Examine your list of 10+ ideas you built. Can you identify the "starving crowd" for each of them? Does a starving crowd even exist?
Lots of ideas seem cool. Far fewer ideas are are easy to sell. And often the ideas that are easy to sell are not the same as the cool ideas.
That's why I think building/marketing ideas "backwards" can be more effective. Certainly less risky. First identify the "starving crowd." Then build a hamburger for them[1].
If you identify a painful problem, people will ask how to pay for it even before you start development. I've witnessed this in person. If you describe the problem better than the prospects themselves, they will just assume you have the solution.
Good point. I think that most of my projects have an audience but reaching them is the step that I struggle with. That's why I feel that I need to reach them somehow, i.e. paid ads.
I'll try what other commenter mentioned, being part of the communities. Reply guy, provide value, and then get some trust, grow my audience and introduce my products.
If you've built 10 products and hot no-where then perhaps your strategy is a bad one.
And yes, building something then looking for customers is a bad strategy.
I strongly recommend you spend the next month finding a market. Don't start building the next product until you have made sales. If someone says "I'd pay for something that does x" then ask for a deposit. If they say "no", then keep looking.
And no, paid advertising is not the solution. That doesn't get you users (at this point). At this point you need to talk to people.
I’m in the same boat and was considering teaming up with someone who can handle the “void” part for me because it’s extremely demoralising.
And it’s worse because I’ve had some projects do well. I recently built this browser word game for 6+ months which is dead in the water [0] so I’m thinking of pivoting it (to an llm benchmark environment)
A good marketing partner will tell you what to build. 100% of success is building the right thing and being able to reach the market.
Unfortunately, of course, there are lots of bad marketing folk out there. I've lost count of the "if only it could do x, I could sell millions" type promises I've heard. If you don't understand marketing metrics you'll waste more times.
To be clear, a good marketing person is necessary. But you need the skill set to evaluate good in this context. Or you need to be lucky.
Hey. I'm technical and suspect you are as well, given you are focused on building ideas. It took me a while to figure out a marketing motion that built momentum and attracted people I didn't know to my tools.
Is marketing at all interesting to you? Because the starting point for me has been engaging with people actively talking about the problem my tools solve or in communities that would find games interesting or informative.
Happy to share more if you're in a spot where you've been trying to figure it out but it hasn't clicked yet. Also understand if you're more in the "I'd rather partner with someone else instead" camp.
Thanks for your comment! Technical here as well yeah. Marketing is interesting, I've been playing with Paid ads, B2C, B2B, organic but still haven't reached a level of expertise like I have in the technical side, and that frustrates me a lot.
I would prefer not to have that partner, as I had it before and although the startup reached 40k mrr over 1 year, we ended up closing the company. So I know what it feels to have someone that handles it but doing it myself is the hard part.
* Find communities talking about my problem and contribute value to those threads (not posting top-level). If I have an MVP for the conversation in that thread, I post a link to it, along with immediate advice on how I think about the problem. (This gets me, early users)
* I then take the language from the questions people are asking (and showing a positive reaction to) and use that for SEO. As I answer questions, I capture the questions people respond well to. I then use the language of those questions to update my site copy, and for the recurring ones, I write blog posts and add them to my site.
* Once I see traction from the early outreach messaging linking back to usage in my tool, I then use the same questions as conversation starters for cold outreach to my ICP. etc
This has been nice because I can actually see momentum building. Prior to having any system, it just felt like I was shooting in the dark with outreach messages or watching posts (that I worked on for days) get buried because they didn't resonate with the group/community I was posting to.
Overall, it's slow to start, but the steps build on each other. Prior to this, I had been booking calls to "learn" about people's day-to-day, but since I was technical, I didn't have a ton of background in what that actually looked like and where the edges might be, so a lot of conversations ended without going anywhere (which was also frustrating). I've seen people with a sales background absolutely kill these conversations with zero context, but I haven't hit that level yet in terms of the abstraction they must work off of.
Either way, if you do push on the start of that funnel and start searching for people organically surfacing the problem you are focused on, I open-sourced what I've been using to find those threads so others wouldn't need to reinvent the wheel: https://github.com/obris-dev/openmagpie
Also if you have links to any of the tools happy to provide feedback (even if I'm not the ICP)
Thank you for the advice. I've been trying to be the reply guy in X for few weeks and its slooowly helping but I think that being part of the communities is key. I read something similar about applying this in Facebook.
Cool project by the way. I'll test it now. Did you find this one by using it?
I mostly do B2B SaaS and mobile apps, I previously created a startup and managed teams as well. So I consider myself CTO, but I need to level up and become better with marketing and sales.
Currently I'm working in some projects related to AI. One model, two apps + hardware, one browser game, and trying to get leads for my own AI software agency ( https://urbanodx.com )
Examine your list of 10+ ideas you built. Can you identify the "starving crowd" for each of them? Does a starving crowd even exist?
Lots of ideas seem cool. Far fewer ideas are are easy to sell. And often the ideas that are easy to sell are not the same as the cool ideas.
That's why I think building/marketing ideas "backwards" can be more effective. Certainly less risky. First identify the "starving crowd." Then build a hamburger for them[1].
If you identify a painful problem, people will ask how to pay for it even before you start development. I've witnessed this in person. If you describe the problem better than the prospects themselves, they will just assume you have the solution.
---
[1]: "Starving crowd" story by Gary Halbert, one of the most successful marketers: https://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/newsletters/direct_mark...
Good point. I think that most of my projects have an audience but reaching them is the step that I struggle with. That's why I feel that I need to reach them somehow, i.e. paid ads.
I'll try what other commenter mentioned, being part of the communities. Reply guy, provide value, and then get some trust, grow my audience and introduce my products.
If you've built 10 products and hot no-where then perhaps your strategy is a bad one.
And yes, building something then looking for customers is a bad strategy.
I strongly recommend you spend the next month finding a market. Don't start building the next product until you have made sales. If someone says "I'd pay for something that does x" then ask for a deposit. If they say "no", then keep looking.
And no, paid advertising is not the solution. That doesn't get you users (at this point). At this point you need to talk to people.
I’m in the same boat and was considering teaming up with someone who can handle the “void” part for me because it’s extremely demoralising.
And it’s worse because I’ve had some projects do well. I recently built this browser word game for 6+ months which is dead in the water [0] so I’m thinking of pivoting it (to an llm benchmark environment)
[0] https://snibble.gg
I had a Co-Founder before and I know what that kind of individuals are capable and how your focus becomes just build/ship and his sell/market it.
It feels good, so good luck finding someone.
A good marketing partner will tell you what to build. 100% of success is building the right thing and being able to reach the market.
Unfortunately, of course, there are lots of bad marketing folk out there. I've lost count of the "if only it could do x, I could sell millions" type promises I've heard. If you don't understand marketing metrics you'll waste more times.
To be clear, a good marketing person is necessary. But you need the skill set to evaluate good in this context. Or you need to be lucky.
Hey. I'm technical and suspect you are as well, given you are focused on building ideas. It took me a while to figure out a marketing motion that built momentum and attracted people I didn't know to my tools.
Is marketing at all interesting to you? Because the starting point for me has been engaging with people actively talking about the problem my tools solve or in communities that would find games interesting or informative.
Happy to share more if you're in a spot where you've been trying to figure it out but it hasn't clicked yet. Also understand if you're more in the "I'd rather partner with someone else instead" camp.
Thanks for your comment! Technical here as well yeah. Marketing is interesting, I've been playing with Paid ads, B2C, B2B, organic but still haven't reached a level of expertise like I have in the technical side, and that frustrates me a lot.
I would prefer not to have that partner, as I had it before and although the startup reached 40k mrr over 1 year, we ended up closing the company. So I know what it feels to have someone that handles it but doing it myself is the hard part.
Please share some tips!
My funnel has become:
* Find communities talking about my problem and contribute value to those threads (not posting top-level). If I have an MVP for the conversation in that thread, I post a link to it, along with immediate advice on how I think about the problem. (This gets me, early users)
* I then take the language from the questions people are asking (and showing a positive reaction to) and use that for SEO. As I answer questions, I capture the questions people respond well to. I then use the language of those questions to update my site copy, and for the recurring ones, I write blog posts and add them to my site.
* Once I see traction from the early outreach messaging linking back to usage in my tool, I then use the same questions as conversation starters for cold outreach to my ICP. etc
This has been nice because I can actually see momentum building. Prior to having any system, it just felt like I was shooting in the dark with outreach messages or watching posts (that I worked on for days) get buried because they didn't resonate with the group/community I was posting to.
Overall, it's slow to start, but the steps build on each other. Prior to this, I had been booking calls to "learn" about people's day-to-day, but since I was technical, I didn't have a ton of background in what that actually looked like and where the edges might be, so a lot of conversations ended without going anywhere (which was also frustrating). I've seen people with a sales background absolutely kill these conversations with zero context, but I haven't hit that level yet in terms of the abstraction they must work off of.
Either way, if you do push on the start of that funnel and start searching for people organically surfacing the problem you are focused on, I open-sourced what I've been using to find those threads so others wouldn't need to reinvent the wheel: https://github.com/obris-dev/openmagpie
Also if you have links to any of the tools happy to provide feedback (even if I'm not the ICP)
Thank you for the advice. I've been trying to be the reply guy in X for few weeks and its slooowly helping but I think that being part of the communities is key. I read something similar about applying this in Facebook.
Cool project by the way. I'll test it now. Did you find this one by using it?
I did find this thread using it. Best of luck!
Why are you building?
Try YC's co-founder matching platform. Start broad, then apply filters.
On it, thanks!
What types of things are you working on, I'm looking for a partner(s).
I mostly do B2B SaaS and mobile apps, I previously created a startup and managed teams as well. So I consider myself CTO, but I need to level up and become better with marketing and sales.
Currently I'm working in some projects related to AI. One model, two apps + hardware, one browser game, and trying to get leads for my own AI software agency ( https://urbanodx.com )
Interview people who are vibecoding their dreams but are hitting the vibe wall. That's a pain point that's out there.
That's a good angle, the issue maybe is that they don't have the resources to pay me.
Anyway, I'll start having more conversation, it's better than shipping something else.
Same problem here mate :D
If the void talked back to us it would be fun