Ask HN: Explosive growth or bootstrapped? Out of my depth.
We are building a tool that enables and analyses the feedback cycle between students and educators to improve education (link in profile). The business model is currently a pure-product play. We have a tool that addresses certain pain points among our customers, and we had intended to use a freemium model to market and distribute the product. Scaling would require marketing and direct sales.
A potential mentor recently had the insight that the product offering did not have enough supporting leverage to really become a player, if someone made a big play to capture students and other users of education. His suggestion was that we create an education focussed rating platform - something like tripadvisor for education, gain traction and scale really quickly to create a lever for our product.
His sketch was traction in the next 6 months, ~$0.5M funding round by November. My instincts are that this is ludicrous, but his point seemed strong and well made - we shouldn't fall in love with our solution, we should solve the problem. I want to be able to ask this guy smart questions - here's what I have so far:
- How do you expect to make a return on your time and effort?
- What sort of traction would we require (number and % of users) to move to 1.) a funding round that big and 2.) the feedback product rollout?
- What specific experience or connections do you have that would help us believe you can do this?
What else should I be asking? Who else should we be talking to? What can we read? All input appreciated.