Why 'Validate Before You Build' Might Be Outdated

We've been watching something play out with the founders we work with that feels pretty significant.

You know that standard startup advice? "Don't build anything until you've validated your idea thoroughly." Spend weeks talking to customers, researching competitors, running surveys - basically do everything except actually build the thing. This has been the standard for years because it made total sense. Building used to take months, if not years, and cost serious money, so you better be sure people wanted it first.

But AI tools have been messing with this equation in a big way. We're seeing people build working prototypes over weekends that would've taken them months before.

So we're all sitting here wondering: if you can build real stuff this fast, are we still supposed to spend months researching first?

Quick Primer: What's Product Validation?

If you're new to building products, validation is just proving people want your thing before you spend time building it. Makes sense - nobody wants to code for three months only to find out nobody cares.

The traditional approach looked like this:

• Come up with idea
• Research market and competitors
• Interview potential customers
• Create surveys or landing pages
• Analyze everything and decide
• Then start building

Each step took substantial time. The whole validation process could easily eat up two months before you wrote a single line of code and thats still moving pretty fast.

This made perfect sense when building meant either learning to code from scratch or hiring expensive developers. The stakes were high, so thorough research was worth the time investment.

The New Reality: Building Isn't the Bottleneck Anymore

What's changed is the speed of going from idea to working prototype. We're seeing this with clients constantly now.

In the old world, going from idea to something users could actually test meant months of development work. Now, with AI coding tools, no-code platforms, and better development frameworks, we're seeing functional prototypes built in days or weeks instead of months.

It's usually not perfect, but it's functional enough that real users can interact with it and give meaningful feedback. And that real usage data is often way more valuable than hypothetical conversations about what people might want.

The pattern we keep seeing: when you can build this fast, you learn more from putting something real in front of users than you do from extensive upfront research.

When You Should Probably Just Start Building

Based on what we're seeing work (and not work) with clients, there are definitely situations where jumping straight into building makes sense:

You're solving your own problem - If you desperately want to use this thing yourself, you already have one validated customer. Build it for yourself first, then see if others share the same pain.

The market obviously exists - Building another CRM or project management tool? People clearly pay for these things. The question isn't whether there's demand, it's whether you can make something better or different enough.

You can build really fast - If you're comfortable with AI tools, no-code platforms, or you're just a fast developer, the cost of being wrong is pretty low.

Speed matters in your market - Some spaces reward being first more than being perfect. Anything riding current trends, seasonal opportunities, or fast-moving markets.

When the Old Advice Still Applies

But we're also seeing situations where slowing down for validation still makes sense:

Complex or expensive builds - AI can't help much with hardware, heavily regulated software, or enterprise tools that need months of integration work. Being wrong is still really costly here.

Unfamiliar customer base - If you're building for a market you've never been part of, spend time understanding that world first. You can't solve problems you don't actually understand.

The problem isn't obvious - If your idea requires convincing people they have a problem they don't realize they have, validate that the problem exists before building a solution.

Limited runway - If this is your one shot and you can't afford to pivot multiple times, invest more in upfront validation.

What We're Actually Doing with Clients Now

Most of the time, we end up recommending something in between. Not zero validation, not months of research. More like compressed validation:

We focus on depth over breadth and have real conversations with 10-15 people who would actually use this, rather than surface-level surveys with hundreds.

We build and validate simultaneously. Start with mockups or basic wireframes while doing customer interviews. Use the feedback to guide development instead of just deciding whether to proceed.

We use AI for the research grunt work like competitive analysis, market trends, even generating better interview questions. This is especially help with with newer research features some models have like Claude or ChatGPT. This frees up time for the important human work of actually talking to potential customers.

The Real Answer Depends on Your Context

There's no universal right approach anymore. What makes sense depends on what you're building, how fast you can build it, how well you understand the space, and honestly your personality as a founder.

Some people need higher confidence before they'll invest time building. Others are comfortable with uncertainty if it means moving faster. Neither is wrong - they're just different approaches that work for different people.

An experienced developer building their third SaaS product needs less validation than someone shipping their first product ever. Someone with six months of runway has different constraints than someone building nights and weekends while keeping their day job.

Questions We're Still Wrestling With

We don't have this all figured out. Some things we're still thinking through:

• How do you know when you've validated "enough"? There's no magic number of conversations that guarantees success.
• What's the minimum useful research? Sometimes it feels like you either do extensive validation or skip it entirely.
• How do you avoid just building for yourself when you can move so fast?
• Is building the wrong thing quickly actually better than building nothing?

What This Means for You

The "validate extensively before building" rule made sense when building was slow and expensive. Now that AI has flipped that equation for many types of software, we need approaches that match the new reality.

Validation isn't dead - it's about being smarter about when and how you validate. Sometimes that means extensive upfront research. Sometimes it means building fast and learning from real usage. Most of the time it's probably somewhere in between.

The key is matching your approach to your specific situation and being prepared to iterate fast as you learn.

We're still experimenting with this balance and learning from what works (and doesn't work) with the founders we help. If you're wrestling with similar questions about when to build versus when to research, we'd love to hear what you're trying. And if you want to talk through your specific situation, that's exactly the kind of thing we help founders figure out.