What would you recommend as an off-the-shelf solution for getting customer feedback on product?

The art of the "cold pitch" is definitely something that needs to be worked on, and doesn't come naturally to everyone. A couple of quick tips: 1. 4 is not a big enough target group, you've got to cast a bigger net. Try pitching 20, and aim to get 3-5 responses. 2. When sending a cold email, really think about what you are offering them. Whilst you'll get the odd good egg that simply wants to help - you can't expect entrepreneurs and small biz owners to take time out of their day to answer your questions. To counter, why not tell them you're conducting research in the space, and would be happy to send the finds/reports back to them in a nice format, which could in turn help their business. 3. Don't give up, keep hustling. Try changing around the emails slightly, track which emails convert into responses, and fine tune from there. Good luck and feel free to book a call if you want to chat more. Best James.

The ways I've done this in the past are 1) Find some customers that are willing to hire you (or your product) but know that you'll only be free nights & weekends to support/work with them. 2) Find a "partner" (co-founder or other) that's got a flexible schedule that can help build the business while you're at work. 3) Block out nights, mornings and weekends to build the business till you have enough orders to cover 50% of your salary. This might mean 7pm-11pm most nights, and 4 hours each day Sat & Sun. Make progress (sales $$$) and momentum. All that being said, it's risk reward. Sounds like you want to avoid taken the risk, and I get that .. but the upside is always smaller. Unless you put yourself in a position to have to succeed (ex: quitting your job) then you may never make the scary decisions that are required to build a company (like cold calling, going in debt, making a presentation, etc). I'm on company #5 with many other side projects started nights & weekends .. so I get it - but don't be afraid to bet on yourself and go all in.

If you haven't fully tested your app with the 100 individual accounts Apple allows you to test via TestFlight or Hockey, then I'd suggest you should test thoroughly with your email list before launching to the app store. Things to look for at this early-stage: Activation and Breakage Points: From app download to user onboarding, where are people getting lost? Your goal is not only to have them download the app, but complete whatever steps for them to become your user. Optimizing the flow to ensure maximum conversion is a key first step. Engagement: How often are they completing the tasks you deem most important based on your business model? How can you increase this number? User Understanding: How clear is the app's UI and messaging? Where are they getting lost? Virality: While true virality is hard to measure at this stage (given the constraints of pre-launch testing), you can evaluate the potential effectiveness of any distribution tactics you might employ (contacts, OAuth's etc) in terms of user opt-in and conversion issues. Real analytical data is easier to interpret than user interviews but there is a such a treasure trove of good customer development intel from customer interviews. Those first 100 people who download the app should be personally interviewed about their experience, what they like, how much it solves their problem, how much of a problem that is for them in the first place and so on. Before you go live in the app store, I highly recommend you max out your installs in a private testing environment. I'm happy to talk this through with you in more detail in a call.

Usually Programmers are only slow when they don't know how to solve a particular problem. So they will spend a lot of time researching and a lot of trial & errors to solve a problem. It is important that before you engage a programmer on a project, you break down the entire project into simple, easy to understand modules. Let him give you an estimate of how many hours he will require to complete each of the modules. Example: a typical site will have a login module, registration, My account, profile etc. So let him estimate how much he will require to do the login. You can go even detail here. (e.g. how much extra time if you were to implement Facebook/Twitter Login?). Once he start developing, track his progress closely and make sure he is following his given timeline. If he goes over his budgeted time on a module, talk with him and see what went wrong. It is often seen that they may be wasting their time on something very insignificant that you may have asked him to implement, but you can totally go by without it too. So by understanding what is taking longer time, you will be able to prioritise things better. You definitely need some tools to get this done. Google Spreadsheet or Excel works just fine. But if you don't mind spending a few bucks there are many agile project management tools that you might look into. Here is a list, google them all and sign up for trials: * AgileZen * Agile Bench * Assembla * AssiTrack * Blossom * Basecamp * Breeze * DoneDone * Eidos * Fogbugz * GreenHopper * Jugggla * Kanbanpad * Pivotal Tracker Or the reason why he is slow can be purely non-technical. Sometime your developer may don't share the same level of enthusiasm as you about the idea that you are working on. They often don't often see the "bigger picture" (since you don't share everything with them explicitly). If you can somehow get them excited about what he is a part of, it will work like a drug :) He will work day and night without questioning you. But you need to work equally as hard as him. The moment he sees that you are the boss and he is just the guy doing work for you -- his mentality will shift from being part of something to being the low paid developer. Ultimately its all about motivation and making him a part of your venture. After all he deserves it, if he is really playing a crucial role in the entire development.

I have built several multi-million dollar businesses using (2) very simple questions: "What makes you say that...." and "Tell me more...." No matter what someone says to you, you just keep asking one (or both) of the questions. If you do it 4 or 5 times in a row you'll learn everything you ever wanted to know.