I think such content works in terms of "Follow me and my journey and I'll tell you (sell you) how you can do it, too" on several social media platforms but on HN there's no follow feature.
In this post the product URL isn't mentioned, maybe the hope it commenters will agree and then the founders jump in an explain they have a solution? (I'm glad not seeing fake accounts asking low-ball questions, that's a tactic that never works.)","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2024-11-26T20:20:05.000Z","created_at_i":1732652405,"id":42249613,"options":[],"parent_id":42249195,"points":null,"story_id":42249195,"text":"You guys keep posting similar stories:
https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=davidheikka
Not quite sure what response you are hoping for with all these posts.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"mtmail","children":[],"created_at":"2024-11-26T20:39:44.000Z","created_at_i":1732653584,"id":42249827,"options":[],"parent_id":42249195,"points":null,"story_id":42249195,"text":"I'd be interested what the other two products were that didn't take off. Do they still exist somewhere?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2024-11-26T19:42:29.000Z","created_at_i":1732650149,"id":42249195,"options":[],"parent_id":null,"points":4,"story_id":42249195,"text":"I want to share my short story as I think it can be helpful to a lot of people on here.
This is for those of you who have tried every marketing strategy under the sun with no success (like I previously had).
Just two months ago I had been working hard for 7 months straight without getting any real interest or users to my product.
I had built two products and it was the same story for both: nothing.
When I started my third project I took the time to analyze what I\u2019d done wrong with my first two products.
A commonality I found was that I didn\u2019t talk to anyone before building them. I just made assumptions that I thought made sense.
I tried validating them afterwards and the response was what I suspected. No interest at all from my target audience.
My products were to generic and there were better alternatives.
For my third project I used this pain point of building products no one wanted and I realized this is the problem I want to solve. It\u2019s a problem I experienced myself and I desperately wanted a solution to it.
So this time I reached out to my target audience before jumping ahead. I created a post on Reddit and shared a survey that helped me understand my target audience better.
Specifically:\n- How they\u2019re currently solving the problem\n- How big of a pain it is to them\n- How much they would pay for a solution\n- Their opinion on my solution idea
The response was good so I decided to move ahead and build the MVP. Building it took about 30 days.
When it was finished, I shared it with the same people who responded to my first Reddit post.
That\u2019s how I got my first few users.
To keep growing I posted and engaged in communities relevant to my target audience on X and Reddit.
Just after two weeks I had gained 100 users which is more than I could ever have imagined, and about 100 more users than I had ever had for any of my other projects.
Finally getting users for my project was the best feeling, and in my opinion I owe it to validating the idea this time.
My project continued growing and less than two months later I find myself at $2200 revenue, which is crazy since it feels like it was yesterday I was struggling just to get anyone to sign up for my projects.
Anyways, I thought I\u2019d share this and maybe it can help you in case idea validation is something you skipped before you started building.","title":"Validating my idea got me to $2200 revenue in less than 2 months","type":"story","url":null}