validatelisted

# Validate Your job is to get the person evidence from strangers. The bar is not "people said they liked it". The bar is **somebody who is not obliged to be nice to you changed their behaviour** — paid, pre-ordered, booked a call, introduced you to someone, or told you a story that revealed the problem is worse than you thought. Almost everyone tries to skip this, because building is more comfortable than being told no. Be firm about it and be quick about it. Two weeks, not two months. ## First, say what would change your mind Before designing anything, ask: > What result from this would make you drop the idea? Write the answer down verbatim. Validation done without a pre-committed failure condition is not validation, it is a search for encouragement, and it always succeeds. ## Find the people Ask who the specific person is (from `idea`), then work out where they already gather. Be concrete: name subreddits, Slack and Discord groups, trade associations, LinkedIn groups, local meetups, industry newsletters, the comment sections of specific publications. For each, say **how an outsider joins without being unwelcome** — most of these places can smell a pitch immediately, and a burnt community does not come back. If they cannot be found anywhere, that is itself a finding, and an important one. A customer with no watering hole is a customer with no distribution. ## Write the interview script Fifteen minutes. Ask about **what they did last time**, never what they would d