Prove demand and validate your idea with $0 spent, as soon as in one day.

For a startup idea to be considered viable, it must solve a substantial issue.

Through validation, you get a proof of concept to see whether the idea justifies additional time and resources.

When you have a decent idea, don’t be scared, act on validating it immediately.

Let’s suppose you want to start something. You have a few ideas that you want to validate but you don’t have cash to validate it.

From this point forward, let’s assume this:

You are a business owner with a website where people buy things.

You are having a hard time converting visitors from your ads.

After some digging, you find out that the issue is your slow website and people bounce off after waiting for 2 seconds and not getting it fully loaded.

You assume others have this same issue.

You want to determine if there’s a business opportunity there.

I would do this:

1. Go to Google’s Keyword Planner.

Here you can see the volume of searches people input into Google for keywords and phrases.

Ok, we’re on the Keyword Planner and we can type in keywords into the box to see the Google search volume for that keyword or phrase.

Let’s try: “website speed optimization” or “speed up my website” or “slow shopify website”

When we search this phrase, Google shows us similar search terms and the number of times per month people search them on Google search.

Our intuition was correct. People are searching “speed up WordPress site” or “website speed optimization"

But has anyone else thought to solve this? Well, Google also shows if a lot of advertisers are competing for clicks and views for each keyword.

It seems there is a HIGH level of competition from other companies who are bidding to get clicks from people searching for these keywords. We can try to find other search keywords, but this is a good first step.

So far we have learned:

Other people are having the same problem.

There are over 500 people per month who search for a similar keyword combination of words on Google related to my problem.

Competition seems high tho. Clicks for these keywords cost from $4.5 up to $27 per click in the US. It might be a crowded space. Need to research the competition to see what they offer.

2. Talk to the market

Now that we’ve found out there’s some demand for this. Let’s talk to the market.

I would do the following:

Find where your market is. It could be Facebook Groups, Discord groups, or Reddit. Search for “Shopify store owners” or something similar on those platforms.

From this image below, I think the target customers are probably in /shopify.

I would start a thread about your frustrations with website speed and low conversion rate. Write a title that will catch your attention and spark the conversation.

Ask people how they are solving the problem now. You’ll hear about people who aren’t solving it, people who have no idea this is the problem, and people who went to the market and bought something. ALL are important to you.

Determine why these existing solutions fall short. You’ll have to engage the audience and ask. What’s wrong with existing solutions? 

From this process, you will have:

A: Determined that everyone is completely satisfied with existing solutions

or

B: Found a few reasons why existing solutions aren’t getting it done.

And you’ll be hearing this from the ideal target customer.

3. Ideation

Go to the drawing board and list the reasons why existing solutions aren’t working. List the competition and where they excel. Are the existing players in the market NOT solving the issues your social media group expressed?

Come up with 2 or 3 ways to solve the main issue people seem to have. Make sure your solution exactly solves the problem people expressed.

4. Market idea feedback

Go to Google Forms here: Google Forms

Create a simple, and free landing page that tells the following:

Who you are

The problem you have uncovered

The issue with existing solutions

Your solution and why it’s better

Then, put a call to action at the bottom.

Ask for feedback + their email address so you can continue the talk and reach them when your solution is ready.

Then go back to the social media groups. Tell them you are working on a solution to the problem you discussed and post the link to the Google form. Tell them you’d love their feedback and that you think you’ve found the solution that solves current frustrations.  Get them on a call and sell them on the solution and your unique mechanism.

In one day you can find out:

• Does anyone else experience the same problem?

• If yes, how many people are ACTIVELY seeking for a solution to the problem?

• Where do these people spend the most time and how can I reach them?

• What do they like/ dislike about current solutions on the market?

• What gaps exist in the market I can capitalize on?

• Plus, you can collect emails and feedback from future customers.

The best method to validate your idea with under $20:

Create a website that lists your product offerings with a signup button as the CTA (call-to-action), and send it to potential users. There should be no ‘coming soon’ or ‘beta version’ sign - it needs to look like an actual product with the pricing on the page(unless it’s a high ticket B2B SaaS) that people could use at any second.

Rather than asking people what they'd do, it actually gets users to do something (ie sign up/buy now).

When they click on “buy now”/”sign up” button, you could prompt a window saying something like this “The demand is too high right now, to provide the best experience for you we can’t let you sign up now. Please leave your email and we’ll get back to you soon”

If you see people trying to sign up/buy your product and getting frustrated because the product doesn't actually exist, it likely means that's a painful problem they're facing - a very good sign.

Thanks for reading,

You are a free member of

Growth Catalyst Club

1. Get 1 on 1 Facebook Ads help.

2. Spending >$3k/mo on FB ads? | Get A Free Audit (worth $500)