Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It

It's said that amazon asks their product makers to write a press release about the release of the product and work backwards from there.

Working backwards has its uses...

I recently wanted validation on a product I had already finished developing

I thought I needed it so others will too. I put in a lot of time architecting it, designing it with careful UX and UI.

When it came time to show and tell through a demo video i couldn't create a simple enough one that explains what it does.

So anyway I posted it in some communities and people we just confused and nobody signed up.

So I had to abandon the project as there were no takers

Cut to about a week back where I had another idea... This time instead of simply developing it further, I jumped straight to see if I can create a explainer video of the product. So with zero expectations about it working I made one without audio or music or even subtitles and posted on reddit. It was just a screen recording of it working on my laptop.

To my surprise people wanted it. Some even demanding it. I quickly put up a "coming soon" website to capture emails. 36 people gave their emails! Many more I could message on reddit once I am ready.

Here is the link to the reddit post... https://www.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/13xm1s5/i_made_this_seo_keyword_searching_thingie_for_my/

here is what I wrote...

------- Headline: I made this SEO keyword searching thingie for my own needs... Does anyone want it? Its very ugly at the moment

Description: Lets say you want to rank high on Google for the keyword "pet dog care"

Before you write any content, you want to know what questions people ask on Google, Who is ranking on the top 10 and what other keywords do they rank for?, and 'Google Suggestions' for the phrase.

So I made one and I find it damn bloody useful when creating highly relevant and SEO potimised content. Wonder if anyone else finds this stuff useful.

I have been burnt building unnecessary stuff before so I am very careful to validate first now. I will only develop this further is there is any interest here :-) -------

The ugly video I shared... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-873SkJ2RI

link to the coming soon page... https://keywordranking.me/

Now I am developing the product into something others could use in collaboration with actual users and i have to do it fast since so many are waiting. This is a first for me. This is probably what product Market fit feels like... probably.

I would recommend reading both Inspired and Empowered by Marty Cagan to help you think about your product journey. Very relevant to what you'll be building, and personally I found Empowered challenged me in ways that both made me uncomfortable and also better at my job as a Product Manager.

There’s a balance to be had. Show your thing too early and it can die. There’s a reason large companies don’t announce everything the moment it’s planned.

It's a tough balance to strike, especially with hardware. I'd love to be able to put together a preorder page to validate demand for my next McGuffin, but it's very difficult to know specs, cost, and appearance before at least a representative prototype has been tested and quotes obtained from suppliers. And it takes a great deal of time and engineering effort to get to that point.

Of course I could show off something completely different than what gets delivered, but for some product categories, the entire appeal evaporates if the promised specs are not accurate. For example, something like camping equipment goes from awesome to pointless if the final product lacks key promised traits like foldability, waterproofing, low weight, etc. See also Magic Leap's marketing demo, which they ultimately couldn't deliver on within the constraints of a real product.

I think the Lean Startup methodology has a lot going for it, but it's very hard to square with certain products.

PS: Your video is really nice. I'd probably rather use a website that looks like that than one with fancy graphics and animations and formatting. It feels more like a professional tool than a flashy toy.