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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?

#81

Post by dhosek »

rawtxapp wrote: post #73

I think reddit ads are pretty underrated, they are fairly cheap, you can target specific subreddits and people in those subreddits tend to be passionate about the topic. If you allow them to comment on the ad itself, you might even get more useful feedback in addition to getting users on your mvp (there will also be lots of copy-pasta, but it's not too bad).

Ooh, I was considering some ad buys to promote the kickstarter for the LaTeX book I'm writing. I'd considered advertising on tex.stackexchange.com but found that the pricing is closely held and apparently in the "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" range. Reddit, on the other hand, will let me buy an ad starting at $5 and the site I read talked about the $.75/CPM and said that the biggest challenge is that for niche products, it can be hard to actually get $5 worth of CPM in the time frame of the ad since the $5 is per sub-reddit, but this looks to be exactly what I want right now.

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

#82

Post by Frodo478 »

chdaniel wrote: post #39

A couple of things need to be balanced, I think, as I'm doing just that with PriceUnlock ( https://bychgroup.com/price-unlock/ ) PriceUnlock will help SaaS owners finds the perfect pricing for their product, with more upside and less downside when trying new prices. Besides, it helps you stop leaving money on the table. * THE THINGS* 1. You can "scratch and claw", as Jason Cohen (founder of WPEngine) puts it. He talk…

Thanks! Checked every single link. And let me say that I was thinking using something like price-unlock in the future. I hope to see some updates on the project

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

#85

Post by anonseeker »

bbulkow wrote: post #36

I have a system for this. You have two problems, not one. You need to get useful feedback out of 100pct of people, and you might need more people. To get useful feedback, distill your potential value proposition to one sentence. If you have multiple ways of saying it, make a couple. But one sentence only and write it down. When you have someone from the correct category (target market) on the phone, yes, you need a p…

This is a great comment but it assumes the poster has answered their posted question of "Where do you find potential customers?"

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

#86

Post by marktangotango »

dahart wrote: post #77
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…

Very well said. Will add that from experience, the suggestion of knocking down technical issues is so important it’s mandatory, and it does not stop once you get users, it will be required forever with a successful product. BUT! ... IMO it’s a very slow way to acquire users, and the engagement improvements are incremental at best, unless you are making sweeping changes or hit something viral (unlikely!!) or were miss…

> And don’t get stuck writing ads or blog posts either.

I felt this one.

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

#87

Post by AussieWog93 »

If you've already made your MVP, just try to sell it. Almost all of the feedback you get "organically" will be from people who are actually interested in your product and have a stake in it being able to meet their needs. A lot of it will be in the form of "Does your product do x?" or "How do I do x with your product?.

I would probably get an average of two pieces of valuable feedback a week through customers (or potential customers) emailing me directly and telling me how they use my product or what they liked/regretted. The few times my product has been shown on a forum like HN, a lot of the comments were low-value, hypothetical spitballing or complaints from people that weren't part of the target market anyway.

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

#88

Post by soared »

Depending on what you're building, reddit is by far the best answer. For many things I've built I've been a part of the subreddit for a long time, intimately know the community, built something I know they need, and post it there. If it gets upvoted and they like it, its validated. If it doesn't get upvoted, well, back to the drawing board.

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

#89

Post by grwthckrmstr »

Hey! I understand the position you're at. Wrote a guide[1] previously about how to find customers and talk to them.

To summarize:

1. You'll find users for product feedback the same way you'll find customers to pay for your product.

2. Look for manual, non-scalable ways to get your first set of users and feedback. Don't do anything passive like joining an email list etc. Direct message, because you want conversations at this stage.

3. Where do your customers hang out? It could be on LinkedIn with a certain designation to their profile, Facebook groups, Slack communities, on Twitter, the specific subreddit where people might have the problem you're solving. Or any other internet community, it could be that they search for "specific phrases" on Google when they face the problem you're trying to solve.

Go to these avenues, write comments, be helpful to the community, look for people who are talking about your problem, or write a descriptive post explaining the problem you're trying to solve and that you're looking for beta testers, ask them to DM you.

In the case of Google, throw together a simple landing page, pay for the keywords via Google AdWords and try to get people to message you with messaging buttons or a live chat on the site. Or have a link or calendar embed for people to book a 1:1 demo with you.

4. Make sure you make an offer to make it worth others. Tell them they'll get 90 days of free beta access in exchange for providing feedback.

Keep focusing on having as many 1:1 conversations as possible. When you try various methods, one of them will work better than the rest.

Double down on what's working and get more people. Eventually that'll become your marketing channel.

[1] https://www.preetamnath.com/micro-saas/validate-saas-idea

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

#90

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

soared wrote: post #88

Depending on what you're building, reddit is by far the best answer. For many things I've built I've been a part of the subreddit for a long time, intimately know the community, built something I know they need, and post it there. If it gets upvoted and they like it, its validated. If it doesn't get upvoted, well, back to the drawing board.

Many subreddits have a no promotion policy. Mods will strictly enforce this/ban you if you try.
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