Pre-sell before you build

Validate by taking money (pre-sales, refundable deposits, lock-in prices) before the product exists, usually after warming an audience or waitlist by email.

Components

• Warm an audience or waitlist (build in public, email, landing page)
• Do the validation maths (buyers needed at a price)
• Offer a pre-sale / deposit / lock-in price with urgency
• Deliver manually or build only after enough sales

Who describes it

• Timo Nikolai — Validation playbook (five steps): Timo’s steps to validate a B2B idea before building. (Timo Nikolai · Josef Buettgen & Timo Nikolai (Sep 2025) ▶ 05:20)
• Timo Nikolai — Deposit framework: Instead of charging for a non-existent product or a monthly fee, deliver value on the call and take a 100% refundable one-time deposit (e.g. $500) that secures full access and a spot in the first launch. (Timo Nikolai · Josef Buettgen & Timo Nikolai (Sep 2025) ▶ 05:52)
• Gil Hildebrand — Four-step pre-sale playbook: Gil’s start-from-scratch playbook for validating and funding an app before building it. (Gil Hildebrand · Gil Hildebrand (Dec 2025) ▶ 09:46)
• John Rush — John Rush’s product blueprint: The same idea-to-launch process he uses for all 20+ products. (John Rush · John Rush (May 2025) ▶ 03:44)
• Colin McIntosh — Validation sequence: Pre-customer then customer validation. (Colin McIntosh · Colin McIntosh (May 2024) ▶ 05:05)