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If you've got the awesome team you say you do, then you should aggressively do some Lean Startup-style validated learning. 1) Come up with an idea 2) Create a

If you've got the awesome team you say you do, then you should aggressively do some Lean Startup-style validated learning. 1) Come up with an idea 2) Create a Wordpress landing page for that idea (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1697302 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1697302 ). Sure WordPress landing sites are ghetto, but if it's good enough for groupon... 3) Buy ads on Google/Facebook to drive traffic to your landing page. If you're angel funded, you're racing against time, not money, so buying targeted traffic is a way to get validated learning in a shorter amount of time. 4) If people are responding to your landing page (clicking through the ads, signing up for an email, etc), make a survey to find out their thoughts on your idea, it's competitors, and what they currently use to solve that problem. 5) When these marketing efforts help you find an audience that is reachable and responsive to your idea, start building! When you have something, monitor usage and solicit feedback to find the next thing to build. If something isn't getting used, scrap it. Repeat as often as possible. If you're looking for a small tight market, I would highly recommend using Facebook ads. You can target by interests and groups, which means you're showing your ad to people who have self-selected to show their interest in the market you're looking at. I'm making an online trading card game, and I made a survey on Wufoo, posted it on my site, then made a FB ad pointing to the survey along with a $25 Amazon gift card to a random person that completed it. I spent $75 on ads targeted to Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Magic: The Gathering players, got 50K impressions, over 200 completed surveys, and this was in only 3 days. $100 total got me validation of my idea plus other useful information, and 50 or so people signed up for my newsletter and to playtest when I'm ready.

il 16y ago
I was going to post something similar, but you beat me to it. This is absolutely fantastic advice for any startup, and something every startup should commit to doing before they spend months building a product. If you gauge interest before committing to an idea, you never risk ending up with a product that can't find a market. I hope you flesh this out more and turn it into a blog post, it could benefit a lot of people on HN.
newobj 16y ago
Great message, but one thing threw me for a loop. "got me validation of my idea" <-- why? 50k impressions to 200 surveys is a 0.4% conversion rate, and I'm sure at least some percentage of those respondents were not entirely positive. Where did the validation come from? Or was it the $0.50 CPA for your "users" (survey completers)? (Which seems low, assuming you can muster something like $1 revenue per user on average.) (edit: Or maybe you can think of the CPA as $2.00, since only 50 out of the 200 people signed up for the newsletter.)
- pchristensen 16y ago
  My "idea" is an online trading card game with a science and technology theme. So the "validation" I got from the survey results were things like: - I asked how interested people were in playing games with different themes (medicine, business, ancient history, science, etc). Science and technology had the highest interest, both in magnitude (very interested) and percentage of favorable - I was worried that people would not try new games, but would stick to the ones they already played. This was an issue for a minority of people but most people were excited about trying new games - I was worried that people wouldn't want to play TCGs online. This was a valid concern, more than half of users had concerns. I got stats on what people like about in-person gaming and what they dislike about computer gaming - I didn't know if people spent money on online TCGs. Turns out they do, but not as much as cardboard games. This was not validation of a specific business model - this was answering the question: Is there a plausible market for this? I'll again survey for specific feedback on my game when it's ready to show, but if I found out things like "I'll never play another game besides my favorite" or "No one spends money on any online TCG", then I would have to reconsider. You can see the whole survey here: http://geekstack.com/survey-for-trading-card-game-players/ http://geekstack.com/survey-for-trading-card-game-players/
sendos 16y ago
1) Come up with an idea I think the OP is saying they are stuck at this step.
- pchristensen 16y ago
  But the point is, come up with any idea, spend two hours on Wordpress and copy, spend $100-200 on traffic to a site or survey, and in a couple of days you know if your idea is any good. With a survey, you also may find some guidance for a new or derivative product.

il 16y ago

I was going to post something similar, but you beat me to it. This is absolutely fantastic advice for any startup, and something every startup should commit to doing before they spend months building a product. If you gauge interest before committing to an idea, you never risk ending up with a product that can't find a market. I hope you flesh this out more and turn it into a blog post, it could benefit a lot of people on HN.

newobj 16y ago

Great message, but one thing threw me for a loop. "got me validation of my idea" <-- why? 50k impressions to 200 surveys is a 0.4% conversion rate, and I'm sure at least some percentage of those respondents were not entirely positive. Where did the validation come from? Or was it the $0.50 CPA for your "users" (survey completers)? (Which seems low, assuming you can muster something like $1 revenue per user on average.) (edit: Or maybe you can think of the CPA as $2.00, since only 50 out of the 200 people signed up for the newsletter.)

pchristensen 16y ago
My "idea" is an online trading card game with a science and technology theme. So the "validation" I got from the survey results were things like: - I asked how interested people were in playing games with different themes (medicine, business, ancient history, science, etc). Science and technology had the highest interest, both in magnitude (very interested) and percentage of favorable - I was worried that people would not try new games, but would stick to the ones they already played. This was an issue for a minority of people but most people were excited about trying new games - I was worried that people wouldn't want to play TCGs online. This was a valid concern, more than half of users had concerns. I got stats on what people like about in-person gaming and what they dislike about computer gaming - I didn't know if people spent money on online TCGs. Turns out they do, but not as much as cardboard games. This was not validation of a specific business model - this was answering the question: Is there a plausible market for this? I'll again survey for specific feedback on my game when it's ready to show, but if I found out things like "I'll never play another game besides my favorite" or "No one spends money on any online TCG", then I would have to reconsider. You can see the whole survey here: http://geekstack.com/survey-for-trading-card-game-players/ http://geekstack.com/survey-for-trading-card-game-players/

sendos 16y ago

1) Come up with an idea I think the OP is saying they are stuck at this step.

pchristensen 16y ago
But the point is, come up with any idea, spend two hours on Wordpress and copy, spend $100-200 on traffic to a site or survey, and in a couple of days you know if your idea is any good. With a survey, you also may find some guidance for a new or derivative product.