The Minimum Viable Testing Process for Evaluating Startup Ideas

So many founders have a great idea but can’t figure out how to sell it. Second-time founders know that they shouldn’t even bother with an idea if it is not sell-able. Marketing risks force you to face the truth: Do you know enough about your market to know how to sell it and who will buy it?

If we were to try to test an entire idea, we would have to build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The problem with MVPs is right there in the name — “product.” MVPs offer the perfect excuse to skip assumption testing and start building your product instead. While you may intend for that initial MVP to be small in scope, it often shifts in definition... See more

A great business idea isn’t enough. You need to quickly and cheaply test your assumptions to establish whether your product meets the needs of a market and fills this niche well enough for people to pay for it. The early days of a startup should involve constraint testing, tweaking and learning with the ultimate goal of discovering product/market f

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I noticed four distinct paths to effectively validating a startup idea:

1. The do-it-manually path: Don’t build anything—solve the problem manually first, for a small number of companies


2. The listening path: First talk to tons of potential users, and then start building


3. The prototype path: Start building a prototype and then co-create it with a small n

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