You don't need to validate your idea
Or, do you like the sound of crickets?
Hey, it’s Mac, back atchya.
Here’s what’s in store:
🎬️ Behind the scenes
💡 1 Insight
⛰️ 1 Challenge
🧠 1 piece of inspiration
🙈 In case you missed it
💁 How I can help
🎬️ Behind the scenes
➼ I was part of another IndieHackers roundtable, this one titled Here’s how to hit $10k MRR faster
➼ Noticing myself stalling right before the finish line of SaaSPulse, I found a partner to help me improve it and get it out the door. Hop on the waiting list if you want a daily overview of your SaaS and customer acquisition in a simple, digestible format.
➼ Ever since I discovered Peter Askew, I’ve been intrigued by the idea of domain-first ideation. That is, discovering a great domain that already has a good reputation or lots of backlinks, then building a business around it. I now subscribe to Bonjour Domain by Franck which totally keeps those juices flowing.
➼ When people subscribe to this newsletter, I ask them where they are in their journey. Here are the current results:
Where readers of this newsletter are in their SaaS journey
That huge green section represents people looking for an idea. So the other morning when I found myself wide awake at 4am, what else was I gonna do but get up and write 5000 words on this topic? So…
I've been working on a guide on How to generate viable business ideas. Interested?
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💡 Insight
Every time you hear someone talk about launching their new app or product, they mention the need to validate their idea.
In the bootstrapped creator scene, we should never have to validate our idea. Idea validation is for those entering new markets or creating new markets. For those who are trying to change the future. Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, or Steve Jobs.
As creators, we should almost always be entering existing markets with some amount of competition, as it's incredibly difficult to create a new market on our own.
While many people start out being deterred by any competition, we should actually be afraid of not having competition.
If you have an idea that has no competition, chances are very high that there’s no market for it, or it’s a business that’s going to take a lot more resources than that of a bootstrapped founder.
On the other hand, by entering a market with competition, you know that creating a viable business from that idea is doable. It's a proven system.
If you’re still worried about competition:
How many products can you think of that stand alone in their market with no competition?
How many Italian restaurants are in your town?
How many scheduling apps are out there?
How many time tracker apps exist?
Does the world really need another to-do list app?
Yet, people continue to make viable businesses out of these every day.
What most of us need to do is not validate the idea itself, but validate that we know how to find and get the attention of our intended audience.
This is where the hard part is for most of us.
If you're a developer, you know you can build an invoicing application, and that's not an idea that needs to be validated. You know it's a valuable problem that is essential to businesses all over the world.
What you need to validate is that you can get in front of that audience and get their attention.
This is where the value is in having conversations with our target audience or trying to build a waiting list before building the application itself.
If you’ve failed to get users for your products in the past, I’d bet it wasn’t the creation of the product that was where you got stuck, rather, you got stuck when it came time to find and attract your target audience.
If so, you’re not alone. This is where most people go wrong, and it’s a hard lesson to learn.
But luckily I’m here to show you a better way, and hopefully, I’ve already shined some light on a better approach.
In fact, I’ve been working on a new project intended to help creators do just this - audience-first validation, so they can spend time building products that people want instead of building them and leaving them to rot. More on that soon, and in the meantime, you can start on the challenge below.
But first, I’m curious:
Want to learn more about audience-first validation?
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⛰️ Challenge of the week
If you’re pre-launch and haven’t been talking to customers, or you haven’t proven to yourself that you can reach, and engage your target audience, try to get a call scheduled with 3 people that you think match your ideal customer profile.
Just ask if you can pick their brain. Don’t overthink this.
Trust me, you’ll learn a lot in this process.
🧠 Inspiration
All these success stories can piss you off.
You feel like you're working your ass off, getting nowhere.
Meanwhile, others are crushing it and making it look easy.
It's time to pull back the curtain and reveal what's really behind these success stories.
A thread 🧵
🙈 In case you missed it
Last week we talked about Driving traffic through Reddit. And if you don’t believe it’s doable, see this.
Would you be interested in a SaaS Bootstrapper community?
A place to engage with others, share and get feedback.
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💁 When you’re ready, here’s how I can help
1:1 Coaching via chat: For just $49/mo you can connect with me privately in Discord and get help from me along the way, whether it’s about brainstorming ideas, figuring out if you’re on the right track, determining your next steps, going to market, or scaling.
1:1 Clarity call: Wherever you are on your bootstrapping journey, chances are I've been there. I know the struggles and challenges and am here to help through a 1:1 clarity call.
Aware: Aware started an early Black Friday deal for 50% off annual plans. If you’re looking to step up your audience-building game on LinkedIn, this is a great time to make this investment in your audience growth.
Last but not least, get a free product promotion: Refer this newsletter to 3 people, and I’ll mention your product in an upcoming newsletter to my thousands of readers.
The easiest way to do that?
Copy and paste your unique ‘share’ URL below, and post a nice tweet about this newsletter with that link. 😀
P.S. How did you like today's newsletter?
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Have a great weekend.
I’ll be watching the Valencia (Spain) marathon going past our apartment on Sunday, and enjoying the fact that I’m not running this one 😅
Mac
P.P.S. Can you do me a favor? Reply and tell me what you’re working on and what your biggest struggle is at the moment, please?