You have 1 day to prove demand. what will you do?
You have 0 twitter followers.
You have 0 social followers.
You have no email list.
You have $0.
You have 1 day to ideate a new idea, validate and prove demand of your next product.
How will you do it?
- Are you going to scratch your own itch and call it a day?
- Or copy a competitor's idea, and call it proved?
- Are you going to start building a core MVP right away?
- Are you going to build a full landing page (or) something else?
- Are you going to post Google forms all around?
The goal is to prove that someone is willing to pay for a product like yours / would choose you over a competitor
EDIT: By time boxing it, you'll now cut out the time taking steps / constant fine tuning and will be forced to put yourself out.
Trending on Indie Hackers
Define a target market - 30min
Find a problem (forums, help centers) & solution - 2h
Define success metrics (what proves demand?) - 30min
Landing page (Carrd) + CTA directing to a long detailed Typeform with payment form - 2h
Distribution - 4h
a) Relevant subreddits
b) Find a competitor, email/tweet their users (use testimonial sections, google "-site:competitor.com + "powered by"" or something similar)
c) Grab a $75 ad coupon for Google Ads
Analyse feedback - 1h
That's a 10 hour day, with a reasonable 1 hour lunch break. Seems doable if you don't spend to much time looking for what tools to use etc.
holy craps man. that
site:competitor.com + "powered by"really works! I was blocked on how I should find users but now I have some leads! Thank youYeah I love doing that. Doesn't work for everything obviously, but if your tool is around landing pages, CMS, stuff like that, works really well.
Alternatively you can also try to find URLs like xxxxx.wordpress.com and exclude the wordpress.com results.
And if your tool is more like a sort of tech you install on websites, I suggest using BuiltWith. They can also provide lists of websites that use a particular tech, which could either be a competitor or something you integrate with.
What would you have in the Typeform and how would you handle payments if you don't have a product to deliver yet?
I would fill it with questions to 1) stress the problem, 2) validate people are motivated enough to at least fill in a long form.
For payment, depends on the solution to the problem. Perhaps for starters you can make a database or guide aiming to start solving the problem, before a SaaS does it in a more complete way.
Or maybe you can cash in the payment and reimburse immediately? Or do a fake payment form?
ask Reddit!
## Morning: come up with the idea
Start with the market.
## Afternoon: validation
Here are some ways to validate the idea you came up with.
## Other questions to ask
Ahrefs Keyword Generator looks like an awesome tool.
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I don't know much about promotion.
Instead of making something and then promoting it, you could try doing the reverse. First find the people you want to serve, then read about the problems they have, and then build a solution for them. Because you started with the market it will be easier to sell the thing because you can just show up where they are already hanging out and give it to them.
If it sounds like I know what I am talking about, I don't. I have been following this community for a long time and what I wrote above is common advice here.
Good luck.
Hope it helps!
Maybe this will sound stupid. What will happen if you can't prove demand in 1 day?
As long as you put yourself out there, you've won the challenge. It's to just time box yourself so you can push it out.
Yeah I see what you mean Sai. Let's then push ourselves
For B2C, create basic landing page for your product, also add a signup button for users to drop their email to be notified when you launch. Go where your target users are found (forums, twitter, reddit etc..) and see how many sign-ups you get.
Agree with @hamishcoding. But set up pre-orders. You only know theirs demand when people part with money.
This. I would go as far as making it a fake buy button so I know there is legit interest.
I actually love working to constraints like this – it really breeds creativity.
I'd spend my first hour writing up my idea in way that can be shared, and then put it online – I'd spend the rest of the day getting people to look at it and give me their feedback. I'd find these people by reaching out via any channel. Even without followers you can search the web to find people that either are your potential customers or peers.
At GoSquared we did something similar as a team – we did a "launch day" where we all had a day to launch a SaaS business. Mixed results as a team – it really proved the value of building a strong following on social media etc. But I also wouldn't confuse "social media following" for "network" – there's a lot of amazing people out there, who, believe it or not, don't have Twitter / Instagram / whatever else.
Getting out there and getting to know people rarely seems like the most important thing to do today, but it enables you in the future in so many unexpected ways.
A little more on that launch day we did: https://www.gosquared.com/blog/what-happened-when-we-started-7-companies-in-one-day
Talk to people. Pick up the phone, send an email, etc. I think outbound sales is very underestimated today, especially early on for a new company.
Only one other person has mentioned this thus far but PICKING UP THE PHONE and banging out 10 cold calls to target customers would pretty close. As long as you talked about their problems before ever talking about any proposed solutions you have in mind. You could do this while you were doing a lot of the other ideas here as well.
I'd be stuck, lol, but I'm looking to learn from the other answers here.
If you have few dollars to spend - download eBook by @farez
https://farez.gumroad.com/l/startstrong
Most of the advise from this eBook is well known - but it gives you quick reference to keep you from fall-in-love with bad ideas.
Thank you @meera. That is indeed the purpose of the eBook.
It's a workbook format, with Google Sheet and PDF templates, to get you answering a set of questions about your idea in a consistent way.
Farez
Go down my list of ideas
Pick one
Go to a free landingpage builder (growthlist, carrd)
Build a landing page with a sign up option
Go to every forum with potential customers and share that link
This is awesome. We forget how much we can get done in less time. I'm guilty of this right now. I'm going to radically reduce the time bucket I've allocated for validation for my current project.
And some great tips here.
Thanks for the reminder!
So interesting how we perceive things - I took it as read that the idea was ready to be tested at the start of the day, but a couple of responders here have factored coming up with the idea in the first place into that day. Wow.
I may just do this challenge next week.
I’m working on validating an idea for TurboNav, in reality I’m scratching my own itch so I plan on building the app anyway. But, I’m three days in and sadly I only have 3 signups. I don’t think I’m being aggressive by adding myself constraints. So I think this is a good challenge
Whip up a landing page, and promote it aggressively, including paid ads.
I am in the process of doing this exact thing without the aggressive deadline though lol
i love this
Order domino's
Let's hope the delivery arrives within an 1 hour! xD
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Lol okay. Obviously things takes time, this is just a fun thought experiment to see how to minimize time to validation
EDIT: changed it from 1hr to 1day