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independence3 unconnected · 1 more author in those circles
standing

contested · 3 claims against 1

applies to

b2b, no audience needed

mixed results

confidence

high

evidence

4 claims · 4 articles · 4 receipts

window

2016-10-28 → 2020-05-22

3 builders who never spoke to each other · contested

Ask the buyers own forum what to build

Go into the subreddit or trade forum where the people with the problem gather and ask them directly what the ideal tool would do, or post the outcome and ask who wants it. The answers come from people who feel the pain rather than from people who like building things.

Where this splits

Posting into a forum of the buyers themselves produced usable answers, while asking a general community of other builders for product ideas returned nothing worth acting on.

3 claims against 1

Chris Frantz · Sergio Mattei Diaz · Tyler Tringas

Ask the forum where your buyers already gather

  1. 01Take an idea to the subreddit or forum for that interest and ask the members outright whether it is any good.
  2. 02Validate by posting one open question in your niche's trade forum asking what the ideal software for their job would do.
the objection · 1 claimCory Zue

A builder community returns no useful product ideas

Asking a builder community for product ideas is a poor use of time; posting the request produced nothing useful.

  1. 03Test demand by posting the outcome, not the product, into a Facebook group where that role gathers, and asking who wants it.

What it returned

  • The founder lists Reddit specifically as an idea validation tool and says asking your favourite community genuinely helps.

  • That single question drew hundreds of replies, and a year later the founder was making a full-time living from his window cleaning app and hiring his first employee

  • One such post drew hundreds of interested comments, and the same offer had been posted successfully in at least five other groups.

  • Zue put up a request for ideas on Indie Hackers and got little out of it

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

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More in social

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the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

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