What’s your favorite “cheap test” for validating an idea before building?
Many of us have had that moment where we’re excited about a new idea - only to later realize we should have validated it before investing time and resources.
There are tons of creative, low-effort ways to test if an idea has traction: landing pages, waitlists, Reddit threads, cold outreach and more.
I’m curious - what’s your go-to method for testing an idea before writing a single line of code?
Have you found a tactic that consistently gives you signal? Or maybe a surprising validation method that worked better than expected?
Would love to learn from the approaches this community has tried, what worked, what didn’t, and what you’d do differently next time.
Replies
One thing that surprised me: just describing the idea out loud to non-tech friends. If they say ‘oh that’s cool’ and move on—it’s a no. If they get animated or say ‘I’d use that,’ I pay attention.
I usually just go and talk to the target audience.
One more hack: take the competitors product, give it to the TA, and get the feedback: with your differentiators, and imagining with them.
Always gives a lot of ideas to rethink before coding.