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patio11 has a good description on his site kalzumeus.com of how he market tested Appointment Reminder before he sold it to his customers. Sorry, don't have the

patio11 has a good description on his site kalzumeus.com of how he market tested Appointment Reminder before he sold it to his customers. Sorry, don't have the link on me, but his whole site is pretty chock-full of good advice on selling software. Going through his lifecycle email course now, learning a lot.

grncdr 13y ago
IIRC he has stated that he misjudged the demand for Appointment Reminder and ended up selling less than he had hoped.
patio11 13y ago
Here's the meat of it, reposted from an HN comment since it is my most succinct account of the story: A spiritually similar example: Appointment Reminder didn't actually exist in summer 2010, but I had a two-page demo of it set up. I got $400 out of an ATM when I went home to Chicago to visit, and just wandered around the Gold Coast/Magnificent Mile region of the city looking for every hair salon and massage therapy practice I could find. I asked them all if I they took walk-ins and, if so, could I have 30 minutes of the owner's time for whatever the rate was ($30 or so). In lieu of the shoulder massage/etc, I said "I'm interested in the massage therapy industry. Would you mind if we just chatted for half an hour about it?" And I asked about how they handled scheduling, appointments, no-shows, etc etc. I also did a demo of my two-page AR mini-app on the iPad and asked if they would be interested in buying it when it was ready. I think only one person actually accepted my money for the interviews. I got five-ish "Please tell me when that is ready" out of a dozen or so conversations. No Bay Area or signup form required. (I put their emails in a paper notebook. And lost it prior to launch. Whoopsie.) This was mostly successful for me: it confirmed that there was a market willing to pay for AR without me needing to actually build it to demonstrate that. (My sampling technique, which found only massage therapists/hair salons, did sort of lead me off the rails as to who I'd eventually end up targeting for most of the business. D'oh.)

grncdr 13y ago

IIRC he has stated that he misjudged the demand for Appointment Reminder and ended up selling less than he had hoped.

patio11 13y ago

Here's the meat of it, reposted from an HN comment since it is my most succinct account of the story: A spiritually similar example: Appointment Reminder didn't actually exist in summer 2010, but I had a two-page demo of it set up. I got $400 out of an ATM when I went home to Chicago to visit, and just wandered around the Gold Coast/Magnificent Mile region of the city looking for every hair salon and massage therapy practice I could find. I asked them all if I they took walk-ins and, if so, could I have 30 minutes of the owner's time for whatever the rate was ($30 or so). In lieu of the shoulder massage/etc, I said "I'm interested in the massage therapy industry. Would you mind if we just chatted for half an hour about it?" And I asked about how they handled scheduling, appointments, no-shows, etc etc. I also did a demo of my two-page AR mini-app on the iPad and asked if they would be interested in buying it when it was ready. I think only one person actually accepted my money for the interviews. I got five-ish "Please tell me when that is ready" out of a dozen or so conversations. No Bay Area or signup form required. (I put their emails in a paper notebook. And lost it prior to launch. Whoopsie.) This was mostly successful for me: it confirmed that there was a market willing to pay for AR without me needing to actually build it to demonstrate that. (My sampling technique, which found only massage therapists/hair salons, did sort of lead me off the rails as to who I'd eventually end up targeting for most of the business. D'oh.)