How to Validate Your Startup Idea If you’re considering a new SaaS startup, validation should be one of your very first steps. A startup requires monumental amounts of effort, money and time. Spending all of this only for the idea to turn out to be impract...
Validate with Conversations This is the best place to start your validation process. Really, you should be having conversations with your target audience before you even settle on an "idea". Effectively, you do this by talking to people. Get your idea out ...
Validate By Selling Behind the Curtain This is sometimes called the “Wizard of Oz” method. Effectively, you “fake” the product or service you’re hoping to sell, giving the outward appearance of a fully functional system. Then, you see how customers respond...
Validate with Polls and Ads Consider the pipeline most customers travel through to find and use a product. Often, it goes: Customer sees an ad (or ads) Customer clicks on an ad and reaches a landing page They are converted by the landing page and make a p...
Validate with a Landing Page Once someone clicks your ad or link, you want to find out if they will follow through and hit that subscribe button. Using a landing page is a great way of doing this. Effectively, you’ll create a page that explains your idea, ...
Validate with an MVP or Prototype How to build an MVP is beyond the scope of this article, so I’ll keep it short. This is generally late in your conceptualization process, and where you’ll commit some serious time, money and effort to your idea. By now, yo...
Other Considerations Before You Start Product-Founder Fit The validity of your idea is an important thing to establish. However, you should also think about how you fit into the business as a founder. Does the product and business work for you? Is it somet...
Handling Competition and Standing Out Competition absolutely isn’t a bad thing. You just need to make sure you stand out from the crowd somehow. A great way of better understanding your target market, and the product or service you’re hoping to sell, is to...