Idea validation strategy

One approach I emphasize a lot in my newsletter is to find your customers.

Definitely don't launch an MVP as fast as possible (which requires building an MVP, which is not validation at all) -- find your customers first. A few questions you should be asking yourself:

• Who is having the problem you intend to solve?
• Would they pay to solve the problem?
• How do you plan on repeatably finding and engaging these people?

The closest thing you have is cold calling, but the problem is that the "good" customer interviews are not you "selling" something to people (i.e. you shouldn't be asking for a commitment) -- you should be researching and letting them explain their problem. See the mom test (often cited).

More concretely, if you think you've identified a problem, and the people/companies that have that problem are on social -media platform X or can be reached by method Y -- talk to those people via the method that they are most comfortable with.

If you're selling to indie hackers, find the people who might have your problem (on this forum, Product Hunt, etc) and message them however you can.

This is a different approach, but SEO has been great to validate ideas for me. It can help you understand the demand and which features to include in your MVP. I wrote a guide on how to use SEO tools to validate a business idea with examples covering the whole process.

I would try to include in the strategy to use some tool that could speed up and reduce the cost of hypothesis validation.

You can use this: https://workbench.nozomihealth.com

I've done a combination of #1, #2, #3, and #5 since 1989. Two of the biz were only ever on a single one page website. One biz ran 7 years, the other 15 years. Depending on your price point, if it's higher, you can also get a refundable deposit. The 7 year biz was a $25k-$50k monthly commitment and would usually close after 2-3 phone calls in under two weeks. The 15 year biz was a near instant yes/no and a $175 to $2.5k monthly commitment. Combined rev on both over $20m (gross) & 40 FTE on the 7 year biz. Don't overlook biz dev strategic partnerships as another validation path. Good luck all.

After you’ve made some basic decisions about your product concept, and written down your assumptions, get out to test them to see if they resonate with potential customers.

Spending time with the intended target audience and just asking them questions about themselves. In the "win friends and influence people" book (Great book terrible title) it really comes down to putting that person first.

When you are solving someone else's problem first its a great way to make them feel heard, feel seen, and then come back to them with a solution.

Rarely do people hear about something that is going to solve one of their problems and don't agree to at least keep in touch (which is a great way to start building an email list.)

Have been writing around this to more than 20,000 subscribers and been in the Micro SaaS Ecosystem. This newsletter can be a good starting point around working trends and validations.

I was able to gather some important points to consider when planning to make an idea into a project. So, I thought making the same accessible for others also so that they can evaluate those ideas. check it out. https://evaluateidea.com/

Landing page and then following up with a survey. I then send an email to the users and schedule a call. I have better context about the user and can go on more deep questions rather than making bad small talk.

The ability to build a community around an idea or product.

In idea validation, finding the right people to interview to uncover useful insights remains a big challenge for me.

Some idea validation strategies that have worked for me in the past include conducting market research to understand the needs and pain points of my target audience, creating a minimum viable product (MVP) to test the main features and gather feedback, and using social media and content marketing to build an engaged community and gather insights from potential customers.

I've also found that reaching out to potential customers directly, through techniques like cold calls or email outreach, can be a valuable way to gather feedback and gauge interest in my product. Additionally, creating a landing page or running paid advertising campaigns can be effective ways to test the market and gather data on customer behaviour.

Finally, I've found that keeping a close eye on the competition and learning from their successes and failures can be a helpful way to validate and refine my own ideas. Overall, the key is to be open to trying different approaches and being willing to adapt and pivot based on the feedback and data you collect.

One of the things that I usually use is to search in Google Trends, in the "Google's year in search" tab, there we can see what people search for in Google classified by different interesting categories.

Are people looking for something related to your idea? Specifically what are they looking for? What are they interested in?

It is a source in which sometimes interesting things can be found.

Other times, depending on the sector, nothing is found.

Hey Fabio! I do a lot of customer discovery interviews and get feedback on my MVP from different domain experts across platforms like Geeks and Experts.

What I have done is build lean (for this you just need to know about the tools out there) and then speak to users.

I usually reach out through linkedin or if there isn’t geographical restriction, like a student platform I will just drop in and ask if they are experiencing the problem i am hoping to solve.

I great book on Idea Validation is the The Mom Test

Fetured Customers is also a great tool to use. You can find case studies, your competitor's customers, their reviews, and lots more.

First thing I do is to share the idea on the feedback channel of the wbe community. I also use twitter and reddit a lot...