š© Your waitlist doesn't validate your product
š Freedom
Freedom is my primary motivator - more than money, wealth, or status. I want the freedom to work on what I want, when I want, where I want.
I already had the first two. But with COVID still out of control in the US (and most of the world), I wasnāt satisfied with the third.
š¹š¼ So I moved to Taipei!
Taiwan recently went 250 days without a single locally transmitted COVID case. Life is pretty much normal there.
Borders are closed to tourists, but with a Gold Card visa and a two-week quarantine, I was able to get in.
Hereās the view from my quarantine hotel:
Iāll still be working on HelloHailey, but Iāll be doing it surrounded be new people, a new culture, and a renewed sense of freedom.
š First time here?
Welcome to The MVP Sprint! Iām Tim.
Iām sharing my public process of taking HelloHaileyĀ from idea to thriving SaaS startup as a bootstrapped solopreneur.
Want to follow along?
š© Waitlist signups donāt validate your product
I learned a lot during my last two-week sprint. As Iāve said before, learning is my most valuable currency right now, even if itās not always good newsā¦
š Opening up the floodgates
I sent an email to my waitlist of 80 people, inviting them to install HelloHailey. I was excited to see a flood of new users try out my product.
But only a few actually did.
Was it disappointing? Sure. But it was also a valuable lesson in stating goals and anti-goals up front:
My goal was to attract enough early users to validate the hypothesis my MVP was designed to test.
My anti-goal (not a goal) was to validate demand - that my target audience wanted my product. My waitlist survey added some friction, but not nearly enough to prove demand.
Iām only human, and as the waitlist grew, I started to (incorrectly) infer demand validation. More signups wouldāve been a bonus, but it wasnāt the goal behind the waitlist.
At least I failed fast
Even though itās disappointing, this wasnāt really a āfailureā. But it wouldāve been had I instead spent weeks slowly emailing waitlist users.
I was able to condense all that learning into just a few days.
āValidating my core hypothesis
Before building my MVP, I was clear about my goal:
The goal of my MVP will be to measurably prove or disprove this core hypothesis.
Without the beta users I found through the waitlist, validating my hypothesis wouldāve been impossible.
After talking to users, Iāve gained confidence that it will be proven correct:
š¤ Hailey has spawned some nice conversations and everyone on the team seems to enjoy it.
š¤„ All of her questions had pretty good engagement. Most of the team responded/commented at least once. Two Truths and A Lie was a fun one.
š The best sunset prompt is igniting the chat.
š¤£ Finally installed Hailey, and she already made me (and my boss) laugh!
I'm optimistic, but I still need more users and more time to learn more. In the meantime, I'm starting to build something new.
Last sprint, I hinted at using gamification to make it more rewarding to engage with Hailey. I wanted to have a fleshed out product spec for this update, but I didn't have much time this past sprint prepping for my 6,000-mile move.
Next update, I promise I'll be able to share more.
š¶ Try out Hailey with your team
HelloHailey has finally opened up to the world! Add her to Slack to spice up your remote work day:
Installation only takes a few minutes; no credit card required.