How do you validate your ideas?
Getting your idea valid is one of the very crucial steps to building a successful product. How do you do this? (In the early stages)
- I wonder if people still find space to complete surveys(Truthfully)
- Maybe creative and evocative posts that stir discussions could help to get feedback.
What are your thoughts?
#ask-ih #fyi
I really liked The Mom Test by @robfitz. There is of course more to idea validation than interviews, but that part it will teach you well.
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll have a look.
Depends on what you want to validate, but definitely not surveys. People will tell you one thing and not follow through. Don't trust surveys.
I have heard the door dash story where they threw together a really cheap website with some menus and a phone number, and offered to deliver, to see if people wanted this service (and clearly did). This is the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQOC-qy-GDY Watch it, it is a really interesting story.
There are more ways of course. I will let others respond. I am no expert at this.
I disagree on this. I think surveys are incredibly powerful provided that you are asking the right questions to the right people.
Yes, it is definitely a skill. Like you said, you have to know how to ask the right questions.
The problem I have had with surveying people face-to-face, is people tend to tell me one thing and do another. When talking to someone, it seems to be difficult for people to just bluntly say they don't like the idea. They will find something nice to say regardless, no matter how bad the idea is, which then results in false sense of positive feedback. Using online surveys, we don't really get responses.
Can you give me some tips on how to run surveys successfully? Do you do surveys in person/online/other? Are your running qualitative or quantitative surveys? Really struggling with this; please share your tips!
Everything I know about surveys I got from the Mom Test, which from what I've seen around different communities seems to be the go-to guide on surveys and customer conversations. The main takeaway for me was that you can't really ask customers about their opinions on things, or what they think they would do given a certain situation (for example, a new product or feature coming out). You have to ask them what they're already doing and why. The example given in the book is that if you wanted to make a recipe app for iPads you might ask your mom whether or not she would use it. Of course she'll say yes. So you're not really validating anything. Instead, you should ask "have you ever downloaded an app for recipes?", "have you ever used the iPad in the kitchen?", etc. Highly recommend the book.
Good stuff, thanks for sharing! I will get this book.
Nice. Yea surveys feel a bit outdated now to me.
The door dash example you gave is a neat MVP. Thanks for sharing! I'll take a look.
Great question. Here's the series of steps that I typically go through:
I go to productvalidator.com (disclosure: I own this, but it's free, and I created it to really help myself)
I type in keywords or phrases about what I'm thinking of doing. I look at the results, and I'm looking for the following:
a) Are people talking about this online? If so, are there certain group types?
b) Are people willing to pay for this solution?
c) Does it completely rely on a third party platform that could shift its weight and kill me?
d) What is the cost of marketing to these people?
e) Do I want to spend the next 5-10 years helping these types of people?
f) Is there competition? Competition validates the market for me, I just have to be different (IE: more valuable) in some significant way to a segment of the audience.
From there, I engage in their groups, providing useful information (being helpful on the internet is vastly underrated), and eventually I ask for a favor. I ask my target audience directly what they're doing to solve a problem. I don't care at this point if they'll pay for it, I care more about how they're solving the problem.
I also sleep on the idea. If it still sounds great to me in a week, I know that it is probably a bit more than just a fly by night thing.
If I can find people paying a competitor, and I've found a differentiating factor in my offering, I'll engage directly with current users of that technology to find out if they'd switch over if I were to come out with my product. (This is usually in addition to step 3 so it's not just "me me me").
Neat Steps! https://productvalidator.com is awesome! I'll definitely be making use of it.
Point 2.c) is very crucial. That is why I am an advocate for controlling the entire product chain. Although, there are services like payments that should definitely be outsourced in this age. And the cost of switching to another provider should be minimal.
2.f) is the 10X Rule.
Thanks for your feedback.