“I start by turning the idea into a problem hypothesis: [group] has [specific problem]. Then I set up a landing page and survey to pull the right people to me, not to acquire customers but to find people willing to talk. The real validation happens in interviews where I ask for stories about their work and listen for the pattern of pain repeating across them.”

“I wasted a lot of time and money building products before anyone had committed to anything. Now I validate by finding the riskiest assumption first, then asking customers for behavior, not opinions: a pilot, a payment, a referral, or their data. FounderSpace went from idea to 10 paying customers in 60 hours because we built the offer and customer access into the same loop as the product.”

“I try to kill my ideas first: talk to hundreds of people who know the space and ask them to tear the thing apart. If I'm still excited after everyone explains why it won't work, I start building.”

“I’ve watched too many founders spend months building something nobody would pay for, so I push them to find the riskiest assumption first and kill it fast. Talk to 20 or 30 real customers, ask when the problem last happened, and get someone to pay before you build.”

“I built IdeaBob because I watched too many founders, myself included, fall in love with an idea before pressure-testing it. My rule now: score the idea across demand, differentiation, distribution, defensibility, and founder fit before a single line of code.”

“I wasted six months, a thousand hours, and $50,000 building a product nobody wanted, so now I validate before I build. Get people to pay something before the thing exists; a deposit proves a lot more than a compliment ever will.”

“I stopped counting interviews after the answers started repeating. With Bliro and the 120+ products we've run at Durran, the signal was never in a survey; it was in the follow-up why after someone described the pain. Build the cheapest thing that lets them react, then decide if the reaction is worth a real build.”

“I spent too long at SiteOwl building what users said they wanted, only to watch some features sit unused while the ones we almost skipped became the reason they paid. Now I push founders to find the smallest thing a customer will actually pay for before anyone writes code.”

“I stopped building before I sold. At Google, Facebook, Square, and DoorDash, the best teams used vibecoded or no-code prototypes to get 2-5 customers to sign LOIs or contracts before writing real code. Real demand is the only validator that matters.”