How do you decide to build an MVP for an idea, or not?
Assuming you came up with an idea, how do you decide whether to spend 2-4 weeks to build an MVP for the idea?
I know the common wisdom is to ask the potentials customer and get their feedback. Sadly, that is not always possible, depending on your social connections and the nature of the idea. Ask on IH, Reddit or create a landing page does not always yield a conclusive dataset most of the time.
I usually asked the following questions:
- Will I use the product? Or know someone closed willing to test the product
- Will I be motivated to work on it long-term?
- Do I have some idea about how to make money
- How long has it been since I have this idea? If not long, should I wait it out to see if I am still as excited 1 month down the road?
I am tempted to come up with a way to score the idea, assuming customer validation is not possible.
I would like to know your thought process and what questions you ask yourself before you decide to work on the MVP?
I’d say if you can’t find potential customers or users to start don’t waste your time building a MVP. The reason why is you’ll be back at exactly the same spot after you build it - where do I find customers? Go find something where you can find and talk to people that care about the problem you are working on first That would be my advice.
Would be interesting to find out how many people only launch an MVP after customer validation (like how many positive customer feedback they actually need to get to proceed).
Again, I would argue the purpose of MVP is to get customer feedback.
Unless it is a SAAS target specific niche like lawyers, doctors, factories, etc.; then you would really need to know how to access these customers.
What if it is TODO app or Pomodoro Task Manager with a special spin? Maybe 10 person will respond (unless you are very popular on social media), 5 says "interesting", while other ask some questions. I would deemed this dataset inconclusive.
Well i think its alot easier to just go code instead of to go find folks to talk to :) it’s hard to go find them, get their time and then try to distill what they say. If they only say “interesting” thats a clear indicator to me to move on to a different problem. They should say when can give you give it to me? As a clear signal of need.
Do you know how to reach 100 potentials customer for TODO app?
I'd go look where those folks hangout - is there a slack channel, forum, blog, news article about how to organize and manage todos? Find those and start a conversation (non-spammy) Which specific todos are most critical? I know for me with winter approaching I have my house prep todo list with every winter prep todo I need to complete. If you thought that was a good starting point - I'd go find homeowner discussions and start there. But I think having a particular niche/focus is key to start - best would be a problem you also have with todos so you can relate. For example, If I don't do my prep there are a variety of nasty winter problems can result that are very costly to repair vs just doing a 30min/1 hour todo :)
I posted a follow up question:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/can-you-share-your-success-story-in-getting-customer-feedback-before-building-an-mvp-14c03ae224
Can you share your success story in getting customer feedback before building the MVP?
This comment was deleted 6 years ago
I posted a follow up question:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/can-you-share-your-success-story-in-getting-customer-feedback-before-building-an-mvp-14c03ae224
Can you share your success story in getting customer feedback before building the MVP?
FWIW - a friend and I just wrestled with this same problem and then productized our decisionmaking/validation process, in the form of a few helpful frameworks.
https://idea2mvp.carrd.co/
They're designed to help you get from idea to MVP faster and get unstuck if you're getting analysis paralysis around multiple ideas. Hope they help!
If you try to survey people on whether they will buy your upcoming product, people will not give honest feedback (Or they don't even know the answer)
You will only know the answer, when you present them with actual payment page. Only during that time, you will know whether users are willing to spend their hard earned $ on your product
So you need an MVP with Payment integrated to know if people is willing to pay for the product?
Yes. I think so.
I usually talk to my target audiences. If 7 out of 10 are interested in the idea, I will build the prototype. I prefer creating a working prototype before MVP.
Prototype as in something for people to click around but nothing actually works?
It depends on how you want it to be. I always create a prototype with some certain interactions to make it feel like the real deal, not just clickable design.
Hey Desmond!
This is exactly what we are solving with SaaSBox.net
For free you can skip all the coding you'd otherwise have to do and you can validate your idea by auto-generating a landing page, stripe integrations, collect mailing list subcribers and much more, for FREE!
I'd love to connect with you to talk more about it since we're looking for some early adopters and you seem like a great fit!
My email is patfdufresne@gmail.com !
Looking forward hearing back from you.
Patrick
Do you have a demo of product page build using SaaSBox?
PS: The title tag is missing in your website
So SaaSBox.net is actually built using our own platform, so what you see if what you get literally!
I'll make a note that the title tag is missing from our website. Let me know if you want to discuss our solution more looking for more users to test it out!
Patrick