Is this idea validation or harmful, good practice or a off on the wrong foot?

Hi, I've worked for years in business to business sales and consulting. You need to find out who works or makes decisions in a company in the area that your potential product could be useful, ie customer service. LinkedIn could be useful for this. Call them on the telephone. Don't e-mail. Open the conversation by asking for help, 'Hi, I'm wondering if you could help me find the person who would be responsible for customer service? I'm looking to get feedback on an innovative new idea I'm considering developing that may be useful to your company.' The most important thing you could ask them during the call is whether they've ever identified the problem that you're proposing to solve as an issue themselves. If they've never noticed, or don't care, then your new product will have a more challenging sales cycle since you'll have to do a lot of education. If they already know they have a problem, you'll need to act quickly because they may be already looking for a solution. Best of luck. David Barnett

A startup is in essence the "art" of juggling. Of course you need some sort of "income" to pay for rent, food while your startup or business begins to generate cash flow. Ideally you should have at least 6 months of saving, sufficient time to give you a clear outlook of what will happen with your business. But some businesses start generating cash liquidity at faster pace. What is definetely certain is that you will need "leverage" in order to get your business started: savings, past clients, loans, investor capital, or even grants. Happy to jump on call and explore more :)

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.

If it's SaaS, you should be monetizing from day one. An MVP in SaaS is the minimal product that people will pay for, that's the starting point. You evolved the product from there. If it's a consumer app, that's a little more complicated. Often times, monetizing preemptively can stunt growth and kill the trajectory, due to lack of focus, user experience, etc. It's really a question of access to capital in this scenario.

Im sure you'll will find many diff approaches but overall your main goal, once you contact, is to always be accessible, friendly and build relationships. Even if your relationships are thin, they are better quality leads for business than you simply walking into a business pitching your product. When pitching your product: Always focus in value, talk to your soon to be clients as if you deal with the issues first hand and this is how you solve them... Don't discuss pricing unless asked. Offer any help or guidance in selecting services even from the competition if they want.. Sell yourself as a rep from a company that is paid to help not sell... This approach works wonders if you can pull it off.. If you have less time during intros or pitching local retail shops you have to be more direct but still aim for a relationship than a quick sale before you move on next door. Learn a bit about their business like busiest hours, popular item or service...after your intro simply offer them more time when they are less busy with clientele to come back to talk about fuckng a certain issue (with a product you represent) :) Hope it helps a bit.