My first startup failed because I skipped validation. Here's how I'm doing it differently
I'm a 20-year-old solo founder and UCLA student. My first startup, Lunavox.net, was a genuinely decent idea but I made the classic mistake: I built the whole thing before validating that anyone actually wanted it. Launched to crickets.
Now I'm building Phase, an AI tool that explains women's hormone lab results in plain English, made for Perimenopause. This time I'm forcing myself to validate FIRST: talking to real users, asking about the problem before pushing the product.
It's harder than it sounds. Every instinct screams "just keep building", building feels productive, validating feels like exposing yourself to rejection. But I'd rather find out now than after another six months.
For those further along: how did you validate before over-building? What actually told you an idea was worth pursuing?
The hard part isn't validating before building—it's validating the decision people are already trying to make. I'd keep testing whether women are looking for better lab explanations or for confidence about what to do next. Those sound similar, but they lead to very different products and businesses.
WOW, this stopped me cold, "validate the decision people are already trying to make," and specifically: are women looking for better lab explanations, or for confidence about what to do next? Those are so close that I lumped them together, but you're right they lead to completely different products. My gut says it starts as "explain this" and the real, deeper want is "tell me I'm okay / tell me what to ask my doctor." But that's a hypothesis, not evidence. That's exactly the thing I need to go ask real women directly. Genuinely thank you, Aryan