How to presell?

Hi, This idea was posted yesterday by @growthbites
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/livestream-your-work-to-increase-sales-pre-launch-4b427d1e36

Typical SaaS is never really pre-sold.
Interested user pre signup list yes, but not common for anyone to buy before your product is ready.

One exception is when the SaaS is built to solve a single clients needs and that client essentially pays the development (for their own usage) and the agreement/terms allow the developer to resell the same software to other users after, which then becomes a SaaS.
Done variations of this a few times. But need to be very clear with initial client to ensure no ownership/rights issues arise later.

Unless you have a pre-existing network, audience, connections, as well as built-up goodwill with the former, preselling anything will be hard.

Why would people just give you money for something that doesn't exist yet?

It's hard enough to get people to give you money for something that exists.

People simply don't have a reason to trust you yet.

I understand you're trying to validate your idea, but not being able to presell something doesn't mean your idea has no market. Plenty of successful businesses, even here on IH, aren't presold.

I'd look for alternative ways to validate your idea that doesn't incur a large amount of opportunity costs. Would you rather validate your idea less strictly/vigorously and release an MVP in 3 months, or would you rather still be out and about trying to presell the idea in 3 months?

You would basically go through your normal sales process that you plan on doing post launch. So, let's say you are solving retailers problems. Started contacting retailers, via in store, Etsy, online marketplaces etc.

The only difference I would do is not have a 100% commitment to what your product is. Let it morph in your conversations to be what they describe as a need and sell them in whatever would solve all their pain. Then build that thing.

Another alternative that seems to be adopted by some of the developers is to live stream the coding process. Of course, you cannot dot that with all the products.

There is no SaaS specific way to pre-sell. Set up the landing page, add proof of delivery, make promises, and ask for the money. And if you are not doing it on any platform, you should talk to a lawyer to create solid terms, especially for the case of none delivery. However, it is significantly harder to convince users to pay in comparison to physical products, because a free trial is expected at launch anyway. If your target market is enterprises, than pre-sell is typical, but you have to do it face to face using the traditional sales process.

The question is why pre selling? If it's either because you don't know how to build the solution you are pitching and need to hire a team, or because you just want to validate the idea, I would say you should find other ways, or at least be 100% transparent on the reasons why you are pre selling.

Thanks to everyone for the great advice. I thought that preselling software was a thing, it gets talked about so much. As a developer, it's always easier to build something for someone else than to come up with an inspired idea :/

Hey, I'm based out of SD too. Not sure if you're interested in grabbing a beer sometime. Just got started on IH