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As an entrepreneur, it’s important to know if your product fits the market. I’ve started multiple startups, two of these that took such a LONG time to get validated, and the other one validated without even taking a month! Here’s how I saved time and quickly knew if my product’s something worthy to consumers, and a quick guide on how you can do it too.
The first startup I did was Queer Chart. I validated the idea in 4 months and found advisors and investors. I also had a team of 10 to build the product in 4 months and was able to do a huge fancy launch. I got 200 users, but the unfortunate thing was, they all dropped after one month.
The second one I did was Sesame. I validated the idea in a year and had a team of 3 co-founders to build the product in 1.5 months. I did a huge fancy launch and got 1,000+ users—yay! 90% of these users retained for 9 months, however, they all dropped after one year.
The next one was FC. I validated the idea in 2 weeks, all for free! I had no team members, no advisor, no money. I did user interviews, no-code experiments to test the poop solution (Discord) and charged using stripe. With this, I got 20 paying customers in just two weeks!
Now you see, there’s a big, notable difference from what I’ve done in each business startup. For Queer Chart, it took me 4 months to see if people will pay for my product, while for Sesame, it took me a long year to find out. These were all done in extremely long periods of time, compared to FC, which only took me two weeks!
Here’s the thing: it's important not to fixate on whether your idea fails or succeeds. What matters is that you don't waste 1 year to get the answer. Get the answer in 1 week, not 1 year. That way you can learn faster, and can try again faster. You won’t get crushed thinking you wasted a year, only to find out your startup would end up a failure.
Now let’s take a look through Maddie’s journey. Remember, the goal is to not waste a year validating products—do it as soon as possible. We will also figure out the product-to-market fit through this template available to be applied:
This method resulted to 40 paying users in just two months!!
Applying this method works a hefty ton; not only do we easily save time and effort validating an object. You now have a product a specific user person is willing to pay for, and you know it works because they retain/pay money.
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