Product Validation

Who this is for

Founders with a strong idea and no evidence — including, especially, ones who have already built a working version because building it was the fun part.

What you'll actually decide

What would actually count as evidence, and the cheapest test that produces it. You leave with a validation plan and a landing-page wireframe to run demand against.

What first-time founders get wrong here

Treating encouragement as validation. Friends saying it's a great idea, and even strangers saying they'd use it, are not signal — the only reliable tests cost the respondent something: money, an email address they check, or time on a calendar.

The first 10 questions

This is where the conversation starts. Each answer shapes what gets asked next.

1. 01What is the product idea in one sentence — what does it do and who is it for?
2. 02What problem does it solve, and how painful is that problem today for the people who have it?
3. 03Who exactly experiences this problem — not a demographic, but a specific type of person with a specific context?
4. 04What do people do today to solve this problem? What's wrong with the existing solutions?
5. 05What is your single biggest assumption — the thing that, if wrong, means the product doesn't work?
6. 06Have you talked to anyone who has this problem? What did you learn, and what surprised you?
7. 07What would someone need to believe to pay for this? What's the value they're buying?
8. 08What's the minimum you could build or show to test the core assumption — a landing page, a prototype, a concierge service?
9. 09How will you get the first 10 real people to try this? Be specific — channels, messages, access points.
10. 10What is the headline — the one sentence that tells a visitor exactly what this is and why it matters to them?

+ 6 more questions across discovery, validation, and the creative brief — each one adapting to what you've already said.

Related product design project types

• MVP ScopeDefine what your minimum viable product actually is — the smallest thing you can ship to test your core hypothesis with real customers.
• MVP Scope MatrixTurn your MVP Scope work into a shareable visual — a prioritized matrix plotting each feature by value vs. effort, so the right cuts to make before you start building are obvious.
• App BlueprintTurn your MVP feature list into the skeleton of your app: the key screens, what lives on each, and how users move between them — ready to hand to your AI coding tool.