Can I claim an idea as validated if nobody has paid me yet?
Hi everyone,
I have a question about my project, MindYourNetwork (MYN):
MYN is a tool to help me stay on top of my most important contacts in my network. Potentially very useful contacts who are neither 'customers' nor close friends, such as potential investors, journalists, ex-colleagues, etc, would fall between the cracks because I would forget to follow up with them. MYN addresses this problem by allowing me to easily keep track of these important contacts in one place, sending me recurring reminders and allowing me to schedule specific reminders.
We have released our MVP on http://www.mindyournetwork.com/ and advertised it among friends and did some outreach. About 15-20 people have so far registered or provided feedback but for now the system is so basic that we feel like we cannot yet charge for it. Feedback is also mostly the same, we need to include categories/tagging, a better way to track notes/comments and some form of social media tracking to give users additional 'material' to write about in their outreach.
What's the best way forward? If we consider the sign-ups and feedback we could 'argue' that we have enough validation to continue developing the product. On the other hand, we don't have paying customers - so can we really claim we have sufficient 'validation' to continue building?
Many thanks & would really appreciate your thoughts :-)
Oleg
If I were you, I'd go ahead and build MVP versions of the requested features. It will make your current users happy which increases the chances for them to recommend it.
Be aware not to go down the rabbit hole when implementing features. I'd build exactly the feature that the user wants and no more. I'd even consider to have a stripped version of the feature.
Also don't just build features. Try to understand what does that feature solve and how can you solve that problem the easiest and maybe cheapest way.
Not sure how well financed you guys are but I advice to keep bootstrapping until you are ready to raise your seed money.
Good luck!
Thanks, sounds reasonable!
Firstly, this is a great product idea, I personally have had this problem and wanted a solution to help connect with people.
You pose a good problem - there are in essence two validation points - people using the tool and getting enough value out of it that they are using it regularly, and people getting sufficient value that they will pay for it.
In general, if customers want and use a tool regularly they WILL pay for it. Be wary though that if this is consumer facing, you will not be able to charge much - end consumers will pay very little for productivity tools (look at Evernote, Padlet etc).
If the cost of developing features for you is low, I would recommend just keep building the features your customers are asking for as previously suggested, focus on marketing, monitor user signups, level of use, engagement and be patient, it will take a while.
If your product is quite new / innovative and you are not yet actually sure people are actively using it, I would not jump to trying to charge for it just yet.
FYI I have a consumer productivity tool with around 20K monthly usrs and only feel that's its now reaching a point that I can charge for it.
This is fantastic and very encouraging advice because I personally really believe in the need for the product (given I am its first user myself!). This encourages me to just give building it - many thanks :)
My advice is to validate the problem before validating the idea.
Do you have potential customers who have quantified the $ size of the problem for you? Eg 'the time needd to keep up with these people is large and I'd happily pay $10/month to have it go away' or similar...
If you can get some of these people to sign up and 'prepurchase' (ie commit to paying before the product is live) then you ahve a pretty good validation that you are working on a good problem to solve...
The only way to know whether your idea is the right solution to that problem or not is to build it and see how potential customers/users respond :) (but keep it simple and slim)
Good luck!
Thanks - good point. I will try to focus on quantifying the $ size more in my customer conversations!
Great product idea!
You've said that 20 people signed up for that.
I think that a very important part of idea validation is how does it feel to promote it.
How hard was it to get those 20 peoples? How hard will it be to bring another 100?
Are those people using your product constantly? or just left their mail and forgot about you? Are you in touch with your first customers?
"Are those people using your product constantly?"
I agree - surely this is the key? 20 signups means very little if they're friends and don't keep using it. If you have 20 people who are regularly using it, whether they're friends or not, then it's somewhat validated.
But going by the description, it sounds like a fairly normal CRM and you might want to create a serious point of difference, either focusing on a specific industry or on the style (minimalist, irreverent, etc). If it were me, I'd go barebones, single-page, login-free (unique URL that they bookmark). That might stand out against fully-fledged offerings.