Brad Feld on Validating Your Startup Idea

Learn how to validate your startup idea. Discover a framework to evaluate your business idea early on, to avoid wasting time and money on false starts.

Introduction

• Evaluating your startup idea

1. Validating Your Idea

• Criteria for an opportunity
• Costs of not doing it
• Risk and uncertainty
• Validating your idea

2. Understand the Problem You Solve

• Your customer's pain
• Determine the size of the opportunity

3. Evaluate Your Product

• Proof of concept
• Scalability
• Adoption rate
• Intellectual property

4. Evaluate Your Market

• Product/market fit
• Disruption and innovation
• Customer acquisition
• Barriers to entry
• Competition

5. Evaluate Your People

• Passion vs. obsession
• Business acumen
• Domain knowledge and experience

Conclusion

• Next steps