I previously started Roll20, and it is now a profitable SaaS business. It started off as just myself, then very quickly I added 2 Co-Founders, and now we have 8

I previously started Roll20, and it is now a profitable SaaS business. It started off as just myself, then very quickly I added 2 Co-Founders, and now we have 8 people total working on it full-time. For that business, we used Kickstarter to get it off the ground, and then just slowly built through word of mouth and a strong built-in networking effect. I am in the process of starting my next project right now; it's a VR small-scale MMO called "OrbusVR". I've been working on it for about a month now, and I've got a blog up (http://blog.orbusvr.com http://blog.orbusvr.com) where I've been posting development updates at least weekly; I've also been posting frequently to Reddit in places where potential players are likely to hang out (e.g. /r/vive). I have around 50 people already signed up on a newsletter, and every time I post about it I gain another 10-15 subscribers. I plan to launch a Kickstarter for this project as well probably in the next month or two; both to "fail fast" if there isn't going to be a large enough playerbase to support it, and to get a boost to the funding (which is 100% out of my own pocket right now). So I guess in my experience, the trend has been: 1) Make something people really want already, but don't have. 2) Work on it in the open as much as possible to build up an early evangelist community. 3) Do a Kickstarter campaign or other event to gauge actual "I will spend money on this" interest. 4) Continue to grow slowly via world of mouth until you reach a tipping point where a network effect kicks in and then just grow from there.