How to validate your startup idea - Paras Chopra
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Source: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1gECLqv9YTtnGdzMfGy3gDX5Zmu7lBcT1AgLQLFMTVAE/edit?usp=sharing Follow Paras at https://x.com/paraschopra
How to validate your startup idea - Paras Chopra
- 1. How to validate your startup idea By Paras Chopra, founder of Lossfunk
- 2. Focus on existing behaviors, and make them more efficient Effort or cost for fulfilling a desire A startup succeeds when it delivers 2x-10x efficiency in fulfilling the same desire
- 3. Examples of efficiency gains ● Uber ○ Waiting for a cab -> Click a button and cab comes to you ● Facebook ○ Asking people if they’re single -> Getting their relationship status from their profile ● Salesforce ○ Multi-quarter complex installation of on-prem software -> Sign up online and you’re good Startups don’t create desires, only satisfy existing one with higher efficiency v/s existing alternatives
- 4. Efficiency dimensions You can target any dimension that the market / customer niche cares about ● Cost ● Effort ● Cognitive complexity ● Time taken But makes sure your target customer actually cares about it. If you make things cheaper when market wants it faster, you won’t get traction.
- 5. Also, nobody cares about incremental improvements Switching products requires an effort! People only do it if there’s a non-trivial improvement in efficiency (e.g. 2x-10x change) For example, if Uber merely made a 10% taxi service, they would not have succeeded. People are lazy
- 6. Pause here.. Come up with 2-3 examples of successful products or startups ● What existing human desires did that startup target ● What was mainstream product / the status quo back then ● What kind of efficiency did that startup target when they launched ● Was it an incremental or a radical (2x-10x) improvement?
- 7. Focus here
- 8. You should eliminate demand-risk even before writing a single line of code
- 9. How to eliminate demand risk?
- 10. As a builder, your comfort zone is in writing code (and lots of it) But what you need most is talking to potential customers (and lots of them)
- 11. No, talking to friends doesn’t count. Talk to people who’re in your target markets (US, UK, Europe and other western countries) India is a tiny tech market, so don’t focus!
- 12. Here’s how you eliminate demand-risk ● Interview lots of potential users/customers about how they go about doing things currently ○ Keep interviewing until you hear repeated patterns ● Interviewing is an art ○ Read the book: The Mom Test ○ Watch this YC video: how to talk to users ● Send 100 personalized reach outs to get 2-5 conversations Only start building once you have 5-10 validations from potential users about your idea! (Bonus: they become your initial customers)
- 13. How to send get people to reply Short, personalized, simple ask. Once conversation gets going on text, ask for a 15 minute call.
- 14. Reach out people on: ● Emails ○ Use Apollo or similar tools to find their emails ● LinkedIn ○ Send a connect request, and leave a short note ● Reddit (great for B2C) ○ DM people ● Discord or Slack communities ○ DM them
- 15. Your final goal: develop a clear venture hypothesis
- 17. Make Deep Research your friend Ask Deep Research to evaluate your idea on 6 dimensions on previous slide to help close your blind spots
- 19. TLDR: be curious about if you’re building something that people want, or if you’re building something that you find cool