Validation Is Overrated
Founders chase validation like it proves something. Most of what passes for validation proves nothing, and chasing it wastes the time that would.
Validate your idea. Get validation before you build. The word is now gospel in startup advice. Founders spend months chasing it. They run surveys, interviews, sign-up forms, and warm chats. But most of what founders call validation is nothing of the sort. It is comfort dressed up as evidence. Chasing it is a common way to feel busy while you learn nothing. Validation, the way most people do it, is badly overrated.
Why the conventional wisdom is wrong
The common advice is wrong for a simple reason. The things founders treat as validation are cheap signals that cost the other person nothing. People say they like your idea. They say they would "definitely use it." They fill in a survey. That is politeness, not proof. Humans are wired to be kind, above all to a hopeful founder sitting in front of them. Soft validation does not predict behavior. It predicts that people are nice. A founder who collects enough of it can believe they have proven a market. All they have proven is that people will not insult them.
Surveys and "would you use this" questions measure stated intent. Stated intent is a poor guide to real action.
Friends, family, and warm contacts give kind but biased feedback. It will back almost any idea you bring them.
Vanity validation, such as likes, sign-ups, and applause, feels like progress. It tells you nothing about who is willing to pay.
What is actually true
Here is what is true. The only validation worth much is costly. It asks the other person to give up something they value. In business the clearest signal is money. Someone pays you, pre-pays, or signs a contract. After that comes time, effort, and reputation. Think of a customer who sets up your product, refers others, or changes their workflow to use you. Those things cost something. Because they cost something, they predict what people will do. Anything cheaper is noise that feels like signal.
This also means the fastest validation is to build the smallest real thing and try to sell it. Endless research before building does not get you there. A founder who spends three months on validation surveys learns less than one who spends three weeks trying to get a single customer to pay. The market does not answer questionnaires honestly. It answers with its wallet.
Validation that actually counts
Someone pays you real money, ideally before you finish building it.
A customer changes how they work in order to use what you made.
People refer others without being asked. That puts their own reputation on the line.
Customers come back and use it again. No survey can ever promise that.
What we have seen
When we started Through The Glass Creatives from nothing, we had no room for a validation phase. We needed paying clients to eat. So our validation was the only kind that counts. Could we get someone to pay us for work, and would they come back? That is a far harder and far more honest test than any survey. Passing it again and again is how we grew into an award-winning company. Since then we have watched founders spend months validating an idea with glowing feedback. They build the thing everyone "loved." Then they find that not one of those eager people will pay for it. The validation was real. The willingness to pay never existed.
The honest take
Most validation is a way to delay the only test that matters, while feeling like you are cutting risk. Encouragement is not evidence. Sign-ups are not sales. "I would use that" is not "here is my money." If you want to know whether you have a business, stop collecting opinions. Try to get someone to pay you for the smallest real version of it. That is uncomfortable, which is exactly why it works. The market tells the truth only when telling it costs the customer something. Chase that, and skip the rest.
Sources
TTGC: lessons from building and scaling our own company, and from advising clients.
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