Hi Comm, I’m a solo-founder bootstrapping on an early-intervention wellbeing product, initially focusing on lawyer wellbeing as a B2C.
Most of the resources I’ve either read or listened to over the years emphasised avoiding paid ads as a way to awareness and customer acquisition, but to instead focus on organic and community-led engagement and building.
Problem I personally have is almost all resources, books and guidance on how to build this community tends to be via online channels; social media. Truth is I don’t engage with social media, and haven’t had many accounts like instagram. I left them all because of my own mental wellbeing (ironic, really). I find the idea of shouting into the void of Twitter off-putting (especially since Musk took over), and generally dislike social media in general.
I tried to engage with said community via Reddit, but it’s sun is hideously toxic (to my own surprise). LinkedIn is probably the only platform I use and I don’t mind it, but both cautious about being vocal (as this is a side project from my own role) and over the years, it feels like LinkedIn has been borked in a way that inhibits it’s organic outreach (like the decline of LinkedIn Groups over the years).
Would like to know how many others dealt with this, particularly if you’re trying to reach out to a community that you’re not in and generally isn’t overly tech-savvy as a whole, or if you ever had any success launching with paid ads.
Since you’re comfortable with LinkedIn, leverage it to the fullest. While being cautious about vocalizing your side project, you can still share valuable insights and engage in discussions related to lawyer well-being without explicitly promoting your product. Assuming the ICP’s. are there.
And if you are product has anything to do with people’s behavior change. You better do a lot of due-diligence before jumping into development.
Try and get influencers.
Been building a healtech platform over the last 3+ years and trust me healthcare and wellness is one of slowest moving verticals from a growth perspective. And for obvious reasons you go to respect that.
Agreed. My background is in the healthtech space. I have a Masters in Physiology and my first startup (V-funded) was a hardware remote monitoring healthtech device. It’s as you say, takes a while.