Ask HN: Is there an almost good way to pre-validate an idea myself?

[gls2ro]

I am interested to find out ways/heuristics/questions on how to pre-validate my own ideas before going with them to talk with possible customers or partners.

In general I have a lot of ideas and I am looking for a way to decide which one is the one who I should invest time to validate it with potential customers.

I found some good questions to ask about my idea in term of market size, is it a need or a possibility, what kind of customers will there be ... But I am looking for more ideas or better questions that can guide me and make this process less subjective.

I am curious if someone recommends a way to do this in a way that is as efficient as possible. Probably I am looking to some kind of skeptical analysis combined with data.

[lettergram]

You can't really "validate" an idea prior to launching something.

You can however view market size, here are the two ways I would do it:

1. Check out Facebook ad's and find your target person, Facebook will estimate how many people are in that target group.

2. Check out subreddits in the various areas you are looking to build a product for.

That being said, look at PROBLEMs, and try not to form ideas. Fixing a problem is much easier and will get people excited, building a product isn't really about your ideas - it's about everyone else.

Subjectively, here are two examples.

1. I built a solution to a problem a friend was having. They couldn't get in to see a course advisor when registering for classes, so I wrote one for them: https://easy-a.net/ It became super popular, without me realizing it. I started getting "thank you's" in the middle of class, and I was like "for what?" That's how powerful fixing a problem is.

2. The other example, is a problem I wanted to fix for myself. I wanted to make money so I built my own financial advisor (for stocks, bitcoins, etc.). We recently launched it, and it's only had a hundred or so email registrations: https://projectpiglet.com/

The difference being, I'm only building my idea for myself.

When building for other people, you have to put yourself in their shoes. That forces you to relay information better, fix their problems, and make them happy. That's how you validate.

I recommend tossing up a signup page, unattached to your name, with a brief description of what you want to do. Just see how many people sign up! I recognize that's talking with potential customers, but a signup page takes a day, and actually forces you to address issues.

I actually love using forms, and posting on subreddits asking for people to list their problems.

[gls2ro → lettergram]

The main reason behind my question was that I have a form of Ideas Journal where I write either problems I see or possibilities of what can be created.

From time to time I read it and try to figure out if there is something truly valuable to pursue.

For sure setting up a signup page could be one way of doing that. And now that I re-read your comment I am thinking that I could make a script to automatically generate these kind of pages for my ideas.

This might be a good way to automatically test most of them.

I also take great inspiration from your examples.

[AznHisoka → lettergram]

Definitely agree on the suggestion of looking for problems. Reddit and forums are great places to start. What do you think of bloomberry.com?

[reckoner2]

This might not be a useful answer for you, but are you sure any of that is necessary? You can spend months pre-validating an idea and never get anywhere.

Go talk to potential customers now. Find people who are willing to pay for what your are going to build. Once you know they exist, then you can start worrying about market size and the rest. At this point having real life people who want to pay you is infinitely more valuable than any hypothetical data and analysis.

[gls2ro → reckoner2]

Yes, I totally agree that the best investment of my time would be to talk with customers.

But maybe I am doing the process wrong. I read a lot about how to start by choosing a group and discovering their ideas.

Currently I have some kind of Idea Journal (actually a .md file in a cloud) where I write ideas, needs, problems, possibilities. It might not be the best way to do this.

I was looking for an easy way (from sitting on my desk) to filter them. Initially I get enthusiastic about all of them remembering the context where I wrote them and I think I am a type of person optimistic so I catch myself finding a lot of reasons why most of them are good.

So I read some books about startups, ideas, lean, ... and I got some questions to ask myself about them. This made the filtering process better.

The reason I asked this question was that I wanted to know also more practical examples of what do you - HN - do before taking the first actions (first investments of your time) in the project you want to build.

[tmaly]

There are two great books that helped me do this.

First, the Mom Test, it is very short, and it talks about what types of questions to ask and what types to avoid. The main focus is avoiding the introduction of bias. You want good data you can work with.

Second book is Running Lean. It has a great script that you can adapt to the industry you are targeting. It also gives pointers on conducting the interview.

Together, these two short books will get you started.

[gls2ro → tmaly]

Didn't read them yet. Thank you for suggestions. Can you please confirm that the second book is this one "Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works" - by Ash Maurya?

[tmaly → gls2ro]

yes, that is the book by Ash Maurya.

[JSeymourATL]

Does your Target Buyer attend any conferences/trade shows/meet-ups? If you can get to any of those -- the face-to-face interaction is invaluable.

[gls2ro → JSeymourATL]

I think most of them are attending conferences/meetups.

Like I wrote above, currently I started with ideas and trying to see (from my desk) if there is a value in them before investing time.

Maybe it is not the right process and I should pick one idea and directly go and talk with customers. Probably I believe (or I am attached) too much on the things I wrote in my idea journal and I should find a way to look at them from different perspectives.

[JSeymourATL → gls2ro]

From your desk-- assuming you can identify attendees of the appropriate conferences/meetups (Twitter is good for this)... cold email/call call them is the next best thing. Ultimately however, you have to get out of your room.