The first version of VIDI wasn't a product.
The first version of VIDI wasn't a product.
It was a single page on a free domain.
No accounts.
No dashboard.
No pricing.
No real infrastructure.
Just an idea and a question:
"Does anyone actually care about this problem?"
What's interesting is that many things people associate with startups came later.
The product came later.
The features came later.
The positioning came later.
Even the thesis evolved over time.
The only thing that existed from day one was curiosity.
I'm glad I started that way.
Because building something small forced reality to answer much faster.
A lot of founders think validation starts after the product exists.
I'm starting to think it starts much earlier.
Sometimes all you need is a simple way to test whether the problem deserves more of your time.
14 weeks later, I'm still learning where that line actually is.
I had the same problem early on, people were happy to say a workflow was painful but that didnt tell me if theyd actually switch. What helped me was asking for one tiny commitment, even just a sample file or a real task to run, because thats where interest turns into signal. If you want, I can share the short onboarding prompt I used for that.
The line you're hunting for, whether a problem deserves more of your time, gets a lot sharper when you stop measuring interest and start measuring cost. Curiosity is free, so it's a weak signal. People will tell you a problem is real all day. The validation that actually predicts anything is when someone does something slightly inconvenient: hands over an email, lets you run the workflow manually for them, pre-pays, drops you into their Slack. I see this constantly with the pre-seed founders I back. The ones who stall spent months on polite "yeah that's annoying" feedback. The ones who move got one person to commit something early. Starting with a page and a question was the right instinct. The next version of that test is asking for a little skin in the game.
That's a good distinction.
The first signal I trusted wasn't interest. It was people coming back with another contract after the first review.
At that point they weren't evaluating the product anymore. They were using it to make decisions.
the 'still learning where that line is' at the end is the most honest thing in the post. fourteen weeks in and you're still figuring out when the problem deserves more time versus when you should stop is a completely reasonable place to be and almost nobody admits it that directly. what's the current signal telling you and are you leaning toward more time or less
Honestly, I think time will answer that better than I can right now. Still learning and paying attention to the signals.
I remember that first post you made. Every time I see a follow up post I feel a tiny bit proud. Keep up the good work!
Thanks, I appreciate that. It's been a pretty interesting 14 weeks so far. Still learning every week.
For anyone curious about what I've been building over the last 14 weeks:
https://vidicontract.tech/
Been following the progress for a while now. It's pretty cool seeing how much VIDI has evolved in just a few months. Keep going 👏
Appreciate that. Looking back, it's honestly surprising how much changed from those early versions. Still feels like day one in many ways though.
Yeah, that’s usually how it starts - simple things feel big at first. Good luck with what’s next 👏
Thanks, Ben. Appreciate the support.
Good perspective. The nuance here is that most people don't articulate this clearly. What's your next step?
Still learning in real time. Trying to follow the signals before making assumptions.
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starting from ‘does anyone care?’ rather than the dashboard is hard. most people can’t resist building first.
Honestly, it felt easier than building first. Curiosity came naturally. Spending months building before knowing whether anyone cared felt much harder to me.
yeah, building before you know anyone cares is rough - you're burning energy with no signal to steer by. curiosity at least gives you something to move toward. how long did that phase run for VIDI?
I don't think it ends. The product changes, the questions change, but the learning part stays the same.
The cleanest validation I trust is when someone tries to give you money before you are ready to take it. Words are free, and even a waitlist email is cheap. The real flip is a credit card, a deposit, or someone asking when can I have this without you prompting. I have killed ideas that had hundreds of signups and pushed hard on ones where ten people were practically pulling it out of my hands. Speed of pull beats size of interest every time. So my version of your question: has anyone tried to pay for it or use it before it was finished? That one moment usually tells you more than 14 weeks of polite encouragement.
Not before it was finished, but before it felt polished.
A few people started uploading additional contracts long before I thought the product was "ready."
That was probably the first signal I trusted. They weren't evaluating the analysis itself - they were coming back with another decision to make.
The line you're circling — when a problem "deserves more time" — I only found mine in hindsight too. Building a tiny iOS memo app solo, I treated email signups as validation for weeks, and it was basically noise. The real signal came the first time someone messaged me genuinely annoyed that a feature was missing. Irritation, not praise, was what told me they'd actually folded the thing into their day. Across your 14 weeks, has the strongest signal been people asking for more, or people complaining about what's broken?
Honestly, probably neither yet. It's still early enough that I'm mostly watching behavior rather than requests. The strongest signal so far has been seeing some people come back on their own later, not necessarily what they say.
the single page before product thing resonates. I started with a dream journal for myself before building anything. three years of entries told me the problem was real before I wrote a single line of code. the validation was just living with it long enough to see patterns nobody else was tracking
That's fair. The only thing I'd add is that a problem being real for us doesn't always mean it's real for a market. I've found it much easier to trust signals that come from other people's behavior than my own.
"Building something small forced reality to answer much faster" —
this is the whole game.
I'm at almost exactly the stage you're describing right now: single
page, real domain, no product behind it yet, just testing whether
the problem is worth my time. So your "where is that line" question
is the one I keep turning over too.
The tentative answer I've landed on: the line isn't interest, it's
when someone takes an action that costs them something. Interest is
infinite and free — people will happily tell you an idea is great.
The signal flips the moment you ask for a real commitment, even a
tiny one, and watch how many people actually follow through versus
quietly drop off. That gap is the truth.
What's been the clearest "this problem deserves more time" moment
for you across the 14 weeks? Was it a specific user reaction, or
more of a slow accumulation that you only saw in hindsight?
Agreed. The challenge isn't building. It's staying willing to change your assumptions when reality disagrees with them.
This is a good reminder that validation is not a launch event.
Sometimes a product being “ready” can actually make the learning slower, because you get attached to the thing you built instead of the problem you’re testing.
The hard part is staying curious enough to let reality change the product, positioning, or even the customer segment.
Agreed. Early on, staying attached to the problem seems a lot more valuable than staying attached to the solution.
Starting this small is underrated. A single page can tell you more truth than a full product ever will.
Did you notice any pattern in who actually cared about the problem?
More than anything, I noticed that interest came from places I didn't originally expect. That's one reason I try to be careful about making assumptions too early.
Great example of starting with signal instead of structure. Most people reverse it and overbuild before they ever learn anything real.
What stood out most in early responses—interest, confusion, or indifference?
Probably a mix of all three. The interesting part wasn't any single response—it was seeing which reactions kept repeating over time.
Love this approach—so many founders skip straight to building and miss how much signal a simple page can give.
Curious how your thinking changed once real users started reacting to it?
Less from any single piece of feedback and more from recurring patterns. Individual opinions can be noisy, but repeated behavior is much harder to ignore.
Really good reminder that validation is about exposure, not polish. A simple page can surface truth faster than a built product.
Curious—what surprised you most in the feedback you got early on?
Honestly, how differently people framed the problem. The feedback mattered, but the bigger lesson was realizing users often think about a problem very differently than the founder does.
Interesting. I remember checking out VIDI when it already had the login and registration flow. At what point did it evolve from that original single-page version into something that felt like a real product to you?
Interesting question. Honestly, not after a specific feature. It started feeling real once people began trusting it with actual contracts rather than just testing it out.
Makes sense. A lot of things in business start much smaller than people think. Looking at VIDI now, it's hard to imagine it started as just a single page.
Funny enough, at the time even the single page felt like a lot. Looking back, it was incredibly simple compared to where things are now.