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Ask HN: Has anyone ever skipped customer development?
I am wondering if anyone here bootstrapping a startup has ever not "gotten out of the building" and just went ahead and build stuff and actually succeeded in gaining traction.
Paul Graham said to look for a pain point, build a quick prototype, and use said prototype as a pretext to engage potential customers, from whom feedback would be obtained to reiterate the product until it becomes something that people want. That's what we did, but feedback has been slow to come (we have a B2B app for a niche market), and we have little idea on how to proceed without much feedback with which to move forward.
My question is, is it ever too late to do customer development, hopefully without pivoting too much? How do we know if we have built something that people want? Are there case studies about startups "evangelizing" a not-wanted product (e.g. due to its infancy, "too-early-for-its-time" syndrome) into a wanted product just by educating the market?
- michael_dorfman 16y agofeedback has been slow to come (we have a B2B app for a niche market) What's your sales process been like? I assume you're not sitting back, waiting for customers to come to you. How do we know if we have built something that people want? Surely you know people in this niche, right? I mean, presumably you didn't just pick a niche at random. So, go to some of those people, and ask them to be beta testers on the software. Give them a free trial, and ask for feedback. If you can't get people to use it for free, you're going to have trouble getting people to pay for it. It's definitely possible to educate the market-- but to do so, you've got to refine your pitch. Ask yourself, "What is the pain point my product solves?" If you can't describe the pain point and your solution in a couple sentences, you aren't there, yet.
- fezzl 16y agoHi Michael, thanks for your quick response. We are currently in Beta and not charging yet. Our typical conversion funnel involves getting traffic to our website (mainly so far through blog write-ups, directory submissions, and our own blog articles), getting them to try our demo, and then getting them to sign up. This has not been a major issue, but getting those who register to actually use the product (at all or for an extended period of time) has been difficult. We actually have had a few excited Beta testers, but they stopped using our product after a while (it's obvious because we're an onsite widget). Our "niche" is the consumer ecommerce/online retail market. The pain points we are aiming to solve are arguably well-documented in the ecommerce industry: traffic and conversions. We are trying to leverage the power of social networks to optimize the sales funnel as well as drive organic word-of-mouth marketing on social networks. We have published several resources documenting how this would be plausible (e.g. white papers, blog articles) in order to educate the market, and it seems that the market cares about what we're talking about. But excitement frequently turns into quiet indifference once they see that our product doesn't work up to their expectations. In other words, I suspect that our product is the problem here, not a misjudgment/illusion about the pain point. My question is how do I tell if I'm not addressing a real pain point vs. the pain point is real, it is the product/execution/marketing that sucks?
- michael_dorfman 16y agoMy question is how do I tell if I'm not addressing a real pain point vs. the pain point is real, it is the product/execution/marketing that sucks Sounds like you need to survey some of your users/former users to ask them about their experiences. Presumably, if your product was making them money, they'd still be using it-- which would indicate that there's a problem on the execution side. Coincidentally, I may be in your niche; I have an e-commerce site in the online retail market (selling books.) If you post a link to your site, I can put my "user" hat on, and take a look.
- fezzl 16y agoHi, we are at http://www.zuupy.com http://www.zuupy.com, we appreciate any feedback at all. Also, surveying our users/former users is something we do frequently, though response rates can always be improved.
- michael_dorfman 16y agoI'll send you an email with my thoughts.