Startup Idea Validation - Success Factors

Many people build businesses around ideas that never appeal to the customers and thus those ideas never sell. As a result, all the time and money go down the drain. One might think that he or she already knows what the customer wants. Initial market research might make them believe that customers would love their product. But when the product actually arrives on the shelves, nobody cares about it. A #marketsurvey can sometimes be pretty useless since it’s still a hypothetical product. That is when idea validation or to be precise, product validation becomes so important.

Validation is all about about testing #assumptions. It’s important to test the riskiest assumption first and not to waste your time on something that doesn’t have potential. Although each #idea is different and most of them often cannot be validated by using the same methods, there are some general tips that I thought to share here and help the startups owners succeed with this very important process -

1. Be Ruthlessly Critical

People who build businesses are almost always optimists, and while you definitely need a certain amount of optimism, having too much of it won’t get you very far. There are far more bad ideas than there are good ones and even for the good ideas, there are far more bad solutions than there are good ones. The only way to get past this issue and to make better decisions is to be highly critical of your own work.

2. Keep the #Validation process simple

Keeping the process simple and effective is the key to fast learning. Often your assumptions are different from your actual challenges. So, instead of listing every single assumption and spending tons of time making sense of them, treat your process as a simple, general framework. Pay attention to picking the right selection criteria and focus on the most essential aspects of your business first. You have plenty of time to focus refining the details once you know your business idea is solid and the big picture works. The point of validation isn't to come up with a perfect solution but to make sure your idea has potential.

3. Involve the right target audience

When validating a new idea and gathering #feedback, involving the right audience is the key. Although your nearest and dearest are the first ones to support your idea, friends and family aren’t usually the most reliable source of feedback. Your idea validation process depends on the ability to gather accurate information regarding your idea. Therefore, finding the right people who know enough about the business or the topic of your idea is necessary.

4. Look around and learn from others’ mistakes

It’s very unlikely you’re the first and only one coming up with a new idea and there’s a chance that there are several people who have had the exact same idea before you. Being aware of what happened to already existing ideas is smart as it can help avoid some of the critical mistakes already made. In most cases, having no competition isn’t a sign of originality and inattentiveness.

#Startup validation is a must in view of the inherent risks associated with entering the market without even knowing if you have got it right from the beginning. There are various steps involved in validating a business and any first-generation entrepreneur must follow these like a cardinal rule. In case if need help in validating your startup idea, feel free to reach out to team #IncubationMasters. This is crucial as there is always a scope for rectifying the business idea and taking the right approach, in case there is any lapse during validation.

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