No businessman is crazy enough to just start a business without testing the waters first. In fact, some of the most successful business people have to change their ideas several times until they were polished enough to become an actual business. They had to validate their start-up ideas first before taking any further action.
Be clear about the problem
You need to tell people first what the most pressing problems are and what the business does to solve it. This makes them more interested to actually invest on it should it become an actual business.
Jessica Scorpio didn’t have a background in tech, but saw an opportunity: her observation was that a lot of people don’t drive their car every day and a lot of people need cars but don’t have them. Thus Getaround was born.
Be aware of your market
Before starting your business, you need to know exactly who you are catering to. This makes it easier for you to advertise to them if you know who they are and what their needs are. This was what Rick Martinez, the owner of Senor Sangria, did.
He looked for potential buyers in his local area, made them taste his homemade Sangria and confirmed that they are willing to pay for it. This motivated him to transform this idea into something of a commercial scale.
Conduct a survey
It helps a lot if you conduct a survey first to have a clear idea on what exactly it is that people want. They are the ones who will buy your products if ever you start the business. Hence, you have to start listening to what they have to say.
Rob Infantino, the CEO of OpenBay, an app helping users find the nearest car repair services, revealed that this was exactly what he did. Once he has polished his ideas, he went out and spoke directly with the potential users of the service. He spoke with vehicle owners and car repair providers. He took note of their advice and went back polishing his ideas again before finally starting the business.
Go for crowdfunding
This unique strategy is like the proverbial ‘killing two birds with one stone’. You validate the ideas and at the same time, get funds to keep the business running. You will be extremely lucky if you are able to find people who are willing to give you money to start the business.
Tailwind, a service offering Pinterest analytics tool, started this way. Danny Maloney, the CEO, revealed that he started validating the business idea by asking random strangers. He posted a sign-up page and bought AdWords to see if people were willing to sign up invest on the idea.
Apparently, they did. Of course, these people were not charged, but it was quite evident that the business will get a lot of support if ever it is started.
Find a mentor
Facebook is now one of the most successful businesses around the world. Mark Zuckerberg was able to tap a huge market and make a lot of money out of it. Before he became a successful CEO, he revealed that he had a great mentoring relationship with the late Apple CEO, Steve Jobs.
During his early days on Facebook, they would meet and discuss the best business management practices. In fact, when Steve Jobs died, Zuckerberg posted a message thanking him for being a mentor and a friend.
This only shows the power of mentoring. If you are willing to learn from the best, you can benchmark their best practices and use them in your own business. Obviously, Zuckerberg has learned a lot from his interactions with Steve Jobs.
Check your competitors out
There should always be a healthy competition in any field in life. Business is obviously one of them. You need to see what your competitors are up to and find out how you can compete with them. This is one of the strategies used by Threadless, one of the most successful Facebook businesses.
They have a network of designers creating graphic T-shirts. Before they start selling their products, they do an online fashion show first. This allows them to see how people would react on their designs. They would also have an idea what kind of designs their competitors would put out to compete with them.
Once they have gathered the necessary information, they will polish the designs and start selling them. This means that the ones they finally sell are those that will surely be a huge hit.
Be patient with your start-up plan
Polishing your business ideas and transforming them into an actual business doesn’t happen overnight. You have to be very patient before you can feel confident that your business will actually do well. It is fine if you have to wait for a while to make the necessary changes as long as the final results would be amazing.
These successful business owners did not just wake up one day and decide to fund their ideas. They have gone through a lot before they have made their business ideas a reality. Now, they are reaping the fruits of their labours. They have seen just how positive the responses of the people are. If they have not done changes in their original idea, the reception would not have been the same.
For more information on how to validate your start-up idea, check out the infographic shown here. It lists the other strategies that may be of help to you.
Read also:
Agility, experimentation and culture change: what innovative start-ups teach brands