The Most Important Validation Signal No One Talks About

I'm sure we've read about all the different and critical forms of validation that exist in the market

The most famous ones being:

1. Commitment of Money
   People are willing to part with hard-earned cash to buy a product you've built

2. Commitment of Time
   People are willing to do interviews and jump on calls to give you feedback

3. Commitment of Reputation
   People are willing to put their reputation on the line by becoming an affiliate or sharing it with their team and colleagues

However, by far the most "obvious" form of validation no one talks about too often and should be the most important, is Ease of Growth

If you've done any dropshipping / eCommerce you know this because a good product beats shit marketing on the paid ad side at least.

In fact, the validation used by most eComm people is the sustainability of CAC to ROAS to LTV measurement

The "cheaper" it is to sell a product the more validation the eComm world sees it.

And I'm here to tell you its the same damn thing even in SaaS

A good product is easy to sell, things click and people will want more than what you can offer

Suhail spoke about this in his YC Stanford video "We knew we had validation for Mixpanel because when we would do b2b in-person calls with prospects I would mention one feature and the client would make calls in front of me to his team saying they needed to quickly get ready for integration for this amazing feature...when the feature wasn't even ready"

The pull effect you get from a good product is VERY distinctive.

More customers show up for calls, more customers will message you at 1AM asking "hey you said you'll launch this feature a couple hours ago is it live yet". It'll be easier to build a community

Now by no means AT ALL am I saying ideas > execution, never ever. However, if you solve a big enough problem it will be significantly easier to sell a solution to the problem

Why do I say this? I've had both "unsuccessful stints" as well as a few that worked well

The distinctive factor has each time has been "the ease of growth" which has been the case for SmartWriter