I keep building projects nobody wants. So this time I'm doing it backwards | Hacker News Reader

I keep building projects nobody wants. So this time I'm doing it backwards

5 pointsthefern10 comments

The problem: You have an idea, you build, buy domain, spend weeks, months, no one shows up.

The idea: A profile page where you list all your project ideas. People can signal interest, and you collect emails — before you build anything. With hatchd, you wouldn't need to spin up a validation page in vercel, or other hosting platform.

Think Linktree, but for your side projects. One link to share everywhere.

Why not just use Product Hunt? PH is for launched products. This is for ideas you haven't built yet. It's your personal page, not a marketplace where you compete in a feed. No reviews or pressure to be polished — just "I'd use this" signals.

Why not Gumroad or a landing page builder? Those are for selling. This is for validating what's worth building first. One page holds all your ideas together, not scattered across platforms.

I threw up a validation page to see if anyone else has this problem: https://hatchd-validation.vercel.app/ If this sounds useful, vote on it, join waitlist. If it's not, tell me why.

Or, you could take the time to do some market and user research to validate your ideas. Why people would do the work of coming on your page and provide their feedback for free? You could also do some discovery research to find problems that are worth solving and then come up with ideas. Happy to chat further on research methods.

So validating your idea before building is better, but there is an even more "backwards" way:

You're still assuming people will be interested in one of your ideas. There is far from 100% chance of that.

To increase this chance closer to 100%: ask people what they are interested in. "Extract" the #1 problem shared by at least 10 people/businesses (that would be worth paying at least $50/month to fix). Then offer a solution to this problem.

> There are three types of problems: 1. hair-on-fire problem, 2. 2nd biggest problem, 3. everything else

Yes exactly. I read OP's post and thought, why would I use this? If I really cared I'd just copy paste links to my projects or even build a small website. It doesn't even solve any problem I have, I never struggled to share projects.

The real problem isn't validation — it's that the question 'would you use this?' is almost meaningless. People are polite. They don't want to crush your enthusiasm. 'I'd use this' clicks cost nothing so they mean nothing.

The backwards approach that actually works: start with a complaint, not an idea. Find communities where people are actively frustrated about something specific. Not 'project validation is hard' — that's generic. More like 'I spent 6 weeks building X and got 3 users and I want to die.' That's a real pain signal.

Then, before building anything, do 10 conversations where you never mention your solution. Just ask about the problem. 'Walk me through the last time you tried to validate an idea.' You'll hear things you never would have thought to put in a feature list. Most of the time you'll also realize the actual problem is slightly different from what you assumed.

The validation page is still a later step, not an earlier one. You need to already know the problem is real and common before you can design a page that speaks to it credibly.

the linktree-for-side-projects angle is interesting but i think the real problem is distribution, not organization. you can have a beautiful profile page with 10 ideas listed but if nobody sees it, the signal you get back is silence, and silence doesnt tell you anything useful.

the voting/interest signal idea is solid tho. the key question is whether the people voting are potential users or just other builders being polite. thats the trap Product Hunt fell into and its really hard to avoid.

It’s like asking your gf what she wants there is no way she will tell. lookup ideo they do observational studies where they check how frequently people have some issue and based ok this create products to fix the issue. desires are often tacit and context‑dependent, not explicitly knowable on demand. it takes time to know someone often months

You are progressing backwards, and I can tell you from 10 miles away this is not something people want and need and not useful.

"I'd use this" is easy to click, giving email is easy. The hard part is giving credit card details and commit to "yes I would buy this"

I’ve seen something similar happen a lot. The challenge usually isn’t whether the idea is good. It’s whether it shows up at the exact moment someone is already trying to solve that problem.

When the timing is right, people don’t need convincing, and when it’s off, even a solid idea can feel unnecessary.

But in this day and age of Vibe Coding being so simple, do people still need such a page? Your users are developers, they'll definitely use Vibe Coding, so why not just say a few words and set up a website to collect email addresses? That would be more customized.

Look up "tarpit ideas" - ideas that sound good on paper but do not grow into startups

The idea lacks a pressing need for users to join and invest into a high-value profile

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