Pre-Launch Research Rarely Tells You If a Product Will Sell

“I'd also like the fakedoor approach to check if there is actual customer demand for the feature. Next to that, also guesstimate what the maintenance cost of the feature will be. Building it in-house maybe tempting, but if it increases workload then I'd benchmark it with paying a third party for it. If there pricing is reasonable, then go for it. [re: How do you decide whether to build a feature in-house or rely on a third-party provider?]”

“I’d lean toward integrating first to test whether customers even use the feature. No point spending months building something that only a handful of users end up needing [re: How do you decide whether to build a feature in-house or rely on a third-party provider?]”

“When testing a new product, I think the first impression only tells you so much. The real test is whether it continues to be useful once you start using it for actual work. For a tool like Priceotus, which focuses on competitor pricing, useful feedback could be about how clearly price changes are presented, whether the information helps users make decisions, and what features would make the workflow easier. For those who test new apps or websites, what kind of feedback do you find most valuable?”

“Every products needs a market research, need and enough people willing to pay for it. Then you need sales channels. [re: Got fired, built a product for a year, and nobody uses it. Tell me why.]”

“But only if you ask the right questions. Don't ask: “Do you like our product?” Ask: What happened that made you look for a solution? How were you solving this before? What was the cost of doing nothing? Which alternatives did you consider? Why did you choose us? What nearly stopped you from buying? What result did you expect? Have we delivered that result? What would make you cancel? Who else has this problem? Then look for repeated patterns. If 7 out of 10 customers independently mention th”

“We do it differently and yet it does the job [re: Building product where we are its first customer]”

“Based on hard personal experience, if your target customers don't see the problem, even if they have it, your best bet is to find a new problem. Quickly. [re: How do you ship an AI product now, when people don't even know they have the problem? (I will not promote)]”

“I'm exploring a few SaaS ideas and trying to figure out the most effective ways to validate demand before investing too much time in development. I'd love to hear what actually worked for you, especially what didn't work and what you would do differently if you were starting from scratch. submitted by /u/East-Fondant1325 [link] [comments]”

“You need to ask the right questions to the right customers. Sean Ellis popularized a simple PMF test: Ask users: “How would you feel if you could no longer use our product? Very disappointed Somewhat disappointed Not disappointed A result of 40% or more saying “very disappointed” is a useful early signal, not proof of PMF. Here's how I'd use it: Survey customers who have experienced your products core value. Ask what they value most. Identify which customer segment loves the product. Inv”

“This is a lesson on market research and doing the uncomfortable part. I build a small niche product for gyms, and i essentially built a minimal end to end POC. I searched small clubs around my area and I planned to just drop by and talk to owners. I printed out a handout to leave with them. I was kind of excited because I build a great app, but also terrified just approaching business and talk about it with strangers. I myself hate talking to sales people and solicitors Anyway, i walked into a c”

“You picked a market where there are probably more than 100 actively maintained tools to choose from, with the popular ones eating most of the market share. How is this going to succeed is the question? [re: Got fired, built a product for a year, and nobody uses it. Tell me why.]”

“You'll need to differentiate yourself from the several existing platforms. Determine the unmet need you are filling for clients. Do you offer vertical niches that are not being served today? A different business model that saves clients time or money? If you don't have differention, you don't have a chance. This is no different than the online auction market back at the turn of the century. There were 10+ auction sites battling amongst themselves. Eventually eBay garnered the most bu”

“Hey all, I’m building a paid-only investing research tool and I’m at the point where I need to validate it before going all-in. I’d love to hear how others handled this stage. Quick context so the questions make sense: It’s a single place for investing research: company pages, fundamental analysis, news and earnings call transcripts, macro data, and a portfolio view that combines accounts from different brokers. The AI only explains the data and never generates numbers. The market already has es”

“You’re asking the right questions for a trust-sensitive product. I’d avoid a broad “try it for two weeks” study at first and run short interviews around three moments: first journal entry, first mood tag, and first peer-space visit. Ask participants what felt affirming, what felt presumptive, and what would make them stop immediately. Recruit within the community and compensate people for this emotional labor. The Askli Research Challenge may be useful for structuring those interviews and synthe”

“I'm trying to figure out how to conduct market research to determine whether people actually need a particular service and, more importantly, whether they would be willing to pay for it. I'm not looking for the usual advice to check Quora, Reddit, YouTube, Google Trends, social media, or run paid ads. I want to understand how to validate demand in the real world. submitted by /u/Beginning-Bit7801 [link] [comments]”

“I'd start by separating who can use your product from who actually has a compelling reason to pay for it. Those are two very different audiences. I wouldn't necessarily commit to one customer group immediately, but I wouldn't try to market to everyone either. Pick 2–3 potential customer segments and investigate three things: What specific problem does this solve for them? How are they solving that problem today, and what does that cost them? Is the problem painful or frequent enough”

“Since you already have creators interested, I'd start testing demand with people who actually buy digital assets while you keep recruiting sellers. Even a few early purchases would give you something concrete to show the next creators, rather than asking them to trust that the traffic will eventually come. [re: How did you get your first 10 sellers for a two sided marketplace? i will not promote]”

“Yes it helps, although you can also take the marketing approach. Really depends also on the type of product. You need to be able to understand your product and the customers needs of that product. If these needs are technical in nature, you'll need to be able to comprehend this of course. [re: Anyone else tired of what Product Management is becoming lately?]”

“thats basically what producthunt does but earlier in the funnel. problem is most people dont actually know what they want until they see it working. you get a lot of armchair critics who would vote no on something that ends up being a hit anyway i think the real filter is just shipping fast and seeing if anyone pays [re: Community driven/built projects?]”

“Got a link to the template itself or just the product page? [re: Find your Ideal Customer | ICP]”

“I r been trying to build for a while may be like a year or so. But I can never get my ideas past the validation stage. how does a person with and idea validate it? Do you need an audience? What a the real process submitted by /u/nahruskii24 [link] [comments]”

“Getting little feedback doesn’t necessarily mean the idea is bad. I’d start with a few potential customers and ask about the last time they ran into the problem. What did they do, and what did it cost them in time or money? That gives you something more useful to build on than “sounds cool.” [re: How do you validate your ideas?]”

“You can learn that shoppers "want premium, clean, and sustainable" and still have no idea which design actually matches that best. That is the failure mode I keep seeing. The research produces language. Production requires a choice. My working assumption is that research often defaults to asking consumers to explain what they want, when the useful question is which concrete variant they would actually say yes to. Same product, one Yes/No question each person sees a different variant. N”

“Where are your customers? How do they shop? The answer to those questions will help you figure that out. Go read How Brands Grow by Sharp. [re: I'm A Brand - How should I market my products?]”

“So, just use it for your own product. You have tested that it works in the past. [re: I spent months building my business. Now I'm realizing getting customers is a completely different challenge.]”

“How do you know anyone wants it? You have to validate before spending tons of time building stuff. Then it’s not that hard to get customers; just call or drop in to an ICP, ask for feedback, get a paid pilot started, refine it with them as a design partner. Scale with lookalike companies and case studies, lead with results, not features. [re: AI made building a SaaS easy. now why is getting 1 customer harder than building the whole thing 💀]”

“For a new app, I would pick the search demand before writing a line of code. Look at what buyers type when they look for the problem you solve, then build the smallest version that can rank for those terms. The app itself is not the moat. The moat is the domain history, the pages that answer the query, and the links from other sites pointing at you. A copycat can clone the features in a weekend but they cannot outrank an established site for the same search terms for months or longer. That gap i”

“Before building anything you should test the theory of the customer-problem-fit. You can do this without any code, it involves market research and problem-fit-experiments. A book called 'Lean Customer Devleopment' is a godo place to start. [re: Looking for TECHNICAL cofounder (I will not promote)]”

“I don't think you need to choose between having a human brand and building something you can eventually sell. The distinction I'd make is whether customers are buying because of you personally or because they trust the business and what it delivers. Behind-the-scenes content, customer stories and showing the team at work can build that emotional connection without making you the entire identity of the brand. I'd also gradually introduce other faces so customers associate the experien”

“Talk to people that you think are your customers, as many as possible [re: How would you validate a Business Idea?]”

“I've had a few ideas for personalized gifts and small home decor pieces kicking around for a while. I think they could be fun to make, but I can’t tell if that's just me liking the idea or if other people would actually want them. I'm trying to figure out how to test a couple of them without going all in right away. Do people usually make a few samples first, get some mockups made, or just ask around and see what gets a response? I'm still at the very “not sure where to start” st”

“Focus groups. [re: What's the best option for getting market research to see if there is a need/want for your type of business idea?]”

“This is a classic case of thinking you need more features simply because a use case exists. What does your product actually do, and is this a use case you should even care about? Have you proven you can build a business around your current capabilities, or are you chasing shiny objects because one person used your product differently than you expected? Not every problem you discover is a problem your business needs to solve. Just because you can build something doesn’t mean you should . Focus on”

“It doesn't have to be binary. Instead of wondering when to launch it to the world, find a few people to test it out, and provide feedback. No one knows your product better than real customers. Launch it to them, and build it for their needs. [re: When to know when to publish SaaS?]”

“Asking for opinions here can be useful, particularly to understand whether your idea seems like a logical approach. However, there are several shortcomings to relying on this alone. It doesn't account for the current market, the competitors already operating in it, or the alternatives customers are using. There's also a sampling bias, as Reddit users don't represent all the demographic and behavioural segments that could be your potential customers. Getting opinions from a wider audi”

“I’m building Pijnhol, which delivers personalised news updates by SMS. One useful piece of feedback was that asking someone to verify their number before they’ve seen a convincing example puts the commitment before the value. The change was to show topic-specific example texts on the homepage, so people can understand what would land in their messages before signing up. The lesson is about ordering: explain what someone receives before asking for access to a personal channel. How have others han”

“I think the fact that you've never used one as a customer is worth paying attention to. Have you considered testing whether a shorter demo converts better than splitting everything into two? I'd imagine most people evaluating a dev tool want to get to the actual product pretty quickly. [re: Has anyone had good experience with Supademo?]”

“validate demand before you build the whole guide. if people already ask where to buy in your comments or dms thats the signal. start with a tiny paid version maybe just the meal plan part and see if anyone actually pays before you spend weeks making it perfect. from what i've seen the creators who do this well sell the first version fast and fix it from real buyers later [re: I lost 60 pounds and had multiple viral TikTok videos with millions of views. I’m thinking about turning my experienc”

“harsh but probably accurate tbh [re: Built the product, struggling with distribution, how would you validate this? (I will not promote)]”

“You need to prove demand for the core offering. Then prove demand for each add-on, in order of proven demand [re: Me and a friend are trying to start a gym in our town that has a been having a population boom. Advice would be nice over the details we have went through already.]”

“You have to convince these consultants that something you built has value and they cannot easily replicate the results. One of the first things we are doing in VC practice is figure out what it takes to replicate. And unsurprising, for many AI SaaS companies - not a lot. [re: Has anyone here sold saas to small consulting firms? Where to find people to talk to? LinkedIn/cold email is a dead end for me, zero results with hundreds of messages. i will not promote]”

It's in the works! The verification process (CASA) goes through an external third party security firm. I launched on Producthunt to get early feedback to see if justifying the upfront cost of…

“To start you need to understand your product's position in the market, and make sure you have a clear definition of who your users and buyers are, and what problems your product solves for them. You may already have assumptions about this, but it's worth validating them before jumping into marketing. An easy way to start is to research any products similar to yours that are already available. If something similar exists, see who their customers are and what kind of language they use to t”

“It's more likely to be validated easier than most and confirm product-market-fit given your first customer cohort could be small and focused and B2B. Actual success comes down to so many different factors not least execution - can you actually build and deliver what you say you will to the quality needed. Validationg/market fit though is one of the biggest hurdles anyone can overcome. There are playbooks for this - go out and talk to people with a working demo, doesnt even have to be a finis”

“Depends on what is your main goal behind it. If it's business then you should do validation before pursuing it. If it's only for your personal use and later you will open it and let product get validated by itself and people like it by chance then you should go ahead [re: Should I build it? (I will not promote)]”

“I’m curious about people who actually ship RAG for paying clients — agencies, consultants, freelancers and small SaaS teams. The technical build is one thing. The part I’m more interested in is the handoff: when you change chunking, embeddings, reranking, hybrid retrieval or context packing, how do you prove to the client that version B is actually safer/better than version A? Do you struggle more with: proving retrieval quality improved; finding regressions hidden by aggregate metrics; showing”

“Their test is a good one. I would add a second check, whether the custom work could become a standard option you can charge for. If it can, it is product development. If it stays a one off with its own process, you are running a side business for one client. Also compare how much team time that account takes against its share of revenue. [re: How do you tell when a big customer is pulling your business in the wrong direction?]”

“You had a good idea. But the idea has been executed already by Meta (Muse). If you truly believe your product is different, you will have to make the differentiation part of your pitch. If no one responds, then you’ve validated that the market is too small or non-existent, and you should move on. Don’t fall in love with your product. Fall in love with the problem. [re: Built the product, struggling with distribution, how would you validate this? (I will not promote)]”

“In 1 week you need to find and test the critical unproven assumption of your business. If you’re selling something that’s been sold before it’s simple : prove that you can reach the customer and convince them to buy from you , if you’re selling something more unique you need to test willingness to pay. If you’re asking for a mechanism besides cold calling, you have cold emailing , cold dmming , commenting on forums where the poster has the problem you solve. Posting your story/ build in public -”

Where did you talk about your product to get your first 4–5 customers?

“Just want to share a simple technique I've been having success with for validating ideas. Anyone who was around in the 2010s remembers the standard advice back then was to put up a landing page with a form to collect emails for a waitlist. This has been dead for a while for a number of reasons, not because of AI but rather because of how people use the internet now. People browse mainly through aggregators where the click through rate to anywhere off-platform is abysmally low, so the signals”

I used to validate business ideas the old school way. Search Reddit. Check Google. Look through competitors. Read forums. Try to figure out if people actually had the problem I was thinking…

“So, the ball is officially rolling and Im beginning the process of product research and getting samples from manufacturers for prototyping my product. I want to make sure I know what needs to happen once my product is ready to go BEFORE it is so that I can get my ducks in a row. My business is in the craft/hobby sector with a focus on art/stationary supplies. My center product is art/alcohol markers which is what im currently developing. I'm operating in Southern Ontario, CA online with hope”

“Most SaaS ideas sound good until you start asking the hard questions We built IdeaExam to help you stress-test an idea before spending weeks or months building it Describe what you want to build and it analyzes market demand, competition, monetization, differentiation, distribution, and execution risk You get an overall score, the strongest and weakest parts of the idea, and a 48-hour validation plan showing what to test next The initial analysis is free Try it here: ideaexam.com submitted”

“I’m building Operon, It builds forms and calculators, but listing those features doesn’t explain why a business would want it. I’m struggling with how narrowly to position it. A concrete example is a renovation estimate page – ask a homeowner about the room, square footage, scope, and budget, then they can send it to the contractor. The contractor can then give them a rough estimate That gives me something much clearer to explain. But I don’t yet know whether an easier explanation will translate”

“Have a product idea, but want to demand test it first, primarily through meta ads, on whether I should move forward into production. It's custom formulations, so I do not want to risk getting 500-1000+ units of something without having at least some signal on if it could work or not. My plan was to run ads to the site where the site explicility mentions this being a pre-order and that orders won't ship until January 2027. However my fear is that this will kill the conversion rate and I w”

“Have a product idea, but want to demand test it first, primarily through meta ads, on whether I should move forward into production. It's custom formulations, so I do not want to risk getting 500-1000+ units of something without having at least some signal on if it could work or not. My plan was to run ads to the site where the site explicility mentions this being a pre-order and that orders won't ship until January 2027. However my fear is that this will kill the conversion rate and I w”

“start with the customer problem before building the product. talk to 10 to 15 users, find one repeated problem, then test a simple version. for some ideas, outgrow can help test demand with a simple quiz, calculator or other interactive tool before building a bigger product.”