Validating an Idea with 400 Email Signups in 72 Hours
The other week I was thinking about what it would be like to work four days per week instead of five. I have a few friends that follow this schedule and it seems great: that extra day gives you time cook, exercise, and generally improve yourself. All of these thing set you up to be more productive the next week.
I knew I couldn’t be the only one with this idea and I thought there could be an opportunity to create a job board that focuses on jobs with flexible or reduced hours. For this idea, I came up with the name 30 Hour Jobs.
Out of interest, I spent a couple of hours putting up a website that called out to people who were interested in a shorter workweek. After grabbing the domain 30hourjobs.com, I made the site available on the internet.
The site says:
More hours worked doesn’t mean more problems solved. In the age of thought-work and automation, a rested mind can lead to better work performance and work-life balance.
30 Hour Jobs is a job board for job seekers and employers who believe that shorter workweeks can lead to increased productivity and higher job satisfaction.
Alongside these words, there is a sign up form for the visitor to subscribe to a mailing list which offers weekly curated job listings.
Once I put everything up on the website, I posted the page on a few websites for feedback and to share it with people who might find it valuable. To my surprise, over the next 3 days, more than 400 people signed up to the mailing list!
Many times I have tried to gather an audience for a cause or to sell software and my results have always been fairly tepid. Seeing such interest makes me think crafting and testing a value proposition for a business is a very important — and overlooked — activity.
In any case, I’ve definitely been inspired to spend time doing research for and writing this weekly newsletter and really provide value to the readers. If there is enough interest, soon I would like to graduate the idea from a mailing list to a full website with a self-serve job board.
If you’re curious, I was able to put everything together in just a couple of hours. Here’s my process:
Things I did:
- Spent time thinking up a catchy name
- Obtained a .com url for the name
- Wrote good copy to convey message
- Used Carrd to create a one page website
- Set up a free Mailchimp account
- Shared the website to the following sites:
- Product Hunt
- Indie Hackers
- Lobsters
- Reddit /r/tech
- Hacker News
Things I didn’t do:
- Write code
- Design
- Create a logo
- Create a favicon
- Setup Google Analytics
- Advertising