
Why don't founders validate properly? Or, why didn't *you* validate properly - NeilRamp
I&#x27;m interested in what stops people skipping this vital step, especially when &quot;no market need&quot; is often cited as the top reason for startup failure. Surely validation mitigates a huge amount of this risk, so why do startups avoid it so often?
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mybestaccount
There are a couple of reasons:

\- It's uncomfortable. You are typically so excited about an idea that the
thought of learning it doesn't have mass appeal is uncomfortable. People avoid
uncomfortable realities. In other words: "I KNOW this is a great idea, I just
KNOW it. If I don't build this NOW, someone else will beat me to it. I don't
have time to waste talking to customers. If Henry Ford would've asked people
what they wanted, they would've said a faster horse."

\- People are proud, if they're going to show a product to their
friends/family, they want to make sure it's well-built, fully featured, etc...
The idea of "just getting something in front of customers that works" aka an
MVP is embarrassing for some people. They think that if they release a
"amateur" product, people will think they're amateur.

\- People are irrational. They think that their idea is so special that asking
people about it, getting validation, etc... could make them a target for idea
theft. So they isolate themselves, validate with a few close friends (who are
unlikely to give honest, brutal feedback) and build a huge product so that
when they launch, they'll be far ahead of their competitors. The problem with
this is that you'll likely build the wrong product the first time around.

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throwaway2019V
These are spot on - having fallen victim to all three.

I'll add that, for the tech minded, building is easy in comparison to
validating. Just fire up the IDE, write code, and debug. Validating involves
putting your idea (and by association, yourself) out there for the world to
potentially ridicule... and then trying to convince people to open up their
wallets to your idea. Not so easy.

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billconan
because I can't find enough potential customers in my direct network. reaching
out to strangers is also difficult without trust. the cold email response rate
is 2%. For example, I built a new blogging platform
([https://epiphany.pub](https://epiphany.pub)), I couldn't find many bloggers
in my direct network. I start a project to fulfill my needs, but I don't know
where to find enough other mes.

also it is a chicken-egg dilemma. It's hard to validate without a prototype.
(I know the dropbox story, it won't work in all cases.) sometimes, a product
is trying to improve user experience, not about an innovative idea. I think
that user experience has to be felt.

I also feel that customer interviews might be misleading sometimes. I remember
when iphone was launched first time, it was way pricier than other cell
phones. A lot of people were nay sayers including myself.

~~~
NeilRamp
I think customer interviews are definitely part of the mix, if done right
(have you read The Mom Test?), but they don't give you 100% clarity. Perhaps
just a more solid hypothesis...

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codegeek
I would argue that "no market need" is not one of the biggest reasons why
startups/companies fail. Most startups fail because they fail to execute
specifically within their market and/or find their product/market fit. So in
other words, market is definitely there but there is failure in execution and
inability to capture a decent market share. They try to sell to everyone which
basically becomes you sell to no one (unless you are Amazon but that takes 20+
years of capital to survive and is outlier)

~~~
NeilRamp
I suppose you can speak about it in a few different ways. Whether that's
Product Market Fit, or No Market Need. I was going on this research -
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/deniselyohn/2019/05/01/why-
star...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/deniselyohn/2019/05/01/why-start-ups-
fail/#65bae51d28a5)

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Jack000
validation is noisy, and can be just as hard as building the the thing.

If you put up a landing page and people immediately start buying, great. What
happens if you get no conversions? Is it the product, market, your marketing?
How much effort/money do you put in before you say it's a negative result?

marketing is an adverse learning environment, and beginners typically
misattribute the cause of failure. It's difficult to learn incrementally via
trial and error, unlike coding.

the best way to mitigate "no market need" is to solve an existing pain (that
the market is already buying) rather than inventing new ones.

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ajeet_dhaliwal
I think there may be an overallocation of failure reasons to "no market need".
If the founder started working on something to solve a problem of their own
have seen at least a few other users use the product successfully but are not
getting enough traction, there's a bunch of stuff to figure out, but success
may be a long way off.

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icedchai
Time, perhaps? You can find a handful of customers to "validate" a product
relatively easily (at least enough to justify it in an early Powerpoint deck.)
This doesn't mean there's enough customer demand for a real business.

~~~
NeilRamp
So you think it might be a resource thing? If they had more time/money/runway
they would possibly do a better job?

Agreed that it's easy to think you've validated by getting a handful of people
to nod enthusiastically at a Powerpoint!

~~~
icedchai
Yes, resource constraints, and overly optimistic, often delusional, thinking.
(The idea is so great, it doesn't need validation... etc.)

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akg_67
Are there any products from “successful “ startups that were fully validated
before being developed/taken to market? Focusing too much on validation can
swap risk of not having market fit with the risk of being late to market. You
are not the only one working on an idea.

