On: Ask HN: Leaving my job to boostrap my projects. Advice?

[jorgemf]

Red flags:

- I only have a few $k (even with a product-market fit since day 1, it is going to take you time to generate enough revenue)

- My plan is to build everything myself (do everything alone is not a good idea, you need at least external support for the bad days)

- Levels has been greatly inspiring (it should be your project/product what inspires you, not others project)

- my question is whether there are any advice you can think of (definetly you need a plan before quitting your job)

My advice:

- don't quit your job, you don't need it to launch an MVP and get your first customer. Actually don't even thing about forget your only income until you have some customers in your MVP.

- try to make your first sell even before finishing the MVP (there is no better validation than this one)

- pick a stack you already know very well

- focus on the minimum features that will make your customers pay

- don't read about other projects, yours is different with it nuances and you lose your focus when reading about others

- talk with your customers since yesterday

- do go to meet ups, unless you are planning to get some customers there

- spend at least the same time doing marketing (user research, promoting, measuring kpis, ect) as you spend developing the product

- don't quit your job

- release your MVP yesterday

- do small and fast releases, big releases are a pain to test, small releases mean less bugs in every release and you get early feedback

- focus, focus, focus. Simple services is not a product or project, pick one, sell it, launch the MPV, and if it doesn't work move to the next one.

- sell your product before even having an MPV or write a line of code

- be ready to fail, most projects fail. Set a metric before start the project to decided whether you are failing or not in advance and move on with other stuff as soon as you detect you are failing

[6DM → jorgemf]

Just curious, how do you sell a product before exists? Do you literally sell it, or do you pitch it and then when they're sold on the idea you tell them it doesn't exist.

[wayn3 → 6DM]

the usual approach is a google form, stating what you are going to make.

then you presell it. meaning you sell something that does not yet exist. if X number of people buy, you build it. if too little people want it, you return their money and say sorry.

then you deliver the product in as little code as possible. if its just information, write an email instead of building a fully responsive javascript react native reflux multi tenant fully distributed app.

yes, its not called reflux. but thats what it induces in the developer.

edit: thats how you presell products that are sufficiently easy to make. if you are looking at bigger projects like, say, a fusion reactor - you dont presell your customers. you presell investors. you do that by saying "heres the paper weve written as postdocs in university, we think we have a decent shot at making this happen". then you take the money and build the first step of your roadmap. then you go back to raising and presell "see? weve built feature X successfully. now we need more money to build the next thing". and so on, until you have a product.

the process doesnt really change, just who you presell.

[6DM → wayn3]

Presell go fund me style (not using the site, just a money first example), or presell as in you email a group to take a survey?

[wayn3 → 6DM]

"hey i have 5 ultimate frisbee frisbees with super mario bros. art on it. want one? $25 bucks to my paypal"

example taken from noah kagan explaining the process. if you manage to collect the cash, you order the frisbees from the vendor you found. if you dont sell 5, just ship the money back. the example is deliberately simple but you can apply that to anythign. you have a business idea, sell the result of the business. if nobody wants it, dont build it.

i dont know go fund me, but if you run a kickstarter, its basically the same thing. you say you need an amount of X dollars to be able to deliver. if its not met, just return the money. the fact that people on kickstarter are idiots and dont deliver after collecting money is another story.

[jorgemf → 6DM]

kind of. You should offer something in return of the people who are buying it in advance. Like for example 50% discount or whatever. Then you should deliver something in less than a couple of months, otherwise it is hard to justify the pre-sell.

What I would do is set a landing page like the product is almost finished and collect emails or some personal information to contact the people when the product is done. This helps to validate your product before even start building it. Once you know your MVP (very minimum) will be ready in less than a month you can start doing the pre-sell and take the money. It also depends on the product, it is not the same if your customer are the gyms or the people who go to the gym. You can make some gyms sing a contract to use your product for a good offer before you have your product done and without getting any money yet. But once you deliver they have to pay you by contract.