Forego your inhibitions and ask people to pay. You should have no problems doing so as long as you know you’re providing value for them. It’s the best predictor of value. It’s your NPS score, your feedback form, your customer interviews all rolled into one.

Talk to your users. The only way to ensure people pay is to build something they want; something that solves a problem and that they are willing to use. Lose any emotional connection to the form your initial idea might take. The amount by which you let your users feedback influence your direction is a good predictor of your success. Experiment with everything in the early days to give yourself the best chance of success, not doing anything is a sure fire way to fail.

No one is going to come. Even your best customers won’t come and find you, they don’t know how. It’s up to you to seek them out. Solving your own problem is one way to bootstrap early customers but realistically you need to figure out who needs you the most and how to get in front of them.