Ask HN: How do you validate something you've made is something people want?

2 points by pearknob 11 years ago | 5 comments

I've been through this countless times. I throw together an awesome side project. People tell me they like it. But it dies off. Sometimes I think "maybe this wasn't something they really wanted?", but other times I find competing products doing the exact same thing and think "man, people do want this".

How do you really validate what you've made is something people really want? I guess I would like to know what are methods/hacks of accurately determining this?

MalcolmDiggs 11 years ago |

Well you're talking about two related but different pieces of data:

1. Demand/Market for a solution to a given problem

2. How well you've achieved product-market-fit with your particular solution.

Determining #1 is fairly straightforward:

A. Google searches for a given query (unmet need)

B. Chatter about that problem or other solutions (buzz)

C. Competitors selling products in that vertical (precedent)

D. Competitors bidding on keywords related to that vertical

Determining #2 is harder / more nuanced; and to a certain extent is a fruitless endeavor until you've hit significant sample sizes. The first 10 people you try to sell might say no, that doesn't mean the product is wrong for the market; that could just be random chance. The only sure-fire way to test product-market fit is to get your product in front of a statistically significant number of users, and see if they bite.

I use the term "bite" because I don't mean "convert". Optimizing your conversion process (getting users to actually sign up / purchase, etc) takes time and that comes later. In the beginning all you need to test is if they care about your product at all (are engaged when presented the idea). That's where the field of engagement analytics comes into play, and that's a big subject...but hopefully I've pointed you in a useful direction.

thenomad 11 years ago |

Competition is excellent validation. If there are competing products that have been around for a while and appear to have a budget (are they spending on advertising?), then people want the thing your product does.

Now all you've got to do is figure out how to out-compete the competition enough to capture a financially significant chunk of the pie.

benologist 11 years ago |

a) solve a problem you have or people you know have, the closer you are to the problem the better

b) find more people with the same problem

There's lots of ways to get traffic -

- if you're lucky industry communities and forums you can post on, people asking on twitter, that kind of stuff

- get press, and not particularly press because you're a startup, go to the news sites and blogs that specifically cover your industry

- adwords, facebook etc advertising

- content marketing like Digital Ocean's giant archive of everything you will ever need to do or install on a web server, that is going to send high quality traffic to their website for years but takes a long time to do

- content marketing about being a startup or developer, I dislike this because the traffic's usually untargeted and it's specifically exploiting us

nicholas73 11 years ago |

Try selling it? There is another bit of activation energy between someone liking it and pulling out there wallets.

I had one phone call where I described my idea to gauge interest, and the guy tried to forward me to his purchaser straight away. Had to explain I hadn't a product yet.

lutusp 11 years ago |

> How do you really validate what you've made is something people really want?

Market research. There are several ways to decide which project to start next. One way is to ask yourself what sounds fun. Another way is to find out what people need. If the point is to make money, the latter approach has it all over the former.