Find event hosts through Instagram hashtags like #wedding and send each a 2-3 sentence DM

Brian Shin… I do is, I open up three different tabs. I have my X open, I have my LinkedIn open, and I have my Instagram or Facebook open up. I have my friends list. I just go through every single one of them and see who might be a good fit. So literally, I circled everyone who had a potential event coming up, and it was four friends who said, "Okay, I would love to try it." It was a Halloween party, birthday party, one wedding, and one networking event.

Brian ShinSo this is the second part. Now you have to go outside of your inner circle and really try to reach out to everyone who could be your potential customers. So, what I did was, since Once could be used at parties, at events, at weddings, I searched on Instagram like hashtag wedding, hashtag birthday party, and across platform, we had around 250 to 300 people listed out. I wrote down a very simple, cold-message type of two to three sentences max that could grab their attention and try to pitch our idea so that they can try it out. Amongst the 250 people, we got around 15 people who reached back and we got around 12 events fixed for that single month, and that's when me and my co-founder decided, "Okay, this does have market potential. Let's try to go all in and try to build out something that's really cool."

Pat WallsThis is awesome. I've never heard of validation in this sort of framing before, so let's talk about this a little bit more. You got your app from 0 to 20k in basically 83 days. If you had to start over today, what would be your playbook?

Brian Shin… encouragement for your product. So that's step two. Well, step three is the real part, which is to build a quick mockup. Don't spend more than two to three days with this. Just go on Figma or just use any of these AI tools that's out there. No matter how scrappy it is, just try to find that really simple product that you can present to your users. And once you have that, step four is to go wherever your users are living in and are active in.

Brian ShinJust start from zero, go to Reddit, learn the ins and outs of Reddit if Reddit is the place to be, or if that's TikTok or if that's YouTube, because this channel will not only be used for validation, but if the validation works, it'll be your main marketing channel in the future also. So do so much cold mailing, cold messaging. Honestly, what I tell other friends and founders is that, if you haven't been banned in these platforms at least two times, you haven't tried enough. And step five is to set that number that gives you enough signal or confidence that this product has potential. For us internally, the goal was simple: before writing a single line of code, I needed 10 events with an actual date with an actual commitment that they would like to try using all the product. Having a commitment to actually use at an event where you have your friends, your family, your loved ones there, we thought that was already a big enough commitment that it was almost proxy to a payment. And so, this would be the exact playbook that I would be using if I had to start all over today.

Pat WallsWell, I love this validation playbook. I think a lot of people watching this, go rewind, start it over, watch it again. This sort of commitment metric, this restraint thing, sounds scary, it sounds hard, but it will save you so much time not building the wrong thing. So I love that. Let's switch topics a little bit. I want to see your app. Can you give me a demo of your app that made over $20,000 last month?