Hustle stories of founders validating ideas
Hey IH!
Looking for the good stories of founders hustling to validate ideas.
Bigger examples:
- Katia Beauchamp with Birchbox buying clothes in stores to send out to customers.
- Doordash founders delivering food themselves with just a landing page food menu and phone number.
- Airbnb founders using their own home during a local conference with a simple landing page.
What are some smaller companies/indie hacker examples? I would love to hear your own!
I attended campus tours of local universities in New York to connect with prospective students who are applying for master's or other higher ed programs. I am not sure what kind of stories you are interested in, but this was one thing I never imagined doing again in my life, but it was fun and also very eye-opening :)
Awesome! What was your goal? You connect students with mentors yeah? Are you the mentor in the beginning? Super interested to hear what your building!
Yes, the earlier MVP was focussed on students/alumni networks. But we have now reconfigured our MVP to focus on indie creators and business owners so you can ship, scale or sell your side hustle.
https://geeksandexperts.com/
I know the founder of Spanx, Sara Blakely used to go to stores and buy her own products or pay her friends to buy her products. This was done to make the store owners believe that her products were flying off the shelfs and she could continue selling it.
Another great example! I’m really curious of lesser known examples though - examples that are currently being hacked together to get that early validation :)