Ask HN: How do I capture the right audience and find the product market fit

I am building a product for improving developer efficiency and I am 2 months into it and have a working prototype, how do I get feedback from the right users who are in need of such a tool? What are your suggestions?

7 points | by akarshhegde18 1 day ago

4 comments

  • lemonademan 7 hours ago
    You could try ProductHunt, or you could show the Hacker News for feedback.
  • akerl_ 1 day ago
    How did you decide what to build without knowing who you’d be building it for?
    • akarshhegde18 1 day ago
      I started off by solving the issue that I was facing as a tech lead working with 15 people in my team, not everyone was performing at their best and thought this could solve the issue. Now I want to get similar developers who are facing this issue. I know the problem is real but the right people need to know that this product exists
      • mmarian 1 day ago
        In that case the answer lies within you (such a movie quote!). More seriously, did you apply the solution to your job? Did it work? Did you look for solutions when you had the problem? Where did you look? Where do you usually spend time online or IRL? etc etc
        • akarshhegde18 13 hours ago
          That’s a good point. I did deploy an early version for my team of developers, and it helped me understand what each one was working on without constant status updates. It also surfaced context that was usually lost across Slack and meetings. The challenge now is that I’m only one data point. I’m trying to figure out whether this pain is common enough outside my own team, and if so, who feels it the most—engineering managers, tech leads, or someone even outside tech (like finance or something). When I had this problem, I mostly looked for better engineering analytics and developer productivity tools, but nothing really gave me how work was actually happening. That’s the hypothesis I’m trying to validate now. Let me know if you know of ways to reach these kind of audience that might potentially use this product
      • akerl_ 1 day ago
        It seems impossible that you know the problem is real but don’t know who the right people are to tell about it.
        • akarshhegde18 13 hours ago
          I know only few people in my network that I can pitch this product to, but need suggestion to put it out on the net for others to see, gain more traction and visibility that something like this exists if they are already looking for it
          • akerl_ 4 hours ago
            I'm saying you're driving backwards down the highway, and you're asking how you can read the signs better because they all look blank.
  • akarshhegde18 1 day ago
    Suggestions of any subreddit communities where I can spend time on?
    • posterity 1 day ago
      [dead]
      • akarshhegde18 13 hours ago
        This is really cool, did you get to know about this conversation from your tool?
        • posterity 4 hours ago
          I did find this thread from the tool yeah
      • akarshhegde18 12 hours ago
        I will try this out, thanks! Starring the repo
  • tommypham 8 hours ago
    [flagged]