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Comment by shafyy | Hacker News Reader

It's hard to give advice without knowing more details, but this sounds like there is really no need for what you're offering.

How did you come up with the idea? How do you know it's something people want in the first place?

To me, this sounds more like a fundamental product problem as opposed to a sales/marketing problem. Try talking to (potential) users and find out what version of the general idea you want to build they could use and why.

Even if they say something like "too early", ask "why". Ask it 5 times, like a small child. "Too early" is just an excuse because they don't have the balls to say no. Find out what the underlying reason is.

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I ran into this problem with my previous startup. We had cool tech, but it didn't solve something that was a major active problem for them.

OP - you may want to examine if you're offering a solution in search of a problem. Problems are harder to find and drill into than solutions. (And enterprise sales are hard, so make sure you're aware of the software valley of death and are in the mid 5 figure annual contract if you've got a long sales cycle).

> are in the mid 5 figure annual contract if you've got a long sales cycle

our initial price was there but we've scaled it down exactly because of the long sales cycle (which honestly i could tolerate if i knew that i was actually in a cycle rather than circling the drain).

> It's hard to give advice without knowing more details, but this sounds like there is really no need for what you're offering.

this has occurred to me of course but i just don't think it's true. without giving too much away it's a simple app that makes distribution of content at tradeshows much easier, personalized, and trackable (lead gen/capture for the content producer). if that's not a thing that tradeshows dearly need then i don't know what is.

> How did you come up with the idea? How do you know it's something people want in the first place?

everyone on the "advisory board" has decades of experience in the industry. it was one particular advisor's idea and i've run with it.

> Try talking to (potential) users and find out what version of the general idea you want to build they could use and why.

truf

> without giving too much away

I don't really understand this attitude. Why are you keeping this a secret? Aren't you trying to sell your app/service? That seems hard if you're not willing to tell people what it is/does.

Perhaps they don't want to announce to the world that their SAAS is in trouble.

Just because someone with experience in the industry thinks it's a good idea doesn't make it a good idea :-)

Let's do an exercise: I don't know anything about tradeshow. Can you explain to me what you mean by content and how it's distributed currently?

I had the same experience (an expert of an industry had an idea about a industry problem that "desperately needed to be solved", so I got excited and then built a solution).

After the solution is built, the expert decided she's "too busy" to return emails.

It happens all the time. Experts have ideas because their 9-5 job requires them to have ideas. They have to push hard for ideas so they will be taken seriously at meetings at work. That's why they are "experts". It's natural for an expert to "push" for her own ideas--otherwise she can't get buy-in from the rest of the organization for their ideas/initiatives and won't thrive.

The quality of the idea is not ass important as the act of pushing for it. Because if an idea does not get support, it's useless, regardless of if it was good or bad.

The moment you ask them to be use your product, they cease to be an "expert" and is now a "user", or even a "paid customer". Suddenly, they don't find the problem so "major" anymore. So you have to really qualify them before diving into the problem. Really make sure they are committed as a user before you start building anything.

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