What are the tools to find out if I have a good start plan?

I have a starting plan, a good idea, some financing and all... The question mostly relates on the fact that the guys (who finance the product I am looking for to make) are asking who would buy this product, and in what form?

To give you an idea, I have set up a form like this: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1kwRMANGbKvIYcre-9lMcEqr8hqZ4WxZp4UEWYDsYRyQ/viewform This would allow us to get a good direction on first,= build an app and then a tool or build the tool first...

First problem is that it got answered only 7 times in the whole week. So the question turns out to be mostly marketing... But how do you market something that has no market?

Ok, so many questions, Let me just ask and require responses to this:

• Is a poll good and reliable tool for a pre-sale market research?
• What are the methods to obtain a maximum of answers?
• Is there any tool to analyse the results?

It depends on you application, what kind of your application is. Poll is not good tool to get result for this stage. You should meet people and show your product and ask question regarding your application. If the application can solve their problems then ask few question regarding price and so on. You can get better idea.

You really need to start by asking yourself who you are gathering the data for.

If you are gathering data to help yourself in designing the product, then you are far better off interviewing people in person. A great first step to take the interview further is to mock up the app, using a tool like Balsamiq(.com), and ask people to test drive the app and see if they would use it and how to make it better. Even better would be if they will pre-order based on the mockup. Then you will know what to do.

If you are gathering data to convince an investor, your time is better spent on other activities than marketing your poll. Your poll will convince investors very little. It's better than nothing, but it isn't powerful enough to get a chequebook out. A mocked up app and orders in place would be more convincing.

If your surveys end up telling you that a device is preferred by users (and be really careful: a device is around 10-50x more expensive to develop than an app, because 'bugs' in a hardware device means a product recall), and you're absolutely convinced you have to build it (ideally build on an existing hardware platform), then you can use Kickstarter to get pre-orders for your device. But don't go the device route if you can avoid it at all!!

Doing research about something which does not exist yet is always tricky. Marketing textbooks often point to innovations whose success would've been hardly predicted by the traditional forms of marketing research.

My advice would be to think about what replacement are people currently using on place of your product. Who is going to lose market share if you get some. If people spend money on your product, what other purchase do they sacrifice for that?

And if there is something to research, that must be consumer behaviour within the whole product category to which your own product belongs.

If your product belongs to the entertainment category, then research current consumer behaviour in that area - what do most people buy; when, how, where, what attracts them, what puts them off, etc. Same if the product belongs to the utilities category or any other category.

Seek to get insight into past and current consumer behaviour. Do not ask people questions like "would you..." but rather questions like "what did you ... last time".