

Large Hardware Validation - natilus

I just got out of some big-time VC meetings in SF and was kind of stumped by one of their questions.<p>We were raising a seed round for a large hardware project and they wanted to see &quot;market validation&quot;.  They were specific in that they wanted to see someone paying for the hardware product.  Our business is B2B and our solution costs 50k - that&#x27;s a hard sell to make to a company without an actual product.<p>We thought about creating a landing page and trying to fish sales that way but people can definitely tell a difference between a hardware rendering and the real thing, on top of that, pre-selling at 50k is quite a bit of a leap.<p>Does anyone have any advice on how to go about creating a market validation?<p>Founders Fund just invested in Transatomic Power (http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.transatomicpower.com&#x2F;), I wonder how they proved their product-market fit?<p>Specifically the market validation question came from Founders Fund as well
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shoo
I worked for a company that did certain kinds of bespoke software development
/ consulting projects for a particular industry.

The company was able to close sales for development of bespoke software based
on prototype software. Sales were worth well in excess of 50k. This relied on
the company having other profitable activities and experience in the same
industry so that it was able to fund the development of a plausible prototype
in order to get a sale. Afaik the company had not taken any VC funding.

Maybe this anecdote suggests a possible approach: think of a ladder of
consulting services / cheaper products that will permit you to stay profitable
until you build up enough plausibility to close a sale. Perhaps with enough
profitability from other activities you might not need as much VC funding.

(i do not have experience of the situation you describe, so my anecdote may be
wildly inapplicable)

