Ask HN: Have you tried cold calling prospects before building a product?

I've never sold anything without a product at all, but find that once you have a product to show, you can get a lot more info on how customers or potential customers would use the product and what they would like to see.

Occasionally, you get something a request which is completely off base for what your business is. Don't ignore these, as they can possibly be a more important direction for your business.

Not sure there's a right number but you do have to make sure that you contact the right people (ie those who have the power and interest in buying). If the need is sufficiently great, you may only need a sample size of one to start - especially if they're willing to bankroll the development. I've had a few fortunate friends who have built a business that way.

I tried cold calling when I was 17 and starting a web design business, I swore never to do it again.

I think there are probably much better ways to find your potential customers. Find our where they go (in real life or online) and go be a sponge. Listen to their problems, add value where you can, and then when the time is right talk about what you are thinking about building and get feedback. (like during the networking portion of a meeting)

I'm doing this right now. We do have a product to display but it's not the minimum viable product yet - we hope to release that in about a month.

My approach has been to explain what we've got at the moment, what we're building and what we're capable of. The conversation is less about making a sale and more about getting an expression of interest. When we release this will you buy it? Why or why not?

Feedback has been invaluable so far and looking forward to following up with all of these warm prospects at the end of October. :)

I haven't done cold calling before building a product but it sounds like a good idea. It's never too early to get some feedback and to make prospects aware that you exist. Having them involved from day one could help you end up with a better product and an initial group of customers who feel a real sense of ownership of the product they helped create.

That said, cold calling is really tough work so I don't hold it against anyone for not wanting to do it. I've done it. It's difficult unpleasant work.

When my business partner and I were looking for idea of what to build we came up with the idea of building an online candidate tracking app for recruitment firms. It was going to be aimed at small 1 - 5 person agencies and would have a cut down feature set compared to the big, and expensive, desktop packages available.

I cold called around ten small recruitment agencies who I would expect to be our target audience and explained how the system would work to them. Of the ten, only one thought it was an excellent idea, whilst most of the others told me that the features we were planning to leave out of our app would be needed if the app were to be of any use.

With this advice ringing in our ears we dropped the idea and continued on to other projects. The good thing about the cold calls was that we got valuable feedback on the app without writing a single line of code. This saved us a few months of coding to get to the same conclusion.