I have started and been successful at creating platforms, here is my advise.
First target to a very specific type of customer. I really mean find people that have very particular behaviours online. They search in specific places, follow specific people on twitter, or maybe they hang out at a very specific cafe at a time. Once you get define it move your website (landing page) around make more than one test value propositions that enfasise on different aspects of the problem.

If you know then talk to them and be the landing page.
Get them to sign up for your product ans charge them. The once that sign up online arrange meetings or hangouts to understand what made join and what they are expecting, then give them just that.

Hope this helps, you can call and talk specific for your business.

Josefina

I started a large SaaS Company for B2B where perfection in code is as importante as it gets.
So here is my advice, DON'T CODE until you know what the Saas Really is.

First start understanding what the problem REALLY is. Interview people and actually spend 100% of your time doing Customer Discovery. (This sounds easy but it is a skill you'll have to develop far more important than coding).

Once you understand what the problem is, come up with a value proposition. Still no code.
Then make a sell.

If you can actually find things already existing that you can Hack and put it together then use that.

Then make another sell.
If you can sell it to at least 50 people if you are B2C, or if you are B2B you should have at least 1 customer.
Once you do that then start automating some parts of the solution that you have hacked and so on.

But THE most important thing is to be in constant conversations with your customers and hot leads.

Remember you are a customer making machine not a coding machine, the first one is where the money is.

Hope this helped you, if you want to talk more about customer discovery and customer development, just give me a call.

I created a company that drives our customers mostly by posting and creating great content for them.

Here is how we do it.
First we identify Who they are and what are they looking for, trying to achieve.
Then we create content that will help them understand bith how we solve their problem and how are we going to help him achieve what he wants better than anyone.

Then we understand where they go to get information and we put it right there. Content marketing is more about context than blogging. Say your customers dont have the habit to go on blogs... Then what is the point?

Our customers are both companies and regular humans so we actually need to have a startegy for each one and measure what works and what doesnt.

Hope this helped so if you want to go deeper into ehat strategies can actually help your company don't doubt to approach me.

Have a great day everybody!

I've dealt with this and at the beggining it sucks, but the trick is to figure out which one is the hardest to get and the riskiest. Let's take skillshare, first we need to understand what consumers want to learn, if people wouldn't want to learn new skills online then why gather up a team of people to create courses if people wouldn't buy them. Once they understood what people would buy then just create the courses yourself one you get people interested other "teachers" would come and be part of it.

I've actually dealt with this problema myself. We created a platform that connects problems from inside the company to people inside the company that can solve them. The riskiest part was WHY people would share problems via online and we discovered that they did not just to make a problem visible, but because that was a great platform to show themselves inside a very large corporation so we enhanced that feature above all else. Once we got that ball rolling we went to get people interested in solving problems and WHY they would do it. What are the right triggers so on so forth. But the riskiest thing for us was getting the ball rolling uploading problems.

If you want to talk longer we can most definitely schedule a call.

All the best!
Josefina

I became an entrepreneur very young too. So here is my advise. Don't think too much if your idea is good or bad, find a problem a specific group of people have and then offer them a way to solve it and charge for it. (Follow lean startup) keep it simple!

Hope this answers your question. It would be great to know if you actually went for it!

Hi, I started a SaaS and started selling with no actual product.
In order to understand what to do.
1. Who are your early adopters ( the ones that are suffering the most because you don't exist).
2. Understand their Real problem and them promise them something.
3. Use things that alteady exist and put them together to make that promise realitu for them.

This is utterly important because you'll learn what to build later, adjusting the SaaS as you are the solution, then you build it.

Now a big thing is PRICING most of the time this is something that gets us all stuck.

Here is my approach.
Think what is the maximum you can change for what you are promising. Try not to think on how much it will cost, but how big is the problem that you are solving. The charge it. By putting a number you'll be able to start the conversarion you need to have with your early adopters in order to understand the value of your SaaS.

Hope this helped!
If you want to tall more give me a call.