PRODUCT»/f you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.” Reid Garrett Hoffman, Entrepreneur PRODUCT VALIDATION Having an ideaisn’t that hard after all; itis claimed that everyone has an idea for a business that would make one rich, at least once a year! So how come we're not living in a world where everyone on the entrepreneurial path succeeds? Reasons for that could be numerous, but one of them is surely that (as we already said) just an idea, isn't a Startup yet - it requires many stages of polishing the concept. In this section of our ebook, we want to equip you with tools of validating your idea and verifying if it can indeed become a profitable product. You'll notice that these methods have a lot in common, and - in real life - one can encounter different variations of it. We encourage you, to look at them critically and ask yourself a question: what exactly would allow me to validate my idea quickly and cheaply? PROOF OF CONCEPT This terrn was coined in 1967. The definition provided at this time by the Committee on Science and Astronautics gives us a good overview of what it entails: “L...] defined Proof of Concept as a phase in development, in which |... is constructed and tested to explore and demonstrate the feasibility of a new concept”The word “feasibility’ seems to be a keyword here. PoC consists of preliminary construction of a functioning product/service and testing it with its presumed customers. It is actually a form of research: first, one should build (as quick as possible) something that would reflect the functionality of a target value created, and second, verify how users will react to whatever one wants to present to them. It provides an important basis for any other moves a business should undertake - it establishes viability, allows for more realistic budgeting, and, in general, supports internal decision-making processes. While creating a PoC one simply wants to prove that the idea is feasible and is worth pursuing further. Say, you want to sell a device that opens a gate of your property whenever you get closer to it. If you'd like to present a Proof of Concept of it - you'd have to: Build it. Probably utilizing already existing tools, which would make the process quicker. You could do it, fe. using a breadboard - the outcome would look nothing like a product you want to sell, but it would have the functionalities of it. There are many tools present on the market, which allow you to build the first version of your website, application or device ~ a lot of them is free, and some of them require a subscription fee, but its cost is nothing in comparison to what struggles you would have to go through if you'd want to go straight to developing a fully designed product (without even knowing if there is actual demand for it!) Test it on customers. You might want to conceptualize who they are and hand them over the device and let them use it for a while - requesting feedback afterward. By this, you would understand if the value you're trying to create is something appealing to them, if they would be willing to pay for it or what could be improved.MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT MVP is a way of validating business ideas (with the least resources possible involved) by creating something that represents the core functionalities of a target product, in a usable form - in order to run tests with customers. So what is adifference between MVP and PoC? Well, we believe that what separates these two is the approach. While PoC wants to simply prove feasibility - MVP focuses more on improving the product, also seems to be a more systematized method. It emphasizes the iterative nature of product validation process. Building MVP is being approached from different perspectives, we tried to describe stages of creating it, in order to share with you an easy-to-follow process, you could implement yourself. 1. Hypothesis - identify your assumptions. What do you need to get to know from your customers? What sort of reaction to your product you're expecting? Who is the target group that you're going to test your product with? 2. Design - based on your assumptions, build something that represents the core functionalities of your target product. Make sure it includes everything you wanted to test, but don't focus too much on details. It is not the time yet. 3. Test - give your MVP to your presumed clients and wait for them to give you feedback. Keep in mind, that not everyone will share their impression easily, so it is advised to have a sort of a survey (or simply a set of questions) prepared - hopefully matching the hypothesis you want to test. 4, Pivot / further development ~ by evaluating feedback you've received from your MVP users you can now analyze if your assumptions turned out to be correct. AA. If they were - congratulations! Now focus on improving your design - go back to the 2nd step. Of course, don't build something new from scratch, simply work on your product in order towrap its functionalities (that have proved to be valuable and demanded) in a better form. Depending on what you're feedback was - you can work on UX, add more functionalities, get rid of things that didn’t correspond to any value-added, and so on. B. If they weren't - congratulations! It is not the end of the world, actually the contrary - you've used your resources efficiently and understood that the business you conceptualized needs a solid improvement, perhaps more research. If you find it difficult to swallow the bitter taste of failure - imagine what would happen if you'd jump straight into investing time & money intoa product that doesn’t bring value to your clients (hint: that would be a disaster - a total waste of resources). Go back to the 1st step and form a new hypothesis based on the feedback you've received.CONCLUSION MVP could be seen as a sort of a one step further from PoC. We could say that PoC is what you have if you went through stages of MVP and proved demand for your product. You may find more methodologies of validating your idea - and we encourage you to experiment with them. Whatever you'll decide to use, make sure itis also cost-efficient and quick. In one study, researchers analyzed the reasons why startups fail - and the most frequent ones were ‘no market need" (42%) and “run out of cash” (29%). That is a good proof of the concept that if you don't test and experiment at the beginning of your product development - you're risking wasting time and money on things no one wants to pay for. Itis important toremember that product validation is a process that should go in a loop - building something, testing it, improving it, testing it... and so on. RECOMMENDED READS Tomer Sharon, Noam Lamdan, (2016), Validating Product Ideas: Through Lean User Research Steve Portigal, (2013), Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling insights