Well constructed proof of concepts are designed
Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2024 4:27 am
Well constructed proof of concepts are designed to achieve these 3 things:
1. Verify that your solution solves the problem you’re attempting to address.
2. Confirm that your solution is valued by your future customers.
3. Determine whether or not people will pay for your solution.
Setting your proof of concept goal.
Once you have a more clear picture of what your specific product or service offering is going to be (based on your target market conversations and using a smart keyword research tool) and you’ve developed a competitive advantage that’s going to make your offering unique in some way, it’s time to set a goal for what you want your proof of concept to achieve.
Only that which is properly tracked and measured, improves.
Your proof of concept goal will be unique to your business and it needs to give you relative confidence in the future of the solution you’re building.
There’s no definitive, across the board success metric for all proof of concepts, but I always recommend setting a proof of concept goal of generating a specific amount of revenue from a pre-defined number of paying customers.
Here are a few popular examples of proof of concept goals:
10 pre-orders for your upcoming product or service
$100 in affiliate commissions generated
100 listeners on your first podcast episode
Getting a book proposal accepted by a publisher
100 waiting list subscribers
Fully funding a Kickstarter campaign
With my challenge to validate a business idea in the California hiking space, I set my proof of concept goal at 10 pre-orders of the hiking guide I wanted to create. If I could get 10 people to pay me for a book that doesn’t yet exist, that’d give me enough confidence to go out and actually shoot the content & create the book.
Now that I had the goal I wanted to achieve—10 book pre-sales, it was afghanistan phone number database to create a (simple) preview of what that would be, so I could start pitching it and asking my subscribers to buy.
Here are a few examples of the many different forms a proof of concepts can come in:
Google Doc (like the one I created to validate my hiking guide)
Blog post (like the one I wrote to validate my first course idea)
Explainer video
Portfolio of your existing work (like this free one on Contently)
Hand-built prototype (like my $100 iStash prototypes)
Simple product sales page or website
A scaled down product or tool (like these no-code prototypes you can build in a weekend)
Rough demonstration of your software solution
Email or email newsletter (like how ProductHunt started)
Self-published book
Facebook or Slack group (like #Investing, a group created by a reader)
So, going back to leveraging my core skills (which we covered the importance of in #2 of this post), I took a couple of hours and wrote out a simple Google Doc Proof of Concept that was just a few pages long, to serve as my proof of concept for this hiking guide idea.
You can check it out and grab the template for it right here.
validate-business-idea-google-doc-proof-of-concept
1. Verify that your solution solves the problem you’re attempting to address.
2. Confirm that your solution is valued by your future customers.
3. Determine whether or not people will pay for your solution.
Setting your proof of concept goal.
Once you have a more clear picture of what your specific product or service offering is going to be (based on your target market conversations and using a smart keyword research tool) and you’ve developed a competitive advantage that’s going to make your offering unique in some way, it’s time to set a goal for what you want your proof of concept to achieve.
Only that which is properly tracked and measured, improves.
Your proof of concept goal will be unique to your business and it needs to give you relative confidence in the future of the solution you’re building.
There’s no definitive, across the board success metric for all proof of concepts, but I always recommend setting a proof of concept goal of generating a specific amount of revenue from a pre-defined number of paying customers.
Here are a few popular examples of proof of concept goals:
10 pre-orders for your upcoming product or service
$100 in affiliate commissions generated
100 listeners on your first podcast episode
Getting a book proposal accepted by a publisher
100 waiting list subscribers
Fully funding a Kickstarter campaign
With my challenge to validate a business idea in the California hiking space, I set my proof of concept goal at 10 pre-orders of the hiking guide I wanted to create. If I could get 10 people to pay me for a book that doesn’t yet exist, that’d give me enough confidence to go out and actually shoot the content & create the book.
Now that I had the goal I wanted to achieve—10 book pre-sales, it was afghanistan phone number database to create a (simple) preview of what that would be, so I could start pitching it and asking my subscribers to buy.
Here are a few examples of the many different forms a proof of concepts can come in:
Google Doc (like the one I created to validate my hiking guide)
Blog post (like the one I wrote to validate my first course idea)
Explainer video
Portfolio of your existing work (like this free one on Contently)
Hand-built prototype (like my $100 iStash prototypes)
Simple product sales page or website
A scaled down product or tool (like these no-code prototypes you can build in a weekend)
Rough demonstration of your software solution
Email or email newsletter (like how ProductHunt started)
Self-published book
Facebook or Slack group (like #Investing, a group created by a reader)
So, going back to leveraging my core skills (which we covered the importance of in #2 of this post), I took a couple of hours and wrote out a simple Google Doc Proof of Concept that was just a few pages long, to serve as my proof of concept for this hiking guide idea.
You can check it out and grab the template for it right here.
validate-business-idea-google-doc-proof-of-concept