Should I build first or sell first? Or a bit of both?
I started building a new project last week after planning it all out during a backpacking trip. I made my first sale last night (from someone I don't know) which is almost validating, except that it's only one sale so it could be a fluke.
I have 40 hours of work left to get an MVP up. But the site will sort of suck without users. So... how should I spend my time?
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Do nothing but program until the MVP is out.
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Do nothing but sell until I get X members.
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Balance my time doing both.
Hey Patrick. Just chiming in because I'm in love with your landing page and copy. Great stuff, keep it up!
Just responding to say that I'm in love with your face!
No but for realz, it’s very much appreciated.
Congrats on the launch and even more on the first sale!
I skimmed through the page - it seems like you can improvise the initial features with a combination of Slack and Skype and some manual tasks (more or less). Anyone who signs up at this point will be more than fine with that.
Hence I'd say a better investment of time is to focus on further promoting the page, collecting as much feedback as possible and trying to get more customers on board.
40h is really not a lot of time to build the MVP, but we all know how estimates often expand and we get into perfecting some unimportant details and then feel discouraged due to wasting time on a feature that turns out to be useless etc...
Good luck and keep us posted!
Btw - nice copywriting skills!
Thanks!
Yeah, I could use nothing but Slack for the first month and it would be fine. It wouldn't scale and it'd be kinda rough, but would be perfectly suitable as a holdover. The reason I chose not to do that is because then the community becomes the focus. And there isn't a community. So I thought that'd be a bad look. But maybe at this stage I can't afford to be concerned with appearances.
40h is for just the main feature... the one that makes it better suited than Slack for this specific pain point. The full first version will probably be more in the 150h range.
For your original question—build first or sell first—I recently read a book (https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Customer/dp/1591848369) that encouraged entrepreneurs to split their time 50-50 on product and marketing.
It argued that doing so will make your sales funnel leaky at first, but that the feedback you can get from early and prospective customers is worth it, because you can use it to develop your product in the right direction. It's hard to do that if you've already added all the major features.
(The rest of that book is pretty fantastic, so I'd recommend it... especially if you want to get into the marketing side even more)
I like the concept and I got all the answers I wanted. Where did you develop your copywriting skills? I think you should focus on recruiting users and further validating and refining the product. Seems you have no problem with the technical building part
Hope it works out, and keep us posted on progress.
Thanks, Sam!
I've written lots of words in my life. The first time I noticed that those words sounded like what I actually sound like in real life (which I think is the point, right?) was after a yoga retreat where we journaled directly after shavasana every morning. YMMV. And then from there it's simply a matter of trying to pretend that I'm a first-time visitor. What questions and pain points would I have? The further removed I get from that the more important it becomes to come to places like IH and learn what questions first-timers really do have.
User recruitment it is! I don't know what I'm doing in this selling world, but it's exciting! Do you have any recommendations for where to find people?
I think IH is a good place to start for sure... and I think perhaps Reddit as well, although I don't use Reddit very much (yet).
Hi Patrick, first of all congrats: i think one $650 sale fully validates an idea i would have considered nice but foolish! I would never pay such amount of money for a community membership. Honestly i didn't understand what happens in the community...is it a forum, a facebook group or what else? What kind of service does it provide?
That said i appreciated all your honesty in the Faq section (and i'm with you when you said that getting divorced changed your life giving you a push towards reaching your new goals).
I would suggest to keep selling even if the product in not completed.
Thanks so much @andretti1977!
This is something that is absolutely foolish to the type of person who doesn't need it. And that makes me love it more. This is the first thing I've ever built that I'd consider polarizing, and I like it! Makes it easier to talk about in some ways.
I'm trying to keep a balance in my copywriting of providing enough info without overwhelming the reader with tiny details. I totally get what you mean about not knowing what type of group it is. Cuz it could easily be a slack group or a facebook group from the reader's perspective. It's not, it's a custom-developed community that can't really be described as a forum, but is semi close. Maybe I can just add either some screenshots or a screencap of it in use?
Cheers to you an your divorce, and thanks for mentioning that and spreading that love!
Nice! Another WDS alum making waves 🌊
Awesome idea in my opinion. Personnaly i’m using Focus Mate and a mastermind I run to do the same thing. I think if you nail how the mastermind and accountability portion of things works you’ll have people like me coming in droves. 😎
And to answer your question, $650 is not a fluke. Probably balance the marketing and MVP as much as you can. This post is a good start!
WDS!!! I sometimes tell people about my experience and they roll their eyes when I tell them how important it was for me. I think it's one of those things that you have to have gone to in order to really appreciate it.
I'm going to reach out to you via email in a little bit. Would love to connect further. You're more than welcome to ignore it if you want.
Yea, for those who have never gone will never know. :-p Sounds good. I'll get back to you shortly!
Really cool idea!
Have you been listening to Tim Ferriss talk about negative financial incentives? ;)
Btw, you have a typo in the FAQ "Why $650?". "soundig"
Thanks so much! And yes, I have! I'm a huge Tim Ferriss fan, and I actually just used Tim Ferriss this morning to describe to a friend who my target audience is: "Self-employed people who are fans of both Tim Ferriss and Seth Godin" is what I said.
Thanks for letting me know about the typo. I should probably run the page through an online spell checker or something. A downside of typing directly in a code editor is that it doesn't pick up on these things.
Site looks great. I think you should focus a little more on the mastermind aspect. The copy just tells me what I have to do when I join. I get the accountability thing, but what set’s this apart from beeminder.com or gofuckingdoit.com?
It’s the community. I know that it’s hard to talk about this if there’s not community, but “Awesome freaking people.” should be the first in the list in my opinion
You're 100% right that the mastermind aspect is what makes this different. But yeah, I feel icky talking about the valuable community... of two people.
One of the things I struggle with in copywriting is trying to sell two main benefits. They both come out watered down whenever I try to do that. So I tried to pick the one that I thought was a more painful pain point to focus on.
I'll definitely keep this in the back of my mind and try to do everything I can (including asking for feedback) to make sure that people understand the mastermind component.
Good point
I agree that the commitment thing is the #1 priority
Set a hard release date and market the he'll out of that: reaching people where they're at (like, you're doing it with this post on IH).
Also get some nice content out there about the tech stack, background stuff on accountability and motivation etc.
Try to get people to leave their email so you can reach them.
Ask for feedback: will people use it, why not, what is good what is bad.
Use the feedback and visitor stream that will slowly build up to finish the remainder the right way and get your small fire going strong 🔥💪🏻
Thanks @EeKay! This is great. I very much like the idea of a hard release date instead of just a "coming soon" release.
I don't have much of a network. No email list or anything like that, sadly. I'll spend some time thinking about where "my people" might hangout and do my best through those avenues.
Thanks!
Awesome. Don't overthink it. You're at IH and that is a crowd that understands (and often undergoes) the problem you're solving. Look at Reddit threads, Hacker News, digital nomad communities, use a footer when commenting on a blog by people of interest, etc.
Write content that resonates and is related to the thing you're solving (put it on Medium or your own blog) and get it out there.
Often it will take time but it will definitely help you to get visibility and users in the long run.
Start marketing for your product in social media platform, Instagram will be a great place for that right now. You could build a few stuff and promote them & then take custamixze offers.
40 hours is not even a lot of time by the time u get everyone’s opinion u could have already built ur idea if your estimate is correct ?
What exactly do I get for my money? Do I get them back after a year? Why would I give them to you if then all I get is that I check-in? What is my motivation? I won't really have any rewards for it any way, I'll just be out 650.
You are right. You just pay him $650. Good business huh! haha