

Launching without social proof - zachinglis

Hey all,<p>First time coming here for advice.<p>Back when I was running my consulting company last year I booked off my Lead Dev and put a lot of money into a startup. I designed it, he developed it and I finally got it done.<p>I then spent a good year battling the banks. Once that was finished, I lost a lot of my excitement. That cross between being unsure how to launch, I wanted to approach the main thing bugging me.<p>Social Proof. We all know that if we see a site with plenty of members, it makes us think that the service is good. And vica-versa.<p>I know a blog with about 600,000 subscribers who are willing to review the site. That helps. But the issue I'm having is: My startup is city-based. What can I do to avoid the "There are no people in this city" and thus the thinking that the service isn't worth it.<p>The few ideas I have is to:
* Turn it into a positive thing. "Be the first!"
* Launchrawk it. Get emails, and then slowly let people in.
* ???<p>What have you done? What would you recommend in my shoes?<p>Any help is appreciated. Thanks guys.
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adrianhoward
_What have you done?_

Basically - pretty much the exact opposite of what you've done :-)

I had an idea some time back. I went and found some users first. Then I
observed what they did and what they valued. Then I changed my idea. Then I
went and observed some more. Then I changed my idea again. Then I went and
talked about the idea to a group of folk that I was 90% certain that I was
solving a problem for - and they mostly liked it. Tweaked the idea a bit. Went
back. They loved it. They told their friends. And they pre-registered. Based
on word of mouth.

Now I've got to the point where I can build something.

I _know_ I have probably a couple of hundred users who are keen on the
product. I know that they're keen enough about the idea to recommend it to
friends. I'm not entirely sure whether they'll be entirely profitable or not -
not sure yet. The only way to find that out is to build something (or the
quickest and cheapest way anyway).

The point I'm trying to drive home is that having a way of getting to users is
a core part of your business. It's not something that you should wait to
figure out until after you've built your product (because figuring it out may
well affect the way you build you product).

 _What would you recommend in my shoes?_

Find a group of users of your product that you can contact directly.

In real life - face to face.

Preferably find a sub-group of your market that is most passionate about
whatever problem it is that you're solving. The ones with the most pain, or
the ones with the most to gain.

Talk to them one-on-one, encourage them to use your product. Watch what they
do. Where possible tweak the product to support that group in a total
wonderful way.

Encourage testimonials and references (any forms of social proof that you can
use before you get large numbers).

Encourage the people _using_ your product to invite other people who will
_use_ the product. Look at the way FreeAgent and Rackspace referrals work for
example.

Be prepared to put a lot of effort in.

In my experience getting actual real users is a long, hard slog that takes
time and effort to pull off. Unfortunately I think you're actually at a
disadvantage now by having a fully formed product without users - because you
may find that the "generic" product that you have now is harder to pitch to
the smaller market that might have pulled in your initial early adopters.

~~~
zachinglis
Interesting. I'll see who I can find in the area. Thank you

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cannibal
Launch in one area at a time. There's no sense in launching everywhere in the
beginning if it's going to make your site seem abandoned. Like you said,
people won't trust it.

~~~
zachinglis
I think you're right. I'll talk to a few local people first and gauge on how
to improve it.

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SuperChihuahua
Display how many followers your company has on Twitter. Some of those
followers are probably spammers - but it doesn't matter short-term.

