I'm validating 5 ideas with a free vote before I build any of them — here's the method

The method’s solid, but be careful using “favorite idea” as the main signal, people will upvote what’s interesting, but they only pay for something that actually hurts. I’d tweak the page a bit: first ask “which one would you pay for this week?” before asking which is most interesting, then throw in a forced trade‑off like “Would you rather get this as a $10 template, a $49 tool, or a $99 done‑with‑you workflow?” and finally split voters by what they’re already doing – folks already using AI skills or MCPs versus just curious – because those are totally different markets. To me the 5‑minute pretotype generator is the strongest card; the pain is immediate (stop wasting weekends), so I’d make that the benchmark any other idea has to beat.

Pre-registering your kill criteria before you look at the numbers is the part most people skip, and it's the part that actually matters. It's way too easy to see 8% conversion and convince yourself that's fine once you're already attached to an idea. Curious how you're handling it if two ideas both clear 40%, do you build both or force yourself to pick one?

The vote-first pattern saved us from the same build-then-abandon loop — one thing I'd add from having just run one: decide in advance what happens if you act before the vote formally closes. We launched early for timing reasons and had to publicly commit to honoring the final tally if it flipped. That commitment turned out to matter more than the vote itself — it becomes your credibility with the exact early adopters you're trying to recruit.

Second thing: our vote predicted attention, not payment. The winning option got the engagement, but the actual money came from two people, and both paid after a direct exchange, not after voting. So I'd treat the price-ladder answers as a ranking signal between your 5, not as a revenue forecast — the $0-vs-$5 line is the only one people answer with their real self.

I took the opposite path this year and it changed how I think about votes. I ship small data tools in a category where building one costs a weekend, so instead of validating first I launched dozens and let paying usage do the voting. The winners were consistently not the ones I would have picked in a poll, and not the ones friends were excited about. The boring niche ones sitting next to an expensive incumbent quietly outperformed the exciting ones. So my suggestion on your method: if any of the five can be built small in a weekend or two, a real launch with a kill date is the cleanest vote there is, because a vote costs the voter nothing and a signup costs them thirty seconds of belief. Your pre registered kill criteria is the part most people skip, so real respect for that. Curious which of the five you personally want to win, and whether you would still build it if it comes fourth.

love this in principle, one thing i'd watch: a vote tells you what sounds appealing, not what people will pay for. "yeah i'd use that" is cheap. the strongest validation i've seen is asking people to do something that costs them a little - join a waitlist with their real email, pre-order, reply to a cold email about it. if they'll spend 30 seconds or $5 that's a real signal, a free click is a weak one. what are you actually asking them to do?

Pre-registering your kill criteria before you see the results is the part that actually makes this work. Most founders set their thresholds after the data comes in, which means they'll always find a way to interpret borderline results as a green light. Your 10% on 500 visitors is tight enough to be honest. One thing to watch: 500 warm-network visitors and 500 cold traffic visitors will give you completely different signals on the same idea. I made that mistake with Genie 007 early on. Sent the validation to people I knew, got inflated numbers, didn't realise until 3 months later when cold conversion told a different story. What's your traffic source plan for hitting those 500?

One thing I'd be careful of is optimizing for the most popular idea instead of the strongest problem.

People can accurately tell you which concept sounds exciting. They're much less reliable at predicting which one they'll consistently pay to solve. If the votes and the willingness-to-pay signals diverge, I'd trust the money over the popularity.

honestly more rigorous than most validation posts, the pre-registered kill criteria especially. one thing i'd still watch: a price-ladder click is stated willingness to pay, and stated WTP basically always reads higher than revealed. the number that's actually predictive is someone hitting a real pay-$X button, even a fake-door that just 500s at checkout tells you more than a vote. also where your 500 visitors come from will skew it a lot, HN and a niche discord will pick completely different winners. curious to see the results in 2 weeks.