Find & validate your idea

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

1. A first-hand account of how a founder recruited a small group of likely buyers, shipped the most basic thing, and iterated on... Intercom Blog Article How to launch with a validated idea Garrett Moon
2. Jackson's test is blunt and useful: can you name five specific real people who need this and would buy it. If you cannot, you... justinjackson.ca Essay A simple way to validate your startup idea Justin Jackson
3. A practical checklist for turning a hunch into tested evidence, including how to run interviews that surface pain before you... First Round Review Article · ~15 min read How to Test a Business Idea: Essential Tools for Validating Before You Launch First Round Review
4. Cohen bootstrapped two companies past a hundred million in revenue, and he is blunt that a typical launch converts around one... A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen) Essay · 15 min read Excuse Me, Is There a Problem? Jason Cohen
5. This is the practical, step-by-step manual for the Lean Startup ideas, built around the one-page Lean Canvas and a system for... LeanFoundry Book · 240 pages Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works Ash Maurya
6. The father of customer development argues that your plan survives contact with reality only after you leave your desk and test... steveblank.com Article · 10 min read Teaching Entrepreneurship by Getting Out of the Building Steve Blank
7. Steve Blank's argument for searching for a business model before building one, the get out of the building philosophy in short... Harvard Business Review Article · 15 min read Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything Steve Blank
8. This piece pushes on the part founders skip: figuring out exactly which gaps a co-founder should fill before you go looking,... First Round Review Article · 15 min read Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: How to Find a Co-Founder Steve Blank
9. Amazon's trick is to write the customer facing press release and FAQ before building anything, which forces you to describe the... Working Backwards (Colin Bryar and Bill Carr) Article · 12 min read The Amazon Working Backwards PR/FAQ Process Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
10. Blank is the origin of get out of the building and customer development, the discipline that a no-code MVP is meant to serve.... Steve Blank (steveblank.com) Article · 12 min read No Business Plan Survives First Contact With A Customer Steve Blank
11. From the Google Ventures team, this shows how to go from a fuzzy idea to a tested prototype in a single week. The core move is... Jake Knapp (jakeknapp.com) Book · Approx. 275 pages Sprint: Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Five Days Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, Braden Kowitz
12. Zerodha built one of India's most used products with a tiny team and a stubborn focus on simplicity over polish. Kamath's view... Inc42 Article · 15 minute read Instincts, People and Vision: Nithin Kamath on Zerodha's Product Secrets Inc42
13. Jason Cohen bootstrapped WP Engine and shares a simple test for whether a problem is real: when you talk to people, do their... A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen) Essay · About 12 min read The Convergent Theory of Finding Truth (vetting startup ideas) Jason Cohen
14. The consumer companion to the B2B piece, covering how Airbnb, Twitter, Pinterest, Tinder and others began. Many ideas felt... Lenny's Newsletter Article · About 15 min read How the Most Successful Consumer Startups Came Up With Their Idea Lenny Rachitsky
15. Isenberg is practical about finding underserved, unsexy niches where people are literally asking for tools that do not exist... Greg Isenberg (gregisenberg.com) Article · ~12 min read Find winning startup ideas from AI and data Greg Isenberg
16. A useful counterweight if you are frozen trying to find the single perfect idea. Gil argues the market you pick matters more... blog.eladgil.com Essay · ~6 min read You Don't Need A Good Idea To Start A Great Company Elad Gil
17. A tight, investor's checklist for the exact decision you are making. Bent leads with choosing a burning idea you cannot stop... Mercedes Bent, Lightspeed (Medium) Article · ~12 min read How to Choose a Startup Idea Mercedes Bent
18. This speaks straight to the kill the lukewarm ones part of the answer. Hedging across several ideas feels safe but actually... Startups.com Article · ~8 min read The Problem With Working on Multiple Ideas at Once Wil Schroter
19. A field study of startups serving low and middle income Indian customers, focused squarely on the price sensitive buyer. It... IIMA Ventures Insights Article · ~12 min read Bharat Startups: The Price Sensitive Customer IIMA Ventures
20. Blank invented the get out of the building idea, and here he makes the sharpest version of the case: until you test your... steveblank.com Article · ~8 min read No Plan Survives First Contact With Customers Steve Blank
21. Bezos separates decisions into one way doors you cannot undo and two way doors you can walk back through. Deciding to build a... Amazon shareholder letter (Jeff Bezos) Essay · ~6 min read (relevant section) 2015 Letter to Shareholders (Two-Way Doors) Jeff Bezos
22. This is the most concrete method we found for collecting the complaints nobody has fixed when you cannot yet get people on... Solving Product (Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman method) Article · Medium read How to Find New Product Opportunities with a Sales Safari Étienne Garbugli
23. This is the honest counterweight to the romance of the naive disruptor, and it maps onto your short answer directly. It shows... Kellogg Insight, Northwestern Article · Medium read Sure, Industry Outsiders Can Bring Fresh Ideas. But Are They Better Entrepreneurs? Kellogg Insight
24. Marty Cagan draws the line cleanly: if you are going to fall in love, fall in love with the problem, not the solution, and get... Silicon Valley Product Group Essay · ~6 min read Discovery: Problem vs. Solution Marty Cagan

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