Validate Your SaaS Idea FAST (Step-by-Step SaaS Validation Process)๐กโ
Summary
TLDRIn this video, Rob Walling outlines a step-by-step process to validate a SaaS idea within 30 days. He differentiates between idea evaluation and validation, emphasizing the continuum of validation. Walling discusses two primary methods: using landing pages for low-touch funnels and conversational validation for high-touch funnels. He also shares his experience with a third approach, combining both methods, which he finds most effective. The video offers practical advice on building email lists, driving traffic, and conducting valuable conversations to gauge interest and secure pre-sales commitments.
Takeaways
- ๐ Rob Walling, an experienced entrepreneur, discusses two primary methods for validating a SaaS idea: verbal commitments or pre-sales and landing pages.
- ๐ Idea evaluation and validation are distinct processes; evaluation uses criteria to assess an idea, while validation involves steps to confirm market interest.
- ๐ The 5 PM framework is a tool for evaluating SaaS ideas, which is detailed in episode 628 of the podcast 'Startups for the Rest of Us'.
- ๐ก Validation is not a binary outcome; it's a continuum that helps gauge the potential of an idea without reaching absolute certainty.
- ๐ ๏ธ Landing pages are effective for low-touch or no-touch funnels, aiming to build an email list to gauge interest and facilitate early conversations.
- ๐ฃ๏ธ Verbal commitments or pre-sales are suitable for high-touch funnels, involving direct conversations to secure commitments before development.
- ๐ฅ The 'curse of the audience' is a pitfall where an audience's bias towards the creator can skew feedback, potentially leading to misguided validation.
- ๐ Building a network or having an existing one provides an advantage for validation, as it allows for more meaningful and directed conversations.
- ๐ฑ Cold and warm validation strategies differ in approach; cold involves reaching out to new contacts, while warm leverages existing relationships.
- ๐ผ The 'Mom Test' book offers guidance on asking questions to avoid leading responses and to genuinely assess the viability of a SaaS idea.
- ๐ A combination approach, using both conversations for initial validation and a landing page for broader interest, can be highly effective, as demonstrated with the validation of Drip.
Q & A
What is the main focus of the video?
-The video focuses on providing a step-by-step process to validate a SAS (Software as a Service) idea in less than 30 days, discussing two common methods and introducing a third approach that the speaker finds even better.
Who is Rob Walling and what are his qualifications for discussing SAS ideas?
-Rob Walling is an entrepreneur who has started six companies, written three books on building startups, and invested in over 100 SAS companies. He is also the host of the podcast 'Startups for the Rest of Us'.
What is the difference between idea evaluation and idea validation according to the video?
-Idea evaluation involves running an idea through a set of criteria, while idea validation is about taking steps to find out if people are interested, if you can gather traffic, and if it's a reasonable idea to pursue.
What is the 5 PM framework mentioned in the video?
-The 5 PM framework is a method for evaluating SAS ideas, which is discussed in detail in episode 628 of the podcast 'Startups for the Rest of Us'.
Why does Rob Walling suggest that validation is a continuum?
-Validation is considered a continuum because you can never be 100% certain about an idea's success. Even with significant validation, such as having a large email list and้ขๅฎ่ฎขๅ, there's still a level of uncertainty.
What are the two most common ways to validate a SAS idea discussed in the video?
-The two most common ways to validate a SAS idea are through verbal commitments or pre-sales and using landing pages.
What is the significance of the 'curse of the audience' mentioned in the video?
-The 'curse of the audience' refers to the tendency of an audience to tell creators what they want to hear, which can lead to false validation of an idea because the audience is trying to be supportive rather than critical.
Why does Rob Walling recommend building an email launch list when validating an idea with a landing page?
-Building an email launch list is significant because it helps gauge interest and allows for direct communication with potential customers, which can guide product direction and generate early revenue.
What are some strategies for driving traffic to a landing page for validation purposes?
-Strategies include discussing the idea on social media, engaging in entrepreneurial groups, using platforms like Beta list, Reddit, and even employing pay-per-click advertising.
How does conversational validation differ from validation via landing page?
-Conversational validation, also known as customer development or getting pre-purchases, involves direct conversations with potential customers to gauge interest and secure verbal commitments. It is more suited for medium or high-touch funnels.
What is the third approach that Rob Walling suggests for validating a SAS idea?
-The third approach combines both verbal commitments or pre-sales and landing pages. It involves having initial conversations to gauge interest, then building a landing page to create an email launch list while the product is being developed.
Outlines
๐ Validating a SAS Idea: Methods and Strategies
In this video, Rob Walling discusses the process of validating a SAS (Software as a Service) idea within 30 days. He differentiates between idea evaluation and validation, emphasizing that validation is an ongoing process to gauge interest and gather traffic. Rob shares his experience with validating various SAS products and highlights the importance of the 5 PM framework for idea evaluation. He introduces two common validation methods: verbal commitments or pre-sales, and landing pages. The video also mentions a third, more effective approach that combines elements of the first two methods. Rob discusses the 'curse of the audience,' cautioning against relying too heavily on an existing audience's feedback, which may not accurately reflect market demand.
๐ Landing Page Validation for Low-Touch Funnels
Rob Walling explains the use of landing pages for validating SAS ideas, particularly for low-touch or no-touch funnels. The goal is to build an email launch list to gauge interest and capture potential customers' contact information. He suggests various methods for driving traffic to the landing page, such as social media, entrepreneurial groups, and even pay-per-click advertising. The key metric for success is the percentage of visitors who opt-in to the email list. Rob advises that a high opt-in rate indicates potential interest in the product. He also mentions that reaching out to people on the list can provide valuable insights and help guide product development.
๐ฃ๏ธ Conversational Validation: High-Touch Funnels and Pre-Sales
The third paragraph delves into conversational validation, also known as customer development, which is suitable for medium or high-touch funnels. Rob describes two approaches: cold validation, which involves making unsolicited calls to potential customers, and warm validation, which leverages an existing network or audience. He shares his personal experience with warm validation, reaching out to a network of founders and speakers to gauge interest in a new tool. Rob emphasizes the importance of honest conversations that aim to understand whether potential customers would be willing to pay for the product. He also recommends the book 'The Mom Test' for guidance on conducting these conversations effectively.
Mindmap
Keywords
๐กSaaS
๐กIdea Validation
๐ก5 PM Framework
๐กPrototype or MVP
๐กLanding Page
๐กEmail Launch List
๐กVerbal Commitments or Pre-Sales
๐กLow-Touch Funnel
๐กHigh-Touch Funnel
๐กCold Calls
๐กWarm Validation
Highlights
Rob Walling introduces two common methods for validating a SaaS idea and hints at a third, better approach.
The distinction between idea evaluation and validation is clarified, with evaluation being criteria-based and validation being about gathering interest and traffic.
The 5 PM framework for evaluating SaaS ideas is mentioned, with a reference to episode 628 for further details.
Validation is described as a continuum, with no absolute certainty but rather a series of steps to gauge interest and feasibility.
Rob shares his experience validating various projects, emphasizing the importance of pre-validation before development.
The State of Independent SaaS survey data is presented, showing the most popular methods for idea validation among SaaS founders.
A critique of building a prototype or MVP without prior validation is offered, suggesting it could lead to wasted effort.
The 'curse of the audience' is introduced as a pitfall of relying too heavily on existing audience feedback for validation.
The strategy for validating a low-touch or no-touch funnel using a landing page is explained, focusing on building an email launch list.
Various methods for driving traffic to a landing page are discussed, including social media, community engagement, and paid advertising.
The significance of email list opt-ins as a validation signal is highlighted, with examples of success rates.
A case for conversational validation, or getting verbal commitments/pre-sales, is made for medium to high-touch funnels.
The difference between cold and warm validation approaches is outlined, with examples and strategies for each.
Rob recounts his personal validation process for Drip, combining early conversations with a landing page strategy.
The importance of not leading potential customers during validation conversations is emphasized, to ensure genuine feedback.
A recommendation for the book 'The Mom Test' is given as a resource for learning how to ask effective validation questions.
The video concludes with a call to action for viewers to like and subscribe for more SaaS validation and growth content.
Transcripts
in this video I'm going to walk through
a step-by-step process to validate your
SAS idea in less than 30 days in fact
I'm going to walk through the two most
common ways to validate a SAS idea and
if you stick around until the end I'll
tell you a third approach that I think
is even better I'm Rob Walling I've
started six companies I've written three
books on building startups and I've
invested in more than 100 SAS companies
so I want to start off by talking about
the difference between idea evaluation
and idea of validation so evaluation is
where you take an idea and you run it
through criteria and I actually have a
framework called the 5 PM framework for
evaluating SAS ideas and if you want to
hear about evaluating an idea and you
want to hear about this 5 PM framework
head to episode 628 of the sister
podcast to this YouTube channel it's
called startups for the rest of us where
I walk through this framework of How to
Think Through evaluating an idea and
this is really helpful if you have 10
ideas 20 ideas you can't validate all of
them right validation is where you start
taking steps to find out if people are
interested if you can gather the traffic
and if this is going to be a reasonable
idea to pursue validation is a Continuum
you're never going to get to 100 with a
ton of validation a bunch of people on
an early access email list and 20 30 40
people who have committed to pay for it
you're still at what maybe 60 70 that
this is going to work you're just never
gonna get to 100 validated and in my
career I validated a lot of things so I
validated a SAS app called drip before
we wrote a line of code I validated my
first book start small stay small with a
landing page I validated our conference
microcomp that you know this YouTube
channel is named after the company
microcomp I validated my SAS accelerator
called tinyseed before we did anything
we put up a landing page because we
wanted to see if there was interest from
Founders and interest from investors and
lastly I validated an online community
that started about a decade ago for
early stage startup Founders by putting
up again a landing page finding out if
people were interested in this video I'm
going to focus on two approaches to
validation but I did want to talk about
kind of the gamut of approaches that we
see in the independent SAS space so
microcomp runs a state of independent
SAS survey where we survey hundreds of
bootstrap and mostly bootstrap really
non-venture track SAS Founders and we
put together a report every year and in
the 2022 report we asked folks how did
you validate your idea and from most
popular to least popular the options
were 33 percent built a prototype or an
MVP 20 asked Their audience 18 combined
got verbal commitments or pre-sales
seven percent copy to competitor seven
percent put up a landing page now what
I'm going to do in this video I'm going
to talk about the verbal commitments or
pre-sales and I'm going to talk about
landing pages and which you use depends
on the space you're going into whether
it's high touch or low touch if you look
at this list of approaches to validating
really the Prototype or MVP in my
opinion should come after you've set up
an ending page or you've done your
verbal commitments or pre-sales I feel
like just building a prototype or MVP is
probably a recipe for really not
validating because you're putting in
work before you go have these
conversations in addition asking your
audience which is also a popular one I
think can be pretty dangerous there's
this thing I call the curse of the
audience and it's where your audience
really likes you and if you say would
you like a new tool that does XYZ they
often will tell you what you want to
hear because a they like you they're
trying to support you they're not trying
to make you feel bad and B an audience
no matter how big you're gonna Plateau
I've seen it firsthand I've seen it
secondhand a lot of folks with small to
medium size audiences launch that SAS
and they get up to a thousand 5K maybe
10K a month and that's it and then they
Plateau so today I'm not going to assume
that you have an audience and the other
one I'm not going to cover is copying a
competitor I think that's interesting
validation I actually don't think that's
a terrible way to go as long as you have
some type of differentiation but we're
not going to cover that in this video as
I said we're going to cover landing
pages is for low touch funnels and I'm
also going to cover having conversations
and getting either verbal commitments or
pre-sales so with that let's dive into
validation via landing page so you want
to validate via a landing page when a
it's really a low touch or no touch
funnel if you're not sure what those
terms mean we have a companion video on
the best SAS funnels to use and you can
search this Channel or just look in the
description of this video and we'll link
to it but essentially what you're trying
to validate here when you have a low or
no touch funnel is can I drive enough
traffic to make this make sense that's
kind of your first risk the other risk
is can I build something that this
traffic will want to buy but
realistically then you have to go build
it because let me give you an example if
you're building something that's going
to be ten dollars a month twenty dollars
a month going out and building that and
trying to have conversations with
individual people I question if that's a
great use of time I actually think
there's a bigger risk and can I just
Market this thing can I get people to a
site and in the end if you do get a
thousand or ten thousand people a month
coming to some site a landing page or a
full-blown blog if you get folks coming
to that looking for something the odds
are reasonable that you may be able to
spin that into something that these
folks actually want and are willing to
pay for and the idea with building a
landing page is to really build an email
launch list because just having people
coming to a site is fine but getting
them on a launch list getting them to
opt in is really the measure that you're
looking for if you're sending 5 000
people a month via these traffic
channels I'm about to mention and no
one's signing up for your email list you
have a problem the typical approach to
getting traffic to that landing page is
to talk about it a lot to talk about
your idea to go on social media you can
ask for advice or you can tell people
what you're building you can talk about
it in entrepreneurial groups like
microcomp connect the SAS community that
is connected to this YouTube channel or
Community like Indie hackers or even
like show Han which is Hacker News you
can go to Beta list and add your idea
there you can go to Reddit you can do
podcaster YouTube tours q a sites like
quora and stack exchange I've seen folks
build pretty amazing launch lists or
even an actual product you know do
marketing on those sites or you can even
use pay-per-click I did this when we
were validating drip I drove traffic
from Facebook ads and Google AdWords to
our landing page to see if people were
interested in a new type of email
service provider and the idea behind
this list is a to gauge are people
interested and B to start having
conversations with folks on that list
you can guide your product Direction you
can get early Revenue when you launch
and really it's a mechanism to have this
tightly knit audience even if you
already have an audience whether it's on
social media or something else getting
people to opt in to want to hear about
the that particular idea or who at least
are acting like they're interested in
that particular idea can have a lot of
value and so those are the ways that I
would send traffic to the landing page
and the question is you know how do you
validate an idea by doing this and I
said it earlier but if no one's signing
up for that email list it's probably not
a great idea if you're getting 10 of
people five percent of people who hit
your your landing page to sign up for it
that's interesting you know it depends
on the type of volume you're sending I
had a landing page at one point where I
got 30 opt-in like that the traffic was
so tightly connected to the message it
was such a good fit that 30 of people
who visited opted in that's a pretty
high number if you're having more cold
traffic sending Facebook ads or whatever
you're probably gonna get in that five
percent 10 range and consider it a
success now this doesn't fully validate
the idea you're not at 100 but at least
you have a signal you have one more
signal than you had in your evaluation
that 5 PM evaluation framework and from
there I'd start reaching out to people
on the list what might you be willing to
pay for it what exactly do you want me
to build and from there it becomes
conversations and once you have some
initial commitments and your idea is
roughly validated it may be time for you
to build a prototype or an MVP if you're
not a technical founder or you're
looking for an experienced developer to
help you build that mvp you should check
out this video sponsor lemon.io cut down
on hiring Time by working with vetted
developers at competitive rates get 15
off your first four weeks working with
their Engineers by going to lemon.io
slash microcomp that's lemon.io slash
microphone so now let's switch it up and
talk about conversational validation
this again is also called customer
development it's called getting
pre-purchases or just verbal commitments
this is not something that you're going
to drive traffic to you know a website
later on and people are going to convert
automatically even if it's not
Enterprise maybe it's a one call close
you do a demo and you you know you get
folks to sign up this is a really good
approach to validating ideas that are
have more of a medium or a high touch
funnel and I've seen folks do this in
two ways you can do cold or you can do
it warm and to hear the story of a
Founder who made 70 cold calls to find
and validate their SAS idea check out
episode 589 of startups for the rest of
us and you'll hear how the founders of
senior Place validated their startup
idea it's a great story but it involved
making a bunch of cold calls and saying
I have this idea would you buy it and
what he found out was people weren't
interested in the idea he was thinking
about building they were are interested
in a slightly different idea and so
before they wrote new code they had
already pivoted into this other idea and
they've had pretty amazing success since
then so that's cold validation let's
talk about warm validation this is where
you look at your network or at your
audience and I know I talked earlier
about asking your audience can be
dangerous but realistically for asking
them in aggregate I think there's more
danger there if you're having individual
conversations with people it can be
interesting like you can learn a lot
from them and so the idea is like look
for advantages when you choose ideas if
you have a network or an audience
launching into that space you have a
unique advantage that other people don't
have now I like to say if you're
launching SAS build a network not an
audience so if I didn't have either I
would start by trying to build a network
in this space if I already had one or
the other it's an unfair advantage and
you can use it because you can go to
your network which is what I did when I
validated drip and I emailed a bunch of
Founders that I knew speakers at
microcomp folks we'd hosted over the
years and I asked them would you be
interested in a tool like this or if you
have an audience you can obviously start
talking about it and either Drive folks
to a landing page or invite people to
connect with you directly and then have
those one-on-one conversations and these
conversations are not a sales pitch in
fact in my calls when I've validated
ideas I would lead with you know I'm a
developer not a sales person I have this
idea and I'm curious if you'd be willing
to pay fifty dollars like is this worth
fifty dollars a month to you and then I
would describe the value prop and kind
of how it would work and when I
validated drip I had 17 phone calls and
I wanted to get to 10 yeses that my goal
was 10. now Jason Cohen from WP engine
you can look them up he's an amazing
entrepreneur he validated WP engine I
believe he got 40 yeses before he was
going to set out to build it for me I
wanted 10 yeses and at that point I told
my developer start building this idea if
you want to hear the full story of how I
validated drip and even see the content
of the emails I was sending out to my
warm Network check out the YouTube video
on this channel called how to validate
your idea and launch to 7K in recurring
Revenue in addition if you want to go
deeper on this there's a book called The
Mom test that talks about how to ask
questions during this phase in a way
that doesn't lead them you're not
pushing them you're not trying to sell
them on this you really are trying to
find out would they pay for this you
want the honest answer would they pay
for this if you built it in a minute I'm
going to tell you about the third
approach that I think is an even better
option if you've been enjoying this
video it would be amazing if you could
hit the like button and subscribe to
this channel we're putting out videos
like this every week tactical deep dives
into validating building launching and
growing your SAS company so this third
option I want to talk about is actually
what I did with drip and I did both of
the above I had conversations early on
to find out if people were interested in
paying for it then once they were the
developers started working on it and I
built a landing page and then I went and
did all the marketing approaches that I
talked about above and I wanted to build
that pre-launch list you know I didn't
just want 10 people interested in the
end we had I believe 3 400 people on an
email launch list that were interested
in our product and it made our launch
day pretty incredible thanks so much for
joining me today hope you enjoyed as I
walked through how to validate your SAS
idea in less than 30 days I'll see you
in the next video
[Music]
Browse More Related Video
The Best Customer Acquisition Funnels for a SaaS Startup
Use This PROVEN Formula to Validate Your Next Startup Idea
How I Use AI + No Code to Validate any SaaS Idea
SaaS Metrics - The BEST Guide to Software as a Service KPIs
How to Build SaaS from Scratch in 8 Simplified Steps
$1 vs $100,000 Sales Funnel
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)