How to incorporate your company in the US
Learn how to incorporate your UK business in the US, from selecting the right structure to staying compliant. This webin...
This article was written by Taylor Wescoatt, one of Seedcamp’s Experts-in-Residence. Follow Taylor on Twitter @twescoatt.
If you’re reading this, you’ve read The Lean Startup and other best practice, and you know that validating your ideas is critical to success. It is also the quickest way to figure out if you’re off track, so you can re-evaluate your options.
At Seedcamp, I work with lots of startups at a very early stage, so validation is super important and we do it a lot. It’s hard though, for a good reason. Customer Validation research is about systematically challenging your own beliefs. As a founder, our sense of self-worth is often woven in with our startup idea, so forcing ourselves to question that is painful. Until you get used to it, then it’s fun!
There is a huge amount of best practice and industry built up around validation techniques, and you can spend many thousands of pounds hiring people to help, but how do you do it yourself on the cheap? Before we dive in, let me make a few suggestions;
Here are the techniques I recommend;
Needs Analysis
Product Analysis
Putting it all together, here are some places where each type of testing can be helpful in the drive towards Product Market Fit;
A couple of extra things to consider;
Building validation into your process is the way to go. At first, it may seem laborious, but you’ll be thankful that what you learn will have saved you a lot of time, you’ll be happier that what you build will get used, and you’ll have a stronger culture of caring about the customer within your team.
For a list of all my articles: http://seedcamp.com/eir-product-articles/