Original Article:
http://www.alleywatch.com/2013/05/why-ever... There are a lot of logistical, technical and administrative things to figure out when first starting. But one thing that every company needs in order to succeed is customers.
How do you start building a customer base from scratch? The same way you build a community from scratch. In fact, for a lot of companies, your first customers are a community.
Many companies today – especially tech companies with access to scalable tools – take the approach of putting up a generic landing page and building an audience of people who they have successfully intrigued enough to hand over their email.
These people aren’t customers though. They’re an audience.
An audience member isn’t automatically a customer. An audience member isn’t automatically a community member either. They are a potential customer, and a potential community member. In order to convert them, you need to engage them.
Like building any community from scratch, it all starts with a conversation. You start with one customer and you talk to them. Then you get two. Then three. And as you bring on more and more customers, you learn. You learn about who they are, what their needs are and how you must adapt your product in order to fulfill that need.
Ever hear of those success stories about companies that just launch a product and everyone loves it and buys it up immediately? That’s rare – very rare. That means that on their first shot, they nailed the product market fit and went directly into scaling.
For the majority of other companies, if you try to scale before you know whether or not your product is a good fit, you’re likely to waste a lot of time and money.
So build your new company like you would a new community. Start by talking to one person and learning from them. Then talk to a second, and a third.
You’re a founder, which means you have to build something that fulfills a need or appeals to a belief. That’s what communities are built around. If you’re truly able to bring people together around that common need or belief, then you’ll find your product market fit quickly and will be scaling in no time.
Build a community around a common interest or belief, learn what the needs of that community are and build a product to fulfill those needs.
Original Article:
http://www.alleywatch.com/2013/05/why-ever...
Posted By: Ryan Dere
Monday, May 6th 2013 at 2:43PM
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