

Core, Simple, Launch - zackmiller84
http://www.thepitch.co/Blog

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keesj
Isn't contacting your potential customers a better idea to validate and get
feedback on your idea? It may take more effort to reach them, but even that
process is helpful in validating your idea as you'll have to find your
customers sooner or later anyway.

Also, validating your idea by asking people whether they'd pay for it is a
common mistake in customer development. People are bad at predicting their own
behavior. Instead ask if they have paid (whether in time, money or another
valuable resource) for getting feedback in the past, where X is something that
provides similar value to the product you're offering. Actually giving them an
option to pay right now might be the best way to validate it, but you
shouldn't have had to build a whole prototype to do that.

I've seen quite a few 'get feedback for your idea' platforms fail over the
last couple months/years so definitely look into those as well and try to
figure out _why_ they failed, as you want to avoid making those same mistakes.

Here's one post-mortem of such a platform:
<http://blog.davejafari.com/sparkmuse-post-mortem>

Anyway, just my two cents. Figured I'd share of my own feedback :)

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keesj
@aculver:

You're right. There's a difference between validating your _value proposition_
(for which you really need to talk to your customers) and your overall
business model (where other experienced entrepreneurs can provide valuable
insights). I guess The Pitch could work for the latter, but I highly suggest
the initiator looks at the reasons so many similar platforms failed.

Petri looks interesting. Actually sounds a lot like some of the plans I have.
I run Beta List[1] and noticed a lot of pre-launch startups don't know the
best practices of doing customer development, leveraging their beta list, et
cetera which made me think someone should build a service to help guide them
through that process.

Not sure how far along you are and if our product vision matches, but perhaps
it might make more sense to work together than compete. Feel free to contact
me if you're interested in having a chat: marc(at)betali.st

(Just keep in mind we _might_ end up building competing services so don't
disclose anything top secret :)

[1] <http://betali.st/>

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nonamegiven
The left vertical bar all the way down the text makes it look like the entire
text is a quote from somewhere else. I experienced unresolved tension, waiting
to see who "really" wrote the text.

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zackmiller84
we have added a name to the end. Blog was just implemented last night.

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tomasien
Hey Zack: signed up for The Pitch, got a confirmation email, had to actually
copy the token from the end of the confirmation link and put it in the "token"
field. Clicking the confirmation link itself just led to a 404 error.
Something to look at for sure!

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erikpmp
Bug squashed. I tried to get too fancy with the routing and obviously didn't
test that well enough...my bad. Can you click the link again and let me know
if it resolves? Thanks.

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stevelaz
This is a great idea, pitching is something that a ton of us struggle with
(even in written form). The more exposure and feedback we can get, the better
off we'll end up. This almost seems like a place to just test your idea out,
but I think this platform could serve for both idea testing and perfecting
your pitch.

It's like code-reviews for pitches :)

By the way, the 'viewed' count increments for every page refresh, even when
the same session/user is viewing it. I just thought I'd mention it. But hey,
this could be a feature.

Best of luck!

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jolenzy
Great lesson, thank you for this.

