Validating your product idea in the AI era
Building is cheaper than ever, which makes validation more valuable than ever. Speed without evidence is just faster guessing.
by Polina Nikolova · Jul 30, 2024
AI tools have collapsed the cost of producing a working prototype. A founder can now go from idea to demo in a weekend. That is genuinely useful — and it quietly makes one old mistake far easier to repeat: building something nobody needed, only faster.
Validation has not changed. What changed is the temptation to skip it, because building no longer feels expensive enough to justify the pause.
Write the assumption down
Every idea rests on a few beliefs: that a specific group has a specific problem, that they currently solve it badly, and that they would change behaviour for a better solution. Writing these as testable statements is the whole exercise.
Test the riskiest one first
Not all assumptions matter equally. Find the one that, if wrong, makes everything else irrelevant — usually the problem itself, not the solution — and test that before anything gets built.
Use prototypes as questions
A prototype is not a small version of the product. It is an instrument for getting a specific answer. Build only what the question requires, and decide in advance what result would change your mind.
Listen for behaviour, not enthusiasm
People are generous with encouragement and stingy with their time and money. Commitments — a signup, a payment, a scheduled call, a switched workflow — are evidence. Compliments are not.
AI makes the building fast. Clarity about what is worth building is still the hard part, and it is still where most of the value sits.
Key takeaways
- Cheap building makes validation more valuable, not less.
- Write assumptions as testable statements before prototyping.
- Test the assumption that invalidates everything else first.
- Commitments are evidence; compliments are not.
