How do you validate your ideas?
Hey Indie Hackers 👋
I’ve been struggling with something that I think many makers/founders know well: ideas are not the problem.
I’ve had plenty of them — probably too many. But here’s the real issue: how do you know which ones are actually worth pursuing?
Because let’s be real: maybe 80% of them are crap… but what if one of the ideas I already threw away (thinking it was crap) was actually the hidden gem? 🤯
In the past, I fell into the classic trap:
– Pick one idea I felt was solid
– Spent 6+ months building an MVP
– Only to realize… nobody wanted it
That failure made me think: maybe what we’re lacking is not more ideas, but a better, faster way to validate them before sinking months of time.
I’m curious how you approach this:
– When you have multiple SaaS ideas, how do you pick the “right” one?
– What’s your go‑to process for validation?
– How do you know when an idea is truly bad vs. just underdeveloped?
– Have you tried tools/methods that gave you clear signals?
Do you guys run into this problem too? How do you usually solve it?
The "truly bad vs just underdeveloped" part is the one that used to trip me up too. What helped was forcing every idea through the same short interrogation before I let myself get attached: who specifically has this problem (a named type of person, not "small businesses"), can one person actually ship a first version, and how soon could someone plausibly pay. If I can't answer the first one crisply, it's usually not a bad idea, it's an underdeveloped one, and the fix is more customer conversations, not more building. If I can answer all three cleanly and it still looks weak, that's the genuinely-bad pile.
Your 6-months-then-no-demand story is exactly what this guards against. Running an idea through five questions costs an afternoon. Skipping it costs what you already paid.
I got tired of doing this ad hoc so I wrote it up as a repeatable prompt I paste into Claude or ChatGPT and hand a link or a note. It gives a go / look-into / skip read instead of another summary. I ended up selling it as a small skill file (it's mine, $12 one-time), but the questions are the actual value and you can run them by hand for free. Link if you want the exact wording: https://atomic24.gumroad.com/l/idea-harvester — either way, the who-specifically question is where I'd start
You're describing a real pain point that many people struggle with. Instead of overthinking, build a simple landing page and start collecting interest through X and the usual channels. Sometimes even pre-selling can help gauge demand.