demand-first-validation
Skill8 starsChanged 3 months agoMITView on GitHub
Validate that a startup idea has real market demand before building. Use when the user wants to check if an idea is worth pursuing, is worried a competitor already exists, or asks "is this a good idea," "should I build this," "someone already built my idea," "how do I validate an idea," or "how do I know if there's demand." Covers the demand-first mindset, the four failure modes that kill bootstrapped ideas, and the competitor reality check. For finding ideas from your own background, see founder-market-fit. For researching demand signals, see trend-research.
In this repository23 other files it gives its agents.
- AGENTS.mdAGENTS.md
- cold-dmSkill
- content-sellingSkill
- discovery-callsSkill
- follow-up-sequencesSkill
- keyword-searchSkill
- profile-optimizationSkill
- prospecting-listsSkill
- context-engineeringSkill
- design-docSkill
- discussSkill
- grillingSkill
- llm-wikiSkill
- opencode-sessionsSkill
- playwright-cliSkill
- pr-descriptionSkill
- founder-market-fitSkill
- idea-scoringSkill
- market-entry-strategiesSkill
- ship-v1Skill
- trend-researchSkill
- tiger-style-codingSkill
- voicenotesSkill
The file
We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent
10 rules. About 0 are common, 10 are distinctive, and 0 are very specific to this project.
≈0
Common · estimate
Many files like this have a rule of this kind.
≈10
Distinctive · estimate
This author's own choices. Worth a look.
0
Very specific
Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.
- Common
- Distinctive
- Very specific
- Distinctive: line 19
Do not optimise for:
- Distinctive: line 41
When an idea appears to have no competition, resist excitement.
- Distinctive: line 44
No competitors in adjacent or other markets?
- Distinctive: line 45
No growing search traffic around the problem?
- Distinctive: line 47
If all three are true, then 9 times out of 10 the reason is simple: nobody cares, and nobody will ever care.
- Distinctive: line 54
Search for direct competitors.
- Distinctive: line 60
Do not let "no competitors" read as "untapped goldmine" without running the three-step check
- Distinctive: line 61
Do not validate with friends, family, or anyone who will not pay
- Distinctive: line 62
Do not greenlight building until demand is visible somewhere real
- Distinctive: line 63
Do not treat an existing competitor as a reason to stop
≈ “Common” is an estimate: at least 1 in 5 of the 350,495 skill files we read have a rule of the same kind, not the same words. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.
Files
Demand-First Validation
You help the user find bootstrapped, one-person-friendly ideas that have visible demand, and discard the ones that don't. Finding good ideas and killing bad ones early is part of good execution, not a separate step before it.
What "good" looks like here
Optimise for:
- Bootstrapped, one-person friendly
- A realistic path to roughly $10k MRR within 12 months
- Markets with obvious, provable demand
Do not optimise for:
- $1bn VC moonshots
- Anything that takes 5 to 10 years to build and exit
- Anything where demand is unclear or has to be manufactured
The core principle
Building in a market with no demand is like pushing water uphill. It is futile. Demand comes first, the idea serves it.
Market research beats user research for finding ideas. Use market research to decide what to build. Use user research later to decide how to build it. People invert this constantly, running user interviews to discover an idea when they should be reading the market for signals of existing demand.
The four failure modes
Most dead bootstrapped projects trace back to one of these. Name the one the user is in, then redirect.
- Ask your friends. Have a random idea, validate it by asking friends if they'd use it. Friends are biased and rarely the buyer. Their yes means nothing.
- Spray and pray. Build many things quickly and hope one takes off. This is gambling with your time, not a strategy.
- Scratch your own itch, then go dark. Have an idea, do no market research, spend a year or more building the thing. Your itch is a hypothesis, not proof anyone else itches.
- See competition and quit. Have an idea, notice competitors exist, get disheartened, and stop. This is backwards. Competitors are the strongest demand signal you can get.
The competitor reality check
When an idea appears to have no competition, resist excitement. Run the check in order:
- No direct competitors?
- No competitors in adjacent or other markets?
- No growing search traffic around the problem?
If all three are true, then 9 times out of 10 the reason is simple: nobody cares, and nobody will ever care. An empty market is usually empty for a reason.
The flip side is the reframe for failure mode 4: finding someone already building your idea is good news. It proves demand. The job is not to invent an untouched market, it is to enter a proven one from a better angle (see market-entry-strategies).
How to run a validation pass
- Restate the idea as a market plus a problem, not a product.
- Search for direct competitors. Found some? Demand is proven, move to strategy.
- Found none? Widen to adjacent markets and to search-traffic trends before concluding anything.
- Still nothing anywhere? Treat the idea as unvalidated and push the user back to founder-market-fit and trend-research rather than into building.
What NOT to do
- Do not let "no competitors" read as "untapped goldmine" without running the three-step check
- Do not validate with friends, family, or anyone who will not pay
- Do not greenlight building until demand is visible somewhere real
- Do not treat an existing competitor as a reason to stop
Related skills
- founder-market-fit - generate candidate ideas from your own skills, scars, and network
- trend-research - find the demand signals that prove or kill an idea
- market-entry-strategies - enter a proven, competitive market from a winning angle
- idea-scoring - rank a shortlist once several ideas survive validation
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