If you've started a company or created a product, in the very initial stages where you were drawing up the core features required, how many people did you earnestly talk with (e.g. surveys, interviews, etc.) before you knew (A) the idea is valid and (B) these are the features people want that relate to my idea?
We didn't start to code until we had 15 "strangers" willing to pay for our solution... and the sense of idea validated I had it after talking to 30 people and had 100+ surveys filled.
I think it really depends on what you are planning to build.
For my last project (B2B) I spoke with lots of potential customers on a casual basis. Once we determined there was indeed market interest, we did more in depth surveying and evaluations to determine the most important features and what pain points the customers really were looking to solve.
For my current project which is consumer focused, I have had lots of casual conversations and I record the input from them into a quick document I use to track, suggestions, concerns, and both positive and negative feedback. The hard part is that without a live product (we are in development) talking about things like: Would you pay for this? If so how much?, Do you think this would help you?, are just hypothetical and we find it hard to really judge by answers if the idea is truly validated. Hopefully when we rollout the private beta of our MVP we can do more in depth usage analysis and collect more accurate feedback.
On the flip side I do know that I currently use the pre-release version of our product and it has solved the problem we were aiming to solve for myself and our other team members. Hopefully this is an indication we are on the right track (fingers crossed).
For the B2B project I would estimate between 10-15 clients before we committed ourselves, and once we had that info we surveyed about 25 potential customers (10-15 of which were in the first casual group).
For my current project I have spoken with at least 50 people. based on the recorded feedback I have. I would estimate about half the people I talk to have something to say either positive, negative, or both. But we haven't done anything in depth or official for this consumer product.
I think it also depends very strongly on who the people are. I tend to agree with Henry Ford's quip that, if he had asked 1000 people what they wanted in a horseless carriage, they all would have said "a horse." Most people don't have great insight and don't offer great advice, so I'd need a relatively large sample size before I'd even begin to build something.
On the other hand, as much as I dislike Steve Jobs from his personal reputation, if he said something was a great idea that would hold a lot of weight with me - enough that I'd probably try to build a product on his recommendation alone.
Zero. Sometimes its easier to build it and try to sell it than it is to research the market. Other times it's better to sell it first. Either way, tire kickers are not very reliable.
I love to get feedback from peers to help improve or position the business concept. But the fist 10-100 clients will be the best feedback. Go get them.
