Did I spend 8 months building the wrong product?
Recommended on Indie Hackers, I am just reading „Start Small, Stay Small“ from Rob Walling. He recommends to start with marketing before writing a single line of code.
Now I realize, that I spent developing 8 months without any validation. Will my product idea be worth the effort?
I’d like to compensate for missing marketing now!
What approach do you use for validation?
It sounds like you already have a couple thousand users and ones that are heavily invested in your product/idea- that's awesome and already a huge success!
I'm not sure if you're already charging (or who your customers are), as I could not find any pricing information on your website. In my experience the only validation that counts is customers validating with their wallets.
Here's a helpful PDF on pricing software: https://neildavidson.com/downloads/dont-just-roll-the-dice-2.0.0.pdf
I wrote an iOS app that is round about 6 years old - it has the several thousand downloads mentioned.
Unfortunately, few of the users actually made an in-app purchase. So they like the idea but probably do not want to spend money on it - which is my future plan.
With my new WebApp (subscriptions are planned, probably like $39/year), I only have 170 signups in 4 months - this is what worries me right now.
Thanks for the link, I will check it out!
That is still 1000X better than what most people around here have. You have proven that you can provide value to people, now you just have to work on communication and creating the right pricing plan to get people to jump up to the paid version.
As a computer scientist, I tend to think in software and tools, and not so much in communication. This is a big area of improvement for me :-)
I've tried two approaches to validation:
When I did 1., I got a little pull, but it's hard to know whether that pull would be much bigger with more time and/or more marketing and/or a more fully finished product.
When I did 2., I launched on Indiegogo, and there was pull: but then came the stressful work of creating a product I'd promised to my backers, whose money I'd already taken, to a deadline!
Of course, you can launch the promise without taking people's money, e.g. just take their email addresses, but the problem there is that you can never be sure that those email addresses will ever translate into money.
However you do it, there's no substitute for talking to your potential customers, trying to tease out whether they'd be interested in paying for your product!
Oh yes, 2. sounds stressful! Did it work out in the end? Could probably be easier if you built similar apps previously.
I have already more than an MVP, but not yet a stable product. Probably I just introduce a paid premium plan and see check what happens.
Still working on it! It's a physical product - globes - so nearly a year after my crowdfunding campaign, I'm close to delivering the first globes.
Good luck getting validation! And moving from your > MVP to a stable product!
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I didn't come up with the idea to compare it with a smart fridge - if these sell, there should be at least some market. I'll check a local store.
Also interesting that the idea shall not be pitched! Most of the time my wife explained the features of the app to friends - but I never asked for the problems that are related! I will pay attention next time.
Amazing - thanks for all the details!