How to Validate Demand for Your Product – Part 2

This is just shilling for a marketing course, using the same technique (sell vaporware, build it out if there's interest) that it describes at tedious length.

This isn't validating demand or even a business model, it's just "Get to the front page of HN". And if 15,863 people visited your site and only 13 registered your conversion rate is 0.08% not 1.8%.

While this is not how validating demand works, I take issue more with the title of this blog post than its content. The techniques described are not necessarily wrong nor are they anything new nor even that useful. I'm not trying to knock this guy's hustle, but the headline is misleading.

With that said, the article is less relevant mainly because different products and startup ideas have totally different ways of validating them.

(eg How do you validate a new CRM SaaS product side project vs. validating starting a company like Hyperloop vs starting an "Uber for skydiving for dogs" company...? Not the same things at all.

Some folks may disagree and of course this is not always possible (usually due to budget?), but in my experience if you are serious about a product or startup idea then hiring a professional to do proper market/customer research is worth the cost, just as hiring a lawyer to do initial trademark research and handle corporate paperwork (employee docs, investor contracts etc.) is worth the cost.

Hiring a professional market research firm is cheaper than a lawyer. Start with it. But if you don't have the money, then any pro help is better than nothing. I am not a market researcher and I am just sharing my 2 cents and what I have seen.

Maybe because market research doesn't need a special license/degree like lawyers need or maybe because demand research looks easy to newbie from a distance, people think they can do it themselves. Most can't, and it's usually hubris to think you can or survivorship bias from startups that pulled it off. It will cost you in the vast majority of cases. There's always exceptions. Come visit NYC or Los Angeles and see the 10 million struggling arrogant writers who thought they could just write a successful movie script or book right away and didn't realize that professional experienced writers have skills they do not. Look into the "flop rate" of new products from companies that hire a professional market researcher compared to startup failure rates and it's clear that incorrect or lack of research is often a major problem. Good luck and happy new year.

So I have a side project that was created as 2 businesses paid $3k a piece for me to create it. They also agreed up front that once delivered they would pay a monthly fee.

I am about ready to release it to general public. But my main tactic to gain customers was to leverage the initial customers to help market and sell to their network. As they are well known in their niche this is working well. As we have real world data on how it has improved their operational efficiency. So far have 10 more people awaiting on boarding.

Long story short find people who have a problem they are willing to pay money to solve right now. I do this by having varied hobbies and traveling to partake in them.

Can somebody clarify, is he validating the demand for his product by actually selling it? What if it's not profitable and you have to pull out I.e. only subscribes 2 students ?

I'm curious, is not linking part-1 of the post part of the strategy too? Of course one could spend a click & scroll to find it, but still was it intended ?

Isn't this exactly what was suggested in "The 4-Hour Work Week" by Tim Ferriss?