how to validate a new business idea?
What would be the first steps to validate your business idea?
how can I attract people to engage with my idea?
What would be the first steps to validate your business idea?
how can I attract people to engage with my idea?
Adolfo,
First I think one starts with customer discovery (asking questions to your target customers or partners) and then balance that out with experiments. But before you begin that step, you need to be clear about your business assumptions and the risks that are associated with those assumptions.
There's a lot to unpack in all of this, which I've tried to explain concisely in my two books. But if you want to start with two blog posts:
12 Tips for Running Effective Experiments
12 Tips for Early Customer Development Interviews
I'm having trouble here too and thanks for the links.
What advise would you have if your intended audience already have a ton of followers? For example, if you're trying to sell to famous / well-known people. How do you stand out (assuming they are all over the world and you can't go to local events)?
Also, when you are trying to validate you understand a problem, how do you go about getting feedback? Say if you have an idea to make it easier for language tutors to hold video conference classes - how do you reach out (cold email) to this group and give them a reason to give you 10 mins of their time to explain their process and pain points when they don't know you and you haven't started developing a product?
I've found it useful to separate asking from advice from trying to sell or pre-sell your product. It's not that the latter isn't useful, but it's easier to get people to give you time and also refer you to others when you are merely asking for advice — as long, of course, as you're actually working on a problem that is relevant to them.
If I was thinking about improving the way language tutors used video, I would probably start by taking a video-based language class from a mix of tutors, thus really getting to know the current experience, and then following up afterwards with them all, stating that you are working on the problem and asking for 40 minutes of their time. That's not affordably scalable of course, but those you talk to can refer you to other tutors. And of course you can directly approach other tutors that you haven't taken a class with and state the problem you want to help with and ask for their time and advice.
Asking for advice and working referrals is important if you are targeting a customer type which has a lot of gatekeepers, as celebrities do. But celebrities all know other celebrities... doctors know other doctors... etc so once you get to one or two, you can get referrals to get to more.
To ensure that you get that referral, you need to be clear about what you are trying to solve, respectful with their time, organized with your questions, and focus on learning rather than sales (unless you are running a sales experiment).
I'm assuming that if you're thinking about a product for celebs that you have some direct connection to them and thus some insight into something they are dealing with. It can be a scary thing building something for a customer to which you have no knowledge and no connection at all. Not impossible, but hard -- requiring a lot of networking hustle and credibility-building.
ultimately, if you have picked a problem that is real and approach people with clarity and humility, you can very often get people's time.
Thanks for the detailed response.
My goal is to learn about their current experience, and in my cold emails, I asked them how they feel about their current tools, anything they like or wish to be different. I then followed up by saying I'm asking because I'm trying to work on a better solution - with this and that feature.
Every email was opened, but not getting many responses. I shorten the email and cut the part which explains I'm trying to work on something. This seem to lead to more responses, but they often don't answer the question and just respond to my opener where I complimented on their work. I then follow up and ask about their experience again and never heard back.
I've only done < 50 emails now (time consuming because I check out everyone's work first so I have something relevant to say), but it feels like I'm not going to learn much doing cold emails this way.
I think participating in the lesson (in the tutor example) is a great way, and I'll try to find ways to do that my constraints. It's not scalable obviously, but is a good place to start.
If you don't mind, maybe you can drop me an email and further talk about it there? Thanks!
Are you expecting an email response? I would try to get them on a short phone call -- even 20 minutes.
Half of this process is about learning whether people respond to the problem -- if no one is interested in talking to you about solving the problem, they might not see it as a problem, in which case you might have a seriously uphill road to climb. feel free to email me at giff.constable at gmail
Ideally, you'd know who your potential customers are. If you know who you think they are, then you can figure out where they hang out. If you can go to where they hang out, then you can talk to them in person (or VOIP/ Video call) and learn from them directly if what you're planning on building will fulfill their needs.