Miles, I've been involved in, or managed, projects with a variety of scopes (software, comedy shows, business projects, marketing, etc) for many many years. So, conceptually, I fall into the category of people who care.
I like the idea of what you've proposed, but you made me work really hard to get at what it is. The thing that will make me click on your link needs to be much more succinct, and either talk about the pain I'm feeling or the benefits I'm going to get from supporting your projects. Take a look at how some of the leading project management tools describe what they do, such as Basecamp, Podio, Mavenlink, etc. Why is your tool more compelling than theirs? Just to be clear, the pain I'm feeling when dealing w/ project management is that it's hard to get to get people to use the project management tools that i've put in place because they cater too much to a technical audience (trac, git), or require too much customization for simple projects (Podio) or are too simplistic to let me do all PM tasks in one place (Basecamp). The technical problem of keeping tasks synched across the network is among the least of my worries, actually. My problem is finding a tool that's simple enough yet complete enough to work for a technical and non-technical audience. Here are some suggestions for your pitch: - identify a particular person that has a particular problem (e.g. your customer demographic) You might need to write a different invitation email based on whether you're sending it to theater producers or web designers - put your link at the top of your pitch, not only at the bottom of paragraphs of justification. - find a Twitter-length description of your tool. Otherwise, you make it too hard for people to share it. - Crete an executive summary (no more than one paragraph) that leaves me wanting more Kickstarter and Indiegogo are really great tools for honing your marketing pitch, and they provide some brutally honest feedback about its effectiveness. It may take you a couple of iterations to get to where you want to be with this project. Good luck! Anca. On Aug 5, 2012, at 3:26 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: > Hi Alex, > > Alex Hillman wrote: >> LightTable is: >> A) an outlier. Building anything on observations of outliers is a recipe for >> disaster > > Well... funded projects in the $50,000+ range are outliers on Kickstarter in > general, but there are other software projects besides light table that have > succeeded in raising significant amounts. I kind of like looking at outliers > - you can learn a lot. > >> B) EXTREMELY niche. You're pitch is extremely broad. That's going to impact >> your sales in general, and even moreso at this stage. >> >> Coverage helps for sure, but I don't think you've actually picked an >> audience to sell to. Do that, and you're entire formula changes. > > Now that is certainly true. In one sense, "folks who manage projects" is a > niche, and more so when one focuses on "folks who manage virtual projects > with teams distributed across the net." In another sense, this crosses lots > of different niches - whether one is doing software development, product > development, running a marketing campaign, organizing a flash performance, > etc., the number of folks who worry about project management are a small > subset. A common set of problems, but a dispersed audience. > > Which brings me back to my questions of how to find and reach people for whom > what I'm doing will be helpful. I have a sense that a lot of my audience can > be found among the same folks who inhabit co-working spaces, but I'm not sure > - hence my inquiry to this list. > > Thanks again, > > Miles > > -- > In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. > In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Coworking" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en. > -=-=-=-=- Anca Mosoiu | Tech Liminal [email protected] M: (510) 220-6660 W: http://techliminal.com | T: @techliminal | F: facebook.com/techliminal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en.
