Begin with the end in mind

Inspired by Tim Ferriss and his approach to product validation, I have added a new skill to my skills repo to help me micro-test the market before actually building the product - add-landing-page. Here is an example of how to run it:

/add-landing-page I want an Android and iOS app for people for who collect stamps.

The basic idea is that it will build a landing page, complete with product mockups, analytics and a real but harmless call to action to validate your offer. Out of the box everything is set up ready to deploy to GitHub Pages. You then buy some traffic, run a test for a short period of time - around five days. Once the test is complete you should have enough data to decide if your idea is worth pursuing.

I am currently making a real effort to get much better at marketing and product development - this is my latest foray. Going forward in our new world with AI, I strongly believe this is something we as software engineers need to get good at if we are to survive.