I went from idea to payment in four days

I’ve worked on startups for ten years now, many projects lived and died in different sizes and stages. Some ideas never became more than a marketing page with a waiting list, some projects were funded startups that I helped co-found.

Some projects never got real traction, some never got into the black, and some never made a dime.

Over the years, I’ve studied various validation techniques, and came to the realization that payment is validation. If someone gives you actual money for your thing, you’re onto something. A lot of people giving you actual money for your thing means your idea probably has legs.

Last month, I was invited to a networking luncheon, and it was a fairly normal one with business owners, and a speaker, in a fancy building downtown and all that. I learned that the networking organization was $350 a month. Too rich for my blood right now.

But it made me think about how people really value what they pay for.

I had been in an accountability group where we stated our goals on Mondays, and talked about our progress a time or two during the week, then on Friday said if we hit our goals or not. I loved the idea of this group but it slowly dwindled in activity, and one week I was the only one stating and updating my goals. That was a free group. And it was dead.

So those two ideas merged, and I tweeted out my idea: a PAID accountability group. The same thing as the free one, but people had to pay to be in it. Because people value what they pay for, right?

It was an idea worth exploring, so I tweeted it out on a Thursday and I had several people say they were interested in a paid accountability group. Paying for it meant commitment, and these founders thought being more likely to hit their goals was worth the payment and commitment.

So I talked to everyone interested. Most guys were into a chat room of some sort, while one guy wanted video chat twice a week. I’m a recovered IRC addict, so a chat room is way more my speed, and I want the group to be tailored for me too, so we settled on that.

Then I slapped together what I needed:

• Started a Slack
• Set up a page on yep.so for a quick landing page with checkout buttons that I could send out
• Set up Stripe for it

I talked more to the prospects that were interested over the weekend, and I had some maybes and some guys who said they would probably go for it.

I settled on $50/month for the group. Enough that it was “skin in the game”, but not crazy expensive.

That Monday, two founders signed up for $50 a month! And one founder wanted to commit to 3 months, so he paid $150 that day!

Amazing. After spending months or even years on startups before until they got their first payment, to go from idea to payment in just a few days was wild.

Granted, it’s not a software startup so I didn’t have to build anything, I just used tools available to build what I needed to provide the service. But the service was wanted, and people were willing to pay for it.

Since then, it’s been fantastic to see us in the group setting goals and hitting goals and helping each other out.

If you have an idea, get feedback on it as soon as possible, try to validate it however you can as soon as possible (a marketing site, an invoice, a wizard of oz site, a crude MVP, whatever works), talk to people, and go for it if there’s real demand, and you have people with their wallet out.