Interpreting validation results?

[inputchip]

Hey fastlane family, I have reached out to 185 potential customers for an idea that myself and business partner are pursuing in the software space. We did a simple questionnaire with direct messaging on LinkedIn, note that this was essentially cold email. Here are the results from the questionnaire:

57% open rate
44% reply rate out of those who opened

The questionnaire simply asked if they would use the described service for a fee. The results are broken down as follows:



I am fairly confident that most of the "maybe's" could be turned into "yes's" once we develop a clickable demo and get early adopters onto the platform which would give us about a 70% positive response. Most of the people who said "no" to the question are likely outside of our ideal customer as they are able to get this particular service for free manually, whereas others are not. The market we are entering is large, and there is little to no competition for this type of service right now.

My questions are:

1.) How do we know when an idea is validated?
2.) Should additional testing be done? Perhaps actually pre-selling the service with a clickable demo?

Thanks in advance!

 

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[urianasi]

Hi, @inputchip.

You are making progress, that is great!

Now, I'm no expert, but let me tell you about a process I've been testing right now and I think is an answer for what you are asking. I am in the same stage that you. I've been trying to validate an idea the past few weeks, and I created surveys, MailCheat(Chimp) lists, run a few ads with a very, very small daily budget, and I've been patiently monitoring the responses, clicks, subscribers while changing the welcome email, minor changes in the copy of the page and so on.

To me, there are two things to consider while validating an idea, and both are important to get them right. The first one, is the hypothesis or guess to validate (in your case, for instance, if people will pay or not for the product) and second, and equally important as the first one, is to put a condition to consider if the hypothesis was validated or not. These two things must be set from the beginning, by the founders that should also run the tests, before even touch a line of code: what needs to be validated, an when it will be considered that it passed or that it failed.

So with this I'm saying that... The founders of the company/project will decide when an idea is validated or not, based on their particular vision for that company.

The way I like to do this is to, at the very beginning, put my ideas into a piece of paper. Then, establish usually no more than one or two hypothesis or guesses that I should validate to continue the process of company/product creation. And lastly, before running any tests, create a document explaining how those hypothesis will be tested and when the results will be considered successful or not.

In your particular case, I would discuss with my partner: do we consider that we've run enough tests to move to the next level? Why? Was this survey enough? Was it tailored to our particular customer segment or not? Do we need to get more responses in quantity to be sure? Do we need to establish a clear goal to achieve with the tests to consider the idea validated?

The only ones that can answer those questions are the founders: your parntner and you. So, this was just a response on how I like to handle the validation process of the hypothesis or guesses I have for the product and my customer segments hoping that you find it valuable and give you some ideas.

Just my two cents. Hope it helps!

 

[raddevon]

Should additional testing be done? Perhaps actually pre-selling the service with a clickable demo?

I love the idea of asking for a sale. You're going to get a more accurate result if you ask them to pay rather than asking if they would pay.