How to validate a nice-to-have product idea

"How can I sell a product that customers don't know they want?"

I think this is a better way to phrase it. Forget validation, you're really looking to find out if you can sell it.

It's a pretty general question, so I'll have to offer a pretty general answer:

Don't try.

I've written about this before (see point #5), but I don't think you should solve a problem that customers don't know they have if you're trying to start a bootstrapped company.

I mean, there's so much opportunity to build a product in areas where customers already know they have a problem (it's the core premise of the Software Ideas newsletter), why build something that will be harder to sell?

Building the next Twitter, or Apple, or whatever can require you to educate your customer on why they need the solution, and when you look at companies that are successful at this, they are almost always VC-funded.

This makes sense. After all, it takes a lot of marketing money and time to convince people to buy something they didn't know they wanted - and only companies with a lot of money to burn have the luxury of pursuing that.

I'll leave you with one last thought around this: Look at the IH product page for Stripe-verified businesses making over $10k MRR. Do you see more products that solve an obvious need, or product that solves pains that customers don't know they have?

Best of luck!

In both cases you can determine your products most likely users, and validate the idea with them. Let's say you have an idea for a new video game. You can discuss it with players on discord who play a similar genre.