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What are you favorite methods of finding out whether people will use your product?

What are you favorite methods of finding out whether people will use your product before you even start spending time and money building it?

Do you think that if you "Copy" an existing popular product then you automatically know that there is a demand for that kind of a product?

  1. 6

    Copying can work if you copy a huge and established category but where you think you do a 10x improvement for at least a niche (think Zoom in video calls). Copying anything less than Series C is risky IMO.

    For my OSS startup Nango (fast & flexible way to integrate with 3rd party APIs) we used minimal MVPs & full focus on customer feedback:

    • Our MVP was usually 80% docs & a landing page and 20% some basic code to make it look like the product works: We learned that early on it's all about positioning, you just need to find the 1-2 sentence description that resonates
    • Cold mail helped us gauge fast if the pitch resonates, a few calls were crucial though to validate if the positioning really works
    • Our first 4 attempts got lackluster interest (not 0, but not great), the fifth attempt with the wording linked above was different. Suddenly we had people joining the Slack community, star the repo etc.
    1. 3

      Where do you think the line is between being minimalist and risking disappointing customers? How do you get away with just making it look like the product works after you've started onboarding customers and they are looking for themselves? Interested because I'm also trying to figure out what time I should be launching MPVs.

      1. 2

        being minimalist and risking disappointing customers?

        What we realized after the first two iterations is that super early on (aka first few weeks) we are very unlikely to get a customer. Think about the steps somebody goes through to become a customer:

        • Looks at the landing page, reads headline -> does it resonate? If not, they are off
        • Looks deeper at key features, benefit pitch -> does it resonate? If not, they are off
        • Takes a look at pricing, how easy to add/get started etc.
        • more...
        • Signs up (or for us: stars the GitHub repo, joins the slack community)

        Instead of optimizing for customers we optimized for learning at step 1 & 2: Headline (aka 1-2 sentence positioning) and the benefit (compared to status quo or competition). We iterated on these until we found something that resonates, then we had to start worrying about the product and how much it works. Turns out we could invalidate the first 4 ideas just by iterating on step 1 & 2.

      2. 1

        Great question, Callum! I'd love to invite you to check out Lukas on G&E who can offer you some mentorship on launching your MVP - it's all complementary for a limited time.

    2. 1

      Is the Slack community working well for you to get feedback from your users?

      We have an MVP in public beta stage, we already got more than 20 users in a couple of weeks through social ads with a very small budget testing the UVP, seeing if the UVP was generating subscribers to the beta pre launch waitlist, and then getting sign ups to the platform. Now we want to get feedback from these users, even through simple questionnaires, but it's hard to get replies from them. Probably 20 users is still a small number, but I'm curious to know if the community approach is working for you, because I'm considering it as well.

      1. 1

        The community works for us as an OSS, about 60-70% of the people who sign up we can engage in a conversation & understand why they are here. I have noticed that timing is crucial, if we reach out within 10min of them joining (with a personal DM that introduces us as the founders) the engagement rate is much higher.

        Before this I built a B2B SaaS with a very different audience and what worked best there for us was to engage people through a personal message in the in-app chat (that would send them an email if they did not come online within 1-2 days). Again timing was crucial, it had to be briefly after they signed up/were online.

  2. 6

    I usually go to Reddit and find the subreddit where my target audience is. I present the concept and straight forward ask the community if it will solve their problem. Since I am a designer, I try to mock up the concept and prototype before asking so they have a visual context of how it will work.
    I get feedback and based on that it's clear if it's worth building.

    1. 1

      I thought about this as well but I'm always afraid someone else steals the idea. How do you handle this?

      1. 5

        I stopped caring about ideas being stolen a long time ago. It's the execution that matters.
        I had an idea that I thought if I posted publically will be stolen. I kept building it in stealth mode for 6 months. I thought it will be a hit and should not get out. After 6 months of building, I decided to make it public on Reddit to get some feedback. I got a very good response. People even sent me DMs asking when it'll be live.

        The idea was out last year and no one has built it yet. I discarded it because I was busy with something else. Happy to share more details.

        1. 1

          What are some of your favorite subreddits to get opinions from?

          I understand from personal experience and from curating growth strategies from indie founders that Reddit can be pretty brutal.

          I would love to hear about your approach and maybe add in your experience to this Reddit report that I am doing.

          Cheers!

          1. 1

            Super interested in learning about Reddit growth opportunities!

    2. 1

      I assume you have to have a number of upvotes/comments that would count as a positive answer to build a product. I mean if 10 people would say that yes, they would use your product, then that is not enough. So the question is: how many people should answer positively for you to think that the solution you are offering is legitimate to build?

      1. 3

        It's more about the interest that they show. If you have a huge target audience, you reach out to a chunk of that and gauge if your product will solve their problem or not.

        For instance, I got comments like "Dude, there is a massive need for this type of addon PLEASE KEEP ON WORKING!!! You are a legend."

  3. 4

    Validation is crucial to avoid wasting time on building products that won't be used. I would prefer creating a prototype and asking the target audience if they'd be interested in using it

  4. 4

    Speaking from my own experience, getting in touch with your target audience/ customer base is a pretty good way of knowing weather there is a demand for your product, and how would you know the details of your target audience? this is where competitor analysis would come into play.

    If you can provide your product at a better price than your competition without sacrificing the quality and can make your tool easier to use, you'll have a pretty good chance of gaining a decent consumer base.

    1. 1

      Would you try posting questions about the problems they face and the product that you have in mind in specific community groups where potential users are?
      Do you think that posting about your idea is a good thing? I mean competitors might take those answers and use against you.

  5. 4

    Hey,

    When it comes to SaaS products, it’s more important to ensure that the product meets customer expectations. There are several key questions to ask yourself before you decide whether your product is fit for purpose.
    There are five phases to building a successful product. The first three phases include defining the problem, solving the problem, and testing solutions. In the fourth phase, you'll need to determine whether the solution fits the problem well enough to meet customers' requirements. If it does, then you move on to the fifth phase where you start selling the product.
    You can also check out my blog ⬇
    https://blog.saasmantra.com/how-to-find-product-market-fit-for-your-saas-business/
    https://blog.saasmantra.com/5-steps-for-saas-product-development/

    Hope you find it helpful-)-

    1. 1

      All 5 are important, but what about changing the order, so an adjusted #4 is first (customer development to learn what they're looking to accomplish and whether they are in fact desperate for a new solution (if yes, define the bare essentials of what that would require)).

  6. 3

    Very interesting question. Earlier, I would believe a survey would do the trick. I learnt the hard way that the only validation of a paid product is when someone actually opens there wallet and pays for your product. Probably the only way to do so would be to build a quick MVP

    1. 1

      In order not to waste time and money, I think you are right, building a quick MVP is crucial. What I am trying to get from this discussion is what is the minimum of a "good MVP" :) Because I think that if you would build a really crappy MVP, then you might be risking of loosing some clients interest.

      1. 2

        I can totally relate to this! It's hard to know how minimal should a minimal viable product be. Would you be interested in a one-off brainstorming call to discuss MVP launches? Lukas is very experienced in this field and would be a great person to connect with.

  7. 3

    Social media polls can help to give an idea of how receptive the public would be of your product. Platforms like Reddit, Quora, etc.
    Trying a private beta launch could also be helpful.

  8. 2

    I think for me it's a combination of more typical validation methods e.g. speaking to customers before hand, getting waitlist users, finding communities and positing designs etc. all with the guise of getting as much confidence before building that the product actually solves a problem.

    However, I also think there is value sometimes in just building the smallest MVP possible (if it does actually solve a problem) and also just using that to validate. That's what I did with my latest product - Rella (https://rella.so).

    I started out with the most basic validation:

    1. This was a problem I faced at every company I worked at: We all wanted to be notified in slack when something happened in our app. E.g. was a user using a new feature, who was signing up etc. so we were able to either make better decisions OR reach out to certain users when certain things happened (was great for upselling)
    2. I then pushed out a very basic landing page using Typedream and Tally forms, and started running some ads on twitter.
    3. While that was running I started built the simplest MVP I could, an app, that when sent an event, would send a message to a designated slack channel.
    4. Once that was released I got rid of the waitlist and started redirecting users to the signup page - as there's no better validation then people actually using the product.
    5. I then sort of dog-fooded my own product to validate itself, by tracking what features were being used, how often they were used etc.
    1. 1

      Great story ;) And great product too. It it successful so far?

      1. 2

        Thanks! Helps when the product you're building forces you to do the right validation, otherwise your product isn't validated (e.g. you aren't even your own customer). Going pretty well still very early days (only been around for a ~week or so) but good signs so far!

  9. 2

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    1. 1

      Thanks for the answer. I agree to every one of them :)
      But what would be the best strategy to drive Traffic to Your Website in your opinion?

  10. 2

    I'm going to explain several different ways to test market demand, but it's probably best to use some combination of these.

    1. Observe search trends related to your product
    2. Perform a test Google Adwords campaign
    3. Analyze your competition
    1. 1

      Great list! What is your preferred way of searching/observing trends? Maybe you have good sites to offer?
      Thanks

  11. 2

    You can use search engine tools (such as ahrefs) to do research to see if the problem you are trying to solve (keywords) has a wide search volume.

    1. 1

      Have never heard about this site. Thanks for sharing!

      1. 1

        For sure -- hope to connect sometime and check out what you're working on!

  12. 2

    Building the scrappiest version of the idea as fast as possible and putting it out there.

    I have tried 3 different (online) business ideas over the past few years without much success (now I know it was because those products were 'vitamins' and not 'painkillers'). So I decided to study what other people are building and monetizing successfully and created a google doc to keep a list of what I was finding.

    I belong to a great creator community and one day in September, someone posted about a business called 'Starter Story'. I immediately figured my little google list could be valuable to others as well so I moved it to Airtable (to make it look nicer, lol). Put it up on Gumroad (as a free product), and started telling people about it.

    I had initially called it 'Inspiration Generator' (cause I was trying to use the list to inspire myself), but someone on Twitter (who I didn't know) told me the name wasn't clear and they didn't understand what it meant. So I renamed it 'Business Idea Bank'.

    Results so far below (some people decided to pay for it even though it's free on Gumroad). This is how I found out people will use it. And so now I'm focusing on growing it, and eventually monetizing properly.

    bVT8ml.md.png

  13. 2

    cold call/email potential clients! For example, you can meet restaurant owners if you gonna build a SaaS for shop operation or order process.

  14. 2

    Seems that just copying cannot be such a good strategy. A great way is to build as cheap as possible MVP and check.
    And for sure, conduct some JTBD interviews. Can save a lot of time spent on developing the things people don't need

  15. 2

    Market fit validation is something that can definitely be made easier by (not copying, but) solving the same problem that other profitable businesses already solve. You can do it in different ways that can make your solution more attractive or as attractive as the one you saw.

    But no matter if you already have people solving that problem profitably, you should validate your idea and start collecting emails from early potential customers before you write a single line of code.

    Here comes https://validate.run, a tool that is perfect for quickly creating a professional landing page and start collecting email addresses from interested customers. You'll be able to show your idea in a professional way + have many email leads ready as early adopters. If nobody or just very few people signed up, you learn that this is not the idea to invest your time and money into.

    If you have any more questions around the topic of validation, I'll be glad to help :)

    1. 1

      Thank's for a really thorough answer!
      So basically you are saying that if you are making a similar solution to your competitor's than it is not enough of a proof that your product will be profitable/popular. I think from knowing that the other are solving X problem at least means that there is a problem, but I agree with you - validation can not be skipped.

      But how do you recommend validating your solution, meaning how to make potential future customers to see you landing page, to hear about a product idea?
      In my opinion it would be wise to reach people on LinkedIn, to talk about product on such communities like IndieHackers, etc. But are there any other good ones in your opinion?

      Thank you :)

      1. 2

        You're welcome :)

        From knowing that teh other are solving problem X you know that this is working. But why should people switch to yours? If you are not doing validation you'll just launch something similar without having potential customers, without having seen / talked to people about what actually matters. So yes, even then you can't skip validation.

        If you have a landing page (either with Validate or not), you'll need to drive traffic to it. Depending on the industry this can be linkedIn, yes. But for other industries this will not work so well, probably. I tried ads and they worked relatively well, I got a few signups for projects, but it really depends on the project and your target audience. Where do they usually hang out? This is where you should run ads or interact with the community.

        1. 2

          I like your answer. Thanks ;)

  16. 1

    The best method in the world at the moment for that is called JTBD analysis and it is scientifically proven. Mixed with other techniques, you can increase your success rate to 90% and know exactly what will happen before even sketching your product.

    In short, you map out the journey-to-be-done, then break it down into jobs-to-be-done and steps where finally you uncover many personal outcome metrics. You also use JTBD interviews to get that data. Then you create a JTBD survey, send it, and analyze the results. You perform statistical, cluster, and factor analysis. You form specific markets and segments and finally, you know exactly who gonna buy and what are their unmet needs.

    I wrote about this on my blog here and I am also the global JTBD expert and founder of ATHENNO which helps anyone to answer exactly this question.

    https://athenno.com/insights

  17. 1

    Here are some methods to test demand for your product and my thoughts below on "Copying an existing idea":

    1. Build a landing page clearly explaining what your product does which needs to "sell" to visitors coming on

    2. Drive traffic to that website

    3. A good indicator to see if it's selling is to add a waitlist email sign-up to your website. Check how many people are signing up and collect emails.

    4. Be part of communities of your niche and ask questions about the problems you're trying to solve and see how it is

    Copying an existing idea and implementing it in a different region are known as being a Proxy Company. For example, DoorDash being implemented in India. Same service but different region. So, copying an idea depends on which region you're trying to launch it in if it doesn't already exist there.

    Happy to help with anything else!
    You can email me or DM me on twitter from my profile :)

    1. 1

      Thanks ! :) Yes, I agree. Building a similar solution but changeing something to make the product look more attractive like add new features, offer lower price or change the region as you've mentioned is a way to go good.
      I have never tried to make a landing page before building an actual product. I will try to do that and try to talk about it on various commuties. Any landing page tips?

  18. 1

    Well, I'm generally trying to listen complains, questions, how to dos from different people. That lets me understand the problem and the domain without even asking a questions

  19. 1

    I have been posting my new site sentientplatter.com on Twitter and I feel like I am just talking to an abyss. I like to run Facebook like campaigns and submit to google search console immediately to see if I can get any traction. Small incremental steps of validation.

  20. 1

    If it can be done as a simple MVP then build and get it out there. There's no way to get perfect validation so don't let that stop you from acting. Can you build a basic, hacked together version in a weekend that'll still be useful?

    If the first version requires some level of complexity, then I'd suggest designing the interface as a clickable prototype, then doing a screencast clicking through the prototype as a "sneak preview" and gather feedback, grow a pre-launch email list etc (i.e. Dropbox style validation, but without writing any code).

    Do you think that if you "Copy" an existing popular product then you automatically know that there is a demand for that kind of a product?

    Yes, this is a smart approach IMO, but of course you need to find an angle that makes sense. What is super frustrating to a subset of users that the incumbent has shown no signs of fixing/adding? Ideally not a feature that the incumbent can easily add if they notice you stealing some customers, but one that would require them to pivot .

  21. 1

    first you ask business users what kind of product they need and you build it - its as simple as that!

  22. 1

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