Hey everyone, my name is Tim, and I’ve worked on 2 businesses so far. I get a lot of questions from younger founders as to how they can validate their business idea better and quicker, and I think this topic needs to better addressed. I’ve been talking to some 15 founders recently, and here are my learnings:
- Kristan from Gymify mentioned that he had severe problems finding communities of people and getting proper responses from them, and he had to close the business.
- A SaaS agency from Singapore mentioned that they problem defining qualitative data to validate a business proposal, that’s why their CAC was cracking.
I am still collecting insights from people who have trouble with validating their business. Please comment below or send me a DM. I’ll keep this post updated with any new piece of insight I can find.
Thank you, everyone, for being part of such a helpful community."
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Aren’t sales validation?
Yeah, you bet.
If you are asking how to validate, it depends on the product. But my validation advice for digital products is;
1- Create a landing page(1 day) or a basic prototype (1-7days). The prototype should not have any functionality. But it should look good enough. It’s only to see visitor’s interest on the product. Count the clicks on signups, views, pricing etc. You don’t even need a login mechanism. You can say sign up’s are closed/private after visitors click. Just fake it.
2- Try marketing on it. Marketing is the hardest. This is where most founders stuck and decide to drop the project. Try to find a scalable channel for the product. Google ads, fb/instagram ads, social media etc. Spend $50 on ads to see a traction.
Sending it to a friend from whatsapp is not a scalable method. (unless there is a growth mechanism that would go viral)
3- Getting good traction? People want to try the product? Create the MVP.
Okay, that’s good. But how would you know when you’re getting good feedback? I think a lot of 1st-time founders have problems here.
People should focus on “the metric” they consider as a win.
It may be a ;
- “click” on “newsletter email” drop. (if you start collecting emails it would also help you after launching the real product)
- “click” on a “Buy Now” button.
- “click” on an “affiliate link”.
- “time spent” on the article.
- “filling the form” on sign up page.
etc.
Adding those kinds of analytics events would help you to get a general idea.
“You get X number of Y events from Z number of visitors. Is this good enough for us to continue?”
Build a shitty prototype as fast as possible and show it to as much people as possible. Then rake in the feedback and iterate.
Okay, what advice would you give to 1st-time founders, so they get the MVP into the hands of right people?