How did you validate your webapp product/market fit?

I co-founded a niche SMB B2B SaaS product. Both my cofounder and I had day jobs. We worked nights/weekends to get to MVP and had 1 free beta customer use it during the day. After getting good feedback from the 1 customer we went to a trade show and got our first couple paying customers. I convinced my cofounder to leave his day job and I would use my salary to pay his bills until we got a few more customers so I could quit my day job. During that period we found an angel investor (a big potential customer who liked the MVP but wanted to see more features). I transitioned to full-time as soon as the check cleared. It worked! Though, luck and timing were the major factors involved for us. Good luck to you!

Haven't quit the day job, but am making decent money.

I've found a sort of sweet-spot where working a couple of hours before work, and sometimes on weekends forces me to really focus on what I'm building. So I don't see myself quitting my day job until the support workload becomes unmanageable.

For validating, I built a quick version in 7 days (https://onlineornot.com/building-saas-in-one-week-how-built-...), told the internet how I did it, kept building features, and customers kept coming back.

I think you can validate a market exists by talking to people and looking at existing products, but you can't validate product market fit without building the product and seeing if people will pay.

I built a dev tool that helps people jump-start React development projects (think boilerplate, but way more customizable). As soon as it hit $2k/month, where I could barely live off the revenue, I felt that was product market fit for me. It was solving a problem for some amount of people and I could continue to work on it full-time. Now doing ~$6k/month.

1. Do not trust your instincts alone.

2. Get beta testers. Relevant comments on hn and reddit will get you first 10-20.

3. Set up a channel for live communication with beta testers. Discord works fine these days and is free. Listen to what they have to say. Be polite and grateful.

4. Ask beta testers "How disappointed would you be if this product ceased to exist?" on a scale of 1 to 10. This will measure how much they care.

5. If your starting scores are low (avg 5-6 or below) or you fail to make it to this stage, you probably do not have product market fit. If you have 8+, by all means keep doing it.

Like many say, validation is basically questioning. 1. Is it useful to you, use it at least 5 times a week? 2. Does anyone else need it? 3. Have you tried the top 10 Google result websites? Are they bad? How better is yours? 4. Try to pitch to your target users through forums not ads.

No, I did not stop my day job to start a new side project or company. The only time I quit my job was the very first time, I started the project. Took 2 years to close it with no big success. And I realized I should have done that without quitting my full time. Since then, I built 6 side projects, never tried to monetize. The latest one was started with an intention to make money, doing good since day 2. Concentrate on SEO if you believe the top 10 Google results of your focus keyword are doing bad. Once you get into top 2, thats all!!

I am still in this process.

My first launch was here on Hacker News, but at that time it was a prototype with no way to register and log in. Interest was very good. Then launched on Product Hunt where I got my first 20 registered users. Beyond that it has been posting the animations created on 4chan and other social websites.

I usually iterate on the features, look n feel etc. Try an idea, see if it sticks. If it doesnt, then discard it. I also have Discord channels that users can get help or chat on.

The product is an animation editor with no code or formulas https://toonclip.com

You need to get a landing page is. You don't have to say exactly what your product is if you don't want to give away details. But either way you must list the benefits.

Then get people to sign-up to a mailing list for the MVP (or beta) announcement. The numbers help to verify your idea.

See mine, which will help people with questions like this: https://cxo.industries/

I'm building a product now while I'm doing my day job. It's not yet sustainable yet, but I've been spending time on it constantly. It pays my rent, that itself is a huge thing for me.

I would not advise you to quit your job. You can quit your job when your side project makes money equal to your salary. Set that as a bench mark and work towards that. Good luck!

Most ppl can scrounge together an mvp and landing page, but software ppl hit a wall when validating. This is a major pain point as it requires networking (finding and connecting with potential customers) then pitching the mvp to them.

Has YC addressed this in a meaningful way?

Instead of guessing what other people may need, try creating a product that you need. Unless it’s super niche there are probably other people who need such a thing too.

My first SaaS failed even thought people really liked the idea I never managed to get a single paying customer. My second SaaS was something I needed but my market research showed barely any interest, especially as it had no free model. This SAAS organically grew to the point of living nicely from it. Maybe I am just bad at validating but I do think luck is a relatively important factor.

Can you work on side projects like this (commercials involved), with having day job? Does it violate your employer contract?

It's like being in love right? "You just know."

Startup School's biggest lesson has been "just launch and find out." You can wonder if you'll have product market fit forever, but you'll never know for sure until you have people paying for your product and telling their friends to sign up. It's by nature an ephemeral thing, startups are not yet a pure science.