Customer Validation

Objectives

After working on this lecture, you should be able to:

• Describe Validation
• Discuss why you need to validate
• Discuss how to validate
• Know how to use various techniques to validate your product
Anne Jacobe, technopreneur, founder of shoephoric.com and CEO of Euphoric lab
discusses customer validation.
A lean startup business plan is a short roadmap that outlines the startup's goals and the
steps to reach them. Concise in nature, sometimes only as long as one page, a lean startup
plan starts by identifying a problem and solution

The Lean Startup method allows organizations to

launch new products or services in environments with
high uncertainty. High uncertainty can be created when
potential customers' problems are difficult to understand
or if it is unclear how new solutions to a problem should
be built.
The Validation Board is a great tool to help entrepreneurs stay focused on taking
action while implementing the Lean Startup process.” - Eric Ries, Author of The Lean
Startup
1. Identify your “Customer Hypothesis”: Who is your organization’s specific target client?
Although we like the idea of helping anyone who needs help, the truth is your
organization will be most effective by delivering specific, customized solutions to a
specific market.

2. Identify your “Problem Hypothesis”: What problem do you think they have for which
they are searching for a solution? I know for me in my work as a coach, it is so easy to
see a glaring problem that I can help my client solve; however, if my target market
doesn’t personally identify with that same challenge, my solution to their problem won’t
“sell” no matter what.

3. The first time working through the Validation board, skip the “Solution
Hypothesis” because we need some data about the problems our target market is
currently facing around a specific issue before we come up with any potential solutions.
Once we have some feedback from our market, we can then begin to test the viability of
potential solutions.
 4. Identify your “Riskiest Assumption”: What are you assuming about what your
target clients want? In addition, what data do you need to support your
assumption?

5. Method: How are you going to test your idea? How are you going to find out if your
target market identifies with the problem you’re looking to help them solve? Are you
going to ask them in person, do a survey, etc.?
6. Minimum Success Criterion: How will I know when I have enough data to validate my
idea?

7. Pivot as necessary: As you get more feedback from your target market, adjust
your approach as necessary. Perhaps the problem you’re setting out to solve isn’t
what they really connect with but there is another problem they’d like you to help
them solve. Keep tweaking your concept until you have enough information to
validate that your idea is viable for both you and for them. Use as many columns on
the Validation Board as necessary.
Example flow chart for customer validation web start up
Validation Board
Activity

 Develop a validation flow chart of your start up idea

 Create the customer validation checklist
 Create the customer validation board