About me
Matteo Mosca
In two years of indie hacking, I launched 13x projects. Two of them got acquired.
I learnt from failures, successes, and multi-millionaire CEOs and mentors — and now I decided to publish my private notes. This is the tactical guide I wish I had when I started.
Intro
After building a 7-figure business and launching more than thirty online products (two of which were acquired), reading countless books on lean startups and meeting hundreds of successful mentors and CEOs, I began to see patterns and trends in my entrepreneurial journey that I had never noticed before.
My decade of researching and launching ideas had suddenly turned into a valuable source of truth, and I was able to see where I had gone wrong and where I had come through, understanding the factors that had contributed to both failures and successes.
Inspired by my newfound insights, I decided to write a tactical guide containing actionable tasks and proven strategies for uncovering high-demand product ideas and early customers. When I put the first draft online, I received numerous emails and messages from readers thanking me for the guidance and inspiration it provided.
In this new version, you get a full rundown of everything you need to do to identify and launch your new business idea. And that’s just Chapter 1. Chapter 2 is a crash course for effective copywriting: you won’t be writing poetry here, just copy that sells.Finally, Chapter 3 is your how-to guide on creating content. Because in this wonderful age of ours, you can actually focus on growing your business and let everyone else work hard to get the word out about the amazing product you just launched.
I hope this book will serve as a day-by-day compass and north star in your journey to becoming a successful entrepreneur.
💹 Find fast-growing markets
by "market" I mean a group of people who are spending their hard-earned money to buy tools or services to achieve their goals and desires
Think about new social, cultural, economic or technological phenomena that is happening in the world:
💙 Passion economy
🛍 Online shopping
😘 Online dating
📹 Video messaging communication
🥾 Digital nomads
💻 Remote work
⚙️ No-code & Low-code
🎮 Online gaming
🤝 Gender equality
👾 Online privacy
🥗 Healthy food and nutrition
🪴 CBD products
🐲 Psychedelic drugs
🤓 Rise of a new technology → GPT-3, No-code, NFTs, 5G, Edge Computing, Blockchain
🚨 Technologies are not markets. But they can generate desires and willingness to spend money (e.g. people want to learn how to code or use GPT-3), or unlock opportunities (internet → online shopping)
... the list can only go on and on.
These phenomena ignite discussions and come with plenty of active and growing online niche communities where people hang out, find answers to their questions, consume contents, and feel a sense of belonging.
These topics, if relevant enough, raise people's interests and the willingness to spend money to achieve a specific desire connected with that revolution.
You already, unknowingly, belong to a market (I'm sure you spend money to buy tools and services on a daily basis). Answer these questions:
What do you do when you wake up in the morning? Perhaps you are a developer, salesman, growth hacker, athlete, an actor?
Think about your main skills, your daily job, your passions and your hobbies
What do people frequently ask you for help? This is a great way to understand who you are, and what community you unknowingly belong to
Do you have strong opinions about a specific topic?
Do you have followers on your social media, blog or newsletter? If yes, who are your folks?
Who do you want to be in 1 year? What part of your life you wish to be better and you're willing to spend money for it?
Out there, there are people with your same ambitions, skills and desires. I believe you can help them to achieve their dreams!
💡 Tech world is about recurring patterns. Waves that you can catch, and as you level up in the online business world, you become more and more aware of these opportunities. You'll start recognising those patterns and commonalities, and the library of case studies that you have in mind becomes intuition and gut feeling at your service. Whenever something new is catching on, be the first to explore and understand the opportunities. To stay ahead of the curve:
Follow interesting people on Twitter (e.g. @Balajis, @ShaanVP ... @matteomosca 😁)
Subscribe to mind-blowing newsletters (e.g Exponential View, Inverted Passion, ...)
Listen to Podcasts (e.g. My First Million, The Indie Hackers Podcast, Tim Ferriss)
Have a look at this http://explodingtopics.com
💬 Find active and growing communities related to these markets
Find the main keywords that people use to refer to the communities
Search for your community here:
YouTube
Facebook Groups
Quora
LinkedIn Groups
Indie Hackers
Twitter
TikTok
Product Hunt
Forum or private communities on Slack or Discord are even better (more intimate and people are more open to discussing)
Communities needs to be active and preferably fast-growing:
Members should post frequently, engage in conversations, answer questions, and they want to share new ideas and get inspired by new ideas, in one word “pro-innovation”
Choose groups with 30k+ members if possible
🚨 Avoid old, static/not growing and established communities
They are typically full of competitors; members are not easily amazed by new ideas as you will likely come up with something similar to what they have already seen. Long story short, you're late here. Go away!
💡 You can find new growing communities here:
💡 One way to ignite exponential growth is by leveraging the rapid expansion of a community that emerged around a specific platform, tool or technology. As they grow, you will prosper!
💡 How do you know when a market is growing? So you can invest your time and energy producing content that, in 1 year, 10x people will search for. Because you know that content created now will work 10x traffic in 1 year? Tough question, my answers, in this case, are other questions:
Daily, how many new members join the community?
Are those members active in the community? Do they post, ask questions, answer, share interesting stuff?
Who are the founders working on the tools/services that serve this community? I'm talking about your potential future competitors:
Are they professional founders? Did they go all-in?
How are their websites? Copy, marketing, products, UX and tech, are well made?
Have they received funds? From which investors?
2/4 weeks test → check the content online (video, posts), community members, influencers, video views, followers, likes, these numbers/KPIs are growing?
🙋♂️ + 🕵️ Be active and analyse the community's members
Understand the culture, values, and dreams of the communities you joined.
What words do they use when they ask questions?
Do they use particular acronyms that you didn't know? That's the community's unique vocabulary. Study it. (e.g. "buy the fucking dip")
Read community's posts: why members participate in the community?
What do they share? What do they ask? What are their desires and dreams?
What are they struggling for? What do they need to solve?
DM some of the most active members, with a genuine curiosity to meet new people and get to know them as a friend
Ask what projects are they working on and provide relevant tools, guides, references that they might be interested in.
While you're building the relationship, ask what methods, process, services and tools they currently use to achieve their goals and desires
You're looking for their "Jobs to be done", read this article, it opened my mind
Keep track of the tools and services they use every day (at work and in their life) to solve their challenges:
To easily get the main tools/services they use, you can even directly ask the three most expensive tools/services you use. With a post like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26990815
Sort the tools that come up in the answer by price: what are the 3 most expensive?
Must-read → The Mom Test if you want to improve the way you talk to your customers
Go to these tools' website, and analyse the landing page.
What desire, goal or pain point they mention to sell the product?
What better life do they present to their customers (members of the community) to sell the product?
How much do they charge?
What business model do they have?
Pay once → means that the pain point is solved after purchasing the solution
Subscription → means recurring pain point, every day/week/month, they have experienced the problem and they need a solution
Marketplace → two-sided market. What's the supply? what's the demand?
💡 What people from the community search on Google?
Define a list of keywords related to the market
Use Google trends to find insights and data
Compare the search volume of your keywords with these ones from the book "Choose" by Ryan Levesque
"Orchid Care"
"Improve Memory"
"Leadership skills"
See these graph as a parameter to check if enough people search for your keywords. If your keyword search volume is below those lines: yellow flag.
Are people searching for that topic on a daily/weekly/monthly basis, or is it just a fad? Perhaps a seasonal, recurring issue?
For example, when it comes to "Orchic Care" we're not talking about a temporary trend or fad. People have been genuinely interested in that topic over the past five years, with a pretty stable demand. This means that if you launch a successful product/service and you find the right distribution channel, you'll have a stable cash flow.If your search volume is not stable as they are: yellow flag.
💰 Calculate how much money you can make with this market
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Bottom-up → How many Project Managers are there in Silicon Valley? (e.g. search on LinkedIn, Google, or find some report.
Top-down → How many startups with 10+ designers/engineers team are there in Silicon Valley? Each one of them has a product manager.
Calculate the TAM (total addressable market)
TAM = Market size x N
N = % of customers you can reach who will buy your product
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Define a potential price that they would pay to achieve their goal
Based on competitors' pricing
Based on the value you provide
Based on what they already spend to get the job done/solve their problem
Based on their lifestyle: where do they live? What's their monthly life/professional budget? What car do they drive? What's their salary?
Calculate how much money you can make
Total money = TAM x Pricing
MRR = TAM x Monthly Pricing
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Is the result ok for you? Does it meet your expectation? If not, go away — change community.
🔥 Brainstorm your ideas
Keeping in mind competitors and market desires, brainstorm new ideas.
Think with different angles that no one has thought, and don't be scared to think out of the box.
If you are targeting Indie Founders and want to improve their productivity, are you sure that another Todo list is the correct answer? Why not an e-book about "How to get along with your partner and have great sex". I feel this one can improve their productivity!
How can you make their lives better? What great vision do you have for them? How do you want them to feel, or what do you want them to be in 1 year?
Are they currently facing challenges due to something that has recently changed in their lives? And that perhaps no one is now thinking about?
Like when Covid-19 hit the world, people were forced to work remotely. This caused a loss of sense of belonging, difficulties in communication and stress.
Think about what prevents them from achieving goals and desires or simply getting a job done:
With 0 waste of time, immediately
Spending less money
With 0 effort
Achieve the goal + having fun
Achieve the goal with a quirky X factor that only you can bring to the table
Or in a new disruptive way
Read those conversations where it's clear that members are experiencing a problem and they are discussing it. If you had a magic wand, how would you like those goals to be achieved?
With which process, method?
Which user interface?
At which speed or efficiency?
With which state of mind you want to reach the goal (less stressed, not lonely, happier)?
😴 Do something else for 1 or 2 days
Do something else
Sleep, eat, hang out with friends, make love.
Let the ideas marinate in your mind. Your subconscious works in the background, it filters the noise and keeps what's matter for you, highlighting specific aspect (even if you don't rationally think about those ideas).
When you get back to think about the idea, you'll have a new neat and bold perspective
After the break, ask yourself these questions:
Am I resonating with these people/market? Do I like to talk to them? Can I do that for the next 12/18 months every day?
Do I want to work on this product idea for 12/18 months?
Does the "total money I will make" will make me achieve my ideal life?
Do I feel a general sense of satisfaction when I think about this idea?
If you are not entirely sure, go with your gut feeling for now.
You'll always have time to back and try another community or market.
Try to put things into actions now; you'll learn more things along the way that will open new opportunities.
🌱 Create a landing page and write a sales message
You have your great idea.
Think about what goals, the better life you'll be able to have if this product idea was there ready to be used.
Make a landing page with Carrd or Unicornplatform, Typedream, Softr.io, with a bold, neat headline that tells everyone what they would become (what better version of themselves they will achieve) after buying your product
💡 People buy the vision of a better life, not your product
Add the features of your product, benefits and pain points you solve.
Map the three main features of you product and follow this method:
Buffer can bulk schedule social media posts
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For each feature of your product ask yourself
So why would a customer want to do that?
Well, it means they can easily post regular content.
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Cool, and why does that help them?
Because it helps them grow their social media following/audience.
(exactly what they write in the hero section of their website)
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If you already have a success story, perhaps yours or your first customer, share that. People resonate with a great story, and they tend to copy what others did to improve their life.
Add a lead magnet to collect early adopters' emails
Create your community (with Slack or Discord). When the early adopters sign up, ask them to join so you can have your small group of enthusiast early adopters you can reach out privately, get feedback and ask more questions related to your idea.
Share the landing page in the community with a public post and share it in DM as well to the people you met. Use the AIDA framework to write the sales message and be friendly.
Write simply and directly as you would do with your friends.
Use the AIDA framework to write the message:
Attention, you want to grab quality attention (use a great "hook"), that raises interest and emotions → read this for more details, or if you have more time read "Contagious" or "The Boron Letters" to come up with viral titles)
Interest Tell them about the opportunity, what's going on and what they are missing (FOMO)
Desires Now focus on them. Tell them that there is a way to achieve that dream life/goal / they can get the opportunity, describe how their life would be if they could exploit that opportunity
Action → Tell them precisely what they need to do to buy your product.
Define KPIs for the "victory scenario". These are really important to measure your performance, and at the end of the test you'll be able to take one the most difficult decision:
Should I change the idea?
Examples of KPIs
30% open email rate
100x subscribers in 3 days (out of 500 leads)
5x early adopters answered my questions (out of 10 DMs)
...
→ Keep on reading about landing pages and copy that sells here 🍄The Ultimate Copywriting Guide
💡 Take a look at this framework by Bram Kanstein "that offers you a structured approach for designing and launching Minimum Viable Products to validate your business ideas."
🚀 Launch the idea
Make sure you reach at least 500 potential customers by posting and sending the landing page by DM.
💡 Are you interested to learn how to 💥Create social content that gets viral?
Measure the KPIs:
How many page visitors? The open rate of your email? How many subscribers? Bounce rate?
Do they ask questions? Are they enthusiast? Do they reach out to you spontaneously?
Those who reached out to you are aligned with your ideal customer?
How many people joined your community?
Do they spread the word about your idea? Any shoutout on Twitter or the social media where you shared it?
Do they ask when you'll be live with the product?
If you have a "pre-order" option, how many customers purchased your product?
🚨 Avoid low-energy scenarios: running a new business is hard, you want supportive early adopters at your side, they have to scream: "Take my money, you are the best!"
Only if you hit your KPIs, start taking care of the business.
Build it: write the e-book, start the community, build the MVP, record the video course...
Keep on reading
This is the first spin of the flywheel. I will add more stuff as I get more experience.
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