How do you start a new product?

1. Buy a domain
2. Design a nice looking one-pager with features, pricing and the option to "signup".
3. Push signed up users to Airtable (wait list)
4. Launch on producthunt
5. Set a deadline for getting ~200 signups (1-2 months)

We did that 4-5 times - it works like a charm.

Customer outreach and competitive analysis, as much as you can stand. Take extensive notes and sketch out rough plans, but you should strive to understand as much as you can about the market and your potential customers before you start for real.

Try to identify a niche in your market that you can dominate (i.e. big competitors are targeting Enterprise customers, leaving a space for agile, hungry indie hackers to fill), and find out from your potential customers what it would take to become the best option in that niche.

Marketing comes first! Put up a landing page that describes your nascent product as clearly as you can, and start collecting email addresses. Those are gold. As you build, blog about what you've built and send those blog posts to your email list to keep them warm. It can take a few dozen "touches" before customers are willing to buy, so you may as well get started early.

When it comes time to build, for the love of all that is good and expedient, don't start from scratch. There are a variety of no-code tools out there, if your app is one that can be expressed in their building blocks. If your app is more-complex or you expect it will grow complex and don't want to have to do a rewrite later, there are a variety of great SaaS boilerplates out there that will get you started. I'm biased, of course, since I'm working on a Javascript SaaS boilerplate of my own, but if PHP, Python, or even Java is more your thing, there are absolutely other fantastic boilerplates out there that will match your particular language/framework needs.

When it comes time to launch, make sure to warm up that list you built, telling them that the launch is imminent. This builds a little hype that translates directly into sales. If you're doing a launch sale, make sure it's a timed exclusive, and communicate that to your list. Give them a heads-up a day or two before the time runs out, too. Some stragglers who have been stuck evaluating are likely to pull the trigger when they realize their window to debate is closing.

Finally, capitalize on your biggest advantage - as an indie hacker, you can move faster and care more than a big alternative company. Take care of your customers in ways that enterprise-focused companies can't, and you'll build a core of loyal customers who will (ideally) recommend you to others and provide testimonials for social proof on your site.

That's, well very broad, admittedly, but it's a solid general outline. If you need more information on specific points, feel free ask!

Love this @deanmraz. I recently made a course all about building a Minimum Viable Product. I break it down into 7 stages as follows:

1. Express your idea
2. List and prioritize your MVP Features
3. Timebox your release schedule
4. Build Your MVP
5. Decide on some KPIs
6. Release it
7. Measure, Learn, Iterate

If you want the course for free, just hit me up and I'd be happy to help.

Get to know your people first. Who is it you think are your customers? Go hang with them. Find out whether what you plan to build is something of interest without even mentioning that you plan to build a thing.

The Mom Test style approach of researching your customers/product is also quite popular. There is an IH Podcast, but the book is worth a read too.

You just start!

Get an idea of if people will want it. Read the mom test and go out and talk to hundreds of people who may have this problem, find out what their current solution is to it and figure out if the one you plan to make is better, then make it.

I start mine during the middle of my previous side-project 🙈

I start with searching/buying a nice domain name.

Hey man I've been in a similar situation recently.
Assuming you've done your homework regarding validation, outreach, marketing plan, etc and are focused on getting something out there, here's what you can do:

• Set a tight deadline for yourself for building an mvp. You can extend it as long as it is within the spirit of the project.
• Focus on only one feature. Keep rapidly iterating on that one feature.
• Once you're ready with the core feature, move your attention to the business logic of the codebase.
• For designs, honestly look around on dribbble or one of those landing page inspiration websites. Most people don't need to reinvent the wheel here. Just beware of typography.

Lastly, I don't use wireframes, mockups, etc. They slow me down significantly, although I use whimsical for outlining complex interactions.
However I can see their use when you're building a project in a group.

Finding a problem and trying to solve has never worked for me as an indie. I always lose interest in a month or two when I go that way. So I try to solve the problems I face. Though I can push the product to the end line, unfortunately, the only person that would want that product is me.
However, I learn a lot of new things and I find it easy to market myself for Jobs.

Yeah I think @rosiesherry is right on. I also highly recommend figuring out what group of people you want to serve (Ie dog owners, coffee snobs, etc), then figure out where they hangout online and join them there.

From there you can see what topics they are interested in, what tools they use, and what questions they're asking.

Then, even before you build a product, it may be easier to create blog content around the questions and topics they're into. And If you really want to get in the minds of your target customer you can find out what terms and questions they type into google through keyword research. (The tools I use for that are Ahrefs, Keywords Everywhere, and Google).

The idea is that as you do that research and create content around it it will attract people who are actively looking for that it (that's the essence of SEO) and you'll be able to build an audience, know exactly what they need, and eventually be able to build a product for them, or introduce them to existing products and earn a commission from it (affiliate marketing).

One really good example of this is a guy who built an online calculator for people looking for engagement rings. He was able to provide value by offering a free tool and earned a commission every time someone used his affiliate link to buy an engagement ring (and those things aint cheap haha!).

I hope that helped Dean! Let me know if you have any questions!

As a developer, I always tend to start working on coding part of product as I feel comfortable with it.
But sooner i realized that things are going to work that way. I need to start talking to target audience first so I can know about which features to work on first.
As @pystar advised, start with a pen & pad and start talking to target audience. 🙂

This is quite broad a question, however, I will advise you to start with a pen and pad. Simple.