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Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project?

#41

Post by rhtgrg »

I had a recent side project, a pdf generator of sorts that I made to solve my own problem.

I decided to try selling it, even though I was 100% confident that no one would buy it. During the first couple of days I’d also overpriced it, because I didn’t want anyone to buy it before I’d had the chance to fix a couple of bugs.

To my surprise (and frankly, shock) people were buying it. I was sure that requests for refunds would start rolling in immediately due to the aforementioned bugs, but they didn’t. I eventually lowered the price and even made it free, because the money was immaterial to me and I’d already learned my lesson from this project. (I also felt guilty for not setting up the infrastructure to ship updated versions to buyers, so I took solace in the fact they could get them for free on their own.)

I might go back to it, but the product is seasonal and doesn’t create recurring revenue so I’ll more likely be focusing on other things.

I’ve never had a project that hasn’t generated at least some excitement in the relevant community, so I might just have a knack for these things. Too bad I only just realized I could’ve been making some money from it!

Re: Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project?

#42

Post by 71a54xd »

First you have to make an important distinction, one that seems oddly difficult for many here on HN - you have to decide if you are earnestly committing time to this project *to make money*. If that's the case, now your time has value and you have to actually figure out if an audience exists and furthermore if that audience (which may or may not exist) is actually willing to pay for your solution. I chose the word solution because solutions implicitly derive value, a new note-taking markup or photo sharing app does not.

The second step is to field your solution and see if people are happy with the problem you've solved. Marketing is also a concept far too often underestimated or overlooked on HN. For instance, I wrote some software based on complaints from a very specific diy agriculture subreddit. Once I reached a bare minimum MVP I posted it on reddit, people were excited because a cool tech thing solved a problem they had. They shared with their non-internet friends and orders / emails started steadily flowing in. Unfortunately, the time/revenue ratio wasn't good enough and I basically broke even on the project.

That said, think about the problem deeply before spending valuable time "validating" what might be a solution nobody actually needs.

Re: Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project?

#43

Post by nojs »

soared wrote: post #28
Winterflow3r wrote: post #22

Some things I've found helpful (I run a niche search engine and curation platform): 1) Find niche subreddits where people that are your target audience hang out, observe communities, help people out, participate in the discussion, if someone has a problem that your product can solve, then help them out in the comments and see what their feedback is 2) Learn a bit of SEO - you don't need to be an expert to fix some lo…

Agreed on #1. Once youre a legitimate member of a subreddit, post a beta version of your site. If it actually provides value and is useful (and you are not shilling), people should love it. Here is an example: https://old.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/qshpov/i_started_ma... 522 votes and 51 comments on a relatively small subreddit put it in near the top for a day or two. Idea validated.

> Once youre a legitimate member of a subreddit

This part is important. I’ve been caught out on Reddit sharing things I’ve built, expecting a “Show HN” type of response but shot down for promoting a product. Unlike here, most people on Reddit aren’t builders and mods tend to have a heavy hand for anything promotional (even if it’s free and you think it’s useful).

Re: Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project?

#44

Post by pryelluw »

Start with a problem and not with a solution. Specially a good problem to solve. How do you know if it’s a good problem to solve?

Im my experience using Buffet’s approach to investing works well. Invest in good companies at a fair price and not in fair companies at a good price.

That means that the problem will usually have a higher cost to solve (time, effort, money).

Now, this is my opinion. Take it with a grain of salt. In the end, a focused approach to problem finding tends to work best.

Re: Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project?

#45

Post by goatherders »

baxtr wrote: post #33
goatherders wrote: post #14

Sell 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 didn't say to ask if someone would buy it. I said to actually sell it to someone. As in, collect the money or get a contract signed.

Re: Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project?

#46

Post by bennythomson »

rhtgrg wrote: post #41

I had a recent side project, a pdf generator of sorts that I made to solve my own problem. I decided to try selling it, even though I was 100% confident that no one would buy it. During the first couple of days I’d also overpriced it, because I didn’t want anyone to buy it before I’d had the chance to fix a couple of bugs. To my surprise (and frankly, shock) people were buying it. I was sure that requests for refunds…

Would you be willing to link to it?

Re: Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project?

#47

Post by squeaky-clean »

Disruptive_Dave wrote: post #37
goatherders wrote: post #14

Sell 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).

It's implied when they said sell it that you would take the actual payment.

Re: Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project?

#49

Post by lumost »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #26
chillfox wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet frame.io seems to be doing very well, it is popping up more and more places.

That is a good point, I haven’t been following film industry closely at all for the last 5 years but > Adobe’s $1bn acquisition of Frame.io took many in the industry by surprise [1] I am surprised. Perhaps this is a case of me not talking to enough people, or maybe people really don’t know what they want until you show it to them. [1] https://www.ibc.org/trends/what-frameios-1bn-sale-says-about...

Collaboration means different things in different fields. Did the filmmakers think - secure, easy to share, organized, and fast film editing software all provided in a browser with instant access to expensive render servers? Or did they think publicly editable film with easy access to a pool of “collaborators” to help with editing?

Many users of google docs don’t use private docs or the enterprise version.

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