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Ask HN: How do you (in)validate new ideas efficiently?

12 points by wuliwong ↗ HN
I have a number of different ideas that could be potential new ventures or projects. In the past I have not done a good job of validating ideas up front before running off to build things. The result has been the creation of neat portfolio pieces but no product/market fit.

My goal is to test a number of different ideas before starting work this time. One of the methods for validation that I would like to use is to build a landing page and purchase advertisements to gauge interest.

Do you have any suggestions for products or workflows that would help to make this type of testing more efficient?

Also, I would love to hear any experience around the topic of validating ideas.

Thanks.

11 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 39.1 ms ] thread
davismwfl
Depends on the ideas. Personally, I always feel it is better to go talk to people in person (ideally) about the idea. Gauging interest in person or at least over the phone is a much better indicator of real interest than a signup form online.

Even if the product is going to be marketed and sold completely online, meeting people in person who would be target audience customers lets you get better data and validate the idea further than just a signup form. e.g. you can ask follow up questions, ask people questions around functionality etc. Also this method lets you find out how you find the right target audience, as in where online would you find them looking for your service, what keywords would matter to them, what media platforms do they pay attention too...

From there you can tweak the idea and if it seems promising then publish a landing page, start collecting more contact info and trying to convert some of those into commitments.

wuliwong
But face-to-face interactions are scaaaary !? :)

I do a lot of talking to friends/family about ideas but I need to get out there and identify people that are actually in the target audience of the product.

davismwfl
Totally, and talking to friends and family helps, but they are the least critical (typically) of your ideas because they want to be supportive. So finding people that are really the target audience and talking with them is critical.

Personally, I find it is always hardest to start the first few conversations for any new project, but after that it seems to get easier for me. Good luck!

wuliwong
Thanks Davis. I received the suggestion today to actually try to get people to pay you up front for the product you are going to build. That was pretty interesting. Seems to scratch my itch for some real objective (in)validation and also prevents me from writing a bunch of unnecessary code.
DATACOMMANDER
That’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it? I’d also like to hear how people approach this issue. I can’t speak from experience, but I read a couple of interesting ideas somewhere. One was to embed yourself in a forum related to your idea and start messaging people, asking if they’d be interested in something that does what your idea would theoretically do. There’s a fine line to walk, though.
wuliwong
I was mainly thinking about the specific task of validating through ads and landing pages. Tracking interest/conersions that way. In order to do that you want to be able to test lots of ideas without re-writing lots of code.

I know there are lots of solutions out there like: instapage, unbounce, etc.

I tried instapage but I had a huge amount of trouble getting it pointed at a custom domain. I eventually gave up and decided it would be easier for me to just develop a re-usable landing page framework in rails and deploy it to different custom domains using heroku.

ibash
Go talk to potential customers in person.

You might feel uncomfortable doing that, and there are usually two reasons: 1. You’re new to doing this 2. You haven’t prepared enough

You probably haven’t prepared enough. You should have a hypothesis of why they’re the target customer, what value they’re getting out of it, and what pain point it solves. You should research to know if there are other products that fit the bill or that they use. You should understand how they make money and how your product fits into their bottom line.

If this is helpful ping me and I can send you more details about my process for this.

ayoubElk
Not OP, but that's very helpful, I would appreciate more details about your process.
wuliwong
Thanks ibash, I'll send you a message. Although another commenter requested more details as well. Maybe you can post more here? :)
niko001
As you mentioned, most people will jump right in and build a landing page / MVP to see if there's any interest, but that's a time-consuming process and I wouldn't spend any more time than necessary on something that you don't know is actually viable.

Still, you of course have to find out if there are potential customers for your idea. I'm using the following validation process to see if a certain target audience is interested in my idea:

1. I start by actually writing down the problem I'm trying to solve and my solution. A lot of ideas may sound awesome while they're in your head, but seem ridiculous once you transform it from an abstract concept into 2–3 sentences.

2. I then create a questionnaire based on my idea. I'm trying to ask pointed questions where the result will actually help my decision-making process, such as "How often are you facing this problem" rather than "Have you ever faced this problem". You can use tools like SurveyMonkey or Typeform to publish your survey.

3. Lastly, I'll try to identify people who are in my target audience. This is tricky, and taking shortcuts like emailing the survey link to your friends doesn't work - there's something called "Interviewer bias", which says that your friends will rate your ideas more favorably than the general public. It's also to be expected that your friends aren't actually in your target audience for your proposed idea.

Because I've been through this process so many times, I created IdeaCheck.io[0], where we generate a questionnaire based on your idea and use a panel of respondents to gather direct feedback from your actual target audience. You can read more about IdeaCheck in my Indie Hackers interview[1].

[0] https://ideacheck.io

[1] https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/ideacheck-io

wuliwong
Nice, thanks! I'll check out ideacheck.