How to get market validation for B2B SaaS?

Hey John,

If I were you I'd pre-launch even before the MVP.

Landing page with the core value prop, 1 to 3 features, pricing and ”join the waitlist ” form.

This way you will be able to validate key elements of your ideas.
You will have a conversation starter for feedback.
You will have the chance to improve the copy before launch.
And it will give you a few more days to polish the MVP.

I did that with my productized design service offer and I got a lot of helpful feedback that led to changing the value prop and improving copy. And it's paying off.

I hope that helps.
V.

I recently read an article about the Appsumo launch. The author was just saying that in this way he received market validation. Maybe you should consider launching at Appsumo too)
https://intch.org/blog/a-lifehack-style-guide-to-appsumo-how-we-made-274k/

Hey John! I'd recommend finding online communities your potential users like to visit and sharing what you're working on with actionable steps they can take to learn more, try your product, and provide feedback.

I'll also advice against free trials at this point. Free trials too early can attract people that aren't your target users and might distract you from the problem you're trying to solve. You also want to validate that your solution is something people are willing to pay for. Another subtle point is when people pay for a product, no matter how little it is, they tend to feel a stronger sense of stake in its success and provide more meaningful and valuable feedback regarding its use. Metrics like churn and retention become more significant in informing your product iterations.

Best of luck with your product!

Hi John - I found this book very helpful: "The Mom Test" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01H4G2J1U It outlines how to avoid common pitfalls when chatting with potential prospects and clients - and helps you make sure you're getting honest, actionable feedback.

Hope this helps,
-John

Chatting with people in your network is the way to go. But you shouldn't ask them which features to add. You should ask them how much will they pay when it's ready.

If they say, I'd pay you $20/mo, ask them which features should you add to make it worth $50/mo.

If they say, I'll pay you but I need to have something that I could use, then build an MVP.

I've got my first 5 customers without a landing page. Only when working with them I realized my main advantage -- super-customizable searching for leads on Twitter.

Thanks so much for sharing this. I'm working on something similar right now! Perhaps we can learn from each other.

So far, we've generated revenue from creator/influencer usage of our platform (charging for access to hubs of files, content, notes, etc.). We are looking to expand to larger organizations to help them capitalize on firm-wide, collective knowledge.

We started with some light email marketing to gauge people's responsiveness to our value proposition. We quickly got a response and set up a call with the potential customer. Then, we learned that the CEO was intrigued about the value proposition and building hubs as a way to "better engage the bench." We included this element about having the bench (non-billable employees) create hubs in the "PS" section of the email because we figured it would be funny AND speak to the owner of a company (for which the bench is an eyesore and cost center)

Now we will double down on this outreach and invest into more email marketing while also sharing some blog articles about our thesis with future customers. From what we understand, they are intrigued but want to understand how much "meat" is in our proposal (so we need to show them!)

We were able to get some other target accounts to signup and start building hubs, as well. I think next it will be smart to write a case study about that usage to show other companies folks are already doing it. We will want to refine our sales cycle and quickly find a way to prep for onboarding (e.g. determine how many seats a company should reserve, what requirements they need to be fulfilled before going live with hubs)

To your point, we do have a free, limited beta, and we intend to keep that there so everyone can use it!

Hope this helps! Good luck on your journey and hope you continue sharing your experiences here!

Resonating what some of the others are saying, I've been reaching out to a few people within my industry/niche/network to get some very early idea validation and feedback, as well as opening up a "waitlist".

For context, I'm working on building a collaborative "swipe file" called Savepad, and while there's so many productivity/catalog tools out there, I've always found limitations with many of them when trying to kickstart projects with my team.

So I had an initial "problem" or hypothesis that I thought would be a great product, and realized that many see it differently. So I took the time to speak with people who signed up for the waitlist (small numbers mainly through SEO or WOM) and started to understand problems better, as well as get stronger in user interviews to validate the problem and product.

All of this is waaaaay before we consider our MVP to be anywhere close to usable, so the conversations and feature validations (or invalidations) gave us a lot more guidance and confidence in how we shape the V1 of our featureset.

May not translate 1:1 to your product, but I'd recommend always talking with people (not only in your network since they may have a bias, but reaching out to others in your target audience or asking your network for intros to others) to validate your MVP. I'd also recommend keeping a "waitlist" - this has worked well for us so far and those who sign up know they'll be a super early adopter at launch, and hence are willing to take time to share their thoughts and have a conversation.

Scribble io is an online web browser game where you guess what other people are drawing. Plus, it's easy to get started! You can play with your friends or join a random game.

Get people to join the beta and get feedback and iterate

Hey John,

The only reliable validation is that other businesses are making money selling the product that you are planning to sell.

Do they exist?

Best

Chris

P.S. I would advise against selling to enterprise

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