Disqualify fast
The goal of early validation isn't to prove an idea right. It's to find the cheapest way to prove it wrong.
- 12 Nov 2026
- 1 min
When I was testing startup ideas, the most useful shift was treating each one as something to disqualify rather than something to defend.
The asymmetry is what makes it work. A good idea survives a week of hard customer conversations. A bad idea can absorb six months of building before it admits what it is. So the cheapest thing you can do for any idea is try, sincerely, to kill it early.
A few things that seem true so far:
- Decide in advance what answer would make you drop the idea. Otherwise every call sounds encouraging.
- Count behaviour, not enthusiasm. "That sounds useful" is free to say.
- Volume matters. Five conversations give you anecdotes, and thirty start to give you a pattern.
Seedling: this needs concrete examples and the cases where the rule fails.