Ask HN: How does a developer with a prototype find a marketing person? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How does a developer with a prototype find a marketing person?

5 pointsDanLivesHere7 comments

This came up in a conversation last night -- it's not about me (I'm not a developer with a prototype). These two guys were talking about a prototype they've developed and how they're going to refine it next, then launch it, etc., and how the sky's the limit.

I asked them how people would find out about it and their answer was an obstructive mess, a mix of "if we build it, they will come" and "twitter/facebook/appstore will take care of it." Some of the people without startup experience bought that; those of us with it kind of snorted. So finally, one of the two guys asked how to find a marketing person.

None of us had a clue. So, HN, what do you do?

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IMHO this is one of the most complicated questions to answer. Probably ranking just like the TechCrunch hyped "Stop Looking For A Technical Co-founder" article from 3 days ago...

Finding the right people is always super-complicated. Not only in regards to startups but overall... where do huge, global companies get their talent from? How do they find the right people? Probably interviewing dozens of people (or many, many more) to find one good to great match. However for them it might be easier because they have way more resources to do so...

For 'just two people' it's way harder. Where to look? Who to ask? How to get the word out that you're looking for somebody?

I think the overall answer is probably also the most obvious one: get out there and tell people i) about what you're working on, and ii) who you're looking for. Go to all the startup events, and meetups, etc., tell your friends about it and ask them to spread the word further, post it across all the social networks out there, ask questions like this here on HN, or Quora, etc. Make noise and hope to get people interested. Let's hope at least one person will be so interested in what you're building that he wants to get involved to help you market it.

But of course - and as mentioned before - this whole finding the right person thing, is one of the most complicated things ever. :) E.g. when using the 'going to events and meetups' as an example - what in my experience most of the time happens is, that people go there, who're looking for somebody to help them with THEIR idea. Usually there are almost no people looking to HELP with somebody else's idea.

That's part of the reason we came up with the idea to create http://Founder2be.com - it's a place for people to find the right person to help, e.g. a marketing co-founder, a tech co-founder, etc.

Full disclosure: I work for Founder2be.

The best case scenario is to find someone when the idea is in its nascent stages. That way the product can be developed with the market and consumer in mind, specifically how it's going to get to the consumer. Tweaks can be made along the way so the the product has a more perfect market fit. Then marketing is easier because, with that person on board, ideally lots pf testing has been done to see if the product ideally fits the marketplace's demand. If consumers don't really want it, then no amount of marketing will help them to buy it. And rarely does creating a fully birthed product and only then thinking, "Ok, now who wants to buy this and how do we get it to them?" ever work.

I say, find someone non-technical or someone who focuses on this from the beginning as a co-founder. Having all hackers means sometimes people can get lost in the trees of coding without even remembering what forrest they're in. Tons and tons of exceptions to this rule obviously but certainly what I've seen. Also, it's much tougher to bring a product to a marketing person that hasn't been throughly market tested and tweaked thereof, and simply say, "Ok, now you do the rest." The market and consumers should always, always be in anyone's mind the entire time they're creating a product.

Also. There are tons of non-technical types with wealths of experience in business, marketing, etc etc. on HN. I being one of them :) Hell, I think it's near impossible to find programmers since I don't run in programmer/hacker circles. So we always have the same question of where the hell do you find a great, technical co-founder who's a compliment to yourself. It's all a bit like dating I suppose.....

If you build it, 2 people might come.

Why do you need a marketing person? In the beginning, you can do all of that yourself (start a blog, approach websites that are in the same field as your app, adwords or some other advertising network).

You need to build up a list of interested and potential customers and then send out emails. I've used this method many times and it works (although, you don't always see results right away).

There are many free or inexpensive ways to get your name out there. Most developers just don't want to do the work or are just not interested in marketing.

I'm a developer that has branched out into business and marketing. It gives you more power over your own company.

It's also much more difficult for a marketing or business person to become a developer.

Once you have money coming in and you want to spend your time running the business, then you can hire a marketing person.

Yep. Marketing is not voodoo. It's not rocket science that you need a MBA to be good in.. especially if it's an internet consumer product.

Learn about SEO and content marketing. Learn about app store optimization. Build relationships with bloggers. Guest post. Ask them for feedback. Build your expertise in forums. Build a mailing list.

Look at roughly similar established products or services where you think the company is really getting things right in your opinion on the marketing side, and see if there is someone doing that work who might be open to talking about moving to a startup. Or just advising at this point. By roughly similar, I mean market approach similar (B2B, B2C, ...) and some similar technology/use case so that you can leverage their experience and not a steep ramp to what is different about your technology.

The plan on how to market the app should come before building the app, it isn't something that works best bolted on at the end.

If the product is already built, then the time is build out the user acquisition part, which is just as much of a challenge as building the product. One has to decide which UA channels to pursue, and basically A/B test towards success.

There's been a similar discution on /r/startups few hours ago, with the big million dollars question : where to find good marketers co-founders for developers that have a prototype?

I tried founder2be, but it seems inadequate (lots of idea guys who believe to know marketing).

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