Galeby #1: Gathering info & validating idea (boring)

Huh... Hi I guess? I don't know how you ended up here, as I don't really plan to promote that part of my blog, it's more a way to leave a trace, structure my thoughts and keep me somehow accountable I imagine

Posts in the "Journal" category will be my journey from now on. If you're a stalker, you can probably find my past entries on different forums, starting from 2018.

What's in there for you? You will probably learn tons of way how NOT to do a startup and stuff. It seems like I absolutely suck at that and will likely continue to do so.

Anyway.

At the time of writing, I'm trying to see if Galeby is actually viable; Like, would people use that if I do it?

The traditional startup way is doing customer research before building, and that's what I plan to do.

Here is my Learning Board:

Made on Milanote

Inside, I put all the stuff I learn, as well as useful resources I find. That allow me to structure what I do on a daily basis.

For now, my goal is to fill this board with informations that will help me establishing a proper strategy. So far, I've been trying stuff a bit randomly here and there, but I need to standardize things, make proper hypothesis and verify them.

I'm used to mass-marketing, but I want to avoid spending as much $ as possible until I get a proof of validation. That's new to me and I hate doing that, but it's not like I had a choice (well, yeah, I do, but I choose not to give myself a choice)

Here is what I've learned so far:

The Channel (or distribution) part is the most important, especially when you get started.

No product? Doesn't matter, if you have a decent distribution you can find people who'd be interested before you have anything.

No revenues? Doesn't matter, if you have a decent distribution, you can make an audience and monetize it.

Here are the different channels I listed so far:

Here is the one I've tried so far:

Manual Outreach:

I send an ultra-customized message to a founder. She opened the message but I don't think she watched the video or tried the custom demo I made for her.

Will try again but for each lead, I need to try their product, find their documentation, add their documentation into an A.I. , find every info I can find about him to make a very personalized & relevant cold email, and then wait for an answer. That's at least 1 day per lead.

Communities:

I posted in a few subreddits, without real success tho. I'm going to use the "promotional" posts next week (basically, a post where they allow you to make your promotion once a week). I'm also going to ask for feedback on my landing page, etc.

Facebook Groups were a no-go, they are managed by guys selling courses and they remove any form of promotion from other people (for the eCommerce segment at least).

Paid ads:

What a shit show. Facebook CPM was at an absurd $25, Reddit Ads banned me because they could somehow not verify my identity, and Google Ads simply delivered 0 impressions. I'm not touching ads until I have a minimum of traction.

Anyway, here is the direction:

• Post in multiple startup directories (ref)
• Manually outreach founders of SaaS that have knowledge database / product documentation
• Create free tools that could be helpful for my audience