You found a problem to solve, now what?
I am Bahauddin Aziz and I have been building and selling SaaS for more than 5 years now. In this blog, I want to share my learning about how Reddit has been one of the most powerful tool to validate newly minted business ideas.
Validating an idea is important not only because it gives you the confidence of building it, but also saves you from bad ideas. On the other hand, not doing it right can take you to believe that an idea is good when it’s not a.k.a “false positive”.
Reddit, in its nature is a place where people talk about their problems, it is what people expect there. Hence it becomes a goldmine to find people who have the problem and then validate it through.
Preparations
1. Answer these questions
Before jumping towards idea validation, I highly recommend you to answer these very fundamental questions:
- What problem are you solving?
- Who has this problem?
- How people solve it right now?
- What is your proposed solution?
- How is it better than your current solution?
I created a video with 5 sample ideas and answered these very critical questions. Once you know the answers
2. Find Subreddits
Reddit has 3M+ subreddits, so it becomes critical to hand-pick only those subreddits where the volume of your potential customers is highest. I recommend finding the top 3 subreddits.
I created an elaborated video on finding the right subreddits with steps.
The Top 3 Methods
1. Engage
Nobody cares about you or your idea. You have to grow your reputation in the subreddit and become someone worth caring about. This is generally done by caring for others in the subreddit, by adding value to their lives. The simplest way to achieve this is by engaging with them. Open any popular subreddit and you will see a plethora of questions/doubts/queries/advice asked by people, since you hold expertise about those things, you should try and help them. Comment on their posts, reply to their comments, help them in any way you can and eventually you will start getting recognized. One you engage enough, you will be able to identify people who specifically have talked about your problem and once you engage and have a conversation with them, it’s highly likely that they can answer your questions to validate stuff.
See how I do it in this video
2. Have thy problem
This is a very simple yet effective method. In the chosen subreddit(s), make a post posing as if you have the problem and then ask people for the solution or if they have faced the same problem. With this, you will not only attract the people who potentially have similar pain but also the current solutions. So in a single move you got potential customers as well as popular competitors.
See how I do it – video
3. Ask in DMs
If done right, this method can be both instant and effective. You find the right people who have said that they faced the problem and then you message (reddit dm) them asking about it, maybe you can say that you faced the same thing and thus you are building a solution.
The average reply rate that you can expect on Reddit is at least 30%. This lets you have tons of conversations and learning about what you are doing right.
4. Use Promotee (bonus)
Who doesn’t like automations, they saves time and process things faster. I used to do all these things manually, which made me realize that why not automate this validation thing. So I created promotee.
See here how you can validate an idea using Promotee
Conclusion
I have been using the above methods for years now, Reddit is the only place i do validation now, it has not only helped me move forward with a few ideas but also have helped me scratch off the ideas that I really thought were amazing.
You can connect with me here and share how things worked out for you