This can be powerful for people who really have no idea what the market will do.
These people should take their hands off the keyboard and not put it back on until they have spoken to at least one Real Person who has the problem that they are trying to solve. After they have done this, they will know if there is any interest at all. This produces actionable insights: if they tell you they have a problem, then at least some people have the problem. If they tell you that the industry's favorite way for solving the problem costs $1,000, that immediately establishes that there is a viable market for solving the problem.
Compare this to the AdWords campaign: can you tell me what numbers you can get that say "This is a good idea -- do this" and what numbers you can get that say "This is not a good idea -- don't do this"? No -- subjectively "good" results don't imply purchasing intent, subjectively "bad" results don't imply lack of it. You'll get noise -- very precise noise, noise you can measure down to the click, but still noise.
Suppose I came up with an idea that I absolutely knew was brilliant, let's say edible shoelaces. Unfortunately these edible shoelaces aren't cheap to produce. I'm a one man shop and have almost no money.
I make a fully functional website to sell this product, only I don't have the product yet. When people browse the site and have gone through the pricing page, etc... and finally click "buy" I simply tell them that we're out of stock.
Now I want to see if people are actually trying to buy this thing, so I start marketing but have a limited budget. I throw $1000 at ad words. If I get 100 people trying to buy my edible shoelaces at $20 each then I know that maybe it's worth investing in manufacturing the product.
How is this not useful data? Instead of going all out and spending money on manufacturing and a website, you only pay for the website and hold off on the manufacturing expense until you're confident it'll pay off.
Except that we are talking document management here, not edible shoelaces. Or anything that requires "manufacturing" in the made-in-a-factory sense of the word.
A fake ad survey for a document management system from someone who "works in the electronic Document Management and Records Management industry" is shouting out loud, "I'm too scared to actually sit and code this thing because it's hard and I might take too long to do it or completely fail to do it."
And I don't know why people like throwing money away. With $100, I'd rather buy 5 months of Linode server time than 12 email addresses. When the best entrepreneurs are saying be cheap, I think we ought to listen and be cheap. And with 2 weeks of time, I'd rather sit and code the most basic functionality of my app and show it to people I know who might need it.
These people should take their hands off the keyboard and not put it back on until they have spoken to at least one Real Person who has the problem that they are trying to solve. After they have done this, they will know if there is any interest at all. This produces actionable insights: if they tell you they have a problem, then at least some people have the problem. If they tell you that the industry's favorite way for solving the problem costs $1,000, that immediately establishes that there is a viable market for solving the problem.
Compare this to the AdWords campaign: can you tell me what numbers you can get that say "This is a good idea -- do this" and what numbers you can get that say "This is not a good idea -- don't do this"? No -- subjectively "good" results don't imply purchasing intent, subjectively "bad" results don't imply lack of it. You'll get noise -- very precise noise, noise you can measure down to the click, but still noise.