Engaging strangers starts with a moment of truth
Shifting the focus of product development from self to your core user group.
Products are built for people. You might start off with your personal problem, but gradually you need to find a few core users and shift your product development focus from a personal problem to a core user group.
Step 1 — Build your confidence levels
You can build a launch page or a small working version of your idea — they all give you the confidence that you need to go out and talk to people. Essentially we don’t want to waste anyones time, so its always better to do some amount of homework before you meet them. Thats how I define a launch page or a minimum working something. You should also have a lot of discussions with your non-core users, but possibly people easier to approach, in your friends/acquaintance circle.
Step 2 — Engage with strangers on a group
I recently found an interesting way to engage with strangers on a Facebook group.
In my particular case, the Facebook group had startup enthusiasts. They were motivated people, wanting to get into a meaningful conversation and also a potential userbase for my product. My challenge was to get through the clutter of the noise of a FB group of 30000+ people and reach out as a top conversation.
I worded my post with a moment of truth on the top.
Do you wonder where those bookmarks go and why you never see most of them again?
I am seeking to talk or chat with some people…..
Immediately the people who had the same problem reached out with their suggestions and ideas. So essentially, I was connecting with people around the moment of truth. People coming out to say, ‘oh shoot! thats me too’.
This got a very interesting response from the community and I got between 5–10 of my potential core users — people I intend to reach out to with the next version of http://rewq.co . And here are a few responses (excerpts) I got.
Manish Gill I’m almost OCD about bookmarking and have tried and discarded many systems. Happy to chat/take a call. You have my number.
Ashrujit Mohanty Happy to chat. After about 200 or so bookmarks in Chrome, I now use OneTab. Doesn’t necessarily solve the problem.
Vikas Singh Hey Naval Saini I have been using bookmarks pretty frequently and they easily get to above hundreds in a 6–12 months. Now I have multitude of problems here : 1) I find difficulty in finding the bookmark later on. Though I make folder for different cate…See More
Banibrata Dutta Delicious used to work very well for me, and the social bookmarking angle was truly revolutionary! Too bad that the original one (which had the soul and spirit of the idea) had to die. Life’s never quite been the same post it… yeah, lot of us are OCD about bookmarks, but I doubt anyone is willing to pay any moolah for it.
Janaki Pendyala I am interested☺ pl msg me details
Rahul Aswani Naval Saini i open upto 40 tabs and save them using a chrome extension ( left bookmarking long ago )
my problem is i don’t bother to go back and read the stuff in those 40 tabs
can your product do something about this
Ravi Mittal I use Pocket extension on Chrome and read from their app when I get time…
Kartik Mandaville Delicious does this well. What do you have in mind?
Ankit Verma you can have my 5 mins tomorrow! I bookmark around 5–10 webpages daily and organize them into folders. But after sometime, they get overwhelming
Kiran Raj Samarthyam Naval Saini — I recently stumbled upon https://revisit.io/. Check if it is what you are looking for.
I would keep sharing more lessons as I come across them in the journey of building http://rewq.co .
