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Ask HN: How can I market my startup to universities?

3 points by chris140957 8y ago

Hi, I'm currently trying to grow my product, https://www.packagr.app, a product for Python dev teams which allows you to create your own private PyPI mirror. I have a handful of paying customers who have validated my product and also helped me to iron out the initial teething bugs. I'm now looking to try and grow my product, and it's been suggested to me that I should be targeting university data science departments that use Python. This makes sense to me as the collaboration options that Packagr provides could be helpful in terms of allowing large teams of researchers to contribute to the same Python packages. However, I'm not really sure where to start with this - Is there anybody with experience marketing startups to universities that can offer some advice? I am thinking about cold emailing university data science departments but not sure how effective this is likely to be? Thanks in advance, Chris

mooreds 8y ago
Hmmm. Do you know anyone in a data science department you could ask about this? They might have a good idea about budget, need, and marketing opportunities. I'd cold call a local university data science professor and see if you could take them out for coffee and ask them these questions. So typical high schlep customer discovery. I'd also expect the sales process to be slow, as university's are big institutions, but imagine once you're in the system they'd be long term clients happy to pay annually.