What is the biggest problem in doing validation on Indie Hackers?
Ideas and Validation channel is inspirational.
However, I realized there’s a common pattern here. And I’m confused.
IHers tend to validate their:
- Ideas, in their early shape
- Landing pages, design, and specs
- Poll: If I do X, would you do Y?
- Competition: Building a product Z alternatives
Do you find these validation methods effective? How’d you ensure your hypothesis going to the right audience?
Keen to hear your thoughts.
Unless your target audience is IH, I'd say none of those are effective at anything other than generate more ideas. You have to talk to actual customers! Read the Mom Test.
Totally! Why no one bring this up frequently?
The truth is ... this is what happens to forums :P
Context is always important
I don't think most of these are proper "validation"
But they have their own merits
It's asking stuff from a creator crowd not end customers
You'd get a different view point that's good for it's own things
For example
If you ask your customers about you LP, they might only say if it's clear or not, giving some emotional level at best
On IH you'd actually get advice on how to improve based on seeing 100-1,000s of them and actually having a deep thought on what makes a good one
Will you buy/pay for example is a bad question that seems good at first but is proven to provide detrimental value commonly
Wonderful summary. This is why I wanna bring this up @hatkyinc
How should IHers improve their validation / ask relevant questions?
"The lean startup" has the basis of everything
For validation specifically many recommend "the mom test", I can recommend https://youtu.be/XXBaBbR04oU
"Think is the process of asking and answering questions, want a better answer, ask a better question"
You can add 5th point, which is "I am pretending to have an idea for validation , I'll reply with a link to my X or Y in hope to sell something".
Big slap for a lot of users :o
How should we avoid this?
Not up to us. It is classified under bootstraping, so it's here.
i think the biggest problem in "doing validation on IH" is that people expect IH to do that for them...
... but that's not what IH is here for!
IH is good for:
#buildintheopenand ship!... among many other things. customer acquisition / validation comes through working the above 3 things and taking those convos / data into your model.
Totally agree with you @8bit - I bring this question because I noticed a lot of users literally rely and believe in too much what people say about their idea / problem / product etc
And without self-critical thinking. Same here, I’m leaning towards relationship building and learning from case studies!
Very challenging! It is a process of self-education. I think what you're doing is great to bring awareness. And a lot of people are helping the starters here. But I guess it is hard to totally educate everyone to be on the same level, after all, it is the experience that teaches.
💥
IH has a lot of developers so it's good for validating what most developers know well. If your product is about the fashion industry for instance, relying only on IH to give you feedback is a bad idea.
Also the fact that someone was successful with one project does not make him or her an expert on everything... It's good to take every advice with a pinch of salt and get feedback from a diverse group of people in many places.
I have a bit of a contrarian take here, but I find indiehackers to be a very useful validation platform. Granted that your product targets startups / devs / marketers.
Most indiehackers don't have much money, so convincing them to buy your product is hard. However they give tons of feedback to help you get there.
They're basically one of the harshest reality check for your product, and will help you refine your offering until it's bulletproof.
When you start promoting it to bigger and more forgivable audiences, selling will seem relatively easy in comparison.
(again, this works if your product targets people "similar" to indiehackers).
Thanks for sharing @dagorenouf - how was your validation process on IH looks like? And what’s something fellow IHers can learn from :)?
Basically just by asking for feedback on relevant threads, and posting on "what are you working on this month?". People are generally eager to tell you what they think.
You can't necessarily use IH to validate your product if they're not you're target market, but it can still be super useful to get feedback on your UX / messaging.
I create polls here, and for sure I get some good feedback from Indiehackers, but I also am able to then send that post to others. Basically utilizing Indiehackers as a free public polling platform for my own benefit.