Thread by @SCHM7DT

THREAD: How to VALIDATE ideas

Before you start a business you need to figure out if your idea is actually good or not

This is the first and most crucial step in any business

Here’s how to do it ↓

Validating ideas = determining if anyone actually wants what you’re trying to sell (before spending months building out the entire business)

Think of it as a demand test

The goal is to get the most basic bare bones version of your idea in front of people who might want or need it…

In the LEAST amount of time, and while spending the LEAST amount of money…

So you can see if anyone is actually willing to buy it

The way you do this depends on the idea, but the principles are the same

You need 3 main things:

1. An offer
2. A market to sell it to
3. A way to get your offer in front of that market

Let’s take e-commerce for example…

Say you have an idea for a product you want to sell, a dog anxiety vest


How do you validate it?

You start by nailing down the 3 basic things above

1. The offer (dog anxiety vest)
2. The market (dog owners with anxious dogs)
3. The way to get this offer in front of people (Facebook ads)

You go on AliExpress, find a listing for the dog anxiety vest

Then build a basic store on Shopify, import the product using the Oberlo app, and make a product page offering said dog anxiety vest for sale

Next you go to Facebook ads, make an ad or two to the best of your ability, target dog owners of some sort, and start sending traffic to your Shopify store

Let ads run for a few days (spending somewhere between ~$100-$300 total) and see the results

Getting sales and profitable? Idea is validated (at least initially)

Getting sales but not profitable? Or not getting any sales at all? Not validated yet

You can either fulfill the orders via AliExpress or you could just refund all your customers and send them a note saying you’re out of stock, either works

And basically you repeat this process over and over again until you find something that works…

And only once your idea’s been validated do you build the actual business behind it (logo, inventory, social media, etc.)

Point is, by running an initial demand test you get to see if your idea is good or not BEFORE spending a bunch of time and money building the entire business…

Which significantly reduces your risk and increases your chances of success

This works for everything (not just e-commerce)

And the most important part is that you’re putting an offer out into the world, showing it to people, and seeing the real world results

Ultimately that’s what business is, because without that you don’t have a business

You just have an idea

Hope that helps!

Pce

- Nate