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22 Comments

Idea validation process kills the hype?

Do you think this happens with you as well?

You get an interesting idea. You get all excited to make the product and brainstorm a lot of things. You create todos, lists and everything on HOW will you build it.

Let's say you plan to validate your idea and you do so, by building a landing page. You do marketing and everything BUT the results are not as you expected / or are very few / not in favor of your idea.

What do you do? Do you still make the product? Does it kills the excitement you had when you thought of building it?

  1. 3

    It happens to me too, even before validating it with a landing page.

    Many of the interesting ideas we have seem like that in the beginning because you're in a hyped builder mode, but once you study it from all aspects on how to do it, looking for similar ways who solved this problem, and doing as much research as you can to give you a full view of how to execute it.

    If after all that you think its still an interesting idea to pursue, you need to find where your users are so you can really validate the idea. In my opinion, it should be paid users that really give you the validation and not an email list or free users because at the end of the day you want a profitable business from this product and its not going to happen with free users (at least not directly unless you're using ads that's another case).

    Maybe also the idea isn't that good also which is one reason why its not attracting anyone. It's not easy to answer should you built it or not before you find the users, but even if you build it you should still find those paid users so you can validate it. I always think that I should have something real to show the users (but this is only my opinion, I know there are many different opinions at this or how to go about with it).

    1. 1

      I undestand your viewpoint. You are maybe right that it is because of the "hyped builder" mode that gets us all excited.

      Thank you for sharing your thoughts :)

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        You're welcome and thanks for starting this thread.

        1. 1

          Yes, I am in the middle of something and that's why I wanted to ask the community.

  2. 2

    That's exactly what validation is for. If results are much worse than expected it means there is no sense to waste your time/efforts/money on it.

    What's the point to work with hype but without sales?

    Move on.

  3. 2

    As others have said, the landing page validates the viability of your solution. It seems like you might be devising a solution for a problem that is, non-existent or unimportant. @csallen wrote a great piece on brainstorming problems to solve.

    1. 1

      Thank you for sharing your take and yes, I have read the article.

  4. 2

    Last time I had one idea that did not allow me to even sleep. It came in my dreams too.
    :) I call this situation similar to honeymoon period. Our brain plays trick to make us believe that the idea will always work no matter what.
    So I give sometime to myself, may be a day or so . In that period I do lots of market surveys to guage the ifs and thens.
    Finally after the honeymoon period gets over I find myself as the greatest critic of my idea considering all the feedbacks.
    After all this if my idea still claims to persist then I take another step towards a MVP.

    1. 1

      Well, That's a nice take. And I agree with it, We should give it some time and continue only after the market research and everything.

  5. 2

    It's not what you expect that matters. It's what the situation is. The market decides.
    Maybe it's not the right time and place. Maybe you're not the suitable founder for this idea.

    There were smartphones before iPhone and electric cars before Tesla. The conditions weren't right before. And using the same playbook might not even work now.

    Ali made very good points for all this validation.

    1. 1

      Alright, Then it means that situation matters.

      So, what do you say, should you not build your product because it's not the right time/place or mentioned reason?

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        I'm just saying there's a lot of factors involved.

        But for sure market demand and conditions are the strongest.
        I can launch a travel app this week. It can be the most amazing one ever and fail right away.

        Currently I don't have an idea so validated yet.

  6. 2

    That's what it is meant to do.

    1. 1

      My apologies, but I don't exactly understannd you. Can you elaborate a bit, please?

      1. 1

        Validation is to determine if idea is viable or not. If your personal "hype" doesn't survive the process then your validation process has been successful (i.e. idea not viable). You could look at whether idea pitched in right way to right people but otherwise you've done yourself a favour by realising nobody wants it (enough). Always exceptions to the rule, but thems the "rules".

  7. 2

    In my opinion a lot of things need some kind of MVP to truly be able to validate your idea. Unless your idea is both very unqiue & simple to understand so that the value proposition is immediately clear for anyone, chances are that it might still be too abstract for most visitors to really grasp the value proposition from just a landing page.

    1. 1

      So, Do you suggest to do validation from things other than from a landing page?

      Can you name a few other methods?

      1. 2

        Other ways could be to do interviews with your target audience or build a demo that you can use to validate your idea.

        For example the story I heard from the founder of https://nomadlist.com/ ; the way he validated the idea for the website was by sharing a Google Sheet to rate the cities that are best for digital nomads, people automatically started adding ratings to his Google Sheet so that's how he knew he was on to something.

        With the project I'm currently working on I focused mostly on interviews to validate since I could already define who my potential users were and how I could reach out to them. Doing it with a landing page probably wouldn't have gotten me very valuable feedback.

        The best method is really depending on what you want to build and don't get disheartened immediately if initial feedback is not as you expected. If it's something you really believe in, the idea of building out an MVP shouldn't be immediately forwarded to the trash bin. Being able to show a prototype to potential users could get them way more excited than an abstract pitch.

        1. 2

          Customer interviews is something I have been thinking about. A lot people have mentioned it as well.

          Thank you for sharing your valuable insights.

  8. 1

    I think "idea validation" is one of the best and worse things to happen to indie hackers. Most of the ideas out there are truly junk so it will be good for the owners to go through the "idea validation" phase so they don't waste there time. On the other hand, I have also seen people with amazing ideas but they give up on it so fast because of "idea validation" didn't pan out or give the result they wanted.

    1. 1

      I understand and that's a dilemma which we face everytime we start a new project or go with a new idea.

  9. 2

    This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

    1. 1

      Great simplification. Thank you for sharing.

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