Skip to content
growthperclickHacker Playbooks.

Niche · Before

Talk to 100 buyers

Before writing code, speak to a hundred people who have the problem. Count how many will pay — not how many say it is 'interesting'.

Compliments are not demand. A conversation that ends in a card or a calendar invite is. This kills elegant ideas that nobody will buy.

How to run it

  1. 01Write a one-sentence problem, not a product name.
  2. 02Find 100 people in groups, comment sections, and warm intros.
  3. 03Ask: how they solve it now, what they paid last time, would they pay you next week.
  4. 04Only build if a painful number would actually pay — Kagan's bar is closer to 'dozens of yeses', not polite nods.

In the wild

Kagan has used a '$1.50 test' and landing-page asks for years: if they will not give a tiny amount or an email for the promise, they will not give a subscription later.

Used by · 3

Noah Kagan

@noahkagan

Validation · email

Talking to humans, tiny price tests, and email as a weapon

Arvid Kahl

@arvidkahl

Embedded · audience-first

Audience-first SaaS inside a community you already belong to

Rob Walling

@robwalling

Bootstrap compounder · email

Start Small, Stay Small — bootstrap compounding as a go-to-market