How to validate your B2B SaaS idea for FREE

82% of the Founders we surveyed spoke to less than 5 potential customers before building their product... and we wonder why SaaS failure rates are so high?

Validation = Sales not signups

Firstly let's define what is actually considered validation here. Many people will drive customers to a landing page to measure if they can get sign ups. This is better than doing nothing at all for sure. But it falls severely short in confirming market demand for a particular solution.

How do we know what those people were really signing up for?

There was a couple of bright young guys on this reddit a few months ago who did just this. Got a ton of sign ups and built like crazy to fill the demand. Only to be very confused when they finally launched their MVP to see that many of those sign ups didn't translate to customers and the ones that did, churned quickly and refused to engage further with their company.

So you must get people into a conversation, and ask for a sale. That can be at a discounted rate, it can be for a letter of intent. It can be for a commitment of their time. What is important is that you ask for something small that has a real consequence for the customer.

Why do you need to do this?

Well - most people when you speak to them are subconsciously trying to find the answers you want to hear. They are trying to make you feel like all of the work you put into creating your prototype wasn't wasted.

So you host these conversations and you get 5 enthusiastic people who tell you, that your idea is the best thing since sliced bread. You run off and build it, excited that you have validation. Again you will be shocked when you launch and those same 5 people now refuse to buy.

"Oh I just meant it was a good idea in general. I didn't mean for me. It's not something I would personally use because of XYZ"

I have been there and made that mistake. Please don't do what I did. It's painful and expensive.

Instead by asking for a 'Sale' you may not actually take any payment details from them it's just important that they feel like saying yes will have a consequence they care about) you move the conversation from a hypothetical into a real sales conversation.

You will face REAL objections from potential customers. You will get no's. and that is GREAT!

When you get a no you get the opportunity to follow up with:

"What am I not understanding about the problem we are trying to solve with this product for you? What would you need to see to turn that no into a yes?"

If you listen carefully after that point your research participant will tell you exactly the innovation you need to make to turn them into an excited early adopter.

Logistics:

When looking for validation we must look for trends, theme's and common stories of pain/frustration that we can solve. You have to be wary of the fact that some people just have very strange requirements or opinions. Just because one person can see the need for something does not mean that a broad spectrum of people in the world also align with their views.

So I recommend that you host at lest 5 of these conversations. 5 gets you into the realm of starting to be able to predict what people will respond to when asked certain questions. Thats 5 x 60 min conversations. A lot of data that you can then use a survey to gather even more data on a larger sample size.

The best Founders I have worked with go all in on this. They make it their unfair competitive advantage. Those that do 5 de-risk their business significantly. Those that do 20+ often create innovative products that grow like wild fire.

Questions are dangerous

I want to also give you a word of warning as you go down this path. The questions you ask, and how you ask them will significantly effect your results in this process.

You have to host these conversations with a mindset of exploring potential problems to solve. You cannot approach them with a fixed solution in mind. What do I mean by that?

Lets take two examples of a research question we could ask a teacher when thinking about creating a data analytics platform for them. Can you spot the problem with one of these?

1. We have seen that teachers like yourself often really struggle with reporting this type of data to the board of governors. Is that also a problem for you?
2. What are your biggest barriers in your daily life as a teacher that prevent you from doing highly impactful work?

In the first question - we introduce a solution to a problem. That bias's the data we get out of that conversation. 9/10 times that research participant will just agree with you. You will think you have validation of a painful problem. But in fact they really wanted to talk to you about how tracking their students mental health data was a much more pressing concern.

By asking the second question you are allowing your participant to lead you to what is most concerning on their mind. You have to be brave to do that. Because they might never bring up the problem your idea is hoping to solve. But that is also the big opportunity. By focusing on problems and not solutions, often those people will share with you an area of focus that has much more potential for a SaaS business to innovate on.

I hope that helps somewhat. It's a tricky thing to do, and takes a lifetime to master. But if you just go into the conversations with a mantra of:

"Two ears, one mouth"

You will do just fine. That is to say you have to ears for a reason. You should be listening more than you are speaking in those conversations. If that balance ever tips in the other direction you are likely dictating to the participant what their problems are and well. In that case you might as well not have had the conversations in the first place.

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