Testing a business idea before spending your savings

This piece for UpdateSee collects the advice that holds up in practice.

Most new ventures struggle not because the product is poor but because too few people want to pay for it. Before investing heavily, talk to at least twenty potential customers about the problem itself rather than your solution. Ask how they deal with it today, what that costs them and what they have already tried. Their answers reveal whether the need is real.

Most new ventures struggle not because the product is poor but because too few people want to pay for it.

Next, look at who already serves those customers and why people choose them. A small experiment, such as a simple landing page, a pre-order list or a handful of paid trial sessions, shows far more than opinions do. Set a clear target in advance, for example ten paying customers in a month, and decide honestly what to change if the target is missed.