| Lots of people leap before they have a parachute because the plebeian view is that entrepreneurs take risks. The reality is that good entrepreneurs manage their risk neurotically. It doesn't help your situation now, but always start these endeavors as night + weekend projects. Manage your risk. Test the market. Get 5 paying customers, then start thinking about quitting your full time job. So, some feedback... From what I gather, OpenLoop a tool for me to organize information and/or projects, generic enough to be used across many verticals and company orgs. It sounds similar to Trello or Basecamp. And that's OK. I'm not sure if my view is accurate, but that's what I feel like you're trying to sell. "Show, don't tell". Go look at trello.com. Go look at basecamp.com/tour. As a potential customer, I want to see screenshots of the software before I signup. I want to see what's different. I'm asking myself "is this worth my time?" Show me a gif of OpenLoop in action. Or make a short screencast (with actual video of the software, not a high-level animation) and stick it right in the hero. Put up a demo at demo.openlooopz.com. Automatically wipe/reimage the account every night to keep out spam and vulgarity. Let people play with it. Explore verticals. Are there verticals currently using OpenLoop really well? Project Managers? Nurses? Accountants? Is it really great at bug tracking? Highlight those on your website - "Project Managers use OpenLoop to Deliver Great Products", "Squash bugs quickly with OpenLoop". Build some dedicated landing pages for those verticals and buy some FB ads. Measure pageviews/signups and see who is most interested. Testimonials or Case Studies. Talk to people currently using OpenLoop and ask them for a quote to put on your page. Blogs. Setup a tumblr in 15 seconds and start blogging about how people are using OpenLoop. Publish guides on popular workflows. Publish ways you're different than your competitors. Refine your copy. People generally don't read large blocks of text. I could tell you were struggling to describe your product because the first item in your FAQ is "What is a loop". Ditch the copy and show me the software. Ditch the "Slack Meets Github" tagline. Perhaps you only used that here. But it didn't help me understand the product. Naysayers come and go. Don't give up, but make sure you're providing if that's your role. If you're out of fuel (money), time to do a contract gig to earn some more runway. You might even have to go back to full time work and do OpenLoop on the weekends. There is no shame in that. If you can, take a 2 week break from anything OpenLoop related (perhaps a contract) and spend time with your family. You'll come back refreshed and find yourself with tons of new ideas for ways to market/advertise, new verticals to research, better copy, etc. Best of luck to you sir! |