Just sent you an email. Would be great to talk.
Ask HN: How to find help marketing an MVP to programmers?
21–26 of 26 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to find help marketing an MVP to programmers?
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an API you use to send push notifications to iOS devices that have your app installed. More specifically: it (a) makes debugging missing notifications easier, as it often feels like a notification just disappears into the ether, (b) it's priced based on actual usage, and (c) it saves you a ton of time from having to deal with Apple's APNS, which in my experience can get quite hairy. Based on our split testing an…
You know, your pricing page says the same thing you just did "It's priced based on actual usage". That's not true. It's a flat fee of $25 per month. Priced on usage would be $0.01 per push message or something, so the price scales based on actual usage. That being said, I want to use this.
Cool! We're going to be putting in coupon codes in a day or two. I'd be happy to give you an extended discount if you'd like to give us feedback on the service. Shoot us an email (info -at- pushlayer.com) and I'll hook you up.
Re: Ask HN: How to find help marketing an MVP to programmers?
#23Have you given any thought as to how you might grow later on, when you want to scale? I ask because this is a good opportunity for you to also test (“validate” as you put it) that part of your business concept.
Definitely. From a technical standpoint, it's Rails app on Heroku (using unicorn), using Sidekiq. I've got a ton of background with Rails and scaling on this platform, though not a lot with Sidekiq. I'm very excited about the possibilities with this though, and I've used redis quite a bit. On our backlog is to do some serious load testing. I'm also quite aware of the recent RapGenius/random routing stuff.
I'm planning to do a series of blog posts about how we built the site and some cool lessons we learned.
From a marketing perspective, the plan is to make an absolutely killer product that developers will enjoy using, and will tell anyone within earshot of it. We also have a couple of cool features that haven't been tried before with push notifications that I think will be intriguing enough to land us some general tech press. I don't have terribly specific scaling plans around marketing yet, as I don't want to put the cart before the horse (i.e. I want to prove there's a product-market fit first, then spend more effort on getting the word out.
Re: Ask HN: How to find help marketing an MVP to programmers?
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't have product-market fit it's normally much easier to move the product than it is to move the market.
How do you know if you're in this situation or if you simply haven't been able to get the exposure you need?
It is not hard to get your product in front of, say, 1000 users. It is not difficult to attend a few meetups of iOS devs and ask them what they think.
Re: Ask HN: How to find help marketing an MVP to programmers?
#25Would be too shocking if I consider this a "How to find a non-technical co-founder" question? Because I think that is just what you need. I don't think a freelance, temporary or part-time marketing person would be a good choice. A real co-founder, responsible for marketing your product would be ideal. Someone that could hack the distribution part of your product. Actually, I don't have any practical tips of how to fi…
I disagree. That non-developer young guy has (as far as you are aware) the same, if not fewer, non-technical skills as the technical founders.
The only people worth bringing on board as non-technical founders are people you know personally, whose work you have seen yourself (and liked), and whose communication skills are a known quantity as well.
If you're going to bring on some random, you might as well do the distribution yourself.
Re: Ask HN: How to find help marketing an MVP to programmers?
#26Have you given any thought as to how you might grow later on, when you want to scale? I ask because this is a good opportunity for you to also test (“validate” as you put it) that part of your business concept.
Definitely. From a technical standpoint, it's Rails app on Heroku (using unicorn), using Sidekiq. I've got a ton of background with Rails and scaling on this platform, though not a lot with Sidekiq. I'm very excited about the possibilities with this though, and I've used redis quite a bit. On our backlog is to do some serious load testing. I'm also quite aware of the recent RapGenius/random routing stuff. I'm plannin…
I would avoid prematurely optimizing. Scale when you need to scale. Right now it's pretty clear that scaling is the least of your problems.