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> I fall into the "Build before talking to customers" trap constantly. Even though I know it's "wrong", it is hard to escape it because of the simple problem of not knowing who to talk to.

Then you have a different problem - you don't have a way to reach target customers.

Even if you build your product, how are you going to build a sales pipeline? Your customers won't hear about your product by themselves - you have to get it to them. Many many companies make products that are good, are actually useful, but they don't know how to build the marketing/sales pipeline that will actually make their products profitable.

And just like validating the product to build - building/validating a sales strategy is usually something you should do before building the product, both because it's harder, and because findings there may change what product you end up building.

Yes, and this is the part I can't seem to figure out. I think it's more of a personality/networking issue.

Right now I have an MVP of a function as a service platform; a general purpose development tool. I'm thinking meetups are the best bet, just to meet people, ask questions, and listen to pain points. But that alone is a skill set that needs to be cultivated; asking the right questions, not coming off as pushy, being self confident, and finding the right events.

I find presenting your experience can help a lot at local dev meetups and conferences. If you can find a venue for pitching your product, then great! But most of the time, people don't want to hear a product pitch. Instead, present ideas or work that is related with the goal of the community viewing you as an expert. Writing books or blogs can also help with this. And in your presentations, put your company's logo in the corner.

The nice thing is that presentations shine a spotlight on you, and then potential customers will come to you rather than you having to go to them. Eventually you will need to do the latter, but your first customers are likely to be people in the crowd watching your presentations or their friends. When you do start having to go find more customers, you will have a much better idea who to target as well and have at least a small network to utilize.

What is the platform you're building? Would love to know more!

>finding contacts on linkedin, and sending out some emails

Has that ever worked? I'm not on LinkedIn, yet somehow companies still find my work email and I'm always getting emails from people about how there product is the best thing ever and can we set up a call, or there is a webinar, or can they come by. Oh, and did I not see their previous attempts to reach me? Yes, I saw them, but I've never responded to any of them from anyone. I just can't imagine cold-calling/emailing people actually works.

The best thing you can do is to make sure you appear high in the google rankings so that when I have a need and start searching for whom might be able to fill that need, you come up near the top.

Yeah, this.

It works if you are selling something of actual value and mail the right person.

My entire business is built on this simple statement. Research research research then contact.

>I just can't imagine cold-calling/emailing people actually

If it didn't work people wouldn't be doing it I presume. It probably works every now and then but it's good enough when the cost of doing it is low.

When does it work? When you reach someone who is actively looking for it.

For example, in the talk given by YC Partner Aaron Harris[0], suggests that cold e-mailing professional investors work when done right.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzz4AEIddzY

This is the reason that us developers keep falling into the same "build first" trap.

Because we're wired the way you describe, unable to even imagine a world where one of those emails would ever get responded to, we miss the sorta obvious fact that, yes, they do work quite nicely.

People wired like normal don't have the same dread of unsolicited contact that we do. And those are the same people who end up as managers, bosses, business owners, etc. People who do the actual software purchasing in the world.

So yes, as impossible as it seems, those mails do work. And we need to send them.

I still find it hard to do. And I'm never anything but amazed when it works.

> I just can't imagine cold-calling/emailing people actually works.

For what it's worth cold calling is a bit different than it used to be—at least in software sales. Today many companies take an account-based approach. This means that there is a good amount of qualification happening before the cold call. Does the account use Salesforce, Gmail, other key integrations? How much ARR are they doing?

If the account is a good match, then the reps will go through the organization on LinkedIn and try and find 3-5 key stakeholders. Who knows about the problems this software solves? Who can be an influencer? A decision maker? Those people are put on a cadence that involves several touch points—emails, calls, social mentions. Stuff like that.

By the time the first cold call is made there is a fair chance that the person on the other end is interested in the solution—or at least in hearing a potential one. Because the research has been done upfront and leads that don't match have been disqualified, this is much more effective than the power dialing.

> I just can't imagine cold-calling/emailing people actually works.

I felt this way for the longest time. I hate cold calls. I hate making them, I hate recieving them. Everyone I've ever talked to claims to hate cold calls. Why do people still do this. Who the hell is buying from cold calls?

So I sat down with a couple of people from a sales team, and just asked them what they did. And apparently, a good chunk of their day is legitimately just cold-calls. (Literally through the phone book, or through LinkedIn, or tradeshow cold-stops, etc). While a cold call almost never translate into an instant sale, we can trace most sales back to a start from a cold call.

They don't sell pecan pies or double glazing either. Enterprise software at price tags over $100k/each, or custom development engagements at $100-300k. And it usually starts with a cold call.

So while it still sounds absolutely insane to me, multiple sales people have told me that cold calls work. And these folks regularly win deals and earn good commissions, so I tend to believe them.

And a good sales person will be one that is OK making cold calls over and over knowing that wast majority of them will be a dud.

Notably, cold calling/emailing works badly for developer tools, decisions are made rarely and we’re pretty locked in once a project is underway. Which is one reason we resist doing it.

But many categories, where you solve a common and easily described business need, it can work great. This is one if the best guidelines for designing a product to sell.

I made a living using LinkedIn’s sales navigator premium subscription to field prospects. It required me to (a) have a large amount of connections in the first place and (b) have a solution for large enough companies to be represented on LinkedIn. (I did electrical product contract manufacturing sales)

Once the decision-maker position is knowable thanks to (a) + the subscription, it was quick to find a name to use to break into the fort so to speak via a “two-touch” method of email and cold calling. A sale at the end of the day begins with a conversation and a persistence in continuing the contact in order to accelerate a deal.

It’s important to note that presentation goes a very long way; it helps I write in my leisure and have a fastidiousness which shows off in my email templates. That’s where I think many cold callers fail: they are too urgent or come across as too unprofessional which registers as a sense of risk before the relationship can even begin.

Finally, everything involves iterating. I was able to comfortably deliver my sales pitch in under 10 seconds over the phone to some of the largest retail buyers in North America by crafting the message via answering the question: “what is it they need to hear?”

10 seconds is a lot of time, but not so much time that it will leave a bad taste in the customers mouth if they have no current interest. You are trying to help them, after all, and they should be able to receive that first impression no matter what.

This may sound overly harsh, but if you can't find 10 potential customers to ask them about whether they want your product: How will you find your first 10 real customers? It doesn't mean this is not a good product for someone to build, but it means this is a company YOU probably wouldn't be able to make successful. This is just from my experience, cause I have fallen into this trap in the past. ;)

>> I have found a little success going to meetups and talking in person to other developers and entrepreneurs...

Perhaps you need to go to meetups with potential customers instead of other developers.

The problem is that what I'm building is a function as a service platform, a general development tool. So developers/managers are the target audience. I think it's a matter of finding the “BANT” (budget, authority, need, timeline) requirements the article mentions.

Why not use this time to "sell" us your function as a service platform? You keep saying its a function as a service platform, but I still have no idea what it is or why it would be useful. I think you're missing a perfect opportunity to tell us more and get feedback from your potential customers (considering the HN crowd is full of developers/managers).

>there's no way to search "startups using x" for a generic technology, like serverless or NoSQL

Are you aware of stackshare.io? It's not perfect for what you're asking - you have to search for specific tools rather than categories like NoSQL - but if I understand your goal correctly it seems like something that'd be useful to you.

> there's no way to search "startups using x" for a generic technology, like serverless or NoSQL.

Smells like a side project waiting to be built.

Search job boards for job openings that list the technology as a requirement.

Not sure that is a reliable indicator. How many times have you seen job openings that list under required experience years of Java, c++, JavaScript, angular, Java script, HTML, react, nosql, mongodb, and postgres all on the same line? The majority people writing those job ads have no idea what they're asking they just dump the list a few stakeholders gave them and these stakeholders will put anything they can think of in there, including technologies the company has used once 10 years ago for a small project that is long dead.

Crunchbase has a Built With section. I'm not sure how its constructed, but I'm guessing it only looks at what it can determine from a company's site. I suppose github could be another source.

I have thought of getting on BuiltWith, AlternativeTo, and StackShare. There's probably a way to find small companies doing this (and the job posting tip, which is interesting) but I haven't been as proactive as I could be, I guess.

I think I first heard about it on HN, but there's an attempt at this called (StackShare)[https://stackshare.io/]

> there's no way to search "startups using x" for a generic technology, like serverless or NoSQL.

1. Make a list of companies & products that implement "serverless" or "NoSQL" or X.

2. There are plenty of tools that search websites to see what they're using. They tend to work better for frontend tech than back though. Sometimes backend tech is visible though. Here's a nice compiled list based off a quick Google Search - https://geekflare.com/what-technology-website-using/

3. Search job boards, industry forums, social media, chat channels (Slack/Gitter/etc), videos, online in general for any mention of those products. You'll get a list of companies using them. Forums, social media & chats will help you see what issues your users are having with them & allow you to build relationships without "cold calling".

"it is hard to escape it because of the simple problem of not knowing who to talk to"

I think this is why the average age of entrepreneurs skews higher...because you get more experience and connections on who to talk to and what questions to ask. And this is why serial entrepreneurs succeed.

If you think of it as a software product standpoint. Once you have a team to build out the entire stack, your next software product would be easier. But the time it takes to find your UI person, backend, mobile, etc...takes time.

My inner circle of professionals are developers. If I wanted some dev resources I could. But when I meet certain people for the first time who don't know a lot of devs, they look at me like a unicorn.

My wife runs a small business/franchise. We were hoping to use that as a stepping stone for future, bigger businesses. There are lots of small business associations around us, Chamber of Commerce, etc. They would have some resources if you want to network.

Steve Blank’s book “Four Steps to the Epiphany” has advice on getting those contacts (and stories of people who finally asked “if we gave this to you for free, would you use it?” only to be told “no”).

Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out.

> I wouldn't expect a lot of success with a slow moving Fortune 1000 company in my city, and there's no way to search "startups using x" for a generic technology, like serverless or NoSQL.

Search for job ads on angelist etc.. if a company is looking for a dev with NoSQL experience they probably are using NoSQL.

Another way to find people using X is to find tech conferences on X. Most software tech have conferences now.

>I fall into the "Build before talking to customers" trap constantly. Even though I know it's "wrong", it is hard to escape it because of the simple problem of not knowing who to talk to.

There isnt necessarily a 'right way' to do things.

I have received terrible advice from marketing/business people. Showing people my MVP was fine for some customers, but others didnt trust me based on a low quality landing page.

While I wanted to make everything perfect and add a feature before presenting it, I was pressured into showing people.

What I thought they'd say, they said. What I thought they wanted, they wanted.

3 years later, things are fine. I worry I created some skeptics that spread negativity(which I've seen).

There is something to be said about building your vision.

As a note/recommendation, don't be absolute in either. Ask for feedback from friends along the way.

It took me years to realise that whenever a non-tech person would see the ugly UI he would actually lie to me about the prospects and give me some generic advice because they simply didn't want to appear dumb.

Not all of them are like that, but you get used to the overthinking approach most of the techies take so you expect some critique rather than some sort of defensive take on the matter.

I spend a lot of time reading stuff, but I'm starting to think that what I really need is just confidence and persistence.

I'm learning more and more that with many things in life, everything is a gray area. Trying to distill something as complex as success into a ruleset is impossible.

Your story about the MVP is what makes me nervous; it's good to hear that there is some wiggle room when it comes to the MVP impressing or flopping.