Azhar

The memories of my father closing his laptop with frustration remain fresh in my mind to this day. It was another one of those nights where he was trying to finish some legal templates that he has been working on for many years. His solo practice required a constant drafting, revising, and editing of contracts, briefs, and motions. I kept proposing to build a tool for him, but he kept forbidding me from doing just that. I had never thought of the project turning into a "startup" while it was still undergoing development, prior to marketing, or before having its first users.

Here's how it happened.

From Family Favor to "Product"

I started it simply as a favor for my dad. Back in mid-2024, the open-source Large Language Model was starting to be adopted while I spent my free time messing about with GPT-style models. The thought occurred to me whenever my dad would complain, "Have I got to keep typing out the same damn client engagement letters and non-disclosure agreements over and over again?" The system can be set up over a weekend. I built a quick prototype and trained a small language model on a handful of legal documents, then added a basic prompt interface and gave it to him.

He adored it.

In the following week, he quietly presented it to half-a-dozen lawyer colleagues. They also were amazed: a one-click draft of an agreement of retainment spared an hour's worth of work for them. Still, none of them was concerned with scale, domains, and branding. All they needed was the tool itself, no site, no mark, no rate page.

That's when the seed of "maybe this is a real product" was planted.

The Handshake Deal

My initial plan? None. I wasn't developing "SuitsAI" to be a company; I was developing an utility for my father. There was no domain; there was no marketing strategy; there was no formal incorporation. But one fine afternoon, my dad came over with a smile.

"Rafi showed this to his firm's senior partner. He knows a guy who wants it on his phone. He'll pay you."

Suddenly, it was no longer hypothetical. Thereafter, a meeting was scheduled with just my father, the client, and me in a tiny office. I demonstrated the prototype on my laptop, and he signed a contract draft. And the deal was done.

That very handshake helped establish SuitsAI. There was another condition on my favor: I would work for them for a period of three months as a consultant to teach their developers about the code, improve prompts, and ensure a smooth hand-off.

Lessons Learned from My "Pre-Launch" Exit

Solve a Personal Pain First. I didn't chase market research or VC trends. I solved my dad's problem. That laser focus made the solution obvious and irresistible to his peers.
Don't Wait for "Launch." If someone is willing to pay, even informally, take the deal. A corporate purchase order is just a piece of paper; cash in hand is real.
Keep It Simple. No fancy website, no public beta, no "apply for access." Just deliver value.
Leverage Existing Networks. My father's network became my first sales channel. Your network can be your incubator.

From SuitsAI to Something Bigger

Selling SuitsAI taught me that real demand often hides in plain sight, waiting for someone to solve a problem, even if that someone is just doing a favor for family. But it also showed me the limitations of informal pilots:

No scalability, because there was no brand, no onboarding flow, no product roadmap.
No visibility, because it lived in private networks rather than a public domain.
No leverage for bigger funding conversations, investors want traction they can verify.

Why I Didn't Launch It "For Real"

Honestly, I was never strongly compelled to take SuitsAI to the level of a full-fledged startup. The only reason I created it was because it might assist my dad, and that personal stake provided me with enough drive to prototype and iterate. But when that necessity was met, I didn't have strong motivation to scale it further.

Even when others were interested, I came to understand I wasn't enthusiastic about the prospect of being a legal-tech founder and more importantly I wouldn't be jumping out of bed every morning eager to work on this concept. I wanted to work on something that got me excited, something bigger and more technologically ambitious, something which could really feel like mine.

So when the chance to sell it ahead of time and progress came up, I did it because I did not want to be stuck making a product that I was never interested in to begin with.

Why This Story Matters

When you read "sold pre-launch with zero customers," it sounds impossible, and in most cases it is, I just got lucky. It wasn't a flashy exit; it was scrappy, but solved a real need. That's the spirit I try to bring to every project:

Find the unmet need. Build the thing that solves it. Start small. Get real feedback, real money, learn fast, and iterate faster.

I didn't have a grand vision or a multi-million dollar pitch deck. I had a problem, a solution, and a family connection. That's all it took to get started.

If you're building something for "nobody," look instead at the people right in front of you. They might just become your first, and best, customers.