I know, I know. It’s not Friday, and I’m already behind!

I’ll chalk it up to “my routine has been crazy on my last week of work, and I don’t even know what it’s going to look like moving forward”. I might even re-name this to “Weekend Check-In” before anyone realizes.

Right. So, how did last week go?

What I wanted to do

I wanted to get some initial data on whether the market wanted any of my ideas, in hopes that the answer of which one to pursue would dawn from the heavens.

What I did

Well, I did get some useful data, but nothing that made any particular idea super obvious. However, I did gain some information for each of the main ideas:

• A soundboard for D&D games: There are no clear search terms for this, at least not on Google. However, I did manage to find that a well-known service, dScryb, is building their own version of this. I like it, but they are making several mistakes on the design that makes it clunky to use for games. I think I can build a better UX than theirs. With a soundboard, the UX is the product.
• A sociogram SaaS for small businesses and schools. Here, the insights are simple:
  • The main field using sociograms is education, by far.
  • There is very little competition.
  • Interestingly, the main regions seem to be the Netherlands and Belgium.
• A mobile app that replicates a game show I love.
  • Interest in the game show in particular has been growing lately. However, this is the project I’m the least skilled for, and not something I can really build in the next couple of months.

What I want to do next week

The thing I’m most excited about is, by far, the D&D soundboard. As far as I see it, it has a good combination of factors:

• It’s something that would solve my problems while running D&D games.
• There isn’t really a great solution out there.
• I’m pretty confident I can build it.

The Goal

The goal for next week will be to validate the idea. How do we validate? Well…

Can I get 3 people to pay anything for it?

Hear me out. Months ago, I read The Right It. It’s got lots of great advice, but the relevant part here is that people often overestimate how much interest they have on something. In other words:

People often think they would pay for something… until they have to.

Think about it: How many times have you walked past a window display, thought “oh, that’s great! I’ll buy one later!” and then never got around to buying anything?

Exactly.

And it’s not only that book. I’ve heard interview after interview in Indie Hackers, for instance, saying the same thing: “I wish we had gotten people to pay us way earlier”.

So, if I can find 3 people that are willing to pay for a product, willing to pull out their wallets and give me cold, hard cash now, then I’m pretty sure I’ve got something that people want.

It doesn’t have to be much. One dollar is more than enough. I’m just interested in crossing the distance from “free” to “anything”.

The How

Before I sell anything to anyone, I need to have something worth selling. Now that I’ve left Apple, I can finally build it!

Here’s the plan for the week:

• Create a prototype to show the idea. I’m intentionally cutting the scope down to:
  • Upload sounds
  • Play sounds
  • Re-arrange, remove, and rename sounds
• Create landing page
  • Figure out how to receive payment
• Reach out to people who might be interested in trying:
  • Get expert feedback: There are a couple of influencers in the D&D community that put out great content on how to DM better. I would love their feedback. I’ll reach out to them and see if they’re willing to trade their thoughts for a copy.
  • Post on Reddit: This is the scary one. I’ll post on Reddit once, asking for “what would you like to see on a soundboard”. Then, at the end of next week, I’ll post again saying “here’s the beta. It’s a paid beta, and here is why”. The offer will be so good they can’t refuse.

So, that’s the plan! It’s intense and scary, but for all the right reasons!

See you next week!