Ask HN: What would you do with $5K for your project/idea?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12964116

by singold • 10 years ago

1 2 10 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm working on my startup idea (an app for turning spreadsheets into webapps) as a side project for now, and have the potential opportunity to apply for ~5K non reimbursable funding. The only thing I have to do is have a plan for 6 months to use that money to validate the idea.

I was thinking of making a basic landing page explaining the idea with a signup form and then spend some money on online ads and maybe with a freelancer to help me do "Things That Dont Scale" (i.e. developing the apps that my app would make).

I feel like I could use that for more useful things but cant think of nothing else (and maybe that's ok), so I want to know, What would you use that kind of money for?

alantrum• 10 years ago

Mmm interesting...I won't choose to buy ads for a landing page for 3 reasons.

- I personally tried and people coming from ads don't convert as well as qualified than people coming from a guest post for example. - You are sure you will never see again your money (even for validating an idea. It's a waste of money) - It's time consuming when you've never done it before, and when you don't know precisely what people should you target

So 2 way to do it :

Start from an audience and build the perfect product for them. And then enlarge your niche. 1) 2 weeks to call 100 of small business, entrepreneur...any people that use spreadsheet 2) From there, you will have already a good idea if people are interest in your idea and what people exactly want your product 3) And you can only start to make a plan with your 5000$ from here.

Pros : - 2 weeks of work - Be sure to have an audience interested by your product - Know exactly what feature you have to do

Use case demo : make lot of use case of different spreadsheet and webapp. And send maximum traffic on it. Drawback : - you have to make a landing page -> time/money - you have to send traffic -> time/money - It can quickly become overwhelming because of the large number of different people with different need.

So I would definitively choose the first option

singold• 10 years ago

Thanks for your reply, I will think more about your first option, 7 people per day is doable on the side and in just 2 weeks you get to talk with 100 people

Ask HN: What would you do with $5K for your project/idea?

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