Early Validation with Customers

For the next couple of weeks, we’re going to focus heavily on receiving early validation on our MVP from customers.

You have an MVP (whether it’s low-fidelity or high-fidelity) to communicate your idea to customers and receive feedback.
You have some people in mind that you’d like to test your MVP with.
Now it’s time to go (in)validate your MVP!

Tips for Early Validation
1. Get Feedback ASAP
Put something in the user’s hands (doesn’t have to be code / tech) and get real feedback ASAP. Your biggest risk is making something no one wants to use or that no one wants to pay for.

2. Let the user fail!
This can be painful, especially when it’s your product design that’s failing.

Remember that you’re testing to see how the user interacts with your product. They need to be able to figure out how to perform a task or fail trying. This is useful insight for you!

3. Map the user experience
If you’re struggling with how to build an MVP from your idea, map the user experience/the customer journey.

What is the most painful part of that journey for your customer?

Is it the login process? Then start there. Is it the purchasing process? Start there. Is it the social sharing ability? Start there.

Then show this to your customers and get feedback for future iterations.

4. Draw Inspiration from Existing Solutions
Every great invention is built on existing ideas.

Look at solutions from other companies, not necessarily in your industry, but ideally companies with similar challenges.

Get ideas from outside the box.

5. And remember…NOTHING replaces talking to your customer.
Know where your target audience hangs out, find them, and speak to them in an authentic way.

Set a challenging yet realistic goal.
Can you show your MVP to 3 people this week? 5? 10? More? This is going to depend on your business idea, how easy it is to find and get in touch with customers and users, and your schedule.

The more customer validation you receive on your MVP, the stronger your business will be.

Assignment
(1) Set a goal of showing your MVP to X number of people this week, and start chipping away at that goal!

Using Zoom – if you’re creating a digital prototype, you can give the user the URL to the live prototype and have the user share their screen before clicking through it.

Don’t forget to take notes during these sessions, and try to record them if you can.

(2) Be prepared to share your findings with your peers, including what you learned from early validation (MVP) and what your plan is for the next round.