My hypotheses for FoundersAround failed. What would you do next?
Hey PH đź‘‹
I spent last month testing some assumptions like: founders want to meet others in-person. These assumptions failed as it's not as simple as that. There are some intricacies.
Well, I think will come back to the original asusmption that sort of worked. People liked being on the map, sharing their profile, and getting discovered.
But growth has slowed, as I was expectingl.
I’m now asking myself:
• Should I double down on self-promotion as the core use case?
• Should I add companies to the map (e.g., Vercel in SF, Deliveroo in London) to make the map more of a “startup ecosystem view”?
• How could I reach more founders without spamming cold DMs?
If you were me:
• Would you focus on individual founders only, or mix in companies?
• How would you grow the base of active, visible profiles?
• Any clever growth suggestions or outreach strategies you’ve seen work in niche founder communities?
Would love to hear your brutally honest feedback.
I want to make this map something founders must be on.
Replies
minimalist phone: creating folders
I think that tool should offer some added value. E.g. when there is a huge concentration of founders at one spot, why not to reach out to some café, coworking or so and organise meetup for them and reach out to them like: Hey, you are so close to teach other, here is networking with other fellow makers here from the surrounding, this will be speaker etc.
But this kind of activity is not so easy to organise, you need to come up with venue, activities, program, etc. But it can start small, just with table reservation.
TL;DR: Offer a proposition value to be listed there.
FoundersAround
Thank you all so much for the feedback. I'm going to do 2 things, based on the very helpful feedback you've been giving me:
- Add DMs
- Promote among a certain group first (YC, 500 or any other common-interest group)
Hopefully adding these will make FA more like a painkiller than a vitamin!
Combine founders with companies to add context to the map and make discovering new connections more meaningful. To attract growth, reach out through places where founders gather like Slack, Discord, or niche online forums. Post short “founder spotlight” features to grab their interest. Make them feel like they’re missing out if they’re not part of it, since creating FOMO gets better results than sending cold DMs.