You’ve talked to 20 potential customers. They all say your idea is “valuable” and “sounds great.” You feel the excitement from positive feedback and want to start building. But if everyone says it’s great, why hasn’t anyone offered to pay?

That gap between compliments and cash is the clearest sign of a problem-validation crisis. You might be solving a “fake problem,” something people talk about but won’t pay to fix. This article shares a simple three-step way to stop guessing and get real signals from the market.

💡

Key Takeaways

The Core Issue: Polite feedback ("That's a great idea!") without commitment is a red flag. True validation comes from proving a customer has a costly problem they are actively trying to solve.

The Strategy: A successful problem validation process follows a "Hypothesize → Validate" model. You must first form a clear hypothesis about your buyer and market before you test the problem.

The Method: The key is to shift from asking for opinions to asking for commitment. This is done by using a "higher-friction ask," like a request for a follow-up demo or a small, paid pilot.

The 3-Step Framework for Problem Validation

This framework is designed to take you from a place of uncertainty to one of confidence, ensuring you only build what customers will actually buy.

🪴

A Note From the Author (Dan Wu, JD/PhD)

As a former startup SVP of Product, I've lived the challenges this covers. I've used similar frameworks and tools to build and manage responsible, high-growth products generating 6-7 figures of annual revenue.

I help social impact leaders find who will buy, what to say, and what to sell, fusing Silicon Valley product thinking & Harvard PhD insight.

Step 1: Specify Your Buyer

What it is: Use our Niche Scorecard to go from a wide, vague audience to a specific buyer (niche) who feels the pain, can authorize a purchase, and is reliably accessible to you.

Why it's critical: Not targeting the right people wastes time and leads you to build the perfect solution for someone who doesn't control the budget. Effective problem validation starts with the right audience.

Example

Less Productive Example: You interview a mix of social media coordinators, marketing agencies, and entrepreneurs. Additionally, your pitch focuses primarily on the benefits to coordinators, who often lack budget. In the end, you get a lot of polite, seemingly validating feedback, not realizing you’re about to spend months building on quicksand.

Productive Example: You use your Niche Scorecard to realize that while social media coordinators do the work and feel the inconvenience, it's the CEOs of small businesses who are responsible for the ROI and have the budget. You focus all your interviews on this group.

Step 2: Choose a Market Category

What it is: Use our Market Category Scorecard to position your solution inside an established, growing market where your buyer niche is already spending money but remains unhappy with current solutions, and where you have unequal advantages and credibility.

Why it's critical: If people can't easily categorize you, they get confused and compare you to the cheapest alternative or, even worse, discredit you completely. Fitting into an established category lets you quickly clarify what problem you solve, where you fit into their world, while avoiding the long battle of educating a market from scratch.

Examples

Less Productive Example: You call your tool a brand-new category (”AI-powered Connection Tool”). Confused prospects assume it's like a cheap online form-builder or a difficult competitor to beat (eg: Linkedin) because that's the only comparison they have.

Productive Example: You use your Market Category Scorecard to choose "financial planning software for life coaches," a category your buyer already knows and budget for. When you use this term, your buyers immediately understand its purpose and can compare it to their existing budget line items for CRMs or event software. You start here to build a robust foundation before evangelizing a new market category.

Step 3: Discover and Validate Real Problems

What it is: Use our simple Validation & Conversion Toolkit to confirm your niche, market, and problem, stopping you from building on a house of cards. A key step is to test their willingness to take action through higher-friction asks for commitment, not just their opinion.

Why it's critical: Real validation isn't a survey; it's a true commitment, like a sale. A simple process stops you from overwhelming people with features and focuses you on what your buyer most care about, making it easier for them to trust you and say "yes."

Examples

Less Productive Example: On calls, you start by listing every feature of your tool (”wouldn’t it be cool if…”). The prospect gets bored or overwhelmed, and the call ends with no sale and no clear next step. Or you ask if the idea “seems valuable.” And while many said "yes," this polite feedback didn't confirm they were willing to pay, putting you at risk of solving a "fake problem.”

Productive Example: You use your powerful Validation & Conversion Toolkit and a simple "3-Step Sales Script" to identify costly problems, present your solution concisely, and make a clear ask for time and money. This leads to confident talks and your first sales.

Problem Validation: The Toolkit

This framework gives you the strategy. If you’re ready to put it into practice, we’ve built a set of powerful toolkits to help you execute each step with precision.

The Core Offer Checklist: A simple diagnostic to assess the drivers of a strong core offer to engage your target audience and clarify your blind spots.

The Niche Scorecard: A simple tool to surface and prioritize potential buyer niches against key criteria, removing the guesswork from choosing who to help.

The Market Category Scorecard: A template to discover and evaluate high-potential markets where you can thrive

The Validation Toolkit: The complete package, including our "Validation Script” and "One-Sentence Value Prop" template giving you a clear repeatable process to discover and test costly problems and effective solutions cheaply.

To access these tools, a great first step is to diagnose your core message with our Core Offer Checklist below.

👉 Want the Tools Mentioned Above?

Start with our free checklist to get on the path to the rest.

When Not to Use This Problem Validation Framework

This framework is designed for finding a repeatable business model. You should pause this aggressive problem validation process if you are in a pure "vision-led" phase (e.g., building a completely new category of art or a deep-tech solution where the market cannot yet imagine the problem) and have the capital to educate the market over a long period.

Frequently Asked Questions About Problem Validation

What is the difference between problem and solution validation?

Problem validation confirms you have identified a costly problem that customers want to solve. Solution validation confirms your specific product is the right way to solve that already-validated problem. Founders often make the mistake of starting with solution validation.

What are the key steps in problem validation?

The key steps are: 1) Hypothesize your target buyer and market, 2) Conduct interviews to diagnose their current process and pains, 3) Filter for problems that are truly costly (quantifiable in time or money), and 4) Use a high-friction ask to test for commitment.

How do you know if a customer problem is valid?

A problem is valid when a customer can clearly articulate the negative consequences of not solving it (e.g., "we lose 10 hours a week on this," or "it costs us potential leads"), and they show a willingness to commit resources (time or money) to a potential solution.

Dan Wu, JD/PhD
Lead Innovation Advisor

I help you innovate safely by making sure growth and governance go hand-in-hand.

SVP of Product & Chief Strategy Officer.

As a go-to-market-focused product leader, I’ve led and launched products and teams at tech startups in highly-regulated domains, ranging from 6 to 8 figures in revenue.

Led core products and product marketing key to pre-seed to E raises across highly-regulated industries such as data/AI governance, real estate, & fintech; rebuilt buyer journeys to triple conversion rates; Won Toyota’s national startup competition.

Harvard JD/PhD focused on responsible innovation for basic needs.

Focus on cross-sector social capital formation, with a strong background in mixed-methods research.

Selected as a National Science Foundation fellow & published on responsible strategy and innovation in outlets like Oxford University Press, Fast Company, and TechCrunch.

First-generation college student prioritizing inclusion and belonging in his practice.

I was raised by a single mother without a high school degree.

I’m passionate about mentoring and coaching using methods that “works with” (versus “do to”), sensitive to one’s constraints and experiences.

Find me on Linkedin →

Job Security vs Entrepreneurship: 3 Truths to Help You Decide When to Quit Your Job: Questions to Ask Yourself First

Problem Validation: Solve a Real Problem Before It’s Too Late

An Experienced Founder's Guide to Problem Validation