Hi HN - I've built B2C web product called Fordi and am looking to build traction. I'm guessing that folks on here have worked through similar problems and would love some thoughts and advice.
The product (https://fordi.io) helps employees fix workplace issues by letting them send an anonymous, private message directly to a manager in real time. Basically instead of waiting months for an HR survey (that may not ask the right questions, may not be anonymous, etc.), this product lets anybody alert company management of their problem in seconds. Importantly, we offer this as a free, public service and it's open to any employee (independent of their HR dept). Using it is done by sending your anonymous message to feedback@fordi.io from your work email and telling us who you want us to send it to, we then deliver it anonymously. While imperfect, I've tried to eliminate friction in the submission process as much as possible (i.e. no app download, no signup needed, no payment). So the 2 big differences from every existing HR survey platform are that i.) feedback is fully initiated and controlled by the employee (not HR); and ii.) it's survey-less (fully conversational in existing apps like email or Slack).
I recognize that this product isn't for everybody. The idea is to gain employee traction with this free service and then eventually monetize it as a B2B SaaS product whose value prop is costs saves w/ better insights by automating survey collection and analysis (with a bunch of fancy bells and whistles that we've built around identifying themes, auto-routing to department leads, etc.). Admittedly, I'm not focused on B2B monetization right now and am simply looking to gain traction with this free B2C service. I tried for a year to sell this as a B2B product to HR depts and struggled dearly (due to execution mistakes on my part plus the HR survey market being extremely saturated, HR engagement being a low priority for many orgs, HR budgets shrinking, etc.). And so because of that I've pivoted into this free B2C GTM angle.
I wanted to see if anybody's worked through similar challenges and has any constructive advice? Thanks in advance!
