My startup validation process

"The reason why most startups don't start this way is because many successful founders have an intuitive understanding for what the problem is and what the right solution should look like"

This kind of over simplification of popular founding stories doesn't help founders. There are almost always twists and turns in most founding stories, including the product; it's rarely a strait path. It's the ability to navigate those riptides that lead to successful execution. Thats why YC invests in people and not ideas. This post provides tools for founders to evaluate their ideas, markets, features, and other "leaps of faith", something that founders have to do continuously once they are in business.

> The reason why most startups don't start this way is because many successful founders have an intuitive understanding for what the problem is and what the right solution should look like. And the reason why they are successful is because they are right.

And the reason why the fail is because they're often wrong.

It's exceptionally rare that v1 is right and targeted at the right markets and positioned right and priced right. If $hours of talking with potential customers saves weeks or even months of wasted time, money, and effort, the ROI is easy.

> ...many successful founders have an intuitive understanding for what the problem is...

Or put it another way, founders solving a problem they themselves have with just enough skill to build an initial solution. Subconsciously many of us forego start-up ideas due to what Paul Graham described as schelp blindness [0].

> Validation is good but often it plays second fiddle to really understanding the problem domain and understanding how the solution is a good fit.

Often times, what the founders set out to build and what they end up getting to product-market fit with are often different things even when they intuitively understand the problem-domain. An example that comes to mind is https://meesho.com, a Unicorn now (with a very different product though roughly in the same domain), but back then failed to raise any capital on YC demo-day [1].

[0] http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L325PVEvm7Q

>The reason they don't have product-market fit is because they start with a solution and look for a problem.

I agree. Understanding the importance of solving the right problem i.e. the problem with enough need gap that people are willing to pay for getting it solved and of course the problem which we want ourselves to be solved played a huge role in me building successful products later on.

So, I'm building needgap[1] a problem validation platform where problems are the first class citizens. Posts are created by the consumers(incl. entrepreneurs) who have a problem, want to find a solution for their problem, check if others share the same problem, however small the problem might be[3]. Builders can post their products in the comments if it solves that particular problem or else discuss with others to create a product to solve that problem(There are couple of products built/being built for problems from needgap).

I'm not saying I've solved the issue of validating problems, far from it. I think I now have a direction towards understanding the 'language, grammar of problems and startup ideas' which might one day result in making validation easier.

[1]https://needgap.com

I think we might have a slightly different understanding of validation. For me, really understanding the problem, and how your product solves that, is validation.

You say nail and hammer, and I say key and lock... ;-)

Agreed. And then again: which problem did the iPhone solve exactly?

Meh, The Lean Startup is a bunch of "our VC funded company did a lot of bla bla bla" with very little detail or actionable information. It could have been a blog post or two.

I'd love some book recommendations with actionable info and with actual details on how to execute.

Did you read the whole section of the post where I recommend reading The Mom Test.... ;-)

p.s. I've read Lean Startup, but will check out The Launchpad, thanks!

I’ll summarize the book in one sentence so you don’t have to read it:

‘When talking to customers, ask about their current behaviors rather than hypotheticals (e.g., ‘would you buy this’).’

I have 20 years of experience in conducting customer discovery interviews professionally, so I found the information in the book to be incredibly simplistic and sometimes misleading or incorrect. I get frustrated every time I see it recommended as some kind of bible for startup founders doing discovery...

The book is about how to avoid getting false signals of customer needs for a problem you think your solving, regardless of solution, that doesn't exist. People also “fire customers” when they don't like what they hear. Its in the same vein.

Yes, surveys are low quality. But personally I find that if they're well designed then you'll get more data out of them than you would a sign-up page. And there are always plenty of people out there who are happy to do an anonymous survey, but not give you their email address. Sometimes that's the best data. You would miss that with asign-up page.

What service do you recommend for sign-up page?

I read Business Model Generation and found it super hand-wavy and not very helpful/actionable at all. YMMV but I really disliked it.

Thanks! I've read Running Lean, but will check out BMG.

Ha! I promise I don't receive a penny from the sales of the book. I wish I did, given how much I've recommended it over the years...

Enjoyed reading it, and also your writing style in general. Am saving the article in order to refer to when I start developing my new product idea. I have a genuine question, and maybe two further "optional" comments to offer since you're explicitly soliciting feedback.

The question: is there a distinction to be made between "startup" and "product"? How, if at all, would you change your process for a simple product idea, like, say, a new kind of umbrella?

As for the optional comments, I did find the "Read a book" a bit jarring in the bulleted steps of the process -- it is unlike the other steps in that you don't do it again and again for every single startup idea you might be evaluating, and so not really part of a process associated with each project.

These are definitely some validate starting points. I recommend giving some sort of chronological order to the process. With emphasis on spending quality time up front defining what problem space you are attempting to solve. Once that is defined, you might have a more clear idea about your potential target customer. From there you could actually build better traits about your customer. This process is typically known as building personas. This part of the process is helpful and helps you and your team focus on what are the real themes/problems needing to be solved.

I do agree that reading definitely helps but one book isn't enough. There are several books in this space that are helpful but probably deserve their own thread. Especially around strategy. Maybe worth building out a collective comprehensive recommendations list one day.

Surveys are great but wont capture the true understanding of your customer or the heavy user of what ever product you create. One needs spend some quality time (1hr initially) with these customers so you can build out a better persona which will help you hone and focus on creating the right solution. Then you can use future surveys after gaining trust to get valuable feedback. I do however understand this is a "fill the top of the funnel" approach which isn't bad.

However that said you make some really great points throughout your posting about falling in love with the problem which will allow you to create a great solution.

Neil would you be interested in turning this into some sort of service? I could help with that, shoot me an email (check profile).

Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed reading your article! Very actionable advice.