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Comment by curiously | Hacker News Reader

I like that first 1000 customers you must touch them personally.

My biggest hinderance is getting a phone number that won't cost a fortune to call people in US or abroad from Canada. some Canadian telecom companies absolutely adore ripping people off when it comes to dialing other countries as if we were in the 1980s.

Basically I want to approach my customers with a call me number that won't cost them a lot and won't cost me a lot to talk on.

I'm still reading through this wonderful guide it is ripe with useful information.

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My hindrance is that no one responds to any form of communication via the internet, targeted to specific people who could benefit from my product. Sure, it's basically relevant spam, individualized for the person receiving it, but for an aggregation service, how else can I know what people think of my product if no one actually sees it (aside from being on Twitter, et al, which also isn't helping much).

Use the dialer in Hangouts (Android's default messaging app), and calls to US and Canada are free. VOIP is the answer to free or nearly free calls with all your customers. You can get an 800 number for ~$2/month to make it toll-free for them.

I have hangouts on my android phone but I don't know what my hangout number is.

The $2/month, where can I find that?

All in all, I want to talk with my customers and do a tech demo (would need a tool to share screen as well).

Hangouts can still work for this, you can do a screenshare in a video hangout. Requires everyone to have google accounts though (personal or business).

There are also numerous great conference/screen share tools out there, like speek.com

how do you find out your hangout number so that people can call you at that number?

Looks like you need to sign up for Google Voice to get/choose the number:

https://support.google.com/voice/answer/150640?hl=en

darn it I cannot get a google voice as I'm in Canada.

Skype has unlimited USA and Canada calling for $2.95/month

does this give me a number that they can call or do they have to be on skype to call me?

Dedicated number is $18/3m or $60/12m incl. VAT.

Twilio is pretty reasonable

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