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How to Test Drive Your Business Idea Before Quitting Your Job

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Re: How to Test Drive Your Business Idea Before Quitting Your Job

#31

Post by stefanmancevski »

pragmatic wrote: post #29

I'd love to know where to find these people to interview. Where do I go, the supermarket, the park? Also I don't think my network is big enough to hit up a significant number for a new software idea aimed at a specific niche (ex used cars sales). Those are the pieces I've never been able to put together in all my time with the Lean Startup methodology.

If you don't have the network, you have to build it. There's no real way around that. If you want to start a business and need to stress test your idea like this, you'll need to do outreach. Whether that's cold outreach or attending events or joining the right groups and communities, it's all about the legwork.

But the point is you can still do that on your own time without making huge sacrifices. Taking the concept of "go out and talk to people" too literally just serves to prevent you from actually finding and reaching your ideal audience.

Need to know where to start? Angel List, LinkedIn, Meetup, and the like. Write some cold emails. You can always build a network, and you should if you want to start a business.

Re: How to Test Drive Your Business Idea Before Quitting Your Job

#32

Post by stefanmancevski »

andrewfromx wrote: post #30

you could re-title "How to make sure you talk yourself out of taking a risk and keeping your job" isn't the limitus test from zuckerberg you should have this burning desire to change the world in this particular way, and the burn should be so intense that you wouldn't even consider for 1 second keeping your job.

Zuckerberg ran his test drive in college. He reached his audience, sold them on Facebook, it worked, so he quit and did it full time. His burning passion was already validated when he took his huge risk. What we argue is you don't have to have a platform built out to get the same validation.

Re: How to Test Drive Your Business Idea Before Quitting Your Job

#33

Post by stefanmancevski »

gricardo99 wrote: post #21

Great writeup. Very informative, speaking as someone new to the realm. It seems it's only applicable to business models that rely on getting revenue directly from customers (i.e. buying subscriptions or widgets). Do you have any thoughts about how you might test an idea where your service is free, but you get revenue through advertising to your users? It would still be very valuable to get some sense of how useful us…

Well I can give an example from an old startup I worked on in the past. We wanted to see if a CRM for job seekers would be useful. But we didn't build it so they could come. We repurposed Trello as a CRM, got a group of job seekers on board from Reddit, and proved there was value in the idea. Then we built it.

The proving of willingness to pay came from surveys of those and subsequent users that said "yes, i would pay X per month for this"

Re: How to Test Drive Your Business Idea Before Quitting Your Job

#34

Post by stefanmancevski »

boyter wrote: post #24

Not really sure if I want to give this one away as I want to use it more myself but https://nugget.one/ seems to be applicable here. They claim to do most of the filtering for ideas for you showing market size, how to reach them etc...

Thanks for the resource! Though I would argue it's still not quite comparable to actually talking to and getting feedback from your target customer base. That's where you hear about the real pain points firsthand, and that is invaluable for validating your business idea.

Re: How to Test Drive Your Business Idea Before Quitting Your Job

#35

Post by marcofloriano »

pragmatic wrote: post #29

I'd love to know where to find these people to interview. Where do I go, the supermarket, the park? Also I don't think my network is big enough to hit up a significant number for a new software idea aimed at a specific niche (ex used cars sales). Those are the pieces I've never been able to put together in all my time with the Lean Startup methodology.

Best way i found to find people to evaluate my business ideas was putting up cheap ads on internet. Started with Adwords five years ago.

Then you drive them to an landing page where you ask for the sale. But right before the purchase, you specify that the product is under development and will be shipped at an specific date. Thanks your "almost costumer" and collect his email for a future launch.

I think the internet is your best tool here, specially if you have some bucks to spend.

Re: How to Test Drive Your Business Idea Before Quitting Your Job

#36

Post by callmeed »

pragmatic wrote: post #29

I'd love to know where to find these people to interview. Where do I go, the supermarket, the park? Also I don't think my network is big enough to hit up a significant number for a new software idea aimed at a specific niche (ex used cars sales). Those are the pieces I've never been able to put together in all my time with the Lean Startup methodology.

Post a job listing on your local Craigslist for the closest category to what you want to work on. Something like:

"Local educational startup looking for K-12 school teachers to survey"

I've done it multiple times for startup ideas and user testing. I've always got numerous replies. Most people are more than happy to have an email dialogue and many are also open to meeting in person to test your app.

If I take up more than 30 mins of their time, I usually get them a $5 Starbucks gift card or buy them lunch (I don't tell them ahead of time).

Re: How to Test Drive Your Business Idea Before Quitting Your Job

#38

Post by akanet »

I gave a talk at Dropbox called "How to start a business without quitting your day job" that I think delivers a lot of the punch on this page without the weird culty vibe. Give it a watch (for free, obviously) if you like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8UwcyYT3z0

Re: How to Test Drive Your Business Idea Before Quitting Your Job

#40

Post by hodgesrm »

newman314 wrote: post #25
2michaeltaylor wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very valid point. One for the lawyers. Anyone have good advice on this front? Happy to add to post.

IANAL but some basic common sense stuff: * Do this on your own time. Maintain separation and document as necessary * Make sure that you did not sign anything as part of your employment agreement that claims ownership over your ideas, thoughts, inventions, data etc. outside of working hours * Do not use any company resources

IANAL2 (but I read a lot of contracts), here are a couple more:

* Read your assignment of inventions agreement _very_ carefully. * If you live outside of California check your employment agreement for non-compete provisions.

If in doubt consult a labor lawyer. Getting qualified legal advice when starting a company is worth the money.

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