To grow the GDP of Southeast Asia, we need more startups. If we view startup creation as a funnel, there’s significant drop-off at the last step: people with startup ideas who don’t start a startup.
A major reason this happens is that they don’t know if their startup idea is promising enough. Fortunately, there’s a way to figure it out. Unfortunately, most people don’t know about it and if they do, they typically get it wrong.
It’s called validation. It’s the process of running real-world experiments to gather data on whether people want what you’re building without having to build it. It can be done in a few weeks, for very little money and doesn’t require you to be technical.
If more people knew how to validate their startup ideas, there would be more startups. That’s why we created a course and hosted events to teach this. But, it’s so important, I want to go further.
New Program: Validate Your Startup Idea
On 15 September, Iterative will host the first batch of a new program, called Validate Your Startup Idea. It’s a 6-week program where Iterative invests up to $10K in your idea and helps you validate your startup idea.
Each week, the program will cover...
- Week 1: Introduction to Validation and Experiment Design – Understand the importance of validation, learn the components of validation experiments, and create a clear, testable hypothesis for your startup.
- Week 2: Design Your First Validation Experiment – Learn different ways to generate traffic, communicate your idea effectively, measure user interest, and design your first validation experiment.
- Week 3: Run Your First Validation Experiment – Execute your first validation experiment and gather data on user interest and engagement.
- Week 4: Analyze Experiment Results and Iteration – Analyze the data from your first experiment and refine your approach for the second experiment.
- Week 5: Run Your Second Validation Experiment – Plan and execute your second validation experiment, incorporating lessons learned from the first.
- Week 6: Retrospective + Wrap Up – Reflect on your experiments, synthesize learnings, and plan the next steps for your startup.
The program is designed for people who...
- Have a Startup Idea – You must have your own startup idea. Otherwise, there isn’t anything to validate.
- No Full-Time Requirement – Unlike our Core Program, you do NOT need to be working on your idea full-time, but it’s fine if you are.
- Based Anywhere – Unlike our Core Program, you do NOT need to be based in Southeast Asia.
For more information on the program, see this website.
Beyond Southeast Asia
Working with people based anywhere is a significant change for Iterative, so it’s worth explaining in more detail.
Since the beginning, Iterative has focused exclusively on Southeast Asia. Our thesis is that there’s significantly more opportunity in Southeast Asia than startups. To close that gap, we need to make entrepreneurship more accessible by (1) getting more people to believe they can start a startup and (2) teaching them how to succeed.
Surprisingly, this seems true outside Southeast Asia. Despite telling founders we only invest in Southeast Asia, the number of applications from outside Southeast Asia has consistently grown. This emergent behavior typically doesn’t lead to anything but is sometimes significant.
As a result, and only with this program, we’ve decided to consider founders from anywhere, not just Southeast Asia. This is an experiment to gain first hand experience working with founders in other regions.
To be clear, we’re NOT less bullish on Southeast Asia. In fact, we’re more bullish than when we started despite the recent decreases in funding in the region. Remember that funding is a short-term lagging indicator. Right now is the worst time to fundraise but the best time to start a startup.
Apply
The program starts on 15 September. For more details see this website.
If you have a startup idea, you should apply here.
