How do you do pre-launch validation(or perhaps marketing)?
I want to do proper market validation before investing hours in development time with my next project. My last project, while fun to work on, missed the mark completely and I want to avoid spinning my wheels on something that no-one wants going forward.
So I'm trying to do research on how other people figure out whether there's sufficient interest in an idea before committing and would like to pick your brain on how you did it.
So here's a couple of questions;
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How did you personally validate interest in your successful project BEFORE building an MVP?
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What channels did you use?(Ads->landing page, cold calls/mails, FB groups, ect)
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What was the volume of level interest that was the deciding factor in you going ahead?(1000 signups, 5 people asking you sign them up, ect)
Any other ideas or suggestion would be appreciated too!
If you're pre-MVP at this point, I'd definitely go for 1x1 conversations. You'll end up learning a lot more about the general pain points people are experiencing - that you may or may not have solved with your original product idea.
If you have a general idea of the space you want to purse, industry forums are a good place to start (try Facebook). Cold emails can work, but you have to KNOW that the person you're emailing definitely needs to solve the problem you're looking at, otherwise you probably won't get a response. Ask around in your network - if you can get one phone call set up, chances are that person knows someone else you can talk to as well.
Very interested in this too, especially steps 2 and 3.
What most founders will tell you is "get out there and talk to people" but they rarely define what "there" is or how to get "there" without being a spammer. :)
Exactly. Or the more general suggestion of "create a twitter poll" or something similar. But some of us don't have an internet-celeb amount of followers.
I've given up on Twitter or even places like WIP.chat to offer any meaningful form of communication. It's like talking into the void. But I digress.
Yeah, couldn't agree more. :)
This comment was deleted 5 years ago
Finding people to talk to is my problem.
However, problem discovery would also be a good topic to delve into.
Exactly. The key is would they pay and how much. I recently validated an idea with a large group of people saying they would be interested. But I neglected to ask how much they would pay. I've decided to just grow my email list until there is enough interested people, then create the actual product once people are willing to put money down.
I had a ton of people say they were interested, but very few have bothered to even join the waitlist.
Lesson learned.
This comment was deleted 3 years ago