[mh_]

We were a little bit lucky in this regard, because we had some authority in the niche (2 members of our original team had spoken at security conferences internationally for the previous 10 years).

I have lots of thoughts on this though. I think with a low enough burn rate, you can overcome this with a great product, and taking just one bite at a time. ie. one happy customer, then another. Actual customer happiness is so low, that you just have to do a little better to have people talk about you, and over time it compounds nicely.

[mh_]

I've previously pondered how we would have approached our early steps if we were completely unknown, and the best option i can think of is a kind of sincere, influencer marketing approach.

i.e. if you dont have the voice in the industry that people will listen to, find people who do, and get them to see your product. Most industry leaders are constantly looking to up their game, so you should be able to catch their eye, and if your product is awesome, they will say so

[1cvmask]

How would you recommend approaching them?

[mh_]

I think it would depend on how those experts roll.

For infosec for example, i think if your product did "X amazing thing", then you'd definitely get a seasoned experts attention if you tweeted "hey, we built a thing that does X amazing thing, give me 5 minutes and i'll show it to you"

I think theres a part of this that means your products has to convince them in the 5 minutes they give you (or at least has to convince them to give you 5 minutes more)