My first software business was DoorProfit, built with an experienced co-founder. We spent two years in development before officially launching. It was an incredible experience, and the business is thriving today, but with AI and how fast things are moving now, I have a new rule: launch in 30 days or less. And every business I start gets validated with one question, before I build anything at all.
The question is this: what has been your biggest challenge with [X]?
That is it. Here is how to use it so it actually tells you something.
The Rules
Ask where your avatar already hangs out
Forums, Facebook groups, meetups, your own community. Not your friends, unless your friends have the problem.
Ask people who have already decided they want the outcome
This is the mistake that cost me two years. Ask random people about investing out of state and you get random opinions. Ask people who have already decided to invest out of state and you get the two or three real obstacles standing in their way. Decision-makers give you product requirements. Browsers give you noise.
Talk to at least 10 people
Fewer than that and you are pattern-matching on anecdotes.
Track the response rate itself
No response is data: maybe this is not a real problem. An overwhelming response means you have hit a nerve, and the bigger the problem you can solve, the more you can charge to solve it.
Save their exact words
Their phrasing becomes your marketing copy. If three people say bookkeepers are too expensive and never accurate, then "Tired of expensive bookkeepers who still get it wrong?" writes itself. You are not guessing at the message. The market dictated it.
Three Real Validations
The software company
When we asked out-of-state investors our question, two answers dominated: "I don't know where to invest" and "once I pick a city, I don't know which neighborhoods." We built the entire product around those two answers, and launched the MVP with a single feature, a crime map, because nothing like it existed. Shared in a few communities, it pulled in around 100 signups in about two hours. The feedback from those users became the feature roadmap.
The community
Before the ROI Inner Circle was a community, it was investors emailing me asking to be connected to my out-of-state agent teams. When I asked what their biggest challenge with financial freedom was, the answers were "I don't have time" and "I don't have access to deals." The community's whole design, a few hours a week with sourced deal flow, is those two answers, inverted.
The bookkeeping company
I have been through six bookkeeping companies across our businesses, all expensive, all inaccurate. Before building a solution, I posted the question in my community and online: what is your biggest frustration with monthly bookkeeping? Around 30 responses came back with three repeating pains: hard to find a bookkeeper, competent ones are expensive, and they are not accurate. That is the blueprint and the website copy, straight from the market's mouth.
What Validation Is Not
Validation is not asking "would you buy this?" because everyone lies. It is not a survey about features, because you have not earned feature opinions yet. And it is not your excitement level, which is irrelevant, sadly. It is evidence that a specific group of people actively struggles with a specific problem, in their own words, at a volume that suggests they would pay.
Once the question comes back hot, move fast. The 30-day launch framework picks up from here. And if the solution turns out to be software, you no longer need two years or a dev team, because a weekend and $200 will do. These days my two-person team ships a new app most months this way.
