Article · ~12 min read

$1,400 in pre-sales, step by step

Indie Hackers community · Indie Hackers Free Beginner

A concrete, step-by-step account of collecting real pre-sale money before building, from a founder who actually did it. Unlike theory, it shows the messy specifics: who to approach, what to say, and how many said yes with a card out. A good template for running your own pre-order test.

  • Real pre-payment is a far stronger signal than an email signup.
  • Approach people already living the problem, not a cold audience.
  • Cap the pre-sale and watch the conversion to estimate true demand.
Open on indiehackers.com ↗

The question it answers

  1. How do I test whether people will actually pay, not just say they like it?

Read with it

  1. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  2. The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Do Things That Don't Scale Paul Graham
  3. The most concrete guide to actually measuring what customers will pay, including survey methods and tier design. It turns... lennysnewsletter.com Article · long-form guide The Ultimate Guide to Willingness to Pay Lenny Rachitsky & Patrick Campbell
  4. A leading early-stage Indian VC firm answering the questions founders wish they could ask a VC face-to-face, including how they... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · 30-50 min per episode Prime Venture Partners Podcast: Fundraising Masterclass for Founders Prime Venture Partners
  5. CB Insights read hundreds of real startup postmortems and found that poor product-market fit (around 43 percent) is the single... CB Insights Article · ~15 min read The Top 12 Reasons Startups Fail CB Insights
  6. Video · ~25 min How to Talk to Users Eric Migicovsky
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →