People’s words are one thing.

But the real (and only!) proof of whether a business idea will work is if people open their wallets.

Back when I lived in New York I won a Lean Startup Machine competition. It was a 3 day hackathon where we had to plan, build and sell a product.

We won not because our idea was the best. But because we went out into Times Square and sold the damn thing.

We made a handful of sales of a non-existent product - gathering their contact details and promising to send them it if/when it was ready.

We only made $7 but that was infinitely higher than the $0 all the other teams made.

Our grubby $7 showed actual genuine interest in the product - not just a vague “yeah sounds cool”.

You should build a basic version of your product and see if people will hand over cash for it.

I’m not talking about a fully fleshed out product. That’s a waste of time, especially if there isn’t a market for it.

Instead we build an MVP (minimum viable product). This is the most stripped down but still recognisable form of the product or service.

We then give it away in exchange for an email or ideally charge a small amount of cash. Even a single dollar.

Here’s a prompt to generate MVP ideas. Use this below the idea that you are working on:

Provide me with 3 detailed MVP versions of this idea that can be made in a day

Prompt Output

ChatGPT generates a super basic version of the product/service that you are working on.

It retains the core value of the offer but in its most simplistic form. If people find this valuable then they are more likely to find your developed full offer valuable too.

Once you’ve settled on an idea go ahead and put together a super simple MVP. It should not take you more than a day. If it does it’s too complex.

If you get a good response to the MVP push onto the next phase that we’ll be covering in the final Part.

If the response is lukewarm or non-existent then roll back to idea generation and go again.

Seems time consuming? Sure. But not as much as if you spend months or even years building something that nobody wants! Better to spend the time building prototypes now than go all in on a losing idea.