Building A System for Idea Validation

I’ve wasted a staggering amount of time starting new projects and business ideas.

Starting something new is addictive.

The chemical rush of idea inception is like a drug.

That “aha!” moment springs you to life with the energy and motivation you’ve been craving.

The pull to start something is strong but it’s at this moment that you have to reign yourself in and really dive into what’s going on here.

Are you just chasing the buzz, or does this new opportunity actually have legs?

We all have a limited amount of time in the day and by starting something new, you’re saying no to myriad of other things in your life. Time spent on existing projects, time spent with family and friends, time spent on yourself.?

I am now of the opinion that chasing an unvalidated idea be avoided at all cost.

This year as I embark on building new products and looking at new business opportunities with a partner of mine - I’ve decided to implement more structure around this process by having a validation system for handling new ideas and opportunities.

It starts with a templated thesis document that contains the following outline.

• Idea
• Problem
• Market Trends
• Audience
• Competitors
• Validation

If you want to use this system for yourself, read on and I’ll explain the process as it stands today.

Note: I'll likely be updating this throughout the year so be sure to subscribe to this newsletter if you want to learn about the improvements being made and lessons learned.

Let's get into it...

Idea

You should start by just getting the idea out of your head into a cohesive paragraph or two.

Describe what you’re thinking and then refine the description to make the language simple and to the point.

When you write out your idea like this it makes it easier to see the potential flaws in your thinking and correct this early.

Problem

This section is probably the most important as you really need to tap into the pain/problem that your idea solves.

As Michael Seibel from Y?Combinator states,

“Can you state the problem clearly in two sentences? If you can't, you don't know the problem.”

Watch the below timestamped section to see this in action and use this as your guiding principle.

Market Trends

Looking at market trends is a part of this process that I have been guilty of overlooking in the past.

In an ideal world, you want to be in a market that is growing and has traction.

I find Glimpse to be incredibly valuable for this as it bolts on to Google Trends and supercharges it with additional search and traffic data.

You definitely don’t want to be building in a market that is in decline. You'll be fighting a losing battle.

Audience

Next, you need to know your audience. Who are you serving with your new business??

Identify their demographics and psychographics to the best of your ability. Make assumptions if needed.

These are the people you will be in constant contact with while you get your idea off the ground. Make sure they are the type of people that give you energy.

Competitors

Run a quick and dirty competitor analysis by searching Google for the keywords you’d likely be targeting.

Make note of the top results and dig around their websites to see what they are offering. Do they solve the same problem as you?

Ideally you have a unique value over these competitors and have angles that enable you to stand out and gain attention.

Idea Validation

Currently, the way that we use this section is to take all of the above research and figure out a hyper specific solution that we could offer that matches the needs of the target audience.

We then think of way to stand out when comparing ourselves to the competition.

This section usually starts as a brainstorm of validation ideas that gets refined over a few days and reduced to something that makes sense and is easy to deliver.

Our criteria is:

• A test that is low effort to build (like a waitlist).
• We can identify the route to market.
• Has the potential to run paid ads to scale.

The goal is to test fast so that we can either kill the idea and move on or promote the idea to the next stage of development.

So this is the process as it stands as of now. It takes a few hours worth of work to complete one of these documents with enough information to move on.

Usually, those hours are spent over a couple of days which is extra beneficial to give the ideas space to breath and evolve before finalising.

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Thanks for reading.

Sam.