Ask HN: How do you validate your startup idea when you've no distribution?

Re:Ask HN: How do you validate your startup idea when you've... by aresant on Monday August 23, 2021 @04:06PM (#28281244)

Spend the money on the validation!

Recipe to spend $1000s marketing dollars vs $10,000s of development hours to validate ->

(1) Think hard about exactly who your target customer is and how your product would be received.

(2) Use google ad planner or FB's audience tool to see how accessible that audience is online, along with projected CPC costs

(3) If you are super budget constrained scour the internet for free adwords / fb advertising credits eg - https://www.diydigitalstrategy.com/150-google-ads-coupon/ - many online marketing classes will come with a $100 - 150 coupon

(4) Build a landing page framework WITH pricing on the landing page (or a pricing range eg $XX a seat with team discounts). Both FB & Goog are anti "waiting lists" so you need to think about how to get around this. Consultative sales, eg a "Somebody from our sales team will be in touch" doesn't break their TOS as long as you do a good job following up with the customers

(5) Spend the money on the validation and get the added bonus of talking to some very early preliminary customers that are NOT in your orbit

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Re:Ask HN: How do you validate your startup idea when you've... by alangibson on Monday August 23, 2021 @04:09PM (#28281283)

You can do it for $10s by using old school sales. Cold outreach still works if you're solving a problem.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you validate your startup idea when you've... by acomms on Monday August 23, 2021 @05:19PM (#28282118)

This is tough in B2C though.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you validate your startup idea when you've... by asdev on Monday August 23, 2021 @05:39PM (#28282325)

any ideas for B2C apps?

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Re:Ask HN: How do you validate your startup idea when you've... by dotvignesh on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @11:37AM (#28290258)

Ah! It was something I wanted to try, will take this as a framework and try it out. Thanks!

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