Top 9 'Market-Validating' Experiments to implement for entrepreneurs before writing a single line of code
You have a brilliant idea. It’s the kind of idea that keeps you up at night, scribbling on notepads and sketching out user interfaces on napkins. You can see it perfectly: the sleek design, the seamless functionality, the glowing App Store reviews. You’re convinced this is the one. The only thing standing between you and startup stardom is a few months of intense coding.
So you dive in. You hire a developer, or maybe you spend every waking hour teaching yourself to code. You pour your savings, your time, and your sanity into building this perfect product. Six months later, you launch. And then… crickets. A few sign-ups from friends and family, a polite nod from a stranger on Twitter, but no traction. No one is using it. No one is paying for it. The painful truth dawns: you built something nobody wanted.
This is the number one killer of startups. It’s not a lack of funding or a bad marketing plan; it’s a failure to validate the market before building the product. This is a principle I, Goh Ling Yong, have seen separate the founders who succeed from those who burn out. The most successful entrepreneurs aren't just great builders; they are relentless, scientific experimenters. They treat their initial idea not as a blueprint, but as a hypothesis—a guess that needs to be tested in the real world with real customers.
The good news? You don’t need a finished product to run these tests. In fact, it’s better if you don’t. Before you write a single line of code, you can run a series of simple, low-cost experiments to de-risk your idea, understand your customers, and find out if you’re truly onto something. Here are nine of the most effective market-validating experiments you can implement today.
1. The Customer Discovery Interview
This is the foundation of everything. Before you can solve a problem, you must deeply understand the people who have it. Customer discovery interviews are not sales pitches. They are structured conversations designed to uncover your potential customers' pains, existing habits, and desires, completely independent of your proposed solution.
The goal isn't to ask, "Would you use my app?" because most people are too polite to say no. Instead, you want to become an archeologist of their problems. Ask open-ended questions about their past experiences. "Tell me about the last time you tried to..." or "What's the hardest part about...?" or "What tools or workarounds are you using for this right now?" Their answers will reveal if the problem you think they have is a real, burning pain point they'd be willing to pay to solve.
Example & Tips:
Let’s say your idea is a financial planning app for freelancers. Instead of describing your app, find 10-15 freelancers and ask:
- "Walk me through how you currently manage your business finances and taxes."
- "What's the most frustrating or time-consuming part of that process?"
- "Have you ever looked for a tool to help with this? What did you find?"
Listen for emotion—frustration, anxiety, resignation. If they describe a mild inconvenience, it's not a big enough problem. If they describe a soul-crushing, multi-day ordeal, you're onto something.
2. The Landing Page Test
This is one of the most classic and effective ways to gauge interest. You create a simple, single-page website that clearly explains your value proposition—what your product does and for whom. It should feature a compelling headline, a few bullet points on the benefits (not features), and a single, clear call-to-action (CTA): "Enter your email to get early access" or "Sign up for our beta list."
Then, you drive a small amount of traffic to this page using channels where your target audience hangs out—social media ads, posts in online communities, or direct outreach. The key metric here is the conversion rate: the percentage of visitors who leave their email address. A conversion rate of 10-15% or higher is a strong positive signal that your value proposition is resonating with people.
Example & Tips:
Imagine you want to create a service that delivers curated activity boxes for toddlers. Your landing page headline could be: "End Toddler Boredom. Screen-Free, Developmentally-Awesome Activity Kits Delivered Monthly." Below this, you'd list benefits like "Save hours of planning" and "Designed by child development experts." The CTA button would say "Join The Waitlist." Use tools like Carrd, Unbounce, or Webflow to build this in an afternoon—no coding required.
3. The "Concierge" MVP
With a Concierge Minimum Viable Product (MVP), you manually deliver the core value of your product to your first few customers. The customer knows you're doing everything by hand. This isn't about scalability; it's about maximum learning. By walking a customer through the entire process, you gain unparalleled insight into their workflow, their pain points, and the moments where they find the most value.
This high-touch approach allows you to test your core assumptions about the service without any technology. Are you solving the right problem? Is your process logical? What steps are confusing? You're essentially acting as a human-powered version of your future app, and the feedback you get is pure gold for shaping the eventual product.
Example & Tips:
Before building a complex algorithm for a personalized travel itinerary generator, you could offer a "Concierge Travel Planning" service to five clients. You'd have a detailed consultation call, then manually research and build a custom PDF itinerary for them. You'd learn exactly what information they value most (e.g., foodie spots vs. historical sites, walking directions vs. public transit info) and can charge them for the service to validate their willingness to pay.
4. The "Wizard of Oz" MVP
The "Wizard of Oz" MVP is the clever cousin of the Concierge MVP. From the customer's perspective, they are interacting with a fully automated, sophisticated system. But behind the scenes—behind the curtain, like the Wizard of Oz—it's you and your team manually pulling the levers and making everything happen.
This is a powerful experiment for testing ideas that rely on complex technology like AI, machine learning, or intricate automation. It allows you to validate the demand for a "magical" solution before you invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in building the actual magic. You get to see how users interact with the idea of your product and whether it actually solves their problem in a meaningful way.
Example & Tips:
Zappos founder Nick Swinmurn famously started this way. To test if people would buy shoes online, he went to local shoe stores, took pictures of their inventory, and posted them on a simple website. When an order came in, he would go to the store, buy the shoes, and ship them himself. To the customer, it looked like a real e-commerce store with a warehouse. Behind the scenes, it was just one man and a camera.
5. The Explainer Video
Sometimes, a product idea is hard to explain with just text. A short, 60-90 second explainer video can bring your concept to life, showing customers the future you envision. The most famous example of this is Dropbox. Before they had a working product, the founders created a simple screen-capture video demonstrating how file syncing would work.
They shared this video on a tech forum (Hacker News), and their beta sign-up list exploded from 5,000 to 75,000 people overnight. The video didn't just explain the product; it sold the vision and proved that a massive, latent demand existed for this solution. It validated their core hypothesis without a single line of production code.
Example & Tips:
You don't need a Pixar-level budget. Tools like Powtoon or Vyond can help you create simple animated videos. Focus on the story: start with the customer's problem, introduce your product as the hero, show the key benefits, and end with a clear call-to-action to sign up for more information. The goal is to measure engagement: views, shares, and, most importantly, sign-ups.
6. The A/B Test Ad Campaign
What if you're not even sure which value proposition is the most compelling? You can use the power of digital advertising to find out. Create two or three variations of a simple ad on a platform like Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Each ad should target the same audience but feature a different headline or benefit.
For instance, one ad might focus on saving time, another on saving money, and a third on reducing stress. All ads lead to the same simple landing page (see experiment #2). By spending a small amount of money ($50-$100), you can see which message gets the highest click-through rate (CTR) and the highest conversion rate on the landing page. This experiment quickly tells you which "hook" is most effective at grabbing your target customer's attention.
Example & Tips:
For a B2B SaaS tool that automates reporting, you could run three ad variations:
- Ad A (Time-saving): "Stop Wasting Hours on Manual Reports."
- Ad B (Data-driven): "Make Smarter Decisions with Automated Insights."
- Ad C (Peace of mind): "Never Miss a Deadline. Your Reports, On Time, Every Time."
The performance data will give you a clear winner, guiding all of your future marketing copy.
7. The Social Media Group or Content Probe
Instead of building a product, start by building an audience around the problem. Create a Facebook Group, a Substack newsletter, a LinkedIn page, or even a simple blog dedicated to the topic your business addresses. Share valuable content, ask questions, and facilitate discussions.
This is a slower, more organic form of market validation, but it's incredibly powerful. You're not just testing an idea; you're building a community of potential early adopters who trust you. By observing their conversations, you'll learn their language, their biggest challenges, and the solutions they've tried. When you are finally ready to introduce a product, you'll have a warm, engaged audience ready to listen.
Example & Tips:
If you want to build a platform to connect dog owners with local playdates, start a Facebook Group called "San Francisco Dog Owner Community." Post tips on local dog parks, ask for vet recommendations, and start conversations about the challenges of socializing a new puppy. Once the group is active, you can poll them: "Would anyone be interested in a simple app to find nearby dogs for a playdate?" Their response will be your validation.
8. The Pre-Order Page
This is the ultimate acid test for market validation. It moves beyond "would you use this?" and even "will you give me your email?" to the most important question of all: "Will you give me your money?" Setting up a pre-order page asks potential customers to pay for your product before it’s been built.
This separates the genuinely interested from the merely curious. Someone giving you their email is a good signal, but someone entering their credit card details is an undeniable sign of purchase intent. It proves that customers feel the pain so acutely that they are willing to take a risk and pay upfront to have it solved. This is the strongest validation signal you can get without a finished product.
Example & Tips:
Use platforms like Gumroad, Podia, or even a simple Shopify setup. Be completely transparent that this is a pre-order for a product in development and provide a clear timeline for delivery. To incentivize early buyers, you can offer a significant discount off the future retail price or include exclusive bonuses. Even if you only get a handful of pre-orders, you've not only validated your idea but also found your first true evangelists.
9. Crowdfunding Campaign
A crowdfunding campaign on a platform like Kickstarter or Indiegogo is like a pre-order campaign on steroids. It’s a public, time-boxed event that combines market validation, marketing, and your first round of funding all in one. It forces you to crystallize your vision, create compelling marketing materials (like an explainer video), and articulate your value proposition in a way that resonates with a broad audience.
Running a successful crowdfunding campaign is a massive undertaking, but the payoff is huge. Hitting your funding goal is the ultimate form of market validation. It proves that a large number of people not only want your product but are willing to back it financially. You also get a built-in community of passionate early adopters and a powerful story to tell the press and future investors.
Example & Tips:
This is best suited for physical products, games, or creative projects, but has also been used for software. Your campaign page needs to be flawless, with a high-quality video, compelling story, and attractive reward tiers. Before launching, it's critical to build an email list and buzz around your project. A successful Kickstarter isn't about launching to crickets; it's about driving your pre-built audience to the page on day one to create momentum.
Stop Guessing, Start Learning
The journey from idea to successful business is not a straight line; it's a winding path of discovery. The biggest mistake you can make is assuming your initial vision is perfect. As we advocate for here on Goh Ling Yong's blog, the lean startup methodology isn't about being cheap; it's about being smart and eliminating uncertainty as quickly as possible.
These nine experiments are your toolkit for doing just that. They shift your mindset from "I need to build this" to "I need to learn this." Each one is a small, calculated bet designed to give you concrete data from the real world. This data will guide you, help you pivot, and ultimately lead you toward building a product that people don't just like, but desperately need.
So, pick one. Choose the experiment that feels most achievable for you this week. Don't just think about your idea—go out and test it.
What's your big idea, and which experiment will you run first? Share it 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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