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Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop it

It's said that amazon asks their product makers to write a press release about the release of the product and work backwards from there.

Working backwards has its uses...

I recently wanted validation on a product I had already finished developing

I thought I needed it so others will too. I put in a lot of time architecting it, designing it with careful UX and UI.

When it came time to show and tell through a demo video i couldn't create a simple enough one that explains what it does.

So anyway I posted it in some communities and people we just confused and nobody signed up.

So I had to abandon the project as there were no takers

Cut to about a week back where I had another idea... This time instead of simply developing it further, I jumped straight to see if I can create a explainer video of the product. So with zero expectations about it working I made one without audio or music or even subtitles and posted on reddit. It was just a screen recording of it working on my laptop.

To my surprise people wanted it. Some even demanding it. I quickly put up a "coming soon" website to capture emails. 36 people gave their emails! Many more I could message on reddit once I am ready.

Here is what i wrote....

You can see the interest...

The ugly video I shared... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-873SkJ2RI

link to the coming soon page... https://keywordranking.me/

Now I am developing the product into something others could use in collaboration with actual users and i have to do it fast since so many are waiting. This is a first for me. This is probably what product Market fit feels like... probably.


hey this is why I always ask the team do a landing page to capture interest before diving in any design and development work. Great to see you recover and pivot though