How to find first users to validate the idea?

Did you try compiling the ecommerce stores and sending them emails? Not the best option but can't be ignored. Or use may be LemList kind of outreach tool for this.

Hi Levy! Congrats on kicking off your project. How exciting! 🎉

Finding the first users/testers for a product can be challenging. However, I think first you might need to take a step back.

👉 My question here is: How did you arrive at your solution (AI-generated product descriptions based on a picture)? Are you solving a problem that you experienced yourself or somebody else?

When you start a new project, resist jumping directly to solutions and focus on the problem (it’s cliché but it’s the hard truth). Start by talking to people. It will help you validate the size and urgency of the problem, and you will see if this problem even exists. Based on the findings, you will draft your target audience and search for testers within that audience. If you run the initial research, AKA you’ve been talking to people regularly, you should gather a group of potential testers to who you can reach out with your prototype. At each iteration, you just need a handful number of testers (preferably 5) to keep the ball rolling.

The response rate to your messages is also a way to validate your idea. If you can’t grab anyone’s attention enough to only talk to you, you might need to rethink your approach or even the whole idea. But don’t give up after contacting just a few people. Send 50 e-mails, see how many people reply, and then decide what to do next.

Where to look for users? So far, you got that part right - platforms such as Reddit, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., are good places to look for B2B users. If you know your target audience, think about where they might spend their time online (or even offline - meetups, conferences, etc.) and try to meet them there. Additionally, you can check out FB groups dedicated to e-commerce and the Shopify Community. You could even look for existing online shops with big inventories that might be interested in your product.

When looking for users, you have two options: to post a public message and hope that somebody reaches out to you or approach people directly. If you go for the latter, make sure to have an angle and explain why you decided to message this person in particular. Also, check different forums to see if people have been already talking about the same problem. Reach out to them first since the problem is the most burning for them. Keep in mind, though, that people receive a lot of requests, so don’t come across as spammy or sales-y. You are here to learn for now.

As the last thing, I want to throw in a few comments about the idea itself. I’m running my own e-commerce business with a range of different products. I hate writing product descriptions, but to make it less painful, I’ve started using ChatGPT. It works pretty well as a starting point, but the generated text still needs some polishing, especially to fit the brand tone. So far, the AI hasn’t been that great in this regard, IMO. I imagine that descriptions generated based on pictures would have the same issues, plus I would still need to provide more information about the product functionality and features that are not visible in the picture. Since I already have to do that with ChatGPT, I don’t see a value proposition here.

I strongly advise you to learn more about the problem and test whether the current solution really solves it. Also, AI-generated product descriptions sound more like a cool feature but not necessarily a full product/business, IMO.

I hope you will find it helpful! 🙌