I launched a project for Indie Hackers, and I just wanted to say thank you
Thank you, Indie Hackers ❤️
Hi everyone,
About 3 days ago, I launched IdeaPz, a free project to help Indie Hackers and project creators see if people would actually be willing to pay for their project ideas.
I built it in less than a week and shared it on Reddit and Indie Hackers, since this is mainly the community I created it for.
Honestly, I didn’t expect such a great response. I’ve received 50+ comments and feedback, almost 200 visitors, and a lot of people took the time to share their thoughts. Indie Hackers even featured my post on the homepage for a while.
I’ve launched several small projects before, and I’ve never received this kind of response. So I just wanted to say thank you. It really motivates me to keep working on it.
I still have a lot to add and restructure thanks to your feedback. One of the biggest points has been the difference between interest and real buying intent, with suggestions like deposits, reservations, or asking users what they would actually pay.
I’m still figuring out the best direction for IdeaPz, but I don’t want to rush it. I want to keep the original vision while making the product genuinely useful.
IdeaPz is completely free and will remain free.
If you have an idea, feel free to submit it or share it with someone who might find it useful.
And if you’d like to support my work and help me keep IdeaPz maintained, moderated and evolving, there’s also a small Ko-fi link on the site. No obligation!
Your feedback already means a lot to me. Thanks again to everyone following along
Really interesting idea, and I like how casual and simple the layout feels.
One thing I was wondering about: how do you determine whether an upvote is actually a strong signal that people would pay for the idea? For example, does the platform take into account the person’s experience with the problem, whether they’re part of the target audience, or how closely their situation relates to the problem being solved?
I’m curious because I could see 100 general upvotes can mean something very different from 10 upvotes from people who actually experience the problem and would potentially pay for a solution.
Hey ! loved the platform , the ui is also amazing
Thank you so much for your feedback, I really appreciate it! For now, votes are the main signal, but it’s hard to tell the difference between curiosity and real interest with just one vote.
I’d like to improve IdeaPz over time and find ways to provide stronger signals. Hopefully, it can help people make better decisions about their projects.
Thanks again, it really motivates me! And feel free to submit an idea if you have one
This is the kind of post that keeps solo builders going. Just launched my first product this week — an AI assistant for small businesses. No users yet, but communities like this make the journey less lonely. Thank you.
Thank you so much! It really means a lot that you like the project and find it useful. Thanks again, and good luck with your project too.
the interest vs buying intent part is spot on
i’ve learned that feedback gets much more useful once users have some skin in the game
Thank you for your feedback! And yes, I think it’s an interesting direction to explore. It might be a bit complicated to implement at the beginning, but I’ll definitely consider it for the future.
Thanks again for your interest in the project.
50+ comments and 200 visitors in 3 days with no audience is a decent signal — especially when the feedback is coming from the exact community you built it for. The IH feature probably helped, but people clicking and leaving thoughts means the problem resonates, not just the novelty.
The "would people actually pay" question is one most founders answer too late. Good luck with the rebuild. Genuinely curious what the most common feedback was about what's missing.
Hi, thanks for your comment, it really means a lot!
I’m also curious about this feature. On IH, the most common feedback I’ve received is about adding a price, or letting the user choose how much they would be willing to pay, the idea of reservations or deposits, and also the fact that, for now, the project mainly works well for tech-related projects.
Projects targeting more specific audiences, like doctors for example, would be harder to evaluate with the current audience.
Thanks again for your feedback!
Uwielbiam tę przejrzystość i gratulacje sukcesu! Budowanie jawnie i faktyczne słuchanie opinii użytkowników na temat intencji zakupowych kontra samo zainteresowanie to absolutnie właściwy krok. Powodzenia z IdeaPz!
Thank you so much.Since I launched this project to help creators, your feedback really means a lot to me. Thanks for your feedback, I’ll keep documenting the evolution of the project on Indie Hackers.
Thanks for following the project, and good luck with your projects too
Congrats on the launch! Building something useful in less than a week is impressive.
I like the idea of checking if people are really willing to pay. How do you plan to measure real buying interest in the future through pre orders, deposits, or something else?
Thank you so much! At the moment, I don’t know yet. These are options that people have suggested to me, but I can’t really say yet what I’ll do. It’s definitely possible though.
Yeah, that’s one of the ideas I’ve been hearing the most: deposits, reservations, or having people pay a percentage to make the buying signal stronger for creators.
I’m still not sure what I’ll do yet. The project is only 5 days old, but it’s definitely something I’m thinking a lot about.
Thanks for your feedback! If you have any ideas on how to approach it, feel free to share them. Your feedback really helps me see different perspectives for the project.
Congrats! 🎉 This is a great example of why launching early and sharing a project with the right community can be so valuable.
Getting 50+ comments and nearly 200 visitors in just a few days is already a strong signal that people are interested in the problem you're trying to solve. The feedback about separating interest from actual buying intent is especially valuable, because that could become one of the most important parts of IdeaPz.
It's also great that you're not rushing to add everything at once. Taking the feedback, identifying the strongest signals, and improving the core idea step by step sounds like the right approach.
Just a heads-up: I tried visiting the website, but my browser says the connection isn't secure. It looks like there may be an SSL certificate issue that needs to be fixed.
Keep building — it will be interesting to see where IdeaPz goes from here! 🚀
Feel free to let me know what you think once you’ve had a chance to check it out. Your feedback is more useful than you might think
Thank you for pointing that out! The URL wasn’t the right one, but I’ve just fixed it.
And yeah, I’m really trying to do my best to make the project as useful as possible, while taking your feedback into account and still keeping the original direction of IdeaPz.
You can access the site now, it’s fixed and the correct URL is there.
And thank you again for your feedback. It might seem like a small thing to you, but for me, working on IdeaPz every day, managing it and trying to improve it, it really means a lot.
Thanks again
Congrats on the launch - and on getting real feedback so quickly. I’m still new to this space, so it’s genuinely encouraging to see Indie Hackers show up like that for something built specifically for the community.
The point about “interest vs. real buying intent” is a useful distinction. I’m in pre-launch on my own product right now, and that question keeps coming up.
Really cool that you’re not rushing the direction just because the response was strong. That seems like good instinct. Good luck :)
Thank you so much for your feedback! Yeah, I’m trying to do my best. I honestly didn’t expect this project to have so much potential, or for people to see so much potential in it, but I’m really glad they do
congrats on the response, 50+ comments and a homepage feature from a week-old project is genuinely rare, glad the "keep the vision, don't rush it" instinct is holding even with that much feedback pulling in different directions
on the deposit/reservation complexity question sitting unresolved in the thread above: one lightweight version that avoids full payment infrastructure, let people "back" an idea with a small, refundable-if-you-want deposit only once 5-10 people have also backed it, similar to how some crowdfunding platforms gate charging until a threshold is hit. that gives you a real buying-intent signal without building individual escrow/refund logic for every single idea from day one, and it naturally filters for ideas with actual multi-person demand rather than one enthusiastic commenter
good luck figuring out which direction to run with, sounds like you've got more good options than most people get this early
Thank you! I think a deposit system could really make a difference. It’s great to have so many possibilities and to see that the project has so much potential.
I’m also really curious to see how it evolves over the next few weeks and months.
Thanks again for your feedback! If I remember correctly, you also took part in the previous discussion, right?
Yeah, that was me in the earlier thread too. Following this one partly because I'm curious whether the deposit-gating idea survives contact with actual money, versus just being a nice mechanism on paper. Comments are cheap, a refundable deposit is a real (if small) step up in signal, but real signal usually finds more ways to break than you expect going in. Will be interested to see what happens once the first few ideas actually hit that 5-10 threshold.
Congratulations on your launch. It always feels good to accomplish something and provide a useful tool to the community. There are so many redundant tools out there, and this one seems to be in a class of its own.
Thank you so much! It really means a lot. I’m trying my best to build a tool that can be genuinely useful for us, or at least a little bit useful
awesome work dropping this so fast, congrats on the traction. that point about buying intent vs interest is super important, gonna run an idea through it later today.
Thank you! It really means a lot to see so many people recognizing the value of the project. Thanks again, and all the best with your projects too
impressive how fast you shipped this and actually opened it up for feedback. i’ve hit that same wall trying to measure real buying intent versus just hype, so testing deposits or reservations makes total sense. gonna run my current prototype through it tonight.
Sounds good, that’s great! All the best with your project, and thank you very much for your feedback!
Congrats on the launch, especially for building it in under a week. That kind of momentum is something to be proud of. The 50+ comments and 200 visitors show people genuinely want this kind of validation.
I’m curious about how you’ll handle the interest vs. buying intent gap. Deposits sound promising but might scare off early users. Have you thought about asking a simple “what would you actually pay” question before moving to stronger signals?
Yes, definitely. The question of pricing is something I want to look into very soon.
For now, with the outreach I’m doing to get some regular traffic and managing the site in my free time, it’s a bit difficult to work on everything at once.
But pricing is definitely something I want to explore in the future.
Congrats on the launch 200 visitors and 50+ comments in 3 days off Reddit and IH is genuinely solid for a solo launch. The interest vs buying intent point you got feedback on is one I've been wrestling with myself this week, trying to find pilot merchants for something I'm building a lot of people will say yeah that sounds useful but it means very little until someone's willing to actually commit Curious how you're planning to test real buying intent going forward deposits or something else
I’m still thinking about it for now. At the moment, I think collecting emails and people showing a stronger signal of interest could already be useful.
To be honest, I don’t really know yet what I want to do in the future. I’m very focused right now on outreach through different channels to get enough traffic, while also managing the site in my free time.For now, I’d rather focus on what I need to do in the next few days. But the idea of having people reserve with even a small percentage of the payment does seem interesting.I’m still a bit lost, to be honest. I didn’t expect the project to have this much potential.But thanks a lot for your feedback and support. If you have any suggestions, don’t hesitate to share them. It’s really useful to me.
Totally I get the lost but excited feeling On the reservation idea even something small like $1 to reserve/skip the queue filters out a lot of the polite yeah sounds cool responses, since people who won't part with even a dollar usually weren't going to convert anyway Doesn't need to be your final pricing, just a signal test.
For what it's worth, focusing on outreach channels over roadmap right now sounds good traffic and real signal will tell you more than planning ahead ever could Good luck with it, following along.
Thanks so much for following the project, it really means a lot to me.
If you want to support the project even more, I also created a Ko-fi on the site for anyone who wants to support my work.
But honestly, your feedback, encouragement, and the fact that you’re following the project and seeing potential in it already mean a lot to me.
You’ve already done a lot, so thank you again, really.
No problem at all genuinely enjoyed the exchange Outreach is rough, it's easy to overthink every message, so don't be too hard on yourself if it feels slow Wishing you good traction with it.
Thank you so much for your advice, and I wish you all the best with your projects too! I really appreciate this kind and constructive exchange
Interesting idea, but I don't get - where is the button "I wouldn't pay"? I bet it's even more important than "I'd pay for it".
I see what you mean. I think the lack of clicks and emails already gives an idea that people wouldn’t be willing to pay, but it’s an interesting point I hadn’t thought about.
Thanks for your feedback
Interesting that the response was much stronger than the actual buying-intent signal.
Curious what you’ll count as meaningful validation for IdeaPz going forward.
Yeah, I think allowing people to reserve or even pay would be a much stronger signal. The tricky part is figuring out how to manage something like that without making the process too complicated for both the buyer and the creator.
It’s definitely an interesting direction, and I’m still thinking about how it could actually work with IdeaPz.
Thanks for the feedback!
That makes sense. It’ll be interesting to see whether IdeaPz can turn that stronger intent signal into something simple for both sides.
Yeah, I’m curious too! I think the project has a lot of potential, and with all the suggestions I’ve received, I have a lot of directions to explore. It’s really nice to see!
Now I just need to figure out which one to pursue
That makes sense. With several possible directions, it’ll be interesting to see which one the early user behavior actually pulls you toward.
Exactly.I’m curious to see where the first user behaviors will lead me, while taking the feedback into account and staying true to the original direction of IdeaPz. I don’t want to rush things, but I’m excited to see how it evolves.
That makes sense. It’ll be interesting to see how the first real user behaviors shape the direction without pulling the product too far from its original idea.
Yes, exactly