62
83 Comments

Stop building product that nobody needs - talk to users now

  1. 30

    While it is obviously valid and crucial to talk to users before you build anything, I am not sure that we should actively discourage people just building.
    Because I do not believe this is waste. It is just a learning curve and happens for a reason.
    And you learn better from your own mistakes, when actually facing the dead-end. And then you grow.
    Similarly with relationships, you can tell your friend this is not working and should move on, but it is when shit hits the fan that the realisation becomes stark and eventually he/she moves on and grows.

    1. 1

      I just made my first smaller pivot to focus on revenue rather than all my attention on community. I built an MVP that focused on facilitating the community. While I think it wasn’t the best decision, the community aspect is still useful and our long term product. We learned we needed to start somewhere else.

      Here is the site: ourbreadcrumbs.co

    2. 1

      True, building and getting feedback should balance

    3. 1

      Agreed, I'm all for doing as much customer development as possible, but sometimes you just need to build -> expect people to come -> nobody comes and learn the hard way (or get a bit lucky and figure out how to iterate from there).

    4. 0

      I'd probably disagree. Making own mistakes a very inefficient way of learning. Needs to be a better way.

  2. 1

    Hey, Community I would like to share product hunt launch of - Echo ( https://www.producthunt.com/posts/echo-78ebfee0-82df-4cac-be61-c6c020f27972 )

    I believe you all understand the value of innovation and efficient communication.

    Echo is a powerful browser extension that lets you leave voice comments directly into platforms like Google Docs,Slides,Sheets Notion, and Figma & more.

    Imagine giving feedback, explaining complex ideas, or collaborating on projects & designs using the simplicity and nuance of your voice.

    As an early adopter, your insights and feedback will be invaluable in shaping this tool to better suit your needs.

    PH - https://www.producthunt.com/posts/echo-78ebfee0-82df-4cac-be61-c6c020f27972

    Best, Amogh Tiwari

  3. 15

    This has been a growing topic of interest for me. “Maker waste” as I call it. We all build shit because we think it’s a cool idea only to abandon it when nobody shows up to the party. We’re wasting our time, money, and energy - which could all be honed in on something otherwise impactful. Abandoned projects, domains, servers, etc. It’s like maker pollution. There needs to be a better focus of building for impact.

    1. 2

      This hits me hard. I've been doing my part, in some sense by convincing many aspiring startup founders/entrepreneurs to do more customer discovery before building anything, yet I myself do from time to time build stuff just for the sake of it.

  4. 1

    Absolutely on point! So many startups and creators pour countless hours and resources into products without first understanding their target audience's needs. Just in our experience, our team has sometimes spent countless hours developing a feature, only to find out later that users wanted it another way. Engaging with potential users early on can save not only time and money but also ensure the product's relevance in the market.

  5. 7

    It's an interesting idea.

    But for $60 a call, you are going to have to do a lot of calls for it to be statistically significant.

    One call to someone - they might shoot it down. Whereas speaking to someone else in that same sector, they might love it. I'd never advise someone to stop working on a startup because of one call.

    Remember, JK Rowling had about 30 rejections.

    1. 2

      Once you have exhausted your own connections, you I would start speaking with target customers outside my circle. Listening to 4-5 independent voices might give you a good idea of how close you are... or raise red flags.

      1. 2

        I think you should offer a package. I've read that it takes a minimum of 7-10 conversations with people in your target audience to get an accurate picture of your product's flaws, etc.

        I'd also offer some sort of discount on the first 1-3 calls. Especially bc you don't have any testimonials or case studies. If you're thinking in terms of LTV, make the first 1-3 calls breakeven for you and focus on product, and you may start to really grow if customers are happy with the product.

    2. 1

      Totally agree with @petecodes

      That's why ask an indie hacker like me for as free unbiased feedback as possible by tagging me in your post or comments :)!

      Happy to do this and a 20 min call for any indie hacker if needed :D!

      1. 1

        Cool man! This sounds like real help! Let me know if the offer is still on the table please! :)

      2. 1

        Hey, that would be great if you could feedback main product idea ;)

  6. 1

    Questions to ask a potential user:

    What is the hardest part about doing the thing that you're trying to solve?
    Ex.: What is the hardest part about working on a group project with school computers?
    Tell me about the last time that you encountered this problem.
    Why was this hard?
    What, if anything, have you done to try to solve this problem?
    What don't you love about the solutions that you've already tried?

  7. 4

    I am a Python and Django programmer and I have produced and developed various products for my clients based on their ideas, but I am having a hard time choosing an idea for my startup.
    I have technical ability, but I really don't know what product, what customer group, or what service to offer.

    1. 4

      It is really hard to come up with something useful in a vacuum. Either find a problem that concerns you personally or interview potential customers asking them what makes their life difficult.

    2. 1

      Once you have the idea, you'll most likely struggle to sell/market it. That's an issue we all face as technical people hehe.

    3. 1

      Let me tell you some of my ideas please. Get in contact ! I made some researches, i'm not a dev, just an user tech enthousiast. Can we ?

    4. 1

      A good place to help come up with ideas is to look at what other people are building successfully and then get inspiration to build something yourself and maybe offer it to a difference audience, geography etc.

    5. 1

      This comment was deleted a year ago.

    6. 1

      This comment was deleted a year ago.

  8. 4

    Too much time is wasted by entrepreneurs building products that nobody cares about. I pulled this site together to help myself and others connect with target audience. Hope we can all get benefit from it.

    1. 28

      This comment was deleted a year ago.

      1. 3

        Really appreciate your sense of humor :D

  9. 3

    a great advice, but also I would suggest using tools more, here's a list of free ones to validate - https://unicamel.io/checklist-kit/

  10. 2

    You can easily validate your idea with tools such as:

    These tools are complementary to conduct market research within minutes.

    1. 1

      Easy validation of your idea with AI is a myth, but I agree that tools can be complimentary. I just asked ChatGPT 4 to provide a list of good SaaS ideas. It gave me this:

      1. AI Content Generation: A platform using AI to generate, optimize, and manage content for websites, blogs, and social media.

      2. Virtual Event Management: A comprehensive tool to plan, host, and analyze virtual events and webinars.

      3. Customizable CRM: A flexible, easy-to-integrate CRM solution tailored to specific industries or niches.

      Each category has a 100 of competing products. Does it mean you should go build product #101?

      1. 1

        You have several degrees of depth, indeed the first level is generalist, you have to continue challenging Chatgpt by digging, and the answers will become more refined.

        Also, you can provide examples of tools, and it can give you variations to brainstorm.

        After that, it is necessary to validate the idea, and the mentioned tools can help to select the right ideas.

        To brainstorm even more efficiently, I came across the following tool https://ideasai.com/

  11. 2

    Yeah, I once wasted a year of building something that didn't really grow. I changed my tactics and it worked somehow https://founderscafe.io/post/get-paying-customers-before-building-anything

    1. 1

      That's great. What is the product you are working on?

  12. 2

    This is pretty fascinating! I think sometimes people don't know what they want. But it's always a good idea to go with data rather than your gut - always validate your assumptions.

  13. 2

    I think that 60USD would be enough to find this person online and book a session with them. What are the advantages of using the platform?

  14. 2

    100000% agree with this. Sadly so many makers spend their time making products that may only be used for a few months by a few people. If you're building something for the purpose of practicing your craft. That's great. But jumping from project to project, buying domains, hosting, SaaS tools, and burning your time working on ideas that haven't been validated isn't the way to do.

    I think a lot of makers come from a background that isn't strategic product thinking, so I actually made a course to try and help these folks understand more about product validation https://howtoproduct.co/#define-design-validate

    1. 2

      I registered and looked thru your website - great work. I have one concern, if I may. It seems that validation and customer interaction is the last step of the process (4th out of 4). Waaay after domain purchase, mockups, designs. Am I missing something?

  15. 2

    Yes! It can often be difficult to diverge from what you had in mind originally, but there is truth in the saying 'The customer knows best'!

  16. 2

    One of the biggest issues that I have seen people face is that the minute they try reaching out to potential users, they get dismissed as someone advertising their product.

    Quite a few places now have a “No advertising” rule and ban anyone who tries to advertise their product.

    I’m curious to see if others have seen this and if so, then how they got around it and getting people to talk with them.

    1. 2

      I think this depends on the industry and how you phrase the reach out. I've had about 20% conversion (20 people in my target market hopped on a video chat) from cold non-personalized email because I say I'm researching a problem rather than building a product.

    2. 1

      I think it boils down to the fact that you need to really make sure you are giving a lot more than you are taking. People don't mind being 'advertised' to if they have genuinely been shown or taught something that is beneficial to them. If done right, it should actually make them want more straight away!

      There's a very fine line, and people aren't ignorant towards what is blatant advertising vs what is genuinely providing them with good value. I've seen plenty of examples of both—so much so that I wrote a guide (www.validatethatidea.com) on how to do it because I see way too many people doing it incorrectly.

    3. 1

      Good point. I am explicitly stating that entrepreneurs should NOT sell anything (or gather specific insider info) during the session.

      1. 2

        This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

        1. 2

          I guess this makes it an art of interview - trying to forget your idea and help customer identify and solve their problems. Only then evaluating if your solution fits. Not easy :/

  17. 2

    I talk to users and they tell me they want me to work on something that will take thousands of hours :(.

    1. 1

      Can you make a temporary solution for them? Something from sticks and duct tape for time being (before you earn enough to finance further development)?

      1. 1

        That's pretty much what we started with. Our extension now works okay, and I ask our users a lot how we should make it better, and what they ask for is more of what we are already doing. The thing is it currently isn't profitable, and there is far from any certainty that even after all that time it will work.

        1. 2

          Ask if your users would be ready to pay more for the new functionality. Their reluctance to pay up would be a clear sign it's not worth it. That would be my guess.

  18. 1

    I created a customized ERP integrated with IOT for the company I currently worked for, I want to sell some modules (the company I worked for has agreed on this as long as I don't share their data) however how can I know if this product will be sold or not considering the target market is a manufacturing company (knowing their long and strict purchasing policy)?

  19. 1

    What's the best way to actually find a problem to solve? A lot of the times I feel like I'm stabbing at the dark. If i'm not organically part of a community, how are we finding this?

    1. 1

      Most founders start with something that they needed themselves... and still end up succeeding with something else. Talk to users/friends/colleagues, listen carefully, interrogate - you'll bump into something worth exploring!

  20. 1

    Something I'd like to add: it's important to talk to users but it's even more important to talk to users efficiently. Every call with a customer takes away time from building product, so as builders, we need to find a way to get a bunch of feedback quickly versus doing a ton of individual user interviews.

  21. 1

    One of the best things we did early on at Sonix was send a quick survey once a user had had a chance to try our free trial. Not everyone responds, but because we sign up so many customers every day we get a lot of feedback. Here are the exact questions we ask...

    1/ How did you find out about us?
    2/ What did you like most about your experience?
    3/ What did you like least about your experience?
    4/ What do you wish that Sonix could do that it doesn't?
    5/ On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend?

    I review this feedback every single day. Super useful.

  22. 1

    Yaa we have to talk with the users or we should building apps that users need. otherwise your apps wont grow.

  23. 1

    I'm agree with what you are saying, but as we look through history, there where lots of products that no one even thought about and when someone made the product, everyone accepted it.
    I mean, we can also make some new needs for people and solve them for them!

    1. 1

      Big companies usually do that, afaik. But for early stage founders, it's best they use the "solve the problem" method

  24. 1

    What do you suggest as the best avenue for acquiring data for users without any product to show them? I feel like context is key. Also, gathering user feedback is expensive without a product (surveys etc)

  25. 1

    Love it! Heard a ton of useful comments on user research and contact with reality on this pod, highly recommend: https://open.spotify.com/show/2aO82EdfJSqBBmH8zsdxBs?si=0d1aae1e23144b6a

  26. 1

    how i can talk with users, what users ?

    1. 1

      That would be your potential users. You find them and ask them for a conversation. Learn about their life and problems they would like solved. Then go execute.

      1. 1

        how can I do that? Most people won't care to spend their time. So you'll have to ask many people which is pretty much considered to be spam?

  27. 1

    Fascinating! Never really saw the importance of connecting with my target audience but I think your link highlighted this nicely. Thanks for sharing this :)

  28. 1

    I don't think this is a legitimate endorsement. Only when they pay for the goods can you consider yourself successful. Therefore, you need a minimum viable product (MVP) before you can begin validation, unless you're holding a pre-sale. Because that's what an MVP is all about!

    Having said that, I believe your strategy is a sound one for gathering enough data to begin developing the MVP.

    We have a program, which help for business owner validate their idea in 4 weeks:

    Bootcamp - Week 1
    During the first week of UniCamel. We work closely together to restructure the business, and dive deep into the problem we are solving, competition, and the value proposition. Not to mention the target audience, channels and strategy we are going to use. Then we use project management tools to assign and prioritize tasks to build the MVP and get ready to start the fun part.

    A / B - Week 2
    This is the most important week of your business. We will launch the MVP and try different target audiences with the most attractive techniques used by high scalable startups. We keep an eye on different tools that track the user journey, behavior, and numbers to adapt our solution accordingly and that’s why we call this week A/B.

    Hunt - Week 3
    This week we launch our best campaigns based on the numbers and market responses that we will adapt to so quickly. We call it “Hunt” as we will be focusing on getting the first paying customer and closing our first deal while we focus on the unit economics of the business. We will build together the most effective sales funnel and financial model with accurate numbers that allow the business to grow.

    Personal Development - Week 4
    In the last week of the program we focus on making sure the founder fully understands the whole process and confident enough to take it forward on his own. We monitor the performance while we assign different tasks to make sure that you are ready to go. We focus on handing over the whole startup data, website ownership, and 3 month growth plan.

    If you interested guys, you can dive deep into this here - https://unicamel.io/

  29. 1

    Start by talking with ur customer, it's the hardest but best way to learn and step into reality.

  30. 1

    What are some best methods or techniques that can be used to survey and talk to a niche set of users?

  31. 1

    Talking to customers is a critical part of building your ideas.
    It is also one of the steps in our Idea Validation Bootcamp along with 4 more critical steps!

    Check out the bootcamp here: curiorevelio.com/idea-validation-bootcamp

    Next cohort starts 17th July!

  32. 1

    This is crucial, but also true that there is a minimal of 5-8 to have significant info to move on or just decide is no the right track! Pivot, pivot, pivot!

    Great Idea with Insider, it will be nice to have packages + know real case studies, maybe from this community?

    I will keep you in the loop, tks!!
    Best!

  33. 1

    Good point - we work on that every day!

  34. 1

    I've been trying to get responses on Slack groups & Facebook groups - I've gotten some, but not too many. It seems people are quite cautious engaging because they are afraid that they will be sold something OR the problem I am solving is not a conversation-starter, which is pretty important.

    I also have an idea to list out user testimonials of my competitors - and reach out to these people and ask if they're willing to tell me what they like & don't like about the service (i.e that I am planning to buy the product also or just tell them that I want to build an alternative) - what do you think?

    1. 1

      Hey MikkMa did you end up reaching out to your competitors' customers? Did it work?

      1. 1

        Yes, I did! And they actually (not all, but a few) were willing to jump on a call with me. This is good because they're clients of businesses that are offering a similar value prop - so you can get some good insights.

  35. 1

    Maker waste, syndrome, or whatever you call, there are too many of us who like to build stuff and keep polishing on it. Bad product does fail a startup but the inability to acquire a market fails many many more.

    We want to build a good version before taking to the market and keep pushing. I have done that as well and so decided to change that with LINKDRA my current effort.

    Relevant in this thread because connecting with early buyers to refine the product, get feedback is crucial. If you are from the domain then it is easy to find buyers but if you are not then that is an obstacle course.

    **Do, you have a buyer persona? **
    If yes, then this may help. You can search out the profiles that match your buyer persona and reach out on LINKEDIN with crisp content. No sales pitch yet. 3-5 wil accept if you are sincere and have a legit profile. So, if you do this for a week, reaching out to 50 everyday, then by end of the week you should have over 100 connections. That's a good starting point to ask for a 30 min call.

    And if you are busy and so many other things to do, then you should try LINKDRA (linkdra.com). I built this to solve my own problem and realized many others too can benefit.

    https://www.linkdra.com

  36. 1

    I'm doing completely different. I'm building project management software. And I've recently got one freelance gig and I can use that project for my upcoming software. So that I can test it and test it until it's perfect.

    1. 2

      I don't mean to rain on your parade, but be careful here. What you like might be different from what others need.

  37. 1

    This looks like a great idea, signed up. How is the response so far?

    1. 1

      There are many responses. There is a noteworthy discrepancy where majority of entrepreneurs looking to connect with more senior target customers eg in Senior Management category (probably to better understand the sales tactics). Those will be difficult to match based on the price points of this offer.

  38. 1

    Really great idea, really like it. Sorry to sound cheap but $60 for one user and 30 mins seems expensive. I guess it's because you need professionals to talk to who are highly paid?

    1. 1

      If you're looking for an IndieHacker-priced version (i.e. free) check out The User Interview Exchange :)

      1. 1

        Happy to see a fellow hacker working on a similar project. Do you know of any other products from same category?

    2. 1

      I agree with you completely. This works for a higher-priced products or funded ventures. Not quite the IH crowd :/

  39. 1

    This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

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