How can you tell if your idea is a good one? Nothing beats getting in front of the people you hope are going to buy it.

You never know how an idea is going to be received when you make it public, which explains the temptation to keep working away in isolation. So when we took our innovation to the London Bike Show over the weekend, there was a worry that the best part of a year's industry could be about to go up in smoke.

Last summer our new venture, Cyclo Technology, started developing a packable bike helmet for commuters and cycle hire scheme users. Ten months have passed since my co-founder Josh and I talked about the idea and it’s been pretty intense.

First we brought on board award-winning designer Will Wood, who’s worked with Boeing and Aston Martin, as well as devising numerous bike-related innovations with his agency BDI Design.

Next we applied for and won a start-up grant from Innovate UK, the Government agency that helps ideas become a reality. This enabled us to do interviews with bike industry experts, carry out a UK-wide survey to 1000 potential customers and run user-groups to test concepts and write a product design brief. This research confirmed that, as well as surpassing safety standards, the kind of product we hope to create must deliver in three key ways to have a fighting chance of filling a clear gap in the market.

First it must be genuinely ‘packable’ unlike the current foldable options available. Volume reduction isn’t enough, if the folded shape of the helmet doesn't easily fit into a regular work or travel bag. We are aiming to make a product for lapsed and casual riders, as well as keen ones, so it must also come at a price to suit everyone. From our consumer research this is at the ￡40-￡50 mark - reasonable, but not so cheap as to undermine perceptions around safety. Finally, for our product to ‘land', especially among younger consumers, it has to be produced with our environment in mind. This insight led us to connect with ocean plastics campaigners and suppliers who have since agreed to work with us and ensure our helmet contains recycled ocean waste.

With this knowledge in mind, we set about designing and 3-D printing our prototype. The challenge was to create a helmet that packs down, but avoids mechanisms which complicate the user-experience and also increase production costs. The Cyclo, a two-part product manufactured using single-shot injection moulding, is our solution.

The prototype was widely endorsed by the people we showed it to first - family, friends and others within our professional networks. While this was good to hear, it wasn't the validation that we needed. So when we were offered a late chance to exhibit among the hundreds of market-leading products at the London Bike Show with its audience of discerning cyclists, we knew we had to take it. Even so, the months of graft and a growing belief in the product, couldn't stop subdue our apprehension.

With blend of hope and trepidation, we headed to the Excel Centre to find out what 'real' people would say. The long and short of it is this - either cyclists are all very nice people who’d do anything to avoid offending us, or our efforts have paid off and we have come up with something that really can meet a clear consumer need.

Over the course of three days we had more than 300 conversations with all kinds of people - keen and casual riders, retailers (of bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters), product manufacturers and even a few potential investors. New market opportunities also emerged after discussions with people who travel a lot and others who participate in sports like para-gliding.

By taking our prototype, with a patent application submitted, to people who had no reason to like what we'd created, we now feel we've well and truly ‘de-risked' the initial concept. There’s plenty more R&D for us to do as we move towards a final, market-ready product. However we can now do this boosted by the ringing endorsement of the very people we hope will soon be buying and using our innovation.

You can see how The Cyclo works in this short film and follow our story at cyclotechnology.com.