# Marcus Redfield, Director of Partnerships at Laneway (62 people, Series A) — read of TrustMRR, June 7 2026

> 9 years in B2B SaaS, currently the internal person founders call when they want intel on a market before pitching us. I write $5K-$15K angel checks maybe twice a year. I commute 24 minutes each way and my 9-year-old has swim practice Thursday nights, which means I'm always catching up on tabs I opened earlier in the week.

## How I got here

Googled "SaaS directory revenue data" after a founder I know asked me where she could research what competitors were actually making before she pitched her round. I'd bounced off Crunchbase (too expensive, too stale) and Product Hunt (no revenue signal at all). TrustMRR showed up third. The meta description said something about "verified MRR." I clicked on it the same day but didn't actually read it until tonight.

## What I clicked first

The subheading pulled me in: "How many 'successful SaaS products' have you visited that have zero revenue?" That is a real pain. I've been burned by directories full of ghost products. The follow-up line, "Founders deserve transparency. Investors need data," landed. I kept reading.

Then I hit the featured products section. SendGrid. Notion. Zapier. These are not discoveries. These are the three most-cited SaaS examples in every Medium article from 2019. And "Notion $5M+ MRR, verified via Stripe" -- I do not believe Notion is sharing Stripe data with a third-party directory. Notion's ARR was reportedly well over $100M before their last raise. $5M MRR reads like a number someone typed to fill a wireframe.

## Where I paused

The scoring section stopped me cold. "52/100 Adoptability. $-25,000 Year-1 take-home (Fermi). 1 in 8 Meaningful-success odds." And then: "Honest disclosure: we don't have live customers on this idea yet."

I had to re-read the whole page after that sentence. Because the page opens with "8,500+ verified SaaS products, $14B+ in combined MRR tracked." That is a live product claim. A directory with 8,500 listings and $14B in tracked MRR has customers. It has engineers maintaining the verification pipeline. It has people logging in to browse it.

Then you get to the bottom and find out this is a concept being sold by "Wishdeal Factory." The $29/month and $99/month tiers are not real tiers you can subscribe to. The "Get listed" button is not a real onboarding flow. This is a pitch document for an idea that does not exist yet, dressed up to look like a live product.

That is a jarring experience.

## What I distrusted

Everything in the hero became suspect after the disclosure. The "8,500 verified SaaS products" number, the "$14B+ in combined MRR tracked," the SendGrid and Notion listings -- those are either fabricated or pulled from public sources and repackaged as if TrustMRR verified them. Neither is what I thought I was looking at when I landed here.

The verification claim is also vague in a way that sounds precise. "Verified via G2, Stripe, AppSumo, or self-reported with proof." Self-reported with proof means the founder uploaded a screenshot. That is not verification. That is a screenshot.

The line "Our team confirms your revenue claims" describes a human process with unknown standards, unknown team size, and no described methodology. If your core value prop is verification, you need to show me the chain of custody, not just the label.

## What would convince me

If this were a real product, I'd want to see one mid-size company (not SendGrid, not Notion -- something I've never heard of, $80K-$400K ARR) with a verification trail I can trace. Show me the G2 review count that implies revenue range X, the public Stripe data or AppSumo sales page, and how you translated that into the listing number. One real example of the verification process is worth more than 8,500 claimed listings.

For the Wishdeal Factory framing -- the "buy the dossier for $5" model -- I'd want to understand whether any previous idea from this factory got built and hit meaningful revenue. One outcome, not a score. A name and a number.

## What I'd ask in an email reply

1. The featured listings (SendGrid, Notion, Zapier) -- did those companies opt in, or did you scrape public data and present it as a listing? I want to understand if "verified" means they consented or just that you found a public number.

2. If I pay $99 for the Adopt tier, what exactly is the "working code starter"? Is it a Next.js scaffold with a Postgres schema, or is it a Notion template with a checklist?

3. Has any product from the Wishdeal Factory reached $5K MRR in the 12 months since launch? I'm not asking for a success guarantee, I'm asking if the factory has one data point.

## Verdict: dismissive

The underlying problem -- SaaS directories full of unverified vanity metrics -- is real. But this page presents a nonexistent product as if it has 8,500 listings and $14B in tracked revenue, then walks that back in a footnote score. That structural dishonesty is a bad sign for a product whose entire value prop is honesty about revenue. I'm not replying.

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*Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-06-07. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*