How to validate an idea?
I have posted the idea in a couple forums, and I got good comments, and people told me to go for it. But how do I validate it on a large scale? Like 1000-10000 people?
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I have posted the idea in a couple forums, and I got good comments, and people told me to go for it. But how do I validate it on a large scale? Like 1000-10000 people?
Hey!
Have you read the book The Mom Test yet? If not, I highly recommend you do. It's all about how to validate or invalidate an idea, and I've discovered from talking to probably one hundred early-stage founders at this point that if people haven't been exposed to the ideas in the book, they are pretty likely to mess up the validation stage.
My guess is that you haven't read it, based on your post:
This is NOT validation! This is one of the most common mistakes that founders make, and I say that from experience having made this mistake myself in the past (see Lesson #1 in this post).
The reality is, people are often wrong about whether or not they would buy something, so someone claiming that they would purchase a product shouldn't be taken seriously.
So much of this is idea-dependent. 10,000 people is a huge number in the business-to-business (b2b) world. Even if you're selling a product directly to consumers, 10,000 people is a lot.
Would you mind sharing what space your idea is in? We can probably offer better advice if we knew.
My general advice is to try to land your first few sales as early as possible, possibly even before building an MVP. This isn't possible with every idea (which is why I say it would be helpful to know what market you're thinking of building in), but too many founders dismiss the possibility of acquiring customers before the product is in a final state.
(for more on pre-sales, I've written a ton of stuff around this here)
Thanks for sharing valuable resources like this Kevin! The Mom test is vital 🤩
No problem!
Hey there! I was just planning on making a curated news website which was tailored to you (Like social media) , and has a couple other features like trend monitoring etc. It is free, I was planning to make revenue with ads only though.
Ah okay, so not b2b at all.
In your case, I'd say there are two big questions that need to be answered:
Can I find a way to reliably attract new users? (Distribution channels)
Can I make a curated feed that's good enough to keep users around?
Both are hard questions. This is an example of a business idea that carries some Product Risk (the risk that you can't deliver on the product) because you're competing with a number of existing solutions. For example, I use the new Microsoft Edge (the Chromium one) and that has personalized news built into the home page. There's also competition in solutions like Pocket and especially Flipboard.
There's definitely proof in the market that there's demand for personalized news, but the question is really more about if you can build something 10% better and convince people to use it.
Since you're not expecting to make big bucks per customer, and I'm assuming you're not looking to raise venture capital, you probably won't have a lot of money to throw at acquiring customers, meaning you'll need to find some other way of attracting users. Besides manual outreach (posting about the product on communities such as IH), have you given this any thought?
The challenge with curated websites is that you don't have unique content that will naturally rank on Google, meaning that there isn't an SEO play for you here. Likewise, no chance at affiliate or referral marketing since there's no reward you can offer your partners (since the product is free). I think this will end up being your biggest challenge, even more than the challenge of building a better Flipboard.
One thing to heavily consider is some sort of niche play. Instead of a curated news website, you could consider being a curated news website for <niche>. It allows you to differentiate from solutions like Flipboard more easily, and customers who care about the niche you pick will be more likely to sign up for your solution if they've heard about it.
But anyway, here's the reason you're struggling to figure out a way to validate the idea: The product's success relies on a large number (10,000+) of daily users, and anything less than that would not be significantly profitable. There's literally no way to validate that 10,000 people will use your solution except to start getting people to use it and see what happens.
This is different from validating an idea where the users pay you directly. With an ad-based product, the most important metric is DAU (Daily Active Users), and there's just no way to test if you'll have high DAU with this idea.
Compare this to an idea where you expect users will pay you $200/month. Those ideas are easier to validate, because you can just ask 100 interested users if they'd be willing to pre-order in exchange for early access. If 30 say yes, you know you've hit on something interesting. Unfortunately, there's just no way to do the same thing when you have an ad-based product that relies on high DAU.
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The one thing I keep coming back to in my thoughts is this: Do you already have an algorithm that you think can be 10% better than solutions like Flipboard? If so, you may just have to take the risk and see what you can do. But if you don't know how you'll out-compete those major companies, I'd recommend niching down so that you can be "The best curated news source for <niche>".
But either way, you'll probably struggle to validate this idea in the traditional sense. The best thing you can do is launch quickly, work hard on attracting new users, and see what happens over the next few months.
@flashcash0402 by releasing a MVP in beta access stage. I was in a similar position when I started Ruttl. Just create something that is functional and then start promoting it to niche communities. That should help you validate your idea, market demand and product market fit pretty quickly.
as @kevcon80 said, check out the Mom Test.
If you want a taste, YC has a great video based on the book. How to Talk to Users
https://www.ycombinator.com/library/6g-how-to-talk-to-users
presales. One of the best ways to validate an idea and market is to have people take out their credit card and pay for it. Create a prelaunch landing page or kickstarter
Here's a great article on how Joel Gascoigne at Buffer validated his idea simply with a couple of landing pages: https://buffer.com/resources/idea-to-paying-customers-in-7-weeks-how-we-did-it/
Like @Kevcon80 said I'd support the point that it is not proper validation by asking people.
I think the best way would be to create a small landing page and either put a waiting list for early access on that.
I think the ultimate validation is to put a payment form on the page already and see if customers are really willing to pay for your service. If they are you can be sure that they would have bought it. On the other side that is maybe just possible with services where the free plan or a small MVP already exists I think.
Depending on the idea, your steps to validation could vary. Can you provide some information about the idea?
You could use a survey or, maybe even better, make a landingspage and presell the idea.
Hey! This is a really good question. I think there is a strong difference between quantitative and qualitative research. The latter is far more important in the beginning stages of any startup. You should be speaking with your early adopters within your chosen customer segment for at least 30+ minutes with a prepped interview. In the Lean Startup, that's what we call customer discovery interviews. It's a tricky process to nail, but its vital if you are really trying to solve a problem. I don't want to do any self promotion, but I built a product especially for this. It's called HUSTLE OS. It guides you through all of these steps (everything is explained with written text and resources in there...). You can check it out here: https://www.gethustleos.com/. If you want a community discount, let me know!
Hope that helped!