u/Huge_Moose2741

Hey ya'll, need a little guidance from the community here...

Working on my first product. It's essentially a micro cms for tattoo artists that enables them to post their portfolio / personal site with minimal friction. I got the idea and started cranking out specs and coding it out but then discovered the whole world of bootstrappers and solo founders and realized that I've totally blasted by the validation stage. The only validation I have is from my tattoo artist hating that he has to use instagram to display his work so in a sense I have one person's validation but that's it....

Any how, I've got the MVP like 95% complete, got a domain and everything but in the mean time I've been wrapping my head around what is the least cring way to validate this product pre launch. A couple months later, I haven't touched the thing. It's just sitting in a git repo as I get side tracked by other shiny new ideas.

So I guess I'm just asking for ya'lls experience here, but I think I'm just gonna beta launch it and try to spam the thing to tattoo artists as free until x amount of users sign up or something. Is this a terrible idea? Should I be working on validating it before launching? Do I need a flashy launch strategy?

What did you first product launch look like? Did it bite the dust? Did you have a launch plan?

Appreciate the input!

I've got a JellyStar that I've sort of hacked into being a dumb phone. I uninstalled a lot of the stock apps, the browser, the app store itself and installed some 3rd party packages like a private contacts app and I'm using a third party keyboard as well. Texting is totally a pain in the butt on this phone though which is ironic since half of my intention with using a dumbphone was to text and call my friends and family more. Curious if any JellyStar users out there have a specific keyboard they like to use?

I hiked the PCT in 2022 and totally fucked up my achilleas like 300 miles in from over use. Recently been considering attempting an FKT near me but I have a hard time slotting enough time on feet in the day to confidently attempt it.

Just curious if there's any other desk job folk like me out there that have used a walk pad during their 9 - 5 as training. Anyone have any experience with these? Kind of feels like a big hack as far as thru hike training goes. Kind of considering picking one up.