Stuck at the idea validation - feedback needed
Hi fellow indie hackers,
Hope you're doing great and your projects thrive!
Recently my friend and I decided to build something useful in the space of presentations. Both of us are passionate about good looking things and we thought it would be great to solve some problem in the space. For instance, help people get better designs for their ideas with less friction and effort. (Let's for a minute assume we know how to build nice looking slides without drag-n-dropping stuff manually.)
The point is to at least pre-validate our ideas prior to building anything at all, which we've already done before and sort of failed - there was no demand for things we created.
I've been researching what people say about making presentation trying to find any clues about what problems they may have. I used reddit and quora a bit, google keywords research, tried to spot something in comments on youtube.
My expectations were that at some point I'd realize there's some pattern, something that's popping up in discussions on the internet or in frequent searches, but so far, I've found almost nothing.
The next nail into this coffin is competition. Everyone in the space is doing almost exactly the same - Canva, Adobe Spark, Pitch, and many others create online software to drag-n-drop various stuff onto your slides. No one on the internet seems to be upset with how long it takes and how bad results sometimes are.
So it either means 1) our vision (presentation design could be less time consuming and ultimately better looking) isn't reflected in the reality, or 2) I am missing something important in the ways to pre-validate the idea. (We have also started talking to people but we've had only a few conversations as it's hard to find people we have no idea about.)
I'd be perfectly fine with 1) if that's the case but I am wondering if any of you have been in such situation and how you proceeded from there. Should you really be able find any proof of demand prior to building anything at all? If yes, what worked for you?
Appreciate your time and attention greatly!
Presentations is a huge space.
Have you considered narrowing it down?
Your competitors are trying to solve the presentations problem for everyone. What if you solve it for one tiny, tiny niche?
That way, you'll know who your customers are and where to find them. You can go to them and show that your solution is better for their specific use case.
And your competitors won't be able to compete with you, because their solution is generic, whereas yours is built specifically for your niche.
Just a thought!
Hey Mark, this is precisely what we're trying to do - thanks for sharing!
In particular, we want to solve presentations for those who don't have time and don't want to be a designer. Basically, let people focus on the content and the rest will be done by us - without you fiddling with the layout.
But the question is, who are these people that may need it. We came to the idea of launching it first to see who'd be interested so we could interview them.
Good strategy. I hope that through your interviews you find some really tight niches to focus on!
Hi Oleg,
The best case is that you are a heavy user of presentation software yourself and feel an itch that is not currently being scratched. That still won't prove there is a market but you will at least know you are solving something.
If you are not a heavy user then become a heavy user - turn this post into a 5 or so presentations - each using a different competitor. Try adding live data to your presentations etc. Take old pitch decks (they are all over the web) and redo them with these 5 or so competitors.
Scouring the internet won't work because you don't even know what you are looking for. For instance maybe some of us would like a presentation that leaps right off of our store fronts. It's unlikely you are going to find posts that represent that demand.
Thank you David, that's a helpful perspective.
My co-founder thankfully is a designer himself with an insight into this field, which we share. But I still wanted to get some pre-validation if possible.
Turns out, it's not necessarily so - so we're gonna make a leap of faith and build something small to gather the feedback.
Further bad news - what is building something small going to do? Why would anyone use your incomplete product when so many competitors exist?
I think you are in a similar situation to where we are with our project management / communications offering where I am busy this weekend working on extensive documentation and improving the onboarding. IE why would someone take the time to learn your software unless it's apples to apples for all the presentation features necessary for their use case?
Yes there are some startups that were able to get validation from very early products but they are all in green field markets. What startup in a mature market got validation from a small effort?
So the tool we're building will:
Thank you for these questions! They made me think about my sales pitch.
Okay, so you are looking for pain so you can design the perfect aspirin. All problems are pain and all pain needs an aspirin BUT there is another approach. The opposite of the aspirin is the vitamin - the thing that takes something that isn't broken and makes it better. It just has to make it a lot better. Look at the space from that perspective. Can you make something that allows people to create a presentation 10x faster? Maybe people don't consider the time it takes today as being a pain point, they have never seen any other way but if you can make a video showing a presentation being put together super fast that would make people want your vitamin. Make something that does something new, adds missing capability, is more impactful etc. Focus on turbocharging what's out there - find a presentation package that is open to outside hooks and add-ons and build for greater functionality.
Dean, glad you've written this - I appreciate your attention and time!
It's an amazing new perspective. Indeed, presentations aren't new at all and the ocean isn't "blue" either. But what you've captured or highlighted to me very well is that we're trying to make something that already exists better. And there's demand for this, right?
The issue still remains though, we need to know our ideal customers to tailor product and messaging for them.
The demand for something that's a lot better visually, a lot easier to use, a lot faster to build - it's all there because the presentation market is beyond proven. As long as what you offer is "a lot more X" there is a market within this space. I don't know if "ideal customer" will apply if your vitamin is universal. You either have people who make presentations all the time as part of their job function (a small percentage but easy to reach because they are in tune to the market) or the fat middle of people who use presentation software 2-12 times a year. You may want to just niche down and gun for a high usage group like sales people and/or marketing people. Tailor the message to the benefits of your widget COUPLED with their niche - like "make presentations much more easily to deliver more impactful presentations that result in higher sales". So go for the power user crowd, which has to include the biggest batch of early adopters - your product/service will likely have a viral component or at least a word-of-mouth component because your product is literally on display to a lot of people by its very nature.
Presentations given over zoom seems like a newer take on the market maybe. Try to look for how things are changing and jump ahead.
Also maybe just start the core of the (fairly large) product, then add some unique part as you think of it (and validate and iterate or change it)
Totally agree. This now ubiquitous remote thing changes everything. We'll think about it :-)
Good point. Can't remember the name exactly but I've coworkers give cool presentations with interactive presentation software. The app lets the audience add comments, questions, respond to polls, etc. Maybe an area to look into more!
You might find this helpful: http://concepting.foundersfactory.com/
Thank you, I'm reading now.
One thing I've noticed is that many people just don't seem to care if their presentations are butt-ugly. 🤷♀️
Yeah, we've noticed that too. And with my co-founder being a designer and me just having an eye for good looking things, we can't make sense of it :-) I suppose those folks aren't our customers at all.
Yes, you do wan to have some evidence that your solution has a problem.
I'm not very clear about how you did your market research so far. I also don't understand the part about talking with people. I don't suppose people would just talk about presentation problems directly. You might need to reach out and ask how many presentations they make, give, and endure. How long do they spend on making a presentation? What do they find annoying about other people's presentations? I, for example, abhore ppt slides that look like they belong in a word document. Also irrelevant pictures, backgrounds, and animations are annoying. Don't get me start about graphs with missing labels.
Anyway, I hope that helps.
Artur, thank you for the comment. Everything about questions we need to ask is very much on point. That's exactly what we're doing.
My question is more about how to find the right people for these interviews.
Good questions to be thinking on. I'm not too well versed in your niche but if you posted the idea to Kern.al I'm sure a lot of people would wanna give you feedback / recommend resources?
Here's an example of Andrew's idea a while back that got good feedback - https://kern.al/idea/reducing-meetings-within-companies
Thanks Joel that seems to be a neat idea!
Have you by chance got a spare invite?
yes, made this one up for indiehacker friends - https://kern.al/register?invitecode=INDIEHACKER
That's fantastic - thank you so much!