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Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

I've had a lot of success with this!

Run highly targeted advertisements, and specifically include in the advertisement that you are looking for beta test users to talk to - and what kind of users you are looking for.

The most success we had was with LinkedIn Lead Gen forms. We got meetings with about 50 people at $25-$50 a pop. Be very personal and transparent - there are lots of somewhat bored professionals out there who would love nothing more than try out your app and give you feedback.

Another option is to sponsor a professional mixer event in your area. Depending on the event, you might be able to get a 5 minute speaking spot for less than a few hundred bucks.

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That's interesting regarding LinkedIn Lead Gen. My market is on LinkedIn but not other social and there's little SEO organic traffic opportunity.

I'd love to learn more about how you set that up. Could you link to some of those Lead Gen posts if they are still available or share some more info about your approach?

I am thinking of this. Do you think this is a good approach to get market validation? Or should I wait till beta to use this method?

As soon as possible.

I cannot recommend The Mom Test enough. Probably the best book about having early conversations with customers.

$25-$50 each? How much is one customer worth?

They're early adopters. Guessing they're worth a lot since you're counting on them.

Normally early adopters are the cheapest. The "shut up and take my money" type that make up the initial marketing channel. So it can be a bad sign to start out with a high customer acquisition cost.

I guess, if you're calling development and startup cost zero.

In this case they're paying more for the feedback/interview than for an additional user

Depends on the industry. In my world (B2B SaaS) we are spending $90 - $300 for every new lead generated. Of course, every new lead doesn't become a customer. We have to spend $3000+ for every account added to our free tier!

That's really expensive! That means you are spending $3,000,000 for 1000 free tier users. May I ask how much does your Saas charge paying customers? I would love to know the potential revenue to justify the expense.

They said it was B2B SaaS. It's easy for the lifetime value of an account to be 100k+ and to have pretty good conversion from free accounts.

Have you had luck with B2C on LinkedIn? I thought it was mostly useful for B2B.

I did LinkedIn mostly for B2B. I think it would work well for B2C if you had a very particular set of clientele (middle aged business professionals). So for OP's post, I think it would be a good fit.

Facebook has a good audience for tech early adopters, but you have to put up with a lot of garbage leads. Nothing quite comes close to the ROI of the LinkedIn Lead Gen form

I'd be interested to chat! Contact in profile, if you're game.

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