
Ask HN: We've launched successfully. Now what? - hackathonguy
Hey everybody,<p>So we&#x27;ve launched our startup on TechCrunch and a whole bunch of smaller publications and are currently live on Product Hunt. Overall it&#x27;s been a rather successful &quot;soft&quot; launch (we&#x27;ve been trickling more articles, etc. for about a month), with more than 500 businesses and companies picking up our product.<p>However, I&#x27;m wondering what the next step is. We have decent word-of-mouth growth, and obviously product-market fit is the most important goal to strive towards right now, but what can I continue to do actively to grow our startup?<p>Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences. :-)
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danieltillett
Explain how your bot helps me make money with actual data from real customers.
Do this well and your problems are solved.

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fuqted
It might help if you mention what you're doing.

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hackathonguy
Sure. Yala is a social media scheduling bot that knows the best time to post
your content.

[https://www.yalabot.com](https://www.yalabot.com)

Shared it here on HN today as well:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12760549](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12760549)

~~~
fuqted
There are a few of those, but that's cool. One that comes to mind is
MeerEdgar. Here's a podcast featuring the founder, Laura Roeder.
[https://empireflippers.com/laura/](https://empireflippers.com/laura/)

If I remember correctly she started out as a social media consultant so Edgar
was obviously a good fit. How much do you want to make Yala a winner? I think
doing so would mean drinking the social media marketing kool aid. If you don't
already, you should start by following Gary Vaynerchuk.

You're asking how to market your company in the digital age..considering the
company you founded my guess would be you already know the answer. Your blog
is active but I couldn't find a link for it on your home page. Maybe you
should consider directing traffic there and hosting it on Medium.

The first thing I noticed while comparing your blog to MeetEdgar's is that
theirs seems a lot more targeted.
[https://blog.yalabot.com/](https://blog.yalabot.com/)
[http://blog.meetedgar.com/](http://blog.meetedgar.com/) While it's awesome
that you're appealing to the tech crowd, maybe you should center your content
around giving social media marketing advice (Gary Vaynerchuk will make this
easier). Vaynermedia also has an office at the Transbay WeWork in Sf. I've met
the copywriter that works there. I don't think it would hurt to reach out to
people like that and ask for advice.

Personally I found out about MeetEdgar from the The TropicalMBA and
EmpireFlippers podcasts. I could see you being featured on CodeNewbie. "The
Hackathon Startup" \- or something - in the theme of how she typically names
her episodes.

I'd say you should also try to be featured on Startups For the Rest of Us but
after googling I see Laura's already been there. I'd try anyway.

Some random tips on this:

1\. When I was listening to Gary Vee's last audiobook I remember him talking
about a time a Sony exec or something gave him advice. He said, basically
'don't take a tv interview unless your record is about to come out' (I'm
butchering it). Basically, if you decide to content market in the form of
being featured on podcasts then wait until you've made some more progress with
Kala, when you're excited and rife with ideas.

2\. I was watching a Sophia Amoruso interview last night
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4w_v4PCvMg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4w_v4PCvMg))
and she was giving her tips on dealing with media and she basically said to
have an assistant send the intro and hinted at using a fake email if you don't
really have an assistant. She's built a successful company and her first book
sold 200,000 copies, so take it from her.

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csallen
Congrats! Now comes the hard part. Launch is a huge event, but it's typically
difficult to get that level of press in the following months. You'll mostly
have to grow on your own.

The holy grail is massive, sustained, free word-of-mouth growth. You mentioned
achieving product-market fit? That's usually what it looks like: You've
identified a group of people who have a valuable problem, your product does a
badass job solving it for them, your marketing appeals to these people
specifically, and they are talking to each other about your product with
enthusiasm.

There are lots of examples on my website
([https://IndieHackers.com](https://IndieHackers.com)) that showcase how
various businesses have reached this point, so you might want to take a look
there. Here are a few suggestions that I've distilled from these interviews:

\- Hang out on relevant message boards and forums, and offer your product to
people who sound like they might need it. (It's important to do this in a non-
spammy way, e.g. talk about other options in addition to yours, and also give
them general advice.)

\- Offer some sort of referral/affiliate program so your customers (or even
random people) can advertise for you, and you don't have to pay unless you
make sales.

\- Look for a good distribution channel. I've talked to lots of people in the
past who make almost all their sales due to exposure via the Shopify
marketplace, the Google Apps marketplace, the App Store, etc. Maybe building
integrations can help with this.

\- Direct sales is underrated. Find potential customers and email them. Go to
conferences and events where you know potential customers will be, and talk to
as many as possible.

\- Make your branding even more niche. One example is how ConvertKit went from
"email marketing" to "email marketing for authors" to "email marketing for
professional bloggers". It seems limiting, but it makes it way easier to find
target customers' communities, and it helps you spread by word of mouth since
these specific people tend to hang out together. It also gives you lots of
ideas for building the features your specific customers need, so your product
ends up being way better for them than alternatives.

\- Start producing content that your potential customers would benefit from.
This is a long-term strategy that takes some serious commitment, but it can
really pay off. For a good example, check out Hubstaff's blog, which I believe
is crucial in helping their business generate leads:
[http://blog.hubstaff.com](http://blog.hubstaff.com)

Also, your TechCrunch article says you're a bootstrapped team of 3, and I
don't see any pricing. Are you giving it away for free? If there is one piece
of advice you take away from this comment to the exclusion of everything else,
it's this: _Charge money for your product as soon as possible._ It's extremely
difficult to tell if you're on the right path with a business-targeted product
if people can't pay for it, and it it's extremely difficult to build a company
if you can't tell if you're on the right path.

