Am I validating this idea the right way?
After a long while of only building client projects (via https://upgraded.dev), I'm taking a stab again at building a startup.
The idea is about a centralized online courses reviews platform -- like TrustPilot, but only for online courses. This is the current landing page built in an hour: https://revido.co
As I am a noob in validating ideas, I'd like to ask what your advice would be to best validate this before committing any time/money to develop it. So far, I'm considering these steps:
- Find a niche. There is already a product like this for all courses (https://www.classcentral.com/), so I'm considering doing this only for coding-related courses. However, I am still doubting if even that is too broad.
- Find where my audience hangs out online. If we go with coding, I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to reach out to Reddit communities and StackOverflow users to see if they would find this useful.
- Showcase to course creators the value and get feedback. I'm also considering manually building out some course profiles for some existing popular coding courses and asking the course creators if they wish to link the profile we created for them with their course to get reviews.
While I believe to be experienced in rolling out MVPs quickly because of my work with my no-code studio, I am still inexperienced with validating ideas (usually our clients do that themselves). So, would greatly appreciate any tips!!
P.S. The stack for the landing page is Carrd.co + getwaitlist.com. We usually build out MVPs using Bubble.io
I don't think early access makes much sense for this kind of stuff. The idea is already validated -- these sites are being used. Unless the early access is used as a kind of email list builder? Either way I think most people will skip it and simply go to a site that already lists courses. Why wait for you to build something?
What I would instead do is focus on giving value immediately. The site is about reviews for online courses.. list the courses and reviews, add affiliate links. Done. That would be my MVP. If I couldn't generate revenue from that then I'd move on.
What this will do is force you to deal with the only thing that matters: can you get enough targeted traffic to these review pages and convert them?
Another thing I would suggest is allowing course types to be listed through URLs. This would allow you to quickly test different subjects with subject specific landing pages. As you say, you're not sure if even code-related courses are too broad. You could have courses/code, courses/react, courses/docker, courses/frontend.
Reddit and Twitter are good places to start, though Reddit has a distaste for any kind of self-promotion. This is the challenge, though. Development is the easy part. Getting people's attention and keeping it is the hard part. Contribute something of value outside of the courses themselves. Tutorials would be a great example of this. Think about publishing useful course-related content, then listing related courses throughout the content itself.
Thank you -- this is super useful!!
You're already on the right track thinking about validating the idea before going into full on maker mode. I think your plan sounds good, some additional things to think about:
Good luck!
Thank you!!!
By defining the success of the validation efforts, do you mean setting a goal for the number of signups or something along those lines? @drikerf
Exactly! Set a goal, measure and evaluate :)
It can be number of signups but also if you're doing direct outreach, you can measure things like reply rate on your emails. I've recently written a guide on how to do that here: https://blog.wobaka.com/how-to-validate-your-idea-and-get-your-first-customers/
ClassCentral is your validation, to a certain extent. This already proves that people want centralised reviews.
If you’re going for a clone of that idea but a narrower niche then I think your risk is around growing big enough to be sustainable. So I’d be looking at the size of the opportunity on paper as a next step. How many courses, how many users, how many competitors, how competitive are marketing channels etc.
If you’re going to take a different approach - maybe a closed community, or partnership with course providers, or something else, then you could look at other validation approaches
Thanks! Had not thought of the closed community idea, but it can definitely be a great way to start understanding what the users that belong to a specific niche need before jumping to build something. Thank you!! @willbarden
i think this is not a new idea
Since this is not a new idea, it does not need to be validated. You just need to validate the execution. This type of product has a cold start problem so I wouldn't do it unless you have an awesome execution of the idea or you are well connected in this area.
Haha, cannot agree more!! We're definitely not well connected but planning to reach out to creators first and see how we can incentivize them to list their courses with the promise that we will market aggressively to get them reviews. Definitely not easy though!
A great way to validate an idea is to ask for money right from the start. Everyone will tell you they like your idea until you ask for money XD
Good point -- thanks!1