The validation problem nobody talks about I have watched more ideas die from bad validation than from bad execution. People come to me with something they have been working on for months. They have done surveys. They have talked to friends. They have built landing pages. And they are still guessing. The issue is not effort. The issue is asking questions that feel productive but tell you nothing useful. Last month, someone showed me research they had done on a subscription box concept. Forty people had said they loved the idea. Great. But when I asked how many had actually paid a deposit, the answer was zero. Not one person had put money down. That is not validation. That is politeness. The questions that actually matter Most validation frameworks focus on whether people want what you are building. That is the wrong question. Here is what I ask instead: Would you pay for this today, and if not, what would need to change? The word "today" does the heavy lifting. It forces specificity. It separates interest from intent. I have seen this single question kill ideas that would have wasted years of someone's life. I have also seen it transform weak concepts into viable ones, because the answer reveals exactly what is missing. Who is already paying for something worse? If nobody is paying for an inferior version of your thing, you have a demand problem. Not a product problem. Not a marketing problem. A demand problem. Look at the pub closures happening right now: 161 in the first three months of this year. Some of those were bad businesses. But many were serving a market that stopped paying. The demand shifted. If you cannot point to people currently spending money on a worse alternative, you need to stop and think. What happens if you do nothing for six months? This one trips people up. If your potential customer can wait six months without solving the problem, the problem is not urgent enough. Urgency creates buyers. Mild inconvenience creates "maybe later" emails. The franchise trap I have been following the Vodafone franchise case, where 62 former franchisees are taking the company to court. One of the claimants said they were "sold a dream" that did not match reality. This happens constantly with business ideas, not just franchises. People validate the dream version of their idea. The version where everything goes right. Where customers behave rationally. Where the market stays stable. Where costs stay low. Real validation means stress-testing the nightmare version. What if your supplier doubles their prices? What if your main channel disappears? What if a larger competitor notices you? When I work with people at ALIRA., we run scenarios through the 5 Whys tool on alira.london specifically to find the hidden assumptions. Usually, there are three or four that nobody has examined. Those assumptions are where businesses break. The 72-hour test Here is something I started doing with clients last year. Before any serious investment of time or money, we run a 72-hour test. The rules are simple: You have three days to get one person to pay you something for the idea. Any amount. A pound works. You cannot use friends or family. You have to describe the thing in one sentence. The success rate on this test is about 23%. That is not a typo. Fewer than one in four ideas can get a stranger to part with money in 72 hours. But the ones that pass this test have a dramatically higher survival rate six months later. The test works because it strips away everything except the core question: will someone exchange money for this? What validation is not Validation is not a survey. Surveys measure opinions, and opinions are free. People will tell you they love sustainable fashion whilst buying fast fashion. They will say they would pay for premium quality whilst choosing the cheapest option. The gap between stated preference and revealed preference is enormous. Validation is not a landing page with email signups. Email addresses cost nothing to give. They measure curiosity, not commitment. Validation is not your mum saying it sounds great. It is not your mate saying he would definitely use it. It is not a stranger on LinkedIn saying "interesting concept". Validation is evidence that someone will change their behaviour and part with money. Everything else is noise. The questions you should be asking yourself Before you spend another week on your idea, sit with these: Have I talked to ten people who are not friends or family about this? Has anyone offered to pay me without being asked? Can I name three specific people who would buy this in the next 30 days? What is the smallest version of this I could sell tomorrow? If this fails, what will I wish I had checked first? That last question is the one people avoid. It feels pessimistic. But running through failure scenarios before you start is not pessimism. It is preparation. The Decision Matrix tool on alira.london is useful here, because it forces you to weight the factors you are probably ignoring. The real cost of skipping this I worked with someone last year who had spent £34,000 on a product before doing proper validation. Savings, credit cards, a small loan. The product was genuinely good. Well-designed. Thoughtfully made. Nobody bought it. The problem was not the product. The problem was that the people who wanted it could not afford it, and the people who could afford it did not want it. Basic validation would have surfaced this in a week. Instead, it took eight months and most of their savings. That is what bad validation costs. Not just money. Time, confidence, momentum. What to do this week Monday or Tuesday: Write down the three biggest assumptions your idea depends on. Be honest. If you assume people will pay £50 a month, that is an assumption. If you assume they will find you through Instagram, that is an assumption. List them. By Thursday: Contact five people who are not friends or family and ask them the "would you pay for this today" question. Do not explain. Do not sell. Just ask and listen. By Sunday: Run a version of the 72-hour test. Set a price, any price, and see if one stranger will pay it. If you cannot get one person to pay one pound, you have learned something valuable before it cost you everything.