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Baltazar Torres

I built the MVP. Now I have no idea how to market it….

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For those of you who’ve been following along — first off, thank you. I’ve been building Probado, a platform that helps early-stage founders get structured, paid feedback on their MVPs from vetted testers. It’s affordable, customizable, and enhanced with AI that helps summarize insights and recommend improvements.

We’ve got now 100+ vetted testers onboarded, and the MVP is just about done.

But now I’m facing the part that honestly feels the hardest so far: marketing.

I’ve been trying to figure out where to start — and I still haven’t cracked it. We posted jobs for freelance marketers on Upwork, and I’ve been speaking to people on platforms like GrowthMentor, but I’m realizing I’m not even sure what kind of marketing help I need… or what I should be paying for it.

Some people quote $15/hr, others $150/hr. Should I be looking for a growth generalist? A content person? Paid ads? Partnerships? I’m building this alone and trying to avoid burning money just to learn obvious lessons the hard way.

So if you’ve grown a SaaS product from zero — or even just figured out the first few traction channels — I’d seriously appreciate any advice.

For those of you who’ve done this before:

• What’s the first kind of marketing help I should invest in?

• What’s reasonable to pay at this stage for someone who gets results?

• What actually worked for you in those earliest “pre-scale” weeks?

Appreciate any guidance — especially from those who remember how weird and unclear this part of the process can be.

— Baltazar

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Manu Goel
Launching soon!
In initial stages, your own involvement will be crucial too. I would say find communities where entrepreneurs flock together and if the platform offers paid ads eg even Reddit has paid ads. You might use freelancers to design ads or use Canva. Also, be ready for the long haul. It does really take time for marketing to seep in - few months at least.
Baltazar Torres
@manu_goel2 thank you!
Kaustubh K

Finding early customers isn't hard. You don't need anyone to do it for you. Follow this simple step-by-step process:

  1. Dig into your personal network and find out who are the potential buyers. Either meet them in person or schedule a call. Since they know you - it's easy to do the demos. Be upfront about the pricing and carefully note their questions and feedback. If they buy - great. If they don't - you've the feedback.

  2. Find out if the feedback is useful. If yes - improve your product a bit. Don't add features. People don't buy features. They buy the tools that solve a problem. NEVER build a new feature for your MVP thinking that it will give you customers. Build features only when people swipe their card.

  3. Then look for strangers who are likely to buy your product. Where can you find them? Reddit, ProductHunt, LinkedIn - everywhere. Every day, send a cold email to about 10 people. Write each email without AI and make it very personalised. Do it for about 30-45 days consistently. Aim to get 5-10 responses and 2-3 demo calls.

That's all you need to do.

Baltazar Torres
@kaustubhkatdare wow thank you so much I will definitely start doing that. Thanks also for the dos and don’t the idea of not building features before validating the mvp is something I will definitely implement.
Nika

Hey, has anyone already used your service to test their MVP? If so, would you consider sharing their success stories where your platform played a role? They’d likely share it organically as well to showcase their results – it could be a great part of your word-of-mouth strategy.

If you want to get companies to test their MVPs, try to also DM them. If anything else comes to my mind, I will write it here :)

Baltazar Torres
@busmark_w_nika thank you so much I have three companies that have used probado so far I will try to get their experience and upload it onto the site
Himanshi Sharma

How many users/founders you got to test their web/app ?

For example we got 52 users in first 7 days of launch as we simply asked folks to try it on Reddit who were facing same problem.

How about start slow ? with 10-20 founders testing their websites ? Reach out on targeted sub reddit :)

By the way I recently observed someone built exactly what you've built, don't remember name, just fyi. I mean exactly.

Abe Qarm
Really resonated with this. We’ve been in the same boat—built our product while trying to figure out marketing with zero room for waste. One thing that helped us early was doing direct outreach ourselves to get those first signals. We ended up building a tool to make that easier (getcreel.com) – it works with Zoom Phone and lets you cold call or demo fast without bouncing between tools. Not trying to pitch – just sharing something we built out of the same frustration. Happy to share what’s worked (and hasn’t) if that’s helpful. —Abe
Baltazar Torres
@abe_qarm Thank you Abe! Your services actually sounds really cool and helpful for founders like us. Always happy to hear more!
Abe Qarm
@baltazar_torres Do you guys use Zoom Phone? if not I advise you to, they are cheap. Then you can add our integration it’s in BETA (no charge) and we are building fast. I’d be happy to connect and show you how SmartDial can benefit your startup!
Furqaan

Hey Baltazar. First off, congratulations on the launch of Probado. We run a newsletter for builders like yourself and we'd love to feature your product! It's 100% free. Would love to get you some feedback and initial users!