Ask them if they see any potential issues with manufacturing your CAD design, including whether they think any weld marks will show through the metal, whether any bend radii are too tight, whether they can foresee any issues in assembling the parts at the end (you should send assembly instructions, or work with them on them) etc.

Ask them what their prices would be for 1, 10, 500, 10k, etc. units, so you know how well you can scale up with them if needed.

If you're in initial discussions with them, find an existing product that exemplifies the quality you would like to get from the shop, and take photos of the example. For instance, it you want the quality and finish of an aluminum Macbook, use that as the example. Make sure to include the color and finish instructions in whatever files you send them.

Ask them for a single sample before a full order, and how much that sample would cost. You're going to want to have a "golden sample" that you approve of, that they will try to match in all subsequent copies. It's also good, if possible, to have "limit samples" which provide high and low bounds of the product's final appearance.

Let me know if you need any more help.

Best of luck.

If you have data showing a correlation of traction with some other variable then monitor and/or control that other variable.

As an example of a variable you can directly control: Price. Depends on the product, but in general, as one lowers the price of something, the demand (traction) will go up.

As an example of a variable you can't directly control, but can track: Engagement. If you have a Youtube channel and you notice more of your audience leaving comments, or clicking the thumbs up button, or watching the entire video from start to end, that's not only a sign that they are enjoying your content, and will be coming back for more, but also a indicates that more and more new customers will start being drawn to your channel either by word of mouth/email referrals, or by the Youtube algorithm advertising your video more since it sees increases engagement. So you would expect traction to increase.

In general, if you are collecting data from several layers of your "sales funnel" (Google it), as you see the % of users getting to lower and lower layers of the sales funnel go up, you can expect more and more traction. Both of the above examples would predict that future potential customers would go further and further down your sales funnel, thereby increasing traction.

I always recommend to continue working on the business in parallel with keeping an eye out for a cofounder. As you continue to move forward, it will become easier to get others interested and passionate about joining you.

Keep potential cofounders that you may have already met updated on progress, so that they can see you're not just someone with a good idea, you're driven to implement it too. As they see you continue to make progress they will become increasingly interested in joining and helping you, as they see the potential develop, and what's clear in your eyes becomes more clear in theirs.

Also, as you continue to build the startup, you will continue to iterate and validate it, and you'll get better at understanding and presenting to others its core exciting features / values, which will further help you pitch it to potential cofounders.

Best of luck, and feel free to let me know if you'd like to discuss this or any other aspects of your startup in more detail

Lee

Answering this question efficiently requires being able to see how you are currently going about it, so that we can see what you may be doing wrong, and suggest corrections / additions. Feel free to send a link that we can check out.

best,

Lee

While a direct phone number is helpful in terms of getting to talk to who you want to talk to, even more valuable is a 'warm intro' from someone that the person knows. Warm introductions depend on a personal relationship with someone, so that kind of service can't be as easily automated and would be extremely valuable. Because it would inherently be impossible to effectively pull off for the long term at a large scale, you'd have to charge a lot for that service though.

One possible way to make it more scalable is to have a lower priced option which involves a warm intro to a gatekeeper, instead of the final target. Gatekeepers might be easier to befriend, and might even be open to helping occasionally in exchange for a cut of your revenue.

I have several ideas on how you could pull this off in a psuedo-automated way, that would let you quickly implement the idea in a low cost way. If you'd like to discuss it further let me know,

best,

Lee

Since you've already been on Linkedin Sales for a while, and know the landscape, a good first step could be to try to further optimize the efficacy of that outreach (unless it's already extremely effective). Anything learned there should be translatable to other channels as well. I can't give advice on that kind of optimization without seeing what you're already doing.

In terms of other channels:

1) you can look on job posting websites for any companies looking to hire someone to do what your IT solution does. For instance, Angellist, etc. Reach out to them with a solution that is presented as obviously cost saving and efficient relative to having to hire someone to do it.

2) if your product could work for small companies, maybe pair up with a local 'startup accelerator' and offer your services free for some time (e.g. 1 week?) to all of their participants.

3) look on relevant online forums for people asking for help with the problems your product solves

etc.

Let me know if you'd like to discuss your product and potential outreach options and optimizations in more detail,

best,

Lee

The answer is "it depends". It depends on the following:

1) Your current 'runway': [How much money you have saved + Your current recurring income - Your current expenses].

2) How much money it would take to develop a 'minimal viable product' (MVP) that would allow you to test your idea. (i.e. would it require 0.1% of your savings + income, or would it by 50%)

3) How much potential you think your idea has.

Usually, the cost of #2 is something that can be made _much_ cheaper than you might initially imagine. This can be done by truly understanding what the core 'value proposition' is that you want to test, and understanding very affordable, minimalist techniques that will allow you to develop a product capable of testing it with potential customers. I've done this many times in the past, and it has allowed me to rapidly test out and iterate many ideas with very small capital investment needed.

Again, the answer depends on understanding the details of the previously listed issues #1, #2, and #3 above. If you'd like to discuss the specifics of your idea and whether an MVP could possibly be quickly and cheaply created and tested, either do some online research on potentially cheap and easy tools that might help out, or let me know, I'd be happy to help,

best,

Lee

First you'll need the 'sellers'.

To get them to sign up you'll first need a website set up that looks professionally made to the extent that one could conceivably believe that it would attract 'buyers' to use its services.

Then, do research on how best to find sellers that would be appropriate for your site. You'll have to do grunt work to reach out to them individually at first. For instance maybe you're looking for experts on certain topics, you could check out slideshare.net and find the most popular decks on relevant topics, and then reach out to those authors. Or maybe you check out Linkedin or Quora and find the right people there. Help them with the sign up process as much as possible, and give them some extra early-sign up incentive, like maybe say that you'll feature all early sign ups at the top of the website for 1 week after you go live, or maybe you'll actively email market for them for several days each.

Once you've gotten sellers to populate the site, start advertising to buyers. Give the sellers easy ways to do advertisement too. For instance give them text and/or photos for social media posts, etc. If you onboarded some already-popular people as sellers, they will be able to help a lot in terms of generating their own traffic.

Although eventually P2P marketplaces can be somewhat self-perpetuating, initially you'll have to do a lot of manual work behind the scenes to get everything going.

best of luck,

Lee

These might be useful:
https://flippa.com
https://exitround.com

And for selling websites:
https://empireflippers.com
https://feinternational.com

best of luck

Without any more details only very general advice can be offered. But that general advice would be to build an 'MVP' (minimal viable product) and start testing it.

Test it with yourself, then friends, then family, then strangers, then more strangers etc. You'll be making changes to it along the way to make it fit closer and closer to what people want and find useful, and you'll be refining your knowledge of who your target market is.

When you have enough data showing people like and will pay for your product, you can get investment if you want, to grow faster, or grow more slowly and organically without investment.

If you can't build your 'disruptive tech idea' yourself, there are several options that will still let you make and deploy and test an MVP version of it.

Feel free to send more background info if you'd like advice better tailored to your actual idea,

best of luck,

Lee