When you’re a lone builder, the vacuous nature of developing an idea into a product or service that consumers will pay for, is a gauntlet you must run whilst getting beaten with misplaced hope, time loss and burnt cash.

Ideas. They’re everywhere. They ooze out of every conversation, and squirt from every complaint into your brain. One idea stands out and you say “Hey, this is it. This is the one!” and like the countless before you who said the same, you start building. It’s the old dream of Doc Brown from Back to the Future tinkering in his Wild West barn building an ice maker.

So, what do you do?

Kill the Beast!

I once gave a best man speech at my cousin’s wedding and referred to him as the Beast from the famous Disney animated film. A stinking walking grub of a man but was transformed by his Belle. I opted straight for the takedown move and lived to tell the tale. This process is important for ideas because they can consume whatever mental capacity you have available in your waking hours. I write ideas down and explore their demise. If it can be easily killed, I write “DOA” on the page with the murder details and move on. My brain is free to work and it’s a domain renewal I don’t have to pay for. John Carmack talks about this in the YouTube video below (warning - it’s an hour).

What if it can’t be easily killed? Great! There might be something in it, but hold off buying the domain and only invest time or money into to…

Potential Customers

This is a hard learnt lesson for me, and it still feels like the wrong thing to do. Go and have some conversations with potential buyers FIRST. Check out the competition and try and imagine yourself using their product. Why would they buy yours? If yours can be proved better, with potential customers signalling they are happy to pay, then it comes down to spreading the news (i.e., marketing). Try and sign them up for beta testing with a small discount too to prove it out.

If your idea still sucks and you will get a good idea at this point if it does **ba dum tsh**, then it’s time to kill it and move on. Marketing can only do so much if your idea is great only through your own eyes.

Talking to potential customers might cost you an Amazon voucher, but you’re likely to get good information from them. If you can’t find a group of people to talk to, it might also be a clear signal that your idea is DOA.

Then there’s targeted adverts but you’ll need deep pockets. If your idea is big, then no problem! Get an investor or re-mortgage your house (please don’t do that without speaking to them first).

Product Led Growth

You might have been shouting this at the monitor saying, “Hey Dave, this goes against the grain of building a great product!”. You might be right. There is a term: “A free user will always be a free user” and it’s hard to convert free to paid. Therefore, I’ve stopped thinking about the world like that and opt for a short trial where test pilots can explore the power of the idea. Do you think your product or service can be validated in seven or fourteen days? I love providing the ability for product consumers to explore and pay when their needs have been validated. By opting for the simplest conversion paths, you can work on closing meaningful gaps instead of working on the human condition that accepts free and begrudges giving it back. Converting users from a trial period to paid plan, is much easier than free to paid, and you get meaningful data to work on. Bonus!

Close

Ideas are free and they’re everywhere. I recommend trying to be the assassin of your own ideas because it will give your confidence levels a boost, point your compass the right way and it will save you money and time. Having good signals from potential buyers will add energy to the whole experience and make it easier on launch with a few discounted customers instead of free.