How To Validate Your Business Ideas | Meaning Validation | Definition Validation

Ever wondered what certain business terms mean? Are you thinking about starting a business but the jargon is bamboozling you? Well, don’t worry. I’m here to help…along with a little Stone Age friend of mine. Welcome to Speak Like Shaf, where we’ll get to grips with business terms that might be giving you grief and at the same time throw in a few entrepreneurial words of wisdom. This week we are going to check out the word “validation”.

Validation is a noun and it means to check the validity or accuracy of something. In business terms, it means proving market need. Let’s say you’ve got your business idea and you think it’s a belter. You might think that but you need to find out if the rest of the world agrees. Take your idea on to the next stage and find out if there is a need or demand for it from the market. After all, what’s the point in coming up with an idea that no one wants? Once you have come up with your idea and proved that it’s worth pursuing, everything else is achievable with a lot of hard work.

So how do you validate your idea? Firstly, do your research to make sure someone else hasn’t got there first. If they have, it’s doesn’t mean that your idea is dead in the water but it might mean that you have to rethink and come up with something slightly different. Assuming that, you are good to go, the next step is to see if there is a need for your product, idea or service. Talk to people. Do plenty of market research and see if your idea is met with interest and approval. Make sure your audience don’t spare your feelings, you want them to be as honest and open with you as possible. They aren’t doing you any favours by sugar-coating constructive criticism.

If it all goes to plan and you are getting a lot of positive feedback, you can really start to make your dream a reality. Figure out a business plan, get investment and start running your own business.

I mentioned earlier that my little Stone Age friend was going to help me explain to you what validation means. You’ve already met Rab The Rock Star in previous videos and you’ll remember that he was one of the first humans to monetise his business. But let’s take a step back and see what happened even before he got to that stage. It wasn’t easy trying to catch and cook your dinner back in the Stone Age and Rab realised one day that the hunters would do better if they had decent tools. So he had an idea and designed the perfect tool to help catch and kill deer and mammoths. But before he made them, he asked the hunters if his idea would really help them. He wanted to make sure there was a demand for his business. Of course, they knew their job would be much easier and gave validation to his idea.

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Rab’s proof, if it were needed, that it’s not just today’s start-ups who need to get validation! Every business, no matter how small, needs to know there is a market out there for it. If you have people keen to use your product, your business is already on its way to becoming a success. I hope that’s cleared things up for you, don’t forget to let me know what you think.

Before you go, do you fancy taking the concept of validation one stage further? I’m confident there’s demand for a series of videos like ‘Speak Like Shaf’. I would like you, that’s right, you, to help me validate the concept. If you agree with me, simply hit the subscribe button on my YouTube channel. There you go, that’s validation at work.

Before you go, I do have one favour to ask of you. Please hit the subscribe button and the bell icon on my YouTube channel by clicking here so you can be informed whenever I upload a new video

If you enjoyed this week’s video, check out the rest of them here