Why don't founders validate properly? Or, why didn't *you* validate properly
I'm interested in what stops people skipping this vital step, especially when "no market need" is often cited as the top reason for startup failure. Surely validation mitigates a huge amount of this risk, so why do startups avoid it so often?
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There are a couple of reasons:
- It's uncomfortable. You are typically so excited about an idea that the thought of learning it doesn't have mass appeal is uncomfortable. People avoid uncomfortable realities. In other words: "I KNOW this is a great idea, I just KNOW it. If I don't build this NOW, someone else will beat me to it. I don't have time to waste talking to customers. If Henry Ford would've asked people what they wanted, they would've said a faster horse."
- People are proud, if they're going to show a product to their friends/family, they want to make sure it's well-built, fully featured, etc... The idea of "just getting something in front of customers that works" aka an MVP is embarrassing for some people. They think that if they release a "amateur" product, people will think they're amateur.
- People are irrational. They think that their idea is so special that asking people about it, getting validation, etc... could make them a target for idea theft. So they isolate themselves, validate with a few close friends (who are unlikely to give honest, brutal feedback) and build a huge product so that when they launch, they'll be far ahead of their competitors. The problem with this is that you'll likely build the wrong product the first time around.
- It's uncomfortable. You are typically so excited about an idea that the thought of learning it doesn't have mass appeal is uncomfortable. People avoid uncomfortable realities. In other words: "I KNOW this is a great idea, I just KNOW it. If I don't build this NOW, someone else will beat me to it. I don't have time to waste talking to customers. If Henry Ford would've asked people what they wanted, they would've said a faster horse."
- People are proud, if they're going to show a product to their friends/family, they want to make sure it's well-built, fully featured, etc... The idea of "just getting something in front of customers that works" aka an MVP is embarrassing for some people. They think that if they release a "amateur" product, people will think they're amateur.
- People are irrational. They think that their idea is so special that asking people about it, getting validation, etc... could make them a target for idea theft. So they isolate themselves, validate with a few close friends (who are unlikely to give honest, brutal feedback) and build a huge product so that when they launch, they'll be far ahead of their competitors. The problem with this is that you'll likely build the wrong product the first time around.
These are spot on - having fallen victim to all three.
I'll add that, for the tech minded, building is easy in comparison to validating. Just fire up the IDE, write code, and debug. Validating involves putting your idea (and by association, yourself) out there for the world to potentially ridicule... and then trying to convince people to open up their wallets to your idea. Not so easy.
I'll add that, for the tech minded, building is easy in comparison to validating. Just fire up the IDE, write code, and debug. Validating involves putting your idea (and by association, yourself) out there for the world to potentially ridicule... and then trying to convince people to open up their wallets to your idea. Not so easy.
Yes, agree that these are all part of the problem, as far as I see it!
because I can't find enough potential customers in my direct network. reaching out to strangers is also difficult without trust. the cold email response rate is 2%. For example, I built a new blogging platform (https://epiphany.pub), I couldn't find many bloggers in my direct network. I start a project to fulfill my needs, but I don't know where to find enough other mes.
also it is a chicken-egg dilemma. It's hard to validate without a prototype. (I know the dropbox story, it won't work in all cases.) sometimes, a product is trying to improve user experience, not about an innovative idea. I think that user experience has to be felt.
I also feel that customer interviews might be misleading sometimes. I remember when iphone was launched first time, it was way pricier than other cell phones. A lot of people were nay sayers including myself.
also it is a chicken-egg dilemma. It's hard to validate without a prototype. (I know the dropbox story, it won't work in all cases.) sometimes, a product is trying to improve user experience, not about an innovative idea. I think that user experience has to be felt.
I also feel that customer interviews might be misleading sometimes. I remember when iphone was launched first time, it was way pricier than other cell phones. A lot of people were nay sayers including myself.
I think customer interviews are definitely part of the mix, if done right (have you read The Mom Test?), but they don't give you 100% clarity. Perhaps just a more solid hypothesis...
I would argue that "no market need" is not one of the biggest reasons why startups/companies fail. Most startups fail because they fail to execute specifically within their market and/or find their product/market fit. So in other words, market is definitely there but there is failure in execution and inability to capture a decent market share. They try to sell to everyone which basically becomes you sell to no one (unless you are Amazon but that takes 20+ years of capital to survive and is outlier)
I suppose you can speak about it in a few different ways. Whether that's Product Market Fit, or No Market Need. I was going on this research - https://www.forbes.com/sites/deniselyohn/2019/05/01/why-star...
validation is noisy, and can be just as hard as building the the thing.
If you put up a landing page and people immediately start buying, great. What happens if you get no conversions? Is it the product, market, your marketing? How much effort/money do you put in before you say it's a negative result?
marketing is an adverse learning environment, and beginners typically misattribute the cause of failure. It's difficult to learn incrementally via trial and error, unlike coding.
the best way to mitigate "no market need" is to solve an existing pain (that the market is already buying) rather than inventing new ones.
If you put up a landing page and people immediately start buying, great. What happens if you get no conversions? Is it the product, market, your marketing? How much effort/money do you put in before you say it's a negative result?
marketing is an adverse learning environment, and beginners typically misattribute the cause of failure. It's difficult to learn incrementally via trial and error, unlike coding.
the best way to mitigate "no market need" is to solve an existing pain (that the market is already buying) rather than inventing new ones.
I think there may be an overallocation of failure reasons to "no market need". If the founder started working on something to solve a problem of their own have seen at least a few other users use the product successfully but are not getting enough traction, there's a bunch of stuff to figure out, but success may be a long way off.
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Time, perhaps? You can find a handful of customers to "validate" a product relatively easily (at least enough to justify it in an early Powerpoint deck.) This doesn't mean there's enough customer demand for a real business.
So you think it might be a resource thing? If they had more time/money/runway they would possibly do a better job?
Agreed that it's easy to think you've validated by getting a handful of people to nod enthusiastically at a Powerpoint!
Agreed that it's easy to think you've validated by getting a handful of people to nod enthusiastically at a Powerpoint!
Yes, resource constraints, and overly optimistic, often delusional, thinking. (The idea is so great, it doesn't need validation... etc.)
Are there any products from “successful “ startups that were fully validated before being developed/taken to market? Focusing too much on validation can swap risk of not having market fit with the risk of being late to market. You are not the only one working on an idea.