Paid Acquisition Through Investment?
Paid acquisition is always risky, so I would love feedback on this idea. https://findcollabs.com/project/sedventures-meta-project-cGy0iOcmZMzPr0hjDcWt
FindCollabs top of funnel has increased 10x since I started doing some content marketing on dev.to. I think I can keep people coming in the door, the question is how to get them to take the collaboration seriously.
I'm trying to figure out whether human beings even want to collaborate with strangers on FindCollabs like they do on GitHub.
It's very difficult to learn why you do/don't have product-market fit from watching your metrics and the behavior patterns of large numbers of people. You need to talk to them. Sales over marketing early on.
So at your stage, I'd focus on having actual conversations with individuals 1-on-1 (in-person, calls, chats, whatever), onboarding them personally, and following up with them regularly. I'd use the recommendations from The Mom Test to avoid coming away from these conversations with inaccurate ideas.
Tweak your product based on what you learn from these interactions. Question your core assumptions. And don't stop talking to people, because changes in those conversations (or a lack thereof) will be your barometer for whether you're the right track.
Once the product is good and your assumptions seem more-or-less validated, then start doing content marketing and pouring gas on the fire.
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As a data point of one, I certainly do want to collaborate on projects with people. But the tools I have at my disposal seem great — GitHub for code, Slack for organizations, Notion for collaborating around lots of written content/files/docs.
So I wouldn't use FindCollabs if the value proposition is simply tooling around collaboration, unless it somehow leapfrogs the competition in terms of great functionality. That's hard to do at a general level (although Notion has done to Google Docs for me), but easier to do if you niche down and focus on a really specific use-case, like GitHub does with code.
(One idea here: helping podcasters collaborate with audio editors, transcriptionists, people to do show notes, etc. I might use that. My whole podcast team and production pipeline in one place sounds great.)
Ofc, there are other possible value propositions. For example, helping me find good people to work with, helping me compensate them, helping me onboard them, etc.
This is a very good point. My conversations 1-on-1 have been significantly more useful than anything large scale/public.
The goal of FindCollabs is to be a place where people find collaborators, not necessarily do collaboration.
Excellent reply!
Let's assume that people don't look for "collaboration" per se. By using FindCollabs you can wind up with:
Now, what do people really want? Getting deeper into this question, we'll find out that:
I think FindCollabs narrative should revolve around showing that being an active member help you achieve some of the above.
You did a great job here:
https://dev.to/the_prion/rejected-from-a-top-tech-company-build-a-side-project-1957
The promise of personal investment might be quite a costly user acquisition/retainment strategy. Nonetheless, I think it does sound appealing.
On the other hand, if I knew that being an active member of FindCollabs maximizes my chances of being recognized and finding new clients/job opportunities - that'd be a no brainer.
I know you did a few shows with some community members, organized the hackathon, and provided lots of support to users.
Here are a few extra ideas
I'm aware that these things don't scale in a way to self propel FindCollabs to million users community. But would provide extraordinary value to me, and I'd be willing to pay for it.