Would you pay for an "Ask a [hiring manager, office manager, small business owner, etc]" service?
There are sites where you can get code mentorship online by the minute (ie pay $15 for 15 minutes of Django assistance from an expert) and I'm wondering if a similar model would extend to talking to people with different roles. Not for help per se, but to get in touch with potential users, for example.
So for example, If I want to talk to a bunch of hiring managers, rather than try to hunt down a bunch on LinkedIn, it might be worth it to pay $150 to talk to 10 hiring managers for 15 minutes each and save a lot of time.
Is this something you would use? Would you pay for it?
You might look at the market for usability test and customer product test services. There is a whole industry which does nothing else but maintain a panel of people in different Industries and with different skills.
For a user test I can just book 10 people, middle class, housewifes, managers, etc.
They charge high prices for that. A self service might be possible, but how can you maintain the quality of your panel?
So I think there is a market, but maybe not a profitable one in the lower pricepoint area of validating a side project.
Id happily pay for access to people. But would you have enough lawyers available for my next SaaS idea? Or Electricians, or bus drivers? Everyone will have a special request which will probably eat your margins while you look to find such people.
Maybe focus on a sub niche, If you find one which is in demand.
This is really good feedback. I had no idea that it was already a thing, and it makes sense that the key challenge here would be getting the communities. Good thought on targeting a niche. Thanks!
I would use that for situations when I need to ask an expert a question or bounce an idea off of them. For example, if I have a product in mind, it would be super useful to be able to ask an expert how to best structure the database(s) and which products to use (i.e., should MySQL be used instead of Postgres).
If this is your use case then you may want to checkout out codementor.io, which provides exactly what you're referring to (I think).
I'm specifically trying to branch off that idea as a way to contact your potential users more easily :)
Lol well I hope someone else things it's useful, because I just registered talkto.co