🕵️‍♀️ How do you validate a startup idea?

Spend all of your effort going from 0 to 1 without building anything beyond a mock up (manual processes on the back end) until it's clear your user(s) will actually use it. YC would always remind us to figure out how to make 100 users extremely happy, then they will help you get your next wave of growth (promoters). That involves a lot of customer development (talk to users, study their actions). Think in terms of first principles, understand the foundational truths and don't just run off and build what they're asking for. Then there are growth hacking channels to experiment with. Iterate rapidly.

All of these are good options i think, but if possible, building a small MVP can also be a good way to get extra feedback.

My advice is to talk with people you don't know about your product idea (Reddit can be a great place for this), to hear what they have to say. Listening to their current frustrations / thoughts on your idea can help you avoid early mistakes or fix incorrect assumptions that you have to look further into.

"Idea validation should be done before any coding" Well it actually depends on your skill set: - I'm not a designer so making a landing page for testing takes me a lot of time. - On the other developing some datamining scripts, which return some excel file, takes me only few hours. So I usually test my idea by offering those excel file as a consulting service (that is how I tested QApop for a year). Outreaching influencer in our target market is a nice way to get feedback: - Check top influencer on Quora - check people active on relevant hastag on linkedin I would avoid asking friend, as they might give you some good feedbacks to please you. To validated the idea you want to get feedback from strangers. Indie Hacker & https://lunadio.party are nice place to ask for feedbacks.

Create a quality MVP without all core functions. Wait people to ask for them. Choose one and only one core function and build it, make it amazing and communicate until you find the right communication.

A pitch deck is also good as it forces you to explain your ideas in a short number of slides and of course you can use that to raise funds

If I need it myself, nothing like that exists and I would be willing to pay for it, I know it has its (maybe small, but real) market.

It's not about the idea, it's about the dream. Keep follow your dream

What to look out for when validating (1) Is the product able to meet the needs and wants of the market? (2) Is the startup idea technically feasible and financially viable? How to carry out validation (1) Primary Research - Go out and speak to as many people as possible about your idea. (2) Secondary Research - Validate the market and carry out competitor analysis. Post-Validation: Pivoting and the Feedback Loop Start building your initial prototypes and carry out validation on the product to test its technical feasibility.