Validate before building a small project?

I was wondering about that exact thing too. If everyone without a big credibility yet has this "preorder my non-existing tool", we won't get anywhere.

If you have a big following that also happens to be your target audience, fine, selling before building will work. But that's not people like us, it's mostly twitter influencers that have products for Twitter or youtubers that have youtube products.

I think we still have to validate, but a bit differently. You'll have to do things that don't scale and reach out to people that are your target audience. Cause they are not already following you, you have to do cold outreach + win their trust. It's harder but still possible.

You may think "well, why validate in the first place, I can just write the code in 4-6 weeks", but remember that you are not only validating your idea in a boolean sense (validated or not validated), but you are constantly keeping in touch with potential customers and pivoting and forming your idea around their problems and current toolset.

I'm building products for companies for 14 years already and you have two options with a "small project".
You can create a simple Google Form to send to your contacts, friends and social media, asking questions about features you're not sure about, or just general questions so you would know if there's even a small market for your idea. You can dig deeper into the data, iterate the form, etc.
Or you can just build an MVP and put it out there ASAP and collect real data.
Most of the time I recommend something in the middle – validate the idea quickly and then build it, track it and iterate it live.

Hey,

The project we are working on is in the video marketing space and has intense competition.

We know that we won't be able to get to market fast enough if we start pitching our product later on. So, we are constantly posting on almost all of our social media platforms and trying to embed our product name into at least one potential customer daily!

So yes, the approach to building your brand before the launch will go a long way.

Starting is tough and so getting at least one signup a day without even launching is a huge win :D

Check out what we have in the past two weeks of building our product UpEmbed

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/upembed-two-week-anniversary-6ce289f4d9

I think for small apps/solutions you should just build first.

Selling before building makes sense if you're building a large solution and you already have credibility.

In my opinion, you get credibility by building small useful solutions that people use.

Take a look at Ankur Tyagi, I just saw this tweet right now (https://twitter.com/TheAnkurTyagi/status/1615641245866393601), he is now writing his book on technical writing and he's already made a lot from the pre-orders and he's writing chapter five now.
He managed to do this because he has already written a lot of technical articles and other articles and threads around that topic. So people trust him in that field thus they buy before the product is complete.

When building small products I suggest that you solve one thing really well. For example, a Twitter bio generator tool only does one thing. This will save you time and effort when building.

If your end goal is revenue I suggest you validate the way Tibo and his TweetHunter team did (https://twitter.com/tibo_maker/status/1614966983698653184).
They would spend only one week building a product and then launch it. If It made money (that's the only way they validate a product), they would work more on it. If it didn't make money they would abandon it.

Spending 4-6 weeks on a product is really long I think. Try half that time and validate it (people giving you their money). If it makes money, you put your efforts into it.

The only time you should spend 4-6 weeks is if you can't build it faster than that. I want to build small products too but I can't build them in one week like Tibo did, so I will spend as long as I need while keeping in mind that the product should only do one thing.

I hope this helps

You may use tools like Checkmyidea-IA or Validatorai to automatically validate your idea.

It will help you to :

' Identify if your idea meets a real market need
' What methods to test the viability of your idea quickly and at a low cost
' Analyze competition for your idea
' Determine if your idea is technically feasible with your skills
' The needs and behaviors of your users
' To market your idea and acquire your first users

I usually did not validate. Did fail around 5 times and succeed once. I kinda believe once you stop being romantic about your own ideas, and honestly focus on solving people's problems and making them money and saving their time - you can trust your gut feeling more

I think, trying to break through the noise in hackernews, indienhackers, producthunt and making buzz, if it makes buzz, people talking, uplikes, commenting, then you might be on to something?
Problem is, the way I see it, if you got a "unique idea", someone might steal it?

Obviously, you don't have the major risk of investing a huge amount of time if it will only take 4-6 weeks of your time. In some cases, founders spend years building a product only to find out that there is no need for it. I would ask you how upset would you be to find out after spending over a month building that there is no demand. If you want to avoid that scenario then you need to conduct customer interviews to validate the problem. Doing customer discovery is not only about validating the problem but also gleaning insights that can help you plan the best MVP possible.

If waiting for the perfect idea keeps you from building something and getting started, I would say build something within 2-4 weeks and try to sell it.

But if you just want to avoid the hard part of validation, that's the wrong approach.

Of course, it's still possible to just build something.
If it's your first time, you'll learn a lot.
And, this may sound harsh, but if you don't have customers after building a product, you may learn how important validation is.
This is not to discourage you from not validating an idea, but just a reminder.

Also, keep in mind that the smaller your audience, the harder it is to validate, just because of the reach.
I would still encourage you to validate your idea, at least as you develop it.

In the end there is no single answer, but if you would regret spending a few weeks building something nobody wants, maybe validation is the way to go.

This is something even I thought through, Manish. If you're launching a product for the first time, then it's super hard to land presales as people wouldn't have any trust

You could do one thing. Offer limited-time access for your product say 2 months free but in exchange for feedback. I wouldn't advise making it completely free but this would help gauge the interest

Other than that, the only way is to try to launch within 3-4 weeks and see the interest. Work on the feedback and iterate. You can also build an audience by sharing your learning along the way.

And the next time you launch, things would be different since you'll now have an audience to whom you can pre-sell

I learned early on in my startup journey to if possible sell before you build.

Just let them know when they buy it'll take a week or a few to onboard them 😉

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I make pitch decks instead of landing pages and go out to talk to people individually. I've done this for games, VR apps, and business models.

When 10-25 people resonate with the idea I may build it but if 1 person buys it then I'll at least build a prototype.

I think landing pages are great for seeing if your idea resonates broadly but you can start generating revenue before having a product by explaining the benefits/outcomes to customers then selling the app, but letting them know you'll need 2-4 weeks to get started because you're a new company

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As an example my media studio is building an app. There are two reasons why we're doing this:

• Our clients want more communication (mainly more metadata on projects)

• We believe we can scale by having an app to free up part of our time

BUT even though we have coding resources doesn't mean we should instantly use them. The first bullet is nearly guaranteed as long as we test the app while developing, but the second (and arguably more important point) is can we scale?

This is an assumption until we get a new client.

During winter break I wrote sales documentation like presentations, message templates, etc then during the first week of Jan went to social media did cold outreach and in the second week of Jan got a new client.

This proved that the new app business model can help us scale clientele because our sales cycle went from 90+ days to ~14 days (we're seeing this happening again and again with people in our network now that we're letting them know our new business model).

We haven't told anyone we're releasing an app (but the sales deck is presented like app-based startup pitches) but we've grown our revenue by knowing our business model and talking to potential customers.