Isn't this just sort of market research for how to prioritize the roadmap? I think it was a great way to do so.

Yeah this seems like the kind of thing people would have advised me to do when I was trying to start startups around 2010. But I was too focused on engineering and had no head for the business side so I never tried it.

Ya, I know this strategy under the name “smokescreen mvp”. I don’t remember exactly, but I think it is advocated in the lean startup. Personally I am a big supporter of the strategy. Many startups fail because _nobody cared about the problem_, and this is totally avoidable