Tips for marketing a product without alerting my full time emplyer?
I'm hoping to bootstrap TinyCadence and slowly grow it into my full time job over the next few years. I'm at the point where I need to start marketing it, but the first steps that come to mind are to use my professional network.
Unfortunately, I cannot do that without alerting the CEO and management of my current company that I am pursuing another project, and would like to avoid doing that. Any suggestions for marketing outside of using my personal professional network?
Hi Ryan. Here's a non-exhaustive list of acquisition channels you can use to grow from 0 users to your first 10 and how to avoid alerting your management
LinkedIn, & Facebook is out of the question. With Twitter (X) you can probably get away with a persona as well?
To sum up, there are a lot of ways to get your first 10 - 100 customers without having to alert your management.
You could work with a trusted party such as your partner, or friends in the industry who could be the face of the idea and help you market through channels that you cannot explore anonymously.
Market early and get into channels where your ideal customer is going to be, active, and responsive to your content or services. Unless it is written in your contract or company's HR book, you do not need to inform them of your side hustle.
My biggest mistake in the past was waiting to start, and waiting for things to be perfect before launching. It is way more important to get to 90% of what you think is done and get out there and try to land your first client ASAP. That is really the proof of concept that you have a service people want/need.
Tell the true. Ask them for help, make them part of your project.
I believe there isn't a simple answer to your question. I am in the same situation as many indie hackers who are bootstrapping their projects and still don't have sufficient income to leave their full-time jobs. Currently, I am avoiding any direct marketing within my professional network and refraining from using my name as a founder to promote the project.
You could try asking the CEO if it's permissible to have a side project, provided it doesn't impact your performance. I've had this idea but haven't yet mustered the courage to ask my manager.
Hey, it depends on what the product does and how it might be bought. I'm in a situation where I have a fulltime job and children, and I' counting on the job for income for the foreseeable future.
I took all of this into account when deciding on the type of project to launch. I needed to build something that I can work on nights and weekends and never need to work on during the day. This seems simple, but this means no contracts, no demo's, no legal, no professional network etc.
To work around work, the best way I found is to go back to the idea stage and have the right idea.