Ask HN: How did you get early beata testers (Non Friends and Family)?

8 points by KleinmanB 14 years ago | 8 comments

I finished my MVP and have had friends and family test it. Unfortunately you dont always get the most honest answers from F+F. How have people gone about soliciting early testers outside of their social circle?

kirillzubovsky 14 years ago |

Search for sites like http://betali.st and put up your splash screenshot. People who are interested would check it out and try the product.

Post facebook/twitter messages to your followers and ask them to try. Better yet, find some twitter hot-shots who might be interested in your product and send them a tweet. Sure most will ignore you, but if 1/10 tries it out, you've got another power beta user.

Lastly, take a look at my post here (http://www.geekatsea.com/what-google-must-learn-from-my-fail...), will give you some ideas as to what beta users say vs. what they mean.

Good luck!

kevinchen 14 years ago | |

…and then after you get one of those "hot-shots" testing your product, create an artificial scarcity by doling out beta invitations slowly. [Of course, this will only work if you set up some kind of website with pretty / cool-looking screenshots.]

bunturedempter 14 years ago | |

You can check out http://wikindu.com as well, It's not betali.st but you can send your completed startups. maybe after you get out of beta, you can submit it to wikindu.com

wisty 14 years ago |

You can advertise. Say, $1-$5 per click (I'm not an expert). It won't really pay off (in terms of value per user), but it will give you feedback.

It won't scale as well as word-of-mouth / viral adoption, but that's a premature optimization issue.

coryl 14 years ago |

You cold call them. You find people in forums, communities, etc. who have complained about the problem your solving, or are active powerusers in the industry, and you message them. You tell them, "hey, I read in your blog that you were having trouble with X, I'm working on a solution. Can I email you to ask about your experience with [1][2][3]?"

Even better if you can skype interview with them. Best of luck.

balajiviswanath 14 years ago |

1. Use launchrock to create a splash page with info of what your product does and a signup form. 2. Create your blog and write about your product & field. Follow SEO best practices and put a sign up link in your blog. 3. Run a Google adwords campaign with a small budget. 4. Go to startup events and network with people who might be interested and point them to your launch page.

regularfry 14 years ago |

Get out there and talk to your customers face-to-face. If it's something they want, they'll bite your hand off to be on the beta, and you'll learn more about what your product should be by having a proper conversation than you ever could over email.

zbruhnke 14 years ago |

if you're in a niche field (like alot of startups are) try searching for forums etc. in that niche then try reaching out to users on those forums and acquiring them as beta testers. I'm sure others on hacker news are alot like me and would love to beta test a variety of products so posting it on here would not be a bad idea either