Startup Commons

  • Startup Commons
    • About Us
    • Our Team
    • Our Customers
    • Services And Pricing
    • Our Business Model
    • Our Digital Solutions
    • Our History
    • Contact Us
    • Partner With Us
    • Request For Speakers
    • Job Opportunities
    • International Internships
  • Business Creators
    • About Business Creators
    • Creating Businesses
    • What Is A Startup
    • Startup Development Phases
    • Growth Academy Elearning Platform
    • Founders Shareholders' Agreement and Team Building Online Training
  • Support Providers
    • About Support Providers
    • Learn About Startup Ecosystem
    • Startup Development Phases
    • Providing Support Functions
    • Innovation Entrepreneurship Education
    • Innovation Entrepreneurship Curriculum
    • Growth Academy eLearning Platform
    • Certified Trainers
    • Become Growth Academy Provider In Your Ecosystem
    • Growth Academy Training On-Site By Startup Commons
  • Ecosystem Development
    • About Ecosystem Developers
    • What Is Startup Ecosystem
    • Ecosystem Development
    • Ecosystem Development Academy eLearning Platform
    • Subscribe to Support Membership
    • Ecosystem Operators
    • Development Funding
    • For Development Financiers
    • Startup Ecosystem Maturity
    • Case Studies
    • Submit Marketplace App Challenge
    • Become Ecosystem Operator
  • Digital Transformation
    • Digital Transformation
    • Ecosystem Operators
    • Apply To Become Ecosystem Operator
    • Applications Partnership
    • Ecosystem OS
    • Circle Pass User Accounts
    • General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
    • Digital Ecosystem Applications
    • App Developers
  • Contact Us
  • Startup Commons
    • About Us
    • Our Team
    • Our Customers
    • Services And Pricing
    • Our Business Model
    • Our Digital Solutions
    • Our History
    • Contact Us
    • Partner With Us
    • Request For Speakers
    • Job Opportunities
    • International Internships
  • Business Creators
    • About Business Creators
    • Creating Businesses
    • What Is A Startup
    • Startup Development Phases
    • Growth Academy Elearning Platform
    • Founders Shareholders' Agreement and Team Building Online Training
  • Support Providers
    • About Support Providers
    • Learn About Startup Ecosystem
    • Startup Development Phases
    • Providing Support Functions
    • Innovation Entrepreneurship Education
    • Innovation Entrepreneurship Curriculum
    • Growth Academy eLearning Platform
    • Certified Trainers
    • Become Growth Academy Provider In Your Ecosystem
    • Growth Academy Training On-Site By Startup Commons
  • Ecosystem Development
    • About Ecosystem Developers
    • What Is Startup Ecosystem
    • Ecosystem Development
    • Ecosystem Development Academy eLearning Platform
    • Subscribe to Support Membership
    • Ecosystem Operators
    • Development Funding
    • For Development Financiers
    • Startup Ecosystem Maturity
    • Case Studies
    • Submit Marketplace App Challenge
    • Become Ecosystem Operator
  • Digital Transformation
    • Digital Transformation
    • Ecosystem Operators
    • Apply To Become Ecosystem Operator
    • Applications Partnership
    • Ecosystem OS
    • Circle Pass User Accounts
    • General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
    • Digital Ecosystem Applications
    • App Developers
  • Contact Us

5 Fast Ways to test your startup idea

11/11/2014

Comments

 
As Marc Andreesen famously wrote, market need is more important to early startup success than team or even product. So before you go out and start coding, here are 5 fast ways to test your startup idea is even worth pursuing in the first place

#1 – Are people interested? Check with Google and Facebook

There are some great free tools that can help you gauge interest in a category in order to start a business. For example – Google trends tells us organic food is declining in search volume, whereas vegan food is on the rise:

Picture
Digging into the details, the Google keyword tool tells us there are a high number of searches in the US for vegan seitan, tofu and more, yet according to Google there is low advertiser competition – that is, less people bidding to appear with those keywords.  A low advertiser competition can sometimes signal potential – a consumer demand with little competition from suppliers. 
Picture
And using Facebook’s free ad manager can tell you size of demographic segments, for example those between 21 and 55 years old in the US who are interested in Wellness related topics  (64 million people).
Picture
 #2 Ambush focus groups

There is no substitute for talking to real users, but it’s easier said than done. Before starting your startup you need feedback so you can validate the idea. But friends rarely give you honest/negative feedback and response rates for unsolicited emails are abysmally low. However it’s easy to speak to potential users – go to a place there are a lot of them in one place, waiting.

#3 Put up a simple landing page and A/B test the message


It takes literally under an hour to register a domain, buy a landing page template and customize it so it looks like a real service. Once it’s up you can then integrate an A/B testing services like Optimizely or VisualWebsiteOptimizer 
(they both are great products with free trials) and create variations of the messaging or title.  

Picture
vs
Picture
You can then submit the site to various forums or on social media (Product Hunt, Hacker News etc) asking for feedback, and see which proposition results in the most interest and activity on the site, as measured by click rates on the call to action buttons.

This A/B testing can help you test different concepts and messaging in parallel, and see out of them which has the most potential to consider moving forward with.

#4 Compare what’s out there today

Many startups are so enamoured with their idea they forget to check what’s out there already (or has been tried before). On the flipside, new opportunities can be found by looking at bad experiences. 

#5 “Feedback-ify” your MVP

If you’ve done all those steps and the startup idea has survived, the confidence factor is a lot higher to proceed.
Once you’ve created a minimum viable product, now matter how rough, now’s the time to get as much feedback as possible. The best ways to do that are through statistics packages like Flurry which will tell you what is happening, and in-app / web survey tools like polljoy that will tell you why: what users think about your product.

Both of these tools are free, and the qualitative and quantitative data will start to give an answer on if your concept has legs and ready to take to the next step.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
This is an edited version of a post originally posted at https://polljoy.com/blog/, by Simon Newstead, who is entrepreneur and angel investor, with a passion for the mobile and gaming space. Simon is currently the CEO and Co-Founder of Frenzoo, and Co-Founder of polljoy. You are free to re-edit and repost this in your own blog or other use under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License terms, by giving credit with a link to www.startupcommons.org and the original post.



Comments
    Our Services
    Supporting startup ecosystem development, from entrepreneurship education, to consulting to digital infrastructure for connecting, measuring and international benchmarking.
    Picture
    ​Subscribe for updates
    Startup ecosystem development updates with news, tips and case studies from cities around the world. 
    Subscribe

    Join Us?

    Are you interested to join our global venture to help develop startup ecosystems around the world? 
    Learn more...
    ​

    Archives

    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    October 2019
    June 2019
    February 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    July 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    July 2013
    June 2013

    Categories

    All
    Accelerator
    Africa
    Asia
    Australia
    Commitment
    Concepting
    Design
    Digital
    Ecosystem
    Establishing
    Europe
    Event
    Growth
    Incubator
    Infrastructure
    Innovation
    Investment
    Leadership
    Lean Startup
    Mentor
    North America
    Report
    Scaling
    Startups
    Team
    Validation
    Vietnam
    Vision

    RSS Feed

Startup ECOSYSTEM DEVELOPMENT
To Scale INNOVATION Entrepreneurship

Business
​Creators

What is a Startup?
Startup Development Phases
Business Creation
​
Growth Academy eLearning 

​​Support
​Providers

Supporting Startups
​
Startup Curriculum
​
From Technology Transfer to Open IPR
Support Providers
​Knowledge Center
​
Funding Sources
Growth Academy eLearning ​

​​Ecosystem
​Developers

What is Startup Ecosystem?
​From Innovation Ecosystems to Startup Ecosystems
Startup Ecosystem Development
Startup Ecosystem Maturity
Ecosystem Developers 
​
Development Funding 

Ecosystem Operators

About Ecosystem Operators
Funding Sources
​Digital Ecosystem Applications

EcosystemOS​


Picture
Subscribe to our mailing list
Entrepreneurship, innovation and startup ecosystem development updates, with news, tips and results from cities and organizations around the world.  #startupecosystem
Subscribe
Growth Academy eLearning | Resources | Blog
Join Us | Sharing Policy
Picture
Service by Digiole Oy
​© 2023 Digiole Oy some rights reserved