Hacker News Reader

Comment by rb808 | Hacker News Reader

Some good advice I heard here a few years ago is start marketing well before you start coding. Eg create a website, start your advertising, look for customers while providing a white label product or even just a promise to deliver later. Its a great way to find out if anyone is interested. If you can attract actual customers then you can start coding. If you have trouble getting any attention maybe you have the wrong product.

View on HN

This may have been good advice a few years ago, but things do move on. People are wary giving their email address to the promise of a service and will normally now be hesitant to engage without some kind of product in return.

What’s more, having people actually use and pay for your product is much better validation than people saying they will (not always the same thing)

I feel the opposite. The early days of the internets (2000-2010) spam was crazy and annoying. I hated giving out my email because I would just get even more unwanted email and I knew I would forget my password to any new account I made.

Today, we have much better spam filters, companies realizing sending unwanted spam only hurts them (so they offer unsub), and password managers.

I would signup for a product just to see more info if I was curious about their offering.

They offer unsub because they are legally required to.

Is anyone else comforted when they see an email signup is through list-manage.com?

I trust that at absolute worst I can email MailChimp and they will actually act on my desire to unsubscribe, and I know that almost certainly that won't be needed because of their enforcement of reasonable unsubscribe.

I find it ironic because it seems they wanted as anodyne a domain as possible so they wouldn't clash with their customers' brands.

I don't think people are that wary about giving their email addresses. If you're solving a problem for them, they'll probably subscribe.

But yeah, of course, having people actually use and pay for your product is the ultimate validation.

Sounds similar to the idea of crowdfunding.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com