Read the comments first and thought this was going to be crap. Instead it's great! Good read. Also read The Mom Test .
The Mom Test is a must read! Only when you read it, do you realize how wrong your previous approaches to business validation were.
How to validate your startup idea quickly
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Re: How to validate your startup idea quickly
#32Read the comments first and thought this was going to be crap. Instead it's great! Good read. Also read The Mom Test .
The Mom Test is a must read! Only when you read it, do you realize how wrong your previous approaches to business validation were.
I love that book. Such a tiny book but so much wisdom.
Re: How to validate your startup idea quickly
#33Nice article. Most people make this mistake of building products first and then finding customers for it. By following this approach they build something that nobody wants. Ideally one should validate the idea and market fit first. One shouldn't be building something for which there are no customers at all.
Follow this approach: -> demo - sell - build
And not: -> build - demo - sell
I bought this e-book recently on Gumroad and loved how it is right on point about how to strategically validate your business and generate sales before you even build it.
Here it is if someone is interested - https://gumroad.com/a/497906803
It provides so much value for the small price you have to pay. I highly recommend buying this book.
Re: How to validate your startup idea quickly
#34A number of the comments are saying this is bad because from Facebook, numbers are unrealistic ($100mm?!), signs tell you nothing. Personally, I've done startups longer than I want to admit (10+ yrs). If I was to start another one, the play book would look basically like this article. Idea/Thesis, Hypothesis, Target, Test and some where later - build. The problem I had when I started and why so many founders get it w…
Idea/Thesis, Hypothesis, Target, Test and some where later - build.
This is a common strategy if you just want to 'do a startup' but it misses the need. Every successful business I can think of started with a founder needing a product to exist. All the startups I've been involved in have been products I wanted to exist because I needed them myself, or I had a close relationship with someone who needed them. Turning them in to something that could make money was a key goal, but I'd have built some form of them anyway even if it wasn't.
If you're just thinking up things people might want and throwing up a landing page to see if people claim they're interested I suspect you're going to get bored quickly, and you'll move on to the next even better idea very quickly.
That's not to say it can't work if you're making something just because 300 people signed up to your Launchrock page, but I think the motivation to succeed won't weather the storms that your startup will face if that's the only reason you have to build something.
Re: How to validate your startup idea quickly
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Startups are street racers: you never know who you’re racing next to. They might have bigger sponsors than their sleeper suggests. A NASCAR analogy would therefore apply to traditional VC centers like SF, NYC, etc. It’s hard to pass someone before a turn at 200 MPH, but if you don’t do it, plenty of other people can and will . Practically anyone can build a racecar, or a startup. The race puts proof to the lie: not e…
But... you are not competing with Lewis Hamilton if you stay at the local go kart track! Plenty of room for small fish. He’d love to come and beat you but he can not afford to, his time would cost millions.
And yet I bumped into a childhood hero of mine, Leo Laporte of tech broadcasting fame, at an impromptu meetup he did at a bar in SF I heard about on his Twitter. So as I lived in SF at the time (~2012 I think?), I just went and met one of my role models.
Sure, you don’t know if you don’t go. But you also don’t know if you don’t know to go. Can going be taught? Isn’t that what startups do?
Re: How to validate your startup idea quickly
#36A number of the comments are saying this is bad because from Facebook, numbers are unrealistic ($100mm?!), signs tell you nothing. Personally, I've done startups longer than I want to admit (10+ yrs). If I was to start another one, the play book would look basically like this article. Idea/Thesis, Hypothesis, Target, Test and some where later - build. The problem I had when I started and why so many founders get it w…
I don't know that this advice is so realistic anymore, or at least the target click thru rates should be adjusted. Ads on FB now have very low click-thru, and even then, I'm not sure how much that ultimately tells you about your product or market. You can spend a lot of money going through all kinds of different customer segments on FB, or you could recognize that there are other ways to attract customers than social…
Absolutely, we're in agreement.
"Test" doesn't necessarily mean spend on FB/G Ads. It means devise a test feedback signal is quick, low cost and yields a meaningful/measurable metric.
An idea selling a more efficient ship engine to ship owners is never going to do well in Ads, but there is a test that is more cost effective than build engine => sell engine.
> Of course none of these can tell you the 'why' -- it might be something simple that you would never have thought of, but you end up pivoting too early.
This is a founder dilemma and the thing founders need-to/should worry about. Don't build until you've got at least a decent, objective signal the idea is worth the cost of building, but how you get there is a doozy.
Re: How to validate your startup idea quickly
#37With all due respect, a Facebook person's thoughts on validating a startup idea are pretty much irrelevant. Whatever thing you are building at Facebook starts out with 10 hurricanes of wind behind it. Startups begin with all the wind of a baby blowing a raspberry.
Yup. The author made a poll of fellow FB employees. As if that is even remotely representative of the overall market of the 25 to 44 year olds. Just consider the average salary of the polled population vs the general population.
Re: How to validate your startup idea quickly
#38With all due respect, a Facebook person's thoughts on validating a startup idea are pretty much irrelevant. Whatever thing you are building at Facebook starts out with 10 hurricanes of wind behind it. Startups begin with all the wind of a baby blowing a raspberry.
Yup. The author made a poll of fellow FB employees. As if that is even remotely representative of the overall market of the 25 to 44 year olds. Just consider the average salary of the polled population vs the general population.
Poll of "fellow FB employees" could be replaced with spending ~$100 on Google Ads and using a certain targeting criteria.
Re: How to validate your startup idea quickly
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree different levels of "skin in the game" mean different signal. Simple link click is pretty lousy signal and I would ignore it. I think email is okay. Phone number is probably better. Somebody putting their credit card is really good. I didn't mention all of that for brevity. But you could device a point based grading system based on what signal you get.
I’ve done ok with a link to a calendly on the email marketing campaign - you’d be surprised how many people we up for a chat! And as a bonus it solves the awkward timezone issues for me and im not tempted to take 2am calls to be nice!
That's a really interesting idea!
Re: How to validate your startup idea quickly
#40A number of the comments are saying this is bad because from Facebook, numbers are unrealistic ($100mm?!), signs tell you nothing. Personally, I've done startups longer than I want to admit (10+ yrs). If I was to start another one, the play book would look basically like this article. Idea/Thesis, Hypothesis, Target, Test and some where later - build. The problem I had when I started and why so many founders get it w…
Idea/Thesis, Hypothesis, Target, Test and some where later - build. This is a common strategy if you just want to 'do a startup' but it misses the need . Every successful business I can think of started with a founder needing a product to exist. All the startups I've been involved in have been products I wanted to exist because I needed them myself, or I had a close relationship with someone who needed them. Turning…
There's a lot to be said for working on solutions to problems you have yourself. But I think that also leaves a lot of very fertile ground untouched - the problems that startup founders tend not to have, but many other people do.