How to Validate Any Business Idea With the “Stand-Up” Technique
By: Matt Sandrini
Tags: Business, Startup, Marketing, Freelancing, Entrepreneurship

Most entrepreneurs get stuck before getting started.

I have helped wantrepreneurs across three continents finally launch their side hustles: countries change, but the mistakes do not.

I know, because I have been there too: that limbo state where you know that you want to launch a business, but you can’t help but overcomplicating everything.

Most entrepreneurs-in-the-making get lost in a sea of podcasts and books, or get glued in a marsh of procrastination without progress. Classic examples are buying a domain, waiting for the perfect name, setting up a website (and then tweaking it), finding an accountant (with no accounts), and so on.

All these things are not going to generate money.

Here’s the secret: you don’t actually “have” a business until you have…a sale!

Most people confuse having a product with business success.

This is because having a product is easy: asking for money exposes you to feedback and rejection, whereas developing a(nother) product happens safely behind the scenes.

That’s where the “build it, and they will come” myth started: as a buffer to protect wantrepreneurs from potential rejection. But rejection is nothing else than precious feedback from the market, allowing you to adjust your offer to better match what customers want.

Using your time, money, and energy on setting up a website, developing the perfect product, and finding the ‘right’ name is just a way to delay that feedback, and as a consequence hinder your business success.

You want to test your idea quickly and remain as lean as possible. That way, you can quickly adapt to your customers’ feedback without having to distance yourself from a lot of work and invisible costs that you’ve already put into your untested idea.

So, what’s the quickest way to test your business idea?

Enter the stand-up technique

A friend of mine is a stand-up comedian doing gigs in London and a few other cities in the UK. One week last year, I went to three of his shows.

I thought stand-up comedians came up with all these jokes on the spot until I realised that…all his shows were largely the same.

It’s not as natural as it looks: comedians prepare in advance for months or even years, fine-tuning their routine and jokes based on how the audience reacts.

Though each show was largely the same, I noticed that, every once in a while, my friend would take a risk and drop a new joke in the middle of the show: if the audience liked it, he would add it to the routine. If it bombed, he would test it again with a different audience and see what happened. If it fell flat a second time, he’d just let go of it and try something else instead. Over time, the successful jokes that passed the test formed the bulk of his overall routine.

This same principle applies to business: by testing your idea in front of a smaller audience, you can quickly learn whether it’s worth committing to or not.

How to validate your business idea

When it comes to a business idea, the same strategy applies: come up with the idea and test it in front of an audience.

You don’t need the perfect name, a sophisticated website, and a ton of content to do this.

All you need is a short blurb to post to an online community you can engage with and some sort of checkout system (your PayPal will suffice). You want to put your idea in front of the right people (your ideal customers) and then ask for the sale. If they say yes, double down. If they say no, make sure that you’re speaking to the right audience, and then give it one more go. Just like a stand-up comedian.

Here’s an example.

A few years ago, I had this idea for a caffeinated chocolate snack.

I love dark chocolate, and I know how powerful a stimulant it is. So I wanted to mix it with matcha tea for added cognitive boosts and…my mind started coming up with so many ideas and tactics, but I wanted to get feedback before committing any of my time, energy, and money.

The first thing that I did was to sell a few bars to my friends. I asked my entrepreneurial friends if they were interested in trying out the bars and asked for the sale. It felt uncomfortable, but they said yes, and I made a small batch at home. When I delivered them, they came back asking for more. Success.

However, I still wasn’t 100% sure if they’d only bought because they were my friends, so I went onto Reddit and told a group about my project. I described the bars and asked if anyone was interested in buying. A couple of them replied saying that they’d be interested in trying the product for a $10 price, so I emailed them my PayPal link. One of them said yes and paid. Success.

Because I didn’t have the product yet, I refunded him, gave him a discount code for the future, and told him I would let him know when the product was back in stock.

At this point, the idea was validated and I’d been happy to continue. But while posting on Reddit, I had also contacted a few office spaces here in the UK, offering a 30% discount code if they linked to my (very simple) one-page website in their newsletter. Unexpectedly, two of them said yes, and I received three Shopify notifications announcing that a few $19 packages had been sold. Super success.

Since I was still looking for the final chocolate maker, I immediately refunded the purchase, sent a discount code, and personally emailed each customer with an update. Everyone was super friendly and supportive.

With a validated product, I was ready to create the product and scale my marketing efforts.

The myth of the “perfect” product

You can have the best product or service, but if no one knows about it, no one’s going to buy it. They just can’t. Making your product “better” is just a way to delay getting feedback from your audience.

That’s why it’s important to act fast: instead of adding invisible costs to your idea, and making it difficult to adjust and move on, get feedback as early as you can (you can get my outreach templates by taking the idea challenge).

Be like my friend the stand-up comedian. Test your ideas instead of distracting yourself by making things overcomplicated: get your idea in front of the right audience and see how they react.

Remember, it’s important to ask for the sale: if you just ask them, most people will tell you “yeah, good idea” just to not upset you. But are they going to open up their wallet?

If you don’t actually have the product ready, you can always not take the payment or refund them (just make sure you keep them in the loop — they’ll appreciate being part of the journey).

This is how to make sure that your time, energy, and money are spent on business, not just an idea.

Ready to validate your business idea? Check out my free course to find and test your business in 5 days.

– Matt