Build in Public: Ensembl #4 — How I’m Validating The Idea and Finding Paying Customers
Hello hello!
How do you know if an idea is worth pursuing?
An idea needs to be validated, and depending on what material you read, there are many ways to validate an idea, but they all boil down to ‘will someone pay for it?’ In other words, do you have customers before you build?
I’m still validating Ensembl. I’ve had some great feedback; lots of people say they have the problem this app solves, but I need customers.
Here I wanted to explore how I am going about validating the idea finding customers.
Photo by Evgeni Tcherkasski on Unsplash
Speak with Friends & Family First
Wanting to start a multi-million-pound company, I used to think customers existed elsewhere and I had to go looking for them.
It didn’t even occur to me that my first customers could be my family and friends, but if what I build solves a problem they’re willing to pay for, then why not?
However, these people are biased and will probably tell you your idea is great even if it’s not. I’m yet to find someone in my close circle to challenge me on it. I’ve quickly realised how to tell if someone is genuinely interested or just boosting you.
Ask them to pay for the app when it’s built.
Even friends and family falter when they need to hand their money over. Brits especially; we are hard to sell to and don’t hand money over easily.
Speak With Everyone Who Will Listen
I took a startup bootcamp a couple of years ago, and one of the biggest things I took from that was to speak with everyone who will listen.
Before this, I thought my ideas had to be kept under lock and key, and anyone who I told must sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) — I mean, what if Google or Apple found out? They would obviously steal it.
Come on, Google and Apple don’t give a sh*t about my ideas, and if they did take notice, it would be at a stage where the company is large enough to be on their radar.
I’m finding feedback from people invaluable. Talking with people who have the problem I’m trying to solve directs the project, defines the feature list, improves the UI/UX, and more. It’s potential customers telling you directly what they want and what they are then more likely to pay for.
Find Communities Online and Speak to Them
People love to moan about their problems; it’s human nature. Become a good listener.
Reddit has a subreddit for every topic you can think of, and this is a great place to find people with the problem you’re solving.
Ensembl is digital content management, so I’ve been scouring the subreddits below and found numerous posts about needing an app to centralise their saved and shared content.
I now have a database in Notion full of posts that Ensembl is the answer to, and the people that posted these and others that agreed in the comments are now potential customers I plan to speak with.
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