I want to validate my idea

Find out whether anyone actually wants this, before you spend a year building it.

The lessons, in order

1. What actually is a startup? — A startup is not just a new company, and it is not the same thing as a small business, an agency or freelancing. The difference decides how you fund it, how fast you must grow, and what counts as success. (12 min)
2. Problems versus ideas — An idea is a guess about a solution. A problem is a fact about someone's life. Start from the fact. (10 min)
3. Evaluating an idea honestly — Nine dimensions, assessed as evidence rather than as a score. What you know, what you assume, and what is still unvalidated. (15 min)
4. Market size — TAM, SAM and SOM — How to size a market bottom-up so the number means something, instead of the '1% of a $50B market' slide everyone has seen. (12 min)
5. Why customer discovery comes first — The cheapest way to find out you are wrong. Twenty conversations cost two weeks; building the wrong thing costs a year. (10 min)
6. How to run a problem interview — A specific script, the questions that work, and the ones that quietly destroy your data. (15 min)
7. Reading the evidence honestly — Separating what people said from what it means, and noticing when you are hearing what you hoped for. (12 min)
8. Testing willingness to pay — The only reliable test is asking for money. Everything else is people being nice to you. (12 min)

All Founder Academy subjects