5 Clear Signs Your Startup’s Idea is Worth Pursuing
How do you validate your ideas and know whether or not you should actually move forward with them—without losing thousands of dollars in the process?
Standing at the idea crossroads. Photo by Justin Luebke on Unsplash
1. You know what you’re trying to prove.
When you can boil down your entire idea into one core hypothesis, you’re ready to start testing.
Do you know what problem you’re solving? Summarize it in one sentence. If you’re not solving a specific problem, then you’re just building something you want to build, not something that people want to be built. That’s arguably art, not design. Your hypothesis should be a one-sentence solution to whatever one-sentence problem you came up with.
2. You understand who you’re trying to help.
Whose problem are you helping solve? Where is this person hanging out online? Create an audience persona or an ideal person sketch to better visualize their needs and goals.
If not:
Choose 10 people — ideally who are in your network — who have that problem. Either survey them using SurveyMonkey or — IDEALLY get them on the phone or ask in person/record the interaction!
Ask them if they feel the pain you want to solve (make sure it’s actually a problem!)
If they are feeling it, what is their current solution to it?
What are their biggest gripes about it? How does that problem specifically affect them? do they lose time? money? customers?
How often do they experience the problem?
You can also go to Reddit and join a subreddit oriented to whatever ideal customer or client would benefit from your solution to their problem. Post 1–2 targeted, specific questions to get their feedback. You can ask your target subreddit before or after you build your MVP, preferably both. Small, niche Facebook groups and other app-specific forums are other awesome places to look for specific feedback. You can use Surveymonkey for surveys, or just ask a question in the group discussion itself. If you have an Instagram, you can set up simple IG story polls to gather feedback.
3. You’re able to build quickly and get your MVP to ideal customers ASAP.
You want to get something to market as quickly as possible and iterate from there. What are the bare bones of your solution? As long as it functions, it doesn’t have to be gorgeously built or have all the features you’d like to have at the beginning. Put your best, most simple sketch out there and start using that to collect your data. This leads into…
4. You have proven market demand with pre-orders.
Create a super simple landing page using Carrd or Mailchimp. Your goal with this landing page is to get as many pre orders as possible. Pre-orders generally are a better predictor of market desire rather than plain mailing lists, since a mailing list subscriber may not ultimately purchase your product. By getting proof of concept and initial sales, you’ve financed your idea by turning your customer into an investor.
5. You’re constantly gathering feedback.
The more information and review you can receive on your initial MVP, the better. Live video or phone call feedback is ideal, but a mix of in-person and survey/textual feedback should give you sufficient data. By continuing to hone and sharpen the idea and product, you will be able to more effectively create a better product for your customer that solves the problem better.
Once you’ve collected and synthesized this feedback, it’s time to redesign your MVP several more times until you’ve developed a fully functional, sellable product that is consistently receiving positive feedback!