Learn how to balance market validation with your own vision and intuition when launching a new product or service. Find the right mix of data and creativity.

I value market validation as a compass that helps me make strategic decisions. However, I also trust my intuition, honed through years of experience in pet nutrition. It allows me to foresee trends and innovate beyond current market demands. This balance ensures that while I listen to customer feedback and market signals, I remain true to our founding vision of delivering quality pet nutrition. It's about blending data-driven insights with gut instincts to drive sustainable growth and innovation in our competitive landscape.

Last updated on Jul 16, 2024

How do you balance market validation with your own vision and intuition?

Market validation is the process of testing the demand and viability of your product or service idea before launching it. It can help you avoid wasting time, money, and resources on something that nobody wants or needs. However, market validation is not a foolproof method. Sometimes, your own vision and intuition can lead you to create something innovative and valuable that the market does not yet recognize or appreciate. How do you balance market validation with your own vision and intuition? Here are some tips to help you find the right mix of data and creativity.

Key takeaways from this article

Articulate your assumptions:

Clearly define your core problems and target customer needs. This helps identify gaps in knowledge and potential risks in your strategy, ensuring a more focused approach to market validation.### *Look for customer innovation:Observe how customers currently solve the problem you aim to address. Their creative solutions can provide valuable insights into the problem's significance and guide your product development.

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1 Understand your assumptions

The first step to balance market validation with your own vision and intuition is to understand your assumptions. What are the core problems that you are trying to solve? Who are your target customers and what are their needs, pains, and goals? How does your solution differ from the existing alternatives? How do you measure success and value? These are some of the questions that you need to answer before you start validating your idea. By articulating your assumptions, you can identify the gaps in your knowledge and the risks in your strategy.

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Lisa Kostova
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This may be a contrarian perspective, but the answer is "you don't balance market validation with your intuition and vision". I've eaten too much humble pie to be arrogant in assuming I know what problems need solving. You only look at market validation. Period. Then you train your intuition to be able to spot patterns in the future, but never think you know. Always validate before assuming. The Valley is littered with founders who are solving problems that either don't exist, or, more often, are not primary pain points, but minor nuisances. My mantra now is "please lead me to serve my clients by helping them with whatever they need most" and then detaching myself from what that is.

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2 Validate your problem and solution

The next step is to validate your problem and solution. This means finding evidence that your target customers actually have the problem that you are trying to solve, and that they are willing to pay for your solution. You can use various methods to validate your problem and solution, such as surveys, interviews, landing pages, prototypes, MVPs, and experiments. The goal is to get feedback from real or potential customers, not just from your friends, family, or colleagues. You also need to be open to learning from the feedback, even if it contradicts your vision and intuition.

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Venkatesh V.
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In my experience, customers always solve problems by whatever means they have at their disposal. If you have a theory that a problem exists, look out for customer innovation around the problem. They might be manually solving it or might have built a custom solution in-house.The bigger the innovation, the bigger the problem.

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Silvia Mah PhD, MBA

Published Author | 2 x TEDx speaker | Igniting Innovation, Impact & Investing through Action & Intentionality | VC | Associate Professor | Keynote Speaker | Advocate 4 Diverse Founders | Investor | Servant Leader
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Co-creation of new products, product extensions and services surrounding products with your customers allows for early buy-in, and continued delight of your company's products and creates life-long promoters of your brand.

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3 Iterate and refine

The third step is to iterate and refine your idea based on the feedback and data that you collect from market validation. This does not mean that you have to abandon your vision and intuition completely. It means that you have to use them as a guide, not as a dogma. You have to be flexible and adaptable, and willing to change or pivot your idea if necessary. You also have to balance between validating enough and validating too much. You don't want to get stuck in analysis paralysis, nor do you want to launch without enough evidence.

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Susan Coelius Keplinger

CEO at Force of Nature | Performance Marketing at Scale
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Don't hesitate to iterate based on feedback. Be open to refining your product or service based on what you learn during the validation process. This adaptability is key to success.

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4 Trust your gut

The final step is to trust your gut. Market validation is not a guarantee of success, nor is it a substitute for your own vision and intuition. Sometimes, you have to trust your gut and follow your passion, even if the market validation results are not favorable or conclusive. This is especially true if you are creating something new or disruptive, that the market does not yet understand or value. You have to be confident and courageous, and willing to take risks and fail. You also have to be patient and persistent, and willing to educate and persuade the market.

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Shashank Sinha

Celebrating Pets and Pet Parents @Drools
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I value market validation as a compass that helps me make strategic decisions. However, I also trust my intuition, honed through years of experience in pet nutrition. It allows me to foresee trends and innovate beyond current market demands. This balance ensures that while I listen to customer feedback and market signals, I remain true to our founding vision of delivering quality pet nutrition. It's about blending data-driven insights with gut instincts to drive sustainable growth and innovation in our competitive landscape.

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Silvia Mah PhD, MBA

Published Author | 2 x TEDx speaker | Igniting Innovation, Impact & Investing through Action & Intentionality | VC | Associate Professor | Keynote Speaker | Advocate 4 Diverse Founders | Investor | Servant Leader
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Trusting your gut is knowing and acknowledging your strengths. Aligning that new idea or new market being pursued with the knowledge that your strengths of product-development or market research inform that decision, will take that "trust your gut" from "hunch" to "success".

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5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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How do you balance market validation with your own vision and intuition?

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1 Understand your assumptions

2 Validate your problem and solution

3 Iterate and refine

4 Trust your gut

5 Here’s what else to consider

Market Analysis

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