Validation:
if you build it, will they come?

You’ve had a brilliant idea for an app, and you are eager to build it. What’s the first thing you should do?

Well it’s not talk to a typical software development agency, who will most likely try to sell you a project to build your product.

Creating software is an expensive business. Before you invest in creation of software you should do some research to find out if you were to turn your idea into reality, would there be users who would want to use your software, and (depending on the business model) pay for it?

This process is called ‘validation’, and we advise all our customers to go through this process before commencing the build of any software.

Many founders get so excited by their idea they assume that other people will too, and then they invest significantly in their product, only to find later they have built something no one needs, and no one cares about.

Validation is the best way to stop that happening.

What exactly your validation process looks like depends on who you are, and what business you are trying to create, but what you want to determine is that if the software were to exist, you’d have enough customers to make the investment in the software build worthwhile (the definition of which will be based on the business you are trying to create).

Validation approaches

Validation from friends and family is rarely reliable. It will be biased – they will likely tell you things you want to hear – and unless they have deep domain knowledge in the industry or sector you are looking to create a business in, they are unlikely to be able to give you the detailed feedback you need.

Depending on who you are, and what business you are trying to create, your approach to validation may be different. Here are some examples:

Validation from industry

If you already work in the industry you are seeking to create a product for, this is often the easiest route to validating your idea. If the idea solves a specific problem or pain-point in your industry this is even better.

In this case validation can be as simple as sense-checking with industry contacts that the problem you are looking to solve is shared throughout the industry in sufficient volumes, and they would be prepared to pay for software that would solve the problem.

The founders of Blossom Educational, a nursery software startup we worked with, fit this category. They had deep domain knowledge of the childcare industry, and had a clear problem they were looking to solve, the automation of the huge amounts of bureaucracy.

Customer surveys

If you want to be a founder because you hate your day job, and you want to do something totally different, then your idea might be nothing to do with the industry you work in.

In this case you need to find potential customers you can survey, to find out if your idea is of any interest to them.

This process is often called ‘customer development’, and the most important feature of it is that you must talk to real customers about your ideas, to ensure a market really exists for your product.

Whether this is in person, through social media, or more traditional means (e.g. cold calling), it is important that you ensure there is a market for your product by finding the potential customers before you create it.

Create a landing page

Some ideas, especially those where the business model would only work at high volumes, are difficult to find enough potential customers for in real life. For these ideas you can take the landing page approach.

The idea with the landing page is that you create a very simple web site of 1-3 pages, describing your product. From this page you try to ‘convert’ visitors to add their name to your email list. You then try to drive traffic to that page via Adwords, Facebook ads, or other (typical paid) means, and see to what extent people are interested enough in your idea to sign up to a mailing list.

This is doubly useful:

1. Any sign ups become potential customers you can use for customer development as you further develop your idea, and a mailing list to market to when you launch your product.
2. If you can’t get people to sign up to a mailing list with how you sell your idea, you will be unable to get them to part with their money when the real product exists.

Joel Gascoigne, the founder of Buffer, has an excellent blog post that goes into more detail about the landing page approach.

Whichever approach you take to validation, the best situation to be in is to find potential customers who are eager to pay you for access to your product, and cannot wait for it to exist. If you find significant numbers of these, at a price point that will fund the creation of the software, you have definitely validated your idea.

Have an idea you want to discuss? Or have you validated your idea, and now you want to build your product? Book a free consultation with us for your project, and we’ll help you take it to the next level.