Ask HN: What Do You Recommend for a Minimal Viable Launch for a SaaS? - artur_makly
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lee101
I recently launched a cryptocurrency trading platform that offers ai based
forecasts:

I would recommend building sharing into the platform and the process in
contextual locations (when you signup/save/finish or go to do something else
in the app as a popup for example), we also built a referral program into our
MVP so users can earn real bitcoin if someone they refer becomes a subscriber
to [https://BitBank.nz](https://BitBank.nz)

The referral program helped build links and we should have leveraged adding
contextual hints to share and earn because for me the marketing has been a
difficult process even harder than building the product and creating machine
learning systems...

The ability for people to easily share and a strategy for building links is
essential really to spread your product, there is often an initial spike of
media attention and press and if your not properly prepared to capitalize on
that then your out of luck when the traffic and hype tapers off as it does
with the press, one risky thing about releasing an MVP really... although i
think releasing an mvp is the way to go.

~~~
artur_makly
good tips. I wonder if there is Referral Plugin for Stripe..

~~~
artur_makly
boom. [https://stripe.com/works-with/category/referral-
marketing](https://stripe.com/works-with/category/referral-marketing)

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darrenwestall
If you can do it by hand, launch it. Automate it once you have proven the
commercial need, or when the manual pain point becomes too much.

Do the marketing first. Build it and they will come is bullshit.

That should let you ship early, fail early and not waste a bunch of time. If
that doesn’t happen, you know you’re on to something and it’s a fantastic
problem to have!

