Ask HN: How do you validate your ideas? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you validate your ideas?

11 pointsShinyCyril6 comments

It seems like the easiest way is to get a landing page or similar that says 'Here's my product, here's what it does' and gather feedback from people (and some points of contact) which you take on board and use to shape the development of your product.

How is this done in practice though? I was working on a project with a friend a while back and we posted a landing page with a mailing list here. The feedback it got was along the lines of "This is just a landing page, come back when you have a product".

How can you get useful feedback and validation on ideas without spamming links to meaningless landing pages everywhere?

I look forward to hearing your views.

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Validation is often oversimplified.

Driving traffic to a landing page validate's that you're good at marketing; signups validate interest from consumers; feedback provides insight for product development. However, none of these actions validate your idea.

Product demo videos provide people the context they require to properly assess the value of your idea. The best demo videos quickly describe the value of the product and then provide a use case which creates context for the audience. Finally, they end with a QUICK walk-through.

Drew Houston launched Dropbox with a product demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QmCUDHpNzE. Try to think of validation as an ongoing process and product demos as the next step.

"Validation is often oversimplified."

100% agree. It's very difficult to get "honest" feedback without getting a product in the hands of users.

Why are you separating the idea from the execution? Ideas are just multipliers for execution[1]. You can have the best idea in the world but if your execution is terrible no one will use it. Conversely, a lot of effort focused on an average or even so-so idea can result in a great product.

If you're unsure whether to start building something, the answer is usually to start building anyway. You can refine your idea as you work, and once you have a basic prototype you can start asking people what they think of your idea and of your execution.

Prototypes are cheap, and as soon as you have one you can start validating what really matters: your product.

[1] https://sivers.org/multiply

First you'll want to build up an email list of interested customers. That'll be your launch list.

In the mean time, you'll want to contact the list to see if there's anyone who has a burning desire for the product right now. These are your Early Evangelists that will guide your product development. Their need for the solution is so great that they're willing to work with you even from the 'napkin idea' phase.

If you're unable to find a handful of these Early Evangelists then either a) you don't have a problem with a big enough pain point or b) you're bad at reaching your target market. In either case you'll want to fix that.

A/B tests. Have a single site, two pages, and something like Google Analytics. See how many people visit the site and if they spend more time on A or B. Then modify the worse of the two and re-test.

At some point you have to just take a risk and develop a product. All you can really do is see if there is ANY interest at all, and also discuss it with people who might be consumers of the product to see what they think (but take it with a pinch of salt, focus groups are notoriously fickle).

Can you really validate a product without taking risk? By the time you think through, develop, pitch and launch an MVP, much of the hard work is done.

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