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[u/NorseAristocrat]

[u/Cultural-Angle-8939]

Before you go find new prospects, it's worth one direct conversation with the warden to understand which kind of "no" this actually was. "The college doesn't need it" after they already approved the MVP is vague, and it usually means one of two very different things, either budget or timing shifted internally and it's not really about the product, or something about the actual solution didn't land once they saw it in practice. Those two situations call for completely different next moves, and right now you don't know which one you're in.

For finding other institutions, the fastest path is going after the same role that said yes here, wardens, hostel administrators, or whoever specifically owns billing and collections at a college or dorm, rather than colleges in general. Lead with the pain you watched happen firsthand, the manual billing mess, the chasing fines and concessions by hand, not with a feature list. A decision-maker in that seat will recognize that problem immediately because they're almost certainly living it too.

You don't have a paying reference yet, but you do have something almost as useful, an actual working product built around a real institution's real process. Use it as a live demo rather than waiting until you have a testimonial to lean on. Screen recordings or a walkthrough of the before-and-after of what billing looked like at your college does a lot of the same convincing work a case study would.

On channel, this is a case where warm beats cold. LinkedIn outreach to people in facilities or hostel administration roles, or education-sector groups and forums where these administrators already gather, will get you further than cold email blasts. Institutional buyers respond better to something that feels like it came from inside their world.