How I Validated My Idea in 2 Weeks

Helping founders save time and money with validation at startupbuilder.mba
After growthseeker.io failure as a community, I've decided right away to solve the problem of "validation" and to accelerate the path to startup success in another way. So I've validated a value proposition to help founders validate business ideas (yes, loop mode ON).
This short post summarizes how I made it with the support of Notion.so. And I hope it helps others with their validation process. The process is based on 5 key validation areas, and I validated them all before building the product (I had a prototype in coda.io that took 3/4 hours of work).
1. Validated audience / Market size
- Defined 4 segments, needs and calculated that the SOM is bigh enough for my goal.
- Defined priorities.
- Defined type of audience
- Scouted audience looking ant IndieHackers valdiation group
2. Validated The Problem
- Coached +100 entrepreneurs
- Defined Jobs, Pains, Outcomes
- Interviewed 4 angel investors, 2 incubators and 1 industry expert. 100% of them confirmed the problem during the interviews.
3. Validated The Value proposition
- Built it based on the researched Jobs, Pains and Outcomes
- Scouted the interest with a Twitter+Linkedin post. Then tracked the access and there were hundreds of clicks more than the people I've shared the prototype with. I concluded that the link was shared by Word Of Mouth.
- 90% of closing a deal with a University to buy the product for a monthly flat-fee rate for their studens.
- 1 incubator outreached me interested in using the product for their founders
- 800$ of sales in <3 weeks WITHOUT product
4. Validated The GoToMarket
- Made $800 in direct sales via channels that I can easily reach
- Universities are interested in the product for their students (channel)
- Incubators are interested in the product for their founders (channel)
- Notion templates marketplaces (channel) published the product
- 2 digital product makers interested in selling a blundled product with startupbuilder.mba
5. Validated The Willingness To Pay
- Sold $800 in <3 weeks WITHOUT product
- Increased price to 49$ and sold out the tier (again, without a product).
- There are early-adopters willing to pay that price.
- Audience is ready to buy (early-adopters so far) and have the minium budget to make the product viable.
I did all of it in 2 weeks (not including the 100 research talks) following my validation checklist with 27 steps (checks) divided into 5 validation blocks. As the KPIs were green, I've built and launched the product (based in Notion.so) to help others validate their ideas before losing too much time and money https://startupbuilder.mba.
AMA about validation and decision making new ideas. Happy to help!
Previously published on IndieHackers
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