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My startup validation process

neilcocker.com

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Re: My startup validation process

#31

Post by this2shallPass »

tchock23 wrote: post #29
carterklein13 wrote: post #13

I see The Mom Test recommended anywhere. Can anyone shed some light into what other information it contains other than "focus on the problem (not your solution) and explain things simply and concisely enough that your mother could understand?"

I’ll summarize the book in one sentence so you don’t have to read it: ‘When talking to customers, ask about their current behaviors rather than hypotheticals (e.g., ‘would you buy this’).’ I have 20 years of experience in conducting customer discovery interviews professionally, so I found the information in the book to be incredibly simplistic and sometimes misleading or incorrect. I get frustrated every time I see i…

What information in The Mom Test would you say is misleading or incorrect?

Re: My startup validation process

#32

Post by NeilRamp »

dsubburam wrote: post #28
NeilRamp wrote: post #2

I'm spending time refining this, so would be genuinely interested in any feedback, or ways to improve. It's absolutely not the finished article, and intended to be quick and deliver results.

Enjoyed reading it, and also your writing style in general. Am saving the article in order to refer to when I start developing my new product idea. I have a genuine question, and maybe two further "optional" comments to offer since you're explicitly soliciting feedback. The question: is there a distinction to be made between "startup" and "product"? How, if at all, would you change your process for a simple product i…

Thanks for the comments, and kind words!

The difference between startup and product is simple, and it's something I'm guilty of conflating (along with many others). The product is what you're selling, and the startup is the organisation built around it to bring it to market. I should really have used the word Product instead of Startup.

Thanks for the thoughts around the Read A Book bullet point. Yes, I think it could do with being re-written!

Re: My startup validation process

#33

Post by rawoke083600 »

cpursley wrote: post #16
redm wrote: post #11

Two classic books that are fast reads and will also help you are 1) The Launchpad (about YC) and 2) The Lean Startup. Both are old books but they cover many of the same concepts and ways of thinking. I’d add that if you do nothing else, read the first 3 chapters of The Mom Test; it provides a great overview for evaluating ideas.

Meh, The Lean Startup is a bunch of "our VC funded company did a lot of bla bla bla" with very little detail or actionable information. It could have been a blog post or two. I'd love some book recommendations with actionable info and with actual details on how to execute.

"E-Myth - Revisited" is very good as an "operational handbook". Basically "systematised" everything and don't do "special request/things" for customers, since most of the time they are not repeatable by other branches or members of staff and get buy-in (for your vision) from your employees. There are many more practical lessons in there.

Re: My startup validation process

#34

Post by rexreed »

The reason why most startups don't start this way is because many successful founders have an intuitive understanding for what the problem is and what the right solution should look like. And the reason why they are successful is because they are right.

The reason why unsuccessful startups fail is many, but for many they don't have product-market fit. The reason they don't have product-market fit is because they start with a solution and look for a problem. This analysis follows that same general track. Validate something. But validate WHAT? What if you just have nail in search of a hammer?

Validation is good but often it plays second fiddle to really understanding the problem domain and understanding how the solution is a good fit. Validation can only happen once you have that good sense of a fit.

Re: My startup validation process

#35

Post by tekkertje »

cpursley wrote: post #16
redm wrote: post #11

Two classic books that are fast reads and will also help you are 1) The Launchpad (about YC) and 2) The Lean Startup. Both are old books but they cover many of the same concepts and ways of thinking. I’d add that if you do nothing else, read the first 3 chapters of The Mom Test; it provides a great overview for evaluating ideas.

Meh, The Lean Startup is a bunch of "our VC funded company did a lot of bla bla bla" with very little detail or actionable information. It could have been a blog post or two. I'd love some book recommendations with actionable info and with actual details on how to execute.

I went through "Running Lean" by Ash Maurya after reading Lean Startup, and it's a lot more practical and full of examples that can be applied in your own business. Only thing is that it's more oriented at consumer startups, so for B2B SaaS I'd recommend "The Startup Owner's Manual" by Steve Blank.

Re: My startup validation process

#36

Post by Reebz »

cpursley wrote: post #16
redm wrote: post #11

Two classic books that are fast reads and will also help you are 1) The Launchpad (about YC) and 2) The Lean Startup. Both are old books but they cover many of the same concepts and ways of thinking. I’d add that if you do nothing else, read the first 3 chapters of The Mom Test; it provides a great overview for evaluating ideas.

Meh, The Lean Startup is a bunch of "our VC funded company did a lot of bla bla bla" with very little detail or actionable information. It could have been a blog post or two. I'd love some book recommendations with actionable info and with actual details on how to execute.

Disciplined Entrepreneurship by Bill Aulet.

He’s actually had a couple of exits which can’t be said for most authors in the space.

Re: My startup validation process

#37

Post by NeilRamp »

rexreed wrote: post #34

The reason why most startups don't start this way is because many successful founders have an intuitive understanding for what the problem is and what the right solution should look like. And the reason why they are successful is because they are right. The reason why unsuccessful startups fail is many, but for many they don't have product-market fit. The reason they don't have product-market fit is because they star…

I think we might have a slightly different understanding of validation. For me, really understanding the problem, and how your product solves that, is validation.

You say nail and hammer, and I say key and lock... ;-)

Re: My startup validation process

#38

Post by twox2 »

NeilRamp wrote: post #37
rexreed wrote: post #34

The reason why most startups don't start this way is because many successful founders have an intuitive understanding for what the problem is and what the right solution should look like. And the reason why they are successful is because they are right. The reason why unsuccessful startups fail is many, but for many they don't have product-market fit. The reason they don't have product-market fit is because they star…

I think we might have a slightly different understanding of validation. For me, really understanding the problem, and how your product solves that, is validation. You say nail and hammer, and I say key and lock... ;-)

I think validation is more about whether or not someone will pay for your solution than if it actually solves the problem or not. Sounds like the same thing, but it's not really.

Re: My startup validation process

#39

Post by redm »

rexreed wrote: post #34

The reason why most startups don't start this way is because many successful founders have an intuitive understanding for what the problem is and what the right solution should look like. And the reason why they are successful is because they are right. The reason why unsuccessful startups fail is many, but for many they don't have product-market fit. The reason they don't have product-market fit is because they star…

"The reason why most startups don't start this way is because many successful founders have an intuitive understanding for what the problem is and what the right solution should look like"

This kind of over simplification of popular founding stories doesn't help founders. There are almost always twists and turns in most founding stories, including the product; it's rarely a strait path. It's the ability to navigate those riptides that lead to successful execution. Thats why YC invests in people and not ideas. This post provides tools for founders to evaluate their ideas, markets, features, and other "leaps of faith", something that founders have to do continuously once they are in business.

Re: My startup validation process

#40

Post by ignoramous »

rexreed wrote: post #34

The reason why most startups don't start this way is because many successful founders have an intuitive understanding for what the problem is and what the right solution should look like. And the reason why they are successful is because they are right. The reason why unsuccessful startups fail is many, but for many they don't have product-market fit. The reason they don't have product-market fit is because they star…

> ...many successful founders have an intuitive understanding for what the problem is...

Or put it another way, founders solving a problem they themselves have with just enough skill to build an initial solution. Subconsciously many of us forego start-up ideas due to what Paul Graham described as schelp blindness [0].

> Validation is good but often it plays second fiddle to really understanding the problem domain and understanding how the solution is a good fit.

Often times, what the founders set out to build and what they end up getting to product-market fit with are often different things even when they intuitively understand the problem-domain. An example that comes to mind is https://meesho.com, a Unicorn now (with a very different product though roughly in the same domain), but back then failed to raise any capital on YC demo-day [1].

[0] http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L325PVEvm7Q

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