V4RP
Is Your Startup Idea Any Good?
Borrow Validation Tricks from the Founders of Linear, Mercury & More
Every founder hits the same wall: Is this idea actually worth a decade of my life? You can’t Google the answer. The best you can do is steal a few validation moves from people who’ve been there.
Turns out the playbook isn’t “just talk to customers.” The smartest founders used weird, scrappy, and sometimes contrarian tactics to pressure-test their ideas before writing a single line of code. Here’s what worked for them.
1. Don’t Just Ask Buyers, Ask Builders
Bob Moore (Crossbeam) skipped customer discovery and went straight to fellow founders:
- Instead of “Would you buy this?” he asked, “Would you start this company?”
- After 20–30 calls, one idea kept winning. That became Crossbeam.
Why it worked: founders filter for market size, durability, and pitfalls — not just usability.
2. Run a Minimum Viable Test (Not a Product)
Gagan Biyani (Maven, Udemy, Lyft) invented the MVT:
- Define the “atomic unit” of your idea (Google = search query, Amazon = buying a book).
- Pick the riskiest assumption, then hack together a test.
- For Maven, he ran a single cohort course with Sam Parr — 9/10 rating, $150k revenue, zero code written.
Lesson: Don’t build. Test the assumption that could kill you.
3. Sell It Before You Build It
Ryan Noon & Abhishek Agrawal (Material Security) tested four ideas with “marketing vignettes”:
- Stripped-down pitch decks that looked like landing pages.
- Pitched each daily to prospects.
- The winner was obvious: more meetings, deeper questions (“How much does it cost? When can we use it?”).
Takeaway: If prospects try to hand you money for a fake product, you’re onto something.
4. Spy on Your Own Company
Karri Saarinen (Linear) validated inside his day job at Uber.
- Casual chats with IC engineers and PMs across Uber, Airbnb, Coinbase.
- Everyone complained about project tools but assumed nothing could change.
- The aha: speed was the killer feature incumbents ignored.
That pre-work gave Linear conviction to build.
5. Don’t Pitch Your Friends
Ryan Glasgow (Sprig) avoided social bias by cold-emailing strangers.
- Mockups sent to PMs at YC-backed startups.
- If busy people spent hours helping, it proved the pain was real.
Rule: if strangers don’t care, your idea doesn’t matter.
6. Pressure-Test Feasibility, Not Just Desire
Immad Akhund (Mercury) knew founders wanted better banking. The real risk? Regulations.
- Spoke to 90+ fintech insiders: founders (failure modes), investors (fundability), lawyers (compliance landmines).
- Once it went from “impossible” to “hard but doable,” he was in.
Lesson: sometimes the real validation is legal, not customer.
7. Hunt for “Bad Ideas”
Michael Grinich (WorkOS) chased ideas that looked wrong to most people.
- Founders hated enterprise software. IT admins hated not having it.
- That tension was the gap.
If everyone thinks your idea is good, you’re probably late.
8. Watch for Founder FOMO
Bob Moore’s trick: founders picked his best idea and started introducing him to potential customers.
When your “validation group” turns into your first sales pipeline, you’ve found the one.
The Punchline
There’s no scientific formula to validate a startup idea. The tactics are messy, personal, and often counterintuitive. But they all share one thing: they stress-test conviction before committing years of your life.
