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Why not use this product? [radical candor requested]

I recently launched the MVP of LandingPing, a landing page creator tailored for indie hackers that have a product idea but haven't validated it yet.

The value prop is:

  • Free for now, will become freemium eventually with usage based tiers
  • No code
  • Integrated mailing list signup
  • Updates sent out to subscribers also appear on landing page as "pings" (kickstarter style)
  • The editing limits help the creator avoid wasting time thinking about branding, images, etc and instead focus on conveying their value prop.

My insight is that, from personal experience and that of fellow IHers, we tend to waste a lot of time building shiny landing pages for ideas that haven't even been validated yet. I think this comes from the fact that we are subconsciously comparing our landing page with those of top-tier "startups" like Stripe or MailChimp since the medium is the same and we feel we'll be judged in comparison to those pages. There is some merit to this bias because when we see a landing page our expectations are automatically set very high due to the aforementioned conditioning. By using a blog-style medium instead, you brake the mould and avoid the bias, clearly conveying that this is a page for an idea you're working on, not a finished product.

What I'm asking is to put yourself in the shoes of a creator with a product idea that they want to validate, and tell me why you would pass on using LandingPing to do that. The aim is to figure out what's missing naturally, as I presume that an MVP can't already have reached product-market fit on the first try.

on March 1, 2021
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    I think the root problem here is that creators are spending too long on their landing pages. Landing pages are a great artefact for running interviews to validate an idea. Only as you gain confidence in your idea should you spend more time fine-tuning the landing page. The risk is you become too attached pre-validation and become a victim of the sunken cost fallacy. So I guess, with that in mind, starting with a simple idea, pre-landing page, does make sense. I'm just not sure how much it could/would help to validate that idea. I hope this helps. Would happily answer more questions if it's helpful.

  2. 1

    Hey Barry, I like this and I would probably use it. I like the simplicity. Every idea should start with words. User sign up is an obvious plus. The 'update' functionality is kinda cool and again I think I would use it. Of course, the lifetime of this tool wouldn't be too long if the product actually gained some traction.

    A couple of barriers that jump out at me:

    1. I wouldn't want any sort of switching moat preventing me from taking subscribers and putting them into mailchimp / hubspot.

    2. If it's not really a landing page that users are clicking to, the you could potentially get more traction by just posting the text directly in whichever forum you are using to distribute? Thoughts?

    1. 1

      Hey Ric, thanks for the feedback.

      Yeah point #1 makes sense, I would put that feature in a payed tier (or maybe one-off payment to export), but for now I should probably implement that feature as people might be warry of using LandingPing because of that barrier. They could always send a link to their landing page with signup form as a ping though!

      For point #2, instead of rewriting the text each time, the point would be to post a link to the page, that can definitely have more content than a simple forum post as it also includes all the updates and an email signup form. Do you think it doesn't provide enough value?