
Trying to make a plan to validate a SaaS idea - iliasp
Hi everyone, in succession of my previous posts about the SaaS I am trying to validate I decided to actually sit down and make a stepped process of the actions I should take to validate as best as I can my idea before I start building an alpha version of the service.<p>Here is what I have come up with so far.<p>1. Launch a simple one page landing page with a signup section for their email.<p>2. Expose it to potential customers for a week: reddit, linkedin etc<p>3. See if I have any signups, if so how many<p>4. If I had some subs, run some questionaires by them to see what they really want, also ask for what troubles them the most and if they have tried other similar solutions and what went wrong.<p>5. Launch a more detailed landing page with the price plans and a pre-order option with a big discount. This way the idea will be validated by having users to actually pay for it, which is the hardest part<p>6. Send follow up emails to update every contact that has signed up<p>7. Validate the idea against how many sales it did within the first week(or month?)<p>8. If I did any sales, start building the MVP while staying in close touch with the early bird customers<p>9. Maybe in the meantime invest on some ads?<p>So far I have made a landing page with the proposed features and three price plans that asks the user to sign up and logs his plan selection. I haven&#x27;t got any subscriptions yet but I got some valuable feedback that essentially said that the page is not clear enough as to what the service is doing and how it&#x27;s solving the problem it is. So I decided to go back a step and I am currently refactoring it into a single landing page with subscriptions to an alpha version with the promise to be part of the creation of the service. Hoping to hey some early birds and begin the feedback cycle.<p>Looking forward to hear your thoughts about my thoughts and my approach.<p>Many thanks!
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BA4gDY-cqjsEPWn
I would skip on investing in ads in the beginning. Focus on gathering feedback
from face to face conversations or at least some other way where you know
there's a human on the other end and what they are saying is (mostly) genuine.

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DamnYuppie
This x100

Ads won’t tell you pain, they won’t clue you on the market size and segment.

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verdverm
Agree, I just talked to as many people as possible. Started figuring out what
problems I could solve, the personas / niches that are relevant, possible
paths across the chasm.

Now, 6 months later, we've started a beta program and are exploring more
rigorous methods for understanding customers, pain/value props, and adoption /
retention

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verdverm
The most helpful activity will be to get out the door, so to speak. You will
learn more in less time by talking to people.

