What are some ways to validate demand for a supplement you want to launch?

Face to Face will always be better. The reason is because to get to the root of an issue or to what really drives a person, you need to ask WHY 5 times. Only then you can offer a solution that will be irresistible to your prospects. Let's try with an email survey. 1. What is your biggest struggle when you want to expand abroad? __________ 2. Why? __________ 3. Why? __________ 4. Why? __________ 5. Why? __________ You look like a freak, right? Now in a normal conversation, it would go something like: Oh, your biggest challenge is costs? Tell me more about it. Yes, i just don't have enough cash flow to open an office abroad. Where is your cash flow going instead? (that's a hidden why) It's going into our local activities. Why do you prefer spending money locally? Because we get more return on investment. etc etc.. I'm happy to jump on the phone to test this technique (it feels a bit awkward at the beginning but with some training it becomes natural). Serena

I think there are great lessons to be learned from Exec. They started out wide, but have gone very deep on cleaning. It depends on the core thesis of your vision. Do you have a different product experience that could be competitive to existing marketplaces? Or are you just going for land-grab? The most important thing to understand about the services marketplace business is that it's a very localized business operation. I believe that if you're just looking to make money, the best way to do this is to go to "secondary markets" and build up marketplaces with a plan to sell to someone who has already raised great VC and has a presence in the major markets. If you are looking to compete in major market cities, then the safer bet is to find the very deep opportunity unless you really believe your customer experience can beat the established players. Happy to talk this through with you in more detail.

Don't even think about monetization yet. You want to focus on first starting to capture this month's traffic - even just 1% - as email subscribers who you can continually message and Market to. Once you have someone as a subscriber, you can now email them a dozen times over a few weeks promoting your affiliate offer, increasing the chance that they'll convert -- after all, who is more likely to convert? Someone who just read a post or someone who opted in and received a dozen trust building emails promoting a product? If you have an email list built off of this traffic you could even promote multiple products over time! If you have three compelling offers, you can pitch all three in sequence, with breaks for education and information. You're right to want to monetize this audience. First and foremost: you want to capture this audience as subscribers to your email list.

I've been through this with a lot of clients and there is a very simple answer: Essentially you are always ready. Iterating and validating go hand in hand. You can almost turn this on its head and ask "When should I stop validating and continue iterating?" Iterating without validation is a risk because you are working in isolation and don't know whether your assumptions are correct. So validation should be built in as part of each and every iteration. That includes pre-MVP, when your startup is still just an idea in your head. In the early days that might mean discussing design drafts over coffee, in the later stages that might mean looking at analytics results and A/B tests. Think of it as a continuous, ongoing process, a conversation with your target market, rather than a stop/go affair where you disappear into your office for a few weeks and then re-emerge, ready to validate. Each stage continues until you start to hear the same answers and are not learning anything new. Then it's time to ask new questions and for that you most likely need to move on in your product development cycle. It would be great to hear more about your product, feel free to get in touch. Best of luck - Nils

If you are really thinking about building your product you should first do the alpha and beta. There is a strong community of tech people on Hacker News, ProductHunt and Reddit that will support your idea and even pay in advance if you can show a demo first. Give you an example: Dropbox. Drew (CEO) made this short video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QmCUDHpNzE about how Dropbox was supposed to work. He send it to all the community and it becomes viral. Everyone started to sign up. He had a fremium model at start, but look at it now. So I will encourage you to do two things: Follow this order 1-Go and build your alpha/beta and create a demo that everyone can see and feel excited about 2-Share it with the community 3-If you want to "sell it" in advance you can use selz.com or payloadz.com And rethink you business model and moentization strategy so it adapts to your product and not the other way. :) If this helped let me know!