Validate Your Ideas

I hear a lot of ideas, a lot of them. Whether it’s reading applications for Hatch, the pitches at Start Norfolk or on The Pitch, I’ve heard hundreds this year alone. A lot of them are just that, ideas, and I find it crazy to think that people think they may have “The Next Big Thing” when they haven’t tested it out yet.

I’ve been taking the AppSumo Wantreprenuer class on Making Your First Dollar and it has me validating ideas left and right. One of the pitches recently on The Pitch, which is a sounding board for those with ideas, was called Yearbook, which allows people to look at other high schools yearbooks online.

I decided to try and validate this person’s idea, through craigslist, my high schools Facebook page and a random yearbook site I found through a google search.

I made a youtube link of how I did it showing that it doesn’t take long(less than 12 minutes), with the step by step process.

What was the scariest thing? Saying hello to those from high school from 11 years ago (Hello Again!).

One classmate said great idea and a few others liked the post. Is that enough validation to build? What number of people do you need before you build?

When looking back at what has been the biggest obstacle in the past few years in Norfolk, the one thing that keeps me up at night is people building on assumptions. It’s why we don’t do business plans at Hatch, plans are just that and they change seconds after you think them.

Validate people, before you lose a lot more than you need to!

My girlfriend has an idea to create a Hallmark for Animals on special occasions, whether it’s their birthday, they are sick or maybe just got out of surgery. I like the idea, but I had no idea if people were looking to give gifts to their friends or families animals so I decided to test it out.

I created an ad on CraigsList to see if the idea was crazy.

Spelled out what the service was and the pricing.

Looking for a gift for your friend or families animal? Is their animal under the weather, just went through surgery or is it their birthday?
Buy them a Box of Goodies, included in this package is:
Gourmet Dog Treat
Human Cupcake(hey, the owner likes treats too!)
Dog Beer
Human Wine(red or white?)
Occasion Card
All this will be delivered to the location you request within 24 hours. For urgent delivery add $10.
Items may differ than those in images

After 24 hours, no dice.(I’ll wait a week on this one) There could be 3 reasons for this.

1. No one is looking… in Norfolk (excuse)

2. Price is too high

3. I suck at ads

I’m not finished validating, so I went to a dog park in Norfolk’s facebook page and posted the ad. I’m going to do two other tweaks (lower price and city) too see if this changes anything.

Both posts took me less than an hour total. Wouldn’t you rather spend an hour validating than losing money and time?