How To Validate?
So, you start with an idea. How do you do the market validation to make sure that there is a market for your idea? I am new to this, but "validation" seems like lip service that everybody says you must do but does not explain the how you do it part. I'm sure I am just a little misguided in my searches, but can anybody speak to this or help point a noob like me in the right direction? 🙏
#ask-ih
The last tools I've built was to solve real problems first. Eventually, they become products. I believe the best way to learn and validate is by doing consulting or concierge services. You can both test solutions AND monetize.
Nice, thank you. Yea, right now I am doing contract web development, in part so that I have more time to start exploring my own ideas more.
I would say validation is hard. It's needed to talk with many people and your target audience as well. For this, I created a discussion group in Telegram where we can discuss ideas and people share their thoughts about it. Like an initial validation!
I'd say create a facebook page where you want to state what you are trying to solve. Maybe not be overly specific. See if you get some feedback. Likes are probably useless. And then at least you'll have a list of users who you could then follow up via a promotion to ask specific questions. You can replace facebook with another platform depending on the type of consumers of your product. Also maybe use Reddit and Quora to get people to suggest solutions. You can see what is out there.
We made a 3 minute video on this exact subject this week! Give it a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QYb17KRnZE&t=4s
The mom test is great for this! http://momtestbook.com/
It's not just about validating an idea. It includes a lot of good things like how to approach conversations so you get real quality feedback.
Hey, I published this yesterday : https://www.conversionhut.com/how-test-a-business-idea/
Thank you, I will be sure to give this a read :)
Step 1:
Don't start with an idea, don't try and validate it
Step 2:
Find an audience you're interested in. The more niche the better.
Step 3:
Get to really, really understand them, their pains and motivations. Where are they losing time and or money?
Step 4:
Work up from one of their 'valuable' (or significant) pains to a concrete problem you can solve.
For example... big pain for gyms is churning customers. Why are customers churning? One reason is they aren't motivated to go to the gym and held accountable. Build a tool that helps gyms hold customers accountable. Make lots of money.
Step 5:
Take this solution back to your audience and make 2+ sales before building anything.
Step 6:
You have the beginnings of an interesting business. Now the hard work begins...
Thank you, this is great!
I'm building a course about this topic, as I continue to see the same questions pop up repeatedly on all the forums I hang out. Would you mind answering a few questions so I can better provide some thoughts?
I am also interested in just building some portfolio pieces just for the experience of app development and not necessarily pursuing a business out of it. Although of course it would be nice to leave that door open. In that case, I was thinking of a freemium model with a bare bones MVP to just get something out the door for the experience of it and then pursuing monetized tiers if a user base comes out of the free tier
Yea, for sure. I am not really pursuing any product right now. Right now I just have ideas pop into my head and I like the thought of making a creative living for myself through entrepreneurship. With that in mind, I have begun to explore how to accomplish this (joining this community, listening to SaaS podcasts, books, etc). A recurring theme is not to develop a product in isolation with no validation or marketing of any kind and expect it to just work magically. The idea of validation makes a lot of sense and is something you hear all the time, but so far in my exploration, it is never followed up with..."and here's how". I guess the closest thing that I am looking for is somewhat of a script to follow. A follow up question is how do you do validation without somebody stealing the idea? Or is that just the wrong concern?
Gotcha. The "script" question is a bit more in-depth, and I'm on my phone so I don't have the finger dexterity to type it all out here. The short version:
As far as idea stealing, I wouldn't worry about that. Most people in the world are not software developers, and it's quite likely that your customers just want the problem solved, but don't have the capability or desire to solve it themselves. I'd worry less about this, and more about matching your idea as a solution to someone's painful problem.
beautiful, thank you 🙏
I'd also think about reframing your idea into a statement that reads something like:
I believe <person> has a hard time dealing with <problem.> I think I can solve that problem by building <awesome app name>.
In the above statement, the easy part is building the app. The first thing you need to do is make sure those people actually have the problem. Framing your idea in this way helps YOU in understanding who might benefit in what contexts, and gives you a starting point to go have conversations.
That makes a lot of sense and is nice and simple. Great advice, thank you :)
+1. These are all great questions.
@jmcguin - what are you building? who are you building it for? is anyone paying for it? is there other evidence (anecdotal or otherwise) that people want the product or service?