Engineers love to build. Give us an idea, and we’ll have a working prototype by tomorrow. That energy is valuable — but it’s also expensive. Every hour spent building the wrong thing is an hour not spent building the right thing.
Validation Techniques
Here are approaches ranked from fastest to slowest (and cheapest to most expensive):
- The Mom Test interview. Talk to potential users about their current behavior, not your solution. Ask about specific past actions, not hypothetical future ones.
- Landing page test. Put up a page describing the solution. Measure signups or click-through on the CTA. No product needed.
- Concierge MVP. Do the thing manually for a few users. Learn what matters before automating.
- Wizard of Oz. Make it look automated but do the work behind the scenes. Validate willingness to pay before building the backend.
- Smoke test. Advertise a feature that doesn’t exist yet. Measure interest before building.
The cost of building the wrong thing isn’t just engineering time — it’s opportunity cost, team morale, and the time your competitors spend solving the real problem while you’re invested in the wrong one.
Signals That Validate
Real validation looks like:
- Money changing hands (strongest signal)
- Users volunteering to be early testers
- People describing the problem unprompted
- Users trying hacky workarounds for the problem today
- Consistent demand across multiple conversations
Anti-Patterns
- “My friends all say it’s a great idea” — they’re being polite
- “Nobody has built this yet” — maybe there’s a reason
- “I would use this” — you’re not the market
Validate demand, not opinions. Ship experiments, not assumptions.