I’ve heard good things about this book: http://momtestbook.com/
Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project?
31–40 of 80 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project?
#32I’ve heard good things about this book: http://momtestbook.com/
I bought this book after it came up in a previous thread on HN. It really is good. Short, simple, and direct.
Re: Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project?
#33Sell one unit to someone. In fact, do it before you start coding. Coworkers, business contacts. "If I built X would you pay for it? Yes? Cool, what's a fair price?" Get one of those first, then open your terminal. Aside from showing there is a non-zero market for your wares, it also proves that you are willing to do the hard part which is the selling, not the building. If you won't do the hard part then you are wasti…
According to "The Mom Test" that's actually something you should avoid doing. If you ask people they might answer "yes" because
- they're being nice to you
- they think in that very moment they would but in a real situation they wouldn't
In my experience, reducing "value risk", which OPs question is essentially about, has to happened incrementally. So build something small and then try to sell it to someone. Work with them to improve the product and then try to sell it more people and so on.
The veed.io blog has some nice articles with great insight into this topic: https://www.veed.io/blog/
Re: Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did this with an idea I had. I thought of making a collaborative online video editor, like Google docs for video. First thing I did was talk to filmmakers. The idea was unanimously panned. I was immediately told it sounded like a terrible idea. Turns out filmmakers don’t want collaboration in post production, they want control. My tool would have taken that away from them. This saved me hundreds of hours of develop…
And yet frame.io seems to be doing very well, it is popping up more and more places.
> And yet frame.io seems to be doing very well, it is popping up more and more places.
The key is knowing who your target customer is and solve for them [0]. Then, you are in a good place where you either fire ones who aren't [1] or change your solution (rather, start with a burning, hair-on-fire problem your target customer has, not solutions) [2].
Typically in a b2b setting, one starts out by addressing all needs (must-have) of their target customer as opposed to their wants (good-to-have). That is, other customers whose wants are NOT your target customers needs, you do not address them in the early stages of the product development [3]; and price / position [4] the product accordingly [5].
When changing the solution, figure out if there's another much bigger adjacent problem, that you weren't paying attention to [6], staring you down [7].
[0] https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done
[1] https://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/users-you-don-t-want
[2] https://www.ycombinator.com/library/8g-how-to-get-startup-id...
[3] https://apenwarr.ca/log/20211024
[4] https://hackernoon.com/obviously-awesome-a-product-positioni...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_mix#Lauterborn's_4_C...
[6] http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html
[7] https://tomblomfield.com/post/33506878578/making-something-p...
Re: Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project?
#35I’m doing a surfing class booking platform.
I felt a need for something like this as a surfing student: I was booking classes via messaging/phone.
A few years go by and I forget about it, but recently I meet the owners of two surfing schools who tell me about the need for a such a booking system.
Trying to launch soon.
Hope this counts as validation.
Re: Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project?
#36I’m doing a surfing class booking platform. I felt a need for something like this as a surfing student: I was booking classes via messaging/phone. A few years go by and I forget about it, but recently I meet the owners of two surfing schools who tell me about the need for a such a booking system. Trying to launch soon. Hope this counts as validation.
Would you be interested in a call to share experience?
I'm currently developing a similar platform for music practice space (https://noisycamp.com).
Re: Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project?
#37Sell one unit to someone. In fact, do it before you start coding. Coworkers, business contacts. "If I built X would you pay for it? Yes? Cool, what's a fair price?" Get one of those first, then open your terminal. Aside from showing there is a non-zero market for your wares, it also proves that you are willing to do the hard part which is the selling, not the building. If you won't do the hard part then you are wasti…
That's not a sale. That's a question with absolutely zero investment or action asked of the participant.
Take an actual payment. Even if it's for vaporware (that you can eventually deliver on and that's properly messaged).
Re: Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project?
#38The single necessary and sufficient condition for a business, says MIT’s Bill Aulet, is a paying customer.
Re: Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project?
#39Sell one unit to someone. In fact, do it before you start coding. Coworkers, business contacts. "If I built X would you pay for it? Yes? Cool, what's a fair price?" Get one of those first, then open your terminal. Aside from showing there is a non-zero market for your wares, it also proves that you are willing to do the hard part which is the selling, not the building. If you won't do the hard part then you are wasti…
According to "The Mom Test" that's actually something you should avoid doing. If you ask people they might answer "yes" because - they're being nice to you - they think in that very moment they would but in a real situation they wouldn't In my experience, reducing "value risk", which OPs question is essentially about, has to happened incrementally. So build something small and then try to sell it to someone. Work wit…
I mean if they actually cut you a check for it and you are talking to people outside your close circle of friends, then this could be some part of the post mom test process.
Someone literally handing you money for your thing kinda invalidates a lot of other processes, theories, etc.
Re: Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project?
#40Set yourself a discriminating target.
A friend’s kid asked me for some advice about his startup. It is a SAAS in the elder care space; he’d developed it for his grandmother and had a few friends using it as well.
He asked this same question (except it wasn’t a side project). I suggested, “If you can get 50 people whom you don’t already know to use this product for more than a month then you might have a winner.”
The three keys here are:
1 - more than a month meant they actually found it useful. For his SAAS it would imply they’d stick around after a starter period month.
2 - people he didn’t know: his friends and their parents might take extra effort to use it. He had to find people with actual need
3 - 50 is arbitrary but not terrible; a dozen or so doesn’t tell you a lot while 250 probably doesn’t tell you a lot more than 50 or 75
In the past six months he’s tweaked his product based on feedback from this effort and has gotten into the high 20s.