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Ask HN: Bootstrapping, demo'd MVP to potential customers, but stuck

2 points by moomoo11 ↗ HN
After building MVP over a couple months based on a problem i've had and also known others to have, I spent the last couple months doing a whole lot of outreach, talking to target audience (small businesses mostly) and understanding their frustrations and showing them what I build. I must have reached out to hundreds of people, spent dozens of hours talking to people. I even got coffee with a few of them and spent time talking When I showed them what I'm working on, they were all interested and gave some good feedback as well.

Unfortunately, nobody seems to commit to try being my "pilot" customers. I'm offering it free for 3 months, and my plan was maybe I could support 5 such customers and really tune my product based on further feedback.

What am I doing wrong? What do I need to do differently? Any and all ideas welcome, thank you!

4 comments

[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 112 ms ] thread
ilaksh
I wish I had an answer. But in case it helps in any way, I built a few different versions of my product and had over 800 sign ups over the course of four or five months during which it was free. Most of them seemed to try it at least a little. Out of that, two people were interested in paying $5 per month.

So the new version I am working on is less expensive to operate, for one thing.

How did you manage to get people to actually talk to you? Hardly anyone actually said anything in the Discord. And there weren't many in there. Did you call people on the phone or something?

moomoo11
I went to talk to them in person. My target audience is small businesses in general right now.

I talked to my barber and other stores in the strip mall. I cold called a few places but that was honestly the most harrowing experience of my life lol.

I haven’t tried online outreach. I’m not sure the best way to do that.

Thanks for sharing your experience. How’s it going with your v2?

ilaksh
It's v3 actually and it's going okay but I am spending more of my time and energy on a small contract to pay the bills. I got a little bit of progress on v3 this weekend though.
verdverm
The more details you share, the more people will be able to help you with ideas

For example, I might say "leave the demo with them" if it's something like a square terminal competitor, or at least something with that form factor. But I don't know enough to know if that is a relevant suggestion.