What are some ways to validate demand for a supplement you want to launch?

If you are really thinking about building your product you should first do the alpha and beta. There is a strong community of tech people on Hacker News, ProductHunt and Reddit that will support your idea and even pay in advance if you can show a demo first. Give you an example: Dropbox. Drew (CEO) made this short video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QmCUDHpNzE about how Dropbox was supposed to work. He send it to all the community and it becomes viral. Everyone started to sign up. He had a fremium model at start, but look at it now. So I will encourage you to do two things: Follow this order 1-Go and build your alpha/beta and create a demo that everyone can see and feel excited about 2-Share it with the community 3-If you want to "sell it" in advance you can use selz.com or payloadz.com And rethink you business model and moentization strategy so it adapts to your product and not the other way. :) If this helped let me know!

Let me google that for you http://www.tampabaycopack.com/company.html http://www.manta.com/c/mm2w4l8/the-american-bottling-company http://www.manta.com/c/mthcq94/southeast-atlantic-beverage I'm sure the management and salespeople of these companies can give you all the information about regulations, since it's their core business.

Face to Face will always be better. The reason is because to get to the root of an issue or to what really drives a person, you need to ask WHY 5 times. Only then you can offer a solution that will be irresistible to your prospects. Let's try with an email survey. 1. What is your biggest struggle when you want to expand abroad? __________ 2. Why? __________ 3. Why? __________ 4. Why? __________ 5. Why? __________ You look like a freak, right? Now in a normal conversation, it would go something like: Oh, your biggest challenge is costs? Tell me more about it. Yes, i just don't have enough cash flow to open an office abroad. Where is your cash flow going instead? (that's a hidden why) It's going into our local activities. Why do you prefer spending money locally? Because we get more return on investment. etc etc.. I'm happy to jump on the phone to test this technique (it feels a bit awkward at the beginning but with some training it becomes natural). Serena

I've been through this with a lot of clients and there is a very simple answer: Essentially you are always ready. Iterating and validating go hand in hand. You can almost turn this on its head and ask "When should I stop validating and continue iterating?" Iterating without validation is a risk because you are working in isolation and don't know whether your assumptions are correct. So validation should be built in as part of each and every iteration. That includes pre-MVP, when your startup is still just an idea in your head. In the early days that might mean discussing design drafts over coffee, in the later stages that might mean looking at analytics results and A/B tests. Think of it as a continuous, ongoing process, a conversation with your target market, rather than a stop/go affair where you disappear into your office for a few weeks and then re-emerge, ready to validate. Each stage continues until you start to hear the same answers and are not learning anything new. Then it's time to ask new questions and for that you most likely need to move on in your product development cycle. It would be great to hear more about your product, feel free to get in touch. Best of luck - Nils

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.