How to validate your business idea before investing time and money

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And now, let's dive in:

How to validate your business idea before investing time and money

Are you looking to start your own business, but unsure whether it will be successful? You’re not alone. 

One of the most painful problems faced by those who want to start a business is validating their idea and finding out if there's demand. 

According to research, 7 out of 10 businesses will fail. And the number 1 cause is not being able to deliver real value.

Translation: It seemed like a good idea, but no one is willing to pay for it.

How to avoid this?

Focus on validating your idea before starting the business. The earlier you can do it, the better.

Making sure your idea has the potential to make money before launching it, can be the difference between success and failure. 

To give you a better idea of how you can apply this to your current and future business ideas, we’re going to analyze how real founders validated their businesses to increase their chances of success (therefore avoiding wasting a ton of time and money).

Talk to people

I know, super disruptive, right?

Well, turns out this simple thing can save you a lot of trouble and, at the same time, provide tons of valuable feedback.

And lots of business starters simply skip it and do it after they’ve launched.

The benefits of doing this are countless:

- Building a list of people who are potentially interested in buying from you

- Gathering feedback to build a better solution that actually solves a problem

- Making it easier to sell to future customers

Leverage your network and connections

After speaking to dozens of target users across industries to validate their hypothesis, these founders realized there was one pain every single one mentioned. That basic strategy was key to building their $650K ARR business.

Send a survey

If you’re targeting a broader B2C audience, sending a survey to as many people as possible might be the way to go. Collecting feedback from over 1,000 people validated there was enough demand for their food business that today makes almost $500K/year.

Online communities 

Many times people who fall into the same category gather in online communities. That’s a perfect place to hang out, listen and participate.

Please don’t join just to spam non-stop.

Receiving favorable answers after asking people on Reddit if they were actually experiencing a problem was the confidence boost that kickstarted this $8K/month tool.

George also relied on the feedback from an online community to build his $180K/year solution for job seekers.

Use Google

But really use it.

Beyond its search tool, others such as Google Trends and Adwords Keyword Planner can help you identify what people are searching for and if the number is growing. And how much it’d cost you to capture those users with ads.

And that’s exactly what Jack did.

Sure there were many “compatible coffee pods” brands. But he found many people complaining and demanding other flavours that weren’t available.

With those insights, he and his founder were able to start a business that sold millions of units and generates $252K per year.

Smaller is better

Your idea is big. Super big. It requires a lot of resources to get started. And because you don’t have them, that’s stopping you from starting.

Here’s when the concept of an MVP (minimum viable product) comes in handy. The idea is that people will actually get value, even if you’re not offering your ideal-unlimited-resources product or service.

Instead of investing a ton of money in a store, storage, inventory, etc., these founders trimmed down their idea and built a subscription box to check if the concept had traction. All while working full-time jobs.

That small test led to starting a business that generates $1.8M per year in sales.

The whole mindset behind this approach is to get out there. Don’t be afraid to show an ugly website or not having a proper storefront. Talk to people, test stuff at a small scale, and minimize the risk. The important thing is to just get started.

Want to discover how thousands of founders launched their projects on a budget?

And discover exactly how founders went from idea to thousands of customers.

All the systems and strategies to build a successful business can be learned, so why not learn them from others who have already done it?

You can't find these insights anywhere else, unlock full access now and start building your dream business.

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