Stop Trying to Validate Your Startup Idea

I hope the headline brought you here with a bit of “WTF is he going to propose now?” But I was compelled to share this perspective when in the start of a host of new incubator cohorts, we’re talking about idea validation, and some brilliant observations were made by mentors.

Startups love to talk about validating ideas. It’s the buzzword in every incubator, accelerator, and innovation workshop. What we now know after years of preaching idea validation is that most founders aren’t actually validating anything that needs validating; they’re confirming their own bias, polishing an MVP they already wanted to build, and talking to people who are inclined to say nice things.

What separates real founders isn’t validation. It’s being capable of rapid invalidation.

Not because Lean Startup got it wrong, far from it, but because the intent behind its ideas too often gets lost in translation. The goal was never to prove your idea is brilliant. It’s to run at every wall and see which ones don’t collapse under pressure. I’m known for saying “It’s not really Product Market Fit, it’s Market Product Fit, because you build what the market wants rather than putting product first.” This idea of invalidation caught my attention as doing something every founder should be doing in a way consistent with what I did with PMF: just flip it upside down and see what happens.

The best founders aren’t looking for affirmation. They’re searching for the truth. So, for example, to do that, you can’t talk to customers, who offer affirmation, you have to talk to everyone, to uncover all of the possibilities that arrive what’s actually right. Flip the conventional wisdom upside down that it’s not “talk to customers,” it’s “talk to everyone.”

Most “Ideas” Aren’t the Problem

Most startup ideas aren’t dumb. Over the decades, I’ve sat through hearing thousands and only a small handful were clearly bad ideas. Spend enough time in accelerators, pitch rooms, or grant review panels and you’ll realize: the majority of ideas are reasonable. Often even elegant. What fails isn’t the concept, it’s the journey through resistance. And you can play with my headline there as a play on words, I’m pointing out not that ideas aren’t actually the problem, but that what founders fail to do is focus on the problem — their idea is a solution, not the problem, and what successful entrepreneurs are fixated on is the problem.

Founders with experience usually know where the real pain points are. If you’ve lived the problem, you’ll feel it in your bones when something clicks. If you’ve worked in health care, for example, you’ll understand how a pill-tracking device might resonate but also where it might fail.

Execution, not creativity, is where most things fall apart. Timing, friction, trust, access, incentives. The idea might be solid, but the terrain you have to cross to make it all work out as a new company is really what’s brutal.

The Medicine Tracker: A Thought Experiment

Take that pill-tracking container idea. Completely valid idea and most of us know it, that’s a completely valid concept. Elegant solution. We don’t need to validate the idea, we know it. So, let’s play it through what actually happens when a founder for such a thing is successful:

Step 1: The market check.

You discover competitors already exist. And in the process, you also find that their websites are awful. Reviews are minimal. You think, “Why haven’t I heard of this before? It’s a similar solution!” Because, in our scenario, they clearly have failed some things: they were invisible on arrival. That doesn’t validate nor invalidate your idea; what it does is it uncovers for you what they failed and how you can succeed.

Step 2: Assumption stress-test.

Think patients are your customers? Ask them, and yes, I’m alluding to “talk to customers” which I just pointed out is wrong, but I’m doing that to make my point. You THINK patients are your customers for this. So, talk to them. And you find: Older patients light up and love it, until they see complexity. Younger ones like the concept but wouldn’t pay for it. That’s two different markets that you just learn from: make it simpler OR find a different customer.

Step 3: Widen the lens.

Which is why what you do is talk to all people, not just what you think are the customers. So, we hit Doctors? Maybe they say they wouldn’t buy but they’d love your solution for care. You talk to Big Pharma because after all, you’re keeping medicine safer. But you find Pharma doesn’t care (though you discover a potential investor). Then you find Pharmacists. And what was oblivious to you until you talked to them, they lean in. They tell you people are always asking for this. They put you in touch with the Store buyer so you can get your solution in. Some even mention grant pathways. What just happened? You didn’t validate — you invalidated: not the complex solution you thought, not patients directly, not doctors, etc. And the process narrowed the noise into a signal.

That’s what progress looks like.

The Pattern Behind Most Failures

The brutal truth we’re incessantly repeating is that that 90% of startups fail. So, when will we start focusing on how-to-not-fail instead of pretending we can advise startups on what’s success? Flip conventional wisdom upside down. Failure is not for lack of passion. Not even for lack of innovation. It’s because they followed a pattern:

• Build the product
• Ask “customers” if they like it
• Hear nice things
• Take those nice things as proof

It’s comforting. But it’s a lie. Admit it, it’s probably what you’re doing. It’s what you were told to do to prove it to investors. It’s what you heard to do in building an MVP to validate it. You were told talk to customers, and of course they want your solution but that praise often ignores that they won’t pay for it, or won’t switch, or are just being nice — after all, it is a good idea, and they know what a better solution might be.

Invalidation flips the script. Instead of clinging to a belief, you test its limits until the weak spots show themselves. You don’t chase success. You survive your own scrutiny. And in startups, survival earns you the right to try again.

Someone asked me recently how to validate with no money. The answer is simple: don’t. Start by invalidating.

You don’t need capital to talk to people. You need time. And the willingness to ask uncomfortable questions of those who might disagree. More importantly, the willingness to both listen and hear, not argue, not convince, and just absorb that over hundreds of conversations, people are telling you how to avoid wasting your time. That’s what moves you forward.

Talk to users, yes, but also the ones who aren’t using. Talk to 12-year-olds and 80-year-olds, something we advise constantly only to usually find most don’t actually bother to go do it. After all, why? “they’re not our customers.” Because if they don’t understand it and agree, it’s too complicated. Talk to distributors, regulators, competitors, and the people who already failed trying. Most will say something you didn’t want to hear. And that’s the point.

Shift Your Thinking About Everything to Consider the Opposite

Lean Startup gave us a model and if what you’re doing isn’t working out the way you hope while you think you’re practicing it methodically, flip it and try the other angle.

If you’re seeking affirmation, you’re not running a startup. You’re writing a script you hope others will follow. Flip the frame: spend your energy proving yourself wrong.

The more resistance you survive, the more resilient the idea becomes. The more resilient you become.

Originally published at https://seobrien.com on September 26, 2025.