How can customer validation help your startup succeed?

Imagine you’re selling crack. If people don’t come back for more, that’s bad validation. If they slam on your door at 4am, then that’s GREAT validation.

Customer validation is moving from a hypothetical solution to getting customers to put skin in the game. Will they preorder or sign a purchase order? Pay to customize the product or service for them (modules, features, etc...)? Pay to test out the product/service? If not, what are the specific things that the customer needs in order for them to pay? Does that mesh with what you're building? If not, why?

Customer validation is essentially a reality check for startups. It's about engaging with potential customers to confirm that your product or service not only solves a real problem but also that people are willing to pay for that solution. It's a step in the Lean Startup methodology where you test your hypotheses about your business model directly with your target market. Think of it as a way to ensure you're not just in love with your idea but that your future customers will be too.

The concept is the most crucial step of startup process - more than hypothesis, idea itself or even than 'ability to scale'... Basically, the concept addresses entirely the most important question: does it worth to invest time & effort or not? There are growing number of new business models on start-up venturing where customer validation is the main go/no go criteria at the beginning of the process. Super-quickly built prototypes are passed to customer validation step and if it gets customer validation, then it is proceeded to MVP. Otherwise, idea is dropped immediately and another one is prototyped as next. By leveraging 'customer validation', serial entrepreneurship is transforming into climex!

Customer validation is crucial for startups as it involves testing value propositions and business models with target customers through various methods like surveys, landing pages, prototypes, MVPs, and pilots. It helps validate or invalidate hypotheses based on real customer feedback and evidence, following the initial stage of customer discovery.

Before thinking about how a solution can be built and how well it fits, I would strongly urge founders to do deep validation on the problem they are addressing - they need to understand it from their customers’/users’ perspective. Is it urgent, painful, frequent, unavoidable, common to many…? Too many aspiring founders start from building a solution and only then look for which problem it can solve.

Customer validation is crucial for any startup's success. In my view, it helps you understand if people actually have the problem your startup wants to solve. By talking to potential customers, you learn what features they need, how much they would pay and even how it should look. Building something nobody wants is expensive and demotivating. Validation helps you avoid that by ensuring you are on the right track before investing heavily.

Customer validation is important as it defines product development, commercialisation pathway, and increase value of the venture with better valuation outcomes during fundraising.

When I first start working with an early stage startup, I try to understand what their customer validation techniques were and what process did they follow to improve their customer understanding, because at the end of the day, that's the purpose of customer validation. Without fully understanding the customer needs and pain points, how are you expected to build a product they would actually use.

Customer validation is in a way real time feedback for your products or services based upon which we can work upon or improvise for even more better efficiency as we will be having more clarity from the customer or user point of view regarding its uses or features how they want it to be and cater according to their needs or wants. All this provides a direction for long term investment in terms of growth , precise target setting and vision.

Validating customer needs isn't a one-off task but a perpetual cycle of refinement. Start with hypotheses shaped by initial customer insights. Select fitting tools—surveys, prototypes, MVPs—to challenge these beliefs. Establish clear success benchmarks. Test with your audience across varied mediums. Analyze feedback against your goals, discerning which assumptions hold. This continuous dialogue between your vision and customer reality guides whether to evolve or transform your offering, ensuring your startup remains aligned with market demands.

"I spoke to 1000 people before launching my startup," - and guess what they all loved the idea. No doubt. It's the best startup idea, but real validation comes not from a self selecting group, but from a customer that will pay you and be delighted about it. And then 500, 5000, and 5m customers. Of course there are traditional steps to this... - identify your target customer - develop the MPV - engage with potential customers - iterate and refine based on feedback - *what will customers actually pay for and value* - measure responses to product changes - build a feedback loop ... but the most important reinforcing feedback is a customer that opens their wallet and parts with cash.

This requires qualitative research with your current customers or MVP trials. One-on-one depth interviews are particularly personal and tend to yield the best insights. It's crucial to validate your assumptions about customer pain points, actual market needs, competitors, and that your solution effectively addresses these challenges.

?????????? ????????????: conduct surveys, hold interviews, or gauge interest through social media. As you gain traction, consider creating mockups for feedback, or even run A/B tests to compare different versions. ??? quality over quantity - dig deep into the "why" behind each response. Be open to adapting your idea based on what you learn, and remember, validation is an ongoing process, not a one-time event. ??????????????: Airbnb. Their founders initially offered breakfast cereal and air mattress stays to cover rent. Recognizing the demand for travel accommodations, they pivoted their concept and went on to revolutionize the hospitality industry. Customer validation= solution fit a real need, paving the way for their immense success.

In the startup sea, customer validation is like a dolphin's echolocation - continuous and adaptive. Picture a clever clownfish, Fin, using hypotheses from sea anemone focus groups. He employs surveys and prototypes, akin to sending out sonar pings and testing new reefs. Success criteria are set, like a shrimp setting traps. Then, Fin dives in, deploying experiments across currents, collecting feedback like pearls. This feedback is his compass, guiding whether to swim ahead or change course. Remember, in the world of startups, it's not about swimming straight but agile swimming in the right currents. Keep adapting and spread shark love! #divineintervention #gabenfreude

Half of the advice here is wrong. Validation is not discovery. In validation you are testing actual sales: can you get attention of target segment, can you get their money (or at least time), validate willingness to pay. You can't do this by just asking questions. It has to be a sales-like experiment. Half of the advice here talks about discovering your Ideal Customer. Validation is the next step to prove that there is scalable business is solving the problem with your solution.

Dont spend alot of time on hypothesis, jump -to-market and: -Ask customers what do they want now -Listen to them -Understand the future the want -Design that path for them

Four quick best practices, always: 1) Talk about price. They will never make a buying decision without the price, test it up front. Even if you're guessing, that's a place to start. 2) Have them rate the solution. People are nice and provide platitudes: this is great, really innovative, interesting. Ask them to rate it: on a scale of 1 to 5, how likely would you be to buy this? or how much does this fulfill your needs? 2) Frame in priorities. Is this their #1 priority, or #10? You'd be surprise how much someone tells you they like the product, but when it comes to budget, it's down low. 3) Have a second person on the call. It's hard to take ask questions, take notes, and think about follow up. Also, debrief with that person.

GPT In the ocean of customer validation, navigating with best practices is like a sea turtle's journey to its nesting ground - precise and purposeful. Start like Sammy the Squid, with a clear, testable hypothesis, focusing on the problems your sea creatures face. Test your ideas with real fish from your target school, not just the ones swimming in your current. It's like offering seaweed snacks - make sure your audience actually likes seaweed! Keep your tests frequent and simple, like testing the water's temperature with a flipper. And remember, change only one wave at a time to understand the ripples it creates. This way, you learn from every splash and adjust your swim accordingly. #divineintervention #gabenfreude

Depending on the founders' budget, those practices can differ a lot. The first step is to develop the ICP (ideal customer persona) and to assign this persona attributes you believe your customer has. Next, test your assumptions against real-life people who are your persona. If your ICP is the VP of Finance at a Pharmaceutical Enterprise, you must find ways to talk to those people. A great way is still LinkedIn, and you can reach out to them via direct messages or connect with your ICP at industry events.

Customer validation to help your startup succeed; what are some common mistakes to avoid during customer validation? A big mistake I see a lot of people make is they try to mold their customers around their business, but it should be you fit your business to the customer. And another mistake I see is thinking that two customers are the same and have the same needs, for example, just because a customer is in the same industry or vertical as another customer they have the same needs. Not quite. #vc #venturecapital

Some Tech founders tend to think what they envisioned and built is the perfect solution and disregard first users' evaluation feedback. This is a prevalent mistake.

Some mistakes are: Only talking to people you know - This leads to biased feedback. Make sure to get objective input from real prospective customers. Asking leading questions - Don't just ask questions that confirm your assumptions. Ask open-ended questions that uncover honest opinions. Ignoring negative feedback - Don't dismiss feedback about concerns or lack of interest. Take it seriously to determine if pivots are needed. Not testing with a MVP - Testing vague concepts rather than a basic prototype makes feedback less concrete. Focusing on solution not problem - Customers care about solutions to their problems, not the specifics of your proposed product.

Understand that whatever you've created, whether physical or technical (i.e. SaaS product), is highly likely to evolve into something quite different than what you envisioned at the start. This is a normal part of product evolution and you must let it happen. How? Create systems that collect as much user/purchaser feedback as humanly possible, then take it seriously and allow the product to adapt based on the feedback from customers. At the end of the day, you are not the consumer, and what you 'think' they will pay for is not likely to be correct. Listen and let nature run it's course.

Not validating your assumptions by collecting real-life feedback from your customers. Too many founders make this mistake and build a solution solely on their assumptions or perceived knowledge of the market. This often leads to a failure of the company if the company can't afford to pivot.

The best investor for a freshly founded B2B startup is the first hero customer who makes some down payment to help you build the product

(a) Customer insights gathered during validation can significantly enhance marketing effectiveness. A personal example is a B2B SaaS startup that leveraged customer feedback to identify the most valued features, which were then highlighted in their marketing campaigns, resulting in increased lead generation & conversion rates(b) Customer validation can offer strategic insights that guide crucial business decisions. A cleantech venture I advised adjusted its business model from a capital-intensive manufacturing approach to a licensing model based on potential customers' feedback, which was pivotal in attracting investment & entering the market more efficiently (c) The importance of UX in product design cannot be overstated.

Be a drug dealer. If your product is that good, give them the first try for free. Then turn the taps off. If it's a game changer for them, then you're in business. If not, get feedback. Tweak your product and try again. Repeat until they're hooked.

When I speak with the founders of pre-revenue startups, I quite often discover that their commercialization plans are based on non-validated assumptions. I send them to the field to speak with their potential customers, and they always come back surprised. Next thing I tell them is that they will have to engage with their customers throughout life of their venture, and do it in a systematic and professional manner so that to assume as little as possible and to know as much as possible about them.

Il faut regarder de près la concurrence et étudier leur mode de fonctionnement... Faire de leur défaut votre force... Votre différenciation !