How to interpret the validation numbers? Pivot, Change the message or Carry on?
Hi there makers,
I have had this idea in mind for a very long time. I have sketched the design of the product in a notebook (I am no techy) and I also wrote a Business Plan.
I don't have a team nor money to invest as I am unemployed (fully working on this project). I have been doing a lot of research regarding starting a company, and mostly everyone agrees that Validation is key before making anything.
This is how I did my validation:
- Created a plane Landing Page
- Created a mailing list
- Created social accounts
- Spread the question in Facebook, Whatsapp, Reddit, Instagram and Twitter Did all this without spending any money.
So far, the results are:
- 226 Facebook organic likes (almost half of them are my contacts), rest of them are genuinely interested people.
- 14 subscribers (9 of them are known people).
Now, my questions:
- Are people not interested in the idea? AKA: should I pivot the idea?
- Is the idea definition not clear in the validation message? AKA: should I change the message?
- Have I not done enough yet and should I carry on? AKA: should I carry on spreading the validation message?
Any feedback would be appreciated. The messages have been sent to 600 FB contacts (117 of them liked), and to 12 FB relevant groups (around 100 FB followers from there). Reddit post resulted in zero followers, 11 upvotes and a "unappropiate subreddit" label.
Thiese are the texts I've been mostly sending for validation:
"Hi, I’m starting a new project which aims to help companies and jobseekers find one another within the wonderful world of Green Economy and Sustainability. If you find this idea interesting, please sign up for updates or follow EmploGreen on social media: Sign up for updates: https://emplogreen.wixsite.com/emplogreen Follow EmploGreen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/EmploGreen Follow EmploGreen on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emplogreen/ P.S.: If you know someone who may be interested, please feel free to share. Thanks, Belén :)"
Hi there! To those who try to live a zerowaste / low carbon lifestyle: 1) Who do you work for? 2) Do you think that Zero Waste lifestyle would be less frustrating if your work or profession were also contributing to sustainability? 3) How difficult is it for you or do you think it would be to find a job with an ecological mission? I am working on a project that aims to help companies and professionals find each other in the complex world of Green Economy and Sustainability. The project is called @emplogreen , and you can find it on social networks for now. The website is coming up very soon, and it will bring amazing job offers from green companies, as well as all sorts of professionals that want to contribute to a greener world. If you find it interesting, I encourage you to follow us on social media and share between eco-conscious and eco-curious people of your network. Regards, Belén Torres "The biggest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it"
Article in Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/environment/comments/ct1blr/ajobdeterminesapersonsroleinsocietyis/
Hi Belen,
Great idea! I'm actively looking for a job in a 'green' / sustainable company right now and I can tell you that it's quite hard! Search terms like sustainable on LinkedIn give useless search results. And the green job boards I could find (in the Netherlands there is one) are mostly recruiting communication or salespeople.
So I'd be very interested! And as Dave says, I think it is worth to try and make the actual job board, even manually backfill with some existing job posts you might have seen, and go from there.
Regarding your message "help companies and jobseekers find one another", you could maybe focus this more and just say you're creating a job board for jobs green/sustainable companies, for me that would be clearer.
I'm researching jobboard software for another project, I found a couple of great paid ones (like jobboard.io) but they cost 300$ per month which is a lot! I found a couple of open source ones but didn't have the chance to try them yet. Maybe it's easier to start with Wix and see how that goes.
Good luck!
Hi Roel, you are describing my pain and the reason that initiated this project!
Regarding the messaging: thanks for the tip, I will change it see what happens.
I found a few templates and addons which are quite decent. One of them was a 56Dollars one time license in WP. I was going to go for it (on wordpress) but then what stopped me is that I will not be able to keep all the data if I move to a different hosting provider.
Someone advised me to go for 'WP Engine' which is 30$ a month, however I was quite interested in Green Geeks and other hosting companies that use greener energy and reuse the heat of their servers.
@belentorres88 Are you doing this as a Fixathon project? If you need some tech help or advice I'd be happy to help!
Hi Belen!
My best advice is to not take any kind of social media hype or statistics as part of your validation. In fact, ignore it entirely. Interest !== action.
Twitter/FB hype doesn't typically translate to leads, and it may lead you to wrongfully validating your product.
My tips:
- Search for golden nuggets. Before launching on social media, have a business model canvas built and have a very specific list of clients. If the hype reaches them, you'll know it's validated. They will reach out to you OR become leads if it solves a problem.
I came across this with Cowork and other launches. It's easy to get caught up in the flood of retweets and whatnot, but just ignore it completely. Look for golden nuggets that validate very specific scenarios and niches.
Words are not validation. Statistics are not validation. Action is validation.
Hi Sergio, thanks for your tips, it means a lot.
I do have the BP and a list of clients I'd like to contact. I suppose I don't have to wait to contact them until I have something to show them, I thought I did.
Well done on Makerlog and Cowork (and other launches) ;)
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