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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?

#101

Post by showsover »

JamesBarney wrote: post #16

For OP: What is your product and who is your target audience? Generally ways you find users are outbound: find potential users then call/email them. Inbound: find out what your potential users are searching for Community: find online communities where your potential users hang out For other people besides poster who are earlier in this process. Figure out your marketing/sales/go to market strategy before you start co…

My product is in the FIRE movement: tracking your net worth and figuring out how to get there. It's a simple webapp at the moment that tracks your investments and helps you guesstimate how much you need to save every month to achieve your goal. I'd appreciate any feedback about it! https://roadto.fi

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

#102

Post by mud_dauber »

arnonejoe wrote: post #71
fny wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people like to please people Related, if you can distance yourself from the product. Don't be the founder, owner, creator. Act like some other third party who is getting feedback. People often mask criticism, and rarely do people tell someone that their baby is ugly. ;)

The book 'The Mom Test' is all about this.

Seconded.

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

#103

Post by vizually »

1. Depending on your application, the end users can be from different target market/background. If that will be the case with your app, list down the top X markets and create a specific landing page which "talks" the language of the target market.

2. Cold-outreach, Find your ideal target customers on LinkedIn/Twitter, google them, message/email them on social media (lead finding tools) and ask for help. Be willing to offer to pay them for 10-15 minutes of their time. At least a few will help without asking for money.

3. Assuming what you are selling is described on a landing page (doesn't have to be), you can do a user test by asking questions to consumers using survey tools) the goal is find out if users understand what you are trying to sell (clarity of message, trustworthiness)

You can use tools like Survey Monkey, Google Surveys, even Facebook ads.

here are a couple of examples of a purpose-built tool for feedback called ninjafeedback:

https://ninjafeedback.com/simple-survey-tool

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

#104

Post by blacktriangle »

sbayeta wrote: post #93
blacktriangle wrote: post #10

For us, it was trade shows. We did the math: what would we pay per person to have them take a look at our software, and how many people did we think we'd get to come by our booth at a show? I realize this can vary by industry though, in ours a standard booth is roughly $1000 which is far more affordable than most. We learned a ton and made contact with our first customers who ended up being vital in helping us refine…

This resonates a lot. What line of business are you in?

Human resources and regulatory compliance.

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

#105

Post by f6v »

showsover wrote: post #100
f6v wrote: post #17

> without spamming HN or reddit Do you customers spend time there? Then go ahead and ask for feedback. > P.S. A fiverr clone for product owners or analysts might be what I'm looking for here. Cold emails through LinkedIn? Or product owners and analysts your friend/former colleagues can introduce you to? Product meet-ups are a thing as well (most likely online). You might try talking to people and asking for feedback…

They do spend time there, it's one of the only places that i know where FIRE enthousiasts hang out regularely. I'm creating something to track your net worth so you can map out your road to FI. I'd appreciate any feedback if possible: https://roadto.fi

1. Where do you get the data from? Is it supposed to fetch it from my accounts somehow?

2. Why would I trust you with my data? I mean, do you have a bank-level security?

3. 3 "Create account" buttons seem a bit excessive, as you can see all 3 of them without scrolling.

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

#106

Post by f6v »

f6v wrote: post #105
showsover wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do spend time there, it's one of the only places that i know where FIRE enthousiasts hang out regularely. I'm creating something to track your net worth so you can map out your road to FI. I'd appreciate any feedback if possible: https://roadto.fi

1. Where do you get the data from? Is it supposed to fetch it from my accounts somehow? 2. Why would I trust you with my data? I mean, do you have a bank-level security? 3. 3 "Create account" buttons seem a bit excessive, as you can see all 3 of them without scrolling.

And "Create an account" button shows "Login" tab instead of "Register" on Safari.

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

#107

Post by luxuryballs »

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 reminds me of a book I read recently called “New Sales. Simplified.” by Mike Weinberg, in terms of engaging with people on their terms and the “sales story”, highly recommended, and he narrates it himself on Audible. Very approachable for non-sales people but also refreshingly “back to basics” for those with sales exposure especially if wanting to focus on new sales acquisitions rather than just repeat customers.

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

#108

Post by leoluo »

The key here is to be super intentional about which customer groups you want to reach out to regardless of how easy is it to get them. For example, when public.com was in their beta phase, they avoided the low hanging fruit of going to those wall street bets and those reddit groups and instead took a very deliberate approach of looking for more diverse and underserved communities and go after them (e.g. professional women's slack groups)

I wrote more about their story here in my substack (https://consumerstartups.substack.com/p/-39-how-to-make-stoc...). I also share a bunch of stories about how other successful early stage startups acquired their first batch of users and validated their ideas.

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

#110

Post by JamesBarney »

showsover wrote: post #101
JamesBarney wrote: post #16

For OP: What is your product and who is your target audience? Generally ways you find users are outbound: find potential users then call/email them. Inbound: find out what your potential users are searching for Community: find online communities where your potential users hang out For other people besides poster who are earlier in this process. Figure out your marketing/sales/go to market strategy before you start co…

My product is in the FIRE movement: tracking your net worth and figuring out how to get there. It's a simple webapp at the moment that tracks your investments and helps you guesstimate how much you need to save every month to achieve your goal. I'd appreciate any feedback about it! https://roadto.fi

Then I think a community driven approach would be a good place to find potential users for feedback.

https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fire/

https://www.reddit.com/r/fatFIRE/

Also facebook.

Not to mention there are a ton of bloggers. Start emailing bloggers in this space and explain why your app is better than the rest.

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