Give your best product to top customers for free first. You get testimonials, word-of-mouth, and a paying customer pipeline. Start charging small fees once the product proves itself, then raise prices gradually.
Everything that I do, I always start with free, whether it's a new product line in a massive company. One of our portfolio companies, we built out a software product and what did we do? We started for free. We took our top 100 customers and said, hey, why don't you try it out? Let us know, give us feedback. And they just kept giving us feedback. And honestly, in the beginning, the fact that some people want to charge for this is insane. It's like they're giving me so much valuable stuff. I'm just happy that they use it. And for those of you who are worried about your pocketbook, like I'm fronting all these costs, well, yeah, that's why it's called investing in a business. But People who you work with for free can make you money in 3 ways. Number 1 is they can leave you a testimonial. Number 2 is they can refer you other customers via word of mouth that you did a good job. And number 3, they can actually stay on and pay after a certain period of time when you do make it not free and you make it for money. You do such a good job that they're like, I don't want this to stop. And then you say, great, now you can do it in exchange for money because I can't do this anymore in exchange for nothing. You go with free and then you go with a small, small amount of money and then you keep raising your prices over time.
