I launched a project to see if people would pay for your Indie Hacker idea

It's great to see you taking the initiative to validate project ideas! This step is crucial, especially for indie founders looking to minimize risk before diving deep into development.

In my own experience, I launched a content optimization tool and faced similar uncertainty about customer willingness to pay. To validate my idea, I started with a structured approach. I created landing pages that outlined the project’s value proposition and included a simple email sign-up form. This helped gauge interest before spending too much time on development.

I suggest adding a few key elements to your platform to strengthen its usefulness:

Feedback Loop: Encourage users to provide feedback on their willingness to pay and any features they’d find valuable. When I did this, it gave me insights into the most desired functionalities, which informed my feature prioritization.

Landing Pages with CTAs: Beyond just gathering emails, consider incorporating clear calls-to-action (CTAs) like “Join the waitlist” or “Reserve your spot.” This can help convert interest into commitment, which is a stronger signal that people are willing to pay.

Benchmarking Against Competitors: Analyzing similar projects or tools can give you insight into pricing models and customer expectations. When I was refining my pricing strategy, I found that pricing heuristics from competitors were invaluable.

Initial Pricing Experiments: A/B testing different pricing strategies or tiered offerings based on what you learn can be a cost-effective way to see what resonates. For instance, offering a free tier with limited features can help you attract users who may later convert to a paid plan.

Engagement with Your Audience: Regularly engage with your early users. Hosting webinars or creating community forums where they can discuss their needs adds value and builds loyalty early on.

Collecting data through these means will provide you with a solid foundation to determine if there's a real market for what you're offering. Best of luck with IdeaPz! It sounds like a useful tool for the community.

This is actually helpful in finding if such solutions are actually needed. Great idea!!

This is the right question to test early.

I’d care less about “do people like the idea?” and more about whether you can get someone to take a costly action: pay, leave a deposit, book a call, or at least give you real contact information.

Interest is cheap. Commitment is the useful signal.

I really appreciate this.

I've made a project and I haven't gotten any traction yet. It would be good to know if people would pay for my project before I sink too much time in.

Thank you!

The main risk is that votes and emails can look like willingness to pay while measuring curiosity instead.

I would make the signal ladder explicit for each idea:

1. Upvote: interesting
2. Email: notify me
3. Short action: answer a question, book a call, or join a test
4. Commitment: refundable deposit, paid preorder, or a clearly priced pilot

You could then show founders how many people moved from one level to the next, not just the total vote count.

I would also ask voters what they use today and when they last experienced the problem. Ten votes from people with a repeated problem and a current workaround are stronger than 100 casual votes from other builders.

That distinction could become the most valuable part of the product: not "people liked your idea," but "here is what they were willing to do next."

The interesting part is combining voting with email interest, because that gives an idea more signal than a simple upvote. I’d be curious how closely those signals actually match what people are willing to pay for later.

Useful angle, but the honest limit of any "will this idea make money" tool is that it scores the idea, not the offer. The same idea priced as a $9 template and as a $150 done-for-you service behaves completely differently: one needs traffic, the other needs five conversations. If you want IdeaPz to be sticky, consider outputting a suggested first paid offer alongside the score - narrowest deliverable, price band, and what proof the person would need to sell it this week. That's the part most people are actually stuck on. Speaking from the service side of this: I run Fieldnote and write a custom client/VA onboarding kit (discovery questions, scope + boundaries, 8 client emails, terms checklist, 30-day plan) same day for $50 - https://payhip.com/b/WPVax - and validation for it was literally three people saying "yes, today", not a score. Happy to be a test input if you want a real service listing in there.

Could we do this: gather a group of developers, then solicit clients by sending projects to them and asking if they're willing to develop them, since each developer has different skills and is willing to pay different prices?

This is a really useful idea. I recently built a Notion CRM for real estate agents, and one of the hardest parts has been validating whether the right audience is actually willing to pay for it. A tool like this could be very helpful before spending weeks building a product. I’ll check it out!

Votes and emails tell you a topic is interesting, not that a wallet will open. The cheapest fix is to make the signal cost something: a $1 vote, or a card on file for the waitlist, because the gap between free interest and paid interest is the number founders actually need. I see this constantly in pre-seed deals, where 5,000 waitlist signups turn into 40 paying customers and the founder is genuinely surprised.

The thing I would watch is that "would you pay" and "did you pay" measure different people. Pre-orders and deposits filter better than votes, but they still mostly test your pitch, not the product. What worked better for me with small digital products was shipping the smallest sellable version first: one narrow deliverable, priced low, live in a few days. If nobody buys a $19 thing that solves one concrete problem, the $99 version of it was never going to sell either, and you learn that in a week instead of a quarter. Two suggestions for IdeaPz: show how many validators actually paid versus just clicked, and let submitters attach the real artifact (landing page, sample chapter, template) rather than just describing the idea, since people validate what they can see.

The buying intent vs curiosity gap is the hardest part of any validation. We see the same pattern — free previews get a lot of "let me try" traffic, but the real signal is who comes back tomorrow.
Deposits add friction before trust is built. Have you considered a "pay what you want" minimum for early access instead? It filters curiosity without requiring a full deposit mechanism, and you still get the payment validation signal.

Testing if strangers will pay for an unbuilt idea is the ultimate validation shortcut. Most builders spend months on features nobody asked for. Getting a "yes, here's my card" before a single line of code is the only metric that matters in month one. What was the biggest objection you heard during those early conversations?

That's cool! I just submitted one of my apps to it. I'm almost done with it. It's actually a Chrome Extension. Not sure that's an actual app but...

How will I know if it gets votes? Just keep visiting your site?

Thanks!

A useful next step may be separating validation by market and customer type. A founder can receive strong general interest but still see weak willingness to pay in a specific market because pricing, trust, language, and regulation differ. I would ask submitters to define the target country, buyer role, and expected price before collecting votes. Then show separate signals for interest, email commitment, interview acceptance, and deposit or payment. That would make the result more actionable and reduce false confidence from broad popularity. Are you planning to segment responses by geography or buyer profile?

The measurement boundary that matters most - not "do people want this" but "will people pay for this". Most indie hacker experiments measure interest (upvotes, signups, comments). That's the output of the system, not the outcome. Willingness to pay is the measurement that reveals whether the problem is real enough to extract value from. You can be right about the problem existing and still wrong about whether anyone will solve it themselves or pay for your solution. The insight here is methodologically clean - you don't argue about whether something is a good idea, you measure whether people put money behind that opinion. That's the boundary between "interesting problem" and "viable business".

Nice direction. I’d make the output hierarchy very explicit: an email signup shows interest, viewing a price shows stronger intent, and starting a reservation or checkout flow is stronger still.

For my own small launch, I’m treating each narrow pain point as a separate hypothesis rather than asking whether people want a broad category of tool. “I need an image under 100 KB for this form” is much easier to validate than “Would you use an image tool?”

That might be a useful direction for IdeaPz: let creators define the exact job-to-be-done first, then segment votes and emails by that use case. It would make the feedback more actionable than a single interest score. Curious whether you plan to add simple price-testing or reservation experiments later.

brokerrace already named the gap - "upvotes and email signups measure interest, not willingness to pay." I ran those two columns side by side, and the distance between them surprised me.

My validation ledger keeps two columns that never merge: "they publicly adopted the point" and "they paid." Across 19 cold outreach attempts, 10 got the founder to adopt the idea in public - "going to use that in onboarding," "I'll soften that in the listing," their words, on the record. Revenue: zero. The project it was for is still at zero. If column one had counted as validation, I'd have been holding 10 wins out of 19 for something nobody bought.

The enthusiasm isn't fake and it isn't noise. It measures attention accurately. It just isn't the wallet, and column two needs its own instrument.

One mechanic that keeps either column readable: lock the number, the window, and the pass/fail rule before you look. Mine only stays honest because all three were fixed in advance - otherwise I grade my own homework generously, every time.

Which leaves a labelling question sitting under IdeaPz, separate from any feature. The output is column one, votes and emails, while the page says "find out if people would be willing to pay for their project idea." Those are two different claims, and someone skimming that line could easily take it for the second. Saying plainly that it measures interest rather than willingness to pay is a copy change, not a feature. Or column two gets its own instrument, carrying mestresdaweb's ladder up to commitment. Either is coherent. Ambiguity isn't, because then the number means whatever the reader needs it to mean.

For what it's worth, I'd want that settled before the backlog MananShah watched grow in two days, since it decides which of those requests are relevant at all.

Nice, congrats on shipping this! Validation is honestly the step most of us skip lol, we just build and hope. Combining votes + email capture is smart, at least you walk away with a list even if the idea flops.

One thing I'm curious about, how do you separate people who actually mean it vs just clicking to be nice? That's always the hard part with validation.

Validating before building is the right instinct, but I'd push on one thing: upvotes and email signups measure interest, not willingness to pay. Plenty of ideas that get a wall of 'sign me up' emails still see near-zero conversion once an actual price tag shows up. Have you thought about adding a soft paywall step — even a 'reserve your spot for $X' button that doesn't charge anyone yet — just to see who clicks through past the free-interest stage? That gap between 'I'd use this' and 'I'd pay for this' is usually where the real signal lives.

Had to make an account just to jump in on this thread! I recently spent months building DealClose. co — a tool that helps service businesses create, send, and manage professional quotes and proposals, and I can tell you firsthand that wondering "will people actually pay for this?" is easily the most paralyzing part of the whole journey.

IdeaPz is a super smart way to tackle that friction. I love that you're pushing past generic upvotes to capture actual emails as an early signal. As others mentioned, figuring out true buying intent versus casual curiosity is tough, but walking away with a warm pre-launch list is a massive advantage over building in the dark.

Huge congrats on shipping such a clean, straight-to-the-point MVP! I'm definitely bookmarking this to run my next batch of project ideas through.

Simple concept, but genuinely useful. Validating demand before spending months building is always one of the hardest hurdles.

Checked out the link, retro terminal aesthetic. Clean and straight to the point. Best of luck with the launch!

This is a smart problem to solve — "will people actually pay for this"
is the question that kills most side projects before they even launch.

Curious how you're handling idea quality on IdeaPz — since anyone can
submit, how do you keep it from filling up with vague ideas that get
easy upvotes but wouldn't hold up to real payment intent? Feels like
the hard part of a validator tool is making the "votes" actually
correlate with willingness to pay, not just "sounds cool."

Bookmarking this for my next idea, nice work.

The strongest part of the idea is moving validation before development, but I would be careful about making a vote look more precise than it is.

I would model validation as a ladder of evidence: (1) problem confirmation — the user describes the last time the problem happened and the current workaround; (2) intent — email plus an acceptable price range; (3) commitment — a pilot request, scheduled call, or refundable deposit. Then show the quality of the signal, not only the total number of votes. Ten people who can describe a recent, costly problem may be more valuable than one hundred generic upvotes.

I would also separate community traffic from the creator's target audience. A shareable page with referral tracking could report “Indie Hackers votes” and “target-user votes” independently. Asking the creator to define the ICP and expected price before publishing would make the results much easier to interpret.

For a three-day-old MVP, I would not build payments first. I would track which ideas generate qualified emails and whether creators actually follow up. That behavior will tell you which stronger validation experiment is worth building next. Good start — the product is simple enough to learn from quickly.

This is actually very useful...

Especially when suffering from burnout, seeing that your idea is actually worth money is a huge psychological boost.

I like that you're trying to move validation earlier, before someone spends months building.

One thing I'd be curious about is how you distinguish curiosity from actual willingness to pay. Votes and email signups can be useful signals, but they're also relatively low-commitment.

I've been thinking a lot about the gap between people saying an idea sounds good and finding evidence that they'd actually take action for it. Do you see IdeaPr eventually helping founders move beyond interest toward stronger validation signals?

Thanks a lot — this is a really thoughtful way of looking at it.

I don’t have a way to track the after-the-fact outcome yet, mainly because IdeaPz is still only a few days old. But I really like the idea of checking back with creators later to see whether they actually built the product and, more importantly, whether anyone ended up paying. Over time, that could make the initial votes much more meaningful instead of just showing a number.

For the reciprocity part, I’m a little more hesitant. One of my goals with IdeaPz is to keep it very simple and low-friction, so requiring people to vote before submitting could make some users leave before they even try it.

That said, I definitely see the problem you’re pointing out. Maybe there’s a lighter way to encourage people to give useful feedback without making it a hard requirement.

Really appreciate the suggestion — especially the idea of connecting early validation signals with what actually happens to the projects later. That’s something I’d love to learn from as IdeaPz grows.

Others here have hit the two obvious problems (audience mismatch, and a click being a near-zero-cost signal), so I'll name the one underneath both: IdeaPz is a two-sided marketplace where only one side has a reason to show up. Founders get something concrete from submitting; voters get nothing at all, so the board fills with supply and starves for demand, and the votes you do collect come from whoever happened to be browsing rather than from anyone who has the problem. The cheapest structural fix is reciprocity as the price of admission -- your idea's page stays unlisted until you've left N substantive votes on other ideas, with a required field like "what do you use for this today and what does it cost you" attached to each vote. That does double duty: it manufactures the demand side out of your existing supply side, and it makes each vote carry information instead of just a count, because someone who can't name a current workaround self-identifies as out-of-ICP. Longer term, the thing only you can own is the outcome data: email every submitter at 90 and 180 days asking whether they built it and whether anyone paid, then publish the hit rate by vote pattern -- "ideas with 20+ 'would pay' votes converted to revenue X% of the time" is a claim no competing idea board can make, and it's what would let you honestly tell a founder what their score means. Do you have any way to capture that after-the-fact outcome yet, and would you be willing to gate submissions behind giving votes, knowing it will cut your submission volume in the short run?

The audience mismatch is the core issue with any idea validation tool aimed at developers. You end up with developer judgment on problems that typically affect accountants, operations managers, or small business owners who are unlikely to be on IH at all. The workaround I've seen work in early validation: instead of asking 'would you pay for this,' ask 'tell me the last time this specific problem cost you X hours or money.' The people who have a specific, recent answer are your actual buyers. The ones who say 'yeah that's annoying' are not. Requiring a price field on submission would make IdeaPz sharper too — it forces the creator to take a real position rather than describe a vague idea, and it surfaces whether they've actually thought through their revenue model yet.

Smart idea. Validating willingness to pay before building can save a lot of time and effort.

One thing I’d worry about is audience mismatch.

Are you sure your audience isn’t other indie developers? If that’s the case, then how can creators learn the views of regular people, their audience?If most voters are other indie hackers, that seems pretty useful for dev tools or SaaS aimed at builders. But if someone is validating a product for regular people. For instance, teachers, restaurant owners, dentists, etc., votes from other founders probably don’t tell them much.

Maybe each idea could have a shareable validation page, and you could separate votes from the IH community from votes coming from the creator’s actual target users.

Then you’d know whether the signal is “other builders like this” or “potential customers actually want this.”

Curious how you're separating people who like an idea from people who would actually pay for it. Those seem like two very different signals. Are you testing payment intent directly or mostly collecting feedback first?

The hard part with idea-voting tools is that upvotes and email signups are the cheapest possible signal — people will happily click "I'd pay for this" and then never open the launch email. When I validated a small workflow tool last year, 60+ people said yes on a landing page and only 3 converted when I actually charged. What finally worked was asking for a $10 refundable deposit; it cut the list to a tenth but every one of those people replied to my emails and two became paying customers. If you want IdeaPz to be more than a popularity contest, consider adding an optional pre-order or deposit tier, plus a "what would you pay" free-text field instead of just a vote. Also worth showing the poster who voted, so they can do 10 real interviews instead of staring at a number. One small UX note: order the feed by recency and by category, otherwise early ideas will hoard all the votes and new submitters churn out fast.

Congrats on the launch, Solo-DevelopperJR!

Validating willingness-to-pay before spending months building is indeed a huge pain point for most indie creators.

My current project (Ask A Monk) goes in the completely opposite direction—it's a non-profit, algorithm-free emotional shelter with zero tracking and no email logins. But for anyone building commercial SaaS or products, a tool like IdeaPz to gather early interest is definitely handy.

Best of luck with the growth!

I think the distinction between getting votes and getting real buying signals is really important here. Someone can like an idea without actually needing it enough to pay for it.

One thing I’d look at is what people are doing today to solve the same problem. If they’re already spending money or using a workaround, that gives you a much stronger indication that there’s a real need. You can then compare your idea against the existing option and see whether people would actually switch.

I’d also pay attention to actions beyond voting, such as email signups, requests for more information, trial usage, or willingness to pay. Those signals can tell you much more than a simple upvote.

For local or service-based ideas especially, checking the actual demand in the target area before investing too much time can be useful. It helps separate an idea that sounds good from one that solves a problem people are actively trying to solve.

Love the idea. I’ve been through that journey: developing something that I think is useful but not being sure if it’ll be useful for others. Or even better: when should I stop developing? What to develop and what not?

Submitted and idea I’ve been working on: a dial-in assistant to make better espresso.

I think this is a really important problem for indie hackers.

A lot of people spend months building before knowing if there is real demand. Even simple signals like people joining a waitlist or explaining their problem can save a lot of time.

One thing I’ve learned is that feedback quality matters more than the number of votes. A small number of people who have the problem today are usually more valuable than a large number of people who just like the idea.

Curious to see how the signals from IdeaPz compare with actual launches over time.

Votes are useful, but I’d watch email signups more closely.
Someone giving you their inbox is a much stronger signal than a vote.

Nice scoping — the reason most "idea validation" tools fail is that they ask people to rate an idea instead of react to an offer, and votes are almost free to give. The thing I'd add to IdeaPz is a required price field on each submission, so voters answer "would you pay $X" rather than "is this cool"; even a fake-door price point separates enthusiasm from intent very quickly. I'm working from the other end of the same problem with Binnen48 (a 48h one-pager / DIY kit — demo at https://binnen48.github.io/demo/), and what I've seen is that a concrete landing page with a price and a single CTA gets far fewer signups but far better ones than an abstract idea description. Two suggestions: let submitters attach a landing page URL so voters judge the actual pitch, and show creators a per-idea conversion rate (views to email) rather than just totals, since a small idea with 40% conversion is more validated than a viral one at 2%. Question for you: of the ideas submitted so far, has any creator come back and reported real revenue, and did their vote count predict it at all?

This is exactly the validation problem I'm wrestling with right now. I'm building something similar in spirit — a waitlist-stage product where I'm trying to tell the difference between "polite interest" and "actual demand."

One thing I'm curious about with IdeaPz: does an idea getting votes actually correlate with people paying later, or have you seen cases where something gets a lot of votes but the emails never convert? I ask because I've found email signups alone can be a pretty noisy signal — I'm currently trying to weight "how fast someone responds" and "do they ask follow-up questions" more heavily than raw signup count.

Bookmarking this to try on my next idea. Nice execution for something this focused.

Congrats on the launch!

If you’re looking for extra distribution, there’s a small pay-to-rank board for SaaS tools right now called Saas-Rank

I like the idea of validating demand before spending months building. One thing I’d be curious about is how you distinguish between someone saying “I’d pay for this” and someone actually showing buying intent.

Votes and email signups are useful signals, but I’d probably want to track the progression from vote → email → meaningful product action → willingness to pay. Otherwise, an idea can look validated while the actual conversion intent is still weak.

It could be interesting if IdeaPz eventually showed founders not just how many people voted, but where the strongest intent signals are coming from.

Wow! this is so cool! i'm going to try positng my product ideas here.
i think it would be better if there's the summary list of the ideas a user voted for

This is super cool! I like the idea of collecting feedback before making products. This would be super useful for aspiring developers. I will say the design is a bit harsh, but that's my only critique. Other than that, it looks great so far! I would even consider adding categories and making the ideas page a little more obvious.

I spent last night killing product ideas. Votes and emails make almost everything look alive. A card makes almost everything die.

I would not treat IdeaPz votes as "people would pay." That's "people are curious." If anyone here converted those emails into an actual sale, I want the conversion number. That's the only thing I'd trust.

Congrats on launching IdeaPz. I like the idea of testing willingness to pay before building the full product. How are you thinking about distinguishing polite interest from real buying intent? For example, would a small paid pre-order or deposit be a stronger signal than votes and email signups? I’m also curious how you plan to handle ideas that serve a very narrow niche.

Wish I'd had something like this before I started. SimpleClause got built on more of a "this is a real problem" and something I had to face,I started base from a feeling rather than any structured validation. Worked out fine, but I've had to figure out audience validation after the fact (currently trying to figure out freelancers vs. renters as the primary segment, the hard way, through real conversations instead of upfront data).

Question on the mechanics. Once someone submits an idea and collects votes/emails, is there a signal for how much someone would pay, or is it purely a yes/no interest signal? That distinction seems like it'd matter a lot for anyone trying to size a niche before building.

The concept is clever but I'm curious how you handle the "willing to pay" bar - are you running actual checkout flows or just surveys? That's a pretty different signal.

I think the email option says more than a vote, but it still shows curiosity more than buying intent. While building DictaFlow, I've found the clearest signal is whether someone will explain the annoying workflow they want to replace, then return after trying the product. IdeaPz could ask what people use today and what would make them switch. That answer might help a founder more than a higher vote count.

This is a nice idea, since im in the validation process myself too! I have submitted an idea, I think the UI is great, its maybe too code-y.

I'm not sure how many people would actually pay for the ideas submitted tho, its easy just ticking a box or clicking a button saying they would pay.

The signal I'd trust more than votes or emails is who comes back to check on an idea without being prompted. I've sat through hundreds of pitches where founders waved waitlist numbers at me, and the ones that actually converted to paying customers were the ones who could show unprompted return visits, not just signups. Track that inside IdeaPz and you'd have a sharper proof point than anything on the page right now.

It's a good idea!

I think oftentimes people claim they would pay for something, but end up not actually doing so. It's too common, so my view is that the only real validation is money on your Stripe account.

It's easy to vote on a website presumably consisting of majority of early adopters, but the real voting happens with users wallets.

It seems to me projects that help raise money like Kickstarter are good approach.

Maybe something to consider adding.

Votes and email signups are still a fairly cheap signal, someone can say yes to a survey question without ever pulling out a card. Have you thought about testing a small non refundable deposit instead of just an email capture? Even a dollar would filter out a lot of the polite yes crowd and give the person submitting their idea a much more honest number to work from than a vote count.

it is the great idea , if there really be a community that are ready to try new things,

Great idea—validating demand before building can save founders months of work. I’d love to see stronger signals like preorders or deposits added in the future!

I am building that is using people , thinking if to add genuine pricing but that will test my engineering ability a lot

This is a problem I’ve been thinking about a lot while building my own product. Getting people to say “this is cool” is easy, but figuring out whether they would actually pay for it is completely different.

I like the idea of testing willingness to pay before spending months building. I’m curious, how do you distinguish between people who genuinely intend to buy and people who just like the idea?

I’d use the trial to answer one question: can you find a painful problem people will actually pay to solve?

Pick one niche, talk to 20 potential users, write down the same objections and complaints that keep repeating, then check whether any of those problems already have budget behind them.

If nobody is willing to pay, I’d rather learn that in a week than after building the product.

That kind of trial is way more useful than “let’s brainstorm some growth ideas.”

Votes are a mood, the same way one ChatGPT answer is a mood. Type the buyer question a customer would actually ask and see who gets named. Nobody named is a real gap, and a named competitor is a citation problem before it is a landing page.

the thing I'd flag that nobody's said yet: you're accumulating a real feature backlog (deposits, price ranges, "what do you use today," vote/email breakdowns, wishlist emails) after only 2 days live, saying yes to almost every suggestion in the thread. that's the exact scope-creep-before-validation pattern IdeaPz itself is designed to help other people avoid. worth picking the single change from this list that would most directly test "does this predict real payment" and shipping just that, before the backlog gets long enough that you're building instead of validating

also, slightly meta point: most of these comments (mine included) are essentially voting "cool idea, I'd try this" without having used it yet, which is exactly the kind of low-commitment signal ValidationOS is warning you not to trust. the strongest validation of your own launch would be watching whether commenters actually submit a real idea in the next few days, not whether they say something nice in the thread

This is actually really relevant to what I'm doing right now — I built a subscription tracker for Malaysia and I'm still trying to figure out if it's solving a real problem or just a "me problem." Might submit it on IdeaPz too. For ideas already submitted, have you noticed any real correlation between vote count and people who actually leave their email? I've got some signups on my own landing page already, but I honestly don't know how predictive that is of people who'd actually use (or pay for) the thing later.

Cool idea!
Probably more useful for a consumer facing product vs a B2B.

I think at this point it functions as a "like" or thumbs up so I wouldn't use it as indicator for someone actually willing to pay. But if voters had a stake in the idea then that could be a stronger indicator. Requiring a validated email to vote is one way to do that. Maybe something similar to the early Groupon "deal tipping point" could be another indicator- that gets voters to encourage others to vote for the project and drives traffic to your site.

I think you should add the feature to collect emails when people vote or add things to their Wishlist as soon as possible, because creators also want to get in touch with these supporters. If it's just at the idea stage, having a lot of collected info or contacts can really get developers to pay attention and help bring the idea to life. It wouldn't just be a site for gathering votes.

I think you should add the feature to vote and collect emails for the Wishlist as soon as possible, because creators also want to get in touch with these supporters. Just being in the idea stage, if you collect a lot of information or contact details, it can grab the developers' attention and help push the idea forward.

Useful launch. People who vote are rarely the people who pay — the ones who pay are already solving the problem with something else. Strongest signal isn't votes or emails, it's "what do you use today and what does it cost you?" If IdeaPz asked that on vote, founders would see real demand vs polite interest.

Nice idea. One thing I’d be curious about is how you’re distinguishing a low-friction vote from stronger validation. A vote shows interest, but an email might still be curiosity; an optional follow-up such as “Would you pay $X?” or “Would you join a waitlist?” could provide a stronger signal. Are you planning to show idea owners a breakdown of votes versus email signups? That could make the feedback much more actionable.

Interesting idea. I like that it separates general interest from actual willingness to pay.

One thing that could make the signal even stronger might be asking users to choose a price range they would realistically pay, instead of only voting. That could help creators distinguish “this sounds cool” from “I would actually buy this.”

The email collection part also seems useful for testing whether interest carries through beyond the initial vote.

Issue with such polls is that people would simply say or click I would use it just to support you or to be nice, actual answers are a lot hard to find

congrats on shipping this, the pay-validation problem is one we think about a lot too. one thing i'm wondering about, how are you handling the gap between people saying they'd pay and actually pulling out their card? that's always been the hardest signal to trust for us. going to try submitting one of our earlier ideas to see how it feels