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How I Conducted Market Research for a B2B Startup With 0 Corporate Contacts
And It Wasn’t Even on LinkedIn!
Market research can be daunting, especially when you’re targeting big players like corporations.
What do you do when you don’t have a network, access to LinkedIn, or the budget for a professional survey?
Let me share how I tackled this exact challenge for a friend’s startup in audio tech — creatively, effectively, and without breaking the bank.
And I talked to 50 people in the process.
Meet My Friend
Let’s call her Lily (for privacy reasons)
Lily’s startup had an innovative audio tech product with potential in museums, trade fairs, and other industries.
But I saw another possibility: corporate environments.
The challenge? Neither Lily nor I had any corporate contacts to validate this hunch.
Lily didn’t want to use LinkedIn for market research yet, so I had to get scrappy and find a workaround.
This is how I cracked it.
The Challenge
How do you validate an idea for a market you have no access to?
Find the people who work there.