

How to test whether your idea has a market - tzaman
http://blog.codeable.io/2013/01/24/how-to-test-whether-your-idea-has-a-market.html

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duiker101
I see a lot of articles from you guys lately. It's cool, the articles are not
bad and you are doing it the right way, you market your product by giving good
articles. I think this is fine, just don't send out too much before you run
out of content and become boring. Nobody would benefice from that. Once a week
should be enough. Just my 2c.

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tzaman
Thank you, we've been talking about it actually, and decided to start out with
a bit more frequently then ease out a bit. Being new on the market some
awareness and traction can do us good :)

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ef4
There's a misconception that actually plays in your favor here: most people
dramatically underestimate the execution risk of building a new product,
particularly software.

If you can communicate very clearly what the product is going to look like and
what it's going to do, selling a product that isn't done yet is not much
harder than selling one that is. In some ways it's easier, because the
customers can fill in the details themselves, and they don't appreciate how
hard it is to get all those detail right.

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impostervt
Would like to hear of an example where this worked. Even if I liked an idea
someone pitched me on, I don't know if I'd give $10 to them to get early
access to something they haven't started building yet.

Perhaps I'm jading at seeing too many bad Show HN posts where I think, who
would want that?

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ef4
It certainly works when you're selling to a business and you're showing how
you can take away some real pain, or make them some real additional revenue.

I have gone in with a demo and come away with a deal for real money. Then we
built the real product around that customer's actual needs, which made it
dramatically better than we could have by just guessing in advance how they
would use it.

Edit: Also see just about everything on Kickstarter, where people often pay
real money for things that don't exist yet.

~~~
totalrobe
These things do exist - Kickstarter products are required to have prototypes
and concrete deliverables.

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fro
Ten dollars seems like a token amount that most clients would give you to just
say, "Hey why not, maybe this will turn into something." I'd make it a higher
amount or just, you know, genuinely ask them whether they would buy and use
your product. Most people will give you their honest opinion either way.

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varunkho
And to find potential customers other than your mom&friends, [0] HN post can
certainly help!

[0]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4987836>

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euros
“Building a product to fit an existing market, is better than finding a market
to fit an existing product.” - Unfortunately not my quote!

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JimWillTri
If you can get someone to pay you $10 for an application you may or may not
build in a year then you are either a hell of a salesman or you found someone
truly gullible.

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Toenex
Isn't this preciously what Kickstarter [<http://www.kickstarter.com/>] is for?

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totalrobe
Asking for money with no product? This is also called panhandling...

