davidheikka

I realized deep research would be great for validating business ideas so I built it into Buildpad.

You can try it for free to see if your idea is worth pursuing.

And don’t worry, if you choose privacy mode your data won’t be used to improve Buildpad and is for your eyes only.

How it works:

1. Come up with a problem to solve together with our AI

2. The AI will perform the deep research* (takes a few minutes)

3. You get a full analysis with sources

*The deep research involves a multi-step process where agents look through the web to find discussions, reports, competitors, and more to guide its final analysis.

It’s quite cool and you can try it for free in Buildpad’s “identify problem” phase at https://buildpad.io

I was always driven but when I was younger I channeled it into video games and sports.

During the past year it has intensified. I think part of it comes from reading about people with a lot of drive, such as Elon Musk, Kobe Bryant, and Bill Gates. When I read that they are putting in 80+ hour work weeks I ask myself, why can't I do that?

That's awesome. Wishing you the best!

I’d say consistency with high volume targets. We got our early users from posting on X, especially in the build in public community, and that came from doing a lot of posts and replies per day.

Yes, doing it full-time. Cost to acquire new customers has been $0, we're growing organically and through content marketing.

I believe we could hit $10k just repeating what we're doing now. But we're currently looking at where to best spend our earnings in order to scale faster.

I get the AI wrapper objection, but Chatgpt or other LLMs can't do what Buildpad does. For example, when verifying demand for your solution (this is one of the phases users go through) Buildpad will generate and host a "research page" for you that will help with taking in feedback from your target audience and make the whole validation process a lot easier.

I appreciate your perspective and I'd be lying if I said that what we're doing isn't a risk. But I personally get so much enjoyment out of building my own product and having users that appreciate it, that all the hard work makes it worth it. And the idea that we can make it into something huge is very motivating too. For me, it's a risk well worth taking.

Appreciate the suggestions, will keep that in mind

Thanks! We don't have it right now but it's something we've thought about and may implement in the future.

It totally depends on the situation. The good thing about X is that you can link your project in your bio and do a pinned post as well, so when you provide some value in a conversation many people will check out your project.

I think the best kind of posts are the ones where you provide a lot of value and can naturally link to your project at the end. Can't be too salesy though, there's a fine line.

Step 6 - Iterate

- At this point we had over 1k users and had gotten our first paying customers too.

- Now it was just about iteration.

- Collect feedback > improve the product > market more > collect feedback …

- This is what we did to get to 40+ paying customers and 1600+ users.

But how did we know that these are the steps we should take to get there? How did we come up with this plan? The truth is, we stole it.

Let me explain myself.

Earlier this year we failed hard. We spent months building a product that people didn't want. We tried everything to make it work (including spending $1k on ads), but we weren't able to turn it into a success.

It was really weird because we thought we had something good. The product made sense to us.

Finally, we came to a point of sober thought. We had wasted months on a bad product. That sucked, but at least there were some lessons to be learned.

When reflecting on what had gone wrong, it became clear. We had made the same mistakes that 95% of entrepreneurs make.

We didn't follow a clear process. We spent our time on the wrong things. We didn't have a plan. There were a lot of mistakes and we kept seeing other people make them too.

So what if we build a product that solves that problem?

A business building platform for entrepreneurs. The idea spoke to us deeply. We feel your struggles. We know how much it sucks to spend months building something, only to find out that no one wants it.

The product we built was meant for you and us.

Now to the cool part.

We used the product we built to get help building the product we built. Confusing? Let me explain:

The process I outlined above that got us our first 1600+ users wasn't us just freestyling. It was a carefully crafted process by Buildpad.

We started building Buildpad and as we did we used it at the same time to guide ourselves. In a way, Buildpad built Buildpad.

Super meta, I know.

But that's what happened. And if you’re tired of building failed products, maybe give Buildpad a chance?

Probably don't build another Buildpad though. My head starts spinning when I think about the meta of that.

But you can build something you feel passionate about and that people will pay you for. Or you can import your existing project and get help in getting that off the ground.

Once you've gotten your first payments and things are looking good for your business, perhaps you will consider giving us some feedback so we can make Buildpad even better.

This was a long post but it's something close to my heart. I hope you could learn something from our failures and our successes. And if you think Buildpad might be for you check it out at https://buildpad.io

I'm happy to offer my input in the comments if you have any questions.

Thanks for the suggestion. It's something we'll likely be implementing. The only thing is that Reddit provides better data because there are actual discussions that reveal a lot whereas for Google it would just be traffic on keywords.

The project: https://buildpad.io