Hello Not (❌) MJ's scouters! :)

Yesterday, I've taken my third lessons in the course of "How to build a startup". As the course is heavily based on "Lean-startup" method, it give a lot of emphasize on the validation process. In addition, I saw two live examples that inspire me on how to perform a perfect validation for startup company. Before, I'll will micro-analyze them, let me explain first why validation is that important.

Why is validation is important in startups?

Validation is the most important thing in a startup. A best practice might even be to validate as much as possible before actually building anything at all. That’s because validation is about asking the right questions, and building without validation is about answering the wrong questions.

The point of doing validation is to feel confident that your startup idea is worth pursuing. The specifics will depend on your particular startup; for example, if you are building a social networking site then you might want to know that there are enough potential users out there and you can attract enough of them to make a living.

What is validation?

The validation process in a startup can simply be described as using data and evidence to back up your assumptions. It's an iterative cycle where you implement an idea, measure its performance, get feedback from the market, and then make changes to your model. You repeat this cycle until you have what you believe is a validated model. This approach can take anywhere between 3-6 months depending on how much time and resources your company has at its disposal.

Types of validation ? (Market, Tech, Business model, etc)

Validation of market is the process by which corporations test whether a marketing campaign or product has achieved its targeted objectives and generate results. In contrast to "marketing research," which is conducted during the planning stage, validation of market provides evidence objectively based on both quantitative data (e.g. surveys, performance data and focus groups) and qualitative data (e.g. interviews, focus groups, etc.).

Validation of Tech is the process of verifying a product’s design, development and operation to ensure that this product can be successfully launched in the market and that it has been applied as stated in the proposal.

Another (not less important) aspect of the startups is to validate the business model,in order to make it suitable to maximize revenues.

Examples of validations that caught my eyes lately

Those examples are:

1 - The famous DALL-E 2.¹

• This is an extraordinary example. As enthusiast about the tech, I didn't even figured out that they were validation of the productization of their product later on, since I was extremely focused on the possibilities and examples. 2- An Augment Reality (AR) application for planning REAL things in physical world while getting the BOM of that planning² that .
• I saw it on Reddit-VR page and got very excited from the number of likes, comments they got. Furthermore, by the number of people who wanted to try this product and wrote how this is a product that solve real problem, and why they will use it, as opposite to other VR/AR-stuffs.

Why those are great examples?

• Gather ideas from the data the users usage. (e.g Dalle-2 gather a lot of text-requested for types of, they can analyze and segments them while putting efforts in the most common use-cases).
• Beta-testing on small size. while putting the VR-application, there are many excited early-adopters that volunteered to test the application (with No-cost to developer, while also increasing the Product-Market fit).
• Build a community ,excitement and hype around their project. By building a waitlist you can on-board them into your newsletter, and actucally increase your marketing efforts of this and other products.

How can I tell that they passed the validation test?

1. Many variation of engagement types (likes, comments, etc).
2. A lot of sharing and being viral.
3. Many sign-ups to the upcoming updates/ newsletters.

But the most important one: 5. A Paying customer (It's crucial due the Niceness Gap³)

Now it's my turn.

I'm making with my brother 👋, a "startup" prototype. It is an educational oriented and intent to show a complete walk-thoroughs of (my approach) of "How to build a startup". The prototype will include technical perspective (building the product - as a SaaS) and business perspective (marketing, sales, etc).It is a bit provocative by purpose and called: "Reading in coffee for startups". So, in order to put it into a test I made a Landing Page that ask for users to sign up (for newsletter and even perform some pre-selling!).

Here is the Click & Value proposition:

Here is the Pricing validation:

Although, this is not necessary at that phase (of problem validation), I included a pricing validation. As you can see, I use several marketing techniques. First, I added three options, and pushing customers into track Number #2, which gives the most value for money. Second, I made it annual basis, in order to make cash upfront for my startup (and having a predictable income). third, I anchor the value of the product (with the crossed price), while also offer a discount in the price. Finally, I added a time-limited offer which push customers into buying.

How I applied this insight to my journey? #TakeAway

• Making a kanban-board to the process of validation.
• Building a mailing List to ask further questions and expand the validation process into other areas.
• Making a wait-list for my Captcha idea (I will explain in it next week)
• Build it with Feature-flag & A/B testing for making a statisitic validation process.
• Publish the website with all the capabilites before 12/8.

Is it possible to make a privacy-preserving validation process?

Due to the fact that in the landing page, I reveal the problem & solution that I'm developing, I'm going into a race against other builders to build the better process, I might want to keep it secret for a while before revealing it to the world.

• Making a privacy-preserving validation process.

Epilogue

As a developer/ entrepreneur for long time I work the opposite as the method above. I interested in Tech, and thoughts that somehow I can find a way to port it into a business case (since I was understanding a very narrow market). As I grew-up and going into more broader world, I founded that this technique is not the right way and I must first fall in love with the problem instead. Thus, this approach above is kinda save me from making a rookie mistakes.

Conclusion

In this post, I've walk through validation methods. First I explain why they important, then I analyze two example of working validation examples that I witness in the last days. Finally I show how I'm going to make a validation process in my

Disclaimer:

This paper done with the assitance of the following tools: Obsidian, ShortlyAI, Grammarly

Reference list: