Much quicker than you think, and with info that can make or break your business. Here’s how long it takes to validate your idea for a new tech product or startup
From concept to market, with a pitch deck that you can take directly to investors to get you going faster than you ever imagined. We’ve spoken before about why you should validate new product ideas first, but exactly how long does it take to validate your idea?
What steps do you use to validate an idea? Is there a framework for testing ideas, or a way to validate concepts very quickly?
Of course! You’re going to like how fast concept validation can be…
In short, validating a new product idea through Specno’s concept validation takes around 8 weeks. That’s start-to-finish, with everything you need to 1) know the market for your product, 2) how to reach them, 3) how to build the product and 4) a detailed plan to scale that business to where you need it to be in the next 12–18 months. Plus: Have a pitch deck you can take almost as-is to apply for funding.
See a detailed breakdown of the process in our guide to idea validation.
A key deliverable behind concept validation is to not only test your idea but also help you discover ways to actually grow and develop the idea into a fully-fledged business. As an app development agency, we have a vested interest in growing the tech industry as a whole, so we invest a lot in helping founders build sustainable and profitable businesses.
That’s why our idea validation steps are so thorough…
Using your concept/idea as a starting point, we explore what a business built around that service could look like – how can you monetise it, can you get funding and how much, what happens after funding, what’s the potential for scaling and how do you get there?
We help you find out how desirable the solution you’re proposing really is. The size and scope of the potential market, and whether (and how much) people are willing to pay for that solution, so you get an idea of the worth of your concept and also have a solid foundation for your first build.
Adoption in tech usually comes down to a product’s value proposition and how that’s communicated to the user. This a step many founders ignore until very late in the game (which is why they struggle with marketing). We believe it’s such a central part of determining product success, it should be done before you build. That’s why we help you create a performance-marketing-based user activation plan at the concept phase.
We help you show that the market exists, and how big it is, prove they are willing to pay for the solution and create a realistic sense of how much of that market you can capture in the next decade or so. And then also analyse competitors: look at their prices, features, and how much funding they have managed to raise in the past, to build that into the picture of your business’s future value and potential. And finally, help you craft a go-to-market strategy.
Also see how to check if an app idea already exists.
We work with you to plan in-depth the future of the business: what happens after you get funding, how do you generate a return for your investors and what is your exit strategy – should you build to sell or list? We detail the required founding team and future resources you will need to secure through every stage of development (have a look at the facts, figures, pros and cons around outsourcing and insourcing your development), and give you an easy-to-implement game plan to track your day-to-day, week-to-week progress at every level. Also see just what skills you need in the ideal startup team
In this video, our CEO Daniel Novitzkas gives a top-level overview of the need, framework, processes and specific deliverables that go into our concept validation service.
Founders want and need to move fast. But when validating an idea, the thoroughness of your research and testing is so vital to your future success that the cost of missing a step could be total.
That’s why we developed our unique concept validation framework and worked to package it inside a timeline of 8 weeks (2 months), which we believe, considering Specno’s experience in helping build over 100+ startups, working closely with 200+ tech investors over the last 4 years, is one of the fastest and most effective ways to validate your idea. Also see the steps to validate your mobile app idea and exactly why you need to test your app idea, plus what a week for an agile development team looks like, how to get the right price with beneficial low code development cost and how to run some key validation experiments.
And to get the full picture of timelines and options for launching a new product, see our guide to how long it takes to create a new app. Also get a glimpse into the tech-enabled future of retail.
Have an idea to test?
