How to test your startup idea?

It is indeed important to waste less. Either time or money. I am not talking about being cheap, I am talking how to be more efficient.

There is a trend called how to fail fast and succeed faster. I have been talking to various entrepreneurs and lean startup practitioners, seems there are various ways of testing: is your startup idea gonna work? One of the most famous one is "get out of the building".

I would like to share my ideas on how to ensure your startup idea can have bright future or not. This approach is more based on "customer development".

It is very simple.

1. Pick a name
2. Register a domain
3. Create a video max 90 seconds
4. Setup your web site (landing page), in the web site put the video, social network sharing buttons and collect emails for launching product.
5. Setup Google Analytics for your web site and monitor your traffics,
6. [Optional] Invest some limited amount of money on Google AdWords.

These are the basic steps before doing a serious online marketing. Try to measure these items per week:

• traffic drivers
• number of video views in youtube
• number of leads generated in email collection
• number of shared in each so social networks

Try to repeat if for few weeks then you can have some rough idea that is your startup gonna work or what else do you need to prepare before investing on development of your product.