How should I go about the next step of my startup?

[sidarok]

Hi everybody, this is my first post and I am seeking some valuable advice.

I am running Coachius - A niche social platform for coaches and mentors.

Coaching community is diversely booming and is very much underserved. In U.S alone, only life coaching is estimated to be a 6B$ sector.

I wanted to develop a platform to give coaches and people who are looking for coaching to connect at a social level, discuss and engage for sessions.

With this in mind I developed an MVP - http://test.coachius.info

What do you think about the idea and the MVP? What do you think my next steps should involve? (keep pitching?, go live quickly? focus more on monetization?)

Thanks to all of you in advance.

[davismwfl]

I worked with a client last year that was coaching small businesses and my team worked with them to help those clients get off the ground with basic marketing sites launched etc. I'd say that you are at least on to something targeting that market as we found it much larger than anticipated. We have since stopped working directly building the "students" products (unless they have a real engineering problem to solve) but we have made (and are adding more) a few specific solutions that serve the broader community and have brought those to market.

What I learned is that the educational, mentoring, and advice part of the market is quite large with people on both sides willing (if not anxious) to pay money to learn things that others take for granted (be it how to provide the advice or in getting the advice). Linking those two communities together is of significant value, and making it so that they can communicate more effectively seems very valid. Now what that means in terms of potential opportunity, I don't know exactly, but I can tell you we see some of the products we have (and are launching) in the space easily growing into a very nice sized business that do not require investment backing and are profitable from very early on. Our specific focus is very much on delivering the content and marketing the content and solutions versus a social media based forum, although we are integrated to most social media outlets.

As for advice, launch something quickly, get some buy in from people willing to actually pay for it and get some traction. If you are seeking investment you'll need to prove traction anyway so that is the first thing to focus on IMO.

Good luck and have fun!

[sidarok]

Thank you very much Davis, for the insightful comment.

It is indeed a big and underestimated market waiting with full of untapped opportunities.

Currently the site is entirely free - I was thinking of gaining traction first and then monetizing it.

So would you advice me to go ahead and launch it, or keep it at stealth mode and raise money - so I can quit my day job and fully focus on this?

[davismwfl]

I'd advise that you launch with a minimal set of features and get people on the platform and make additions to it as you go. There is a saying, you should be at least slightly embarrassed by your version 1. Can't remember who said it, but man it so works, it also is a great motivator to improve.

I personally don't believe in stealth mode without some very special circumstances, and this wouldn't be one of them. The times I would say stealth is good is for serial founders that have credibility to raise money privately and keep the wraps on something until it launches. And even then, they likely have some large clients committed already and are already on a solid path.

So my 2 cents, don't quit your day job. Launch the site, get some traction, get feedback, don't hide it, promote promote promote. Once you have some traction and have people talking a little about it, then you can start to think about a pitch deck and trying to raise money (if that is your goal). Although there is "easy" money as some say, it isn't that easy really, you still have to have fundamentals in place or have a track record proving you can do it. If you get a little traction though, it isn't unrealistic to have a small group or a high net worth person provide you some seed capital to try and accelerate the pace.

Personally, I wouldn't go the raise money route initially, I'd first start off trying to make money with the platform. Bootstrap it, see what happens. The go big or go home attitude isn't necessarily wrong, but the majority of businesses are not launched or founded that way. They start small and build up. Nothings stops those businesses from being as large as a VC backed business (though money does equal velocity), and you can always attract money at a later date, usually under more favorable terms.

[webstartupper]

Firstly, congratulations on finding a large enough industry you are passionate about.

Pick a niche in the coaching industry based on the following conditions.

1. The niche must be small enough such that there is no current market leader (or market leader can be displaced)

2. The niche is big enough that there are enough customers to validate the idea.

3. You have some unfair advantage in that niche. For e.g. You have experience in business coaching or you have access to customers in the fitness coaching, or you have a close friend working in relationship coaching.

Then, validate your idea by talking to customers in that niche. Build and market your app till you are the market leader in that niche. After that, you can decide to pick and dominate another niche (or all of them)

Benefits of this approach

1. By sticking to a small niche, you can make something that resonates with the customers. It is much easier validating a product built for a very specific purpose.

2. By starting with a small niche, your goal will also be small. So it will be easier to figure out whether you are on the right track.

3. You will be able to become the market leader in a small niche much faster than you can become the market leader in the coaching industry. Once you have validated your business in the niche, it is much easier raising funding for the larger goal.

[j2bax]

Will your service save your target customers time and make their lives easier or make their work more effective? If so, charge for it! Even if only a small amount, don't undersell yourself. If its not worth paying for, they probably won't use it for free either. You should definitely consider a free trial if nothing else but keep it in their minds that your service offers value. If you have paying customers you will also be much more likely to devote yourself to improving the service and seeing it through to full fruition. If a prospect converts to being a paid customer, they will be invested in using the platform and continuing to validate what you are doing.

[sidarok]

It will make indeed their lives not only easier but also will let them find more clients, and for clients more coaches.

But on the other hand without the users the value of the platform is next to nothing.

That's why in the MVP I have developed all the social features that are commonly available - A professional profile (linkedin) live chat and messaging, notifications (facebook) and groups for forum chat.

My aim was to develop a community first to whom I can sell the further services much easier.

Do you think this is flawed? (fremium model?)

[obayesshelton]

Maybe look at some accelerator programmes etc and work with their startups, the reason I say this is that they are always missing maybe 1 or more person and if they have a full team they might be missing some specific skills which a mentor could give them.

[blairanderson]

Find a single customer and get them to pay for your service.

When they say no, find another one.

Repeat until you have a bunch of customers.

Coding and hiring will be required to accomplish the above tasks.

[sidarok]

Hi @blairanderson, thanks for your comment.

Currently the site is completely free and not even launched yet.

The dilemma I am having is to continue implementing features to charge for vs. launching it as it is and seeing what happens, what user feedbacks are - and then develop those services.

[timjahn]

Launch it. Launch launch launch.

Let customers tell you what features they need.