How to Validate & Start Your Business Idea in 14 Steps - Part 1

It is vital for an entrepreneur to validate his/ her business idea whether it has Product Market Fit (PMF), because not having PMF can fail your business. 

(Check out what is PMF and how I failed in my first born baby business due to not having PMF here). 

So, why wasting money, time and effort for something that is not viable as a business when you have the chance to know it prior to starting?

This is a simple process I follow to validate my business ideas now, simply because I have experienced failures with some of my startup ideas in the past, which occurred due to not checking for PMF at the beginning. (Sometimes, I learn from making mistakes 😀). Also, these are the things I learnt by joining some of the globally recognized incubators and accelerator programs including AngelHack and MIT GSL in the USA while reading different articles and trials and errors with my own startups. 

(Please note that there can be many other processes and ways you can try your idea. This is simply how I have tried). 

I believe this article will help you as a guide when you’re starting your own business, because I know how frustrating it is when we have no idea what to do next, trying this and that, making all the mistakes, wasting time, money and all that effort 😔 which finally leads to giving up on our dreams. 

What you will get from this article?

I’m providing you:

• the 14 steps to start a business while validating your business idea

• some free tools you can use at different stages. 

Here's the Part 1 of this article with the 1st 6 steps.

1. ✍️ Write down your idea (Problem & Solution/ What & How)

2. ❓Find the “Why” in your idea

3. 🛣️ Write down the user/ customer journey

4. ➡️ Draw a flow diagram (if you can)

5. 🤺 Do the competitor analysis

6. 📱Draw the mockup screens (if your idea is into tech)

Now, let’s understand how to do these in simple ways.

1. ✍️ Write down your idea (Problem & Solution/ What & How).

Write down the problem you are trying to solve and your solution for it. This answers the questions; “What and How”; what are you trying to do and how to do it. 

2. ❓Find the “Why” in your idea.

Understand why you think there’s such a problem and why your idea is the solution for it. Is there such a burning problem? Can your solution actually solve that problem? 

This is not a one-off task. I ask this question at every stage/ step of my idea, so that I can understand and find the answers for this question along the way. When you know the answers for this, it becomes easy for you to promote your business solution to your target market. You are showing them the real reason why your target customer should buy from you, because your solution is solving this problem for them. 

Later, this can become your unique value proposition (UVP) as well while it helps you to understand how your customers would feel or think about your solution. 

3. 🛣️ Write down the user/ customer journey of the solution. 

Navigate through your solution as a user/ customer. Refer to the Use Case Diagram here. However, don’t make it too complicated, just write down the user journey/ steps of your solution. So that you can get a clear idea whether there are any issues, missing things/ steps or actions. 

4. ➡️ Draw a flow diagram (if you can). 

This helps you to get an easy and better understanding of how you need to develop the solution. Refer to the Flow Diagram here. If you feel like this is too complicated for you, just skip this step. 

You can use Draw.io to draw your flow diagram specially if your solution is a tech based one. Because this method is very easy for Software developers to understand and you will need them to develop your solution at the end. 

5. 🤺 Do the competitor analysis.

• Find similar products/ solutions available in the market already.

There are similar products or competitors meaning your idea is already validated 🙂 That’s a good sign, right? But if there are competitors, then where are you going to position your business? That’s why we need to collect more data about other things like below. 

• Identify your competitor’s target audience.

• Find the issues, problems or pain points of their customers with the existing solution.

• Markets/ countries they are operating now and why they are operating in those markets.

• Their future market expansion plans.

6. 📱 Draw the mockup screens

If your idea is a tech related solution, try to draw the mockup screens. This might feel very difficult, but just use your common sense and general knowledge here. You don’t need to be an expert in UI/UX, because you are only trying to understand how your solution will look. Use Canva for this.  

By now, you have already completed half of the process in validating and starting your business idea. Now it’s time for you to start taking actions to execute the above steps. 

The rest of the steps in this process will be discussed in my next article (Part 2). At the same time, I am planning to do different articles explaining each of these steps with more details and examples in my future articles. 

I can help you optimize your LinkedIn profile;

• To stand out among the crowd (because attention is the key now)

• To land in your next dream job (because you are losing $12,000/yr now staying at the same place)

• To start your LinkedIn creator journey (still only 1% users are creators on LinkedIn. Don’t lose this huge potential to grow your personal brand).