Ways to find people to validate startup idea

In my opinion, it's key to becoming an active member of online communities in your industry to connect with people who can provide honest feedback. If you don't know where to start, you can check out Unita. It has over 1K welcoming online communities where you can find early adopters.

Online communities are a great place to start. My favorite is Reddit, and you can search for folks that mention pain points your solution can solve and reach out to them to interview them. Here's a blog post I wrote on this process of validating ideas. Enjoy!

Find people with the problem you are trying to solve. Where or how do they currently solve this problem? Online? Offline? Outside of the marketplace? Try going to these places either online or physically and talking to people. See if they'd solve this problem the way you're product is built for and if there are problems that you aren't even seeing.

If you're B2C then you don't necessarily need to have conversations with people although I think it helps frame your idea. B2C is open to customer behavioural analysis such as landing pages that lead to waitlists and pre-orders. I agree with this thread that Facebook, Discord and Reddit communities are great places to play out your ideas. Google Trends👍

There are several ways to find people to validate your startup idea, including the following:

Connect with people in your network: Start by reaching out to people you know, such as friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances. These individuals may be able to provide valuable insights and feedback on your idea.

Join online communities and forums: Join online communities and forums related to your industry or target market. These can be a great way to connect with potential customers and gather feedback on your idea.

Attend events and conferences: Attend events and conferences related to your industry or target market. These can be a great way to network and connect with potential customers and other entrepreneurs.

Conduct surveys and user testing: Create surveys or conduct user testing to gather feedback from potential customers. This can be a valuable way to gather insights and validate your idea.

Collaborate with other entrepreneurs: Collaborate with other entrepreneurs who are working on similar ideas or in the same industry. This can be a great way to bounce ideas off each other and gather feedback from a diverse group of people.

I would start with building an ideal customer persona and seeing where your potential customer hangs out. You can try online forums, slack channels, facebook groups or you could send cold DMs on Twitter and Linkedin.

When I was building a product for prospective college students, one of the best ways I found them was by actually physically attending college tours. It was a great way to get instant feedback on ideas.

I would also love to invite you to check out Geeks and Experts where we have domain experts from various fields who can help with idea validation. Some of the experts like Lukas offer free brainstorming sessions.

Feel free to DM me on twitter and I can help to get you more customer interviews through my network. No sign up fees or commitments :)

I think validation could also come from finding what people are searching. Try Google Trends: https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=US

Outside of that, joining communities on Discord, Reddit, etc. related to your startup will help you tap into what people are having issues with.

Facebook groups are always a great starting point to validate your ideas. You only need to have an ideal audience in mind, find a relevant community and get feedback from them. As long as you don't try to sell anything, people are often happy to share their opinion.