Getting Users Is Hard
Some things to think about - not necessarily true, but just a brain dump:<p>&gt;<i>I&#x27;m building a mobile app to create and share social events with your friends. A social event would be going to the bar, house party, or meeting up for coffee. You can fill out a simple form (event name, description, date, time) and post to a feed for your friends to see. Your friends can notify you they&#x27;re going by pressing the &quot;attend&quot; button.</i><p>Have you tried selecting people you want to hang out with at a bar and sending a text message to them that says &quot;Hey, we&#x27;re going to bar X at 5 if you want to tag along&quot; to validate the concept.<p>&gt;<i>Now I&#x27;m trying to get my first users. Yesterday was my first day. I made a spreadsheet of everyone I can message that live in my target area. My list is 82 people. Yesterday I contacted 24 people and got one person to sign up, I was hoping to get five. But most of the people I messaged didn&#x27;t even respond.</i><p>Instead of contacting the 24 people to ask them to sign up, tell them you&#x27;re going to have coffee at place X. Basically, use the spreadsheet as your app and validate the concept.<p>Generally speaking, if people are not coming <i>for</i> you, they&#x27;re coming for someone else: the crazy guy, the wicked smart girl, the hot one, or the one who&#x27;s always funnier when drunk. If you&#x27;re none of those, your job is to set it up and do a &quot;casting&quot; of people who go well together, and do so <i>in a certain context</i>.<p>Someone will invite you and you&#x27;ll say &quot;I don&#x27;t know...&quot;. They&#x27;ll say &quot;X and Y will be there, too&quot; and that may change your mind because X knows more than anyone on some esoteric subject you love, and Y is just so much fun to hang out with.<p>Sooo... Maybe you want to focus on the Person&#x2F;Venue&#x2F;Clique fit and the application automatically invites the <i>right</i> people when you&#x27;re going to the <i>right</i> venue. The right people for the right venue, but also the right people who gel together in that venue. I wouldn&#x27;t invite Y to a bar because he doesn&#x27;t hold his liquor and acts douchey, so the application embeds that in its graph. See Person&#x2F;Venue&#x2F;Clique fit below.<p>- There maybe an asymmetry in that people are more interested to know what you&#x27;re doing than to let you know what they&#x27;re doing. Unless there is a vanity component in there.<p>- Is it a broadcast or personal invites? If it is a broadcast, maybe I don&#x27;t know how you feel about me and feel I&#x27;d bother if I came. Me: &quot;Hey! I saw you beaconed earlier&quot;. You: &quot;Uhmm.. Sure!&quot;.<p>- Platform fragmentation: how is your beacon broadcasting? Do I have to have the app installed to know where you are, or does it broadcast to Instagram, add a WhatsApp status, post something on Facebook? or text message [supposing it&#x27;s invite&#x2F;private] and Twitter or similar if it&#x27;s not.<p>- Maybe there&#x27;s &quot;diffusion of resposibility&quot; going on. If you invite me personally, I&#x27;ll feel much more compelled than if I see it on a broadcast because I might think surely other people might join you and you&#x27;ll be fine. If everyone has that thought, nobody will show up.<p>- Person&#x2F;Venue&#x2F;Clique Fit: Person A is cool with Person B and Person C, however, Person A would hangout with Person B in venue Y, but not with Person C. Person A would also hangout with Person C in venue Z, but not necessarily with Person B. It can be for a variety of reasons: perception, image, precedents, etc. Regulars Person A meets in a venue might not appreciate Person B for example. Usually, when a person goes to a venue, there&#x27;s a small set of people they want to be with at that venue.<p>- People might have &quot;spots&quot; they don&#x27;t want other people to joing them at.