vitovito

I used to tell founders that if they can't figure out how to find the right people to get feedback from early, they're also not going to be able to find the right people to sell to later.

The logistics are the same at either end of the process.

If they expect to hire a salesperson once they have a product, why not hire a research panel vendor or a firm like GLG to get validation?

If they want to own their sales and customer acquisition channels once they have a product, they have to figure out how to build an audience to get validation.

Is it a dark art of hustle and luck, or is it just marketing, and most founders don't want to do that?

The only difference is what you're selling, but the process is equivalent.

If you still have your proof of purchase (if you bought it from Apple directly, they should also have it), you can take your receipt and the laptop to an Apple Store and they'll remove the activation lock. They may wipe the machine in the process, I don't recall.

(We had some company iPhones in our device lab, not on MDM, and people would attach them to their personal accounts, so this was an occasional hassle.)

I don't use it as a daily driver any more (I did for a bit while traveling, for obvious reasons), but it's been very useful as bench computer. Doesn't take up as much room as a laptop on a desk, has both a USB 2.0 and a USB 3.0 port for serial consoles and data transfers, is proper x86 so I don't have issues with running proprietary flashers on it. I think it's running 18.04 right now because I needed to flash an old Jetson board.

There's only a fixed amount of phone numbers, but you can gate the person behind a single number by an extension, just like businesses do.

Give out your regular number, and generate a unique extension for each business or individual.

Have an IVR, bot, or service answer the number. "Hi, you've reached blakeburch, if you have an extension number, please dial it now." Valid extensions get routed to you, invalid or expired ones go to voicemail.