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Ask HN: Where do you find potential customers to validate your idea / MVP?

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Re: Ask HN: Where do you find potential customers to validate your idea / MVP?

#51

Post by xsmasher »

There was a trick in "Four hour work week" - I'm going from memory, might not be accurate - where Ferriss would place eBay listings for nonexistent products and then cancel the auction before it completed; any bidding would indicate real customer interest.

You could do something similar with facebook ads. Make ads for the finished product, if people click take them to a "Register for more info" page. Now you have some email addresses of interested people.

This only measures superficial interest in a concept of course; it doesn't give feedback on your actual product.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find potential customers to validate your idea / MVP?

#52

Post by everlost »

Highly recommend Brian's Tacklebox program. It helped me create a framework for validating my product idea, while gaining the skills (and confidence) for running customer interviews, landing page tests, mapping markets, etc.

Obviously, you still need to put in the work to reach out to potential users. But the program helps you approach it in a structured format.

https://gettacklebox.com/

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find potential customers to validate your idea / MVP?

#54

Post by mmukhin »

Send 200-500 personal cold emails to the person who is the buyer of the product.. over the course of 1-2 months. Dont bulk send, 5 emails take me 30min.

To get emails, ideally find a directory of companies you want to solve the problem for, then u can get a trustworthy person on Fiverr make u a list of names/companies/emails. I do it 50 at a time.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find potential customers to validate your idea / MVP?

#55

Post by bellttyler »

xsmasher wrote: post #51

There was a trick in "Four hour work week" - I'm going from memory, might not be accurate - where Ferriss would place eBay listings for nonexistent products and then cancel the auction before it completed; any bidding would indicate real customer interest. You could do something similar with facebook ads. Make ads for the finished product, if people click take them to a "Register for more info" page. Now you have som…

The 4 hour work week is such an awesome book.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find potential customers to validate your idea / MVP?

#56

Post by nocommandline »

I faced/am facing the same 2 issues with https://nocommandline.com which is a GUI for Google App Engine

1) How to find people to validate your idea: I've used Show HN, Stackoverflow (I respond to questions about Google App Engine and a few other areas), Google Groups forum for GAE. I'm also trying Twitter by responding to comments that I feel are related to GAE, Cloud hosting, etc - basically any thing that I feel is related to the App or just general knowledge that I have that is helpful to someone

2) How to get feedback from users: This is the part that I'm struggling with. I have a link on the website for submitting bugs, providing feedback, etc. I haven't gotten much feedback from it. The windows version of the App had some bugs at the time of my ShowHN (I mistakenly exposed the download link for the Windows version) and I could see multiple people downloaded it but I didn't receive word from anybody saying it wasn't working or complaints about it. I have since fixed the bug.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find potential customers to validate your idea / MVP?

#57

Post by staunch »

How do you "talk to your users"?

1. By getting "distribution", which means people buying, or considering buying, your product or service by visiting your web site, taking sales calls, etc.

2. Then you talk to these people who bought (or didn't buy) your product or service about why or why not. This can be via email, chat, phone, survey, etc.

How do you get "distribution"?

1. You buy it with money (ads, etc) if you have the money to do so (it's not cheap).

2. Or you farm for it on someone else's platform (SEO, media stories, etc) if you have more time than money.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find potential customers to validate your idea / MVP?

#58

Post by senko »

adav wrote: post #8

Check out The Mom Test and find an audience to talk to first. Validate any idea long before you build an MVP. In my opinion it's two separate steps. I must admit I've also fallen in your trap many times myself. It's too fun to just go ahead and build something sometimes without considering the best way to find those early users first.

Seconding The Mom Test recommendations. Terrible name, incredible book - full of down to earth, actionable advice.

That said, the first step is finding your customers. If you can't find them to talk with them, how will you find them to sell to them?

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find potential customers to validate your idea / MVP?

#59

Post by nocommandline »

lovedswain wrote: post #31
takinola wrote: post #11

This is actually a very insightful question. You get them the same way you plan to get customers after you have built the product. If you do not have a way to get customers to test the idea, then you do not have a way to get customers after you build the product. The process of building an MVP includes the process of figuring out distribution. That said, it depends a lot on what type of product you are building. If y…

> The process of building an MVP includes the process of figuring out distribution. As blindingly obvious as this is, I've never seen it put quite so concisely. Fantastic. I could've cut short so many bullshit discussions this way

>> The process of building an MVP includes the process of figuring out distribution. Maybe I'm being picky here but I disagree a little bit with this. At the start, your MVP might just have been for you i.e. to scratch an itch you have and it is only later that you think about getting other people to use/pay for it. So maybe your above statement will (should??) apply if your MVP was targeted for the public

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find potential customers to validate your idea / MVP?

#60

Post by riku_iki »

danenania wrote: post #35

Betalist is good for this: https://betalist.com/ I'd also recommend spending the next 30 minutes putting together a very rough description and a mailing list sign up form, and then posting a comment in this thread with a link. Being on the front page of HN will get you hundreds to thousands of visitors, and it isn't easy, so don't miss the opportunity!

Such posts very rarely appear on front page, maybe 0.1% of them.
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