One thing I would have loved to read about is more about how they did market validation for these ideas. For a micro-bet strategy knowing which one (outside of really interesting projects that would trend on HN), it feels like market validation chops would be crucial.
The author seems to be batting an insanely high average for just building things and having them actually get some traction, and be exit-able.
> When I started this mission, I had a big list of project ideas that I'd built up in my phone. Maybe you have one of those lists too.
> Two years later, I've realised a lot of these initial ideas were pretty terrible.
> It's a paradox, but I've found that my best ideas now come from building other ideas.
Funnily enough, I went the other way and started sharing my large list of ideas with others (I send 3 non-terrible ones to subscribers every week[0]). Of course, running a mailing list and sharing the ideas was one of the ideas...
At this point market validation (and practice validating ideas) is starting to seem like the most important thing. Knowing you should take the month to build before you do, but reading the post it feels like maybe bounding initial development time sometimes can work in lieu of validating the market.
[EDIT] - please see previous discussion about the mailing list as well![1] -- it's released every sunday night.
[EDIT2] - is anyone having trouble sending email to the author? I'm using protonmail and wanted to get in touch but I can't -- email looks to be no bueno for proton mail. I guess I'll either try thunderbird or twitter.
[EDIT3] - Looks like proton mail does not like emoji email addresses currently... Thunderbird happily sent.
[EDIT4] - Nope, nvm I'm getting a mail lookup error (hn strips the emoji)...
> Delivery to tinyprojects@.gg failed with error: MX lookup error
>At this point market validation (and practice validating ideas) is starting to seem like the most important thing.
Market validation - especially for online products and services - is indeed incredibly important, but not many people like to write about it because it is actually very drab and a tiny bit audacious.
His market validation - you are seeing it. It is a submission to Hacker News.
Ok ok, that is a given, but the author alludes to other various ways he gets feedback and validation for his products. He also talks about how well his products were received on Product Hunt and you can also follow him on Twitter.
My final advice for seeing how online services validate their ideas - run the product's domain through a backlink checker. It lets you see what other websites link to their product and what avenues they pursued for outreach. Each of those submissions exposes the product to potential customers and gives valuable feedback to the creator.
> His market validation - you are seeing it. It is a submission to Hacker News.
Yup you're totally right. All these ideas really seemed like things that would trend on HN (but that's easy to say in retrospect, getting to the front page isn't quite so easy!).
> My final advice for seeing how online services validate their ideas - run the product's domain through a backlink checker. It lets you see what other websites link to their product and what avenues they pursued for outreach. Each of those submissions exposes the product to potential customers and gives valuable feedback to the creator.
This is one thing I know I'm terrible at. I barely use any SEO tools properly, I should probably just hurry up and pay for ahrefs or whatever already.
I don't think the concept of checking backlinks even clicked properly in my head until I read your explanation, thank you very much.
You can get a general idea with free backlink checkers, just won't be able to deep dive and do various filters.
Ignore all the spammy websites that usually regurgitate random links. Focus on the sites with high DR that don't have the "NoFollow" attribute. These are the hard-hitting websites that boost your domain for SEO purposes and can be good places to get feedback on your own product.
The author seems to be batting an insanely high average for just building things and having them actually get some traction, and be exit-able.
> When I started this mission, I had a big list of project ideas that I'd built up in my phone. Maybe you have one of those lists too.
> Two years later, I've realised a lot of these initial ideas were pretty terrible.
> It's a paradox, but I've found that my best ideas now come from building other ideas.
Funnily enough, I went the other way and started sharing my large list of ideas with others (I send 3 non-terrible ones to subscribers every week[0]). Of course, running a mailing list and sharing the ideas was one of the ideas...
At this point market validation (and practice validating ideas) is starting to seem like the most important thing. Knowing you should take the month to build before you do, but reading the post it feels like maybe bounding initial development time sometimes can work in lieu of validating the market.
[EDIT] - please see previous discussion about the mailing list as well![1] -- it's released every sunday night.
[EDIT2] - is anyone having trouble sending email to the author? I'm using protonmail and wanted to get in touch but I can't -- email looks to be no bueno for proton mail. I guess I'll either try thunderbird or twitter.
[EDIT3] - Looks like proton mail does not like emoji email addresses currently... Thunderbird happily sent.
[EDIT4] - Nope, nvm I'm getting a mail lookup error (hn strips the emoji)...
> Delivery to tinyprojects@.gg failed with error: MX lookup error
[0]: https://unvalidated-ideas.vadosware.io
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31388399