Validation
How to hack real improvements in four weeks - Dan Sullivan, CEO, Crowdly, at Harvard iLab
You can make tangible leaps toward validation of your product or service by focusing on hacking a small list of milestones. And by doing so you can add substantial value over the "guy with the Powerpoint" you might otherwise be.
Dan S. Notes on Validation
Revenue: Get sales; if your product is hundreds or thousands of dollars in its full version, sell a $50 or $100 "lite" version, sell it to 50 to 100 people;
Customers: get non-binding letters of intent from customers, e.g., "If [your company name] creates an offering that offers features A, B, and C I have an interest in buying that offering" Now you have "customers" waiting to buy the thing you're going to build with your own or investor's money, and you're not building something that nobody wants.
Users: use landing pages to get (future) customers to sign up to find out more about progress toward your new offering. With google analytics you can track how many people saw your landing page, how many people clicked on your call-to-action, and how many people gave you their names and email addresses so you can update them on your offering.
Additions to team: I'd focus more here on the sets of milestones you've created; for business plan competitions such as Aldag, I would identify key team members you'll need to add later as you prepare to tackle new and more ambitious milestones.
Validate your business idea with lean startup principles
Discusses quick methods you can use to get feedback fast from your targeted customers so that you can build more of what people really want instead of what you think they want. This video focuses more on validating customer needs than on validating the credibility and value of your new venture, but the mindset and principles are quite similar.
craig a. notes on validation
Crowdfunding
Are you ready to sell your product on Kickstarter or Indiegogo? Those sales provide you with the validation of revenues ("GFD" for Dan Sullivan's maybe-not-so-polished adviser, "MONEY" for Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary.) Union Square Ventures co-founder Fred Wilson and Foundry Group co-founder Brad Feld are both avid backers of Kickstarter campaigns (in fact, Fred W is a private-equity investor in Kickstarter).
Read / listen to this All Tech Considered (NPR, 4/28/2014) piece on Kickstarter: "As Kickstarter evovles, investors watch for next $1 billion idea." See also this related article on Foundry Group's blog, "How some investors think about projects on Kickstarter."
Bootstrapping
You can set and achieve many milestones by bootstrapping (using resources you already have on hand and/or resources that cost next to nothing to deploy to build value into your startup like landing pages, Google Analytics, social media, in-person or over-Skype interviews, etc.)
Below: "Tom and Tony" of tastytrade talk with Brad Feld about bootstrapping...