3 ways to validate your startup idea without building a damn thing

In my last post, I shared my ideas about MVE’s: Minimum Viable Experiments. To recap, an MVE is a type of experiment that should…

• require minimal set-up,
• require minimal cost and materials, and
• ultimately help you determine whether you’ve got a startup idea worth pursuing, or not.

MVEs are great because they take the focus away from building and shift it towards validating. In fact, I think that the longer you can pursue your startup idea without building anything, the more open you’ll be to new ideas, and the more successful you’ll be when it comes time to execute.

So to help you embrace the validate first, build later mantra, I’ve created a list of three ways to test your startup idea without building a damn thing:

1. Fake door testing

A “fake door” test is simply a marketing page, ad, button, or other asset that advertises a product that has yet to be made. Fake door testing (or “ghetto testing”) is the go-to idea testing method of Zynga games. They create a 5 word summary of a new game they are considering, make a few ads, and put it up on various high-trafficked websites. They only build games that attract a certain number of “clicks” on their fake door.