Who validated demand for their product before building an MVP?
It seems like the people who have built lots of startups are pretty religious about validating demand before building an MVP. Sure seems like a way to save a lot of time! 😅
I'm specifically thinking about this flow:
- Build a landing page
- Drive traffic to the landing page with a cheap ad campaign
- Collect emails (or payments if you can get away with it! 😂)
But, I know there are other ways to validate demand, too.
Share a link to your product and tell us how you validated demand!
None of the above.
I collected 500 emails for a startup I did once. I built the MVP and guess how many tried it? None.
The best way to validate your problem IS to build the MVP. The key is to have a team that can move quickly and adapt if things don't go according to plan.
Wow 500 emails and no takers? That's super disappointing.
It feels like giving out an email is a low-effort signaling activity.
Similarly, I once asked for beta testers for my app and got a lot of interest, but in the end only a handful of users used the app or gave feedback. People just wanted free stuff, I think.
The landing page didn't work for us. I've been building in public in IH for the last 11 weeks, and am going to launch the alpha on April 1, 2022. It's a no-code platform for API integrations for backend development. We have been trying to reach out to customers and get their feedback on the product and understand the problem spaces they have.
I'm not sure why the myth of "building a landing page to validate demand" is still a thing.
The only way to validate demand is to create a product and have people actually pay you money for it, honestly.
You can do whatever you like (customer interviews, research, waitlists, etc) but until you have actual $$$ hitting your Stripe account, you have validated nothing.
You can simulate that entire purchase process without actually charging anything. The point of the “landing page validation” is not to have a join to waitlist or anything like that But to actually setup a “fake” purchase funnel which will validate almost as good as a real purchase
Completely agree with this, email signups have not worked for me in the past. What did work was an ultra low tech approach, you get access to my software if you sign up on patreon. I had zero code to write to manage user accounts. Then once i saw this got traction, i actually built a subscription system.
I’m curious to see how well this has worked for others as well.
I often encounter landing pages here or on Hacker News that are nothing more than requests for an email to be put on a waitlist. I usually forget about those pages and never come back.
I imagine it might work if you have a very niche and “necessary” product that someone is dying to have to improve their workflow, and most likely it would only work for B2B solutions.