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Sacha Nacar

How do you find your first (beta) enterprise customers/testers?

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Hi Makers! I'm working on a tool aimed at medium to large companies (100+ employees). My tool is still in its infancy and I'm looking for beta users in the enterprise world to test it and help us build. So my question is, how do you go about finding them when you are so early stage? What are your strategies? What's your pitch like?
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Hussein Yahfoufi
It really depends on your tool and who your target is at the company. Are you selling into the Sales team? Marketing? Tech? Finance? etc.. Once you figure that out are you able to find communities that they join? are they on LinkedIn? Where can you find them? Then you can think about joining those communities and adding value to the community and start making connections. Another way to handle B2B is via cold emails. Getting emails on the business side is easier than personal. You can find several tools out there that will help you get email addresses. Yet another option is to run ads on Google and LinkedIn or major blogs in the industry you are in.
Francisco Umpiérrez
@husseinyahfoufi Very useful tips but could you give examples of those tools to get email addresses?
Hussein Yahfoufi
@new_user_b49303fb0b if you do a quick search on PH for find emails or on Google you will find plenty of examples. One I've used in the past is Hunter
Sacha Nacar
@new_user_b49303fb0b @husseinyahfoufi thank you for the really useful tips here 🙏
Sacha Nacar
btw @husseinyahfoufi if you are curious about what I'm building I'd love to send you more info! You can contact me: sacha[at]meetinghero.ai
Caroline Chiari
I'm still struggling to find mine, but the rule I love to keep me on track is the following: You never sell to companies, only people. A company never makes any decision, even though it seems like it. It's always the employees. So market to the employees, not the employer.
Sacha Nacar
@caroline_chiari I love that, I think you’re very right! btw if you are curious about what I'm building I'd love to send you more info! You can contact me: sacha[at]meetinghero.ai
Imani Brown
Don't sell to companies, only people.
Sacha Nacar
@imanibrown4 very true 🤗
Pavel Osadchuk
Corporate hackathon is a good way. We get couple early customers (20k+ employees) this way and they basically funded my company by buying my product
Sacha Nacar
@xakpc that’s one of the best advices! Hadn’t thought about it!! Great idea!
Caroline Chiari
@xakpc I'm not 100% sure I understand how it works in practice? You go to a corporate hackathon with your product, solve the problem, and they're like "wow! I love this, let me buy it!"?
Pavel Osadchuk
@caroline_chiari my story was something like this There were a Corporate hackathon and very early version of my product (built on another hackathon btw) We came to the hackathon and built a new prototype (based on our product ideas, not codebase) to solve a particular company problem in tight work with company experts. It was small and simple but it showed some potential. We won that hackathon and get invited to join a company (because most of the corporate hackathon is a hiring event, you know), but declined it because we were already incorporated. Then it was decided to try our product on a small scale, then on the entire company. The prototype was merged in the product, made it more mature and useful. The company churned after 4 years of using our product. We also land a couple more companies this way, one time even got a flight to Accor Hotels HQ in Paris to present our prototype (based on our product) to mngmt. Sadly it did not end with test run because our product was not too useful for them. But after some time, it becomes weird to come to hackathons with basically the same solution and build it again from scratch every time (you should build something new on hackathon), so I mostly join them for fun and for connections, and we moved to more major channel in our space - expo P.S. I'm sure that there is a lot of context missing and this story is not scalable at all and probably will not work in an online-only world, but this is the story.
Caroline Chiari
@xakpc Great story! thank you very much for the clarification!
Sanket Makhija
By building a product and roll-out for people to use it. We have launched our product, do share feedback, suggestions,
Sacha Nacar
@sanket_makhija simple. I get it 🤗
Sacha Nacar
@sanket_makhija btw if you are curious about what I'm building I'd love to send you more info! You can contact me: sacha[at]meetinghero.ai
Sanket Makhija
@sachanacar Sure, mail is on the way !!
Stan Rymkiewicz
I run a marketplace that connects startups with sales reps. It's pay-per-meeting model. So if the reps won't book you sales calal with good clients, you owe them nothing. Learn more here: orapa.co
Sacha Nacar
@stan_rymkiewicz thanks for sharing! Sounds very useful!
Ben Johnston
I just read this Stripe guide by Patrick McKenzie on finding your first 10 customers: https://stripe.com/en-ca/atlas/g.... The most inspiring part for me was: when reaching out don't take no response for an answer. The truth is that the people who you want as customers tend to be busy people. They often just see your email at the wrong time.
Sacha Nacar
@ben_johnston1 I can totally relate with this as I do it myself (working at a large firm)
Dmitry Derbenev
I think it's one of the best questions that the founder could ask himself. Try to visit sectoral business events e.g. conferences and chat with people there. Good luck!
Sacha Nacar
@dmitry_derbenev great tip! How do you go about finding conferences in times of covid? I find that a lot of the business is fine face-to-face
Sacha Nacar
@dmitry_derbenev btw if you are curious about what I'm building I'd love to send you more info! You can contact me: sacha[at]meetinghero.ai
Dmitry Derbenev
@sachanacar there are a lot of online events now, which is also a great way to start conversations with different people
Fritz Brumder
You have to be scrappy and work your ass off. But here are a few tricks - 1. Remind larger company employees that it keeps them fresh to work with more nibble startups. They will be impressed with how quickly you get updates done because it takes them months and months. 2. Explicitly say you are looking for innovators. You need the people that love to get up and dance first: https://youtu.be/izP5n1SBEaI?t=43 And everyone loves to be called an innovator:)
Sacha Nacar
@fritzly what an awesome video analogy! Thanks for the tips, I can definitely relate and act on this
Sacha Nacar
@fritzly btw if you are curious about what I'm building I'd love to send you more info! You can contact me: sacha[at]meetinghero.ai
Sacha Nacar
Wow I love this community! You all are giving such awesome tips! Please keep them coming 🙏👍
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