

How do you test an MVP when there is the "Chicken or the Egg" problem? - chanced

I am almost finished with an MVP/beta version of a SaaS that helps businesses of specific industry market to potential customers. While I believe the service will be considered valuable to both the companies that sign up and their potential customers, I really don't know how to proceed with a proper way to validate this hypothesis.<p>For me to find truly test whether or not my customers (the businesses) are willing to pay for the service, I need users otherwise it is hard to argue a return on the investment. On the flipside, I can't get users without businesses signed up.<p>I'm considering offering a 3 - 6 month beta period that would be free to companies. The problem I have with this is that it's not really testing the viability of the service. Moreover, I won't be able to work on it full time since I do not have investors and I am afraid of falling short on bug fixes, feature releases, and most importantly, marketing to end-users. I could probably seek out investors but this is another chicken and egg situation; I will not have truly tested the service's viability to investors.<p>How does one tackle the dilemma of having two customer bases that are dependent on one another?<p>Bonus question: If it is to proceed with the beta period, would you seek out investors? If so, at what point?<p>Thanks,
Chance (long time lurker, first time poster)
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rex_gsd
Not knowing the industry your SaaS is targeting perhaps you could take the
route that the original founders of Reddit did and lie to the first few
businesses that come onboard. <http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/22/reddit-fake-
users/>

Get all your friends to sign up to the service and interact with the first 10
or so business customers as if they were real users. You don't have to go free
open beta for the first 6 months to verify the MVP, you could even confirm the
idea by visiting or cold calling some of the target businesses you're
interested in poaching. Perhaps try to stick a high dollar price on the
monthly rate and offer the service to the first 10 signups for free or
generate interest with an awesome landing page and a big closed beta image to
procure email addresses from both users and businesses..

~~~
chanced
Ah, sorry I don't know how I missed this comment. Thanks for the link man. I
had no idea but that's genius :)

I could probably get enough of my friends to interact with it but I guess but
I feel that I somehow need to test both groups in order to truly understand
it's viability.

