How to Validate Your Startup | A Video Transcript
by Lauren Yeoman, Marketing & Comms Manager, and Katherine Barrow, CSO at Pixel Fusion
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Hi Everyone, my name is Katherine Barrow and today I thought I would talk a little bit about some really important ideas when it comes to your own startup.
At Pixel Fusion we work with a lot of startups at different stages, different levels of funding, and one of the things that we find time and time again is that people tend to forget how important it is to consider not just the desirability of your idea (so not just whether people are actually going to WANT the product that you’re creating), but whether it’s viable and whether it’s feasible as well.
People tend to forget how important it is to consider not just the desirability of your idea (so not just whether people are actually going to WANT the product that you’re creating) but whether it’s viable and whether it’s feasible as well
So what I thought I would talk about today was just a little bit more detail on those three different factors and what makes the combination of all three of those really critical to the success of your startup. The one that everybody focuses on at the beginning is desirability.
What we mean by desirability is “is this something that people are actually going to want to use?” so is it solving a problem — a real problem — that people actually have and if it is is it in a format or in a product that people are going to actually want to interact with on a day to day basis?
A lot of startups start there, because that’s where the idea comes from right? That’s where you have that sort of “Ah-ha!” moment where you are like “Wow! Ok, cool! I can really solve this problem that I am experiencing” or my friend or my family member is experiencing or that I’ve just seen in the world, and so that’s where that initial idea really comes from.
The problem that we see quite often is that people assume that if they can validate that this is a problem that people actually have, and it’s a product that people actually would like to use, then that’s it — they’ve got a really successful startup on their hands. And so the real problem is when you forget about the other two factors. You forget about feasibility which is “Is this actually technically possible?” “Can I make it happen?” and you forget about viability which is “Is this sustainable?” “Is it going to be profitable?” and “Is it defensible?” “Is somebody else going to jump in and eat my lunch at the last minute?”
Starting with desirability, what we often look at is something like a design sprint. We might use to assess whether you’ve identified the right problem, whether you’ve identified the people who are actually experiencing that problem, and whether you’ve solved it in a way that people want. Design sprints are great for answering those questions because we spend a lot of time going out and validating those ideas with real users and getting real feedback.
The second part of that though is looking at the feasibility — and this is where design sprint’s often just don’t work right — so what you might find when you go and do a design sprint is that you spend all five days figuring out whether it’s desirable and you don’t answer those really, really critical questions. Things like “does the technology actually exist that we need to be able to do this?”. For example, if you have a really great solution for, I don’t know…getting to Mars right, you think you’ve come up with a really great idea for this but have you actually validated that the technology exists? Are there going to be hidden unknown questions that you are not quite sure how to solve, or that we just don’t physically have solutions to yet.
The second part of it is also thinking about “ok we might have the technology but is it accessible?” “can I get that technology?” “is there a good supply of people out there who actually have the skills and are going to be accessible to me to help me solve this problem?” because that comes into feasibility as well.
What we like to do as part of our design sprints is actually identify those areas where technical feasibility is a question and do things like build a proof of concept. A proof of concept is great — you don’t need to spend a lot of time to really validate whether that thing is going to be possible or not, so for example you might build a proof of concept to see if you can integrate with a particular service or to see if you can build something in AI or VR that is going to work in a way you need it to work in order to support your solution.
And then finally, one of the most important factors of all is actually the viability. What we mean by viability is you’ve identified some things that people want, you’ve identified something that solve the problem and you have checked to see if that is actually feasible; so the technology exists. But is it something that people are going to pay for? is it something that is solving a big enough problem or an important enough problem that people are actually willing to hand over money to solve it? and have you identified a business model that surrounds that, so have you done your research into “is it going to be subscription based?” “is it going to be a one off payment?” and also understanding who it is that is going to be paying that.
So feasibility is one part of it but viability is ultimately where it comes down to “is this a viable business?” Because at the end of the day, you can solve a problem and you can build something really cool from a technological perspective, but if it’s not a viable business there’s kind of no point really. And so, I thought that would just be something really helpful to share for people who are starting out, who have maybe had that “Ah-ha!” moment and thought “Wow! I can really solve this problem!” is don’t forget about the feasibility AND the viability because it it’s the intersection of all those three things that’s really going to create a strong, viable sustainable startup and ultimately a successful business.
Watch the video here: https://medium.com/pixel-fusion/want-to-have-a-successful-startup-9323a8d015d8
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