I often wonder about this, because I'm in the process of building something and have never shown it to anyone. But it's a developer tool, and I'd be the target audience. So I start with asking myself what I need, with the hope that I can build a really good tool that I'd actually use, and then hopefully others will find it useful as well.
Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It
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Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It
#32I often wonder about this, because I'm in the process of building something and have never shown it to anyone. But it's a developer tool, and I'd be the target audience. So I start with asking myself what I need, with the hope that I can build a really good tool that I'd actually use, and then hopefully others will find it useful as well.
I dont want to discourage you... there is a high likelyhood that others want it. but it is better to be absolutely sure. Just make a video and send it to a few people and see what they say. That will teach you a lot
Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
False equivalency. OP is an indiehacker with (relatively speaking) $0 marketing budget versus a large company. OP - keep validating and showing your early, "ugly" products. Marketing and market validation matter the most.
It’s an existence proof. Even at an indie startup, if you mention your idea too early there’s a risk you’ll lose the motivation to work on it due to negative reception. Not every idea that’s poo-poohed is bad.
The trick is knowing which feedback to listen to. If Dropbox listened to the negative feedback from HN on launch, they'd think there wasn't a market and it was a dumb idea. HN was (famously) wrong, partly because HN isn't the target market of the service.
Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It
#34Work backwards quality in Amazon has been degraded to historically low. Now it’s cherry-picking customer pains to fit some narratives for promotion sake or blindly copycat with no core value.
Used to work there and this is so true
They talk a lot about being data-driven and then in reality its like some PM just cherry-picking random customer anecdotes to justify whatever they want
So many features I would think "literally 2 people are going to use this" but we need to build it to get those promos and expand the org empire
Worst was the alexa org
Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It
#35Best growth hacking thing to do now is to make an HN post about lesson learned and to make sure all the links are included. Like the OP. Later on it should be possible to make another HN post about the impact of the previous HN post on the sign up counts. Make sure to include the links there too.
Don't forget to piggyback off OP's thread with a comment sharing links to your app/prototype/work if you also happen to develop something even barely related.
Too bad I don't have anything at this time to plug.
Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It
#36I often wonder about this, because I'm in the process of building something and have never shown it to anyone. But it's a developer tool, and I'd be the target audience. So I start with asking myself what I need, with the hope that I can build a really good tool that I'd actually use, and then hopefully others will find it useful as well.
If it's open source, that's fine.
What you have to ask, however, is who is buying your product? How much are they paying? What additional needs would be needed for them to pay you?
Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It
#37Best growth hacking thing to do now is to make an HN post about lesson learned and to make sure all the links are included. Like the OP. Later on it should be possible to make another HN post about the impact of the previous HN post on the sign up counts. Make sure to include the links there too.
HN is a nice dopamine hit as 40k people hit your landing page in one go, but it very quickly needs to be replaced with consistent marketing effort, or you'll start to believe your idea has no legs.
Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It
#38Just because the people you showed it to couldn't imagine using it doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of people out there who desperately want it and would recognize its utility to them.
To other creators: 0.1% of the USA and EU is 777,000 people. OP made a very niche product, hopefully he showed people who need SEO-related products, but if you only need to sell to 10,000 people to make a profit, you might "just" have to find them.
Of course, part of the "product" is telling the right people they need your product. If you can't do that then you haven't really finished the product.
Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It
#39Try getting them to put money down for a discount or other incentive. The best signal is paying up; promises are cheap.
Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It
#40Asking people for their opinion on anything (in my case, it's writing) is an art. Not everyone's opinion is worth listening to. If you throw it out to the general public, you'll get a lot of stupid ones. It's better to pick a few people you respect, who are not uncritical lovers of your work. But you need to do that. As the creator, you have a blindness that it's impossible to get past all by yourself.
There is a book called "The Mom Test" that has this perspective.
thanks, downloaded the Kindle sample.