You know that when folks like game companies sell preorders they're not actually taking and spending your money, right? Usually it's a token amount like $5 that just serves to make the customer invested in the product to make them much more likely to come back and purchase it when it's ready. They'll also happily refund your $5 or whatever if you change your mind or the product is late, etc.
Dinging a bunch of credit cards for full value and then spending that money to develop what you've already sold could easily turn ugly. I can't tell exactly what your product is, but assuming there is actual code behind it - software is hard and frequently takes a lot more work than you expect.
I'm not saying it won't turn out fine - but if you're simply looking to validate your product then i think it'd be really wise to keep 100% of that pre-order money segregated, unspent and available for no questions asked refunds.
Agreed. And no questions asked refunds are definitely available. I've written two successful book so the money itself isn't the issue. I just happen to have set a $5k limit on what I can spend personally.
If everything totally fails (possible, but not likely) I will repay everyone out of my own pocket.
I think that's great then and am super excited to hear how it turns out. The kickstarter-eque up front market validation strategies fascinate me - under the right set of circumstances I could see it becoming almost a revolutionary step in capitalism.
Have you experimented with any sort of feature-request pre-order tier where the entities that pre-order early have direct say in what gets built? I know that you're obviously building for them, but is there any way to stroke their ego and make that part of the package?
That's an interesting idea. I haven't done it. I need feedback from customers to find out exactly what to build, but I would never want to be put in a position where I must build something a customer tells me to do.
That gets much closer to consulting or contract work. Not products.
Dinging a bunch of credit cards for full value and then spending that money to develop what you've already sold could easily turn ugly. I can't tell exactly what your product is, but assuming there is actual code behind it - software is hard and frequently takes a lot more work than you expect.
I'm not saying it won't turn out fine - but if you're simply looking to validate your product then i think it'd be really wise to keep 100% of that pre-order money segregated, unspent and available for no questions asked refunds.