VALIDATION — 7-day smoke test (<$50)
Goal: prove real expat founders will pay (or credibly pre-commit) before building the deck or scheduling anything. Kill fast if not.
Design
Sell the workshop before it exists. Landing page + Stripe Payment Link with a named date ~3 weeks out (“first cohort”). Stripe refunds are free and instant if it dies — no one is harmed.
Day-by-day
| Day | Action | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Publish landing page (index.html in this package → .deploy/ or a Cloudflare Pages preview). Create 2 Stripe Payment Links: €149 workshop seat (date named — provisional Tue Aug 4 pre-filled), €49 template pack (v1 already built in templates/ — instant delivery via Stripe post-payment link once Joshua reviews + uploads). Wire links into the page. Do not publish before the Stripe links are pasted. |
€0 |
| 2 | Post the origin story to r/germantaxes and Toytown Germany (the two most tolerant of practical tax content). Value-first post that genuinely teaches the annual sequence; link only where rules allow (profile/comment). | €0 |
| 3 | Post LinkedIn version (personal, story-format). DM 5 expat founders Joshua already knows: “would you pay €149 for this? here’s the page.” | €0 |
| 4 | Post r/germany (check self-promo rules; if disallowed, pure-value post and let people find the link via profile) + 2 Berlin founder Slacks. | €0 |
| 5–6 | Answer every comment/DM. Each substantive question goes into an FAQ file — it’s free market research and future workshop content. | €0 |
| 7 | Count. Decide per thresholds below. | €0 |
Optional accelerant if organic is quiet by Day 4: €30 of Reddit or LinkedIn ads pointing at the page. Total spend stays ≤ €30–40.
Success thresholds (Day 7)
| Signal | Kill | Iterate | Green light |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paid workshop seats (€149) | 0 | 1–2 | ≥3 (€447 in 7 days on zero ad spend → 7+ by workshop day is near-certain) |
| Template packs (€49) | 0 and no seat sales | 1–3 | ≥4, or any combo with seats ≥ €300 total |
| Qualified engagement (comments/DMs asking “when/how do I sign up”, waitlist emails) | <10 total across all channels | 10–30 | >30 |
| Landing page conversion (visits→checkout click) | <0.5% | 0.5–2% | >2% |
Green: schedule cohort 1, build the deck (Week 1 of SPEC month-one plan compresses since templates already drafted). Iterate: price test (€99?), reframe (pain-first vs story-first headline), or pivot the wedge to the €49 pack as the entry product. Kill: refund anyone who paid, keep the origin-story post up (it costs nothing and keeps validating passively), archive.
What this test deliberately does NOT do
- No deck, no dummy-filing build, no Discord, no recording setup — all post-validation work.
- No paid tools beyond optional €30 ads. Zoom Pro is bought only after green light.
Risks checked by the test itself
- StBerG framing: the landing page ships with the education disclaimer from day 1; if community mods or commenters flag it as advice-adjacent, that’s a Day-2 signal to tighten copy — cheaper to learn now than after launch.
- “Free content is enough” objection: if threads get big engagement but zero purchases, the market wants free content, not a workshop — that’s the Iterate branch (the €49 pack or a cheaper recording may still convert).