Is this enough validation? Does this count as any traction?
I'm a student on a gap year working full time on a premium ($400) consumer hardware startup in the pet space so certainly not the easiest space to build in being consumer, hardware, and premium. The problem also requires education, but once most of the customers are educated, they're really compelled to make a change. Our product could potentially prevent vet visits (science backed, we've talked to vets as well) that are $400-$1500 though, so it's an investment and it replaces a task that is otherwise very time-consuming (80-150 hrs each year) and quite gross, which is why many pet parents don't do it.
So we first had 150+ quick chats with pet owners just to validate the problem and see if it was even a problem (and it was). Since then, we've had deeper, 15-20 mins customer discovery calls + posting every now and then on FB groups. We built a list of 52 people on the waitlist (at the premium price point).
We switched to a paid deposits system not too long ago and have had 12 people pay $50 deposits for a product they haven't ever seen or used yet, and wouldn't be shipped for another 8+ months (paid based on renders alone). All of these deposits came from the customer discovery calls (minus 1 - which came from an investor at a VC firm that reached out to us).
But not all of the calls were with people that could afford the product (a lot were students, minimum wage, laid off/unemployed) since we live in a very small city that isn't known to be either a dog city nor have lots of wealthy people, and mostly just uni students).
So from the calls, of those that could afford the product (stable jobs, disposable incomes), 39% of them paid deposits for a product they hadn't seen/used, almost a year in advance, and if we put our 'SAM' constraint on (57-60%+ of all pet owners), and 63% of that category paid deposits. Although we have also had people outside of these categories pay (people that don't make a lot, but love their pets, or people that once educated, converted into our SAM constraint).
I feel like we can get a lot more people if we can get in front of more of these people that we know already convert, especially if we invested more money into our video, but it feels that staying in this small city in Canada is just slowing us down. Most of our deposits came from people we didn't know at all from the US. Is this enough validation to keep on going? Would moving to a bigger city (and thus paying much more in rent) where we know our ICP lives be a good move?
So far I got these calls by messaging ppl on tiktok (but if they don't follow me then the requests go to spam so only some replied) or posting on fb groups but most of them don't let you post for this type of stuff. I feel that if I were just in a bigger, denser city with lots of dogs/cats and wealthier ppl, it'd make the whole talking to people process so much faster.
I'd appreciate any insights :)