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.
- A ready-to-use set of interview scripts (discovery, validation, and jobs-to-be-done) with probing questions built in, so you... CleverX Template · 1 to 2 pages User Interview Script Template CleverX
- A discovery-focused interview template that keeps questions on behaviours and experiences rather than reactions to your... Great Question Template · 1 to 2 pages Customer Discovery Interview Template Great Question
- Often your first product does not need code, and a shared Notion page or database can stand in as the whole thing while you... notion.com Tool Notion notion.com
- A friendly form tool for running the interviews, waitlists, and fake door signups that power a no code MVP. You can gauge... typeform.com Tool Typeform typeform.com
- Your short answer names the LOI as a real B2B validation signal, and this is a clean, lawyer-built template made for exactly... Common Paper Template · 1 to 2 page template Free Letter of Intent Template Common Paper
- A structured, free program that reverse-engineers how B2B startups actually find product-market fit, built from patterns across... First Round Course · multi-part guide The PMF Method First Round
- When your manual matching works and you finally do need software, this guide plus its no code builder lets you stand up a real... Sharetribe Academy Tool · ~40 min read Create a Marketplace: Build Your Platform in 10 Steps Sharetribe
- A structured how-to you can follow, covering when to run a Wizard of Oz test, the steps, the tools, and the pros and cons.... Learning Loop Template Wizard of Oz Experiment (play) Learning Loop
- This entry frames the Wizard of Oz test as one experiment in a wider validation toolkit, with clear guidance on cost, evidence... Kromatic (The Real Startup Book) Template Wizard of Oz (The Real Startup Book) Kromatic (The Real Startup Book)
- The free course from the person who coined get out of the building, the core idea that no facts about your idea live inside... Udacity Course · Self-paced, ~8 lessons How to Build a Startup: The Lean LaunchPad Steve Blank
- A ready to use script for interviewing a recent customer about why they switched, built entirely around past behaviour and... Deploy Empathy Template · script Customer Interview Script Template: The JTBD Switch Interview Michele Hansen
- A ready made structure for running and logging customer interviews the Mom Test way, so your manual research is captured... Notion Marketplace (GrowthHacking.World) Template · Notion template Problem-Solution Navigator: A Mom Test Based Interview Template GrowthHacking.World
- The ready-to-use questionnaire from the Founder Dating Playbook, covering roles, values, money, commitment, and how you each... First Round Review Template 50 Questions to Explore With a Potential Co-Founder Gloria Lin
- A ready made place to write each idea as a one line problem and score it on the criteria that matter to you. Putting all your... Notion Marketplace Template · Template Idea Rating Scorecard (Notion template) Notion Marketplace
- This is the simple artifact your answer describes: list the three or four criteria you both care about, weight them, and score... Smartsheet Template · template Weighted Decision Matrix Templates Smartsheet
- A tool that scans forums, search trends, and communities to surface pre-researched idea candidates, with a free idea of the... IdeaBrowser (Greg Isenberg) Tool · Web tool IdeaBrowser Greg Isenberg
- This is YC's curated shelf of talks and essays filtered to market size, so you get partner-level guidance in one place instead... Y Combinator Course YC Startup Library: Market Size collection Y Combinator
- Even though your primary build should be bottom-up, you still want a top-down triangulation to check it, and this gives you a... Data-Mania Template Top-Down Market Sizing: Step-by-Step TAM, SAM, SOM (with Examples and Template) Data-Mania
- A structured spreadsheet that makes you fill in the number of target customers, your unit economics, and your serviceable and... Scalepath Template · Spreadsheet Free Bottoms-Up TAM Template Scalepath
- The government's live registry of registered micro, small, and medium enterprises, filterable by state, district, and activity.... Ministry of MSME, Government of India Tool Udyam Registration Real Time Dashboard Ministry of MSME, Government of India
- A searchable directory of suppliers, distributors, and manufacturers by product and city, exactly the distributor list our... IndiaMART Tool IndiaMART Supplier and Distributor Directory IndiaMART
- Downloadable district level datasets of registered enterprises you can filter and count yourself. Where the dashboard shows... data.gov.in Tool Udyam MSME Registered Units (Open Data) data.gov.in
- Your short answer says to read the earnings calls and annual reports of public companies near your space for real numbers, and... U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Tool SEC EDGAR Full-Text Search SEC
- A ready structure for capturing notes across your 20 conversations so patterns actually surface instead of blurring together.... Notion Template · reusable templates Customer Discovery Interview Templates Notion
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?
19 →
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 →
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The partnership →