I went there because I want Code Of Us to work with more American clients. The market feels healthier. The projects seem more attractive. Budgets are bigger. Ambition is different and if I am being honest, I wanted to see how we compare.
Are we good enough? Is our pitch good enough? Do we actually understand what American buyers care about? Or are we just sitting in Europe assuming that good delivery should somehow be enough?
Miami answered some of that very quickly.
And not always in a comfortable way.
I was not really selling software
Before going there, I thought the pitch was simple.
Code Of Us helps companies build software. Especially SaaS products. We can come in early, help with an MVP, prove that we are good and then hopefully turn that into a long-term product partnership.
That is still true, but it is also not sharp enough.
A lot of companies can say they build software. A lot of companies can say they build MVPs. A lot of companies can say they are fast, reliable and experienced.
Nobody cares until they understand why you are different.
That was probably my first real lesson.
I was not really selling software services, Iwas selling risk reduction and clarity
I was selling the feeling that if someone trusts us with their product, we will not just blindly build what they ask for. We will help them figure out what should be built first, what should be cut and what should wait.
That is a very different pitch.
I do not think I fully understood that before being in the room with people who hear pitches all the time.
America is direct
One thing I expected was that Americans would be direct.
That part was exactly true.
People talk about money directly. They ask real questions. They do not waste much time dancing around the point.
I did not experience that as rude. Actually, I liked it.
It felt honest.
If someone is interested, you can feel it. If they are not, you can also feel that pretty quickly. There is less pretending.
In Europe, I think people can sometimes be polite for too long. Conversations stay soft. Everyone says something nice. Nobody wants to make the moment uncomfortable.
In Miami, if the pitch is unclear, the conversation just moves on.
That can be brutal if you are not prepared and it is also useful, because you learn fast.
You learn if your positioning makes sense. You learn if your first sentence is boring. You learn if you are explaining too much. You learn if people understand what you do or if you are just making noise with business words.
That kind of feedback is painful, but it is much better than silence.
Speed networking is hard, but worth it
There was one part of the event that felt like speed dating for business.
You sit down. You talk. You explain yourself. You listen. You try to find some signal. Then you move on.
After two hours, I was completely washed.
Not physically tired.
More like mentally cooked.
You repeat your positioning again and again, but every person reacts slightly differently. Some care about price. Some care about trust. Some care about speed. Some care about whether you understand their industry. Some just want to know if you are serious.
The hard part is that you do not have time to slowly become interesting.
You need to be clear immediately.
That is where I realized how much work I still need to do, because if I need five minutes to explain why Code Of Us is valuable, that is already too long.
The value needs to be sharper, not more complicated.
Sharper.
The competition was both worse and better than expected
I went there partly to compare myself with competitors.
This is maybe not the most noble thing to admit, but it is true.
When I saw a lot of the competition, my first reaction was:
We can beat this.
By quality, by technical ability, by care, by product thinking, by engineering standards.
I genuinely believe that.
Then I saw one company that serves a very similar client profile and their presentation was a masterclass.
They had a clear story.
Strong hooks.
They understood the fears of the buyer.
They had good examples.
They made the problem feel obvious.
They made their solution feel safe.
And that hit me harder than the weaker competitors.
Because the lesson was not “we are worse.”
The lesson was “we need to level up the way we communicate our value.”
There is a big difference.
They were not necessarily better at building software, but they were much better at making people understand why they should trust them.
That matters, probably more than I wanted to admit.
Being good is not enough
This was the main professional lesson.
Being good is not enough.
You can have a strong team. You can care. You can deliver. You can build quality products. You can have taste. You can know when scope is wrong. You can see problems before the client sees them.
If people do not understand that quickly, it does not matter.
The market does not reward invisible competence.
That sounds obvious, but I think a lot of service companies secretly believe the work should speak for itself.
It does not, especially not at the beginning.
The work speaks later.
Before that, your positioning speaks. Your website speaks. Your pitch speaks. Your examples speak. Your confidence speaks. Your questions speak.
And if all of that is unclear, the buyer never gets to the part where they discover how good the work is.
That is uncomfortable for technical founders, because we often want delivery to be the whole answer, but sales does not work like that.
Especially in B2B.
Especially in a competitive market.
Especially in America.
I need a better ICP
Another thing Miami made obvious is that “we can help many types of clients” is not positioning.
It may be true, but it is not useful.
Code Of Us can serve a lot of clients. We have the team for it. We can build web apps, mobile apps, SaaS products, internal tools, AI features, backends, infrastructure and a lot more.
But if I say that too broadly, I sound like every other software agency and that is the problem.
The broader the offer, the harder it is for a buyer to remember you.
I need to define our ICP better.
Not because we cannot help others, but because sales needs focus.
A founder building a B2B SaaS product has different fears than an enterprise team modernizing internal software. A startup trying to launch an MVP has different needs than a company with a messy existing codebase. A non-technical founder buying software for the first time needs a different conversation than a CTO who has been burned by agencies before.
If I speak to everyone, I make the pitch weaker for the people we actually want.
That is something I knew intellectually and was advised multiple times on.
Miami made me feel it.
In-person trust is different
Cold email is fine. Content helps. A good website matters, but in-person trust is different.
There is something you cannot replace about being in the room. You hear the way people talk about their problems. You notice what makes them lean in. You notice what makes them check out. You get objections in real time.
You also get judged in real time.
Your confidence. Your clarity. Your energy. Your ability to listen. Your ability to stop pitching and actually understand what the other person is trying to solve.
That last part matters a lot.
One of my biggest takeaways was that I should focus more on networking and less on hard selling.
I noticed trust sometimes comes before the pitch, especially when you sell software services from a country no one can even find on a map.
Nobody is buying a small object from you. They are buying a relationship. They are buying months of collaboration. They are buying the belief that you will not waste their time, budget or product momentum.
That is not closed by one clever sentence, it is built over time.
Next time I would structure the trip differently
I also realized I could have planned the trip much better.
If I am flying to the US, I should not just attend one event.
I should chain multiple events.
Pre-book meetings.
Look for paid conferences with curated attendee lists.
Know exactly who I want to meet before I arrive.
Use every day properly.
That sounds obvious now, but it was a real lesson.
Going to an event is not everything, the strategy is everything around the event.
Who do you contact before? Who do you meet during? Who do you follow up with after and in what way?
What content do you create from it? What conversations do you try to start? What introductions do you ask for?
I did some of this, but not enough.
In late September, I am planning to go to San Francisco and Seattle and I will approach that trip very differently.
More prepared.
More focused.
More direct.
Less “let’s see what happens.”
More “these are the people I want to meet and this is the conversation I want to earn.”
Miami was also a personal test
The trip was not only business.
I went with my wife and kid, so it was also partly a family trip.
And honestly, Miami surprised us in a good way.
I felt comfortable there. People were friendly. It felt safe and kid friendly. Service was way better than what we are used to in most of Europe. Everything felt clean and well maintained.
The city had energy.
The food was amazing.
The weather was hot and humid in a way I was not fully ready for, but I liked the energy of the place.
The beaches looked better in photos than they felt to us, though.
Sorry Miami, but Croatia below Split still wins that one easily.
Still, I could see us spending more time there.
That was probably the private lesson.
America felt intense, competitive and very direct, but it did not feel impossible.
Actually, now when I think about it, it feels very achievable and doable.
It felt like a place where you need to show up properly.
That is different.
The real lesson
I went to Miami to sell software services and came back thinking much more about trust.
How do you earn it? How do you communicate it? How do you show someone quickly that you are not just another vendor? How do you prove that you understand their business problem before trying to sell your technical solution?
That is the part I want to get better at.
Because Code Of Us does not just need to become better at delivery. We need to become better at everything around delivery.
Better positioning.
Better pitch.
Better website.
Better ICP.
Better examples.
Better follow-up.
Better network.
Better way of explaining what we already know how to do.
The actual work still matters.
Of course it does.
But the work is not enough if people do not understand why they should choose you.
At least, now I know what to focus on.
What I would tell myself before going
If I could talk to myself before the trip, I would say this:
Do not try to prove that you can build software.
That is not interesting enough.
Prove that you understand what should be built, what should not be built and why the order matters.
Be more direct.
Ask better questions.
Do not hide behind a broad offer.
Do not assume quality is obvious.
Do not treat networking as a side activity.
When the market puts you through the grinder, pay attention.
That is where the learning is.
Miami taught me that B2B sales is not about pushing harder.
It is about becoming clearer.
Clear on who you serve. Clear on what problem you solve. Clear on why you are credible. Clear on what you believe.
Clear enough that the right person can understand it before the conversation is already over.