How to Validate Your Ideas

By now, you’ve probably got a deep understanding of your idea, your business, and the industry that you’ll be operating in.

But how do you know you’re right about all this?

Let’s face it. All that you’ve cooked up so far is just a broth of hypothesis flavoured with a dash of assumptions. With just hypotheses and assumptions, it’s very difficult to predict if you’re right about any of it.
The only way to know if you’re on the right path is to prove it or validate it. Like a mad scientist, you must do everything possible to confirm that your idea is the correct one. How do you do that? Well, you need what’s called a proof of concept .
Ideally, you should do this even before you start building anything. Why? Well, what if your assumptions turn out to be false and nobody actually needs your product? What if the need for the solution you plan provide doesn’t even exist?
That’s a dreadful situation for any entrepreneur to find themselves in. And more often than not, entrepreneurs do find themselves in this situation – having a warehouse full of products that nobody wants to buy.
This happens because a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs get deeply attached to their ideas. They find it very difficult to get out of the fantasy that they have created in their head and face reality.
Ideally, as an entrepreneur, you need to go outside and face the facts as soon as possible. You should face reality today – not tomorrow or next year. If you’ve invested a lot of time, effort and money on building the wrong things for the wrong people, it’s better you find out before you go any deeper.
Lucky for you, I have a way through which you can validate your idea before you spend a single rupee on its development. Here you need to understand that validation is not a guarantee of success. It only gives you enough assurance that there is , in fact, a need out there in the market for your product. But validation definitely saves you a lot of time, effort, and money, and increases your chances of success.
So let me walk you through the steps on how you can validate your idea.

Step #1: Write down the concept

Believe it or not, just writing down your concept can help you get a lot of clarity about your idea. Now when I say write down, I don’t mean that you should go ahead and create a full-blown business plan.
You first need to understand who your customers are. Describe them in as much detail as possible with all their demographic data like age, gender, profession, education, marital status, etc. Then, write down what you think are their hopes and dreams, challenges, and motivations.
Next, describe what problems your idea will solve. By writing down these problems, you can check whether customers also consider them to be problems and whether those problems are worth solving.
After that, write about your solution and how it solves the problem. Again, don’t talk about the features of your product; talk about the benefits . How your solution is going to change your prospect’s life for the better?
Don’t worry too much about how long or short all of these answers are. Whatever information you have, just write it all down.

Step #2: Craft an elevator pitch

In today’s age, attention is one of the most valuable commodities in the world. And it’s scarce. Everyone is busy and may not have time to give you their undivided attention. But that’s mainly because they don’t know what they’re getting from you.
People have less time to focus on things that don’t impact them. You have to capture their attention quickly and get their “yes” within a minute or two that they give you. That’s why you need an elevator pitch.
An elevator pitch is a sales pitch you can make before the elevator reaches the destination floor.
It could be something like this:
Hey [First Name]!
I’m building a product that will solve this problem. [Here, you talk about what it does and expand on its features, focused on its benefits.] Would you be interested in learning more about this and help me create something that’s best for you?
It’s not perfect. But that doesn’t matter. You can refine it as you go and tweak it over time as you learn more about what your audience wants.

Step #3: Test the hypothesis for the problem

An idea is nothing but a problem waiting to be solved. Without a problem, there is no need, and without a need, there’s no place for your idea. So it is crucial that you first validate that the problem actually exists in the real world and that there are enough people facing the problem.
For this, you need to go out there and start talking to your prospects.
At this stage, all you want is to find out if your hypothetical solution solves an actual problem – whether your prospects also recognize the problem and want a solution.
Don’t even talk about your solution here. Just listen to people explaining their problems, and how they’ve been tackling them so far. You will also understand whether the target customer segment that you had identified as the right one is in fact correct. Or do you need to redefine your audience?
What you’re looking for is a signal as to whether enough people in your segment face the problem or not.
You can probably skip this step if the problems your audience is facing and you are trying to address are things like making more money, getting fit, finding partners, fixing communication problems, etc. These problems are generic. In such cases, we directly go to step #4 where we try to find out whether your solution and value proposition actually resonates with your target audience to the point where they’re ready to pay for it.

Step #4 Test the hypothesis for the solution

Hopefully, by now you would’ve confirmed that the problem is real, and your audience is waiting for it to be solved. But now, you also need to test if the solution you’re proposing is actually the one that customers would love to use to solve their problem.
You don’t have to sell your solution at this point. During the validation process, don’t try to convince them about why they should use your solution. You can describe your solution and its value proposition. You can also try to tell your audience how your solution is better than existing ones. Then try to gauge what it would take for them to take the leap and opt for your solution. You can also use this opportunity to test out different pricing options.
The best way to do all this testing is by using questionnaires.
Remember, the most powerful question you can ask is “Why?” This question alone will allow you to go deeper into the responses of your prospects. Also, make sure you conduct enough in-depth interviews to get an accurate sense. It’s also a good idea to record your conversations with your prospects – with their permission, of course.

Step #5 Talk to the right people

So how do you find these people?
All your analysis will go out of the window if you don’t talk to the right people. You have to talk to your target audience to understand how they feel about their problem and your solution.
The best way to ask these questions is in a face-to-face interview. This way, you’ll be able to gauge a lot more about your respondents. We both know how difficult it is to speak to so many people in person but try. And after a point, there are a few other things you can try to connect with your target audience.

Surveys

One of the easiest ways to get more responses is through surveys . You can use the same questionnaire in the surveys too. In fact, with surveys you can probe further and remove any bias in the responses. It’s always recommended that you add a few generic questions such as what your respondents do, or their age, etc. in the survey to gauge the quality of the responses.
On the other hand, completely anonymous surveys put participants at ease and allow them to share their thoughts freely, which can give you great insights. The easiest way to conduct a survey is using Google Forms or a freemium solution like TypeForm.

Then there are Industry Experts

Industry experts are called experts for a reason. They have insights about the industry that probably no one else has. If nothing else, they will shorten your learning curve by quite a lot.
So, if you have any contacts who have been in the industry for a while, reach out to them. This is easier said than done, but it’s definitely worth the effort. It’s best that you talk to industry experts in person and make the most of your time and theirs.

Which brings us to Mentors

The role of mentors is valuable at all stages of a business but is very crucial at this stage. Mentors can not only help you fine-tune and refine your idea but also put you in touch with all the right people so that you can execute your idea in the right way.
When you’re talking to mentors, expect roles to be reversed. They’re quite likely to ask you some tough questions. If you don’t know the answers, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and come back when you have those answers.

Community Meetups are also a huge help

You can easily find communities or chambers specific to your industry. Most such communities conduct meetups where members network and discuss issues and topics related to that industry. Make sure you join such communities and attend events where you can interact with both peers and prospects. You can check out Facebook and LinkedIn and discover communities that can be part of. And if this community isn’t already holding meetups, then you can score extra brownie points for volunteering to start organizing such events.

Strangers – yes, they can help too

Walking up to a stranger and asking their opinion about your solution can be terrifying. What can be more terrifying is the brutality with which they might give their opinions – and that’s a good thing.
When you actually start selling, you’ll be selling to strangers, you should want to know what they feel about your solution. But make sure that you’re polite when you approach strangers and respect their space and privacy. If they refuse to participate, respectfully back off. A good place to do this would be at coffee shops since it’s a much more relaxed environment.

Step #6 The Waiting List

This step is optional but definitely adds a lot of value if you see it through. Set up a simple landing page describing your solution, using the top 3 to 5 words or phrases used by the audience you identified during the interview stage.
Summarize the problem, along with your solution, and tell them why your solution might be the best one out there. Drive traffic to the landing page using ads or even organically and prompt your audience to join a waiting list. Even better would be for you to give them an option to pre-order your solution at a heavily discounted price.
Doing this will give you a list of prospects who might be willing to purchase your solution when you actually launch it, and if everything goes well, people might even pre-order. What better way to launch your solution than to a group of people who are waiting to buy it and try it?
By following these 6 steps, you should be able to get enough feedback on whether or not your idea is worth developing further.
Of course, you might also be wondering what would happen if somebody stole your idea during this exercise.
Don’t worry, ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s the execution that matters, and you already have a head start on this. Trust me, people have way less time, skill sets and patience than you think they do.
Then there’s the flip side. What happens if you do all this and discover that your idea is not good enough. If you ask me, that’s a great thing! It’s better to find this out now instead of pouring in hours of hard work, effort, and money into something that isn’t viable. Besides, you can also pivot from your idea and start all over again or approach it from a new angle.
So in summary, in order to validate your idea you need to:
1. Describe the concept,
2. Create an elevator pitch,
3. Test the hypothesis for the problem,
4. Test the hypothesis for the solution,
5. Talk to the right people, and
6. And create a waiting list
Once you’ve done that and have enough assurance that it’s feasible enough to move forward, you can now go and build your minimum viable product – the MVP. More about that in the next article.