mistiaen

I thought it would be cool to share with each other how to check the viability of your startup idea.

To kick off, I'll share with you what I do whenever an idea pops to mind.

1) Adwords keyword tool First I go to the Adwords keyword tool, to find out if people actually are looking for my idea/future product. You can check per keyword how many searches per month there have been done and if there's a lot of (SEO) competition.

2) Surveys I setup a survey for potential customers. In the survey I try to find out if my assumptions are right. I use this survey for step 3 and 4.

3) Run Google ads Running Google ads is a great way of checking my assumptions. I emphasize different benefits per ad. This way I can check what benefit appeals the most. The more clicks, the more important this benefit is, the more this should be the focus point of the product. The ad leads to my survey. Not so many people take the time to fill it in, but still it is some extra data.

4) Meet with potential customers Although I always find it hard to take this step, I know it's important. These meetings can motivate tremendously, can force to iterate my idea, or make me decide it was a stupid idea. The survey comes in handy in these meetings as well, btw.

So that's my viability-check. I'm wondering what you do to check viability. Looking forward to your ideas and advice!

ps. I'm sorry if I made some mistakes in my English. I'm no native speaker and I know that especially grammar tenses are not my forte...

Hi HN,

Does anyone have tips on important tech blogs (like Techcrunch and ReadWriteWeb) focused on South America. Both Spanish and Portugese.

Thanks a lot!

E

Hi HN,

The two of us are working on our real time analytics service Worldlogger for two-an-a-half months now. Today we rolled out a new version. It still has some bugs here and there, but it works :) Worldlogger kind of does what Chartbeat and Getclicky are doing, but we try to mix the best from both worlds ;) Curious what you think about it!

http://worldlogger.com/

Cheers

E

Hi there,

Me and my co-founder built an analytics SaaS. We now need to sell it. Next to doing press releases and advertising, we want to use affiliate marketing and are busy with a white label program. Do you have other suggestions on sales/marketing? I also wonder how Campaignmonitor and Mailchimp boosted their sales. Anyone knows?

Thanks!