4 ms·
I've had some level of success with the following 2 strategies: 1. Take your closest circle of friends and family. Cross off anyone who is also a developer. Am
by callmeed 11y ago
I've had some level of success with the following 2 strategies:
1. Take your closest circle of friends and family. Cross off anyone who is also a developer. Among the rest, look at people who are professionals or small business owners. Take them to lunch. Ask if you can shadow them at work a bit. Take copious notes. Find out what the most annoying/tedious part of their business is. Also, if they rely on clerical/support staff, talk to those people too.
2. Pick an industry that you have an interest or curiosity in. Put a job posting in your local Craigslist for people in this industry (ex: mortgage brokers or elementary school teachers). Say you are looking for an advisor to discuss some startup ideas. You will get several responses. Have lunch with a couple people. You don't have to have ideas up front. Just ask them the same questions as option 1 above. Ask them if they'd be willing to beta test something you built.
Protip: there are some industries I'd suggest avoiding. For example, restaurant owners are extremely busy and working in a very low-margin industry. They generally don't have time to meet or test things.
Disclaimer: these are mainly B2B strategies. Most B2B problems really boil down to saving money, making more money, or saving time (time is money). If you can do any of those things for someone, they will pay you.
- howon92 11y agoThis is really good.
- vijayr 11y agoCraigslist idea sounds interesting. Do you have an example of a post that helped you? Which sub category did you post?
- callmeed 11y agoYes, at one point I was interested in the medical/healthcare space. I put an ad in our local CL (jobs => medical/health). I got responses from a few doctors and even the CEO of one of our local hospitals. While I never pursued anything in this space, I did get some interesting ideas and feedback. Keep in mind, I don't live in a large city or CL market–so, if you're in a metro, you'll probably get a lot of responses.
- caseysoftware 11y agoI'd +1 shadowing. A couple years back, I had an idea and wanted to understand the business/industry a bit deeper first. I got an intro to a friend of a friend, asked to shadow him for the day, added a $100 Ruth Chris gift card to sweeten it, and then spent the day wit him. Here are some of my questions: - What keeps you up at night? - What drives you nuts? - Where do you lose the most money? - Where do you make the most money? (careful with this one, might be considered suspicious) - When he took a call and ended up chewing out the other end, I asked what the guy should have done instead, how much that might cost him, whether that would risk customers, projects, etc, and some related things. I ended up trying some basic ideas in the space - none worked out - but I learned a ton about an industry, a business, and a genuinely good guy. It was well worth $100.
- bwilliams18 11y agoIf you're a developer and want to work on restaurant stuff message me.