Four common mistakes founders make when validating product ideas

Recently I’ve been talking to a bunch of people who are starting companies, typically engineers who are going out on their own for the first time. And I’ve seen a bunch of patterns in the sorts of mistakes they make in coming up with ideas and doing research for their new companies. So I’m going to catalog some of the most common ones I’ve seen.

Mistake 1: I’m the user

On the surface, this one isn’t so bad. After all, the most common place to find problems is by starting with problems that you have yourself. In many cases, these are problems that you have had for quite some time, and so far as you can tell, no one else has solved them. So these are definitely opportunities, but it makes sense to think a bit critically before committing to an idea.

First of all, you should validate that other people have this problem. It is possible that you are the only one who has this problem, or at least the only one who thinks this problem is a must-have. It is entirely possible that you are the only one who would be willing to pay money to solve this problem.

Likewise, you should think about how much money other people are realistically willing to spend to solve this problem. If people are only willing to spend $5 per month, you will need a ton of users…