Let's Build It: Your First Prototype

Get market validation for your product as quickly as possible

Hi, Guilherme here 😃

This is my first paid post on a series that I’m aiming to do. The goal for each is to do a step-by-step explanation of how to build something. If you’d like to access the full content of this post, and future posts, make sure to subscribe to the paid version.

Also, I just created a Discord. This is a first for me, still trying to figure this thing out. But why don’t you join? You never know what might come out of it:

Now with the actual post 🚀

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So, you have an idea that you think might work, but you’re not really sure how to get started? In this post, I’ll give you a step-by-step explanation, with real examples, of how you can do so.

Prototyping is a very important part of your journey. It’s a way to quickly validate whether or not your idea has some sort of market fit. You want to do this before going all in on something.

The quicker you validate an idea, the quicker you can understand if you’re on the right track. The goal of a prototype is to show your potential customers what value you’re bringing to them. It doesn’t need to be perfect.

Most times it will be dirty, rough, and raw. But it gets the job done: validation.

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The idea

For the purpose of this exercise, I’m going to build a simple idea I thought about: Draw Me Something.

I’m looking to create a service where customers can request a drawing of anything, pay for it, and then receive it in their inboxes after it’s finished. Simple, right? Let’s get cracking.

The plan

To achieve my goal, I need the following things:

• Landing page: It’s a fully digital product, a webpage to host everything is mandatory;

• Submission form: customers will be making custom requests, and I need to be able to receive them and also know who asked for what;

• Payment: after making their requests, customers need to pay for it and only then will I send them the drawing;

• Drawing: I don’t know how to draw. Also, my goal is to build something as automated as possible. So I need a way to automatically generated the drawings.

After choosing all of the above, I need to start building. That means:

1. Setting up the landing page, and explaining what I’m offering.

2. Having a call-to-action that triggers the users to submit a request through a form.

3. Afterwards, the user should be redirected to a payment page.

4. And, upon successful payment receive back a notification saying that the request has been received.

5. In the end, I’ll create the drawing and manually send it to them by email.

Fairly simple, no? Let’s get cracking on how I will achieve this.

The prototype

You don’t need to be a programmer to build a prototype.

In this day and age, there’s so much offering regarding no-code tools that there’s simply no excuse for not being able to build a simple prototype.

Next, I’ll list all the products that I’m going to use (all of them are free to use, with limited but enough options), and even someone with no coding experience can set them up. Afterwards, I’ll show you step-by-step how to connect everything up.