Loading...
Answers
MenuCan someone help us asses our product, datacusp.com?
Answers
The site seems to be good. Let's discuss more over a call.
At this stage, my recommendation would be to focus on 2 things: 1. getting to your first $1 as fast as possible, and 2. understanding the language of the users that are convinced enough to pay you at least $1.
Talk is cheap, and (speaking from experience) directly asking people whether they'd pay for something you made is one of the most misleading (and easiest) user research mistakes you can make.
Step 1: Create a pathway to facilitate receiving your first $1 - create a pricing package/tier for your product, and a way to make sure people are aware of it when visiting your website, or returning to use the product. Like literally, stick a price tag on your product, and see who bites - you can change it at any time, and remember that both positive and negative feedback around that price means that *people actually care*. This is a great result - engage deeply with the haters, they often have even more to tell you than the contented fans.
Step 2: Once the payment pathway is built, track how many people are making it through to the end, i.e. actually paying you. It's ok, if that number is 0 - keep tweaking your pathway until you get to 1+.
Step 3: Talk to the people who pay - like, *really* talk to them. Call them up, even make the effort to visit them in person. Understand their needs, how they solved for those needs before your product came along, the specific language they use to describe your product, and why they stopped using it (this will inevitably happen).
Step 4: Use this knowledge to establish and widen your customer acquisition channels - the language they use should be reflected in your marketing copy, the channels you use to acquire them should be reflective of where they go to find solutions for the problem(s) your product solves, and you should prioritize in the short term fixing/improving the things that caused those early paying customers to leave.
This formula doesn't work forever - it's a kickstarter iterative process for pre-revenue products, that helps you establish the main signal of fit between what the market demands, and what your product provides. Establish that first signal, then widen the bandwidth =)
I hope that's helpful! I'm happy to chat if you have additional questions. ~Jason
Definitely, set up a call with me. What you have looks very interesting. Do you have a pitch deck? How much have you invested? Any subscribers for launch?
Related Questions
-
What's your opinion on using something like usertesting.com vs. real time usability testing (online and offline)?
UserTesting can be instructive in terms of understanding whether people understand your copy, CTAs, and intended flows but generally, I've found the quality of their panels to be pretty low. You're almost always getting people who are not your actual users, so the feedback can only be generally applied as above. I find whatever web analytics package or packages you're using are generally able to provide much better insights. I also really do believe in *real* user panels. Buying pizza or offering small financial incentives to real users to click through new flows where they are talking out loud or answering specific questions is going to give far more actionable insights than anything else. What I like to do is take my best guesses as to what's not working or what I'm looking to improve and then discover/validate via real in-person customer panels. Happy to talk through this in more detail with you in a call.TW
-
Launching a startup with no job and no savings. Should I get a job or find investors?
Wow, lots of questions here. Let me try to hit them in order: "Should I get a job or find investors?" IF you have access to enough investor capital (not debt and not your savings) and you can get to MVP and still maintain ownership of a sizable majority of the business then do it. IF that means debt financing then only use the debt lines the cost of which can be carried by returns generated by the use of funds. I would prefer to offer a convertible note to prospective investors that can be easily extended throughout both friends and family and seed rounds (up to $2M to $3M) to get to proof in the market. If you can get to revenue and earnings fast enough then you can avoid equity dilution all together. IF you cannot secure that find of funding AND you cannot produce enough revenue from your business to deliver sufficient earnings for you to live on, then by all means, you should find a way to make the money you need and not burn all your savings or mortgage your home If that means short term contract work that's great. Particularly if you can find log term work that is relevant to the business you're building. If that means taking a job then do that. IF you do that, then yes, be transparent with your employer and let them know you're working on your own business also. Hope this helps....SL
-
How much equity is typically taken by investors in a seed round?
From my experience I would not advise you to go with Venture Capital when you're a start-up as in the end they will most likely end up screwing you. A much better source for funding would be angel investors or friends/family. The question of how much equity should I give away differs for every start-up. I remember with my first company I gave away 30% because I wanted to get it off the ground. This was the best decision I ever made. Don't over valuate your company as having 70% of something is big is a whole lot better than having 100% of something small. You have to decide your companies value based on Assets/I.P(Intellectual Property)/Projections. I assume you have some follow up questions and I would love to help you so if you need any help feel free to call me. Kind Regards, GiulianoGS
-
I have a great idea for a mobile app. If I can fund the prototype then how do I seek investors?
A prototype will not get you an investor, to be honest. This is just a fallacy. If you can fund the prototype, launch it in the market, get some traction from users. See if your mobile app resonates with your users. You need to track whether your app is able to retain those users so that they keep coming back to it. If you have a good amount of retention with the first few set of users (100 or 1,000), that's a good pitch to take to an investor. Investors are not looking at ideas, they're looking at businesses that can get, retain and engage a customer.RV
-
How much potential value does a startup need to have in order to attract VC funding?
Wow, sounds like you have an amazing profit margin. The key is GROWTH. Continuous and stable, with the ability to predict future growth. Therefore, your market niche is very important, to feed the growth curve within an order of magnitude and can't be too vague. As others have mentioned, investors look for a $100-200 million valuation potential, as well as the ability to morph or expand as needed. Contact me if you want to discuss more.TN
the startups.com platform
Copyright © 2025 Startups.com. All rights reserved.