Episode 503 | Idea Validation, Expanding Internationally, Affiliate Programs, and More Listener Questions

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

Entrepreneurship, Management, Business, Marketing

4.9 • 819 Ratings

🗓️ 30 June 2020

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week Rob answers some great listener questions. We discuss the best way to validate a product idea, how to expand a product with traction internationally, advice on launching a restaurant product during COVID-19, and whether to start an affiliate program. If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you'd like us to cover, please submit your question for the next episode. We'd love to hear from you! The listener questions we cover 1:39 [Arturo Ceballos] What's the best way to validate an idea and pre-launch without an audience? 13:33 [Ger Apeldoorn] When a product has product-market fit and existing customers, how would you grow internationally? 20:31 [Davis] Do you have any experience running an affiliate program. I'm worried about people that sign up for affiliate would be people that would signup anyways? 26:40 [Jacob Warren] Should I launch a startup in the service/hospitality industry during COVID-19? 28:21 [Casey Collins] Following the Stairstep approach, what's the best marketplace to use? Links from the show Vetting a startup (or two): The systematic birth of @WPEngine | Jason Cohen Idea Validation & Risk Avoidance | Episode 324 The Stairstep Approach to Bootstrapping | Rob Walling Clay Collins on Leadpages and how they used affiliate marketing | Podcast How can I support the podcast? If you enjoyed this episode, let us know by clicking the link and sharing what you learned. Click here to share your number one takeaway from the episode. If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you'd like for us to cover, please submit your question for the next episode. We'd love to hear from you! Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to this all listener question episode of startups for the rest of us. I'm your host,
0:04.1	Rob Walling, on the show each week. We cover topics relating to building and growing ambitious
0:08.0	startups using a sustainable approach. And I'm excited to hear from each one of you out there. We
0:13.8	have a couple voicemails to kick us off and then we'll dig into some text questions. And I'm
0:19.7	going to be flying solo today. I've been doing several
0:22.2	Q&A episodes over the last few months with guests, but I wanted to spend some time today and
0:26.4	really dig into a few questions I've received. Also, I wanted to let you know that I've recorded
0:31.3	two exclusive episodes of startups for the rest of us that are available to subscribers of the email list.
0:39.9	The first episode is called eight things you must know when launching your SaaS, and the other
0:44.2	one is 10 things you should know as you scale your SaaS. So I cover both the launching and the
0:49.6	scaling phase. And if you go to Startups for the Rest of Us.com, anywhere on that site, you can subscribe to
0:55.7	the email list on the homepage or in the widget in the lower right. You will get both of those
1:00.9	episodes. Those are solo episodes with just me going through bullet points and thinking through
1:06.4	lessons that I've learned in 20 years of entrepreneurship. And they also come with these really nice
1:11.8	PDF guides that are well designed and kind of summarize each of the points so that if you listen
1:17.3	to the episode and you take something away from it and you want to refer back, you have something
1:20.7	in writing to jog the memory. I think both these episodes and the guides turned out really well.
1:25.4	And I think if you're a fan of this show, that you'll
1:27.5	enjoy them too. So you can just head to Startups for the Rest of Us.com, sign up to be on the mailing
1:32.7	list, and you'll get those episodes in your inbox. So let's kick off with our first question from
1:37.5	Arturo Sabios. Hey, Rob, this is Arturo Sabios out of Fresno, California. And I actually know you back from the Bitwise days when I was first learning how to code.
1:47.8	Anyways, since then, I've learned how to develop apps, and I've tried and failed at launching a handful of these now.
	...

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