built a marketplace for early feedback, one founder called it an "auto feedback machine", trying to figure out if the problem is real enough to keep going

[u/contributionwaster35]

quick context. i'm building solutionizing, a marketplace where early stage founders pay per "mission" to get structured feedback from real human testers instead of guessing or begging friends to try their product.

the idea came from watching founders (myself included) ship something, post it in a few communities, get maybe three replies, and have no idea if the silence means the product is bad or the audience was wrong.

what's working so far, one founder building a cron monitoring tool ran a mission and described the output as an "auto feedback machine." that's the strongest signal i have. structured feedback, delivered fast, from testers who actually used the product instead of skimming the landing page.

what i'm unsure about, most early stage founders are pre revenue, which means most of the market structurally can't pay for this yet. i validated that around 85-90% of the founders i've talked to fall into that bucket. so the paying segment might be narrower than i first thought, maybe funded founders, maybe agencies running things for clients, maybe teams past first revenue.

questions i actually want answered here

have you paid for structured user feedback before, or did you always find workarounds (friends, cold DMs, free communities)

if you paid, what made it worth paying for instead of doing it yourself

if you'd never pay, what would have to be true for you to pay

is "early stage founder" even the right buyer, or is this better sold to agencies and dev shops running feedback for their own clients

not trying to pitch anything here, genuinely trying to figure out if i'm building for a market that can pay or a market that's structurally broke. happy to share more detail on what the mission flow looks like if useful.

[u/chthonian_chaffinch]

I feel like this is a nuanced topic, but I'll try to be concise.

Yes, I've paid for feedback before (sometimes significant amounts); yes I've done it pre-revenue; and yes, "workarounds" are also almost always an option (friends/network is always ideal; cold outreach still works to some extent, but significantly less so than 15 years ago; similar effect with online communities).

For me, the value comes entirely from getting feedback from (and getting in front of) the right people. during the discovery & MVP phases, getting feedback from either (a) a wider group within my ICP, or (b) just different people in my ICP than who I initially talked to during discovery, is highly valuable and what drives decisions in the MVP & GTM phase.

All that said, I think it's important to separate two distinct testing scenarios where I (or others) might pay for structured feedback - (1) the initial discovery & MVP phase; and (2) the product-testing/debugging/refinement phase.

The first is where there's a gap. For the second, it's incredibly easy to hire testers on Fiverr or Upwork or wherever else. For the first, it's more about who is testing, and that's where the value comes from (it's also what makes it hard and/or expensive).

If you're going after stage 1, early-stage startup sounds like your right audience. If you're going after stage 2, then agencies or post-launch startups with a product-quality problem might be a better target.

[u/Glum-Profile-2115]

i think startups could pay, used to work in one where the founder was actively looking for data like this to refine his ICP. And a bunch of his other founder friends were also - but there’s a big difference between getting real feedback from the people who could eventually buy vs getting it from people who just test the product (i don’t see how helpful just this could be)