Business strategy

Startup validation: find the customer who will pay

Andrew Meng and Thomas Kim on testing startup demand, learning from existing products and leaving corporate perfectionism behind.

7 October 20262 min read7 min listen

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Written for builders and creators.

The most successful builders today prioritize shipping a product to see if anyone actually pulls out their credit card.

Editor's note

Why this matters now

Andrew Meng and Thomas Kim argue that cheap software development changes how a small team can test an idea. A working product lets you observe what a customer actually does with it.

Their interview-practice app grew from problems they knew through finance and software engineering. That gave them a starting point, even though the business later proved difficult to keep growing.

If you're weighing up your next build, listen for the difference between a problem you recognize and a product someone will keep paying for.

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What it says

Distilled from the original. The notes above and below are the editor's own.

A working product can test demand

Andrew Meng and Thomas Kim argue for quick experiments when building software is inexpensive. Their emphasis is on seeing whether someone uses and pays for a product.

They contrast that evidence with long periods spent discussing an idea or polishing plans. Their approach is aimed at small teams able to launch a modest test, with limited money at risk.

Existing products give you something to investigate

The founders recommend looking at products that already attract customers. That can help identify a known problem and a possible audience.

A successful competitor shows that someone buys that kind of product. You still need to discover why a customer would choose yours and how you will reach them.

A different audience, workflow or way of presenting the product can give the experiment a specific question to answer.

Start with a problem you understand

Their own Perfect Interview AI drew on experiences with job interviews in finance and software engineering. They took a practice familiar to those professions and tried to offer it to more people through software.

The founders say the product reached a few thousand dollars in monthly revenue. That showed willingness to pay, while later episodes explain the difficulty of retaining customers after they found work.

Corporate habits can slow a small test

Meng describes habits from finance that did little to help his earliest products: polishing presentations, forecasting uncertain revenue and spending time on tiny details.

The founders' point is about matching the work to the business's stage. A young product needs evidence about customers before a detailed financial model has much to model.

Treat the result as evidence

Their early projects taught them about shipping, marketing, support and customers leaving. They describe those skills as part of the value of trying a product, even when the business eventually closes.

A small test can provide a reason to continue, change direction or stop. Its value depends on what it teaches about actual customer behavior.

Editor's note

What to do with this

Write down the customer, the job your product would help them do, and the smallest version that can test a purchase. Decide what response would justify spending more time on it.

Then read the founders' failed-product account. The same interview tool that proved someone would pay also exposed a retention problem. A first sale and a lasting business answer different questions, so keep measuring both.

Find more from the show in our startup-growth playlist.

The original

Lessons we learned validating startup ideas scaling to $100k ARR

How Does This Get Big? · 21 September 2026