How to validate the idea?

How I validate an idea 🔎

1. Find out what people are searching for and where they congregate. So this can be various mediums like Quora, reddit, facebook groups, etc. I built https://productvalidator.com to help as it shows you search terms, groups and questions where this subject is being brought up. (it's free and it just asks for an email before it shows results... I don't spam)
2. If there's enough people asking about it, I set a bar, say 10 people willing to pay for their first month, or 500 email list signups and start driving as many people I can to the idea (I generally set up a landing page with enough content to tell them HOW my product will provide them value. Be overly customer-centric here)
3. I then ask the appropriate questions in reddit groups, facebook groups and people I know in the same vertical. Catalog every response.
4. At the end of the trial run, if I have say 500 email signups (number arbitrary), or a handful of people that pay me to use the product (the TRUE validation), then I start building.

Share as much as you can about your idea. Don't spam, and make sure your posts come from a place where you're trying to provide your readers value.

-- Jimmy

This recent How to validate a business idea article might be useful.

Talk to 10 people you think should be users. Repeat.

I think others have already posted some helpful links, but wanted to drop one other thing:

Be your own worst critic. I've seen some other folks come through here looking for validation, and basically refusing to accept that their project might not be the world's best idea. So when someone offers critique, take it with a grain of salt but try to not ignore the critique - especially the aspects you haven't considered before.

Also, I posted something similar recently that had lots of responses.