HN Explorer

Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It

167 points by anticlickwise ↗ HN
It's said that amazon asks their product makers to write a press release about the release of the product and work backwards from there.

Working backwards has its uses...

I recently wanted validation on a product I had already finished developing

I thought I needed it so others will too. I put in a lot of time architecting it, designing it with careful UX and UI.

When it came time to show and tell through a demo video i couldn't create a simple enough one that explains what it does.

So anyway I posted it in some communities and people we just confused and nobody signed up.

So I had to abandon the project as there were no takers

Cut to about a week back where I had another idea... This time instead of simply developing it further, I jumped straight to see if I can create a explainer video of the product. So with zero expectations about it working I made one without audio or music or even subtitles and posted on reddit. It was just a screen recording of it working on my laptop.

To my surprise people wanted it. Some even demanding it. I quickly put up a "coming soon" website to capture emails. 36 people gave their emails! Many more I could message on reddit once I am ready.

Here is the link to the reddit post... https://www.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/13xm1s5/i_made_this_seo_keyword_searching_thingie_for_my/

here is what I wrote...

------- Headline: I made this SEO keyword searching thingie for my own needs... Does anyone want it? Its very ugly at the moment

Description: Lets say you want to rank high on Google for the keyword "pet dog care"

Before you write any content, you want to know what questions people ask on Google, Who is ranking on the top 10 and what other keywords do they rank for?, and 'Google Suggestions' for the phrase.

So I made one and I find it damn bloody useful when creating highly relevant and SEO potimised content. Wonder if anyone else finds this stuff useful.

I have been burnt building unnecessary stuff before so I am very careful to validate first now. I will only develop this further is there is any interest here :-) -------

The ugly video I shared... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-873SkJ2RI

link to the coming soon page... https://keywordranking.me/

Now I am developing the product into something others could use in collaboration with actual users and i have to do it fast since so many are waiting. This is a first for me. This is probably what product Market fit feels like... probably.

77 comments

[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 145 ms ] thread
markus_zhang
Don't blame yourself, even teams in big companies don't bother to do validation and fetch customer opinions before developing the products.

And I know why.

tchock23
I’ll bite… Why?
markus_zhang
From my experience it's similar to a knight to grab a piece of land and build a castle -- so that he can have a better source of income and better position in the feudal system. And he can then dream of being a lord or something better than a knight.
sullivanmatt
I would recommend reading both Inspired and Empowered by Marty Cagan to help you think about your product journey. Very relevant to what you'll be building, and personally I found Empowered challenged me in ways that both made me uncomfortable and also better at my job as a Product Manager.
cschreiber
Any other PM books you found had a significant impact on your role?
anticlickwise
Thanks for the recommendation. Will definitely read it
ironmagma
There’s a balance to be had. Show your thing too early and it can die. There’s a reason large companies don’t announce everything the moment it’s planned.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
vitruvian_man
False equivalency. OP is an indiehacker with (relatively speaking) $0 marketing budget versus a large company.

OP - keep validating and showing your early, "ugly" products. Marketing and market validation matter the most.

ironmagma
It’s an existence proof. Even at an indie startup, if you mention your idea too early there’s a risk you’ll lose the motivation to work on it due to negative reception. Not every idea that’s poo-poohed is bad.
8organicbits
The trick is knowing which feedback to listen to. If Dropbox listened to the negative feedback from HN on launch, they'd think there wasn't a market and it was a dumb idea. HN was (famously) wrong, partly because HN isn't the target market of the service.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

jsunderland
I’ve definitely had the experience of demo-ing something half baked and gotten stares, then completed the product and those same people who couldn’t connect the dots before understood the product and its value in its entirety. It’s highly dependent on the abstraction level of the product though. An SEO keyword search tool is relatively un-abstract in 2023, in 1999 this might have been a little harder for people to wrap their heads around. Maybe another way to say that is when you decide to make something novel, not only do you run the risk of building a bad product, but you run a very high risk of being early. I don’t think OP is running these risks with their current product though. It’s analogous enough to current products that it’s conceptually easy to pitch. Every founder has some slightly modified view on this philosophy. I’m personally a big proponent of talking to users and figuring out what they don’t understand about what you’re doing early on but not letting early external feedback dissuade you from completing a product when you see a need.
anticlickwise
Yes, Thanks. Its all about handling my personal psychology. As an indiehacker, I need some encouragement early so I know I am not wasting my time
SkyPuncher
There's a difference between publicly launching something and having private discussions with key potential customers.

If you can't find pre-launch early adopters, you probably don't have a product.

mhuffman
There is a big difference between Apple tipping its hand and China printing out a bazillion clones of it before it even hits the market and testing to see if you actually have a market to start with. Apple does not have to test to see if it has a market to start with. People would buy white iTurds on a stick and show unboxing videos if Apple released. You can have a galaxy brain idea but since you don't have millions of fanatical existing customers, it is possible that you can not sell even one unit. So better to test the waters first.
ironmagma
It's not just about market fit though. Pixar didn't announce a movie as soon as it was conceived, and neither should you. Announcing too early often sets you up for failure.
whoevercares
Work backwards quality in Amazon has been degraded to historically low. Now it’s cherry-picking customer pains to fit some narratives for promotion sake or blindly copycat with no core value.
throwaway913931
Used to work there and this is so true

They talk a lot about being data-driven and then in reality its like some PM just cherry-picking random customer anecdotes to justify whatever they want

So many features I would think "literally 2 people are going to use this" but we need to build it to get those promos and expand the org empire

Worst was the alexa org

mitthrowaway2
It's a tough balance to strike, especially with hardware. I'd love to be able to put together a preorder page to validate demand for my next McGuffin, but it's very difficult to know specs, cost, and appearance before at least a representative prototype has been tested and quotes obtained from suppliers. And it takes a great deal of time and engineering effort to get to that point.

Of course I could show off something completely different than what gets delivered, but for some product categories, the entire appeal evaporates if the promised specs are not accurate. For example, something like camping equipment goes from awesome to pointless if the final product lacks key promised traits like foldability, waterproofing, low weight, etc. See also Magic Leap's marketing demo, which they ultimately couldn't deliver on within the constraints of a real product.

I think the Lean Startup methodology has a lot going for it, but it's very hard to square with certain products.

PS: Your video is really nice. I'd probably rather use a website that looks like that than one with fancy graphics and animations and formatting. It feels more like a professional tool than a flashy toy.

anticlickwise
Thanks. i cant even imagine how hard it is with hardware. Dont think lean development applies there
contingencies
Having migrated from software to (very complex) hardware over most of the last decade I would say there are still lean principles, just with different cost and value metrics. For instance, "lean" as an emphasis on rapid iteration has great basis in hardware R&D.

Musk's 4th rule of manufacturing: Accelerate cycle times. You're moving too slowly, go faster. But if you're digging your grave, don't dig it faster.

... via https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup

AlbertCory
Asking people for their opinion on anything (in my case, it's writing) is an art. Not everyone's opinion is worth listening to. If you throw it out to the general public, you'll get a lot of stupid ones. It's better to pick a few people you respect, who are not uncritical lovers of your work.

But you need to do that. As the creator, you have a blindness that it's impossible to get past all by yourself.

mhuffman
There is a book called "The Mom Test" that has this perspective.
AlbertCory
thanks, downloaded the Kindle sample.
notresidenter
I second "The Mom Test", it's a great book that can be read in an hour.
contingencies
If I had asked people what they had wanted, they would have said faster horses. - Henry Ford

Speak with domain experts (people who use, provide, and repair the product or service) because it is faster than learning about the product yourself. - IDEO

... via https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup

whartung
By a similar note, I'm working on a pet project, with no commercial aspirations, but, yea, it would be nice if others eventually use it.

And by that notion, I have lots of ideas, but I must continually consciously reign myself in and try to not fall into a hole for a "nice to have". I don't even have a "have" yet, and would be good to get that finished before we get to the "nice" to haves.

But, I whittle away, pushing another quarter inch forward on my 10 mile journey. I still find myself stuck in a featuritis pothole now and again.

Having a destination document can help keep you on track.

_nalply
That's not a bad thing if you have fun and don't have the expectation of a product.
ChicagoBoy11
I'm in the same boat, and I think the lack of commercial aspiration is a bit of a double-edged sword, because then its tough to balance the competing forces between developing features because they'd be fun to develop, developing features because they would be nice in the product, and developing something that people other than me would actually want to use.
tstrimple
There was a series of "hackathons" I enjoyed called Startup Weekend. They put much more focus on the business validation by talking to people than they did on the actual hacking portion, but the presentations always had a tech demo component as well. But the overall judging weighed the market validation quite highly. It was an interesting change from the hackathons where you just build a cool tech demo.

https://www.techstars.com/communities/startup-weekend

Dudester230602
Best growth hacking thing to do now is to make an HN post about lesson learned and to make sure all the links are included. Like the OP.

Later on it should be possible to make another HN post about the impact of the previous HN post on the sign up counts. Make sure to include the links there too.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
aquariusDue
Don't forget to piggyback off OP's thread with a comment sharing links to your app/prototype/work if you also happen to develop something even barely related.

Too bad I don't have anything at this time to plug.

rozenmd
HN is a nice dopamine hit as 40k people hit your landing page in one go, but it very quickly needs to be replaced with consistent marketing effort, or you'll start to believe your idea has no legs.
make_it_sure
HN traffic doesn't convert unless you have a very broad B2c product or developer related one.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
asimjalis
+1 on the working backwards process. I find it useful even for internal demos and scripts that I write. Thinking backwards helps me figure out what the point of the demo is. Why anyone would be interested in it.
chrispogeek
I write the simplest incarnation of an idea onto an app, and just share it out with colleagues. I have no expectations. I'd say my hit rate is about 1/5. I consider it very high. It's also that high because my audience is my coworkers and I have a good idea of what they want. It's also that low because I just cobble together stuff that barely works, with the ultimate intent to see if i'd get more questions/requests out of it.
quickthrower2
Any IP ownership issues with this? I.e. your employer claims you did it on their time?
danielvaughn
I often wonder about this, because I'm in the process of building something and have never shown it to anyone. But it's a developer tool, and I'd be the target audience. So I start with asking myself what I need, with the hope that I can build a really good tool that I'd actually use, and then hopefully others will find it useful as well.
anticlickwise
I dont want to discourage you... there is a high likelyhood that others want it. but it is better to be absolutely sure. Just make a video and send it to a few people and see what they say. That will teach you a lot
ebiester
If it's open source, that's fine.

What you have to ask, however, is who is buying your product? How much are they paying? What additional needs would be needed for them to pay you?

reaperman
Just because the people you showed it to couldn't imagine using it doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of people out there who desperately want it and would recognize its utility to them.

To other creators: 0.1% of the USA and EU is 777,000 people. OP made a very niche product, hopefully he showed people who need SEO-related products, but if you only need to sell to 10,000 people to make a profit, you might "just" have to find them.

Of course, part of the "product" is telling the right people they need your product. If you can't do that then you haven't really finished the product.

anticlickwise
You are right. But I must admit response like the one I got gives you a tremendous boost to the confidence. I might go back to the earlier product someday if I learn to be a better marketer :-)
dinkleberg
FYI it is way easier to learn marketing when you have something to sell. It is very hard to read about marketing and really learn it if you don’t have a way of putting it to practice.
esafak
Try getting them to put money down for a discount or other incentive. The best signal is paying up; promises are cheap.
udkl
I can second this. With your demo you proved interest. However you now need to ascertain if there is enough 'paying interest'.
tester457
Videos are one of the most important parts of marketing projects. Github projects without gifs get less attention. Humans are visual and don't like scouring through a readme before seeing some action first.
racl101
Read me says:

> "Hello everybody out there using minix - I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones"

thesnide
That was before YouTube got all the braintime drain...

Now, I'm not so sure it would succeed if no nice visuals.

chefandy
You discovered why design comes before development in mature development organizations. Design, fundamentally, is a medium of communication. Creating an explainer video, creating a UI, and creating experiences are all communicating to your users how to interact with your software. Unless your users are also technical, (and sometimes even then,) if you don't know what you're going to say, starting off with implementing how you're going to say it will often lead to failure.

> careful UX and UI

> people we just confused and nobody signed up.

If you believe you did those things by yourself without interacting with potential users, not only were you not careful, but you probably didn't satisfy the bare minimum requirements for a basically functional UI/UX . User interface design and user experience design are two distinct professions with relevant college degrees and career paths. That so many developers think they can just intuit their way through these processes based on osmosis-gained knowledge is exactly why we need designers in the first place.

First, get design input on your new project. That you made something usable enough doesn't mean you can replicate that as you expand. To turn this around, a designer in a technical environment could probably hack together a PHP app that got the job done for simple use cases but it would quickly fall apart upon scaling it up.

Second, get design input on your first project. It's quite likely that your product is genuinely useful but you simply don't know how to communicate that to the user. If you can't do it in an explainer video, you almost certainly couldn't do it through an appropriate interface.

jacknobody
That is a very deep set of remarks; I applaud chefandy, and completely agree that design comes before development. My point of view is a little different than chefandy's though...

I'm a bit of a cowboy myself, but I can cobble good stuff together fairly quickly and make it well enough to last for years (electronic hardware).

In such work, I know that with a clearly visualised goal, development becomes a simple task.

ary
A simple maxim that our investors basically demanded of us was: "Sell, design, build". Accepting that approach had two pretty noticeable benefits:

1) We didn't spend a lot of time building something nobody wanted (which is the main theme of this post).

2) We experimented a lot with our product design because we knew we'd be getting feedback quickly and thus could take interesting risks. There was little "analysis paralysis".

Assuming you are your own target customer (in that you would actually pay money for what you're building) I think it can be too easy to conflate what you want to build ("this is fun/interesting") with what you want ("I need this and am willing part with money to get it").

This thread is a great reminder, so thanks.

SCUSKU
How do you sell something without something to show off?

For example, let's say I have an idea for an app. Naturally I would think to design a few mockups, then post it on Twitter, Reddit, etc.

And then if people actually cared enough to sign up for an email list, then build.

So in this case, design -> sell -> build .

haswell
I think this is where the difference between mockups and fully realized designs comes to the forefront.

Simple mockups can communicate an idea effectively enough to sell the idea. But there’s a large delta between a pitchable mock and a design that is ready to build.

Those early mocks rarely match the later designs in my experience, and I think can be kept under the “sell” umbrella.

ary
This is the answer I would give. We did design work, but not at the fidelity that you would want to actually implement.
derefr
1. Go to meet-ups or conferences — not for your own industry, but rather for industries and verticals that you expect to consume your product. (For example, if you're Twilio, then go to an app-dev conference.)

2. Meet people; ask what they do; wait for them to return the favor and ask what you do.

3. Pitch them on the problem you're solving — and how you are (intending to) solve it — by just talking them through it. Pretend it's something you've already built and that you're just describing the company you work for.

4. Gauge interest by who demands your business card.

pmarreck
I guess more succinctly it would be like

1) Design mockups showing workflow for feasible idea

2) Sell feasible idea

3) Design architecture for feasible idea

4) Build feasible idea

At each new level of these you are asking more and more specific questions about how it would work and are getting "closer to the metal", with the final step being the implementation of EVERY detail (that is known, at least). Also at each step, you discover new things you didn't think to think about, but now must deal with... it's a discovery process.

But this is great because it puts the focus on "gauging interest first" before you spend weeks building anything.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
syngrog66
I've been guilty in the past of putting lots of effort into building, tuning and polishing something which... well, nobody wanted

Or that nobody was willing to pay for, anyway

Or not enough to make it lucrative

Or heck to not even put it in the general ballpark of being minimally sustainable.

Totally changed my mindset since

ftxbro
now do one for single drop at home blood testing
quickthrower2
similarly do one for unlicensed peer to peer taxi service.
JonChesterfield
Alternatively.

1/ Build a thing you want

2/ You've now got a thing you want

3/ ?

4/ Profit

Step 3 is moderately difficult.

rmason
Show and tell doesn't always work as he describes it. You can go out and meet with people and describe what you want to build. It might work or it might not.

I've found it far more useful to meet with the target audience. Your sole goal is to find out if the problem exists and if its bad enough they're willing to pay to get it solved.

The Mom Test book is invaluable because whether you get truthful information or not depends on how you ask the questions. Like a lot of things in startups asking the right questions is counterintuitive.