An idea pops into your head, you get excited, and because you can build fast with AI, you sit down to work. Two weeks, three weeks. You finish it, proudly ship it, and wait for a reaction.
And… silence. Nobody uses it.
It's the bitterest experience for any builder — and far more common than you think. Most projects fail not because they were built badly, but because they were something nobody wanted from the start. The reason? The easiest person to fool is yourself. When you love an idea, your brain convinces you “everyone wants this.”
So what's the solution? Before building, ask. But ask right.
Most people, even when they do ask, ask wrong. They go to someone and say:
“I'm building something that solves this problem. Do you think it's a good idea? Would you use it?”
That's the worst possible question. Why?
- People like to be polite, so they say “yes, great!” — even if it's a lie.
- People are terrible at predicting their own future behavior. “Yeah, I'd buy it” does not mean “I'll buy it.”
The result? You collect a pile of hollow “yeses,” get happy, build — and again nobody wants it.
The key tool: ask about the past, not the future.
Instead of asking for an opinion about your idea, ask about what they actually did. For example:
Ask these three
- “When was the last time you had this problem?”
- “What did you do about it back then?”
- “How much time / money / frustration did it cost you?”
Why does this work? Because past behavior doesn't lie. An opinion is free; what someone actually did is real evidence.
What does a good answer look like?
“Last week I had exactly this problem, I fixed it by hand for two hours and it drove me crazy.”
That means the problem is real. 🎯
What does a bad answer look like?
“Yeah… I guess it happens sometimes, but I didn't really do anything about it.”
That means the problem isn't painful enough. If someone never did anything to solve it, they won't pay for your solution either. 🚩
This one change — asking about the past instead of the future — prevents most pointless building.
And this is only the start
Now you have a real tool you can use today. But some harder questions remain:
- Who exactly should I talk to? (Big mistake: asking friends and family.)
- How many people is enough to be sure?
- How do I turn the answers into a firm “build / don't build” decision?
- How do I know I'm not fooling myself?
These make up the full validation system you learn, step by step, in the ARMA ideation course — so you build with certainty, not hope.