[Day 11] Zero to MVP in 30 Days — Checking in

Hello! If you’re new to this series, I laid down some ground rules in day zero, and explain the idea for my first project on day one. I document, a little every day, what I’m working on.

Today’s going to be a quick check-in style update as I still have quite a lot I want to get through tonight.

First, I want reassure everyone who took the time to comment and email me feedback regarding my landing page that I’m noting everything down. Changes will slowly trickle in and be tested as I get a chance to. Everything’s been broken down into a spreadsheet:

A lot of the cells have notes with a list of full length comments where something was mentioned multiple times, or if the feedback came with a lot of extra context I that didn’t want to misplace.

Today, and realistically much of this week will, I’ll spend on prospecting and emailing folks chasing a pre-order, or alternatively I’m discussing related pains to see if exploring small pivots or redefining our focus is needed to get into some pre-order validation.

Emailing takes a bit of time, but by the end of next week I’m hoping to openly share some stats:

• Total emails out
• Responses (negative and positive)
• Calls scheduled
• Pains discussed

And tomorrow I’ll share some of the actual emails I’m sending out. And I’ll give examples of how the flow looks sending an email to a warm lead versus a cold prospect.

In preparation for tomorrow’s post, if you have an interest in emailing people about validation, these two talks are great and largely what I’m basing my strategy off of this time around:

1. Pawel Brzeminski — 12 minutes — “How to start a SaaS business in any market with no idea or connections, using only excel, email & phone”
2. Rob Walling — 1 hour — “How to Validate Your Idea and Launch to $7k in Recurring Revenue”

Tomorrow!

• I’ll check a few things off the landing page feedback todo list
• All that outreach I’m yammering on about, time to validate or find a related pain I can validate with.
• The Ship page gets promoted tomorrow, which I’m curious about.

Thank you for reading! And of course, feel free to email me with any questions or feedback! My email is on my personal site where this was originally published. And I’ll see you all tomorrow!

Forward to day 12: A look at cold validationBack to day 10: Let’s talk pricing