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Ask HN: What are minimal validations to be done before starting on an idea?
10 points by dudeofjude on June 1, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments
I am at a hackathon, there are several ideas being proposed. I can contribute as a developer.

But I want to make sure, I choose the idea which makes most sense from business POV.

So what are the minimal checks that I should do, to validate that the idea is good enough, and I can proceed further.

So the question is what minimal Qs should be asked before to validate the idea?

Basically it boils down to How the need analysis/ideation stage should be approached, the basic checks.

Thanks!



I think a lot of that depends on how much time you have. If you're posting this FROM a hackathon, where presumably you need to get to work NOW, then some basic research online is probably the best you can accomplish.

- Is there a need for it? Are people asking for something like this publicly? - If you or someone on your team has a substantial social following, try kicking a quick question or survey out to the world and see what kind of responses you can get quickly.

If you have more time, then building a test page (even something as simple as a launchrock page) and seeing what kind of response you can generate would be a smart first move in validating. We did something similar to test a couple of our assumptions for our newly-launched product. We created a sign-up form that had 2 ways to sign up (allowed us to test one vs. the other) and then followed that with a one question survey that allowed users to respond as to which features seemed important to them.


I wrote an article on this a while ago: http://blog.codeable.io/2013/01/24/how-to-test-whether-your-...

It's a short read and my advice still stands.




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