The Dream Link to heading

You’ve worked in the field for 10 or 20 years, you’ve lived the problem first-hand, you’ve got this idea for a product. You know you won’t be a millionaire overnight, but your early revenues from the product will guide what features you build next. You just need to find “someone who knows tech”, and you’re ready to start building…

…is a fantasy we tell ourselves as founders.

A Conversation Link to heading

I love the part of my job where almost every week this year I’ve been the “someone who knows tech” referral for at least one aspiring founder. They’re typically asking for guidance on “how do I vet a tech co-founder?”, “should I use a dev agency?”, or “I’ve been quoted $100k, does that seem right?”.

I then test the conversation via a different path: How many of your hypothesised customers have you spoken to? Typically it’s “Between 3 and 7 friends/family/colleagues”.

Many Conversations Link to heading

At this point I gently walk them back from the edge of the cliff that is a gamble on building software product. The rest of this conversation then goes on autopilot:

  1. Write 📃 the problem, solution, and customer
  2. Share 🗣 it with 10 potential customers
  3. Record 🎙 the feedback you collect
  4. Change 🚼 the problem, solution, and customer using the feedback

How? Link to heading

I’ve skipped over an ocean as though it were a puddle, but if you’re new to this, have a read of The Lean Startup then clone my Lean Canvas template to get you started. If you want more of a hand here, reach out

Magic Words Link to heading

Done that? Good. Now Repeat Steps 2 through 4 until at Step 2 at least half of the 10 people you speak to volunteer the magic words: “Can you tell me when this launches? I’d like to use it!”. It’ll be tempting to lead them to the answer, for it to be real they’ve got to volunteer it!

I’ll do another post on how you conduct pricing validation at this stage of the journey, but in the meantime this Forbes article does a good enough job of walking you through how to use the Van Westendorp Pricing Model

Onwards with The Dream Link to heading

NOW you’ll get value from a conversation with me about building your MVP and conquering the world 😁