You explain the idea. Your friend gets it immediately.
“I would definitely buy that.”
It feels like a small piece of proof. Collect enough conversations like this and launching starts to seem less risky.
There is a problem: the person may be responding to you as much as to the offer. They might genuinely like it. They might want to encourage you. They might imagine using it someday, without ever needing to choose it over something else.
You can appreciate the support without counting it as a sales forecast.
Start with something that already happened
Suppose you want to launch a meal-preparation service for people with demanding schedules.
Instead of opening with “Would you subscribe to healthy lunches?”, ask someone who fits the audience to walk you through a recent working day. What did they eat? How did they choose it? What did it cost? What made that choice inconvenient?
The details might weaken your original idea. Perhaps the person has convenient lunches but struggles with dinner. Perhaps “healthy” matters less to them than receiving food at a predictable time. Perhaps they already tried a subscription and cancelled because it offered too little variety.
Those answers give you something to investigate. Agreement with your pitch gives you much less to work with.
Make sure the person belongs in the research
A stranger's opinion is not automatically better than a friend's. The relevant question is whether they experience the situation you intend to serve.
If your customer is the person who buys office lunches for a team, interviewing people who only choose their own lunch will leave gaps. If your proposed cleaning service targets furnished rental apartments, someone who hires a cleaner once a year is a different customer.
Before each conversation, write down why this person is relevant. You may discover that the audience needs to become narrower.
Listen for an existing trade-off
Useful evidence often involves something the person has already given up: money, time, convenience, or another option.
Ask how they currently deal with the problem. If they pay for an alternative, examine what they receive and what disappoints them. If they do nothing, find out why. The problem may be tolerable, infrequent, or lower on their list than you assumed.
Do not turn every inconvenience into an urgent need. A person can dislike something and still have no intention of paying to change it.
Show the offer after you understand the situation
You can discuss a possible offer and price during research. Give the person something concrete enough to react to: the scope, timing, limitations and price, rather than a flattering description of the idea.
Then examine their reaction. What would they compare it with? What would prevent them choosing it? Which part seems unnecessary? Who else would have to approve the purchase?
An agreed follow-up or an introduction to the actual buyer can be useful next-step evidence. It is still different from payment. If you have not sold anything, describe the finding honestly as a reaction or expression of interest, rather than a confirmed customer.
Keep the uncomfortable answers
After the conversation, record the person's circumstances, the behaviour they described, the price discussed and the unresolved questions. Include the answers that make your idea harder to defend.
A handful of conversations cannot establish the size of a market. They can reveal assumptions worth investigating, language people actually use and reasons your proposed offer might be ignored.
If the answer is “not at that price,” your next job is to understand the reason. It may lead to a different customer, a different scope, or a decision to stop pursuing this version.
That is useful progress before your savings are committed.
Before you commit your savings, you need something stronger than encouragement. In the DECISION Bootcamp, you examine who would pay, what they would pay for and what the evidence means for your idea. You bring those findings into a business case, with private written feedback to help you question your assumptions.
