Let’s face it. You might not be the next Steve Jobs. It doesn’t mean you won’t be able to build a great product. It just says you won’t do it alone. You’ll need early adopters willing to provide you with valuable feedback. Something like 500 people should do the trick.

If I may, forget about your family and friends. They will be afraid of telling you the truth. Because they know it can hurt. Unfortunately they forget that crashing down your company because of a sucky product is far worse! So where are you going to gather your beta tester community if you can’t rely on relatives?

You’ll pitch. Bloggers, entrepreneurs, journalists, investors. If you’re lucky you’ll even get coverage! You’ll inform. Through newsletters, status updates, blog posts. People want to know what you’re up to! You’ll answer. Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, and Getsatisfaction. Don’t disappoint the guys who took time to provide you with feedback!

Of course, you shouldn’t implement all the features your community is requesting. Unless you’re willing to end up with a messy product! Choices will have to be made. By you. But at least you’ll fuel your thinking with fresh ideas coming from real users.

That’s probably how the guys at Instagram managed to build a 3 million people community in 3 months. Did you know that before launching their killer photo sharing app they used to be called Burbn and that Burbn was a location based service?