Opinions On A Startup | Hacker News Reader

Opinions On A Startup

I have this idea for a startup but in order for it to work, the retail stores (i.e. Walmart, Target, Kmart, etc...) will have to agree to the idea. So my question is should I contatct all the retail stores and tell them about my idea and somehow have them put on paper that they are interested in the idea?

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If you can do that, excellent! But they probably won't commit to anything they can't see.

The better ones I've seen in this category have done something like:

  -Have idea
  -Walk into stores, talk to owners, managers, customers
  -Improve idea
  -Build a simple version of the product
  -Get a store manager you're friends with to trial it
  -Gather lots of data
  -Depending on the data, either iterate or pitch the big chains

The stumbling block is basically that even if you make your product totally free, trying it out still costs the store & manager lots of time. They are paying hourly wages, so employee time is a very real cost. Until you have numbers proving that it does what you hope it does, you'll probably need to count on someone running a free trial as a favour to you (friend, family, alumni network, campus store, etc).

It's a long shot and I'm not trying to be cute, but Shark Tank (and the help the sharks can provide by virtue of their connections/experience) might be worth looking into.

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