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Put your rough product online and let strangers pay before it feels ready

First $50 sale arrived unpromoted; more trickled in over weeks

Workedvalidation

What they did

Built the site directly on the public internet with no separate dev/production environment, told no one and did no promotion. The site looked ugly and 'scary', yet a stranger paid $50 and a few more sales trickled in over the next couple of weeks, which he took as validation. He advises getting it into people's hands as soon as possible: 'If you're not embarrassed by the first iteration, then you've waited too long.'

What happened

First $50 sale and a few more in the following weeks, before any promotion; served as validation to keep building.
Stage
Pre-launch (pre-launch / validation)
Effort
Side project, no promotion
4:57
“Over the next couple of weeks, a few more sales trickled in like that, and that was the validation that I needed.”
Jake
9:34
“For me, that looked like just having it on the internet and waiting for some strangers to stumble in and pay for it way before I thought it was ready.”
Jake

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