Last year, I messed up.

I wasted 6 months with my 8-people team to realize that our idea was terrible.

Here is my story of failing to validate our idea and burning through 6 months of funding

I'm a big fan of talking to people for validation, but I find that we founders often jump to the "user interviews" step too quickly.

There is one step founders can do before user interviews, which is to evaluate the idea themselves.

Obviously, I didn't do that...

It was April 2019, I started Toasty, and we built a matchmaking platform for conference-goers to screen and set up meetings with each other.

We interviewed, discovered a problem, built the product, launched it, worked with a number of partners, 6 months later, we pivoted...

In 6 months, we learned a few things about this business model:

- Sales cycle is long
- Frequency of usage is super low
- Buyers and users are not the same people
- Willingness to pay is low
- and more

All in all, a pretty terrible idea to aim for a fast-growing startup.

Because the experience was so painful, I wanted to remind the future me not to make the same mistakes.

So I came up with questions that I'd ask myself about my idea before I take it a step forward.

The 8 questions to challenge my idea are:
1. Is my idea part of a global trend?

2. Is the product easy to use? Can users self-onboard?
3. Is it easy for people to tell their colleagues or friends? Can they try it out immediately?
4. How long is the time to value or AHA moment? Can users use it in seconds, minutes, or days and weeks?

5. What is the frequency of use? Is it daily, weekly, monthly, or annually?
And then 6 & 7 & 8.

We founders often get obsessed with the solution that we forgot to assess these things.

They make a huge difference if we want to work on a product that can grow healthily.

Obviously, this is the short version, if you'd like to get the core of the entire f up story. I put it on my blog: https://kevoncheung.com/validating-startup-ideas

It took me 6 months and working with partners all over Asia to realize.

I'm curious about other builders. For your failed ideas, how long did it take you to realize that it was a not-so-good idea? What made you realize?

#BuildInPublic