# 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.

A popular example of this is the online shoe retailer Zappos, started by a single man and eventually acquired by Amazon for $1.2 billion in 2009.

Nick Swinmurn had a hypothesis: that people wanted to buy shoes online, rather than in stores. So, before investing in inventory and infrastructure, he walked into local stores, photographed shoes, and listed them online.

When someone bought a pair, he’d walk back to the shop, buy them, then ship them by hand.

Customers had no idea he was manually buying and shipping each pair. The website and its inner workings were “fake”, but the customer experience was identical to if everything was all set up properly.

This “faked” version of the business quickly proved successful, and let Nick jumpstart the business with full confidence in its viability.

Other companies have used this same method, too.

The business Validate My SaaS started off manually performing all their competitor analysis reports, then sending them off to customers. Eventually, the success of this manual process evolved into a fully automated system.

## Fake it ‘til You Make it

Effectively, you can do the minimum required to give the customer the “experience” of your service or product. Then, you wait and watch for a response.

If people love your service, you know you’ve got something. If they don’t, you can experiment and find out why.

You could even start by reaching out to businesses and offering your service for free. The best candidates for this are those who’ve already shown some interest in your idea, maybe in your “validation through individuals” phase.

This will let you test drive your business, and identify any pain points or weaknesses early.

Plus, if you can’t get someone using your service free of charge, there’s no reason to invest in or scale it. 

Once your first client is happy, charge a dollar. Introduce the friction of having to pay for your service and see if they stick around. Ensure what you provide is worth money to your customer base.

Finally, you can move to full price. 

For now, this may still mean selling at a loss, since you’ll have to price your services as if all your infrastructure is already in place. It doesn't matter if you lose money to start with, as long as your price will be profitable in the end.

Your main focus should be proving that profitability is possible at some point.


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