[dynamite-ready]

Been looking for a guide like this.

Recently finished an MVP as a personal project, and was thinking about how promote it. It's a daunting task.

It's nice to think that l337 design (well... It's functional, hopefully) and a Reddit/HN post will be enough, but that's probably analogous to writing the first test record to your dev database, techwise...

On top of that, confidence is a big thing. What if my core hypothesis is flawed, or it's just a silly product? It's natural to want to innoculate yourself against criticism and rejection... That's a fundamental psychological feature of all nerds afterall.

[chris_f]

"On top of that, confidence is a big thing. What if my core hypothesis is flawed, or it's just a silly product? It's natural to want to innoculate yourself against criticism and rejection... That's a fundamental psychological feature of all nerds afterall."

The trick is to remember that those responses are still better than the alternative of no one using your project or caring enough to provide any feedback. Users providing feedback is a good thing, even if it is negative.

I post a lot about my side project here and on other forums. It would be great if everyone just knew about it and already decided if it was something that they were interested in or not, but I know only a small fraction of relevant users are even aware it exists.

For me, it would be way worse to spend time building something that people might find beneficial but never got a chance to hear about, than sharing it and being criticized on the internet.

[dynamite-ready]

Great promotional work! What's your side project?

Jokes aside, a large component of marketing is in aggregating opinion. The other half is the dark art we famously complain about.

Aggregating opinion at any level is hard work. And it's almost been elevated to a science now, so it has to be respected.

So to perform all that work to derive a conclusion which will most likely (given all that's known about the probability of start ups and success) prove you wrong, seems a perverse thing to do.

Masochistic, in fact.

I think it's easier to perform this work in the third person... It turns the dynamic on its head (like the schadenfreuder one might feel when working on a software project in the capicity of a QA tester). You're performing a clinical service.

But it takes some special effort to willingly put yourself through it...

I dunno.

I suppose I'll learn more if I just do it...

[tjs8rj]

As someone who has turned side-projects into acquired products and companies, your primary focus should be learning as much as possible and being as humble as possible (to facilitate the learning process). Chances are overwhelming that your current product "sucks" so to speak, but you should remain confident that you can likely get from "it sucks" to "it's actually pretty useful" fairly quickly by getting it in front of people and letting users use it.

Stay humble, get it out there, focus on learning, and good luck!

[dynamite-ready]

Very much appreciate the encouragement. Thanks!