Uncertainty, Validation, and Work

#7 Edition of interesting reads from the week - 15, Jan 2023.

#1 Stability mangoge, chaos denge

Getting comfortable with the constant change in life be it your friends, the place you stay, or the people you meet at work. We all aim to achieve a state of stability for all the hard work we do. But the cycle of uncertain events never stops - from one goal you keep moving to the next and sometimes do not even realize it’s been like that for a long time.

The only thing constant, therefore, is the creation of chaos that all of us have to deal with while we try to earn a state of stability in a fundamentally uncertain world.

We demand certainty from a world that is fundamentally, unchangeably uncertain.

Instead of fighting the change, one has to become the comfortable accepting change and realize that being in chaos is part of our existence. This brings up rage for the unfairness of life but can lead to one revolt against the fundamental ideas of life.

“The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but a beginning.”

A lot of us face similar problems in life and approach solving them in our ways. Channeling the right mindset is important to act against the chaos and make it fuel to revolt and build your future with reason to affirm a better existence.

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#2 Validating your product ideas

Step 1: Validate your Goals
- Market
- Customer
- Problem
- Solution
Step 2: Create a Hypothesis market
- Test the riskiest assumptions
  - Customer Hypothesis
  - Problem Hypothesis
  - Solution Hypothesis
  - Pricing Hypothesis
Step 3: Build a Prototype and Test
- Test your riskiest assumptions
- Prototypes can be:
  - Mockup - Pre-product Validation
  - Low/high fidelity prototype - Pre-product Validation
  - Single-feature MVP - Feature Validation
  - Proof of Concept(PoC) - Validation
  - Minimal Viable Product (MVP) - Validation
Step 4: Test Ideas
- Organic Growth
  - Leverage groups and communities
  - Share ideas with followers
  - Cold Email
  - Testing with target demographics
  - Get out physically and ask strangers
- Paid Growth
Step 5: Validate, Learn & Repeat
- Capture Metrics
- Setup north star and key metrics to track
- Usage
- Purchase
- Conversion Rate
- Usage of Feature

How NOT to validate your ideas?

Asking your friends, families, and colleagues about your idea.
Asking investors about your idea. They could offer their unique perspectives, however, opinion does not equal validation.
Showing your prototype to the wrong people. Asking someone who is not one of your target customers about your prototype when they are not experiencing the problems you are attempting to solve.
Listen to words, not actions. “Great concept”, “I love the idea”, “This is so cool” and, “I think I will pay for it” is not validation.

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