Ask HN: How do you go about validating your startup ideas?  - compass-seeker
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pfitzsimmons
For a B2B product - identify five people to whom you can honestly say: "You
would be stupid not to buy this product" These should be real people you can
name - not hypothetical people. If you cannot identify such people, but think
they are out there, do everything possible to find them. Go through Linkedin
and see who in your extended network fits your target market and find someway
to talk to them. Email people or message people on blogs or social sites that
seem to have the pain point you have identified. In reality, you will need to
talk to far more than five people in order to narrow it down to five people
who clearly need your product.

Once you have found a set of people who need your product, get their feedback
on the idea, show a mockup or prototype, and ask if they would buy it. If a
bunch of people say "yes", time to go build! But as you build, make sure you
check in very regularly with potential customers, so that you stay on a the
right track.

Keep in mind there is a big trap you must avoid in this process. Many
prospective customers will be positive about an idea, but they overestimate
their own willingness to get through the friction involved in adopting a new
product. So the prospect says the idea is good - but then you build it, and
they don't actually use it, because turns out email and excel had a bunch of
hidden benefits that make them better than your product.

As an entrepreneur, you need to implore people to be brutally honest in their
feedback, lest you build the wrong thing. You should focus more on identifying
their pain-points than on pitching your own solution. You also have to make
your own judgements about how big the pain point is, rather than just blindly
trusting a prospect when they say they would buy your product. And you should
to some extent reverse pitch - ("Did you think of solving your problem by
doing X? Do you really need me to build a product to help fix this?")

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mc_hammer
I'm assuming its a computer related startup, but here are a few brief methods.

Website landing page:

    
    
        - build a landing page
        - explain the product and optionally post a mockup
        - mention the price (optional but will give you a better proof of validation)
        - collect at least an email address at the bottom
        - optionally add a stripe checkout form (takes only a few min) and get some $
    

Kickstarter

Website or Shoppify or Etsy or Amazon stores:

    
    
        - build one
        - sell a trial run of the product
    

Physical product:

    
    
        - Option 1: You can test on ebay or craigslist
        - Option 2: Run one small ad in a magazine or newspaper
    

Bar method:

    
    
         - Take the product(s) / apps to a bar
         - Ask people to try it or offer to buy them 1 beer if they try it
         - Try to actually sell it.
         - Ask for feedback
    

MVP (Minimum viable product)

    
    
         - Build only the basic features
         - Build only a basic site
         - Try to sell
         - Lots more info on this out there
    

It would help to run at least some forms of advertising for almost all of
these (sans ebay, kickstarter, and the bar method)

If you get orders you can't fulfill just say you are sold out and ask if they
want you to contact them when you get more product.

If you have any others you care to share I would be interested to hear! Also
good luck

~~~
wmkn
> \- sell a trial run of the product

> \- Try to actually sell it.

> \- Try to sell

Those are critical steps.

Your product is only viable when people are actually paying for it, not when
people only tell you they will pay for it.

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mtufekyapan
This is a big question which can not be answered without knowing detail about
you and your startup ideas. (In my opinion, B2B and B2C startups have totally
different structure about idea and validating.)

Today I read a post about it in this link [http://www.jasonshen.com/2014/test-
your-startup-idea-with-a-...](http://www.jasonshen.com/2014/test-your-startup-
idea-with-a-minimum-viable-transaction/)

When you think about your idea, generally tend to think about technology,
product, development but generally this doesn't work.

(When Twitter first launch, most of people can't get their Twitter account. A
big UX problem!)

(Beginning of something is totally different than already exist business.)

When validate idea, first don't too much focus on validating and speedly
generate your prototype business. This business maybe your first sale or your
first counseling.

Don't forget needed and optimal is very different. Everybody talks about their
optimal but you should focus on your needed strategy.

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cnaut
I think all the methods listed by mc_hammer are great but nothing beats
talking with your target customers and figuring out whether what you are
building is a real problem. I will admit this is a lot easier for a B2B
startup than a consumer startup but it has worked great for us.

------
JohnHammersley
One good route is to solve a problem you're experiencing yourself (or even
better, one that you and some friends / colleagues are all experiencing).

It's how our startup came about -- we built something which did what we
needed, and it turned out that a whole load of other people had the same
problem (unsurprising with hindsight, but the point is we set out to solve a
problem, not to "create a startup")

Happy to share more thoughts if you're interested.

~~~
jamesbritt
Counterdote: One company I was with created a product to solve our own problem
(time-tracking for projects) and while we loved it we did not find anywhere
near enough other people to buy it.

If you're going to be building something anyway, even if there's no market for
it, that's fine. If you simply assume that a given solution to a problem that
happens to please a handful of geeks is going to please many, many more, you
may be in for disappointment.

In retrospect we screwed up by not first validating the market for what we
were _so sure_ people would want.

A corollary here is that, for all I know, people would have _loved_ the
product if we pitched it to them correctly. Being unable to sell/market a good
product is as bad as having a dud offering.

In any event it is far from a given that scratching your own itch means you
have market validation.

I've become increasingly convinced of sales+marketing first, serious product
building after validation of the idea _and_ of the ability to sell it.

------
gesman
I sold four pieces of non-existing product, gave refunds, apologized to buyers
and stamped idea as "perfectly valid"

------
glimcat
Always start by talking to customers.

