Your idea needs validation

When starting a company or a new product, it’s easy to get excited about an idea based on your own intuition or personal interests. But the reality is most ideas are not as good as they seem, the market doesn’t care, or the idea is simply not a business.

We use the following questions to keep ourselves honest and evaluate ideas at Axflow:

• What is the problem that this idea is solving?
  • How big is the problem?
  • Is this problem temporary? Will it still be a problem in 10 years?
  • How was this validated?
• Who has this problem?
  • Who has this problem today?
  • Who will have this problem next year? 5 years from now?
  • Who will we target as the initial ICP (this should be a very specific cohort)?
  • Will they pay for a solution? How much? How do we know with certainty?
• Do we have team-market fit for this problem?
  • What makes our team well-suited to deliver a solution that reaches PMF?
  • Is the team excited by the thought of becoming experts in this problem area?
  • Are we appropriately funded to solve this problem?

A note on ideation

The list above applies to ideas that become top contenders.

The initial phase where your team is ideating should be less critical. At this stage, it’s helpful to look at the idea with rose-colored glasses.

Why would this idea work?

This menatlity allows an idea to breathe and creativity to take hold. Maybe a new idea is born from the foggy haze of an ill-conceived one.

There will be plenty of time to shoot down ideas later.