How have you validated a startup without building anything?
What’s some tips or tricks when you were building a startup on how you validated it before writing a single line of code?
Talk to potential customers. The old days you sold the software that wasn’t built yet. In either case, you need signal that the market wants what you’re building and that it solves a real problem.
Prototype and then show your customers. You can make a prototype of your app without coding anything. Take their feedback, iterate on the prototype and then build once you have enough of a signal that this is what your customers want.
People willing to buy it after watching a demo video, like fund raising
A/B test mock ups of the first product and features. Build simple MVPs for testing hypothesis using crude tools. Create animations and videos of what the product would do without actually building it.
This will only work if the core problem your company will face isn’t a technical one. For example the company I’m building now the tech for it is fairly straight forward. The major problem was building the right relationships and getting letters of intent from our partners and vendors.
Tell us more, are you building this MVP yourself?
I’m a software engineer but I’m not building this product myself. I have 2 engineers I’ve worked with in the past currently building it for me. My days are spent with the designer and our legal team most days. We managed to raise a $10m pre-seed valuation. Thanks to this I was able to hire on the aforementioned engineers and a couple other staffers for almost nothing. The engineers get 1-2% each over 4 yrs with a 6 month cliff. And they are currently working 20hr weeks without pay. They will receive pay after our series A which should occur Jan / feb
Put up flashy webpage promising a free year of whatever you are building when it is ready in a year.
You smoke some weed and it gets auto validated. Then suddenly you get 10 billion valuation.
😂