Find & validate your idea

Find a problem worth solving, then prove people want it before you build.

What founders use for find & validate your idea, ranked by how many answers lean on it.

  1. Long-form, candid interviews with Indian founders and investors on how they actually grew, distributed and built brand, one of... The Neon Show / Neon Fund Podcast · 200+ episodes The Neon Show (100x Entrepreneur Podcast) Siddhartha Ahluwalia In 29 answers
  2. 200+ candid conversations with Indian founders and investors on how they actually found their idea, spotted a trend, and... Apple Podcasts Podcast · podcast series (45-90 min episodes) The Neon Show (formerly 100x Entrepreneur) Siddhartha Ahluwalia In 25 answers
  3. The Zetwerk co-founder talks through choosing a hard problem in an Indian manufacturing market and when to trust customers... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · 40 min Importance of Founder Market Fit and When to Listen to Customers (ft. Amrit Acharya, Zetwerk) Prime Venture Partners In 17 answers
  4. A leading early-stage Indian VC firm answering the questions founders wish they could ask a VC face-to-face, including how they... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · 30-50 min per episode Prime Venture Partners Podcast: Fundraising Masterclass for Founders Prime Venture Partners In 14 answers
  5. This is Indian investors and operators talking, at length, about which global trends actually translate to India and which... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Prime Venture Partners Podcast Prime Venture Partners In 10 answers
  6. The CRED and Freecharge founder on building in India, including his line that Indian founders rush to solutions and underinvest... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · ~90 min Kunal Shah on winning in India, second-order thinking, and the philosophy of startups Kunal Shah (with Lenny Rachitsky) In 9 answers
  7. Run by the managing partners of Prime Venture Partners (Sanjay Swamy, Amit Somani, Shripati Acharya and others), this is a... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Prime Venture Partners Podcast Prime Venture Partners In 8 answers
  8. If you would rather hear the Pattern Breakers thinking as a conversation, this episode covers it with concrete stories and... Lenny's Podcast (lennysnewsletter.com) Podcast · ~90 min Pattern Breakers: How to find a great startup idea Lenny Rachitsky with Mike Maples Jr. In 8 answers
  9. From the creators of the Design Sprint, a structured two-day method to turn a fuzzy idea into a sharp, testable bet before you... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · ~90 min The Foundation Sprint: Test Any Idea in 2 Days Jake Knapp & John Zeratsky In 6 answers
  10. This is a tight founder-and-investor conversation squarely on the question of reading whether a wave is real or you are just... a16z Podcast Podcast · ~18 min Marc Andreessen on Startup Timing Marc Andreessen and Jonathan Lai In 5 answers
  11. A deep conversation on why direct questions fail and how story-based interviews surface real behaviour. Torres names the common... Lenny's Newsletter Podcast · ~75 min Teresa Torres on how to interview customers Lenny Rachitsky and Teresa Torres In 5 answers
  12. An Indian founder story where the early demand test was manual, cold emails and direct outreach to find the first customers... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · ~50 min How Khadim Batti Built Whatfix Into a Global SaaS Leader Prime Venture Partners In 5 answers
  13. The author of Crossing the Chasm explaining beachhead selection in plain, modern language, the fastest way to absorb the... Lenny's Podcast / Lenny's Newsletter Podcast · ~75 min Geoffrey Moore on finding your beachhead, crossing the chasm, and dominating a market Lenny Rachitsky & Geoffrey Moore In 4 answers
  14. Drawing on thousands of office hours, Caldwell separates when to just not die and keep going from when to actually pivot, which... Lenny's Podcast (Dalton Caldwell) Podcast · ~80 min Lessons from 1,000+ YC startups: pivoting, resilience, and avoiding tar pit ideas Dalton Caldwell In 3 answers
  15. The Zerodha co-founder picks an industry, then asks the most basic first-principles questions until you understand how it... Nikhil Kamath Podcast · 60 to 120 min episodes WTF is with Nikhil Kamath Nikhil Kamath In 3 answers
  16. Meesho literally started as sellers running WhatsApp boutiques, which is the spreadsheet and WhatsApp validation path playing... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · ~45 min listen Vidit Aatrey (Meesho) on Building a Category-Defining Startup Vidit Aatrey and Amit Somani In 2 answers
  17. An Indian SaaS founder on how he found and won real customers by identifying a large underserved market and solving its biggest... The Neon Show Podcast · 60 min How To Sell Global Tech Products From India (with Sharath Narayana) Sharath Keshava Narayana In 2 answers
  18. Podcast · 55 min The Mom Test with Rob Fitzpatrick (The Learning Leader Show) Rob Fitzpatrick In 2 answers
  19. This goes underneath Delta 4 into why Indians pay for some things and not others: value versus price, trust, and the real value... Farnam Street, The Knowledge Project Podcast · ~2 hr Kunal Shah: Core Human Motivations (The Knowledge Project) Shane Parrish and Kunal Shah In 2 answers
  20. Sanjay Swamy built mobile payments in India in 2006, roughly two generations before Aadhaar, smartphones, and UPI made them... Prime Venture Partners Podcast · 45 min Why mChek Failed Before UPI Took Over India (Sanjay Swamy on Building Too Early) Prime Venture Partners In 2 answers
  21. This episode focuses specifically on how the consuming class is shifting and what that does to sizing over time. It helps you... Ideas of India, Mercatus Center Podcast · 1 hr 20 min Sajith Pai Unpacks the 2024 Indus Valley Report and the Changing Indian Consumer Shruti Rajagopalan with Sajith Pai In 2 answers
  22. Podcast · ~40 min Mastering Startup Math: TAM, CAC, Churn, LTV and more Shripati Acharya and Amit Somani, Prime Venture Partners In 2 answers
  23. Blakely built a product for a problem she experienced as a customer, with no industry background and no network in hosiery, and... NPR, How I Built This with Guy Raz Podcast · about 45 min How I Built This: Spanx, Sara Blakely Guy Raz In 2 answers
  24. Podcast · ~90 min video Kunal Shah on winning in India and second-order thinking Kunal Shah with Lenny Rachitsky In 2 answers

Show the next 24

The questions

Finding & shaping ideas 18

Find a problem worth years of your life.

I want to start a startup but I don't have an idea. Where do I even begin? 19 → How do I come up with startup ideas that aren't just 'Uber for X'? 19 → Should I solve a problem I personally have, or chase a bigger market? 19 → How do I know if my idea is a real problem or just a 'nice to have'? 19 → I have too many ideas. How do I pick which one to actually work on? 19 → All 18 questions in Finding & shaping ideas →
Validating your idea 21

Get evidence before you write code.

What does 'validating an idea' actually mean? 20 → How do I know if my idea is any good? 18 → How do I validate an idea without building anything? 18 → How do I talk to customers without getting false positives? 20 → How many people should I talk to, and how do I find them? 17 → All 21 questions in Validating your idea →
Market size & timing 18

Is it big enough, and why now?

How big does my market need to be for this to be a real business? 19 → What are TAM, SAM, and SOM and how do I actually calculate them? 18 → Why does 'why now?' matter so much for a startup idea? 17 → My market is small right now but growing fast. Is that a problem? 16 → How do I size a market for India specifically when data is messy? 19 → All 18 questions in Market size & timing →
Founder-market fit 17

Why you, and why this problem?

What is founder-market fit and how do I know if I have it? 18 → Do I need to be an expert in an industry to start a company in it? 19 → I'm passionate about an idea but have zero background in it. Should I still do it? 19 → How much does 'why you?' actually matter to investors and to success? 19 → As a woman founder, or one building outside the big startup hubs, how do I turn my background into an edge? 19 → All 17 questions in Founder-market fit →
Spotting trends & opportunities 18

Live in the future and build what's missing.

How do I spot trends early enough to build a startup on them? 20 → How do I tell the difference between a real trend and a passing fad? 20 → Everyone says the next big thing looks like a toy. What does that actually mean? 16 → Where do I look to find emerging opportunities before they're obvious? 19 → What are the biggest emerging opportunities in India right now? 18 → All 18 questions in Spotting trends & opportunities →
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →