Heya there builders, I just launched and alpha phase of a product I've been working on for around a week. Since yesterday, I got 7 out of 10 members to agree to be my alpha users; I give them the product for free, they give me (very valuable) feedback! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here is what I did in this week, to give you a real life example of how to research, plan, build and test the waters when you're building: Day #1: I came up with the idea in the morning, by midnight I had a very solid working proof of concept. (You know, AI does make that work really easy for builders when you know what you want). Day #2 - Day #5: Iterating on the product, making it a real prototype/MVP. Strategizing about marketing and exposure, and general plan of building this product. Day #6: Find community who suffers from the problem you're solving (Luckily, I had a community already very close to me, which I have built a very solid reputation in for the last 2.5 years). I mapped out 10 people whom I've had contact with (Familiarity), and reached out to them with a message that goes something like this: "Hey! long time, I've been building XYZ, would you be interested in getting access as an alpha user and provide feedback in return?". Day #7: I ensure all systems are ready to welcome the alpha users.. We're talking product deployed online, with a functional end-to-end user journey flow (From signup until problem solved / value). 7 out of 10 people have responded to me, and have agreed to be alpha users. (Still crossing my fingers for the last 3 to respond with a yes). Finally, I sent them out the sign up link with minimal instructions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ REASON FOR RUNNING AN ALPHA PHASE (Or Stealth launch, as I'd like to call it) is as follows: I want to quickly validate OR invalidate my idea.. If 6/10 users tell me that this is something they would use, I'll invest more time into developing it. Otherwise? I'll kill the idea without remorse. And move onto the next.