Top 18 'Pre-Launch-Proof' Validation Experiments to start for founders before writing a single line of code - Goh Ling Yong
So, you have it. The idea. The one that keeps you up at night, the one you sketch on napkins, the one you’re convinced will change the world (or at least a small, profitable corner of it). Your fingers are itching to start coding, to build the beautiful, elegant solution you see so clearly in your mind.
Stop. Take a deep breath. Before you write a single line of code, spend a dime on servers, or quit your day job, you need to answer one brutal, terrifying question: "Does anyone actually want this?"
This is the startup graveyard's most common epitaph: "Built a great product for a non-existent problem." The number one reason startups fail isn't a lack of funding, a weak team, or a buggy product. It's building something nobody needs. The good news? You can dramatically de-risk your venture by treating your initial idea not as a blueprint, but as a hypothesis. And a hypothesis needs to be tested.
Here are 18 "pre-launch-proof" validation experiments you can run to gather real-world evidence, iterate on your idea, and ensure you're building a business, not just a product.
1. The Customer Discovery Interview
This is the foundational, non-negotiable starting point. It’s not a sales pitch; it's a therapy session where your potential customer is the patient, and you're the curious, empathetic therapist. Your only goal is to understand their world, their workflow, their pains, and their "job to be done" without ever mentioning your solution.
Forget questions like, "Would you use an app that does X?" People are nice and will likely say yes. Instead, ask about their past behavior. "Tell me about the last time you had to [complete a specific task]. What was the hardest part? What, if anything, have you tried to do to solve that?" This approach, often called the "Mom Test," uncovers genuine problems worth solving.
- Pro Tip: Aim for 15-20 interviews with your target demographic. Record and transcribe them (with permission!). You'll be amazed at the patterns and language that emerge, which you can use for your marketing later.
2. The "Problem" Landing Page
Before you build a solution, validate the problem. Set up a simple one-page website that does one thing and one thing only: describes the problem you're solving in excruciating detail. Use the exact language you heard in your customer interviews. Talk about the pain, the frustration, the cost of not solving it.
The page shouldn't mention your product at all. The only call-to-action (CTA) should be something like, "Sound familiar? Enter your email to get our 5-step guide to dealing with [the problem]." The conversion rate on this email signup is a direct measure of how acutely people feel the pain you've described. If no one signs up, you've either targeted the wrong audience or, more likely, the problem isn't painful enough.
3. The Concierge MVP
This is the ultimate "do things that don't scale" experiment. Instead of building software to automate a service, you deliver the service manually for your first few customers. You act as the "concierge," personally guiding them through the solution and handling all the work behind the scenes.
Think of it this way: if you're building a personalized meal-planning app, your Concierge MVP would involve you personally calling a customer, asking about their dietary needs, and emailing them a custom PDF meal plan you created yourself. This high-touch approach gives you unparalleled insight into your customers' real needs and workflow, allowing you to design the software with perfect clarity when the time comes.
4. The "Wizard of Oz" MVP
A step up from the Concierge MVP, the Wizard of Oz approach presents a polished, automated-looking front-end to the user, but everything on the back-end is powered by you and your team. The user thinks they're interacting with a sophisticated algorithm, but it's just you, the founder, pulling levers behind the curtain.
Zappos founder Nick Swinmurn famously started this way. To test if people would buy shoes online, he took pictures of shoes at local stores, posted them on a simple website, and when an order came in, he would physically go to the store, buy the shoes, and ship them. He validated the core business model without a single piece of inventory or complex logistics software.
5. The Explainer Video
A picture is worth a thousand words, and a video is worth a thousand lines of code you don't have to write yet. Create a short (60-90 second) video that demonstrates how your product would work. You can use simple animation tools like Powtoon or Vyond, or even a well-designed slideshow.
The goal is to showcase the value proposition and the user experience. Dropbox famously used this strategy with a simple video demonstrating file syncing. They put it on a landing page with an email signup form, and their beta waiting list exploded from 5,000 to 75,000 people overnight. It was a powerful signal that they were onto something huge.
6. The A/B Test Landing Page
What if you're not sure which value proposition will resonate most? Or who your primary target customer is? An A/B test is your best friend. Create two or more versions of your landing page, each with a slightly different headline, target audience focus, or core benefit.
For example, a project management tool could test "The simplest way for freelancers to manage clients" against "The all-in-one tool for creative agencies." Drive a small amount of traffic to the pages using targeted ads (more on that next) and see which version has a higher email signup rate. This helps you hone your messaging before you've even built the first feature.
7. The "Smoke Test" Ad Campaign
This is a fantastic way to quantify interest. Create a simple landing page (as described above) and then run a highly targeted ad campaign on platforms like Facebook, Google, or LinkedIn. The ad should promise a solution to a specific problem and direct users to your page.
Your key metrics here are Click-Through Rate (CTR) and Conversion Rate (the percentage of visitors who sign up). These numbers give you a tangible sense of demand. A low CTR might mean your ad copy is weak or the problem isn't compelling. A high CTR but a low conversion rate might mean your ad set an expectation that your landing page didn't meet. It's a quick, data-driven way to test the waters.
8. The Online Community Probe
Your target customers are already gathered somewhere online, talking about their problems. Find them. Go to Reddit subs, Facebook Groups, industry forums, and Slack communities. The key here is not to spam your idea. That will get you banned and hated.
Instead, become a helpful member of the community. Listen to the conversations. Then, post a question that validates the problem. For example: "Hey everyone, I'm struggling to manage invoices for my freelance clients. I'm currently using a messy spreadsheet. How are you all handling this?" The ensuing discussion will be a goldmine of information about existing solutions, pain points, and willingness to pay.
9. The Blog Post Test
Content marketing is a powerful tool, even before you have a product. Write a comprehensive, high-value blog post that deeply explores the problem your startup aims to solve. Title it something like "The Ultimate Guide to [Solving X Problem]" or "10 Mistakes People Make When [Doing Y Task]."
Promote the article in the communities you found in the previous step. The goal is to see if it resonates. Do people read it? Do they share it? Do they comment with their own experiences? At the end of the article, you can include a soft CTA for an email list to "get more tips on this topic." This tests whether you can attract your target audience with valuable content, a core pillar of many modern businesses.
10. The One-Page Pitch Deck
Forcing yourself to distill your idea into a single, compelling page is a powerful clarity-building exercise. This isn't for raising money; it's for validating your thinking. The one-pager should clearly articulate: the Problem, the Solution, the Target Market, the Competition, and your Unfair Advantage.
Show this document to 10 smart people you trust—mentors, other founders, industry experts. Don't ask them if they "like the idea." Ask them, "What's the biggest flaw in this logic?" or "What's the one question this page doesn't answer for you?" Their feedback will be invaluable in poking holes in your assumptions.
11. The Survey Funnel
Surveys can be tricky because people often say what they think you want to hear. A better approach is the survey funnel. Start with a broad survey shared widely, asking about general pains in a specific area. At the end, ask respondents if they'd be willing to answer a few more follow-up questions via email.
Those who say "yes" are more invested. You can then send them a more specific survey, and then perhaps invite the most engaged respondents to a one-on-one customer discovery interview. This process helps you filter for the people who feel the pain most acutely. As I've learned over the years, and a point Goh Ling Yong often emphasizes, you're not looking for just any customer; you're looking for your first customer.
12. The "Shadow a User" Session
This is customer discovery on steroids. Instead of just asking someone about their problems, ask if you can physically or virtually watch them work for an hour. Observe their current process for the task you want to improve.
Pay close attention to the "hacks" they've created—the spreadsheets, the sticky notes, the weird workarounds. These are clues that point to significant pain and opportunity. You'll see things they would never think to tell you in an interview because it's just "the way they've always done it."
13. The Fake Door Test
This works well if you already have an existing audience or a basic product. You add a button, link, or menu item in your interface for a new, unbuilt feature. For example, a project management tool might add a button that says "Generate Automatic Report."
When a user clicks it, instead of launching the feature, a message pops up saying, "Thanks for your interest! This feature is coming soon. Click here to be notified when it's ready." The number of clicks on that button is a direct, behavioral measure of demand for that specific feature, helping you prioritize your roadmap based on real user intent, not guesswork.
14. The Crowdfunding Campaign
This is the ultimate form of validation: asking people to pay for your product before it exists. Platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are perfect for hardware products, but can also work for software, games, and creative projects.
Running a crowdfunding campaign forces you to do all the hard work upfront: defining your value proposition, creating marketing materials (like an explainer video), identifying your target audience, and setting a price. If people are willing to give you their hard-earned money based on a promise, you have a very strong signal that you've found a real market need.
15. The Competitor's Customer Analysis
Your competitors have already done some of the validation work for you. A goldmine of data is hiding in plain sight: their customer reviews. Go to sites like G2, Capterra, or the App Store and read all their 1, 2, and 3-star reviews. This is a curated list of their product's biggest failings and their customers' biggest frustrations.
Also, read the 5-star reviews. What specific features or benefits do customers rave about? This tells you what's truly valuable in the market. By analyzing both the good and the bad, you can identify a wedge—a key area of frustration or an underserved niche—that your product can exploit.
16. The One-Day Workshop/Webinar
Offer a free or low-cost workshop (virtual or in-person) focused on the problem space, not your product. For example, if your idea is a tool for better content marketing, host a webinar on "How to Build a 3-Month Content Calendar from Scratch."
The people who sign up and attend are your ideal customers. The questions they ask during the Q&A session are direct insights into their most pressing challenges. At the end, you can mention that you're working on a tool to simplify this process and invite them to join a beta list. It's a fantastic way to build an audience and validate your idea simultaneously.
17. The Manual-First Spreadsheet
Before you design a complex database and UI, can your core process be managed in a Google Sheet or an Airtable base? For your first 10 customers, try to run the entire "service" using off-the-shelf tools.
This forces you to deeply understand the data you need to collect, the workflow steps, and the critical outputs. If you can't make it work for 10 people in a spreadsheet, you'll have a nightmare trying to make it work for 10,000 in code. This approach helps you nail the logic and process before you invest in development.
18. The "Pay-What-You-Want" Pre-Order
This is a fascinating psychological experiment. Set up a simple landing page that allows customers to pre-order your product, but instead of a fixed price, you let them enter the amount they're willing to pay. This removes the "Is it worth $X?" barrier and focuses on a more fundamental question: "Is this worth anything to you?"
You'll get a range of responses, but the data is incredibly valuable. It tells you not only if people are willing to pay, but also gives you an early sense of how much value they perceive in your solution. Even a $1 commitment is a thousand times more valuable than a "Yeah, that sounds cool" from a friendly interview.
Conclusion: Fall in Love with the Problem, Not Your Solution
Building a startup is a journey of discovery. Your initial idea is just the starting line. These 18 experiments aren't just checkboxes to tick off; they are tools to help you learn, adapt, and iterate your way to a solution that people will actually use and pay for.
The goal isn't to prove your idea is right. The goal is to find the truth. By running these low-cost, high-learning experiments, you replace risky assumptions with hard evidence. You shift your focus from building a product to solving a problem. And by falling in love with that problem, you give yourself the best possible chance of building a business that lasts.
Now, I want to hear from you. Which of these experiments are you going to try first? Do you have another pre-launch validation technique that has worked for you? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
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