You seem to have missed the key step. Talk to customers before you build. Build what they need. Then have them talk to you to adjust things until you really nailed down the product that solves their needs, and then have them talk to their friends about how much you rock.

Marketing comes later.

▲

collin128 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Strong agree here. I'm a non-technical founder.

I tend to interview 30-50 people initially to find a gap in the market. If I'm into something (strong PMF), a good percentage of those people I interviewed will be future buyers.

I typically have cascading meetings for the following steps:

1 - is this 10X better than what currently exists

2 - does our prototype look 10X better

3 - does our v1 solve the gap we found

4 - what features do we need to build in order to get you to pay for it

5 - what features do we need to get you to refer us to 3 friends

A meeting for each of those goals typically leads to customers (again, if I've found PMF).

▲

ericd 5 hours ago | parent [-]

How do you usually find the people you interview?

▲

redbonsai 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You can use a platform like Respondent to recruit extremely specific demographics. It's not cheap, but if you're strategic with your interview questions you can get really concrete directional signals with as few as five participants.

	▲	ericd 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ah very cool, thanks for the pointer!

▲

abadar 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm in sales. This is going to sound shallow and tautological, but you find the people to interview for Product Market Fit by looking for the people you THINK are the ideal customers.

If you can't find your target market, you might want to consider a different demographic that you understand better. Most successful startup founders started a business specifically to solve the problems they dealt with at their last job. They understand their product market fit because they ARE their target market.

▲

ericd 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Thanks, but I meant more in a tactical/practical sense. What channels do you tend to use to look for those people and contact them?

▲

gomox 37 minutes ago | parent [-]

Depends on the audience, the not-so-technical marketing term for the concept is a "watering hole".

First step is guessing who your customers might be.

▲

ericd 19 minutes ago | parent [-]

Yep, makes sense, have any good illustrative examples? Thanks for the term, though, makes it more googleable.

	▲	gomox 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Tell me who you think your customers might be? Or ask ChatGPT what's a good watering hole for them, it will definitely come up with some reasonable guesses.

▲

yokuze 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

My question exactly.

	▲	csacc 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Also my question

▲

pizzly 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Perhaps in the past. I think the approach now will be to vibe code multiple projects very quickly and see which one has traction even with a low quality product. You will get much better feedback than a discussion with a potential customer who may not even know what they want or have a false idea of what they want. You can always improve a product that has demand and abandon the ones that no one even downloads. Usage and payment are the real test if a product is worth doubling down on.

	▲	kmoser 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This might work to some degree if you can run your project by many eyeballs, but only if they aren't immediately made gun shy by interacting with a low quality product. A focus group environment would be good for this, but setting that up costs money.

▲

garrickvanburen 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I flip this around.

Marketing comes first. Sales second. Product third.

	▲	mothballed 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The Microsoft approach