
Ask HN: What methods, tools etc. do you use to validate your business ideas? - kadfak
Do you even validate your ideas or start implementing right away?
What does your process of validation look like?
How do you generate leads? (landing&#x2F;coming soon pages, emails, etc.)
How do you make the final decision whether the idea is worth implementing?
======
cercatrova
I get on the phone and call people even before building anything, especially
with B2B products since their phone number is easier to find. Email works too
but it's not immediate and it's easier for people to not reply than it is on
the phone. I used a book called Talking to Humans (free) [1] that talks about
how to validate ideas.

The main way to do so is to listen to the potential customer and not even
mention your idea or that you are working on something. You must first
understand their true problems, not your idea of what their problems might be,
which many technical people especially do and rush into building a product
that people may not even want. Ask them about their problems in their daily
life and if you keep hearing the same thing over and over and it aligns with
your idea, then build the product. Even if it doesn't, a repeatedly mentioned
problem is still one that could have a good solution.

[1] www.talkingtohumans.com

~~~
revicon
If you aren't mentioning your idea or that you are working on something, what
is the subject of the call? I think I'm not understanding how a cold call like
this would work.

~~~
cercatrova
When you're validating an idea, you don't want to lead people on and get
vacuous "yes"es, as in if I ask someone if they like my idea, they will most
likely say yes, for one of three reasons:

1) they want to appease me, especially if they're family or friends 2) they
like the idea in their minds but that may not be exactly what you have in mind
3) their idea is the same as in your mind, but they don't have the propensity
to buy.

You want to listen to what their true needs are instead of shoehorning your
product into their problem. You want to build the product from the ground up
so to speak. Sometimes, you guess their needs completely right and your
product is exactly what they're looking for. However, this is extremely rare
because the odds that ex nihilo you got something that fits their needs
exactly is 1/infinity. This does not mean that you cannot tweak your existing
product to fit their needs, but it is simply better for both you (no prior
sunk cost) and the customer (can get something that actually solves their
problems) in the long term.

~~~
revicon
yes, the goal behind what you are trying to accomplish makes sense.

I think I'm still not understanding how you are making a cold call, over the
phone, to a complete stranger, and somehow getting them to start talking about
problems they may have without there being a purpose (from their point of
view) to why they're talking to you in the first place.

~~~
cercatrova
I usually tell them that I'm doing research in the field and need first hand
interviews, or something similar. If you can find a story or reason that is
plausibly true about why you want to interview them, then that works as well.

------
tmoravec
The best validation is a deep understanding of the target group and their
problems. Let me give you an example.

First, pick the target audience you are either part of, or familiar with. In
my case, I chose new and aspiring managers.

Second, learn about their pains. Talk to them, see what they discuss on
Reddit, Quora, and wherever else they gather. In my case, I see questions
about communicating and dealing with difficult people and dealing with various
corporate processes.

Third, figure out what they pay for. Some groups buy books. Some pay for SaaS.
Some prefer webinars, screencasts or courses. The options are endless, but the
focus should be on what the customers already buy, not what we can easily
make. In my case, new managers often buy books.

Four, pick one pain and fix it. Now you don't really need validation in the
conventional sense of the word because now you _know_ what the people want and
you _know_ what they pay for. I picked the communication challenges new
managers face because I have studied this topic extensively before.

Five, implement. In my case, I started writing a book, even though I have
never written a book before. But I know there are people I can help, so there
is a chance that I actually will. My progress so far (shameless plug, accept
my apology and please remove it if you consider it inappropriate)
[https://www.thenewrole.com/](https://www.thenewrole.com/)

This process is a somewhat simplified version of what a marketing expert Amy
Hoy talks about. I suggest you check her website
[https://stackingthebricks.com/](https://stackingthebricks.com/) if you are
considering starting a side business.

Hope this is useful! :-)

~~~
k__
I find the "talk to them" part kinda hard for some audiences.

Some people make money with "talking" to people and want to be paid for
answering any questions,even if you want to help them.

Some people are rather protective of their knowledge, too.

------
busterc
Perhaps against the grain, I sometimes like to build an MVP for myself before
any significant validation; something I'll use even if others won't. Then if
others don't use it, I will. It can be a good opportunity to experiment with
certain technologies as well. One such example is a service I made
[http://EmailMeTweets.com](http://EmailMeTweets.com)

When I first made it public I submitted it to ProductHunt and tweeted at
marketing folks, with large follower numbers on Twitter, to please try it and
help promote it. There was traction but not nearly as much as fast as I had
hoped. In fact, just the other day I created an Indiegogo campaign to gauge
the interest in paying for the service. At this time, there are 3 contributors
for $12 each. Without a big surge it obviously doesn't seem poised to stay
alive... for the public. However, like I said, I'll continue to use the
service privately, freely. So, it's validated and minimally viable for myself;
unfortunately not for the public.

~~~
tixocloud
Curious about your use of Indiegogo - what made you decide to go that route to
gauge interest? It doesn't strike me as a place where folks go to find Saas
apps though I could be wrong.

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swenn
A few days ago someone posted a side project marketing checklist to HN that
has many great ideas:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14942902](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14942902)

------
hayksaakian
I like to imagine that the product already exists, then attempt to sell it to
a customer face to face / in person.

Let's say I'm doing some kind of SaaS for accountants. I would meet with
dozens of accounts with a sales pitch for "x software". This will quickly help
you figure out if what you're planning on building is actually valuable.

Anybody that takes you up on the sale gets to be an early tester.

------
jqbx_jason
Feedback from others is absolutely critical. I'm just one person and I usually
have some sort of abnormal preference even if I don't know it.

So I'll implement a quick version of the idea that gets the point across to
others and roll it out to generate feedback. People will likely utilize it in
ways you didn't expect or point out flaws in concept or execution- this is
good because even if it doesn't validate your idea it could point you towards
developing something else.

This works for smaller features within a project as well. Just roll out a
rough cut of it, get feedback, and refine. The product I'm working on
([https://www.jqbx.fm](https://www.jqbx.fm)) has a live chat feature so it's
easy for me to roll out a feature to a subsection of users and ask them about
it directly. But even if it's as basic as sitting behind someone at your
laptop it's almost always worth your time.

------
jsloss
I'm a huge fan of the interview process Ash Maurya recommends in Running Lean.
I'd add to that the understanding Jobs to Be done (Read: Competing Against
Luck by Christiansen) for an interview process that really get's to the base
progress a user/client is trying to make in a given circumstance.

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alexayou
Small-scale test of the general idea. Not even an MVP - test the basic idea as
an extreme rough draft. If people respond positively to the general theme,
keep testing and building up for that responsive audience. If it's good
enough, they'll keep engaging

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jermaustin1
In my former life I was a product developer.

I liked to tell as many different people about my ideas and get their feedback
for if it is dumb or not. In that list of people will at least be a couple who
would be in the intended audience.

If the idea is at least positively received, I might make an MVP if it is easy
enough, if it isn't, I'll probably abandon it.

If the MVP is stable enough, I'll probably point Facebook or Google Ads at it
to drive traffic.

If any traction is gained, I look at the numbers to see if it is worth it to
finish building it, or just leave it as it is running.

I'm not sure if the Google/Facebook Ads are still a good traffic driver, but
they used to be.

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xoail
There is only 1 metric I believe we all need to test during ideation. Will
people use this? If so, why? This may involve various ways of answering that
question. Things like, figuring out your target audience, asking around,
taking surveys, asking people to sign-up for updates etc.

I happen to hate searching for such answers, and end up creating MVPs only to
realize not enough people want to use it. But I think even before MVP, one
must pursue getting some early adopters excited to try it (even if it is for
free). For my next project I plan to be thorough (hopefully).

------
danieltillett
One thing to really watch out for is if the product can be sold profitably or
not. Especially in the SMB B2B market many technology products are in great
demand, but the CAC is just too high for the product to be viable.

You can get sucked into to creating a product that your customers love, but
which can only be sold at a loss once the cost of acquiring the customer is
taken into account. After making something that nobody wants (to pay for
anyway), this is probably the biggest mistake made by entrepreneurs.

------
bitfork
If I get a idea for a project og business idea One of the first things I do is
checking if where is existing business or similar and go through what they
offer and what where price is or if they make any Next write down what they
offer now compare your own idea and ask yourself how can I be different and
why should customers choose me instead of the compitors

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jv22222
If it's helpful, I wrote a blog post a while back that can help when deciding
which idea to put deeper validation efforts into:

[https://blog.nugget.one/upstart/your-ideas-dont-suck-your-
fe...](https://blog.nugget.one/upstart/your-ideas-dont-suck-your-feedback-
loop-does/)

~~~
theo31
FYI your website is down. Can't access
[https://nugget.one/](https://nugget.one/)

~~~
jv22222
Thanks for the heads up. Should be good to go now.

------
matrix
Step 1: Create a "reverse" income statement to test whether the basic concept
is financially viable.

Step 2: Talk to at least 10 potential customers to assess the idea. Make sure
most are people who don't feel obligated to be nice to you.

------
galkk
Nothing can beat Excel for checking initial financial assumptions

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polote
Discuss about your idea with people, if none of them tells you that they would
use your product (without you asking if they will use it or not), then
probably no one will ;)

------
dqdo
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_tKYvPKN7U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_tKYvPKN7U)

------
amrrs
* Google Insights/Trends

* Google Adwords Keyword search tool

These two help in calculating demand of a service or product.

* If you've got contacts, Random Sampled Survey

------
streetcat1
I look at big companies road map, and do what next thing, only better.

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SirLJ
Back testing with stock market data...

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treestompz
My own intuition.

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alttab
Customers.

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Crepusculo
Amazon Mturk has been a good way for me to get the opinion of people on
potential products.

~~~
xoail
Interesting. How would you use it though? Since most Mturks are random people
with random background which may lead to incoherent response?

~~~
alttab
Better than validating it with people you know - who are too homogenous to
your own background to be able to give you an accurate picture (assuming your
product is for general consumers).

