Great article, thanks, Mitch! I would start even before developing an MVP: Time is your most valuable resource — don’t spend any more than necessary on something that you don’t even know is actually viable.

However, you need to find out if potential customers are excited about your idea — a “yeah, that sounds cool” from your friends & family doesn’t cut it. To find out whether your target audience is interested in your idea, I suggest the following validation process:

• Write down a) the problem you’re trying to solve and b) your solution. Don’t skip this step! A lot of ideas may sound awesome while they’re in your head, but as soon as you transform it from an abstract concept into 2–3 sentences, you may find yourself asking “What was I thinking?!”.
• Create a questionnaire based on your idea. Make sure to ask questions relevant to judging whether your idea might take off, such as “How often are you facing this problem” rather than “Have you ever faced this problem”. Ask what price your target audience would judge as “too expensive” rather than what they are willing to pay for the product — everyone wants to pay as little as possible! Use a tool like SurveyMonkey or Typeform to put your survey online.
• Identify people in your target audience. This is hard. Don’t simply email the survey link to your friends — studies have shown that because of something called “Interviewer bias”, your friends will rate your ideas more favorably than the public. Also, it’s highly likely that your friends aren’t actually in your target audience — that’s a big no-no!

There are platforms that take care of these crucial last two steps for you, such as IdeaCheck.io. They will generate a questionnaire from your idea and use a panel of respondents to gather direct feedback from your actual target audience. Another approach is to print out business cards with your survey link and hand them out to people on the subway, for example — tedious, but free :)!