<story><title>Three months at Y Combinator: what it’s like and how to get in</title><url>http://blog.frontapp.com/three-months-at-y-combinator-what-its-like-and-how-to-get-in/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ryanSrich</author><text>&amp;gt; It helps you answer the only question that matters: is your product something people want?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve probably read that sentence at least 1000 times in a number of different books and articles. Having gone through a lean startup accelerator a few years ago when they were en vogue we focused on this aspect more than anything else.&lt;p&gt;The thing I never hear is how people actually figured that out. Cold calling, cold emailing, going to meetups, getting intros, pitching ideas and gathering feedback is never discussed. I want to hear _how_ you found a product market fit. It&amp;#x27;s obvious that you need to do this.&lt;p&gt;As an example. A startup that I co-founded my sophomore year in college was accepted into a school run summer business accelerator. They emphasized talking with customers&amp;#x2F;users more than anything else. The problem was we didn&amp;#x27;t really know any of our potential customers or users (grade school teachers&amp;#x2F;public schools). So we had to essentially cold call schools, find teachers&amp;#x2F;admins emails online, and fish around our personal network for intros. To say it didn&amp;#x27;t go well is an understatement. Our success rate, of even a phone call, was nearly 1% (roughly one answer per 100 or so emails&amp;#x2F;calls). We eventually locked down a core group of users simply by contacting so many people. Aside from other bureaucratic factors in the public schooling system we failed simply because we couldn&amp;#x27;t establish a growing user base.&lt;p&gt;So, if anyone wants to tell their story with nitty gitty details of not only how they found and retained their users but how they found what they wanted would be greatly appreciated.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nwenzel</author><text>How to figure out if you&amp;#x27;ve built something people want.&lt;p&gt;1) Get someone to give you money. Hearing, &amp;quot;oh, I&amp;#x27;d buy that!&amp;quot; is not the same as, &amp;quot;here&amp;#x27;s my credit card number.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;2) Get them to give you money even though your product is not totally ready for prime time. Basically, even though your product is not done, not refined, difficult to use, etc., having your product is still so much better than not having it that someone is still willing to pay.&lt;p&gt;3) Short of getting someone to pay you, get them to get past some level of friction. If someone will invest their time to cross the chasm of not-user to user, it means they really want what is on the other side.&lt;p&gt;4) Get someone to use your product again. There&amp;#x27;s a reason online apps look at Active Daily&amp;#x2F;Monthly Users. If someone uses it, then uses it again... it must be something they want.&lt;p&gt;5) Don&amp;#x27;t have a product yet, just an idea... pre-orders (see point 1).&lt;p&gt;6) Can&amp;#x27;t even take pre-orders... You&amp;#x27;re just guessing. Build an MVP (or minimum sellable product if you&amp;#x27;re in enterprise). Don&amp;#x27;t try to take on the world. Find the minimum that can offer. Then go back to point 1.</text></comment>
<story><title>Three months at Y Combinator: what it’s like and how to get in</title><url>http://blog.frontapp.com/three-months-at-y-combinator-what-its-like-and-how-to-get-in/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ryanSrich</author><text>&amp;gt; It helps you answer the only question that matters: is your product something people want?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve probably read that sentence at least 1000 times in a number of different books and articles. Having gone through a lean startup accelerator a few years ago when they were en vogue we focused on this aspect more than anything else.&lt;p&gt;The thing I never hear is how people actually figured that out. Cold calling, cold emailing, going to meetups, getting intros, pitching ideas and gathering feedback is never discussed. I want to hear _how_ you found a product market fit. It&amp;#x27;s obvious that you need to do this.&lt;p&gt;As an example. A startup that I co-founded my sophomore year in college was accepted into a school run summer business accelerator. They emphasized talking with customers&amp;#x2F;users more than anything else. The problem was we didn&amp;#x27;t really know any of our potential customers or users (grade school teachers&amp;#x2F;public schools). So we had to essentially cold call schools, find teachers&amp;#x2F;admins emails online, and fish around our personal network for intros. To say it didn&amp;#x27;t go well is an understatement. Our success rate, of even a phone call, was nearly 1% (roughly one answer per 100 or so emails&amp;#x2F;calls). We eventually locked down a core group of users simply by contacting so many people. Aside from other bureaucratic factors in the public schooling system we failed simply because we couldn&amp;#x27;t establish a growing user base.&lt;p&gt;So, if anyone wants to tell their story with nitty gitty details of not only how they found and retained their users but how they found what they wanted would be greatly appreciated.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>graeme</author><text>&amp;gt;So we had to essentially cold call schools, find teachers&amp;#x2F;admins emails online, and fish around our personal network for intros. To say it didn&amp;#x27;t go well is an understatement. Our success rate, of even a phone call, was nearly 1% (roughly one answer per 100 or so emails&amp;#x2F;calls). We eventually locked down a core group of users simply by contacting so many people. Aside from other bureaucratic factors in the public schooling system we failed simply because we couldn&amp;#x27;t establish a growing user base.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve found that walking into the school gets much better results. I work in test prep.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s no magic bullet for learning about clients, and it depends on the niche. In my case (LSAT prep) I learned about LSAT students because I had been an LSAT tutor. In fact, I still do &lt;i&gt;a bit&lt;/i&gt; of tutoring just to stay in touch with what students are going through.&lt;p&gt;Other niches would require completely different approaches.  Steps:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  1. Identify target client
  2. Find out where they congregate, how they communicate
  3. Use *that* approach.
  4. Once you find some, ask for referrals. 
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
I found targeted cold calls worked pretty well. Targeted in the sense that a meaningful % of whoever I was targeting would say &amp;quot;woah, I gotta get me some of that&amp;quot;, even if they had not previously heard of me.&lt;p&gt;The way you get that reaction is by knowing the needs of the prospect, putting yourself into their shoes.</text></comment>