According to "The Mom Test" that's actually something you should avoid doing. If you ask people they might answer "yes" because
- they're being nice to you
- they think in that very moment they would but in a real situation they wouldn't
In my experience, reducing "value risk", which OPs question is essentially about, has to happened incrementally. So build something small and then try to sell it to someone. Work with them to improve the product and then try to sell it more people and so on.
The veed.io blog has some nice articles with great insight into this topic: https://www.veed.io/blog/
I mean if they actually cut you a check for it and you are talking to people outside your close circle of friends, then this could be some part of the post mom test process.
Someone literally handing you money for your thing kinda invalidates a lot of other processes, theories, etc.
> If you ask people they might answer "yes" because
> - they're being nice to you
> - they think in that very moment they would but in a real situation they wouldn't
You forgot that one:
- they would actually buy it
> In my experience, reducing "value risk", which OPs question is essentially about, has to happened incrementally.
That does seems to be the goal of the question... you reduce the risk. You can't be sure it's perfect, like every single step of validation, but you do reduce the risk. That's true because it's still possible they answer "no".
I think it's also extremely important because of the point of OP:
> it also proves that you are willing to do the hard part which is the selling
This is the biggest issue with a big majority of people on Hacker News. We are good a building, not selling. Which is also a big reason why it's pretty useful to find another founder that would fill theses lacks of experiences.
My experience as a professional sales consultant for SaaS startups is that it is not the this cohort is "not good" at selling, it's that it has very little idea of what to actually do. Being a bad salesperson is a different ball of yarn to unspool than not being a salesperson at all.
- they're being nice to you
- they think in that very moment they would but in a real situation they wouldn't
In my experience, reducing "value risk", which OPs question is essentially about, has to happened incrementally. So build something small and then try to sell it to someone. Work with them to improve the product and then try to sell it more people and so on.
The veed.io blog has some nice articles with great insight into this topic: https://www.veed.io/blog/