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I'm going through this challenge right now too. In my case I'm creating content to help improve the skills of Engineering Managers and I'm really stubborn about

by bdg 4y ago

I'm going through this challenge right now too. In my case I'm creating content to help improve the skills of Engineering Managers and I'm really stubborn about a few things like needing to ship the entire most-loveable-product (as I imagine it from my armchair) and not the minimum-viable-product (as proven by real customers). I am a bit lucky to have some product skills to identify the mental biases and traps that I fall into, and some friends help pull me back too. Other commenters have pointed out some of those problems: - Look for positive signal from real flesh-and-blood customers who will give you real money. I printed out my content and had lunch with former colleagues to pick their brains on the topic. I kept doing small tests to check one single area of the final concept. - Downscale. Downscale. Downscale. You might conjure up 100s of reasons why you can't dare approach the market with a faint shadow of your final vision but you need to do it to test that you aren't making a huge mistake. They will not love it. You will not make money. But you also will not waste time doubling down on a fantasy. Gumroad is good for this but I'm doing it on Shopify just by reducing my product to 10% of the content and printing 1% of the order quantity I need to make a real profit (so I will lose a few hundred, but I will validate if I should spend a few thousand) - Figure out how to market. You want to do this because this is a form of your "sales funnel" and how you will actually identify who you want to attract, how to do it, where to go, etc. I'm highly unskilled in this topic but I'm using a book called "The 1‑Page Marketing Plan" which helped me structure a lot of things that I had observed in life and start to build a proper plan in steps that was logical and connected. It's not the best book ever, but it is good enough to get oriented and do something logical.

amit5624 4y ago
I am EM at a startup. Would love to be the alpha user for your product!!
- bdg 4y ago
  That's fantastic, please send me an email, brian@statagroup.com .
pbackup12345 4y ago
That actually makes a lot of sense. To be honest just as an idea that also means that "early adopters" could also mean "first customers at a super low price". Probably less people wants to try something untried, yet, then people want to try something super cheap that they actually need. Also then you can go to your real market and not the market of "beta testers" which will not necessarily give you the correct audience. So one way to gain your first 100 people is probably to actually SELL IT, but at an extreme discount to your real future audience. I even offered a lifetime free licence for the first 100 sign-ups who starts using it. (You loose little as they don't necessarily use it later but they do jump to the free business.) I did even had a few friends of mine post it on their Facebook as an "ad". That of course means that the product has to be at least partially viable.

by bdg 4y ago

amit5624 4y ago

I am EM at a startup. Would love to be the alpha user for your product!!

bdg 4y ago
That's fantastic, please send me an email, brian@statagroup.com .

pbackup12345 4y ago

That actually makes a lot of sense. To be honest just as an idea that also means that "early adopters" could also mean "first customers at a super low price". Probably less people wants to try something untried, yet, then people want to try something super cheap that they actually need. Also then you can go to your real market and not the market of "beta testers" which will not necessarily give you the correct audience. So one way to gain your first 100 people is probably to actually SELL IT, but at an extreme discount to your real future audience. I even offered a lifetime free licence for the first 100 sign-ups who starts using it. (You loose little as they don't necessarily use it later but they do jump to the free business.) I did even had a few friends of mine post it on their Facebook as an "ad". That of course means that the product has to be at least partially viable.