Firstly I'd be wary of conveying the whole "Validating by getting early users". This isn't generally the case, there is often a lot of drop-off because lots of people like to be the first in the gate but may not be your target audience. Lowercase Alpha was asked a similar question by @marckohlbrugge but I do think getting people in using the product and playing with it has its own benefits.
I guess you may have a kind of marketplace 'problem' where you need to get enough quality "pre-users" in order for the site to be useful. How do you plan on tackling this as a new product without an existing base?
Also, Beta List does a great job in this space already so how do you see yourselves complimenting/competing here?
I'd think it would be cool to have the ability to track the idea's process throughout the cycle, so pre-launch, launch, post-launch and have the founders be able to update if there is funding going on, appearances in articles, number of users etc. Similar to how Creators Log is presented I suppose - so may have competition there too 😉
I was part of Backa in its birth (before the PH launch) and saw a lot of the challenges here and ultimately backed (oops-pun) out.
What is the number 1 scenario here?
@bentossell Thanks for the mention. Few comments:
Good point about getting people to show interest not being validation. You'll want to them to invest currency (a valuable, limited resource, ideally money, but could also be time, reputation, etc) to see if they really feel the pain you're trying to solve. Giving out an email address is *something* (willingness to risk getting spammed), but hardly enough to call something validated.
Additionally, if no people sign up for your service after being featured on a site like this does that mean you have invalidated your idea? Not necessarily. Maybe your target audience just doesn't browse the site. To solve this you either need a large and therefore diverse audience (that's what we're going for at BetaList, but it takes time to grow) or focus on a specific niche. If you don't choose a niche you'll likely end up at 'startups for startups' as that's where you initially get the most traction (also see PH and many other community sites), but that's not necessarily where the money is (if that's your goal). My advice would be to focus on a specific niche first and grow from there.
> I guess you may have a kind of marketplace 'problem' where you need to get enough quality "pre-users" in order for the site to be useful. How do you plan on tackling this as a new product without an existing base?
Yep. Startups are so publicity-hungry that sites like these will get startup submissions no matter what. That's the easy part. The hard part is growing an audience by curating interesting startups/products better than existing sites. You'll need a long breath for this. (I've seen many startup directories come and go over the last 5 years since starting my own.)
It's a community site to validate your idea with pools of "pre-users". Pre-users get added to an email list and when the creator launches, the list gets notified. Users and creators can also communicate with each other providing feedback on the project as well as product updates.
Interesting idea for early stage products as you get both users as well as valuable feedback.
I actually thought this would be an interesting space for PH to leverage its community. Have ideas vetted and people subscribe to participate because of interest pre-launch.
Makerpad
Vision Directory
Valentina Studio
Makerpad
dewey.