How Did You Validate?

Question

Dear founders,I'm trying to understand common startup wisdom and it doesn't make sense to me.For example, if you give me the source code of Dropbox, I don't think I'll cross the 100K ARR in the first year. Maybe, even 1K goal would be a stretch.What would you do to get an abstract Dropbox to 1M ARR? Start with cold emails? Define ICP and spam them through Linkedin Sales Navigator, aka B2B sales playbook?I find common advice on validation super generic, which means it doesn't work as it lacks specifics and nuance. For example, competition is good because it proves demand, but "scrappy MVP" doesn't sell in competitive markets.I'm arriving at the point that the only way to succeed is to get your product embedded into some kind of value delivery pipeline through offline sales: meetups, trade shows, etc. Go to a place where your customers hang out offline.Did you validate your idea before shipping the product? Did you know in advance that it'll succeed? Did you have to do cold emails to find first customers? Did you feel you had to push your product at first?

aristofun · Accepted Answer

I wonder for every Dropbox how many similar products are there in the graveyard.
Technically I understand the market fit as the point where your unit economy starts making ends meet and showing positive dynamic. If for every dollar spent (on everything including and most importantly user acquisition) you can prove yourself that you get >1$ returns, your business model works.
And I doubt there is a simple strategy for that, or even a finite number of strategies, even complex ones that can guarantee you anything.
And I'm sure nobody truly knows "in advance that it'll succeed" whatever "it" is.

fantasy905 · Answer

I don&rsquo;t think most successful products were &ldquo;validated&rdquo; in advance in the way blog posts describe. What usually gets validated early is not demand, but whether the founders can consistently get someone to say yes. Code, MVPs, and even competition are secondary. Distribution comes first, and it&rsquo;s almost always messier and more manual than the advice suggests. Most validation looks like pushing something imperfect until either people start pulling it, or you give up. In hindsight we call that validation. At the time, it mostly feels like guessing with feedback.

agcat · Answer

I made my validation thesis and frameworks that i used to run discovery open - https://aishwarya-48913.medium.com/startup-pivots-how-we-ite...And the process of defining ICP, finding them here - https://aishwarya-48913.medium.com/founder-led-sales-for-us-...