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I Asked 3.6 Million Founders How to Validate an Idea

Sometimes, I get stuck in a mental limbo, unsure if I should pursue an idea or not. That’s exactly how I felt on a late Tuesday evening after work, when I threw this post into the Build in Public?An awesome community of indie hackers and founders that share their progress publicly on X community on X:

By the next morning, 3.6 million people had seen the post - it had gone viral. I squinted at my phone in disbelief while notifications continued flooding my screen faster than I could swipe them away.

To give you a better sense of the virality, two things happened: First, I reconnected with a childhood friend who saw my post in his X-feed by chance; and, second, the post even made it into Marc Louvion's YouTube video.¹

The topic clearly struck a nerve. Rightfully so, as validation is the precursor to profitability — it's the revenue side of the profit equation and answers the key question: Will enough people open their wallet for this? It's the founder's equivalent to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.²

This blog post summarizes the responses from my viral post about how to validate an idea. Enjoy!

Build on an existing market

When I think about building something new, Peter Thiel's famous quote "Competition is for losers" comes to mind. However, the replies under my post point in another direction, with many suggesting to remix products that already exist.

This approach gives you the benefit of knowing there’s demand, but the downside is that you'll likely face more competition from those already in the space.

Scavenge for pain points

A lot of replies talk about scavenging for pain points in different places and using them as a starting point to build a product. Here are some examples:

The replies that fall into this bucket mention several ways how to find pain points, such as talking to people from different industries, using search engine keyword planners, or checking what people are asking on social media.

Two sources to find pain points that I found interesting were:

• A map of Reddit's subreddits
• TikTok' Keyword planner

Talk to people

I mentioned "talking to people" under the previous heading, but given the large number of replies highlighting the importance of this, it deserves its own section.

As an engineer myself, I enjoy the building more than the talking. Often, it feels like many people don’t know what they want until they see a solution. To sqeeze the value out of a conversation despite this, several comments recommended reading: "The Mom Test"?"The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you" by Rob Fritzpatrick:

"[...], go read The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick. Short, to-the-point book about how to validate at each stage without poisoning the well by telling people what you’re building. Worth the price and time investment."

Start with distribution

There's a lot of emphasis on the importance of distribution in the replies. After all, you need to let people know you exist, if you want to validate the product you're building:

The fist place people turn to for distribution is social media. But there were also other suggestions, such as:

• Publishing content before building anything to test the waters
• Building on top of a platform or marketplace with an established community
• Running ads to see if people sign up for a waitlist

Scratch your own itch

Building things to solve your own problems (i.e., scratching your own itch) is also a common theme in the replies. There might be others, just like you, who might be facing the same problem.

The advantages of this approach are two-fold:

• Solving a problem that impacts you increases your buy-in, as you know that the product solves a problem
• In contrast to solving someone else's problem, you know the problem, making it easier to improve and iterate on your product

Dummy landing page

Another popular method for validating an idea, mentioned by several commenters, is to build a simple landing page to gauge interest. A great example of this is Buffer, who used this approach to test the waters before building their product.

The approach is nicely summarized by @aleksanderwc comment:

"This is how I’m doing it:

🔸Build simple landing page with waitlist signup or straight away with payment links.
🔹Find your target audience on social platforms like Reddit, FB groups or here on X
🔸show them landing page

If someone sign up / pay, then it’s validated 💪"

Try often

If you want to know what works, try often! A great example is Peter Levels who pointed out that only 4 of his 70+ projects were successful. His takeaway: ship more! Many replies under my post echoed this spirit:

The benefit of trying often is that each attempt provides new information, which helps you refine your approach. If you keep your ideas and products in 'stealth mode', you'll likely miss out on feedback that could point you in the right direction.

Outro

Of the 3.6 million people who saw the post, @0x108Dev put it best:

"You have a Ph.D.—you are going to overthink and overengineer by default."

So let me get back to building.