Validation hustling
I've been sat on my idea for about a year. I have a prototype working at home, but if this is really a thing then I need to get to work validating it.
I don't have the budget to spend on agency supported customer interviews. And I don't trust my friends and family to not just tell me what they think I want to hear - "great idea dude, go for it".
So I've been putting a plan together to start some cold outreach to people I think might be interested in my concept.
I'm sharing here for accountability, feedback and incase this approach is useful for anyone else to take inspiration from. Feel free to let me know what you think and comment with what's worked for you.
So, the idea
Automated grocery shopping! (or as close as I can get)
The problem(s) I want to solve
- Shopping without a plan and overspending
- Too much time spent recipe hunting and meal planning
- Over ordering and creating food waste
- Cooking the same few recipes over and over
I'm reasonably confident at this stage that these problems exist - they were problems I had and still have to some degree. I'm therefore less worried about validating the problems and more focused on the concept at this stage.
What to I want to validate?
- Do participants understand what the product is?
- Do participants understand why the product might be useful?
- Do participants understand how the product works?
- Why wouldn't the participant use the product?
- How much would the participant pay for it?
Cold outreach validation strategy (v1):
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Search for related phrases on Twitter e.g. "food shopping", "food waste"
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Limiting the search to my area using Twitters search tools
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Cold-DM people to see if they would be open to taking part in a 15-30 min video interview (big ask!!)
Example 1: https://twitter.com/adamjtaylor/status/1366188829930045447?s=19
Example 2: https://twitter.com/Tamarmavazi/status/1367186739505344516?s=19
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Wait for a response and roll with it: video call, phone call, email or survey - whatever the candidate is open to.
Target number of participants
5 to start with! I'm not sure how well this will work and what my response rate will be like so, let's see.
I will review after 5, as the responses might influence this.
What will I DM these people?
I've drafted up a boilerplate message to these people that I will tweak depending on what tweet they've written that I'm referring to in my DM.
Boilerplate message
Hi, I'm <My name> 👋🏻. Great to meet you. I build websites/apps. I'm currently building something related to grocery shopping, to help busy people.
I'm looking for people who have shared their grocery shopping experiences or recently tweeted about a related subject, like food waste, for example 😇.
I was wondering if you would be open to taking part in a short interview to feedback on the product I'm working on, please?
With the current lockdown, it's tougher than normal to find people to help - so I'm sorry for the direct approach.
Thank you for your time 🙏
Participant not open to a call
If I get responses but people aren't open to a call, then I am prepared with questions to send in an email (with some additional niceties), below…
About you
Before we begin, we would love to learn a little bit about how you grocery shop…
- What's your typical meal planning and grocery shopping routine?
- How much time do you spend on average meal shopping, per week?
About the product
Have a look at this webpage (ideally on a mobile phone). Take your time to read the information.
- What do you think the product does?
- Why do you think this product would be useful?
- How do you think this product works?
- What reasons can you think of to NOT use this product?
- How much do you think this product costs?
Thank you for your help and have a great day!
<My name> (Founder)
About my landing page
I've invested the minimum amount of time I think I need to at this stage to create a landing page to validate the concept. To do this, I've created it in Notion, using their formatting options and copy I've written. It's, therefore limited but gets the concept across enough that someone should grasp it.
If you haven't clicked through to look, you can find it here.
If you looked, live in the UK and would like to answer the questions above, then please message me 😇
Next steps
- Get started
- Provide an update this time next week
- See if there's anyone out their who would like to be a validation accountability buddy as I start this journey
I think you're over-scoping, trying to solve too many things at once, both technical and probably a lot of psychology, much of it are uncontentious habits and shortcuts..
That's what recipe sites for example are for... cook books etc
If you think you want to resolve that in a better way that would be one product of it's own
Also reusing the same recipes you like is kinda efficient, and you have no indication that you can change people's habits for that even if they say they want to act otherwise...
food waste is one issue, much of it is between the farmer and the consumer and there are projects focusing on that.
food waste in the kitchen, well that's another thing, cooking by scrapes would be it's own thing...
Over ordering - well that's it's own thing, you can again talk about either cooking with scrapes, there are recipe sites you can put an ingredient in and find recipes for example, there are things that can be preserved. Storing produce for longer is it's own topic. Meal planing to exact quantities is another thing - There are recipe box companies for example that send you a box of measured ingredients with a recipe, this is the perfect match of not over ordering for example.
If you do it consistently you'd get that time down
There are options to solve that with like books or "programs"/subscriptions that give you a made plan
overspending can have it's own solutions, with just hard limits for example, like envelope cash usage or temp limited c.c.
Shopping without a plan - well it's a problem you're trying to fight the easiest route, surely, you can't make it any easier than doing nothing upfront, there is a reason this is the default behavior, you'd have a really hard time competing with that
I think you should work on a good problem definition to have the proper focus, it should be one clear thing
This is great feedback, thank you. You're totally right. I'm overcooking it here with the number of problems I'm trying to tackle at once. This started as an attempt to fix my own problem which was the amount of time I was spending planning and doing my shopping. I need to focus on that first - thank you for the nudge.
Hey, I think the fact you made a Notion page is cool but it's not needed at this stage. Spend 0% of the time getting emotionally attached to this approach. Let your super fans tell convince you.
You need to also filter your audience so you're not asking to speak to a bunch of the wrong type of people. There is no reason you'd need an agency to conduct user interviews and actually you'll never build something great if you do. You should get them screened (focus on those that are dying for this, if no one seems to be then it may be a sign) -> then conduct interview -> then build a mvp -> alpha test. Key is to never get attached to any idea you have.
Also here's a company you can do a competitive analysis on https://jupiter.co/
Hmu on Twitter if you need any help
Thanks for sharing your feedback and recommending Jupiter - I'd never heard of it. The point of the page on Notion was exactly as you say, to preventing getting too attached to any solution - quick and easy to change. I felt it was needed to at least ground a conversation with anyone I meet. Thanks for the advice though.
Yeah it's actually not needed though. You only need to speak to them about their problem not share a landing page with them, unless you have enough data to know you are writing what they want on that page. If it's for your internal use then that's fine, but landing pages are good for marketing purposes only
I have enough data to indicate these problems exist.
A landing page is a marketing tool - I agree. I guess in my case it's a prototype that is a useful artifact for explaining what value someone could derive from my product and for soliciting feedback. Do they understand the concept, which bits resonate with them and which bits don't - which other assumptions have I made that don't hd true with participants, what's their take on the price etc. etc.
Why spend so much time on validating your product & features?
You’ve outlined some thoughtful questions, why don’t you validate if the problems exist for customers at scale?
Now I’m wondering, how much time can I save or what value I can gain via your solution?
I figure I can get some more actionable insights from conversations with people rather than data from say a paid campaign, for example. A paid campaign would give me an indication as to whether a landing page converts or not, but speaking to people I could dig in to find out the 'why' a bit better... I think.
Deffo have intentions to scale up the validation though, it's a good about. I think a week of convos at least is sensible too.
Have you thought about how much time you spend grocery shopping if you add it all up? Recipe hunting, planning a list, driving to the store (if you're not shopping online), walking around the store, picking up extras midweek etc etc.
i've been thinking about this a lot recently:
https://m.signalvnoise.com/validation-is-a-mirage/
Yeah it's an interesting topic.
Personally, I'm not aiming for 💯 clarity that this is something that could work. I don't think that's possible, as per the article above. But I think it's realistic to get some confidence that your solution solves the problem; enough confidence to justify to yourself that you should keep going. That's my goal with my validation anyway.
On the flip side, when you have a product you can get real feedback on, I think it is possible to measure PMF. I frequently return to this article about Superhuman:
https://review.firstround.com/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to-find-product-market-fit
that post has gotten a lot of reads... for sure.
i think you need a bit of both: you need a commitment to a future and you need data.
it's a tough mix, that's for sure!
Totally. It's a tough balancing act for sure.
This comment was deleted 6 months ago
Hey, thanks for replying.
My own circumstances have made it hard: demanding day job, new parent, local lockdown in my country. I'm only just getting the time and headspace now to attempt this.
I acknowledge that 15 mins for an interview is a big ask, so I'm remaining flexible to the people who respond and will work with them depending on what's easiest: a phone call, an email, a survey. The problem with surveys is that you can't dig into some of the assumptions made in responses or probe further to find out more detail - but if that's all I can get then I'll have to work with it.
And, 5 is just an arbitrary number to build some momentum too.
Thanks for the questions/thoughts on the concept too…
Is this thing going to tell me what to cook?
Yes, that's how the prototype works currently.
I just know how to cook a few things properly, I want to save time not having to invest time to use ingredients.
What do you mean by this final point, could you elaborate please? "I want to save time not having to invest time to use ingredients"
I have no idea how this knows about what to buy. Do I have to make a list at least once? It looks like quite a lot of work.
How would you expect this to work?