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Is organic growth a good way to validate an idea?

• josho 11y ago
  Think about it from a different perspective. You are validating your business, not idea. What leap of faith assumptions have you made that you need to validate to determine if you have a viable business? For most startups these days, and what I can tell from yours, the hardest part is customer acquisition. So, validate things around acquiring customers. E.g. how much does it cost to acquire a single customer, can you demonstrate that you can repeat that process (even at the small scale). It's hard to summarize these points in a couple paragraphs, I'd suggest reading Eric Ries, and Steve Blank to get an understanding of the principles.
  • maurocasas 11y ago
    As the business model I'm aiming to hasn't been completely revealed just yet, I'm focusing on user adquisition right now, people who will actually apply to job openings. I'll check out those authors, thanks for your comment!
• davismwfl 11y ago
  First, it depends on what you are going for, do you want to raise money? That is a different gauge then if you are just trying to make sure you are heading the right direction. Do you have paying customers and are they engaged using your system? From my brief look at the site it looks like the services are free. Generally getting some traction even with free customers is a good sign, but getting people to fork over money is what separates many hobbies from businesses. Although there are other revenue models, but either way, getting someone to pay you (e.g. revenue) is a better sign then just signups.
  • maurocasas 11y ago
    First of all, thanks for taking the time to check out the site. Right now, as I said on another comment I'm focusing on adquiring users who will apply to the job openings. I want the service to be completely free for those who want to get freelance gigs, and I'm aiming to provide B2B services to agencies and media producers. I'm currently planning out the following iteration of the project which will start displaying some of this "B2B direction" for the product. Thing is, I'm currently the only person working on this heh It's quite a challenge though, I love it.
    • davismwfl 11y ago
      Totally understand trying to do it all. You are doing good, and that is a good user base to start with in 4 months. Expanding the B2B to pay for things while keeping it free for candidates is probably the right approach. I'd say keep doing what you are doing and try to get some of the B2B side moving because without that your growth of candidates will fall and you will start loosing traction. Gotta have the businesses for the candidates to get exposed to. No matter what remember that whether you fail or succeed, enjoy yourself and don't beat yourself up over mistakes they will happen.
      • maurocasas 11y ago
        I completely share the idea about reaching businesses early to generate traction, and I'm currently going that way with the B2B launch. I'm looking to generate a few contracts before launching and run closed tests with these people in order to polish the product before making a public release of it. I genuinely appreciate your comments, thanks!
• andersthue 11y ago
  Doing a startup wether a bootstrapped or vc funded is one long series of validation excersises mixed with the eventual app crashes and data loss that spice up your life. Getting any users validates that they find it interesting enough to sign up, then you must validate more by looking at their interactions, if they are using the app you have done one more validation. My recommendation is that you get one or more mentors who have done one or more startup and also get into a mastermind group, check out https://mastermindjam.com https://mastermindjam.com for help on that.
  • maurocasas 11y ago
    Since I launched the first iteration user growth has been stable, and I've seen people actually using the site. I also think it's cool to know at least 20ish people (I know of personally) have found jobs through Actuame!