[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-pro...
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Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project?
There is an awesome thread here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29673707 But reading between
the lines it's obvious that the major problem in most cases was
lack of demand or inability to market the product. So I'd be
interested hear what and how you do early demand validation for
your side project or idea, if any? Share your story.
Author : boris_v
Score : 112 points
Date : 2021-12-26 12:17 UTC (10 hours ago)
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| I think it depends on the audience. In my case, I built my side
| project to try and solve a real problem that my accountant had.
| It worked, and several other businesses -- mostly accountancy
| firms but certainly not exclusively -- have paid for premium
| subscriptions. Some businesses have been paying me every month
| for years.
|
| I think my audience is the type that prefers it if you pick up
| the phone and have a conversation with them, or email them, or
| write them a letter. So that's what I did. I had lots of
| conversations with lots of people. I tried to build relationships
| to make sales, and the validation part only came when the
| customer actually paid money.
|
| I tried the _build almost nothing and throw up a fake credit card
| form_ like some people suggest, but it didn't work. I know it
| works for _some_ people, but it didn't work for me.
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| Ask for payment. People will tell you it's a good idea and then
| balk at paying even a nominal amount.
| 71a54xd wrote:
| First you have to make an important distinction, one that seems
| oddly difficult for many here on HN - you have to decide if you
| are earnestly committing time to this project *to make money*. If
| that's the case, now your time has value and you have to actually
| figure out if an audience exists and furthermore if that audience
| (which may or may not exist) is actually willing to pay for your
| solution. I chose the word solution because solutions implicitly
| derive _value_ , a new note-taking markup or photo sharing app
| does not.
|
| The second step is to field your solution and see if people are
| happy with the problem you've solved. Marketing is also a concept
| far too often underestimated or overlooked on HN. For instance, I
| wrote some software based on complaints from a very specific diy
| agriculture subreddit. Once I reached a bare minimum MVP I posted
| it on reddit, people were excited because a cool tech thing
| solved a problem they had. They shared with their non-internet
| friends and orders / emails started steadily flowing in.
| Unfortunately, the time/revenue ratio wasn't good enough and I
| basically broke even on the project.
|
| That said, think about the problem deeply before spending
| valuable time "validating" what might be a solution nobody
| actually needs.
| alin23 wrote:
| * Build the minimum needed features to solve the problem for your
| own use case
|
| * Make it open source
|
| * Give it away for free
|
| It's not the golden rule that will work for everything. But
| that's what I did with Lunar, my app for controlling monitors
| (https://lunar.fyi) and it helped enormously with adoption and
| with seeing if a large enough user base could be created.
|
| A lot of users offered to donate, others told me that I was
| stupid for not asking money for the app, others constantly asked
| for features on Github which helped me understand how the product
| could solve the problem better.
|
| In the end, I prepared a large update with most of the features
| that were requested and made those features paid while keeping
| the old version free and open source.
|
| 99% of the users applauded this decision and were happy to pay
| (the other 1% sweared angrily through emails, but what can you
| do..)
| Madmallard wrote:
| Good idea here
| hugs wrote:
| I listed the widget I made on Tindie and then promptly forgot
| about it for a few months. But when I got some initial purchase
| orders, I started paying attention again. When I got a _repeat_
| order from a customer, it had my complete attention. I called
| that customer, we talked about exactly what problem it was
| solving for them, and I learned a lot. However, it still took me
| another two to three years before I stopped everything else I was
| working on to focus on the widget full time. But now that widget
| has been my main focus (and source of income) for the past seven
| years.
|
| Edit: One thing that helps is if your widget is a good-enough
| replacement or alternative for something that people are already
| buying for 10x the price of your widget. Even if your widget
| kinda sucks (it will! it does!), people will be so happy that
| they're saving 10x of their $$$ that they won't mind your
| widget's flaws... _and_ they 'll enthusiastically tell you which
| flaws matter and which ones don't, so you know how to improve it
| in the future.
|
| tl;dr: 1) Pick a widget category where you can make a thing 10x
| cheaper than the competition. 2) Get a customer. 3) Talk to them.
| 4) Take notes.
| e-_pusher wrote:
| Inspiring story. What is the barrier of entry for selling
| gadgets on Tindie? Do you need to get FCC certifications for
| example?
| matt123456789 wrote:
| Build a tool that does early demand validation. There is a
| certifiable demand.
| pcardoso wrote:
| I'm doing a surfing class booking platform.
|
| I felt a need for something like this as a surfing student: I was
| booking classes via messaging/phone.
|
| A few years go by and I forget about it, but recently I meet the
| owners of two surfing schools who tell me about the need for a
| such a booking system.
|
| Trying to launch soon.
|
| Hope this counts as validation.
| raphaelj wrote:
| Would you be interested in a call to share experience?
|
| I'm currently developing a similar platform for music practice
| space (https://noisycamp.com).
| pcardoso wrote:
| Sure! Just sent you an email!
| pryelluw wrote:
| Start with a problem and not with a solution. Specially a good
| problem to solve. How do you know if it's a good problem to
| solve?
|
| Im my experience using Buffet's approach to investing works well.
| Invest in good companies at a fair price and not in fair
| companies at a good price.
|
| That means that the problem will usually have a higher cost to
| solve (time, effort, money).
|
| Now, this is my opinion. Take it with a grain of salt. In the
| end, a focused approach to problem finding tends to work best.
| jyu wrote:
| Don't overcomplicate things. Ideally you or someone you know is
| willing to pay for said product. Then you find other people like
| you or someone you know who are also willing to pay.
| wizardofmysore wrote:
| Fake door testing. Create a marketing page and see the reaction
| you get.
| mentos wrote:
| I'd also recommend putting a Kickstarter together for your idea
| even if it's unrealistic to launch one.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| This. Have done this for my own and in some cases friends'
| potential startups: a fake door landing page and a couple hours
| of posting to discussion groups (don't spam, do it where
| communities allow) or a small Google ads advertising budget.
|
| There's been a couple cases where that simple amount of
| initiative plus about a half day of work, the resulting
| feedback was enough of a push to overcome hesitations my
| friends' had in starting a company.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| I thought about doing that, but it felt like false advertising
| and I didn't want to (a) piss people off, (b) underwhelm them,
| or (c) commit to getting the project ready for use by any
| specific date. Am I overthinking it?
| chuckSu wrote:
| bjacobt wrote:
| You'll also need some kind of SEO to drive traffic to the page.
|
| And if your project is in a niche area, then it probably not
| help at all.
|
| I setup a landing page and in the last 6 months I've had less
| that 100 visits and no interactions with any of the call to
| actions; even with paid advertisements on linked in and google.
| 3np wrote:
| I don't. Money is not a primary motivator for my side-projects so
| product-market fit is not a concern.
| Jack000 wrote:
| There's a simple way to ensure that you're making something that
| people want - just solve an existing problem instead of finding a
| new one.
|
| Search for your problem on google. If the top results are
| blogspam with ads for monetization, that's a bad sign. Are there
| existing products in the niche and are they doing well? Is there
| a lot of search volume for related keywords? Do you have a better
| or unique understanding of the niche that others lack?
| Glench wrote:
| I feel like validation is less of an end-state and more of a
| process of increasing probability.
|
| Like you might start with one data point ("hey, it's really
| annoying when I try to do X" or there are a couple posts in
| online forums from people describing problem X).
|
| Then you get more data (see if more people have that problem,
| talk to the users on forum posts about their specific needs, find
| out where potential users hang out and how many people might have
| this problem).
|
| Then maybe you build something simple to address the needs and
| see if people are interested / use it / pay for it (landing page
| or minimum valuable product).
|
| Then you get feedback from the initial users about what they're
| really needing and iterate lots of times to get it right while
| figuring out where and how to market/distribute.
|
| Throughout this process there's an increasing sense of confidence
| that you're on the right track (or not).
|
| But also sometimes you build something just because and it turns
| out that lots of people like it (Minecraft). But the risk of
| wasting a lot of time and effort is a lot higher without
| continuous feedback.
| sillycube wrote:
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Simple for me: how easy is it to find your first actual ( and
| paying) customers compared to building a website.
|
| Fyi: yes, some experience building websites for others is
| required.
| Winterflow3r wrote:
| Some things I've found helpful (I run a niche search engine and
| curation platform):
|
| 1) Find niche subreddits where people that are your target
| audience hang out, observe communities, help people out,
| participate in the discussion, if someone has a problem that your
| product can solve, then help them out in the comments and see
| what their feedback is
|
| 2) Learn a bit of SEO - you don't need to be an expert to fix
| some low-hanging fruits and get your product in front of people
| who might be using search engines to find a solution for their
| problem. Downside: SEO can take a few months to a year to kick-
| in, so if you have a very short time-window, it might not work
| immediately
|
| 3) Create a landing page and a sign-up list - see how many people
| sign up
|
| 4) Find bloggers and community members that write about your
| topic, cold email them telling them about your product. Be
| prepared for the response rate to be pretty low, but it can work.
|
| 5) LinkedIn - ok, ok I know I might get downvoted for this, but
| imho LinkedIn still has some of the best organic reach of any
| social platform, so you might as well use it to post about your
| product (esp. if it is a B2B one)
|
| FYI - for consumer tech products, willingness to use something
| doesn't equate to willingness to pay for something, which you
| have to account for when doing research.
| soared wrote:
| Agreed on #1. Once youre a legitimate member of a subreddit,
| post a beta version of your site. If it actually provides value
| and is useful (and you are not shilling), people should love
| it.
|
| Here is an example:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/qshpov/i_started_ma...
|
| 522 votes and 51 comments on a relatively small subreddit put
| it in near the top for a day or two. Idea validated.
| codingdave wrote:
| Did any of that traffic become a paying customer?
|
| My experience has been that reddit is great for validation.
| Traffic and kudos. Compliments and constructive critique. But
| almost no traffic from reddit resulted in people willing to
| sign up and pay money.
|
| Now, admittedly, I sold my profitable side project a couple
| years back. Maybe the trends have changed - so I'm curious
| whether reddit users are now actually potential customers, or
| is it still just good for traffic?
| nojs wrote:
| > Once youre a legitimate member of a subreddit
|
| This part is important. I've been caught out on Reddit
| sharing things I've built, expecting a "Show HN" type of
| response but shot down for promoting a product. Unlike here,
| most people on Reddit aren't builders and mods tend to have a
| heavy hand for anything promotional (even if it's free and
| you think it's useful).
| evolve2k wrote:
| Can someone recommend common places to list new side projects?
|
| In my case small SAAS app for business folk.
|
| Surely there's spots on the web for this?
| andrenotgiant wrote:
| What do you hope to get out of listing it?
|
| If you hope to get customers - You're thinking about it wrong.
| First, the typical buyer doesn't trawl a "SaaS Apps" list site
| looking for services they need. Second, even when you list on a
| site like Product Hunt, the chances are low that any given
| visitor that sees your site the day it's promoted also needs
| your service. Instead, think about what search terms someone
| might use on Google when they have (or are about to have) the
| problem your SaaS app solves. Try and write the best answer on
| the web for those searches.
|
| If you hope to get feedback - Again, probably thinking about it
| wrong. I'd try finding people who A.) You don't know and B.)
| Are uniquely qualified to give feedback on your service, and
| get in touch with them, try and offer something of value to
| them in exchange for feedback.
| Winterflow3r wrote:
| I would try two things:
|
| 1) Where do people that have use for your app hang-out or post
| about the problem that your app solves? Are there any online
| forums or subreddits or facebook groups where your target
| audience is? If so, I would join these communities and when
| someone has a problem that your product solves, I'd help them
| in the comments and point to your product. Many groups are (for
| a good reason) hostile to adposts, so your best bet would be to
| spend time and engage with the community as opposed to going
| for direct adposts immediately.
|
| 2) Post on LinkedIn (consistently) using keywords / hashtags
| that target your customer base. Use infographics or tutorials
| of your product to showcase how it solves a problem. I know
| LinkedIn can be a pain, but imho it has one of the best organic
| reaches of any big social media platform and it's free (apart
| from the time it takes to write and post).
| cpach wrote:
| I've heard good things about this book: http://momtestbook.com/
| cvwright wrote:
| I bought this book after it came up in a previous thread on HN.
| It really is good. Short, simple, and direct.
| pmichaud wrote:
| I think the main thing is that you have to actually talk to the
| people you want to sell to to find out what their problem is and
| why it's still a problem despite their next best alternative.
| Then you need to talk to them about the potential solution you
| have in mind to make sure you're not off the reservation
| entirely.
|
| But the real moment is getting a specific person to actually give
| you money, hopefully before you put in too much work on the
| experiment. Promises or "that sounds cool" won't do it, you have
| to prove it to yourself by getting a person to give you real
| money for your thing, that's the only way to really know.
| lumost wrote:
| This is a really important aspect. B2B apps start out as semi
| consultant firms relatively often as it's somewhat easier to
| simply promise you'll solve a problem for a company for a
| certain amount of money than convince them that a new app will
| solve their problems.
| alejolp wrote:
| Just do it, ask for money and see what happens. We just did it
| and it worked, there was no previous research.
| adamqureshi wrote:
| The single necessary and sufficient condition for a business,
| says MIT's Bill Aulet, is a paying customer.
| codingdave wrote:
| For a side project? I build it if I want to use it. There is a
| totally different goal for a business, but side projects are
| hobbies. They bring value to my own life regardless of what other
| people think of them. It is a great bonus if other people also
| get value of it and are willing to pay something, but there is
| nothing wrong with writing a project that simply helps me in my
| own life.
| boris_v wrote:
| You're right. I meant a side project that you build for profit.
| I totally didn't imply it's bad to build something for your own
| use without making profits of it :) How would you formulate
| this question?
| codingdave wrote:
| In that case, I wouldn't call it a side project at all.
| Whether it is your full-time job, or something you are
| building as a part-time business, the validation of the
| demand doesn't change -- Make a prototype and ask people if
| they'd pay for it. If they say yes, move on to an MVP. If
| not, ask for feedback and either try an updated prototype or
| try something else.
| gumby wrote:
| Set yourself a discriminating target.
|
| A friend's kid asked me for some advice about his startup. It is
| a SAAS in the elder care space; he'd developed it for his
| grandmother and had a few friends using it as well.
|
| He asked this same question (except it wasn't a side project). I
| suggested, "If you can get 50 people _whom you don't already
| know_ to use this product for more than a month then you might
| have a winner."
|
| The three keys here are:
|
| 1 - more than a month meant they actually found it useful. For
| his SAAS it would imply they'd stick around after a starter
| period month.
|
| 2 - people he didn't know: his friends and their parents might
| take extra effort to use it. He had to find people with actual
| need
|
| 3 - 50 is arbitrary but not terrible; a dozen or so doesn't tell
| you a lot while 250 probably doesn't tell you a lot more than 50
| or 75
|
| In the past six months he's tweaked his product based on feedback
| from this effort and has gotten into the high 20s.
| DarylZero wrote:
| If you have to completely build the product before you validate
| that there is demand for it, what is the point of validating
| the demand
| gumby wrote:
| Note I mentioned that he had a fire friends of his using it.
| This was for the MVP of his free offering.
| goatherders wrote:
| I'm a big believer that you can make a lot of money starting a
| business and only ever selling to "friendlies" (your known
| network)
|
| That said, business value goes up exponentially when it earns
| the First Dollar, a sale to someone with no existing connection
| to tue company or anyone in it. Very rarely is First Dollar
| sale so unique or edge-casey that there aren't dozens,
| hundreds, or even thousands of prospects that have the same
| problem and would buy for the same reasons.
|
| TLDr - if you want to make some money start by selling to
| friendlies. If you want to validate a business that may be able
| to grow by leaps and bound, focus on the first dollar.
| goatherders wrote:
| Sell one unit to someone. In fact, do it before you start coding.
| Coworkers, business contacts. "If I built X would you pay for it?
| Yes? Cool, what's a fair price?"
|
| Get one of those first, then open your terminal. Aside from
| showing there is a non-zero market for your wares, it also proves
| that you are willing to do the hard part which is the selling,
| not the building.
|
| If you won't do the hard part then you are wasting your time. So
| do the hard part once first.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| I did this with an idea I had. I thought of making a
| collaborative online video editor, like Google docs for video.
| First thing I did was talk to filmmakers. The idea was
| unanimously panned. I was immediately told it sounded like a
| terrible idea. Turns out filmmakers don't want collaboration in
| post production, they want control. My tool would have taken
| that away from them. This saved me hundreds of hours of
| development time and let me work on other things instead.
| chillfox wrote:
| And yet frame.io seems to be doing very well, it is popping
| up more and more places.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| That is a good point, I haven't been following film
| industry closely at all for the last 5 years but
|
| > Adobe's $1bn acquisition of Frame.io took many in the
| industry by surprise [1]
|
| I am surprised. Perhaps this is a case of me not talking to
| enough people, or maybe people really don't know what they
| want until you show it to them.
|
| [1] https://www.ibc.org/trends/what-frameios-1bn-sale-says-
| about...
| dahart wrote:
| Frame.io is more of a collaborative review tool and
| collaborative asset & pipeline tool. It seems potentially
| quite different from your idea of a collaborative editing
| tool.
|
| I also pondered starting building a company and tools for
| filmmaking and bailed out, and I'm glad I did. My
| background is CG & VFX, so not editing exactly, but
| talking to people in VFX helped my business partner and I
| see that VFX software is thin margins, super competitive,
| and not a good long term strategy in the US.
|
| Anyway, the success of frame.io could still mean your
| takeaway was correct that editors don't want many cooks
| in their personal kitchen, but also that your view of
| collaborative editing could have been widened into
| include a broader range of collaborative activity. In
| some sense, pro filmmaking is almost always highly
| collaborative already, not with multiple editors, but
| definitely with multiple people.
|
| Another possibility is that frame.io doesn't resonate
| with editors, but does resonate with many other people
| making films, ads, social media videos, movies, etc. It
| might not be the editors that are buying it. It also
| might not be experienced filmmakers buying it either; one
| problem with interviewing the experts is that they rarely
| understand the markets for non-experts...
| lumost wrote:
| Collaboration means different things in different fields.
| Did the filmmakers think - secure, easy to share,
| organized, and fast film editing software all provided in
| a browser with instant access to expensive render
| servers? Or did they think publicly editable film with
| easy access to a pool of "collaborators" to help with
| editing?
|
| Many users of google docs don't use private docs or the
| enterprise version.
| LaundroMat wrote:
| Or you talked to different people. My impression is that
| frame.io is interesting for marketing agencies and
| freelancers collaborating (on an ad for instance) and not
| for people who make movies.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _And yet frame.io seems to be doing very well, it is
| popping up more and more places._
|
| The key is _knowing_ who your target customer is and solve
| for them [0]. Then, you are in a good place where you
| either fire ones who aren 't [1] or change your solution
| (rather, start with a burning, hair-on-fire problem your
| target customer has, not solutions) [2].
|
| Typically in a b2b setting, one starts out by addressing
| all _needs_ (must-have) of their target customer as opposed
| to their _wants_ (good-to-have). That is, other customers
| whose _wants_ are NOT your target customers _needs_ , you
| do not address them in the early stages of the product
| development [3]; and price / position [4] the product
| accordingly [5].
|
| When changing the solution, figure out if there's another
| much bigger adjacent problem, that you weren't paying
| attention to [6], staring you down [7].
|
| [0] https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-
| done
|
| [1] https://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/users-you-don-t-want
|
| [2] https://www.ycombinator.com/library/8g-how-to-get-
| startup-id...
|
| [3] https://apenwarr.ca/log/20211024
|
| [4] https://hackernoon.com/obviously-awesome-a-product-
| positioni...
|
| [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_mix#Lauterborn'
| s_4_C...
|
| [6] http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html
|
| [7] https://tomblomfield.com/post/33506878578/making-
| something-p...
| Disruptive_Dave wrote:
| That's not a sale. That's a question with absolutely zero
| investment or action asked of the participant.
|
| Take an actual payment. Even if it's for vaporware (that you
| can eventually deliver on and that's properly messaged).
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| It's implied when they said sell it that you would take the
| actual payment.
| baxtr wrote:
| According to "The Mom Test" that's actually something you
| should avoid doing. If you ask people they might answer "yes"
| because
|
| - they're being nice to you
|
| - they think in that very moment they would but in a real
| situation they wouldn't
|
| In my experience, reducing "value risk", which OPs question is
| essentially about, has to happened incrementally. So build
| something small and then try to sell it to someone. Work with
| them to improve the product and then try to sell it more people
| and so on.
|
| The veed.io blog has some nice articles with great insight into
| this topic: https://www.veed.io/blog/
| goatherders wrote:
| I didn't say to ask if someone would buy it. I said to
| actually sell it to someone. As in, collect the money or get
| a contract signed.
| mox1 wrote:
| I mean if they actually cut you a check for it and you are
| talking to people outside your close circle of friends, then
| this could be some part of the post mom test process.
|
| Someone literally handing you money for your thing kinda
| invalidates a lot of other processes, theories, etc.
| seekitabroad wrote:
| Do a short exercise about your provisional persona: needs,
| behaviors, goals, facts. Then ask yourself where you'd find that
| person and post a smoke test/fake door test landing page in those
| spaces (for example if your demographic is 50-somethings, women,
| disposable income, parents, etc. you may look at Facebook and
| find some groups to distribute your landing page).
|
| Look for microtraction, and then experiment as much as possible.
| rhtgrg wrote:
| I had a recent side project, a pdf generator of sorts that I made
| to solve my own problem.
|
| I decided to try selling it, even though I was 100% confident
| that no one would buy it. During the first couple of days I'd
| also overpriced it, because I didn't want anyone to buy it before
| I'd had the chance to fix a couple of bugs.
|
| To my surprise (and frankly, shock) people were buying it. I was
| sure that requests for refunds would start rolling in immediately
| due to the aforementioned bugs, but they didn't. I eventually
| lowered the price and even made it free, because the money was
| immaterial to me and I'd already learned my lesson from this
| project. (I also felt guilty for not setting up the
| infrastructure to ship updated versions to buyers, so I took
| solace in the fact they could get them for free on their own.)
|
| I might go back to it, but the product is seasonal and doesn't
| create recurring revenue so I'll more likely be focusing on other
| things.
|
| I've never had a project that hasn't generated at least some
| excitement in the relevant community, so I might just have a
| knack for these things. Too bad I only just realized I could've
| been making some money from it!
| bennythomson wrote:
| Would you be willing to link to it?
| rhtgrg wrote:
| I would, but unfortunately I've already posted about it here
| from a profile I wish to keep anonymous. (This one is
| practically my name.)
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