Got a Startup Idea? The next step – Validate it Now!
In this digital world, you can validate your ideas online. Why do your market research offline by validating it by going out in the sun when you can find customers right in front of your mobile screen?
You got a startup idea? Great. Currently, all you wish to try and do is to figure out if it’s worth investing untold hours and years of stress to create it a reality.
At present, the ‘start-up’ sentiment in India is so high that everybody needs to venture into it and become a wealthy person overnight. They think their idea is best and unique. However, only a few validate their concepts before beginning a company. Let us connect on this basic attribute of any startup company. Multiple experts have written about this, and recently when I read a book called Entrepreneurship Simplified by serial entrepreneur Ashok Soota, he explicitly mentioned the importance of idea validation platform.
Business validation is a must in sight of the inherent risks related to entering the market while not even knowing if you have got it right from the start
You could build a minimum viable product (MVP) and broadcast it out into the world to collect feedback, as many startup gurus recommend. But perhaps there’s a less complicated initial check you must do to visualize if your plan deserves even this level of effort.
You might have a world-beating product, which developed out of the best research and development lab, but it could still fail in the market! It is not because you didn’t make the business model right, but because you did not validate your business idea. Startup Validation is as vital as the product itself. In the rush to bring the product to market simply supported strengths and beliefs, entrepreneurs often tend to ignore validation of the product or the entire business itself.
If you have come up with a brilliant idea to develop a product or offer a service, you must discuss it with your friends, colleagues and peers for honest feedback. On most occasions, you may encounter negative or biased feedback. However, it shouldn’t deter you from pursuing your dream. This is, in fact, a decent beginning – because you’ll be determined to beat the challenge and explain to them better following time while realigning your methods. You can additionally verify the key business questions and reach out to potential customers; their feedback can assist you to build better business choices. This step will assist you to build key assumptions for your plan. The experience of an entrepreneur to call out these key assumptions, and then get early market data to refute or validate these assumptions is critical before he/she starts to invest in the idea heavily.
A standard market-research might not always work, as relevant knowledge for your business might not be available. Reaching out to existing entrepreneurs within the same industry/ segment of interest will facilitate a higher understanding of the market. Experts in your field will help to look at it from all different perspective and tell you about what is right and what is wrong.
Here are many different questions that you, the entrepreneur, have to ask yourself regarding validation. First – is the idea scalable? To determine scalability, it’s vital to get a decent understanding of the market size. Quite typically, total market data is available through secondary sources. However, this can be very misleading. What is required is a correct assessment of the available marketplace for your venture. This may need market segmentation in multiple ways, by classifying customers and seeing which proportion has a need for your offering.
There is an online idea validation platform that provides you with verified experts and professionals in the area of your interest. In this platform, all you need to do is prepare a set of questionnaire that the app provides you with. The next step is to select the targetted audience you would like to ask questions to. These people will instantly receive a notification and they can provide you with the feedback you needed.
At its core, market validation is the process of finding out – before you spend money and time on the business – whether the market has any space for your idea. If there is an area, if your idea is solving a real problem, and is neither ahead of its time nor behind, then is it worth the time, effort, and heartburn that are all natural components of the entrepreneurial journey.
On the facade, market validation may seem like a complex, expensive affair. But in reality, it is simply breaking down an idea into comprehensible components and distilling the work that will go behind it and the potential impact it will have. That is why specialists count market validation as a very important beginning of any entrepreneurial journey.
