Validating Your Solution: Does Your MVP Actually Work?
Book: Entrepreneurship in the Wild: A Startup Field Guide
Author: Felipe G. Massa
ISBN: 9780262542579
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You found a real problem. You built a prototype. You sketched out a business model. Chapter 7 is where Massa asks the uncomfortable question: will anyone actually buy this?
Not “do they like the idea.” Not “would they use it if it were free.” Will they pay for the whole package, product plus business model, the way you plan to sell it?
Cajun Fire: validation as a lifestyle
The chapter opens with Cajun Fire Brewing Co., the first Black-owned brewery in the South. Founders Jon Renthrope, Adam Dawson, and the rest of the team did not lock themselves in a lab perfecting recipes. They went to festivals, block parties, and pop-ups. They gave away samples and asked people what they thought.
They ran taste tests on cans, hop levels, malt profiles. They built a website that sold merch, because every t-shirt sold was proof that people bought into the brand, not just the beer. They pitched at competitions and won $50,000 at New Orleans Entrepreneur Week. Then they used that buzz to get more feedback.
Hundreds of conversations. Each beer designed for a specific community. Featured in 150+ media outlets. That is what solution validation looks like when you take it seriously.
Your solution is two things, not one
Massa makes a point that a lot of founders miss. A testable solution has two parts:
- Business model (usually your Business Model Canvas)
- MVP (minimum viable product)
You have to validate them together. A great product with the wrong pricing model still fails. Massa gives the example of building something people love but pushing a subscription when customers only want to pay once. Buzz without purchases.
So when you run validation interviews, you are showing both the prototype and how you plan to make money. The whole thing goes in front of customers as one unit.
Step 1: Build your interview list
Talk to potential customers who match your persona. Not industry experts this time. Investors will expect dozens of interviews, and they want to see that you answered your validation questions fully.
Reuse some people from earlier opportunity interviews, but add fresh contacts if you pivoted your beachhead. Schedule 45+ minutes per session. These run longer than problem interviews because you are demoing and discussing pricing.
Ask permission to record. Take notes. Send a thank-you email. These people might become your first customers.
Step 2: Write an interview protocol
Structure matters. Massa splits questions into two buckets:
MVP validation (show the prototype first):
- What was your first reaction?
- When would you actually use this?
- What would stop you from using it?
- What would make you tell a friend?
- What would you change?
Business model validation (walk through the BMC):
- Channels: is this how you want to be reached?
- Customer relationships: what keeps you coming back?
- Value propositions: do these reasons make sense? Rank them.
- Revenue model: what feels fair? Subscription or one-time?
- Partners: who should we team up with?
Rehearse with a friend before you talk to real customers. Tweak questions that fall flat. And do not show every detail of your product. Focus on the parts you are least sure about.
Step 3: Log what you learn
After each interview, fill out a simple log: who you talked to, how long it took, key lessons, and what you plan to change in the MVP or BMC.
Common mistakes that ruin your data:
- No notes or recording
- Showing different MVP versions to different people
- Interviewing the wrong persona
- Asking yes/no questions instead of open-ended ones
Some teams start sorting interviewees into persona categories and discover new market segments they had not considered.
Step 4: Other ways to validate
Interviews are the main tool, but Massa lists several complements:
- Landing pages with a clear call to action. Cheap, fast, good for building a lead list.
- Surveys for closed-ended questions at scale (pricing, channel preferences).
- A/B testing to see which version of a page or product performs better.
- Targeted ads on social media to test whether your message resonates.
- Wizard of Oz experiments where customers think they are using a real product but your team delivers the service manually behind the scenes.
The point across all of these: make small bets before big commitments.
Route monitoring: Progress-Making Forces
This framework helps you understand why customers switch (or do not switch) to your solution. Four forces:
Push: what is wrong with their current solution?
Pull: what is appealing about yours?
Anxiety: what worries them about adopting something new?
Allegiance: what do they like about what they already use?
For a customer to switch, the push and pull combined must outweigh anxiety and allegiance. If your interviews show strong anxiety or habit, you know what to fix before launch.
Keep talking to customers
The gap between validation and launch is dangerous. Founders who stop listening to customers slide back into building in a bubble.
Massa’s advice for the home stretch:
- Keep interviewing. Build a small advisory group of straight-talking customers you can call when you need a gut check.
- Picture your personas in team meetings. Sounds silly. Works.
- Consider co-creation partnerships with your most insightful interviewees.
My take
Chapter 7 is the gut-check chapter. Everything before it was hypothesis. This is where hypotheses meet reality.
The Cajun Fire story is the best proof that validation is not a checkbox. It is ongoing work woven into how you operate. Taste tests at festivals. Merch sales as a signal. Pitch competitions as expert feedback loops.
If you only do one thing from this chapter, do the combined MVP plus business model interviews. That single habit prevents more launch failures than any feature you could add to your product.
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