Try manually onboarding clients and doing a lot of the work for them manually. Instead of having them watch a video or read something have a video call with them walking them through it. It seems kind of backward but during the MVP stage is really the time to be doing a lot of the work manually so you can be in the weeds of the product and get to know the clients, so they feel connected to you and your product.

Think about it from their perspective – you are a business and potentially about to drop thousands of dollars solving this business problem and you’re approached by this young tech genius who says he can solve your problem so now you’re going through an impersonal automated process with links and videos vs the young tech genius CEO personally walked you through onboarding and was there to answer your questions. which one would you prefer as a potential customer?

Have you stressed over prepping for a case interview? Even better, were you in management consulting, IB, or PE who helped with recruiting? The best way to know what people want is to solve a problem for yourself (directly or indirectly).

Just too much friction. Talk with you about the product, watch an onboarding video, learn how to use it? You’re asking them to dedicate a lot of attention.

Read “The Mom Test” book. You probably botched your customer interviews and all those people weren’t interested and were just acting nice.

Did you build the mvp first or talk to your customers first?

Because if you did the mvp first, you’re trying to do the “Solution in search of a problem” method which always fails.

And like others mentioned, 2 weeks isn’t enough time. Give it some more time but keep altering sales strategies. It’s a good sign that people are willing to talk. In my case even that didn’t happen. I guess that was a learning.

Well, if you haven’t reached 1000 people by now, better pivot to AI.

Joking, of course.

How did you reach them initially? Did you speak with them? Call them back.

Create FOMO. Create incentives. Partner with schools so they can help you reach students.

Maybe sprinkle in some extra spice to re-ignite the interest. Consider tweaking your onboarding process or throwing in some irresistible perks – who can resist a platform that feels like a VIP club for case-cracking champions? 🏆

And if all else fails, remember: even Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they probably had a killer project manager. Keep the hustle alive

Help me understand the service provided. What are the consultants getting out of this? To hire interns?

Talk to those leads before you build an mvp

I’m in the space of helping SaaS founders go from 0 to 100 paid users.

You did everything right but probably messed up on execution. If they said they were interested, body language and questions were the queues to look for.

If you believe your market research was good enough to invest time into developing an MVP then you probably just want to fill in the gaps and start onboarding users, somehow…

I started providing this help as a service.

I’m a technical founder and I am currently building SaaS companies for myself, so I’m basically sharing my experience and knowledge with you. On what’s worked and what hasn’t worked for me. E.g. marketing, sales and operations for SaaS companies.

I’ll add I asked a few in my network of consultants at mbb (Cs through partner). I’m not sure why, I was just sharing your post, and the resounding answer was the consultants would not use this. Even if good mba candidates were on it since their funnel is already so robust. It’ll likely have to be firms outside MBB. Which, if that’s the case, means you’re getting worse candidates and your pool will be weaker (and therefore not as attractive to the Deloitte, KPMGs, EYs, etc. or the world since they don’t want to hire second-tier mba grads).

Biggest feedback was no ROI and too big a time commitment. They also said this has been discussed internally at a couple of the MBBs and it always lands on being not needed. They already do so much recruiting work, have tools their firms use, and promote case-prep solutions that have proven to work and already exist.

The pitch would probably have to be time saving for a consulting firm…. But that’s hard. Hope this helps! Tried to shortcut it a bit for you since I have a good text chain of friends in the space.

People is busy bro. Make it easier for them! Work on that

[1] 2 weeks is too short to come to a conculsion.

[2] Keep a track of the process and organize the outcome, split the results by consultants and students, who’s more responsive and more positive/negative, analyze the results.

[3] If the interest is upfront but no response afterwards it might be that the whole process is lengthy/complicated/missing expectations.

[4] Follow the above strategy and continue for 4-weeks

[5] Aim to connect/communicate with 100-150 prospects in this period.

PS: I’m a professional/independent market researcher and can help at any point, if you need additional guidance at any level.

And this is why a double-sided marketplace is so difficult. No value to consultants if there are no potential mba students and no value to MBA students if there aren’t a lot of consultants.

1. Check out Whitney Wolfe Herd’s interviews and writings about how to succeed marketing to both sides of a marketplace.

2. I would encourage you to define who your economic buyer is. How do you make money? What I can tell you is that most mba students don’t have disposable income and shouldn’t be counted on for monetization. Without knowing your strategy, one of the things that could be running them off I’d be either explicit or implied cost.

3. Solutions selling. Again without seeing your pitch this is generalized, but I find that a lot of smart smart tech people who build an mvp love to market features and what the product can do. The mindset needs to be changed to focus on empathy and understanding of the pain for the person buying. It’s not what can the product do, it’s what kind of pain can the product remove and how can it make life better for your economic buyer. Focus on WHY, not HOW. I know this is very difficult for a lot of people with an engineering first mindset, but frankly unless your users are other engineers, most don’t care about how a problem is solved.

4. Getting people to do something different takes energy and as others have mentioned there’s friction in increasing effort. People are inherently lazy; The amount of energy someone is willing to put into your product is proportional to the perceived amount of pain they’ve will save. I would encourage you to think about things with 2 questions. Why change? Why now? Describe the benefits of spending the time using your product.

5. As others have said, 2 weeks isn’t enough time. Keep plugging away. Good luck with everything op.