23 questions I use to determine if my startup idea is worth pursuing
I've started and failed at startup and business ideas and quite often I realised that some of these failures can be avoided if I knew the questions to ask of them in the first place. Before spending months trying to "validate" the idea.
I started compiling these questions and then did further research into how other successful founders "pre-evaluate" their ideas before working on them (I looked up various interviews, videos, and podcasts with 50 founders for this research).
The result is this list of questions below. The first 5 are definition questions - I make sure they are all filled in. Then the next 18 are Yes/No questions: the more "Yes"s I can answer, the more promising the idea.
Of course, there are no guarantees. The goal is to pick the most promising idea and one you can confidently work on.
So, on to the questions.
Idea definition
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Who's your target niche?
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What specific problem are you solving?
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What's the market size?
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What's your business model?
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What's the solution you're building?
Idea interrogation
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Are you solving your own problem?
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Is the problem severe (a.k.a. “Hair on fire” problem)?
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Is the problem frequently experienced?
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Is solving the problem mandatory?
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Is it a proven market?
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Do you understand the market deeply (Founder/Market Fit)?
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Is the market with your problem growing?
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Does your market have the purchasing power?
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Is the problem expensive to solve by the customer?
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Are you serving small businesses?
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Do you have an unfair advantage against your competitors?
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Can it be launched quickly?
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Is the problem arduous, but not impossible, to solve?
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Does your target market hang out together online?
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Is the market highly motivated?
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Can the business operate profitably without you?
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Is your solution simpler than your competitors?
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Do you have an audience in this market?
I go deeper into each of these questions with explanations, founder quotes and examples in my ebook, Start Strong: How to determine if your SaaS business idea is worth pursuing.
And it always helps to have someone to bounce ideas off. Feel free to ask if you have any questions!
Thanks for the great list. I'm currently exploring the idea of building an integrated chat similar to HubSpot or tawk.to but with extremely barebones features.
The value comes from less complexity and friction for customers who don't need a full CRM.
Now I have talked to one potential user who gave me positive feedback, however:
it might not really a "hair on fire" problem. The people this product is targeting are the same people who would probably also be fine without any sort of live chat integration.
Do you have thoughts on this?
You're welcome!
I agree. It doesn't sound like there's an urgent (aka "hair on fire") problem to solve there.
If you don't mind sharing, who's your target audience and what's their specific problem that you're trying to solve?
Farez
I got the idea when I was looking for a live chat integration to provide an easy way to collect user feedback.
I like live chat for collecting feedback because it's low friction and familiar. But most livechat providers have huge overhead that is not needed for this use case.
So to answer your question: target audience is single founders or teams with max 5 people who want to collect feedback on small web projects.
Cool!
Well, even though it isn't a "hair on fire" problem that you're solving, doesn't mean it's not viable. And sounds like you're already answering the "Are you solving your own problem?" with a big Yes, and that carries a lot of weight!
Not to mention a Yes also for the question "Is your solution simpler than your competitors?". Stripe started out with a mission of being much simpler than their existing competitors. And see where they are now :)
If you feel confident about your idea, then next step would be to build an MVP that you can use to validate your assumptions about your target customers and the problem you're solving.
First off, thanks for the detailed response!
Hope I’m not bombarding you with too many questions here.
I think building an MVP is a reasonable next step for me, unless it turns out to be more technically challenging than expected.
What do you think about the approach of just putting together a landing page and talking to potential customers before even starting to build? It seems appealing to get more concrete validation but I’m afraid it will come off as spammy
You're on the right track there with talking to customers first!
Here's what I recommend:
Find 20 people to talk to. Make sure they're all from the same target customer segment. 20 people will you a good idea of where their pain points are.
Focus 100% on learning about their problems and how they're currently trying to solve it. Don't mention your idea. Not even a hint. Because at best, they won't care, and at worst, they'll start giving you feature suggestions and that'll distract you. The goal is to learn about their problem. Focusing only on their problems is also how you prevent yourself from coming across as spammy.
At the of the interviews, pick the biggest common pain, and then go back to them and offer to solve it for them with an MVP.
You don't even need a landing page at this stage. You just need access to 20 people in your target segment.
Please don't worry about asking more questions. In fact, I would be happy to jump on a Zoom call with you to work this stage out with you, if you're interested.
I completely agree with Farez here! It's really important that you approach potential customers in a sensitive manner, not coming off as using them. Make sure that however you ask them, provide them with enough value where even if you do eventually mention that you are looking at solving their problem, they will be extremely interested and not annoyed at all!
Reddit is a great place to go, but be aware that each subreddit has different 'etiquette' when it comes to posting. Perhaps your best path of action is to post as someone who also has the problem that you are looking to solve (which I'm sure you do, that's probably why you are trying to solve it!)
If you have one subreddit in mind that you think potential customers hang out at, use this tool and you can find the other subreddits that people from yours crossover at and also hang out! https://subredditstats.com/subreddit-user-overlaps
See if they have the same pain points as you regarding the issue, see if they have different ones. You'll learn so much and you can even in the end ask them to join you on your journey as you look to solve their problem (if you have provided enough value), at which they should be keen to come along!
I've got more of this sort of stuff on validating ideas in a guide I made. If you have any questions please feel free to message me and I'll be happy to help! Or you can check the guide out at www.validatethatidea.com.
Very sound advice here, the guide looks good!
Thanks! Just finished redoing the website which should be live in a day or so, if you want a free copy of the guide let me know and happy to shoot you through one!
I would love a copy, thank you. You can send it to [email protected].
Happy to trade it for a copy of https://gum.co/startstrong if you want one!
What you outlined here seems like a great next step.
I’d love to take you up on that offer. While I have some ideas on how to go about doing this I have lots to learn :)
It’s probably best if I get in touch with you on Twitter and then we can schedule something.
Please do. I'm @farez on Twitter.
Speak soon.
Thank you, Farez, for a worthwhile read. I have been gaining a heapful of insight from your work... Thank you!
Oof, I'm blushing! Thank you for such kind words. Really happy that it's helpful. Happy to help anytime.
I find those questions very helpful, so thank you for collecting them into a post.
Some of them have a straight Y/N answer while others require lots of investigation to find out. Do you explain in your book how to do so?
Yes indeed, some do require work to answer them. The purpose of these questions is to make sure you do the necessary research before you start.
Unfortunately, my book doesn't tell you how to do it because it's different from business to business.
Is there a specific question you're referring to? Perhaps we can discuss it here!
Farez