Should founders pay someone to help with early-stage validation? 🤔
Hello everyone.
Frequently founders reach me to talk about an interface project when, in reality, they need to validate their product idea first.
As you fellow Indie Hackers know, it is VERY common to see founders skipping the problem validation to focus on the solution.
I am thinking about offering idea validation sprints to help founders to save time and money by building a prototype and testing it with real users.
I tried to present the concept on this landing page prototype:
http://bit.ly/startupbarista
I still have to do some work to do on the design and copy writing but I would like some feedback on:
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Does this idea makes sense to you?
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Did you previously spend money on something like this?
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Do you know similar services?
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How much it is worth in your opinion? — Phases one and two
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Is the landing page clear enough? What are the main questions you have after reading it?
Thank you so much.
I am looking forward to learning from you and help this community. 🔥
IMO, founders need to validate their idea themselves. There is tremendous learning in this rather than outsourcing validation.
completely agree!
I think you are totally right. Do you think a co-creator could acelerate this process or they should save the money and learn by themselves, even that this can take more time?
Both paths are right, doing it yourself and getting a cofounder. But, at this stage, I'd recommend selling yourself.
Thank you for sharing you thoughts. Much appreciated!
As a "techy" I get asked to help often on early stage validation, of the idea or of the product roadmap. Usually my approach is to consult and help formalize their process and ideas rather than "do things". It means less billable hours but provides a lot more value in the long run i think
Hello @MathieuK.
On those projects do you follow always the same process or the project is always different from one client to another?
My concern is that some clients will not be able to run some experiments and doing things with them would be important for them to understand the process — since my assumption is that the majority are first time founders.
Thank you for your feedback 😃
Yes and No. I have a specific list of things that I think/know are important (saying framework seems pedantic), and depending on where the project is at, and what I perceive the strength and weaknesses are, I focus on different things. But I feel that founders that look to externalise this work completely are going at it with the wrong idea. Doing this yourself, I feel, is mandatory to success. And billing less hours now, by having them do more themselves, is a way to maybe bill more hours later because the project has more chances of surviving. But maybe we are not talking about exactly the same work, so if you'd like to continue the conversation over visio, hit me up at mathieukudla@gmail.com
Thank you for your message Mathieu. I sent you an email. 😃
I didn't receive anything :'(