#idea-validation

Dear Fellow Entrepreneurs:

When sending out a launching announcement, please include a blurb to remind your mailing list users what your app does again and why we signed up in the first place. This would really help us to remember in our busy lives how your app can help get your users laid.

Your friend,

JP

Seriously though, this happens a lot. Most recently, this happend when Bushido sent me such a welcome invite. I had no clue what Bushido was as I had probably signed up months ago. Fortunately, this opened up for a nice dialogue with the founder who agreed with the point.

Some get it right though. BufferApp's founder Joel Gascoigne did this when he validated his app. Joel writes:

What I did with Buffer is treat the emails as people who were happy for me to get in touch and discuss the idea with and whether it solved a problem for them. As soon as someone put their email in the "you caught us early" page, I sent out an email which was from my own email address and shared more details about the product which weren't on the landing page. It also ended with a very welcoming paragraph explaining that I needed their help to shape the product into something truly useful. This triggered off a lot of communication and let me ask people what a fair price would be for example so I could decide on my pricing, and also decide on the priority of some features. In my previous startup I did the right thing of launching early but I made the mistake of having around 6000 users and never asking any of them what they thought about the product and whether it solved a problem for them.

So, attach a blurb in your launch email. Even better, tell your potential users how this app improves their life. I know that I'll remember this point when we launch Gitpilot.

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Let's recap: a MVP is the Minimum Viable Product that you need before you start generating revenue.

Buffer is a Twitter app that want's to make scheduling tweets simple. This feature is included in a lot of Twitter clients, but Buffer thinks that by focusing on this one feature alone, it can do it better. 

The author wrote an article on how he built Buffer from scratch and got his first paying customer within seven weeks. I love his methodology on idea validation.

First he created a landing page that sold the value proposition. The landing page has a button that says "see plans and pricing." When people would click it, there would be a message that said "you caught us early, please leave your email address..." See below:

People left their emails. But would they pay? He created a pricing page and used the same strategy as described before. See below:

People would click a pricing plan and leave their emails. Buffer the idea that people would pay for was validated. Genius. Checkout the post and checkout Buffer. [I have no affiliation with Buffer or the author, they just deserve some Google link-juice for sharing their awesome methodology.]

One thing he doesn't address is how to get people to the site in the first place. I wrote about a technique before. The idea is simple, signup for Google Adwords. They frequently send out $100 coupons for new advertisers to use. Purchase some keywords, and deploy your Adwords campaign. You can even take advantage of Google Forms for your email input.

When it's all said in done, you should be able to validate an idea with at most four hours of work. That's four hours well spent.

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