Your software exists to serve the needs of your customers. Don’t build your MVP and hope to find customers. Build your relationship with your customers before you write a single line of code.
The problem we all have is we prefer fantasies to reality. When we finally give ourselves the freedom to pursue our dreams - we prefer to keep that unrealized fantasy alive for as long as possible - for many programmers this means building your software in a silo, away from the reality of what your customers’ needs and desires are.
For Conference King - our customer is King
It’s obvious when you are servicing one client directly that you must talk to them to understand what they want from the end product you deliver them - you wouldn’t just start building something in the dark for that one client you are servicing. So why would you build in the dark when you are planning on servicing many clients at the same time through your one piece of software?
These early adopters are your first clients, and you must service them directly. You will gain allies for life and they will help craft your product. As a conference organizer myself I happen to be the customer avatar of Conference King as well but it would be foolish to build a product that services just my needs and then try sell it to other organizers.
The smart thing to do is to involve them all in the process and get them invested in the story. Use their experiences and ideas to shape the product and give them a sense of ownership over the final creation. It should just sell itself to them at that point - right?
Not one line of code exists for Conference King yet - but I’m speaking to a few key people and future potential customers and getting their input over the next few days - these are my friends who run conferences all over the world for Digital Nomads, and a few of these conferences already use an app but they are open to a new solution.
Jan Richter - Nomads in Paradise
Dimitris Tselios - Vietnam Nomad Fest & Athens Nomad Fest
Holgar Mette - Bansko Nomad Fest
Goncalo Hall - Nomad World
After my conversations with them - I’ll be plotting out my roadmap to MVP over the next few days and then I’ll be sharing that with you.