This week has been a soft-launch week! ✨ 

I started talking about HaveYouHeard on platforms other than X to see if someone was interested in becoming a beta user.

Table of Contents

• How I got the first batch of beta users

• Closed beta users’ expectations

• First users and first bugs

• What have I learned about this space so far?

• Conclusion

• Appendix

  • Personal branding

    • X

    • Beehiiv newsletter

How I got the first batch of beta users

Reddit! ✨ 

The bad thing about Reddit is that self-promotion could get you banned. Many subs are very strict about this.

Luckily, a few also allow or are more open to it as soon as you provide value rather than just spamming a link.

This is what I did:

1. I prepared a list of subreddits where I could post my content, ✍️ 

2. I checked the best time to submit to maximize reach by using this tool, 🕰️ 

3. I created an event in my calendar for each subreddit to post. 📆 

I ended up posting between Wednesday and Thursday on these subs:

• r/SideProject,

• r/EntrepreneurRideAlong,

• r/SocialMediaMarketing,

• r/IMadethis,

• r/LeadGeneration,

• r/roastmystartup,

• r/indiebiz,

• r/thesidehustle,

• r/redditmarketing.

As you can see, only a few of them are targeting the ICP that I have in mind. But for this first batch, it should be fine, I just need to be careful when evaluating the feedback of the user by taking into account that they might have completely different profiles that I may not want to target.

Here you can see the content that I posted.

Across all the subs I got 10.5k views. ✨ 

The outcome was 15 users that joined the waitlist:

• 14 willing to join the closed beta,

• 1 willing to join once open beta.

Considering the total amount of views, this number is not great. 😕

This could either mean:

1. not the right place to post as I mentioned before,

2. content too long, so not everyone went through the whole thing (the Loom video was almost 9 minutes long 😅)

Next week I’ll start reaching out on other platforms.

Closed beta users’ expectations

What does it mean to be a closed beta user? 🤔 

I’m offering the platform for free in exchange for feedback. In a week or so from now, they know that I’ll reach out to schedule a call and to learn their use cases, how the product helped, how the product is not helping, and how they’d love the product to help.

I explained this in the welcome email that I sent to them.

First users and first bugs

HAHAHA 🤣 

Luckily this has been reported by a few users! 😁 

The signup can be done in 3 ways:

• using X,

• using LinkedIn,

• using email + password.

I realized that I never tested the email + password flow. 🤦‍♂️

It was an easy fix, but still.

But that’s also why it’s a closed beta right? 😉 

What have I learned about this space so far?

This week, I had insightful conversations with others in the industry: a Senior Account Executive and a VP of Sales & GTM.

We covered a wide range of topics, discovering plenty of shared perspectives, as well as a few unique viewpoints.

But there was one idea that everyone I spoke to agreed on, each expressing it in their own words. If I were to distill their thoughts into a single message, it would sound something like this:

The “The Mom Test” says to stop having discovery calls once you stop hearing new things. Well, I guess I’d need a lot of them yet. 🤣 

Next week I have scheduled two calls with two marketing agencies. 🚀 

I’m also reading “$100M Leads” by Alex Hormozi which gave a lot of ideas. Before that, I didn’t even know what a “lead magnet” was. 😅 

Conclusion

This was a productive week!

Next week will still be around further understanding the needs of customers and potential customers, getting feedback from closed beta users, and reaching out through other platforms.

WRT product development I’ll mostly improve things to make the app easier to use self-serve like info icons, hovers with explanations, etc.

I hope you enjoyed this update!

If you’re interested in following my journey, make sure to subscribe or follow me on X/Twitter and LinkedIn! 

Appendix

Personal branding

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