I Built a Tool to Help You Sketch Out an MVP Proposal in Minutes

How would you go from an idea to a potential product?

There is a lot of grief involved with some of our best ideas that we simply forget and that never see the light of day. How many times have you thought of a brilliant idea and started working on it just to realize later that maybe it's not as brilliant as it seemed at first? Or maybe you let the idea pass by and not take action just because you don't think there is anything new to it?

Sometimes, this behavior is reasonable, but more often some of us succumb to our own biases and reject a possibly good idea or a direction because our mindset gets more doubtful as we go deeper into it. This leads to either disenchantment, a silent abandonment, or just the feeling of being stuck.

If you don't put your ideas in check before you commit to them, you are into a lot of potential resentment and "wasted" effort.

We all need some feedback from the outside, not just to discern good ideas from bad ones, but also to give us fuel to keep going!

Wheater you are creating music, code, article or a product, a creeping doubtful mindset is usually a notorious demotivator and makes the creative process feel dry and more like pulling teeth than divine inspiration.

If we could only make this process less painful, faster, and cheaper!

Enter Product Hunter!

Product Hunter is a minimalistic tool I created to make this process simple for myself. You can find it on Github here. In a nutshell, it's a self-hosted, one-page pitcher for any MVP idea proposal.

You can make it your own, it's open-source and fast to set up and launch in minutes!

Functions and features

• Product Hunter is only ~12 Kb in size!
• It's mobile-ready!
• It's pitching itself as an example!
• You can host it anywhere, it's just a static HTML file.
• Product Hunter is itself an MVP template that you can edit right now, and make your own.
• You can attract and take note of potential future customers with email subscription and analytics integrated.
• Pitch your idea to the masses in no time!

Making it real

Total cost it took to launch Product Hunter page: $5

Domain: $3 (for 1 year)

Hosting: $2 (per month) - could be free if using IPFS or Github, etc.

Email Widget: FlyWidget - the free account will do (it could be SendGrid or Mailchimp widget, adapt the code to your needs)

Enough talk, let's get started

We split the process into four phases:

Preparation phase

• Get a domain!
• Get a logo and some interesting images/photos!
• Upload them to public image service like Imgur.
• Write a short description of your proposal.
• Write some one-liner or call-to-action for your idea and,
• Some tags for the SEO.
• Log in to Google Analytics and get your G-code for your domain.
• Go to FlyWidgets and make a free email collector widget. Get your Pixel link ready.

Design phase

• Go to ProductHunter, chose a light or dark theme to get you started.
• Edit the page and customize the text and images.
• Click 'Save changes' and save your page.
• Replace G-code and Pixel link on your page.
• Add meta description and keywords in the HTML file.
• Replace the BuyMeACoffee link with your own or remove it if you wish so.
• Use simple CSS and HTML elements to create an even more elegant and simple proposal.
• It doesn't have to be perfect!
• Publish it!

Pitch phase

• Spread your idea to friends, colleagues, and social media. Try targeting groups that matter for your cause.
• Collect feedback over some time frame like two weeks. Check visits, average retention time, and most importantly the number of email signups! This will be your biggest indicator if the idea has merit in the real world or not.

Decision phase

• If you got overwhelmingly good feedback, build it! If not scratch it and try another one!

Congratulations, you completed the circle!

Hope you enjoyed this read, and found it interesting and somewhat helpful!