Ideas are cheap. Here's how to validate them.

Last week, I hosted a roundtable about ideation with indie hackers who have brought multiple product ideas to market. But at the end of the day, ideas are cheap. So this week, I asked them about how they validate their ideas.

Here's what they had to say. 👇

Indie hacker validation processes

Pre-validation

👤 Justin Welsh of The Saturday Solopreneur:

Lean idea validation:

• Twitter account
• Free landing page
• Prospect conversations

You just saved $1,000+ and a lot of time. Source

👤  JT of No Code Founders:

I work backwards from the customer. When I have an idea, I start by getting on a call with several potential customers. I ask them all the same set of questions and finish by presenting my product offering and pre-selling it to them. I'm looking for confirmation that they would pay for the product

👤 Angus Cheng of Bank Statement Converter:

Usually, I like to plan a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), build it as quickly as possible, and then get people to use it. After that, I try to get people to pay.

Nowadays, people talk about pre-validating your idea before building anything. It sounds like a good idea to me, but I've never done it. If I figured the MVP would take me more than six months to build, then I reckon I would pre-validate before building.

I think the best form of pre-validation would be selling the service before you build it. Game developers are great at this! "Dear customer, I am making xyz app. It will help make your dog fluffier. It's going to cost $200 a year. If you buy it now I'll give you a 50% discount."

Get paid before you build

👤 John Doherty of EditorNinja:

My validation process is first seeing if someone will pay me for the thing before I have actually built it. Then and only then will I build out a landing page, figure out how to take payments, figure out how to deliver it, and so on.

I launched Credo once I had agencies who were paying me for leads. I launched EditorNinja only once I had two customers ready to commit, so we had $898 in monthly revenue on day 1.

Leverage your audience

👤 Tony Dinh of TypingMind:

These days, I have a decent-sized audience on Twitter, so I can use that advantage to validate ideas. I usually tweet about the idea or build a small prototype to see if people are interested. It was definitely harder in the early days when I didn't have an audience.

Start with conversations

👤 Mac Martine of The SaaS Bootstrapper:

I usually start with one of three ways of validating an idea.

The first one takes the longest but, if done right, it's most likely to result in a successful business. This involves talking to a lot of people and getting them to reveal their pains. And from here you create a solution. Approached this way, the validation is a byproduct of the process, and the idea can be considered validated if we can repeatedly find people expressing the same pain. This is how I got the idea for an app I bootstrapped to $58k MRR.

Note that you are not telling people about our product and asking if they would pay for it - many will say yes to please you.

The second way can also take a long time, and may be the least likely to result in a successful business. This involves building the product first, then trying to get it in front of people, and hoping they buy. The problem here is you've made a lot of assumptions if you haven't been talking to people. This is probably the biggest mistake most indie hackers make. I made this mistake with my first SaaS attempt.

The third option, which is by far the quickest, is to set up a landing page with a wait-list form (I'm doing this currently with SaaS Pulse), or even a 'buy' button, and drive people to that. You can track how many people click the 'Buy' button. Similarly, you can also do a pre-sale, where you accept payments, and refund them if you don't get enough sales to justify your time of building it.

I've done all these and by far have had the best results from the first option - starting with conversations.

Landing page MVP

👤 Benjamin Katz of RM Flags:

My validation process goes something like this from start to finish:

1. Start by building a simple MVP, ideally without writing any code, and have a “buy” button on the website. If you’re not sure how to do this, I recommend checking out Carrd - it’s a very inexpensive landing page builder that allows you to drag and drop components onto a landing page. I just did this and got two sales immediately, no code involved.
2. Post the landing page on websites where you think your customers are located (forums, FB groups, reddit, etc.).
3. While you wait for a few sales to roll in, ask anyone who has commented or signed up for feedback on how to make it better.
4. Immediately fix any feedback and notify each person that their issues have been solved.
5. If you don't get any sales over the next week or two, the idea simply isn’t good enough or there isn’t a market for it. Leave the website online and move on to the next idea.
6. If you're seeing sales, start investing more heavily in the idea. Ask customers for feedback again, then start building some features/fixes related to whatever is most painful for them.
7. If the number of sales is continuing to grow at this point, I consider the idea validated.

Don't bother validating

👤 Anthony Goubard of Japplis:

I don't have a validation process, I have an Excel sheet with software ideas and in the next column the potential features of the software. If after a few days/weeks/months/years, I still think it's a good idea that I can build in a reasonable time and I would personally use the software, I'll do it.

I'm not sure I'm the typical indie hacker. I'm focused on enjoying the journey, rather than the destination. I won't be disappointed if a product fails. Every download or sale is a win. I'm only concerned with building software that I would use and that I'm proud of.

When is a product validated?

Money exchanges hands

👤 Pieter Levels of PhotoAI:

I still see people think "talking to customers" works when validating an idea, but people don't always know what they want.

I think real validation of an idea happens with executing it and then people getting their credit card out and paying you for it. Source

If they don't pay, they're not a customer and it's not validation. Source

👤 Arvid Kahl of The Bootstrapped Founder:

The best validation for your business idea is having paying customers. Source

👤 Angus Cheng of Bank Statement Converter:

I considered it validated once you start receiving money for it.

👤 Hiram Núñez of Tee Tweets:

Are people willing to hand you their money? That's what it comes down to. You can ask as many people as you want if it's a good idea, if they'd buy your product or service, and/or if they'd hand over their email address. But until they enter their credit card details, you're not exactly validated.

👤 Benjamin Katz of RM Flags:

I consider the product to be validated when people are paying for it. At that point, I invest more into the business. I get more feedback from customers, add features, and share my progress on twitter/social media to get people excited about it to drive more sales.

Customers are retained

👤 John Doherty of EditorNinja:

The initial validation is that someone is willing to pay you for it. You can take pre-orders (while recognizing that if they pay you, you are committing to shipping the product) or build a waitlist (which is riskier).

But a product is not actually validated until it has buyers who stick around, and ideally, tell others about it.

👤  JT of No Code Founders:
Once it's making recurring revenue. i.e. customers have continued paying for the service.

Pain points are common

👤 Mac Martine of The SaaS Bootstrapper:

I don't consider a product fully validated until I see people buying it. That said, hearing a number of people express the same pain of a problem you have a good solution for is pretty damn good validation.

Validation tips

Talk to the market

👤 Mac Martine of The SaaS Bootstrapper:

I always suggest starting with the hardest part. For most of us, ensuring we can get in front of our target audience is the hardest part.

So, before writing any code, try to drum up some conversations. At the least, see if you can drive people to a landing page and get them to sign up for a waiting/launch list. You can then ask those people for a conversation. Or have a sign up flow and track how many people try to initiate it.

👤 John Doherty of EditorNinja:

Talk to the market! Find some potential customers who have the problem you're looking to solve, get them committed, involve them in the process, and then lean on them as your best advocates to help you find others who have the same problem.

👤  JT of No Code Founders:

Talk to potential customers. Listen closely. Keep your ears open for everything they say as you may unearth threats or opportunities you hadn’t considered.

Run toward competition

👤 Arvid Kahl of The Bootstrapped Founder:

Competition is validation of an actual need in your market. Run towards it, not away. Source

Be quick about it

👤 Hiram Núñez of Tee Tweets:

It doesn't hurt to ask around and try to get some "early" early validation by asking to see if the idea is even worth building, but try to put out something as quickly as possible where someone is actually entering their card information. It means they're ready to go, cash in hand.

Read a book

👤 Angus Cheng of Bank Statement Converter:

I suggest reading The Lean Startup for a guide to MVPs and The Mom Test for advice on pre-validation.

Get something, even if you don't get money

👤 Hiram Núñez of Tee Tweets:

Even if it's a free product, ask for something in exchange as an indicator that someone's willing to give you something for your product.

Ask indie hackers to roast your landing page

👤 Benjamin Katz of RM Flags:

Do everything I mentioned above, or send me a tweet at @ben_makes_stuff and I’ll tell you what I think about your landing page for free!

Ask yourself the right questions

👤 Adam Wright of JS Chimp:

Here's my idea validation checklist:

• Is there Google traffic for it?
• Is there high/low SEO competition for it?
• Has another business already validated the idea?
• Do I understand why it's working for that business?
• Are people asking questions about it on Quora?
• Is there momentum behind demand?
• Can I get customers to talk to me before I build it?
• Can I do a pre-sale before I build it?
• Are there Reddit/Facebook communities with daily posts about this topic?
• Are there existing services/software I can leverage?
• Is there an opportunity to arbitrage services or features?
• Am I willing to spend 3 years on this if it doesn't immediately take off?
• If the initial idea fails, can I pivot the idea (or would I even want to)?
• Can I talk about this enough if I need to do a podcast/start a YouTube channel?
• Could I build this in a weekend or a day?
• Could I reduce the MVP to a Google Sheet?
• Will someone pay me $30 to buy this tomorrow?
• Are there easy/cheap/free ways to capture customers before I start paying for acquisition?
• What are the reasons why I'm a fit to solve this problem?
• Is this scalable as a solo venture or will I need to hire a team?
• Can I promote a landing page or Google Form to test demand?
• Have I "mom tested" the idea?
• Who tried this and failed?

Spare the expense

👤 John Doherty of EditorNinja:

What you should NOT do is invest a bunch of time and money into building a product before trying to find buyers for it.

Never stop validating

👤 John Doherty of EditorNinja:

You should always continue validating your idea. Product Market Fit (PMF) is a constantly shifting target, so we should always validate that our product/model/etc is continuing to fit the market. As you try new things or roll out new features, you should constantly validate that they meet the need.

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