Hey guys, I’ve posted in here a few times and spent the last year and a half “kind of” pursuing ideas.
About 3 months ago I started working on a project for a small physical product to solve a problem I had with something pretty much everyone uses daily.
I asked an engineer friend of mine to help me make my first prototype. Got it. Tested it. We made some changes, and I’ve been testing another version. In the meantime, I went way overboard with creating the whole brand identity and whatnot, just to realize I was avoiding actually putting the idea out there.
So now this past week I decided to post about it on my personal social media. Just a quick post about the problem, what I’m working on, and a poll to see if anyone else saw the same issue.
Around 300 people viewed it, and 33 people voted that they had the same problem and thought I had a good idea.
So I reached out to them all directly and asked if they would be interested in getting one if I made them. I got 22 responses all stating that they would buy, as well as just some general feedback.
This is all just based off of a 3D-printed prototype. I don’t even have a fully finished prototype to show.
I grabbed emails from them all, made a landing page for it, and started posting about my process on social media less than a week ago.
Today I had a meeting with some local business guys in my area to ask them about what they thought of the product and my process so far, as well as moving forward.
They basically told me to pump the brakes. They said it could take 3–9 months to get a solid, perfect finished product. They said I shouldn’t ask people for money; I should make like 5–10 finished products and ask for feedback after a month or two.
They said I shouldn’t be posting about it yet because I’m not ready for a product launch, and I don’t even know if the product is good. They said if I post pictures and walkthrough videos of a plastic prototype, people will associate my product with that and won’t be interested.
Something about it all just didn’t seem right to me. I got feedback from people that were quite interested. Their strategy just seems to be the opposite of what I thought… why should I slow down?
I have nothing figured out yet. I plan to have a real finished prototype in the next 1–2 weeks and don’t even know what it would cost to produce this at a large scale yet. I’m the only one working on it; I don’t have a partner, and I have no experience in social media or marketing or anything. I figured I’d just stop pretending and see what happens. It took a bit of pride-swallowing.
I feel a bit discouraged and figured I would ask anyone who’s actually been through something like this, brought a product to market. It seems like the name of the game is moving quickly and documenting the process to gain trust, a following, and interest in the product. All while just figuring it out along the way. I can’t lie, it’s super overwhelming, especially learning how to do literally everything for the first time, but it seems like if I play it right I could have something real finally. I haven’t asked for money from anyone yet either.
Part of me questions whether or not I should truly trust the advice of people that haven’t ever done what I’m trying to do. Yes, they might be business owners, but neither of them has brought physical products to market before.
Any advice would be great. Hope everyone is doing well.
Cheers
About 3 months ago I started working on a project for a small physical product to solve a problem I had with something pretty much everyone uses daily.
I asked an engineer friend of mine to help me make my first prototype. Got it. Tested it. We made some changes, and I’ve been testing another version. In the meantime, I went way overboard with creating the whole brand identity and whatnot, just to realize I was avoiding actually putting the idea out there.
So now this past week I decided to post about it on my personal social media. Just a quick post about the problem, what I’m working on, and a poll to see if anyone else saw the same issue.
Around 300 people viewed it, and 33 people voted that they had the same problem and thought I had a good idea.
So I reached out to them all directly and asked if they would be interested in getting one if I made them. I got 22 responses all stating that they would buy, as well as just some general feedback.
This is all just based off of a 3D-printed prototype. I don’t even have a fully finished prototype to show.
I grabbed emails from them all, made a landing page for it, and started posting about my process on social media less than a week ago.
Today I had a meeting with some local business guys in my area to ask them about what they thought of the product and my process so far, as well as moving forward.
They basically told me to pump the brakes. They said it could take 3–9 months to get a solid, perfect finished product. They said I shouldn’t ask people for money; I should make like 5–10 finished products and ask for feedback after a month or two.
They said I shouldn’t be posting about it yet because I’m not ready for a product launch, and I don’t even know if the product is good. They said if I post pictures and walkthrough videos of a plastic prototype, people will associate my product with that and won’t be interested.
Something about it all just didn’t seem right to me. I got feedback from people that were quite interested. Their strategy just seems to be the opposite of what I thought… why should I slow down?
I have nothing figured out yet. I plan to have a real finished prototype in the next 1–2 weeks and don’t even know what it would cost to produce this at a large scale yet. I’m the only one working on it; I don’t have a partner, and I have no experience in social media or marketing or anything. I figured I’d just stop pretending and see what happens. It took a bit of pride-swallowing.
I feel a bit discouraged and figured I would ask anyone who’s actually been through something like this, brought a product to market. It seems like the name of the game is moving quickly and documenting the process to gain trust, a following, and interest in the product. All while just figuring it out along the way. I can’t lie, it’s super overwhelming, especially learning how to do literally everything for the first time, but it seems like if I play it right I could have something real finally. I haven’t asked for money from anyone yet either.
Part of me questions whether or not I should truly trust the advice of people that haven’t ever done what I’m trying to do. Yes, they might be business owners, but neither of them has brought physical products to market before.
Any advice would be great. Hope everyone is doing well.
Cheers
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