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Comment by throw4w4yceo | Hacker News Reader

> The way to test an idea is to either launch it and see what happens or try to sell it (e.g. try to get a letter of intent before you write a line of code.)

> The former works better for consumer ideas [...] and the latter works better for enterprise ideas (if a company tells you they will buy something, then go build it.)

> Specifically, if you are an enterprise company, one of the first questions we’ll ask you is if you have a letter of intent from a customer saying they’ll buy what you’re building.

If you're a new startup building a B2B product, how does that work in practice? It's difficult to imagine an unproven, early stage startup getting letters of intent from customers. How would you even go about finding those customers?

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I work in the IoT space, specifically around food and beverage production. Its been my experience that people who have a job solving problems are perfectly happy to dump their problems off on you if its cheap enough. Cheap enough might even be several thousand dollars a year.

Everyone has more problems than they can pay attention to, so mostly you are probably looking at people you have direct contact with. Competing in an industry you have no experience in is going to be a very different experience.

Which of the following sounds easier? Getting a letter of intent from a business looking to buy your product. Or building an entire product and trying to convince businesses that they need to use your solution.

Neither are easy, but the latter is just the former but with more steps and you'll probably have to make a ton of changes to your original solution before anyone buys.

I think people struggle with this because:

1. They think the letter has to say "I will buy this today" instead of "I will buy this if it does xyz" 2. People think someone seeing a product (e.g. build something great is all that matters) trumps everything.

You contact the potential user, explain who you are and what your trying to build, they like it and are comfortable signing an LoI. Thats pretty much it.

If its a big B and you need credentials, you'll need to get that first. You can do it by looking and sounding professional, bringing in advisors who add some weight, getting an intro from the CEO or owner (you'd be surprised how many will pay it forward). If its a small B just wander around and say hello.

People generally want to help people who are making things that help them. And your not getting anywhere without understanding your user so you'll need to talk to them, emphasise. A lot of the earliest discussions will be more around you figuring out exactly how your product will help them.

> How would you even go about finding those customers?

This goes to the team. If you want to build a startup selling to enterprise, it helps to have a co-founder that has the skills/experiance to do this.

Presumably you would already have a relationship with the client by, say, working at one of their vendors or having been an employee.

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