It goes beyond just identifying the opportunity though. The way we run Endcrawl is heavily influenced by Pliny's experience running OFFHOLLYWOOD, a post-production facility that mostly served indie filmmakers. Left to my own devices, would I have nailed pricing (flat fee, no room for bargaining) and customer support (email-only but responsive) like we have? Doubt it.
Hackers take note: non-technical co-founders CAN bring a ton of value to a partnership.
Or: if you're going solo, make sure you really understand your customers and your industry.
Coming at this from another angle: people in film approach me with ideas for products, and always ask "where can I find a coder?"
The only answer I have for them is that they don't need a "coder". They need a co-founder.
I've been trying quite a few projects targeted outside of my network and relationship building is something that gets missed. And now as I'm working on an analytics tool where people do know me and my expertise in that domain, it is much easier to convince.
It's something that gets missed but after speaking with the founders directly, that's usually the case so far. The element that's missing most of the time is the "credibility" and "trust" effect.
> How have you attracted users and grown Endcrawl.com? Once the Perl MVP existed, we cobbled together a landing page with a WuFoo form and sent an email blast to Pliny's filmmaker contacts. That was the extent of our launch.
Not trying to diminish the success of this work at all, you guys did a great job finding a niche and working through the process!
I get pitches talking about these types of stories and have noticed that many feature a strong "the founders knew a ton of people who would be the first customers" element that is lost on many readers who are looking to learn from the experience.
Not many SAAS concepts started by a lone hacker developer can get 100 people paying $500 ($50K!) to interact over email with an API with no UI without spending any money on advertising.