Validating Your Startup Idea

[djbaxter]

How to Validate Your Startup Idea
by Sreeram Sreenivasan, noobpreneur.com
August 30, 2017

Validating your startup idea is perhaps the most important step in your entrepreneurial journey. Many founders take the leap without doing the required due diligence and pay dearly later.

Here are 12 questions you need to ask yourself before you start building your startup.

1. What problem is your startup solving?
2. Has anyone else attempted it before? Why did they succeed or fail?
3. What are the benefits of using your product or service?
4. Are there any similar services or products available?
5. Who are your potential competitors?
6. What are the features of your product or service?
7. Does your startup have any competitive advantage?
8. Do you have the required resources to launch your business?
9. Who is your potential customer?
10. What is the market size for your product or service?
11. How soon can you break even, or start creating profit?
12. Can you get prospects, or even paying customers before launch?

Takeaway
Spending a few days, or even a few weeks, on these questions will help you get a clear idea of how to proceed, and uncover any deal breakers early on. Also, it’s a good idea to reach out to your family, friends and colleagues, if you need advice about some of these questions.

Set yourself a time limit, like say 2-3 months, to research these questions. If your idea is able to pass these tests, then you should definitely go for it. If you run out of time, see if you can make your idea work with a few modifications. Else, be patient and keep thinking – your next idea might do the trick.

Read more...

 

[Daniel Krage]

How would you get customers interested in your product without even having a product or prototype?

 

[djbaxter]

How would you get customers interested in your product without even having a product or prototype?

This article is addressing things you need to do before you even have a prototype, i.e., determining whether there's a potential market.

If you're referring to #12, "Can you get prospects, or even paying customers before launch?", even that is about potential paying customers interested in the concept of the product.

If you go to the original article, the content under that heading is this:

It’s great if you have a waiting list of people ready to sign up for your product or service when it launches. The easiest way to do that is to simply create a landing page with a signup form that allows you to collect email addresses of interested people. In fact, I highly recommend creating a landing page before you even begin building your product or service. Start working on your idea only if you get at least a minimum number of sign ups, like say, 25 people. That’s a good indication that your idea is worth pursuing.

In fact, you can even add a pre-order form on your landing page. If people are willing to pay for your product or service even before it is launched, then it means you are truly onto something.

 

[Daniel Jameson]

some more essential Questions you should ask yourself before validating your startup idea

• state the problem
• discover your market
• study your competitors
• conduct a survey