I hope the headline brought you here with a bit of “WTF is he going to propose now?” But I was compelled to share this perspective when in the start of a host of new incubator cohorts, we’re talking about idea validation, and some brilliant observations were made by mentors.
Startups love to talk about validating ideas. It’s the buzzword in every incubator, accelerator, and innovation workshop. What we now know after years of preaching idea validation is that most founders aren’t actually validating anything that needs validating; they’re confirming their own bias, polishing an MVP they already wanted to build, and talking to people who are inclined to say nice things.
What separates real founders isn’t validation. It’s being capable of rapid invalidation.
Not because Lean Startup got it wrong, far from it, but because the intent behind its ideas too often gets lost in translation. The goal was never to prove your idea is brilliant. It’s to run at every wall and see which ones don’t collapse under pressure. I’m known for saying “It’s not really Product Market Fit, it’s Market Product Fit, because you build what the market wants rather than putting product first.” This idea of invalidation caught my attention as doing something every founder should be doing in a way consistent with what I did with PMF: just flip it upside down and see what happens.
The best founders aren’t looking for affirmation. They’re searching for the truth. So, for example, to do that, you can’t talk to customers, who offer affirmation, you have to talk to everyone, to uncover all of the possibilities that arrive what’s actually right. Flip the conventional wisdom upside down that it’s not “talk to customers,” it’s “talk to everyone.”
Article Highlights
Most “Ideas” Aren’t the Problem
Most startup ideas aren’t dumb. Over the decades, I’ve sat through hearing thousands and only a small handful were clearly bad ideas. Spend enough time in accelerators, pitch rooms, or grant review panels and you’ll realize: the majority of ideas are reasonable. Often even elegant. What fails isn’t the concept, it’s the journey through resistance. And you can play with my headline there as a play on words, I’m pointing out not that ideas aren’t actually the problem, but that what founders fail to do is focus on the problem – their idea is a solution, not the problem, and what successful entrepreneurs are fixated on is the problem.
Founders with experience usually know where the real pain points are. If you’ve lived the problem, you’ll feel it in your bones when something clicks. If you’ve worked in health care, for example, you’ll understand how a pill-tracking device might resonate but also where it might fail.
Execution, not creativity, is where most things fall apart. Timing, friction, trust, access, incentives. The idea might be solid, but the terrain you have to cross to make it all work out as a new company is really what’s brutal.
The Medicine Tracker: A Thought Experiment
Take that pill-tracking container idea. Completely valid idea and most of us know it, that’s a completely valid concept. Elegant solution. We don’t need to validate the idea, we know it. So, let’s play it through what actually happens when a founder for such a thing is successful:
Step 1: The market check.
You discover competitors already exist. And in the process, you also find that their websites are awful. Reviews are minimal. You think, “Why haven’t I heard of this before? It’s a similar solution!” Because, in our scenario, they clearly have failed some things: they were invisible on arrival. That doesn’t validate nor invalidate your idea; what it does is it uncovers for you what they failed and how you can succeed.
Step 2: Assumption stress-test.
Think patients are your customers? Ask them, and yes, I’m alluding to “talk to customers” which I just pointed out is wrong, but I’m doing that to make my point. You THINK patients are your customers for this. So, talk to them. And you find: Older patients light up and love it, until they see complexity. Younger ones like the concept but wouldn’t pay for it. That’s two different markets that you just learn from: make it simpler OR find a different customer.
Step 3: Widen the lens.
Which is why what you do is talk to all people, not just what you think are the customers. So, we hit Doctors? Maybe they say they wouldn’t buy but they’d love your solution for care. You talk to Big Pharma because after all, you’re keeping medicine safer. But you find Pharma doesn’t care (though you discover a potential investor). Then you find Pharmacists. And what was oblivious to you until you talked to them, they lean in. They tell you people are always asking for this. They put you in touch with the Store buyer so you can get your solution in. Some even mention grant pathways. What just happened? You didn’t validate – you invalidated: not the complex solution you thought, not patients directly, not doctors, etc. And the process narrowed the noise into a signal.
That’s what progress looks like.
The Pattern Behind Most Failures
The brutal truth we’re incessantly repeating is that that 90% of startups fail. So, when will we start focusing on how-to-not-fail instead of pretending we can advise startups on what’s success? Flip conventional wisdom upside down. Failure is not for lack of passion. Not even for lack of innovation. It’s because they followed a pattern:
- Build the product
- Ask “customers” if they like it
- Hear nice things
- Take those nice things as proof
It’s comforting. But it’s a lie. Admit it, it’s probably what you’re doing. It’s what you were told to do to prove it to investors. It’s what you heard to do in building an MVP to validate it. You were told talk to customers, and of course they want your solution but that praise often ignores that they won’t pay for it, or won’t switch, or are just being nice – after all, it is a good idea, and they know what a better solution might be.
Invalidation flips the script. Instead of clinging to a belief, you test its limits until the weak spots show themselves. You don’t chase success. You survive your own scrutiny. And in startups, survival earns you the right to try again.
Someone asked me recently how to validate with no money. The answer is simple: don’t. Start by invalidating.
You don’t need capital to talk to people. You need time. And the willingness to ask uncomfortable questions of those who might disagree. More importantly, the willingness to both listen and hear, not argue, not convince, and just absorb that over hundreds of conversations, people are telling you how to avoid wasting your time. That’s what moves you forward.
Talk to users, yes, but also the ones who aren’t using. Talk to 12 year olds and 80 year olds, something we advise constantly only to usually find most don’t actually bother to go do it. After all, why? “they’re not our customers.” Because if they don’t understand it and agree, it’s too complicated. Talk to distributors, regulators, competitors, and the people who already failed trying. Most will say something you didn’t want to hear. And that’s the point.
Shift Your Thinking About Everything to Consider the Opposite
Lean Startup gave us a model and if what you’re doing isn’t working out the way you hope while you think you’re practicing it methodically, flip it and try the other angle.
If you’re seeking affirmation, you’re not running a startup. You’re writing a script you hope others will follow. Flip the frame: spend your energy proving yourself wrong.
The more resistance you survive, the more resilient the idea becomes. The more resilient you become.
Ideas are a dime a dozen.
Execution is everything which is why product market fit is the gold standard!
Are you solving a problem someone you know actually has who’s willing to pay you to solve it at a price point above what it cost you to solve it for them?
This is very on point.
Paul O’Brien another solid post! Man you don’t miss.
The idea of the importance of invalidation during the idea validation process hit me like a ton of bricks. It’s a crucial mistake I made early in my entrepreneurial journey.
Market product fit is an absolute gem it’s reminiscent of a similar mistake I see early stage companies make – creating their brand in a vacuum versus listening to their customers and stakeholders’ view, feelings, and opinion of their product or service and incorporating that into their brand strategy.
The journey through resistance is spot on as well – i’ve seen many good companies die crossing that chasm.
Successful entrepreneurs are fixated on the problem… One of my mentors Tony Brown introduced me to the concept of being ‘counterintuitive’ in business, which goes hand in hand with being fixated on the problem and talking to everybody in an effort to achieve invalidation.
Another absolute pearl of wisdom for entrepreneurs in the early stage is talking to everybody and it is the most expedient way to decrease their noise to signal ratio.
I hope today’s entrepreneurs are making the most of these free masterclasses – we didn’t have FREE access to this kind of wisdom back in the day.
You have to have a product/service that customers need, not just want. Need is quantified in $s, want is quantified in words. If customers won’t pay, they don’t need. If they won’t pay, you have invalidated your product/service. It’s not that complicated.
Does it solve a problem? Can you get to revenue?
Agreed. I encourage founders to go in search of “No.” Too many founders avoid people that poopoo their product idea, but they need to hear from all sides. It helps establish that there are limits / boundaries to their product’s market.
Timothy P. Washington Grateful for this, and you’re right to connect it to branding. Most founders treat “brand” like paint on the house when in fact it’s the foundation (and it doesn’t mean logo and design); what customers and stakeholders already perceive, not what you announce. Too many waste years creating in a vacuum, only to discover the market has already branded them in a completely different light.
Tony’s point about being counterintuitive is spot on. It’s the part of entrepreneurship nobody glamorizes because it doesn’t sound sexy: you have to ask questions you don’t want the answer to and chase the resistance until you find what breaks. That’s where the real signal is hiding.
We didn’t have this kind of open conversation back in the day, true. Maybe that’s the blessing and curse of the era we’re in; knowledge is everywhere, but execution still decides everything.
Paul O’Brien my fave imagery in this:
The smartest founders run at walls, not around them. We want the tough, the resilience, the grit!
Ellen Damaso exactly!! You caught it. You’re trying to break through and you can’t break through by going around the issue.
Paul O’Brien that is an excellent point! While having access to free information is certainly valuable, the ultimate factor remains in the execution.
This reminds me of the well-known quote by the English philosopher Herbert Spencer, who stated that “the great aim of education is not knowledge but action.”
This is perfectly timed! I appreciate you sharing this valuable perspective!
To your very lucid point, I always recommend my startups and mentees read “The Mom Test” by Rob Fitzpatrick and look over the Cognitive Bias Kodex, which shows how insipid and ingrained our bias is. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Cognitive_bias_codex_en.svg
Oh, that’s awesome, I’ve never seen that before.
Great insights, or should I call it outsight?:)
well played. And thank you.
Team is the barrier to execution. Founder advancement programs would be SO worthy if they focused more on supporting/building scaffolding instead of all this philosophy. MAYBE… The oversplaining has finally met its inflection point for this failing marketplace. Practical simplicity for real advancement? Market research services? Barriers-in-reality surveys? More turnkey solutions for equity. More passion-to-cause alignment. Access to capital doesn’t solve for what doesn’t exist yet.
Fundraising status quo is HANDS DOWN the most inefficient pathway to execution. Founders in motion need money for basic survival needs to keep them focused, and shame on any program or grant application that charges ANYTHING. That’s simply misaligned motives of monetization, and should be eliminated from this space unless their own outcomes have been validated. And “closing funds” is not an outcome, FYI.
Start Trying to Validate Your Founder Programs
I bet the priorities for their cognitive safety will finally come into focus.
Carol J. Dickerson, Pharm D in fairness, I’m going to keep pushing, even more from Washington now, that we can’t keep supporting the misuse of words: Angels who aren’t Angels, VCs that aren’t VCs, and as I alluded to here, Accelerators that aren’t.
Much of the reason Fundraising is inefficient is merely misalignment of expectations, misleading advice, and founders not being guided clearly to what’s appropriate to what they’re doing. Fix that and we remove most of the headaches.
Change title from “founder” to “scientist”….problem solved
Gerry Hays, JD, QAI More meaningful suggestion than I think most appreciate.
Startups are effectively the R&D aspect of the private sector and Venture Capital is funding R&D more than starting businesses.
Anything that is not a yes is a no.
“Start by invalidating”… Richard Feynman (is he everybody’s hero?) would love this.
Politeness for demand!
Just yesterday I had a discussion with a startup on his idea and apparently all he wanted me to say was “great idea”; he looked really sad when I gave him some feed backs contrary to that.
Segun Obakeye I hate to say it but encouragement in entrepreneurship is really not helpful. Founders should be upfront about what they want, and advisors might ask for that clarity first. When almost everything fails, I’m not here to help a founder be motivated, I’m here to help them avoid the mistakes
Favorite expression when meeting with prospective partners “Feel free to call the baby ugly!” I give them permission to tell me I’m wrong.
Wrote about this the other day. There’s only one real way to validate
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/markchannon_primefocus-founderstories-breakthroughcoaching-activity-7376537442767757313-5MHB
I remind myself that everything that exists around us, no one initially believed in it but the founder. You have to manifest your visions and walk a lonely road sometimes because at the end of the day, the burning bush spoke to you, not everyone else.
Ramel Robinson lonely is an understanent! It’s an isolated journey that requires a toolbox of noise cancelling headphones and a megaphone to be heard.
Adam P. Halpern, MA, AT-Ret I agree! Trust me, I live this life, day to day.
Ramel Robinson I can tell by your comment. It’s a fraternity/sorority of people that understand each other and what they’re going through!
Adam P. Halpern, MA, AT-Ret I haven’t found that social club yet. As was John Wick, I’m still Excommunicado
Ramel Robinson you might enjoy my take on belief and how most live by the “I’ll believe it when I see it” saying, which is not what entrepreneurs and startup investors do:
https://paulobrien.substack.com/p/ill-see-it-when-i-believe-it-entrepreneurs
Love this
Paul O’Brien I’ll check it out and circle back.
Invalidation is a fantastic framing. It’s precisely the scientific method. You have a theory and look for tests to DISPROVE it.
Lance Cottrell with time, I find that when most books and methodologies about startups fail to increase the rate of success, we should try applying them from the other way around.
Now you’ve done it, you got me thinking we should rename or YES!Delft Validation Program to the Invalidation Program…
Freek Smoes I’m having the same thoughts; that fixing most of what founders struggle with in startup communities if flipping ideas upside down.
Paul, in the end we’re all flipping burgers