Testing Startup Ideas Before You Build
Hey Indie Hackers 👋
I built Idea Tester because I’ve been that founder who spent months building something I thought people wanted - only to realise later no one cared enough to buy. It’s brutal, and it kills most startups before they even get a chance. (it's how founderli got started to begin with)...
I wanted a way to know if an idea had real demand before investing time, money, and energy. Founderli's Idea Tester does exactly that: in 14 days, we build a test landing page, run ads, and track interest - giving founders market proof and early leads.
I’m curious - do you usually test ideas before building, or do you tend to go all-in and iterate after launch? Would love to hear how you approach validation.
Good concept! But it sounds hard to make profitable. Many founders already test ideas with no-code tools or simple ads themselves. Unless your validation process offers deeper insights or faster turnaround, people may not see enough value to pay for it.
Thank you Dennis! And yes I think your concerns are spot on. We're running the same validation test on the idea validation service itself, and so far the market demand and appeal for the service isn't attractive enough to make this a commericially viable business. That said, the test is still ongoing, so fingers crossed! Onto the next project if not!
Happy to help! it is great that you are testing even the validation service itself, that is the right mindset. Sometimes the biggest value comes from what you learn between projects.
By the way, you might find this useful, we are hosting an online Q&A event for B2B SaaS founders with both marketing and technical specialists who helped startups grow in Silicon Valley. It is a one hour group session where you can bring your current challenge and get clear practical advice from people with real experience. I think it could be a great fit for you.
Good luck with the project!
Is this automated?
Hi AymaneK,
No it's not automated. We'll work with you to better understand your idea, then we'll create multiple landing pages (with good copy) and ads (for a/b testing) and promote your idea and pages via social media.
From this, we'll then measure the engagement and sign-ups. We'll complete customer discovery from the wait list leads to find out exactly where your idea adds its value. Then we'll run a variety of mock sales with the wait list leads to better understand optimum pricing, any potential sensitivities and most importantly, your conversion rate.
From all of this work, we can confidently see the overall customer demand for your idea, the marketability of your idea, and the commericial feasibility of your idea. Put together, this gives you all the data and insights you need to either move forward with your launch, pivot, or move onto the next idea. And you'll get all the leads generated too, for your first list of customers.
can you explain mock sale?
Hey Indeedee,
Yes, of course, the mock sale is one of the most important elements for finding out if the idea has commericial viability.
So, it starts off with the ads promoting the landing pages for the idea, the waitlist on the page collects the emails of the interested people. From this point, we'll complete customer discovery on those on the waitlist. This covers some key questions around pricing.
Once this is complete, we'll conduct a few 'mock sales' (sometimes referred to as 'fake payment' or 'fake door'). This is where we create a fake payment gateway that looks and feels real, for the new product on offer. This fake payment gateway is sent out to the waitlist leads, the second that someone clicks on a box or button within the payment gateway, the page will then flag that this is a test and that no payment has/will be taken. But we are able to track the analytics behind that click.
This means that we can better understand the expected conversion rate of our waitlist. Pair this with the knowledge we have on how much it cost to build our waitlist through ads, we know what our cost per sale is. Then, based on the mock sale pricing point, we can determine if an idea/product is financially viable.
We do run multiple mock sales all at different pricing points to see what works and what doesn't. We'll gather this information from the customer discovery (around what pricing point is right) and also the pricing point that we believe we'd need for this idea to be financially viable.
Example:
£200 spent on ads gets us 120 people on a waitlist. (£1.66 per waitlist acquisition)
Customer discovery shows that the pricing point for the idea/product exists somewhere between £60 and £70.
We run 3 mock sales priced at £60, £70, and £80, with 40 people in each test
£60 mock sale: 10 people click the link and click on the payment gateway, showing buying interest. (25% conversion, £6.67 cost per acquisition at £60, which yields an expected gross profit of £18. Leaving an expected net profit of £11.33 per sale.)
£70 mock sale: 12 people click the link and click on the payment gateway. (30% conversion, £5.56 cost per acquisition at £70, which yields an expected gross profit of £28. Leaving an expected net profit of £22.44 per sale.)
£80 mock sale: 8 people click the link and click on the payment gateway. (20% conversion, £8.33 cost per acquisition at £80, which yields an expected gross profit of £38. Leaving an expected net profit of £29.67 per sale.)
The outcomes of the mock sale show that the optimum pricing point is £80, bringing an expected net profit per sale of £29.67
Obviously, you can also see how the flip side would work; sometimes the cost per acquisition is higher than the expected profit per sale, which would show that the idea is not commercially viable, regardless of how much demand there is.
Nice idea
Thanks Oscar!