Ask HN: Do you validate your ideas before start coding? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you validate your ideas before start coding?

4 pointsnnurmanov6 comments

I could not validate any of my startup ideas, most people do not respond, from those who respond I get inconclusive results. Should I still try to validate the idea before coding or just create an MVP and see how it goes? What are your thoughts?

View on HN

Landing pages, surveys, waitlists don't work anymore. Coding is a necessary part of validation. Give them something to touch and play with and they'll give you more accurate feedback. Hackathon style coding is faster too. Make disposable prototypes.

The best successes I've worked with have been

1. A keto recipe app with hardcoded recipes made in two weeks. Users told me the way I displayed it was confusing and that it needed carb counts. I did the fixes and they started throwing money at me.

2. A social media app for complaints. Turns out people wanted social media for a small area, e.g. everyone in an apartment area. It ended up being a visitor management/appointment kind of app with social media features.

I've started a similar to #2 web site for banks, it started with a customer suggestion that he wanted to have a system where he can track his complaints. I can see the reason, as the relationship with corporations reminds a black box, you throw an idea and get nothing in response. As I did not get any response from banks, I am now thinking to convert it into private communities around banks and have all the ideas and complaints in one place. I am hoping that when I manage to attract enough users the banks will come

We actually had companies who were happy to use it to track/ticket complaints. For context, complaining on FB is really common here because it works, but it looks bad to have all these angry public complaints. You might want to look at that angle when pitching to banks - just screenshot complaints on social media, especially those that aren't tracked.

Though for us, it's was probably that it wasn't profitable enough and there's another angle that was a burning problem for them. Social media is a surprisingly good platform as reacts are a better gauge of emotion than upvotes.

I think it depends on the idea. Generally, you should patch together something as a beta and roll it out to community/friends/family for feedback. But if it is something that will take almost a year for a beta then you should spend time validating as well.

No. Too small of a sample. I do however try to attack a "red ocean" market (markets with a lot of competitors), I.e. I basically let other do the validation for me.

This is actually a good idea. If you find a niche where there is a market but the the existing apps are of low quality you may be a winner. I have seen on PH a list of products which have high number of users but low rating (I believe it is because of low quality of the app)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com