[Briel]

1. Landing page that shows mockups of your product and how it benefits the audience - capture emails "get notified of launch!"

You can drive traffic to the landing page by sharing it in relevant communities and by setting up some highly targeted ads.

2. Instead of programming your core feature right away, even as a MVP, if possible, do manual non-scaleable work to offer it instead. This lets you test if people want it, without spending much dev time or money.

Example: "Leading into the summer of 2009, the team developed the first incarnation of FanDuel in a Google Docs spreadsheet, says cofounder and chief product officer Tom Griffiths, who recalls recruiting test players on Craigslist and accepting their entry fees via PayPal"

[murph-almighty]

I've heard technique 2 described as a "Wizard of Oz" experience.