What do you do when an "ingenious" product idea comes to your mind? You want to dive right in. You feel like this is going to be the project of your life that will change the world for the better and give you a higher purpose to live for. Or, depending on your desires, you just feel that it's going to make you rich.
At least for me, this has always been so. I get an idea, I become inspired, I dive right in and start coding. The doubt comes later. Maybe in a week, maybe in a month, but it comes nevertheless. And once it comes, I get all kinds of questions running in my head. "Is it really worth it? Is somebody going to use it? Where do I find an audience?", and so on.
Only recently I've come to know that I can actually try to validate an idea before devoting myself and starting the development. In the end, I'm building my idea for people, and it's only obvious to talk to people and try and understand them.
Yet, I'm still new to this. I understand that I need this, but I don't understand how to do this exactly. I believe in my idea, and I believe that there are people who are going to benefit from it. But this belief has only been validated by a couple of people from my personal circle. How do I speak to "the internet"?
I understand that there are whole professions that are dedicated to this: sales, marketing, copywriting, etc. People spend their entire lives learning how to "talk to the internet", and it's very naive for me to expect to magically understand it myself right away.
Another problem is the fear of rejection. Imagine, I actually get to talk to people and express my ideas to them. There's a reasonable chance that they will just say that my idea is plain bullshit. That there's no problem to solve. That there's a lot of solutions already. That a lot of people already tried it and haven't succeeded. And so on.
I've been trying to learn as much as I can about this topic recently, and here are a few ideas that I found interesting:
- Build a pre-release landing page explaining the idea and asking to leave an email to get an early access
- Go to a cafe and ask a few people to take a look at the landing page or discuss your idea in exchange for buying them a drink
- Build the product publicly, talk about your thoughts and ideas openly, and ask for early feedback while developing
But all this still sounds very vague. How to get people to visit the landing? Should I spend all of my money on online advertisement? How to conquer the fear of rejection? In what stance should I talk about the product? And, I think, the primary question is, "How to connect with the target audience and have meaningful conversations on the topic of my product?".
I would appreciate any ideas on this topic. What are your thoughts? Have you ever faced something similar? What was your experience? What were the solutions that helped you?
Thank you. π
Top comments (3)
Always be positive and enthusiastic about your idea!
Enlist 'influencers' whose reputation you value, who like your idea and share it for you with an existing network. Build up a relationship with your selected 'marks' first and then discuss the idea :-)
Have lots of ideas and then the fear of rejection is less because you've got more options.
I don't have any real advice but there is this book that addresses this topic I thought worth mentioning. It is called The Mom Test: momtestbook.com/
I heard about this book, but thanks to your comment I'm going to actually buy and read it. Thank you!