🗞 What's New: MVP vs. landing page...which is best?

Which is better, an MVP or a landing page?

• Is it best to showcase your idea and collect emails through a landing page, or actually show people what your product does with a functional MVP? From validation concerns to targeting the right audience, founders weigh in with their best advice.
• If you're struggling to get your first ten customers, you are not alone. This quick guide can help you land some paying users!
• Founder Sean Moir is transitioning into working on his side project full-time. Below, he shares how he's preparing to make the leap, and when he plans to leave his day job.

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⚖️ MVP vs. Landing Page

by Richard

Which one do you think is best?

1. Creating a great landing page in two weeks maximum, putting some energy into find interested people, and getting feedback. Here, you're doing this without any code on the actual project until you have validated the idea.
2. Creating a functional MVP. This is a bit more challenging, but you also have more to show and test, helping you gain information on what might be most appealing to users.

I know that a lot of this depends on the complexity of the project, also. But what are your overall thoughts?

Do the hardest thing first

Andrew Kamphey recommends jumping right into the difficult things:

Do whatever is hardest first. If it's easy to build, talk to people first. If it's easy to find people, build it first.

One more thing: Limit yourself to two weeks for everything. Create an MVP within two weeks and get it in front of people. If you can't build it in two weeks, edit what your MVP should be. If you're looking to solve a problem, making an infoproduct first might be easier. You can create a Gumroad sales page within an hour. Then, iterate infinitely.

Landing page first

Fluxmachine says to build the landing page first:

A landing page is a quick, cheap way to test whether there is a need for a solution to the problem you're solving. Spending time and resources on products that people have no need for is the number one startup killer. Spend time validating the problem as much as you can.

The landing page should serve two purposes:

1. Validation: You need to know whether there is a need for your solution, and whether there is a big enough market.
2. Getting an initial list of users: Collect emails through the landing page. This is your initial list of customers who are facing the problem that your product addresses. You want to stay close to them, interview them, get their feedback on potential solutions, and keep them in the loop when developing.

When I started my startup, we built a landing page with a waitlist, and also ran Instagram and Facebook ads. We got 1.5K people on the waitlist this way. We added them to a Slack group to stay connected, and requested their feedback throughout the journey.

Validate, then stay close to your customers.

Chris agrees:

I think that most comments are leaning towards landing page. I think this is probably right, but I would caution you to make sure that the audience you drive to your landing page is the right one. I've seen firsthand where companies will throw a landing page up, share it across platforms, and get loads of signups, but those signups turn out to not be the real target audience; they're just other tech people who get excited about new ventures.

The result is that you go deep into development feeling like you've validated demand, but you actually haven't. The people who signed up just want to track your progress, but don't want or need what you're building. If you can avoid that problem, I think landing pages are the way to go!

MVP first

Alexander Eble says that MVPs give you more qualitative feedback, and that is what you need:

Landing pages likely lead to superficial feedback because people may not really understand your plans from just a bare explanation. Since everything is hypothetical, it's too difficult to determine if they're really interested. Actions speak louder than words.

Bad feedback might be worse than no feedback, because it guides you in the wrong direction.

If you can build out an MVP in a short time, do it. If the effort is huge, try a landing page or a concierge MVP. Still, be critical with feedback acquired from landing pages.

Can Olcer agrees:

If you have the skills to build an MVP, it's almost always better to build an MVP. The trick is to place limitations around the scope of the MVP, and launch it very quickly. I'm talking two to three weeks.

If you don't have the skills to build an MVP, a landing page is a good first step. Just be aware that the data you gather from the landing page might not be very representative of how people will like your actual product.

Weighing it out

Sandhiya K. gives advice on making your decision:

A good way to decide between these options is to consider your marketing options. Are you are looking at a conversion rate optimization (CRO) campaign or a marketing automation tool? If you are building a CRO campaign, then a landing page would be the best option. This is because the main goal is to generate leads or conversions, so the focus is on driving traffic to the site. The page allows visitors to read through the details about your product or service, and take action.

Also, both landing pages and MVPs are useful tools that marketers use every day. If you want to see what kind of responses you'll get from your landing page, launch one now. Launch an MVP later if you want to gauge customer interest in your idea.

Did you start with an MVP or a landing page? Let's chat below!

Discuss this story.

📰 In the News

from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani

🤑 YouTube has introduced revenue sharing for Shorts following a report about Shorts being TikTok's biggest competitor.

🚫 Getty Images has banned AI-generated illustrations.

👀 JPMorgan says no one is using crypto to pay for things anymore.

👋 Hundreds of Twitter workers are resigning, citing current "instability" as the reason.

🐜 Scientists have tallied up the number of ants on Earth, and the results are awesome.

Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.

📝 Landing Your First Ten Customers

by Sylvain Naessens

Are you struggling to get your first ten customers? You are definitely not alone. Many founders don't know where to start when it comes to landing their first paying users. This guide can help!

Also, for more details, you can check out the full video here.

Build an audience before you launch

You can have the world's best product, but what's the point if nobody knows about it?

So, try to start building an audience before you even start building your product. Start a blog about the problem you're trying to solve. Launch a podcast. Make videos. Build in public. People need to see and hear about what you're trying to build, and they can only do that if you put yourself out there.

Be clear about your ideal customer

An ideal customer profile is a description of the person that you believe would be the ideal customer for your product.

Ask yourself who would benefit the most from your product. Where do they live? What do they do? What do they care about?

Also, build your buyer persona. This persona represents a specific buyer or decision-maker within your ideal customer profile. They can be business executives or startup CEOs, and everybody in between.

Create a compelling landing page

You don't actually need a product to sell your product. If you want to attract early adopters, you can simply create a landing page with compelling images, add your unique value proposition, and pre-sell your product.

Use your network

Tap into your network. Reach out to former colleagues, friends, or family members if you think they’re part of your target audience.

Schedule a Zoom call and ask questions about the problem you're trying to solve. You can offer them a free trial if they're interested.

Send cold messages

Cold emailing is one of the best techniques you can use to attract your first customers. There are many tools that you can use to find your prospects' email addresses, and once you have them, you can immediately contact potential customers at scale.

You can also search for questions on Reddit, Twitter, and other platforms, or contact people who left bad reviews on sites like Capterra.

Of course, all of these tips depend on your SaaS and your business model. Adapt them as needed, and implement them into your growth plan!

How did you find your first customers? Share your experience below!

Discuss this story.

🚀 The Spector Report

by Josh Spector

I'm sharing growth tips for creative founders! Here's this week's:

Value is transformation.

The way to create value for people is to help them transform. Create things that help people get from Point A to Point B.

Your creation is the bridge. If your creation doesn’t drive a transformation, it’s probably not valuable.

Subscribe to Josh's For The Interested newsletter or I Want To Know podcast for more.

💪 Sean Moir is Transitioning From Side Project to Full-Time

by James Fleischmann

Making the leap from side project to full-time can be a daunting task. Founder Sean Moir is currently in the middle of that process, and he's doing it pre-launch. Read on for more about his journey!

On leaving his day job before launching

I attempted another startup in 2020. It could have been successful, but I burned out juggling it with my full-time job.

This time, I'm trying to avoid burnout. But my progress with Time Advisor, an AI-powered day planner and coaching app, has been slow and inconsistent. I knew I couldn't successfully launch my new project while in my full-time role without burning out again, so I had to fully commit.

I have a comfortable amount of runway in savings, I'm not too far from launch, and I believe I could get another job quickly if needed. It feels like it’s now or never.

So, I'm going full-time on it in October. I’m still pre-launch. My confidence primarily comes from having eight months of cash runway for my family’s expenses, assuming $0 MRR for the entirety of that runway. I’m less than a month from launch, and any MRR over the next seven months extends that runway further.

I’m feeling very excited about the upcoming journey. I know it’s going to be difficult, but it’s a life change that I need. I can’t imagine ever being in a better position than I am now to take the risk.

On where to start if you’re interested in taking the leap

Start by finding a space that you care about deeply.

Having a deep sense of purpose and motivation for the project I’m working on gets me through the lows. I know that, regardless of the outcome, I will not regret the time that I’ve invested.

My last startup wasn't something that I wanted to work on long-term. I'm doing things differently with Time Advisor because I care deeply about this project. I often get lost in the business of life, and I see Time Advisor as an aide for living more intentionally.

On making the transition easier

I negotiated a plan with the CTO at my current company to work part-time from October 1 through December 1, or until my role is backfilled. If it's backfilled in September, I could be a full-time indie hacker by October.

Facilitating a smooth transition is important to me, as it allows me to maintain a good connection with the CTO, who has unlocked a lot of connections for me. It also extends my runway.

Given my engineering background and relative lack of familiarity with design tools, I thought it would be faster to go straight from low-fidelity mockups to building my app. Figma never quite clicked for me, but I recently discovered Framer, and have been using it to build a full set of high-fidelity clickable mockups. Doing so allows me to make decisions about features and scope much faster, and enables me to get quicker feedback on the UI.

On learning, not just building

The biggest surprise has been how much I’ve had to learn, not as a developer, but as a founder. I now know that I can’t just build a product and expect people to come, so for the past couple of months, my indie hacking time was spent doing about 30% building and 70% learning.

I've done a lot of reading across various topics and channels, mostly marketing, and I've also spent time figuring out how to use new tools. But my balance has now swung the other way around, so I'm currently spending about 70% of my time building, and 30% learning.

Discuss this story.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Richard, Priyanka Vazirani, Sylvain Naessens, Josh Spector, and James Fleischmann for contributing posts. —Channing