3 Steps to validate your Start-up Idea

The minimum viable product should be insanely simple. The first product you can ship to your target audience to determine if there is any value you can deliver to them.

As a first-time SaaS start-up founder, it's important to talk to a few of your target audience before you even launch your MVP.

However, don't get into the rabbit hole of doing a 3- year customer research. Best advice from YC Partner Michael Seibel;

' Launch something bad quicky.'

'Get initial customers.' - Any for that matters.

' Get feedback from your initial customers ' -hold the customers tightly, hold the solution loosely.

' Iterate' - Hold the revolutionary idea in your head, but be very flexible, your solution may not be what the customers really want.

MVP Examples

1. Stripe

Initially called dev/payments solved the basic challenges that faced the space.

The start-up then had no bank deals, very few features, and founders had to come to you; to integrate the software.

2. Zappos

Back in 1999 Zappos’ founder, Nick Swinmurn got frustrated when he would not find the perfect pair of shoes at the mall. So he decided to test if 'People will buy shoes online '.

The company got acquired by Amazon for $1.2bn 2009.

3. Dropbox

Dropbox MVP was launched with a video explaining the problem of file management and sharing.

The lessons:

• Keep your MVP lean.
• Have zero or minimum infrastructure.
• Find innovative ways to launch your MVP.

Book of the Day

Eric Ries offers a few lessons on launching your start-up;

1. Write down the User Experience vision - plan of execution
2. Identify any critical assumptions you have made such that if they are wrong will result in loss of time and resources.
3. Build an early version of MVP to get actual customer behavior.

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Okerosi Davis