In a region as dynamic as Southeast Asia, entrepreneurship can be a significant driver for individual and community growth. We love seeing people embrace entrepreneurship and chase their dreams. But, too often we see talented people beginning their startup journeys with bad ideas. We’ll never be able to eliminate the risk of an idea being bad but we think we can significantly minimise it.
How? Through validation. Validation is a crucial step in developing your startup idea, running tests to gather data, and deciding if the idea is worth pursuing. Starting a startup can be scary, but with validation, you can begin the journey with more confidence and conviction.
The good news is once you learn the framework, validation is actually quite straightforward. And it can be done in a short amount of time (weeks, not months), inexpensively, and without needing to code. We want to help you validate your startup idea properly.
Introducing Our Validation Program
Join our validation program to confidently convince yourself to move forward as a founder with a startup idea that is worth investing in. With this program, you’ll learn how to run experiments, gather data to determine your idea’s viability and decide if you should start a startup.
Format
The program will be a 4-week masterclass on validation. It will run from October 9 to November 3. Sign up by October 8 to participate.
- Video Content – Each week, participants will receive access to video content related to validation. Learn at your own pace throughout the week.
- Apply What You Learn – The program includes practical advice and hands-on learning. We’ll assign (optional) homework, so you can apply what you learn to validate your own startup idea.
- Office Hours – Once a week, we’ll host 1-hour open Office Hours, where participants can ask questions, review homework, and receive personalised feedback and guidance from Hsu Ken.
Who Is This Course For?
This course is designed for:
- Future Founders – If you have an idea and are considering working on it full-time, this course is highly recommended for you. What we will teach will be immediately and practically useful to you.
- Recent Founders – If you recently started working on your idea full-time, this course will still be very useful to you. In most cases, founders don’t validate their idea properly before working on it full-time so even if you are full-time, you still need to validate it. In that case, what we teach you will be immediately and practically useful.
- Everyone – If you’re none of the above, this course will probably still be useful. In our experience, the principles for validation apply to every stage of a startup and to non-founders. If you’re an engineer, designer or product manager working on a product, you’re going to want to validate a new feature idea before building it out fully. Although it won’t be the focus of the course, the principles are the same.
How it Works
Participants will learn about validation through videos, hands-on assignments, and Office Hours. Through this combination, you’ll learn, practice, and have opportunities to ask questions to sharpen your understanding.
- Sign Up – Sign up to join the program.
- Week 1, 9-13 Oct: Introduction of Validation, and Validation Components + Office Hours
- What is validation, what successful validation looks like, and the three components needed to validate an idea.
- Week 2, 6-20 Oct: Communicate Your Startup Idea and Generate Traffic + Office Hours
- Discover different ways to communicate your startup idea to the world (such as setting up a landing page) and learn how to effectively use techniques like paid marketing and email outreach to expose more people to your idea.
- Week 3, 23-27 Oct: Measuring Intent and Real-World Examples + Office Hours
- Gather data to measure user interest in your idea. We’ll share real-world examples to illustrate different validation configurations (e.g. paid marketing + landing page + sign ups).
- Week 4, 30 Oct-3 Nov: Iterate, Best Practices and Common Mistakes + Office Hours
- Continue experimenting to learn as much as possible about your target audience and what they care about. We’ll cover best practices to keep in mind and common mistakes to avoid as you continue validating.
Meet Your Host
Hsu Ken Ooi is co-founder and Managing Partner of Iterative, and a successful multi-time founder with experience building startups in the Bay Area and Southeast Asia. In 2009, Hsu Ken co-founded Decide.com, an early machine learning company that predicted the future price of consumer goods. It was acquired by eBay in 2013. In 2014, he was VP of Product at Weave (YCS14). He was previously the Chief Product Officer of Workmate, an on-demand blue collar staffing platform in Southeast Asia.
Validation is a crucial step to setting yourself up for a good start with your startup. Don’t skip or cut corners with this step. That’s how bad ideas endure. Join our validation program, and let’s work together to get more good ideas out there.
