Isn't contacting your potential customers a better idea to validate and get feedback on your idea? It may take more effort to reach them, but even that process is helpful in validating your idea as you'll have to find your customers sooner or later anyway.
Also, validating your idea by asking people whether they'd pay for it is a common mistake in customer development. People are bad at predicting their own behavior. Instead ask if they have paid (whether in time, money or another valuable resource) for getting feedback in the past, where X is something that provides similar value to the product you're offering. Actually giving them an option to pay right now might be the best way to validate it, but you shouldn't have had to build a whole prototype to do that.
I've seen quite a few 'get feedback for your idea' platforms fail over the last couple months/years so definitely look into those as well and try to figure out _why_ they failed, as you want to avoid making those same mistakes.
You read my mind! For "contacting your potential customers ... to validate and get feedback on your idea," I'm currently working on http://www.petriapp.com/ . In short, it's a tool that provides automated coaching to help people with ideas do all the right things in order to validate their idea, get feedback, and (if they decide to develop the idea) have an audience to launch to . Would love any feedback or ideas you have.
It's funny because Zack (OP) and I live in the same area and used to work together. When I started pitching Petri to people locally (including at an event that Zack organizes) people asked me whether it was similar to The Pitch. The distinction (in my mind) between the two ideas is exactly what you mentioned: Feedback from potential customers vs. start-up community. I think both have their place. On the start-up community side, getting feedback like you've just provided is pretty valuable (e.g. "Oh, have you seen X?", "That business model is risky", etc.) That's expertise your potential customers don't have.
You're right. There's a difference between validating your _value proposition_ (for which you really need to talk to your customers) and your overall business model (where other experienced entrepreneurs can provide valuable insights). I guess The Pitch could work for the latter, but I highly suggest the initiator looks at the reasons so many similar platforms failed.
Petri looks interesting. Actually sounds a lot like some of the plans I have. I run Beta List[1] and noticed a lot of pre-launch startups don't know the best practices of doing customer development, leveraging their beta list, et cetera which made me think someone should build a service to help guide them through that process.
Not sure how far along you are and if our product vision matches, but perhaps it might make more sense to work together than compete. Feel free to contact me if you're interested in having a chat: marc(at)betali.st
(Just keep in mind we _might_ end up building competing services so don't disclose anything top secret :)
The left vertical bar all the way down the text makes it look like the entire text is a quote from somewhere else. I experienced unresolved tension, waiting to see who "really" wrote the text.
Hey Zack: signed up for The Pitch, got a confirmation email, had to actually copy the token from the end of the confirmation link and put it in the "token" field. Clicking the confirmation link itself just led to a 404 error. Something to look at for sure!
Bug squashed. I tried to get too fancy with the routing and obviously didn't test that well enough...my bad. Can you click the link again and let me know if it resolves? Thanks.
This is a great idea, pitching is something that a ton of us struggle with (even in written form). The more exposure and feedback we can get, the better off we'll end up. This almost seems like a place to just test your idea out, but I think this platform could serve for both idea testing and perfecting your pitch.
It's like code-reviews for pitches :)
By the way, the 'viewed' count increments for every page refresh, even when the same session/user is viewing it. I just thought I'd mention it. But hey, this could be a feature.
Also, validating your idea by asking people whether they'd pay for it is a common mistake in customer development. People are bad at predicting their own behavior. Instead ask if they have paid (whether in time, money or another valuable resource) for getting feedback in the past, where X is something that provides similar value to the product you're offering. Actually giving them an option to pay right now might be the best way to validate it, but you shouldn't have had to build a whole prototype to do that.
I've seen quite a few 'get feedback for your idea' platforms fail over the last couple months/years so definitely look into those as well and try to figure out _why_ they failed, as you want to avoid making those same mistakes.
Here's one post-mortem of such a platform: http://blog.davejafari.com/sparkmuse-post-mortem
Anyway, just my two cents. Figured I'd share of my own feedback :)