Cleaning up the Sparks folder

Corpus/Sparks/iso27diy/Idea Validation.md

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+# Idea Validation
+https://www.reddit.com/r/microsaas/comments/1kvxsdb/the_exact_steps_i_took_to_validate_my_idea_before/
+
+I know what it's like to try to market a product that no one wants, I’ve built two that completely failed. No one wanted them and I wasted months trying to make it work.
+
+I’ve also built successful products and the key difference was that the successful products solved a real problem. It sounds obvious but it’s easy to forget sometimes.
+
+The hard part is how you validate that you are solving a real problem so I thought I’d share exactly how I did it:
+
+**Step one: Start with a problem thesis and talk to users**
+
+- I was a founder and I had a problem that I suspected other founders had too
+    
+- So I had my problem thesis and the next step was to talk to my would-be users to see if the problem was real and to understand their view of it better
+    
+- I made a post on [r/SaaS](https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/) and [r/indiehackers](https://www.reddit.com/r/indiehackers/) asking founders to answer a few questions and in return I would give them feedback on whatever they were building
+    
+    - The key part here was offering them something in return for their time. That makes it a lot easier to get answers
+        
+    - Here's one of the posts if you’re curious: [https://www.reddit.com/r/indiehackers/comments/1ea1cpd/lets_exchange_feedback/](https://www.reddit.com/r/indiehackers/comments/1ea1cpd/lets_exchange_feedback/)
+        
+- The got me in touch with 8-10 founders who were willing to answer my survey.
+    
+- I asked questions about pain points related to the problem and tried to get an idea if they were willing to adopt the solution I had in mind.
+    
+- The responses were positive so I had the green light to start building a simple first version
+    
+
+**Step two: Building the MVP**
+
+- This is the easy part. Who doesn’t love building?
+    
+- The critical thing here was that I tried to understand what the survey responses were telling me and built a bare bones solution addressing the pain points of these people
+    
+- I built fast. Around 30 days for the MVP
+    
+- That's it. It was time to market this MVP and see if I can get some users
+    
+
+**Step three: Marketing and collecting feedback**
+
+- First I set a clear goal. It wasn’t about getting customers, I just wanted as much feedback as possible so I would need active users. Understanding how to make the product better is so much more valuable at this point
+    
+- I set the goal of getting 20 active users in two weeks
+    
+- Then I asked myself where my users hang out and the answer was X and Reddit
+    
+- Next step was to set daily volume targets. I decided to do 5 posts and 50 replies on X every day and on Reddit I would just write a new post when I had something that had worked well on X
+    
+- So I knew exactly what to do every day and then I just executed that plan. It was easy, because I just had to take action, no questions asked
+    
+- Two weeks later I had hit 100 users
+    
+
+That was the validation process I used. From there on, all I had to do was improve the product based on what users were telling me and continue marketing. That has taken me all the way to $7,300/mo and growth just becomes easier with time.
+
+I hope my journey can inspire some of you to not give up and to follow a solid process for building your product.
+
+Feel free to ask if you have any questions.
+