Thread by @depappas

First, the market you target matters

Even a small bootstrapped company needs hundreds of customers. (Actually, most will need thousands.)

#Growth
justinjackson.ca/build

Three characteristics of a good market:

Highly motivated. You need people who spend money to make progress in their lives.
Sufficiently large. Enough people in your niche with the desire for your product?
Purchasing power. Enough people in your market with the funds to pay you?

Second, figure out what they want

Be in the community: help and observe
Solve your own problems, and see how the community responds

How do you get there? Let's say you want 1,000 customers:

If your trial to paid conversion rate is 40%, you'll need 2,500 trials.
If your visitor to trial conversion rate is 1%, you'll need 250,000 visitors.

Third, build a killer solution

The potential of your product is determined early on by:

The market you choose: How cheap/easy are they to reach? Do they pay for things?)
The customer desire you discover: How strong is it?
The product you build: Does it satisfy the desire?

Building a great product is a key ingredient in your company's success.

To build a "killer" product, you need to provide desirable outcomes for your users:

Eliminate obstacles in their path.
Give them progress at work.
Provide them with status.
Generate good feelings.
Remove future threats.
Bestow superpowers.

Finally, tell people about it!

If your product is good, you should tell people about it. That's what marketing is.

You do this by:

Generating awareness and telling the world your product exists.
Showing them how their lives could be better with it.
Reducing a potential customer's anxiety.
Removing barriers to entry.

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