To deliver value consistently,
validate early and validate continuously
Our team at Tapptitude has delivered over 100 products over the past 7 years, yet that’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the conversations we’ve had with founders looking for solutions to build their product concepts.
We’ll start each conversation the same way:
What problem are you addressing through the product you’re building?
Who is going to be using your product?
Is there a big enough audience for your product?
Do you know if this audience is willing right now to spend money on the problem you’re addressing?
The processes we’ve iterated in the last years have focused on two core things: de-risking the product investment of the startup team first, then delivering product iterations that help users solve a painful problem for them, on a technical foundation that can be easily scaled.
Validation is a key part of the de-risking process when you’re building a product. Validation done well will help you as a founder to:
Save time and budget that you would have invested in a product that had no market interest
Help you better define your MVP and plan your product iterations
Help you decide to pivot your product concept towards the audience’s more pressing needs and raise your chances of survival
That last point is really important. Invalidation is not a failure at this stage. Remember, you haven’t designed a product yet, nor invested in one line of code. If you invalidate your existing product concept, you can direct your attention, expertise, current budget and time towards another idea, with more potential, that has more chances to succeed.
But getting the nitty-gritty details of validation right is hard, and this is where this validation field guide comes in. Through this series of exercises, you’re getting hands-on guidance in learning about the problem you want to solve. It’s our experience that the more you learn about the problem you want to build a product for, the more you end up loving that space. And that is what will keep your enthusiasm high when experiments fail and when your product needs changes, big and small.
We encourage each founder we work with to start the validation process early and do the work to get answers to their questions. The work will be at times boring or methodical. At times it will also be mind-opening, and shift your perceptions. Wherever you are in your discovery journey, remember that validation work is meaningful work.
Erika Kramarik
Full-Stack Marketer
Erika is a full-stack marketer passionate about the intersection between technology and social impact. She mixes research with content design and a human touch to help people and startups succeed in delivering value through their work. When not writing or talking to people, you’ll find her reading or quoting Hamilton for any life situation.
