How can i go on validating a B2B business Idea?What ways available out there?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13710237

by officialoscp • 9 years ago

3 1 9 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I google the phrase, there are lots of articals out there, i have gone through some of these, some are suggesting, surveys, launch page and lot of philliosophy and motivation, but i want to understand the practical fundamental approch. what most people do ?

Should i go out there talking business? if yes how should i approch them? Should i start with sending cold e-mails and stalking in linkedin? or should i start building the MVP first than talk to people out there? Someone help me to get a clear understanding of this process. Thank You.

PS - This is my first question in YC community. Hope i will get some good advise.

nibs• 9 years ago

Talk to customers. Who is the customer? Talk to them. Ask them how they do it now. Ask them to describe how it would ideally work. Ask them how much they would be willing to pay, and tell them your question is not to bottom line them but to figure out how they perceive what it would be worth. Ask them if they are willing to commit to pay that if you are able to meet A, B and C minimum viable functionality. Ask them to put it in writing.

I think LinkedIn is good for information gathering, but you should ideally cold email people with an ask for 10 minutes on the phone and then schedule as many phone calls a day as you can. These are called discovery calls. Your goal is to discover what the priorities and needs of the business are in the area you intend to tackle to figure out if there is even a business there in the first place.

If those calls go well and a few people are willing to put in writing an intention to purchase it if you are able to deliver, build the A, B and C functionality as fast as possible and then call them back and ask them to pay for it. Assume half of those never actually intended to pay for it. Assume the other half will email you constantly complaining that you are missing D, E and F. Call a bunch of new people who you think might be customers and ask how critical D, E and F are.

If they are critical, ask those new customers if they would commit in writing to purchase such a solution. A few more will be willing to than before if you are on to something. Build D, E and F to appease the initial customers (they will be happy) and close the next customers. Carefully reflect on what the potential market is now that you have ABCDEF. Try as much as possible to sell that to new customers until you have a critical mass. At that point you should be nearing product/market fit.

Then ask yourself what you are best at? Try to use customer money to fund hiring everything that is not that thing. Continue to repeat this process through increasingly large and complex markets and layers of abstration below you in the organization heirarchy. Sorry I only have time to write but not to edit, hope this helps.

How can i go on validating a B2B business Idea?What ways available out there?

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