App idea: Networking Ninja
Hi, I'm in the very initial stages of my app (idea validation), and wanted to get a take on what the Indie Hacker community thought of it, and if you would be so kind as to share some feedback (positive thoughts or constructive criticism).
I'd like to create an app that serves as a tracker / reminder to reach out to your network on certain intervals that you indicate. Think of it almost as an add on to LinkedIn. This would include not only your professional community, but friends and acquaintances as well. The user flow would look something like this:
- Connect your contacts to app
- Set reminder frequency and complete profile
- App reminds you to reach out to Jane Smith, includes personalized suggestions on what to include
- Send note within app via connected social media or email applications
- Timer resets
Does that make sense? Have you faced similar issues? How do you keep track of reaching out to your network?
Thank you for reading!
Just stumbled upon this. I'd be interested in an app like this as well. Did you start developing this?
But to be honest I probably wouldn't pay a monthly fee. A one time purchase would be ok though
I could see this being useful.
My Questions:
Would your MVP be integrating with LinkedIn?
How do you plan on monetizing?
How would it determine personalized suggestions?
Thank you for your questions.
Yes, the plan is to integrate with LinkedIn so, at the very least, it could extract your LinkedIn summary and/or your profile picture.
Re monetization: while I haven't thought deeply about this since I'm solving a problem for myself, I think a freemium model could work. Limit the app to 50 contacts on the free version that you can manage, anything more you'll have to pay $2/month for or something. What are your thoughts?
Re personalized suggestions: I'm really struggling with this one. In the ideal app, it would somehow suggest articles on the web to send to your network that may be interested in it. For example, if Jane Smith is one of your contacts, and her contact profile indicates her industry is "Blockchain", it could suggest a Medium article to send to Jane as a friendly way to reach out without you having to think of something to write to Jane about.
Does any / all of this make sense? I love the questions, it's getting me thinking about all the right things. Thank you so much!
50 contacts is way to high, i'm just imaging being asked to send messages to 50 different people and feeling overwhelmed.
I think a better solution may be to charge per user managed per month, because the way I personally would use this service is I'd be trying to improve relations with a few important contacts I really care about (thought leaders, influencers, potential business partners).
At face value being able to remind you to talk to people isn't something that gets me excited, but if the focus is on creating/maintaining connections with high value contacts I start seeing the value that I might pay for.
A good feature might be a sorting algorithm which figures out which of your contacts are even worth networking with (Maybe by keyword or by who has a large online presence?)
Just my two cents.
Yep I have said quite a few times on IH that i would love this product if low maintenance/easy to use. Almost like drip for your personal network.
Let me know how it goes!
Thank you for the encouraging words, Louis. Mind letting me know what Drip is? I haven't heard of it.
Check it out here. Obviously your product wouldn't be like Drip, I meant more the general idea of automated contact sequences :)