Ideas & Opportunity

How do I validate an idea without building anything?

A starting point

Replace the product with a conversation, a manual service, or a landing page. Interview people about the problem, hand-deliver the outcome yourself (concierge), or put up a page that measures whether anyone tries to buy. You're testing demand and behaviour, none of that requires code.

Go deeper

Watch

▶️ Video
Free Beginner

How to Get and Test Startup Ideas

On YC Startup Library by YC ~30 min

Why we picked it

Bridges the gap between 'I have an idea' and 'I have evidence.' Gives a concrete framework for cheap, fast tests so you stop debating your idea in your head and start putting it in front of reality.

  • An idea is a hypothesis, not a plan, design a test for it.
  • Cheaper, faster tests beat elaborate ones.
  • Look for signal in behaviour, not applause.
Open ycombinator.com →

Read

✍️ Essay
Free Beginner

Do Things That Don't Scale

From paulgraham.com by Paul Graham ~15 min read

Why we picked it

The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few customers. The cheapest, most honest way to validate demand is to go get it one person at a time.

  • Recruit your first users manually, don't wait for them to come.
  • A tiny group of users who love you beats a big group who like you.
  • Manual, unscalable effort early is a feature, not a failure.
Open paulgraham.com →
📖 Book
Paid Intermediate

Running Lean

From LEANSTACK by Ash Maurya ~240 pages

Why we picked it

The most systematic step-by-step process for de-risking an idea, built around the Lean Canvas. Where The Lean Startup gives philosophy, Running Lean gives you the exact sequence of experiments to run this month.

  • Capture your business model on one Lean Canvas before building.
  • Rank and attack your riskiest assumptions first.
  • Run problem interviews, then solution interviews, then an MVP.
Open leanstack.com →

People also ask

What does 'validating an idea' actually mean? Validation is gathering real-world evidence that a specific group of people has a painful problem AND will change their behaviour (pay, sign up, sw... Beginner 3 resources → How do I know if my idea is any good? Judge it on the problem, not the solution: is it a real, frequent, painful problem for a reachable group of people, and are you unusually well-plac... Beginner 4 resources → How do I talk to customers without getting false positives? Never pitch your idea in the interview, it invites polite lies. Ask about their real life and past behaviour: the last time they hit the problem, w... Beginner 3 resources → How many people should I talk to, and how do I find them? Aim for enough that patterns repeat, often 15-30 focused conversations before signal stabilises. Find them by going where the problem lives: your o... Beginner 3 resources → What is an MVP and what's the smallest one I can build? An MVP is the least you can build (or fake) to learn whether your riskiest assumption is true. Often it isn't software at all: a manual service, a ... Beginner 3 resources → How do I run a landing-page / 'fake-door' test? Put up a simple page that describes the offer as if it's real, drive a bit of targeted traffic to it, and measure whether people take a costly-to-t... Intermediate 2 resources →