Help finding a mentor/coach
Hey everyone, I'm a software developer with a side project about 80-90% ready for the market and I'm realizing I'm in way over my head. How did everyone go about finding a mentor or coach?
EDIT: Wow, thanks for the responses everyone! I was seriously starting to feel discouraged and this was just the thing I needed.
I definitely should have been more specific: my project is a b2b SAAS app and I suddenly realized I need to approach some company somewhere and ask them for money (actually it will need to be a lot of companies before any of them say "yes"). As a stereotypical introverted developer I was starting to feel overwhelmed at the prospect of all that interaction, and not sure which strategy is right for me.
I'm looking for someone to review my approach (when I settle on one) and offer feedback; I see this is a good place for that too and I will post something here when it is ready!
If what you need is more of a coach (almost a therapist, but less interested in your childhood, more interested in the present day) there's someone incredible I've been working with who I would recommend.
If you cant do it or its not your strong suit you can always partner with someone who thrives on that kind of stuff.
I would recommend attending MicroConf or some other conference targeted at software entrepreneurs. You would almost certainly be able to find a mentor/coach there.
Hi - do you have a website or email? Where are you based? Would love to learn more to see how I can help.
My personnal coach is made of post-it with tasks on it. Whenever I feel that I'm in over my head : I take a small pause, I take a deep breath and I take a look at those post-it. They always make clear what's the next step, provided that you've put a new one for each task.
It might not work for everyone, but these 3 steps are working for me so far :-)
Post-it can be digital. The only important thing is that they must be easy to add, delet, edit & move.
Yeah I'm using org-mode + GTD and the relief is real. What I'm facing is more big-picture stuff...
Hi there,
Are there any specific questions/challenges we can help you with? What part of the project are you struggling with? Are you mainly looking for feedback, advice or just someone to bounce ideas off and hold you accountable?
In my opinion, one of the most amazing things about the indie hacker/founder community is that there are lots of really experienced, successful founders who are willing to spend their free time helping out first-timers with no expectation of anything in return.
The qualifier to that, however, is that there are also lots of people with little experience who happily dole out bad advice to anyone willing to listen. As a first-time founder, it's really difficult to tell the good from the bad (I found this out the hard way unfortunately).
My recommendation would be to read through some of the questions and answers on this forum and reach out to people who seem to have experience in what you're struggling with.
I'm happy to have a chat about b2b SaaS for example, however when it comes to SEM, affiliate marketing or dev-ops, I'm useless ;)
Good luck with the launch - if you're 80% ready for the market, you should have launched 10-30% ago ;)
It is b2b SAAS! I'm mostly struggling with how to get ready to face potential customers who don't know me from Adam. Do I knock on doors? Facebook ads? Content marketing? I realize there's no one right answer; ask 10 different people and I'll get 10 different answers.
Believe me, the app is pretty embarrassing in its current form. The remaining 20% i need to add is multi-tennant support as all the data will be siloed per client...
Just because 10 people will give 10 different answers doesn't mean that there isn't a right answer - it just means at least 9 people gave poor answers (maybe even all ten)!
I've been (un)fortunate enough to do the initial $10k in revenue sales for 3 different B2B SaaS projects now, and have been close to a fair few more as well. If you'd like to have a chat, I'm happy to spend some time on a call with you (no strings).
Otherwise (and for the benefit of others reading), my advice is to do things that don't scale: talk to customers directly, via email, phone and face to face meetings. Sink most of your time into an intelligent direct sales process which allows you to work out your value proposition, sales pitch, pricing and changes to the product which need to be made pre-launch. I definitely wouldn't finish up development of the app without some customers committed...
Good luck with the launch, let us know how it goes!
Do you need a mentor for motivation or gaining skills? You can try Mentorselector.com to find mentor for a specific reason.