Artist's co-founder warns that the biggest mistake founders make is building technology too early. Her team validated their text-based learning concept by manually texting early users, confirming the core hypothesis and user engagement before committing significant engineering resources.

The goal of early validation is not to confirm your genius, but to risk being proven wrong before committing resources. Negative feedback is a valuable outcome that prevents building the wrong product. It often reveals that the real opportunity is "a degree to the left" of the original idea.

Ramli John launched his paid beta program after writing only two of twenty chapters. This allowed him to gather market feedback exceptionally early, co-create the product with his most dedicated users, and pivot based on their input, significantly de-risking the final launch.

Large companies often identify an opportunity, create a solution based on an unproven assumption, and ship it without validating market demand. This leads to costly failures when the product doesn't solve a real user need, wasting millions of dollars and significant time.

Don't treat validation as a one-off task before development. The most successful products maintain a constant feedback loop with users to adapt to changing needs, regulations, and tastes. The worst mistake is to stop listening after the initial launch, as businesses that fail to adapt ultimately fail.

During validation calls for Merge, prospective customers expressed extreme annoyance with the status quo but were skeptical the founders could technically solve it. This combination was the ultimate signal: the pain was immense, and a successful solution would be highly defensible and valuable.

Crisp.ai's founder advocates for selling a product before it's built. His team secured over $100,000 from 30 customers using only a Figma sketch. This approach provides the strongest form of market validation, proving customer demand and significantly strengthening a startup's position when fundraising with VCs.

Validate market demand by securing payment from customers before investing significant resources in building anything. This applies to software, hardware, and services, completely eliminating the risk of creating something nobody wants to buy.

To truly validate their idea, Moonshot AI's founders deliberately sought negative feedback. This approach of "trying to get the no's" ensures honest market signals, helping them avoid the trap of false positive validation from contacts who are just being polite.