Idea validation...sort of
by FarmerDee77Like many of you, my startup journey began at my 9-to-5 job, where I understood the value of planning application data in OSINT and intelligence investigations. Realising this niche had its pains and shortcomings, I decided to hack away on a personal project that would aggregate planning applications from local councils.
I smashed together an MVP using a fleet of web-scrapers, a basic HTML front end, Flask middleware and a MongoDB database. Within a few months, I had a working prototype with enough data to be valuable.
Before dedicating more time and resources into the project, I needed validation. So, where did I go? Reddit, the birthplace of many great ideas and, admittedly, many not-so-great ones (see previous unsuccessful indie hacker projects). The response was positive with several peers and industry experts reaching out and sharing the value it could bring to their workflow.
