

Ask HN: How many people did you talk with before you felt an idea was validated? - acconrad

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?
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dmarinoc
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.

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JonathanWCurd
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.

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acconrad
While I appreciate the advice, the point of the ask hn was to disclose
numbers, so " a lot" doesn't help me much :)

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JonathanWCurd
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).

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leftnode
Honestly, none. The first 10 customers I had helped to validate it.

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dools
Hear hear. I didn't talk to anyone before starting Decal CMS - I just sold the
same thing a few times then made a product out of it.

The best idea is one you can sell to customers today then generalise later to
a scalable business model.

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leftnode
Same here for my product, Kwolla. I took a failed social network I built and
productized the code behind it.

I suppose I could've done some more research before I built the social network
first, but my first month of sales have been stronger than I expected:
[http://blog.leftnode.com/entry/first-month-kwolla-sales-
repo...](http://blog.leftnode.com/entry/first-month-kwolla-sales-report)

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bartonfink
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.

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damoncali
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.

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mapster
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.

