Ask HN: Platform to Find Early Adopters? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Platform to Find Early Adopters?

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I frequently get a lot of ideas. However, I have recently learned that finding early adopters, validating the idea through the community is a critical step which should be made before starting to code.

Apparently, most people fail on this very basic first step. I've done it countless times. However, this time I want to reach out.

Is there a specific platform where you can post your idea and see if people are keen to signup and help you develop your idea?

I was thinking that each person that submits their idea can specify the conditions and the offering and how many early birds they seek.

For example: Mike seeks 20 early adopters that will get a free lifetime deal of the service given that they help out in Zoom call 1 hour a week until MVP is ready.

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"Early adopters" is not some sort of a cohesive group that you can find in one place. I can't imagine such a platform being particularly useful either. Grab three random YC companies, say in education, AI MLOps, and agriculture, and you'll see that there's not really any common ground that would compel potential early users to gather (outside of Hacker News maybe ;))

Reality is that you have to find early adopters where they already are. You have to go to them, not vice versa. Talk to them and solve their problems, rinse and repeat. Many of them will not even realize that they have a problem or that it is solvable, so no chance they would have signed up for this hypothetical platform in the first place.

What are the best ways of reaching out the early adopters?

Got an idea I want to validate I posted this earlier but got no reply here on Hackernews. Not sure if I should just pick a name and do a soft launch on Product Hunt to see if people even like this idea?

Ask HN: Coding request between departments, potential startup idea? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37046357

Like with the early adopters platform, people of all sorts could go there and "back" ideas that haven't yet been implemented yet. Great name would be like "EarlyBird.com". People are early birds in that process so to say.

>You have to go to them, not vice versa. Talk to them and solve their problems, rinse and repeat.

Where do I even find them?

A few thoughts.

1. The lack of response is already an early form of feedback. Perhaps this isn't a pressing problem folks are looking for help with?

2. The thread you linked to is not very compelling in my opinion. There's no solution proposed, just a general problem statement, and even an admission that you could solve this with existing tooling. Not really a whole lot to engage with.

3. I've done my time in management, and have definitely seen the problem you're describing in the thread. It is not a tooling problem, but a process and people one. It is solved through conversations, expectation setting, and ongoing reinforcement.

4. > Where do I even find them?

That depends on the problem you're trying to solve, doesn't it? Respectfully, this is the hustle part of building a business. Understand your potential customers, find out where they hang out (HN, Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook, Discord, Slack communities, random forums, email lists, industry events, etc), understand the norms of engaging with them (people tend to dislike thinly veiled commercial activity), contribute to the community, build relationships. Make some assumptions and come up with a strawman, a design, or a full-fledged MVP. When time comes to asking for feedback, I highly recommend The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick. It's a quick read that should help keep you on track.

Good luck!

It's a lot harder than it used to be.

People today are fatigued by the bombardment of so many shiny new things and the starry-eyed fools peddling these things. It's not just consumers who are feeling it, but businessmen too.

I feel the best way to get opportunities is to already have good relationships with people who would be your "in", where they might server as a direct customer or as a connection to a customer. Opportunities are more likely to present themselves over lunch or golf rather than a cold sale attempt, whether it be email or playing the social media game by trying to hook people in some digital "community" by offering them CONTENT!, people see right through that nowadays.

I say just get involved. Get part-time jobs in-industry, make friends serendipitously - don't tryhard, and beware of your intent. Don't go "networking". That's cringe, unauthentic. People see through it. Don't fool yourself either. Don't go out and say, "Ah, I'm going to go to this event not as a salesey networky guy, wink wink, of course not! Just looking to be a fun nice guy and offer value to the community! Wouldn't it be convenient if I made 'friends' with someone who might also be my customer! haha what if that happened! That'd be such a nice coincidence haha!". People like authenticity and you can't really lie about it, not even to yourself, it bleeds through.

Just get out there and do things and opportunities will present themselves. Be patient, be real, and don't force it.

I'm about to launch a language learning website, and these are the wise words I come for on this website.

I like this idea, but the hard thing here is that people that are early adopters probably don’t represent the real end user.

I have been thinking about a platform where people could list their problems. Like an outlet to rant about things. Perhaps combining a ranting platform with access to early solutions to a particular problem could solve the above dilemma.

In a way Producthunt and Indiehacker is this community, but they tend to be very tech orientated. So it is not picking up on the every day problems.

I liked what Earn.com did at some point where you could join a list to partake in paid surveys. Initially they were quite strict about who are approved for a list which obviously made the results more valuable.

Have you tried to test interest for people joining such a platform as beta testers?

Seems like the overall feeling about such platform is that there is no way of getting people on as early birds is my initial understanding.

I would think it's cool to have a platform where you can get a good deal of a software if you're one the first users that also get the possibility to shape the software at large.

>Have you tried to test interest for people joining such a platform as beta testers? Haven't tried because I don't know how to find them.

Simon Høiberg says you need a social presence which few have and I dunno if I got what it takes to get that.

Guys.....

Just found what I had in mind.

https://betalist.com/

It gives early adopters a heads up.

My idea however was that you don't even need a landing page and all the site does is containing your add and an email submission form and then you'll take it from there, discord, zoom meetings or whatever works for the people that have signed up.

Betalist criteria is a bit different https://betalist.com/criteria

And it doesn't seem like the early adopters get anything. Just a heads up.

We have used BetaList before, we got about 1k visitors to our website from being featured there. It is free, but they try to upsell you to being featured earlier (instead of waiting for a month).

It is your job to provide value to your early adopters :)

Product Hunt. However most early adopters are very enthusiastic about their vertical, which puts them on the long tail, so they’d be easier to find in highly specific groups or through direct (perhaps even in-person) outreach. Maybe try to find someone bitching about the problem recently on reddit?

I also struggle with this step, but I think idea validation is a skill like anything else that you need to practise and study. The closest thing I've seen to what you're describing is (https://needgap.com) but I don't know how actively used it is, I've never really found much value in it.

Not a lot it seems. I got the idea from the #buildinpublic movement that have been quite popular in the indiehacker community for a while now.

Perhaps you should start looking for early adopters for your platform that will help developers find early adopters.

I would be lying if it hasn't already crossed my mind ;) I mean none of these platforms are doing what I am having in mind.

https://medium.com/@pichsenmeister/8-platforms-to-find-early...

Your network needs to be your early adopters.

Is that how you do it?

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