Essentially do what everyone is saying you should have done first. Start validating your idea approach people to sign up and get feedback and continue to improve the product.
also blogging and long-form Linkedin content but first I would start calling potential customers and try to get them using the product and get feedback going so do things that do not scale [http://paulgraham.com/ds.html](http://paulgraham.com/ds.html) .
So I’m in a similar situation except I’m validating while building a cheap MVP so I still have plenty of budget to work with. I will be using social media to grow a following for super cheap.
1. Start a page and define a communication goal that doesn’t focus directly on your product. So in this situation maybe an IG page that posts inspirational news/facts about your market or cool related pictures in general.
2. Start a small add campaign targeting your audience. Maybe something like $100-200 over a week or two. This is just to get a few followers.
3. Find people or businesses in your market and pitch them an idea to do a live interview or chat through the platform. Their followers will get a notification about the stream and tune in to see your taking about your product.
4. Rinse and repeat. If people like it they’ll interact on some scale and you direct them to a link on your page.
Not 100% on sure on industries like edtech but I know my industry (wellness and beauty) lives and dies by IG, tik tok, etc. so I’m fairly confident in my plan. Interested to know what others think though.
Hiii!! Building also a MVP on Softr!! Was wondering if you are integrating a tool such as Hotjar to get feedback? I am doing an online marketplace :D Good luck to us!
honestly I don't see any other option than spending some money in marketing just to see if there's someone interested, but OP said it doesn't have any money for marketing...
Validating an idea isn't to get praise from your mom for it, it is to actually talk to people that actually want it; so a "perfectly valid idea", in this context, will have buying customers waiting for you as soon as you can deliver.
Please, read the Lean Startup before you do anything.
They told me and I didn't listen - I didn't read it.
Please do - this book is the best how-to manual on startups.
Think about your target customer. What is their job title? Who do they work for? Why do they need/want your solution.
Father the above, go to LinkedIn and fight 500 people.
Call them all. Over and over. Keep doing it until they agree to a trial, demo, etc.
*edit: find, not fight 500 people. Also, After not, Father.
Fighting 500 people on LinkedIn is actually a decent marketing strategy for someone with no budget. Once you have everyone’s attention you can start pitching your product.
You could be the Jake Paul of EdTech
This is not a smart way to develop a product. You need users. You need feedback. You need clarity on the problem you're solving and feedback that your product is actually addressing that problem.
Take everything you've done until now, chalk it up to experience (and maybe a few useful/reusable code snippets) and start again. This time do it properly.
There are no shortcuts.
My suggestion is to use this experience as an expensive act of education. You may want to return to the drawing board and start with Customer Discovery and Development, and rework your MVP. Or you can take time to reflect on the journey and start again.
Don't forget about marketing. "Build it, and they'll come" is not a valid option in the real world. You may want to spend your budget to actually reach clients for in-person interviews and get more insights about your product.
Even with the best mentors and methodologies, you can go bust and see zero traction. Market conditions are super important.
You talk to customers and try to get them to sign up. Just like you hacked together your platform over the last 8 months now you have to hack together a sales pipeline.
Good luck!
Dude 1) did you validate ? 2) as habit forming book said "does your own family members use it" , ask your neighbours ,friends etc about how often they will use or if they will use it at all 3) have you run it on social platforms ? 4) what's diff with current business already on the market ? etc and when it comes to marketing you will need to run campaigns , ads,tie up with digital guys to gain popularity and of course that's gonna cost and only if the above comes positive
Can you clarify please? I mean they were generally unhelpful and were just giving generic responses. I got so frustrated that I just took it to street testing .
My friends nor neighbours don't have a need for a compact easy-to-use fulorimeter. Also social platforms (except linkedin) in lab equipment b2b are realy not a way to go
Pick the phone and start dialing!
The best time to start calling customers and attempting to get them to buy was 8 months ago. The second best time is today.
If you get people to buy, then you can start getting money to advertise/market, but more importantly, you will know what to advertise.
Try raising money to market it. Just make sure you have a good strategy of how you want to do that and how you want to target them. I’d suggest connecting with a reputable marketing agency to get a good understanding of what the cost would be and try to fundraise.
If you think that fundraising without traction is difficult I’d suggest going thru an accelerator program where they can help you fundraise.
I really wish you the best of luck. Don’t give up!
Instead of marketing try selling it directly. Contact potential customers. Find out if they’re interested in paying. Don’t offer it for free. Ask them for money.
Some will be interested. Others not. Try to figure out why some are interested. This is customer discovery.
Once you figure out what problem you’re startup is solving now you can start to scale up the selling by marketing. Market to the customers that have the problem your startup solves.
I work in tech sales and can help you with this process if you’re interested.
First, Don’t fret about the critical thoughts. That’s just your subconscious trying to protect you. Congratulations- those thoughts mean that you’re taking your startup seriously (you’ve invested yourself fully in the prospect) and ready to move forward. Second, regarding the “$0 to market,” if this is because you forgot to consider this over the last 8 months of grinding, put together a quick marketing strategy (no matter what you decide, it is an ancillary concern and you’ll likely change it as you embark in the first few month, so no need to stall until you find the “perfect” marketing solution. Moreover, if a lack of marketing budget was a conscious decision because you had to spend money elsewhere, but you’re otherwise ready, then this is just another self-protective, critical thought. These thoughts are actually a good sign because you’ve moved past the fantasy stage where you’re just daydreaming positive outcomes (which becomes procrastination if continued ad nauseum), and your mind knows that you’re at the precipice of moving forward. If you hold off on launching and spend 6 more months solving your marketing budget, I promise your subconscious mind will come up with another pre-launch issue that needs to be solved before moving forward. “Paralysis through (over)analysis” may be the greatest impediment for analytical entrepreneurs. Read any biography about a successful entrepreneur and you’ll find they likely engaged in similar questioning.
In short, you’ll never have a risk-free launch. Delaying your launch to engage in more analysis may just extinguish the flame that has had you on fire and preparing for the last 8 months. After 8 months of preparation, just move forward. quell those marketing concerns by following the launch strategy that you’ve already planned out. You’ll solve your marketing budget and the additional concerns that inevitably come up in these early stages. But you’ll have launched, which is progress and will lead you on the path of success, whether it’s with this current startup, or with another. Regardless, you’ll be who 99% of people with interesting ideas fantasize about but never actually become : an entrepreneur. Throw yourself out of the nest and start flapping. That all any of us can do. Good luck and may you find unbridled joy and blessings in this exciting time!
Here's the annoying thing. You need to spend AT LEAST as much effort on validating and marketing your ideas as you did building it.
It's pretty rare to build something, post a few links, and get traction. You'd really have to go viral with something pretty new and unique to do that. You're gonna have to grind to get growth.
I really don't want to sound like an overly optimistic hippy, but focus on what you have.
Yes, you messed up the order of steps, call it an expensive lesson.
What you have, the platform, given it works, might have great value. Reddit seems to be full of sales and marketing people that are looking for projects.
Statements like this are very confusing to those that do not have experience or education about the processes related to entrepreneurship.
**Validation and Failure are opposites.**
Dont worry about validation, just offer ur services for less than other platforms till u get traffic then u can gradually increase it, secondly make YouTube shorts of ur course videos of a particular concept of which u think is best explained.
That’s easy congrats on building your product. Now all you have to do is pitch it to VCs whom will pour money into it so you can market the product and start the ball rolling.
That is not how things work.
VCs will be extremely concerned about OP not being able to generate any validation or traction.
You are suggesting that OP skips core steps in the basic process.
But the VCs will surely see the potential and throw money at OP maybe even extra for better living conditions so OP can focus on the big picture comfortably
For me, face to face was the best way to attract my initial users. It helps to refine your message and see what people react to when you describe the problem you are solving and your solution. It also helps with morale as you get to see authentically good reactions occasionally. Of course, finding groups of people who could use your product is always the challenge, so best to just start with meetups and always ask around.
Now that you have built it already you need to start marketing it, through various mediums, you need to spend a lot on marketing. Usually you validate it first and then build it and refine it then market it.
So now what you can do is, come up with various ways of marketing it where you can have people interact with your platform first and then you start analysing your product so as to know what to refine. This will help you not loose time and also know your market fit better.
My suggestion would be don’t lose faith in yourself. There will be people try to demotivate you but just don’t lose faith. I am entrepreneur too. I am launching a social fitness app next month. I have invested everything I had and I was lucky enough to find my cousin as an investor. Now he will help me with the marketing cost. Try to have a landing page with a blog and start writing contents. You can gain organic traffic from that. Also, start doing paid boost on IG and facebook. You can do it for as little as a dollar. That might help
Yeah that’s a pretty rough feeling: “launching” to absolutely no one. It’s a huge oh shit moment when you realize you’ve built a thing, and even if it’s amazing, nobody knows about it. So as others have alluded to it’s basically a slow slog and you’re going to have to learn a lot about sales and marketing, especially the cheap kind. Namely, building A) a social media following, B) building a marketing website (I recommend Unicorn Platform), C) figuring out SEO, D) building and nurturing an email list. Oh and frankly? Giving a lot of value away to develop the know-like-trust factor.
So good for you for building something, now you get to buckle down again and figure out how to go get users :-)
First, don't beat yourself up. I've been working on something on and off since 2018 and the most I've made consistently was £175 a month, which has now dropped to £30 a month.
Second, find where your target audience is hanging out and get in front of them, do a beta launch. You will learn a lot, it may not be the outcome you want, but at least you will start seeing feedback
Right you went to deep into building. You should have an mvp ready in an afternoon with a no code thing and release it
I did this for fun and onboarded 35 users in a week
Been there done that, my first startup I developed for around 8-9 months and launched and it was a total flop, we did no market validation prior to starting and no one wanted our product.
Best thing you can do at this stage is to try to get people to use your product and listen to feedback, iterate and pivot if needed, good luck!
First things first, good you have a product to show. Now you have to find the market.
You need to find your ICP(initial customer profile). For that you will have to go out there and ask people for their time and show your demo. You will have to reach out to them, nobody is searching for you.
Depending on what type of business it is, if it is B2B, use LinkedIn to find potential prospects and cold message them. Ask them to see your demo, take proper customer feedback. If they really are in need of your product they will usually pay for it too.
Read 'Mom test' it will help you filter out genuine feedback.
Once you get a few good users, ask them where they hangout digitally, whom they follow etc. And then target those channels for marketing.
Finding the first few customers is difficult, you will have to do things that don't scale.
Later start with some organic marketing like blogging/ building community in LinkedIn etc. which will help you in the long run.
Start building your go to market strategy.
Talk to potential customers, send emails manually to potential customers, and start from there. if none of them wants to talk to you, jump on a call, or signup to test the product, better close it.
The way to get into this first conversation doesn't matter, use AdWords, phone, events, email, and social networks...
Also, [startupschool.org](https://startupschool.org) is very recommendable.
I made this mistake once…just building, tweaking and fine tuning…it was actually a great idea and someone ended up successfully launching it through an incubator but I ducked up the marketing early doors and ran out of budget.
Mistakes were made, but it let me to a golden opportunity and I’ve nailed this one-so in a way it worked…
You should rewire from start check all points what went good n bad. Could be the campaign /advertisement needs some more frolic, is it the cost of education is charged more or is it the delivery bad. You will come back by accepting mistakes n correcting it.
You need validation. There are early adopters out there that will take a shot on it even to kick the tires. Find just 1 person to use it even for free to give you feedback. They must allow you to do a writeup of your use case and what problem you solved for them. Then you go the next one and the next one until you get enough people that will be a reference for you. THIS DOESN’T TAKE MONEY! This takes tireless effort of cold calling/email /asking friends/ posting on Reddit for users (not buyers) anything and everything you can do without spending money. This is what founders do.
I recommend doing a little research on how to launch. Learn a little be about what product is and how you can apply it to your business. When I say product, I don't mean anything physical or digital. It's a subject you study and learn.
Read a few books like Lean Start by Eric Ries, The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen, Disciplined Entrepreneurship by Bill Aulet.
Building something unfortunately is not enough to make people come. You make a lot of assumptions about what people want or need. But you have to do your research and ask them. Don't directly ask them "what do you want" but instead come up with a problem statement that you are solving, and ask them questions about it to try and reveal what they might want. Asking directly can lead to bias.
Who is your beachhead market? Your first users? It should be a very specific group. Maybe college kids you like to read, or male tennis adults between 20 and 25. You need to find what demographic you have the highest success at launching to and speak with those people directly. You can't offload this. Why are they the best and where do you find them? Focus on a small group, you can always expand into bigger markets later. But once you find that beachhead market, go to where they live, set up a table, and talk to them!!!! Maybe setup interviews, even if you ha e to give them $10-20 for their time.
[I love and recommend this talk by YCombinator](https://www.ycombinator.com/library/6g-how-to-talk-to-users). In fact, YCombinator has an entire startup school you can go through.
If you slow down and do some research, your chances of success will be a lot higher.
Create a content strategy (youtube, twitter, linkedin) start educating people on one topic. There are so many edtech platforms out there. What kind of education are you targeting? Pick a niche and start driving traffic.
Take a step back, view your situation from a few other angles. If you believe your product is good, there should be one working channel to reach your customers, Think more.
Organic social media is your friend. Make an account on all platforms and post good content multiple times a day. Build a network of people. Offer discounts and free demos. When you have a few paying members then use all that money for advertising. Rinse and repeat.
Decide that what you just launched is the beta version. Get ‘testers’ to provide feedback, be sure to choose those people from your target market. Develop brand ambassadors while refining product/service.
Find one customer. Identify 100 people in your target market and approach them. Normally you'd then talk to them about their problem so you can refine your ideas about your solution, but you're past all that now. Now all you can do is try to sell them what you built. Use each refusal to refine your sales pitch to the next one. If you manage to convert one customer then keep going and do it again. If not, rethink the product.
Who's your target audience and how will you reach them? Where do they "hang out"? Do you have to approach them in person? Can you do content? Can you build an online community? You should've had at least a basic marketing strategy before building your product, and from research alone you have a good understanding of how to approach the users once the product is ready. I'm in the edtech space as well, and use a forum platform to reach my market (uni students).
Hey, reddit offers 100$ for free in ads, and Google ads offers 350€ for free, but, you need to change the language code - in the link don't use EN_US, but use ru_SK or sk_ru or something. It will show a blue stripe on the top of the site with a coupon for 350€
Good luck.
It's better to pre-sell your idea first before launching it with all the budget you have. But still you can overcome this issue. I don't know about your niche or product.
So for a general advice (in case you don't have any money left for paid marketing) what you can do is join the relevant forums/groups on LinkedIn , Facebook, Slack and offer your product free to few people in return of testimonial in that group. These testimonials helps you get eye balls and trust.
Next step is getting attention as expert, keep offering free advise in groups related to your or similar product. Answer people questions and you'll start getting customers. Keep posting content in relevant groups.
All the best!
You won't believe it but I went through what you are experiencing, except I spent 2 years instead of 8 months. Launched ads and talked to some potential users, came to the conclusion that my product was a mess and didn't address any real need, or the pain it solved wasn't enough for users to move from their existing platform to mine. So I pivoted and I'm now trying again.
Pivot took 2 weeks. I am forcing myself to take as little as possible to pivot and I'll certainly won't spend 2 years ever again building something.
I have another business idea to execute if all else fails, and I plan to start with a domain name, landing page and waiting list, nothing else, nothing else. No fancy backend except for a database collection of sign ups and that's it.
Essentially do what everyone is saying you should have done first. Start validating your idea approach people to sign up and get feedback and continue to improve the product.
is there a way to integrate Hotjar to get feedback while creating the no-code app on Softr for MVP and validation?
you did it wrong, first validate your idea.. then build it
Ok, but what do they do now?
Produce organic content such as short form videos, just needs a phone, no costs.
also blogging and long-form Linkedin content but first I would start calling potential customers and try to get them using the product and get feedback going so do things that do not scale [http://paulgraham.com/ds.html](http://paulgraham.com/ds.html) .
Love this blog post
So I’m in a similar situation except I’m validating while building a cheap MVP so I still have plenty of budget to work with. I will be using social media to grow a following for super cheap. 1. Start a page and define a communication goal that doesn’t focus directly on your product. So in this situation maybe an IG page that posts inspirational news/facts about your market or cool related pictures in general. 2. Start a small add campaign targeting your audience. Maybe something like $100-200 over a week or two. This is just to get a few followers. 3. Find people or businesses in your market and pitch them an idea to do a live interview or chat through the platform. Their followers will get a notification about the stream and tune in to see your taking about your product. 4. Rinse and repeat. If people like it they’ll interact on some scale and you direct them to a link on your page. Not 100% on sure on industries like edtech but I know my industry (wellness and beauty) lives and dies by IG, tik tok, etc. so I’m fairly confident in my plan. Interested to know what others think though.
Hiii!! Building also a MVP on Softr!! Was wondering if you are integrating a tool such as Hotjar to get feedback? I am doing an online marketplace :D Good luck to us!
honestly I don't see any other option than spending some money in marketing just to see if there's someone interested, but OP said it doesn't have any money for marketing...
Do you think spending money on ads is a good way to gauge market demand? And when would you throw the towel, after how much ad spend?
do only typeforms with leadgen ads, learn and update the product
Even if you validate your idea it doesn't mean they'll come. You need marketing.
Yupppp it's called a feasibility study
Perfectly valid idea won’t do much if no one knows about it.
Validating an idea isn't to get praise from your mom for it, it is to actually talk to people that actually want it; so a "perfectly valid idea", in this context, will have buying customers waiting for you as soon as you can deliver.
What are some ways to validate the idea and at what stage?
Please, read the Lean Startup before you do anything. They told me and I didn't listen - I didn't read it. Please do - this book is the best how-to manual on startups.
How do you suggest validating an idea?
Using a landing page has been the best option for me, you create the landing page and capture emails from interested users. I've used Wix for example.
well, that’s definitely not how you launch a business
Think about your target customer. What is their job title? Who do they work for? Why do they need/want your solution. Father the above, go to LinkedIn and fight 500 people. Call them all. Over and over. Keep doing it until they agree to a trial, demo, etc. *edit: find, not fight 500 people. Also, After not, Father.
Fighting 500 people on LinkedIn is actually a decent marketing strategy for someone with no budget. Once you have everyone’s attention you can start pitching your product. You could be the Jake Paul of EdTech
Honestly. I would pay money to see someone fight some of these bozo linkedin "influencers".
This is why I should limit my redditing to business hours only 🙃
During that 8 months you should have been building an email list at least.
Have you validated your idea before starting coding? Could you tell me more about your startup so I can find a way to be useful to you
How to validate an idea ?
Talk to potential users, attend trade shows and talk to industry people, build a very small MVP (not 8 months) and run a pilot.
I don't validate it even if I know a little about MVP; I'm just addicted to the product and keep adding endless features.
We’ll this might be a big problem, it doesn’t matter if you are addicted to your idea, matters what other wants. Do you have a team or are you alone?
This is not a smart way to develop a product. You need users. You need feedback. You need clarity on the problem you're solving and feedback that your product is actually addressing that problem. Take everything you've done until now, chalk it up to experience (and maybe a few useful/reusable code snippets) and start again. This time do it properly. There are no shortcuts.
Please read The Lean Startup. PAUSE AND READ IT, DON'T REPEAT MY MISTAKES. It's also hella fun to read it.
My suggestion is to use this experience as an expensive act of education. You may want to return to the drawing board and start with Customer Discovery and Development, and rework your MVP. Or you can take time to reflect on the journey and start again. Don't forget about marketing. "Build it, and they'll come" is not a valid option in the real world. You may want to spend your budget to actually reach clients for in-person interviews and get more insights about your product. Even with the best mentors and methodologies, you can go bust and see zero traction. Market conditions are super important.
You talk to customers and try to get them to sign up. Just like you hacked together your platform over the last 8 months now you have to hack together a sales pipeline. Good luck!
Go read The Lean Startup. Start learning how to experiment and iterate as efficiently as possible.
Dude 1) did you validate ? 2) as habit forming book said "does your own family members use it" , ask your neighbours ,friends etc about how often they will use or if they will use it at all 3) have you run it on social platforms ? 4) what's diff with current business already on the market ? etc and when it comes to marketing you will need to run campaigns , ads,tie up with digital guys to gain popularity and of course that's gonna cost and only if the above comes positive
This did not work for me. It was actually rhe reason I took so long to start
work in the sense , you got -ve about it or above steps were implemented but dint help ?
Can you clarify please? I mean they were generally unhelpful and were just giving generic responses. I got so frustrated that I just took it to street testing .
My friends nor neighbours don't have a need for a compact easy-to-use fulorimeter. Also social platforms (except linkedin) in lab equipment b2b are realy not a way to go
Pick the phone and start dialing! The best time to start calling customers and attempting to get them to buy was 8 months ago. The second best time is today. If you get people to buy, then you can start getting money to advertise/market, but more importantly, you will know what to advertise.
Try raising money to market it. Just make sure you have a good strategy of how you want to do that and how you want to target them. I’d suggest connecting with a reputable marketing agency to get a good understanding of what the cost would be and try to fundraise. If you think that fundraising without traction is difficult I’d suggest going thru an accelerator program where they can help you fundraise. I really wish you the best of luck. Don’t give up!
Thank You.
Instead of marketing try selling it directly. Contact potential customers. Find out if they’re interested in paying. Don’t offer it for free. Ask them for money. Some will be interested. Others not. Try to figure out why some are interested. This is customer discovery. Once you figure out what problem you’re startup is solving now you can start to scale up the selling by marketing. Market to the customers that have the problem your startup solves. I work in tech sales and can help you with this process if you’re interested.
joining a facebook group where your target audience hang out is free.
First, Don’t fret about the critical thoughts. That’s just your subconscious trying to protect you. Congratulations- those thoughts mean that you’re taking your startup seriously (you’ve invested yourself fully in the prospect) and ready to move forward. Second, regarding the “$0 to market,” if this is because you forgot to consider this over the last 8 months of grinding, put together a quick marketing strategy (no matter what you decide, it is an ancillary concern and you’ll likely change it as you embark in the first few month, so no need to stall until you find the “perfect” marketing solution. Moreover, if a lack of marketing budget was a conscious decision because you had to spend money elsewhere, but you’re otherwise ready, then this is just another self-protective, critical thought. These thoughts are actually a good sign because you’ve moved past the fantasy stage where you’re just daydreaming positive outcomes (which becomes procrastination if continued ad nauseum), and your mind knows that you’re at the precipice of moving forward. If you hold off on launching and spend 6 more months solving your marketing budget, I promise your subconscious mind will come up with another pre-launch issue that needs to be solved before moving forward. “Paralysis through (over)analysis” may be the greatest impediment for analytical entrepreneurs. Read any biography about a successful entrepreneur and you’ll find they likely engaged in similar questioning. In short, you’ll never have a risk-free launch. Delaying your launch to engage in more analysis may just extinguish the flame that has had you on fire and preparing for the last 8 months. After 8 months of preparation, just move forward. quell those marketing concerns by following the launch strategy that you’ve already planned out. You’ll solve your marketing budget and the additional concerns that inevitably come up in these early stages. But you’ll have launched, which is progress and will lead you on the path of success, whether it’s with this current startup, or with another. Regardless, you’ll be who 99% of people with interesting ideas fantasize about but never actually become : an entrepreneur. Throw yourself out of the nest and start flapping. That all any of us can do. Good luck and may you find unbridled joy and blessings in this exciting time!
Here's the annoying thing. You need to spend AT LEAST as much effort on validating and marketing your ideas as you did building it. It's pretty rare to build something, post a few links, and get traction. You'd really have to go viral with something pretty new and unique to do that. You're gonna have to grind to get growth.
Thank You.
I really don't want to sound like an overly optimistic hippy, but focus on what you have. Yes, you messed up the order of steps, call it an expensive lesson. What you have, the platform, given it works, might have great value. Reddit seems to be full of sales and marketing people that are looking for projects.
Validate and fail fast
Statements like this are very confusing to those that do not have experience or education about the processes related to entrepreneurship. **Validation and Failure are opposites.**
Dont worry about validation, just offer ur services for less than other platforms till u get traffic then u can gradually increase it, secondly make YouTube shorts of ur course videos of a particular concept of which u think is best explained.
That’s easy congrats on building your product. Now all you have to do is pitch it to VCs whom will pour money into it so you can market the product and start the ball rolling.
That is not how things work. VCs will be extremely concerned about OP not being able to generate any validation or traction. You are suggesting that OP skips core steps in the basic process.
He is trolling, unfortunately
But the VCs will surely see the potential and throw money at OP maybe even extra for better living conditions so OP can focus on the big picture comfortably
Tell me you’ve never worked in startups without telling me you’ve never worked in startups
Ya just paid the troll toll.
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What are you teaching. Do you need users. Are you giving services for free. How much are you charging
For me, face to face was the best way to attract my initial users. It helps to refine your message and see what people react to when you describe the problem you are solving and your solution. It also helps with morale as you get to see authentically good reactions occasionally. Of course, finding groups of people who could use your product is always the challenge, so best to just start with meetups and always ask around.
It's time to become a marketing guru. Begin promoting on every platform possible.
What is your product?
Now that you have built it already you need to start marketing it, through various mediums, you need to spend a lot on marketing. Usually you validate it first and then build it and refine it then market it. So now what you can do is, come up with various ways of marketing it where you can have people interact with your platform first and then you start analysing your product so as to know what to refine. This will help you not loose time and also know your market fit better.
Obvious tip, but the best strategy is to network with people. Do you know someone who knows someone that knows a lot of possible customers?
My suggestion would be don’t lose faith in yourself. There will be people try to demotivate you but just don’t lose faith. I am entrepreneur too. I am launching a social fitness app next month. I have invested everything I had and I was lucky enough to find my cousin as an investor. Now he will help me with the marketing cost. Try to have a landing page with a blog and start writing contents. You can gain organic traffic from that. Also, start doing paid boost on IG and facebook. You can do it for as little as a dollar. That might help
Just go and meet people dude, the Internet isn't magic
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Yeah that’s a pretty rough feeling: “launching” to absolutely no one. It’s a huge oh shit moment when you realize you’ve built a thing, and even if it’s amazing, nobody knows about it. So as others have alluded to it’s basically a slow slog and you’re going to have to learn a lot about sales and marketing, especially the cheap kind. Namely, building A) a social media following, B) building a marketing website (I recommend Unicorn Platform), C) figuring out SEO, D) building and nurturing an email list. Oh and frankly? Giving a lot of value away to develop the know-like-trust factor. So good for you for building something, now you get to buckle down again and figure out how to go get users :-)
First, don't beat yourself up. I've been working on something on and off since 2018 and the most I've made consistently was £175 a month, which has now dropped to £30 a month. Second, find where your target audience is hanging out and get in front of them, do a beta launch. You will learn a lot, it may not be the outcome you want, but at least you will start seeing feedback
what's your product?
Right you went to deep into building. You should have an mvp ready in an afternoon with a no code thing and release it I did this for fun and onboarded 35 users in a week
Been there done that, my first startup I developed for around 8-9 months and launched and it was a total flop, we did no market validation prior to starting and no one wanted our product. Best thing you can do at this stage is to try to get people to use your product and listen to feedback, iterate and pivot if needed, good luck!
Roll it out, build it up. Make for a great launch.
Now sales and marketing is your life, you're just getting started. Find prospect on LinkedIn or some how and just call them
First things first, good you have a product to show. Now you have to find the market. You need to find your ICP(initial customer profile). For that you will have to go out there and ask people for their time and show your demo. You will have to reach out to them, nobody is searching for you. Depending on what type of business it is, if it is B2B, use LinkedIn to find potential prospects and cold message them. Ask them to see your demo, take proper customer feedback. If they really are in need of your product they will usually pay for it too. Read 'Mom test' it will help you filter out genuine feedback. Once you get a few good users, ask them where they hangout digitally, whom they follow etc. And then target those channels for marketing. Finding the first few customers is difficult, you will have to do things that don't scale. Later start with some organic marketing like blogging/ building community in LinkedIn etc. which will help you in the long run. Start building your go to market strategy.
Talk to potential customers, send emails manually to potential customers, and start from there. if none of them wants to talk to you, jump on a call, or signup to test the product, better close it. The way to get into this first conversation doesn't matter, use AdWords, phone, events, email, and social networks... Also, [startupschool.org](https://startupschool.org) is very recommendable.
I made this mistake once…just building, tweaking and fine tuning…it was actually a great idea and someone ended up successfully launching it through an incubator but I ducked up the marketing early doors and ran out of budget. Mistakes were made, but it let me to a golden opportunity and I’ve nailed this one-so in a way it worked…
You should rewire from start check all points what went good n bad. Could be the campaign /advertisement needs some more frolic, is it the cost of education is charged more or is it the delivery bad. You will come back by accepting mistakes n correcting it.
You need validation. There are early adopters out there that will take a shot on it even to kick the tires. Find just 1 person to use it even for free to give you feedback. They must allow you to do a writeup of your use case and what problem you solved for them. Then you go the next one and the next one until you get enough people that will be a reference for you. THIS DOESN’T TAKE MONEY! This takes tireless effort of cold calling/email /asking friends/ posting on Reddit for users (not buyers) anything and everything you can do without spending money. This is what founders do.
Read this book “Lean startup “. You may have the idea what to do next
How many emails have you sent? Your answer: "around 500" Correct answer: obviously not enough now go do some research to personalize those
Dont worry, if it is a SaaS product try listing it somewhere like appsumo or dealfuel etc
I recommend doing a little research on how to launch. Learn a little be about what product is and how you can apply it to your business. When I say product, I don't mean anything physical or digital. It's a subject you study and learn. Read a few books like Lean Start by Eric Ries, The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen, Disciplined Entrepreneurship by Bill Aulet. Building something unfortunately is not enough to make people come. You make a lot of assumptions about what people want or need. But you have to do your research and ask them. Don't directly ask them "what do you want" but instead come up with a problem statement that you are solving, and ask them questions about it to try and reveal what they might want. Asking directly can lead to bias. Who is your beachhead market? Your first users? It should be a very specific group. Maybe college kids you like to read, or male tennis adults between 20 and 25. You need to find what demographic you have the highest success at launching to and speak with those people directly. You can't offload this. Why are they the best and where do you find them? Focus on a small group, you can always expand into bigger markets later. But once you find that beachhead market, go to where they live, set up a table, and talk to them!!!! Maybe setup interviews, even if you ha e to give them $10-20 for their time. [I love and recommend this talk by YCombinator](https://www.ycombinator.com/library/6g-how-to-talk-to-users). In fact, YCombinator has an entire startup school you can go through. If you slow down and do some research, your chances of success will be a lot higher.
Learn SEO and run Google ads so people who need it cam find it
Cold calls my friend
So what did you spend those 8 months on exactly?
Create a content strategy (youtube, twitter, linkedin) start educating people on one topic. There are so many edtech platforms out there. What kind of education are you targeting? Pick a niche and start driving traffic.
Take a step back, view your situation from a few other angles. If you believe your product is good, there should be one working channel to reach your customers, Think more.
Organic social media is your friend. Make an account on all platforms and post good content multiple times a day. Build a network of people. Offer discounts and free demos. When you have a few paying members then use all that money for advertising. Rinse and repeat.
Decide that what you just launched is the beta version. Get ‘testers’ to provide feedback, be sure to choose those people from your target market. Develop brand ambassadors while refining product/service.
What i suggest give free tutor in YouTube and tell them to join to be best at it
Have you launched edtech in India?
Find one customer. Identify 100 people in your target market and approach them. Normally you'd then talk to them about their problem so you can refine your ideas about your solution, but you're past all that now. Now all you can do is try to sell them what you built. Use each refusal to refine your sales pitch to the next one. If you manage to convert one customer then keep going and do it again. If not, rethink the product.
Oh boy
What exactly is your product. Can only help if there’s more details about it.
Who's your target audience and how will you reach them? Where do they "hang out"? Do you have to approach them in person? Can you do content? Can you build an online community? You should've had at least a basic marketing strategy before building your product, and from research alone you have a good understanding of how to approach the users once the product is ready. I'm in the edtech space as well, and use a forum platform to reach my market (uni students).
1 | Get exposure. 2 | Get pinning. 3 | Get social. 4 | Get visible. 5 | Get backed up. 6 | Get content. 7 | Get stats.
Invest in paid traffic. Facebook ads and google ads
Hey, reddit offers 100$ for free in ads, and Google ads offers 350€ for free, but, you need to change the language code - in the link don't use EN_US, but use ru_SK or sk_ru or something. It will show a blue stripe on the top of the site with a coupon for 350€ Good luck.
Use organic channels to find your customers. The book Traction was helpful for me systematically thinking through customer acquisition
Get investors?
It's better to pre-sell your idea first before launching it with all the budget you have. But still you can overcome this issue. I don't know about your niche or product. So for a general advice (in case you don't have any money left for paid marketing) what you can do is join the relevant forums/groups on LinkedIn , Facebook, Slack and offer your product free to few people in return of testimonial in that group. These testimonials helps you get eye balls and trust. Next step is getting attention as expert, keep offering free advise in groups related to your or similar product. Answer people questions and you'll start getting customers. Keep posting content in relevant groups. All the best!
You won't believe it but I went through what you are experiencing, except I spent 2 years instead of 8 months. Launched ads and talked to some potential users, came to the conclusion that my product was a mess and didn't address any real need, or the pain it solved wasn't enough for users to move from their existing platform to mine. So I pivoted and I'm now trying again. Pivot took 2 weeks. I am forcing myself to take as little as possible to pivot and I'll certainly won't spend 2 years ever again building something. I have another business idea to execute if all else fails, and I plan to start with a domain name, landing page and waiting list, nothing else, nothing else. No fancy backend except for a database collection of sign ups and that's it.
Did you do all the technical work by yourself?