when thinking about building products, I am now super suspicious if I have an idea that takes more than a few days (even hours!) to ship

anything more ambitious than that probably has a set of "stepping-stone" features that act as intermediate for validation and user acquisition

e.g. @clankfun started as a web page that nicely rendered the output of one Dune API call. launching this got enough attention that validated working on a bump feed, which got enough attention to build in trading, and so on and so on. each step reinforced the value for existing users whilst gaining a new set of users.  I was shipping nearly every day in the first few months, from day 1

mostly reading and building. 
prev: @clankfun, improbable, github, amazon. https://ntik.me

I just want us to have fun | Cofounder @ Resolve (YC) - spatial tech for construction. FC tinkering: @livecaster @harmonybot /bot-or-not | /orange-dao

Feels especially common in 3D, games, VR, etc. 

Most of my friends who built successful indie games validated the core loop early on and it's extremely simple. The rest is polish.

Source: we've both been there 😅

yeah it's just scary thinking you could be working on something for a week and then turns out you were totally wrong about how you modelled the value you're delivering and have to throw it all away and start again. I'm too jaded from experiencing this play out too many times.

I agree with this so much. And I think this comes with experience in building products. You realize how fast you can validate with something simple and extrapolate from there.

Multidisciplinary designer - https://www.julo.work/

Nice man, appreciate the insight! 

AI has got to such a good level now as well, the ability to build and validate is super quick.

I think rather than having some process, you can spend enough time in the same place with the users (e.g. hang out on Farcaster if you want to get exposed to Base ecosystem) to be able to feel the same problems as them. Then when you build the first iteration you are basically validating:

- that your intuition on a problem was correct - but in reality you are most likely at least 50% there
- that there are enough people who feel the problem deeply enough to pay attention to a solution and spend the energy to try it
- that hopefully once they try it, it was interesting enough for them to re-engage with it (or you to give you feedback)

if all 3 of those things are validated, you have an opportunity to do the next iteration loop (otherwise it's really really hard). if I launch something and it doesn't have all 3, then I move on to something else immediately.

Good approach Nick, something I always struggle with is adding complexity to ideas and abandoning things quite often. 

How do you approach early validation with users? Or capturing feedback is maybe a better question. X / Product Hunt type platforms?

I’ve explored a few product ideas with Chat GPT and each time it provides 4-6 weeks as the minimum time to produce something that I can then get feedback on. Can’t imagine working on something for that period with zero input from customers

yes yes yes. aggressively descope to earn the right!