However educated you may think you are, you aren’t doing it enough.
Are you building a start-up in your first few months, bootstrapping while maintaining another full-time job or gig, or even enrolled in YC Startup School? That’s great, you’re a super early start-up. And I have news for you.
You might have already learned shit tons about how to build a viable start-up. If you have enrolled in anything in the YC-camp, you will have learned that they have preached early customers/adopters daily.
These people are super crucial because they contribute to up to 11% of all the customers you’ll acquire in your product’s lifetime on average, but they are the key who drives the rest 88%.
Without them, there’s no product. Why? Because your early prototype will be messy. Every prototype is. It’s the definition of prototypes. But the only folks who will tolerate your shitty product are the 11% folks, or what I normally call the Alphas.
The Alphas don’t mind your sketchy prototype. Moreover, they preach it. They put it on a pedestal and worship it. If you charge them, they would still pay. Remember: they have a high tolerance for shitty-ness.
I’m sure you already know all this. What’s new? You ask. Well, here are some things you might have spent your time on that are NOT at all targeted toward these folks and are the signs you don’t really understand them or can’t really get over your shame of launching embarrassingly raw products.
Landing page
Everyone loves a polished landing page. It’s a calling card for any start-up product. It says that you are running a legit and serious business. It makes your product looks professional. It also pleases a lot of people who aren’t your Alphas.
Alphas rarely ask about your landing page. They care more about how your product will fit into their workflow or solve their problem. People who ask for your credibilities are likely Betas— those who will come after the Alphas. They need to follow some leads. Alphas don’t.
Yes, you can answer a lot of questions your Alphas may have with the messages on a landing page, but it is much more efficient and personalized on a phone or text. When you communicate 1-on-1 with someone, they feel special. That isn’t easy to pull off with a landing page. Moreover, a half-ass landing page actually hurts your product credibility more than no landing page.
Page analytics
This usually goes hand-in-hand with a landing page at this stage. The ones most go with are Hotjar, Google Analytics, and Facebook Pixel (Sorry, but I won’t link to them free here). Hey, watching people visiting your slick landing page is pretty fun and exciting. Equally, seeing them bounce is demoralizing.
I have had my share of setting up landing pages and analytics, and it even informed me that I was probably selling the wrong thing. Let’s put it this way: Not having a landing page and analytics and still have people signing up to use my product was the sign that my product has value.
Having a nice landing page with a lot of bounce rate might mean two things: Either you aren’t tweaking your page right or your product is worthless. The difference here is with the latter you are likely to be sent into a rabbit hole of tweaking your page for weeks and obsessively observing traffics. Nobody wants to admit their product sucks and nobody wants it.
Social network
You set up a Facebook page, an Instagram, and a Twitter account for your product. You seek to create great content in the hope of more awareness. You’re hungry for likes and retweets. At some point, you may have even paid to promote your post to get more likes.
I’ll admit social networks are more efficient than landing pages, which works like a static storefront and SEO that kicks in after months. However, as an early start-up with only a few players, you are better off spending time talking to the Alphas than creating stupid content from ripped-off stock photos and praying it gets viral — It never works that way.
Virality is always choreographed. You need a few influencers with enough firepower to set the bang that would steer the crowd and do it in sync.
Social networks may get you noticed, but if you can’t achieve virality then it is just punches thrown in the dark. You will lose focus, get distracted, and end up getting anyone but your true Alphas.
Paid ads
This is a desperate measure. You must have been really desperate to do it. There’s no reason to pay for ads at this stage. Ask yourself this: How often have you clicked on an ad?
Not as often as that advertiser might have wanted for sure. Ads are only great when you have reached a certain stage where trust abounds.
Those who come through ads are very likely NOT your Alphas. They will bounce the minute you ask them to pay or even do something that takes a minimal amount of effort from them.
Don’t try to ride the wave
You need to understand that the internet is a place wired to bubble up intense contents — funny, violent, enraged, dramatic ones. There’s a lot of players and middlemen nudging and manipulating content worthy of going “up” (think content is a swing with a child on it.
The more players pushing at the right timing the more it swings higher). You are not a part of that at this point, and likely will never be. Your goal is to establish real product value and real users who actually stick with using your product.
It doesn’t matter if you have 3 or 100 Alphas as long as they are.
Keep it slow, keep it real.