What is Reddit's opinion of The Right It: Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeed?

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You should read: "The Right It: Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeed"

https://www.amazon.com/Right-Many-Ideas-Yours-Succeed/dp/0062884654

It has solid advice for how to test your product/market fit and get the right product out of it. You have gone too far in launching without customers. Most people start advertising their idea before it's a product and talking to potential customers about it.

At your stage, you should find 100 customers and speak to them personally. Figure out who is the ideal customer for your product as is and find them on LinkedIn, ProductHunt, social media and reach out and offer it for free or at a discount to give you honest feedback.

Once you have a better idea of your ideal customer, spend some $$$ advertising and make sure your CAC (cost of acquisition) is less than the LTV (lifetime value) of each customer.

Also, in the meantime, publish your product on Product Hunt if you haven't. Good ideas can take off and you can get good feedback, etc. Find other places to publish your app and launch.

As a 4x founder with exits, highly recommend you read this: https://www.amazon.com/Right-Many-Ideas-Yours-Succeed/dp/0062884654/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+right+it&qid=1608758310&sr=8-1 before spending money on anything beyond very basic "pretotype".

I would start by getting some kind of commitment from potential customers like pre-orders - DO NOT start by getting a prototype made or by ordering a ton of products on Alibabba that you are not certain you can sell. I see startups doing this all the time, and I made the same mistake years ago as an aspiring entrepreneur - most times this approach will only lead to you wasting a lot of time and money. The hard part about making a physical product is not building the product, but selling it. Make sure you run through these steps:

Step 1 - Market validation: In this phase you should try and find out if you are selling the right product, by simply pretending that the product already exist (that you have it in stock) and then try to get some kind of commitment from the market (email sign-ups, pre-orders etc.) - could also be done with crowdfunding. By doing this you will not only find out how big the market for your product is, but also who the target customers are.

Step 2 - Product validation: In this phase you try to find out if you are building the product the right way. Find the right suppliers, find out what you MQO is (minimum quantity order) getting the right price, getting the design right - you can even use the customers that have signed up for pre-orders in step 1 to get feedback on the product (depending on the product you could choose to send them early prototypes for feedback)

Step 3 - Launch: When you know you are selling the right product, to the right people, at the right price, you will need to get the word out and start taking in orders - use the knowledge gathered in step 1 and 2 to drive traffic through online communities, digital marketing and other channels (find the right way to market your product). Before you reach this point you should have nailed some key insights from step 1 and 2:

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• What is the cost per acquisition (what will it cost you in marketing to get one customer)?
• What is the cost per unit, and MQO (how many units should you order at a time before you have a profitable business)?

I would recommend (even though it's not specifically for physical products) you watch former Director of Engineering at Google Alberto Savoia's videos on Pretotyping: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzgbutZja0Vs-U7NcrDj42g

Or buy his book "The Right It": https://www.amazon.com/Right-Many-Ideas-Yours-Succeed/dp/0062884654