IdeaTest.io - Community-Driven Idea Validation for Entrepreneurs

Discussions
#1

Hey everyone,

Just launched IdeaTest.io and wanted to share with you all.

It’s a concept I came up with months ago when I was mulling over various ideas for startups, and couldn’t figure out which one to try out. We all know about the value of idea validation prior to actually developing things, so I figured maybe there was a service out there where you could share your idea with experts and potential customers in your demographic, in order to quickly get a wide range of feedback to help you gauge the potential of your idea.

I couldn’t find anything, and felt something like this could be valuable to folks, so I worked to put it together, and today I can gladly say it’s live - www.ideatest.io

Would love to get your guys thoughts and feedback :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#2

Site looks good. The idea is good but you’re also tacking the hardest (but most important) part of the startup equation to get right.
If it were me, I wouldn’t trust anyone to do this part for me.

Questions I’d have:

Who are these “experts” ?
Remember half of all people are below average at their job.

Who talks to the customers? (I’d want to do that myself. I think that’s a key entreprenuer skill)
How do you find (and vet) these customers?

I might be in the market for this service. I have an idea I’ve been ruminating over. I actually am in the demographic of users and am in organizations with those users but it’s well worth $100 a month to get some more access.

BTW, I once had a discussion with Andrey B (creator of this forum) about this very subject.
We thought the “sweet spot” of value/price is lining up the people I’d want to interview, and prepping them "Hey, this isn’t a sales pitch. " and essentially “warming them up” (providing a warm introduction vs. a cold call).
And then let ME do the interviewing.

So, this would be sort of like Customer HeadHunter service.

-Clay

#3

More info:

OK, I see now that your experts are in fairly broad groups.
So they are more like “startup experts”. That’s kinda like getting VC or “Shark Tank” feedback. That could be helpful, but I’d have no way of knowing what I’m getting. (Just being honest. This is a prob that all consultants face)

The links to the experts seemed clickable (pointy finger affordance on mouseover) but nothing happened when I clicked.
I’d definitely want to know more about the experts. THAT is largely what you’re selling (or I’m buying)

#4

Hi Clay,

Appreciate the feedback, all are excellent points.

Let me ask you, if with each plan we were to provide the option to request X number of chats with end-users / experts, might that fulfill your needs? In this manner perhaps you could get a decent amount of quantitative data from the ideatest surveys and general feedback, then hone in on a few specific individuals to engage them in conversation and obtain qualitative data.

As far as the quality of experts and how you know what you’re getting, I couldn’t agree more, we definitely need to elaborate on the experts background, experience, etc.

Thanks for the suggestions, we are going to move quickly to try and improve on these (and a few other areas).

#5

Yep, that helps a lot. You want to “got to source”.
I’d also want an idea of how you vetted them.

Ideally maybe there would be a short ( 30 seconds) survey to “filter” on what a good user might be.
Stuff like:

  • Do you have this need?
  • How much time would solving that need save you?
  • How do you solve it now? Have you looked for a solution? if so,
  • what keywords or search did you use?

I am actually just about to start validating a new product idea.
I have LOTS of ideas but I already have a company and I usually find something wrong with most ideas.
This one seems insanely great, and almost too simple to implement. I can’t imagine why no one has. And at least one company is trying to solve the problem for 10x the cost of my solution AND my solution works with all the existing devices.

I’m currently using Facebook Groups to find beta testers, but your option might be better.