How I Created a Business During the Weekend: My Step-by-Step Process for Idea Validation.
This is a post I published in my blog last week about how I created an MVP to validate my idea. The goal of this post is to show the importance of idea validation and to give people a framework for MVP development and some rules for successful idea validation.
Before you read it, I'd like to point out that idea validations isn't about successfully validating that your idea is something that the market wants... It's equally useful to fail at this point. You don't want to build something no one wants. So be as unbiased as you can when trying to validate.
HERE'S THE POST: https://www.bizdesign.agency/post/how-i-created-a-business-during-the-weekend-step-by-step-process
Hi Enrique, very interesting read!
I'm in the process of validating my idea too and I was wondering:
thanks again and looking forward to hearing your opinion!
Hey Federico!
So, for the target audience the common practice is to research the market and the niche and come up with personas that really match the people in the market you are targeting.
For this example it's a bit different because I was creating something for me. I was scratching my own itch.
Now that you mention this, that might have been an error. I assumed from the beginning that most of the people potentially interested in my product where like me.
My advice to you would be to be flexible at this point. Don't do what I did LOL. Don't assume you KNOW the truth. Research similar products and look at the people who are interested. Once you think you have a good understanding of who they are... interview a couple of them and validate that they are really the people you should be targeting. I hope this makes sense. If not, send me a direct message, and we can talk more.
do you think would have been useful driving some traffic to your landing page via paid ads?
I'm usually not a big fan of paid ads at the beginning of a project like this. I think it can definitely help, but it usually gives people a fake understatement of the market and their receptiveness. My goal is always to possibly get to 100% organic traffic. Ads can give a great push, but at the beginning of a project I rather have a clearer vision and understatement, than rapid growth. It's just my opinion.
I believe that studying our competitor audiences might reveal interesting insights regarding which audiences to target and how to talk to them in terms of tone of voice. Do you think that competitor audience analysis could be a valuable step in the process of validation?
100%! I think it's one of the most important things we need at the beginning. We need to understand the people we are targeting.
Good luck brother!
Really powerful answers! appreciate that Enrique! Doing some research on the topic, I've found out this tool that promises to perform all the above tactics. Thought it might be useful posting it here.
https://growthlyapp.com/
Good luck to you my friend!!
Thanks for sharing this Enrique, great read - really enjoyed how you explained "the why" at each step. Your approach demystifies creating an MVP by keeping it scoped to data driven outcomes. Also a fan of Stoicism as well! Beyond the initial launch, did you promote further in the first month? Curious to hear your thoughts on creating an MVP & matching audience fit - you mentioned posting in Facebook and social media. Did you promote further after that? I wonder if there would have been an alternate outcome with a different distribution approach (i.e. different platform, etc.) From my experience, it's an iterative tweaking of both audience and offering. Still provides a solid framework for getting an early signal and making decisions - thanks again!
I did promote it after the first month. What you are saying makes a lot of sense. I know that the idea has potential and if I wasn't able to validate wasn't necessarily because the idea wasn't good. In part, that's why I have kept it on the back burner and even though I'm not promoting it, I am updating it every week with new prompts.
I think the outcome would definitely be different if I would've spent more time promoting to different audiences and platforms and comparing reactions. Maybe I'll do this in the future.
Thanks for your comment! It's very useful to be pushed to think in different ways.