Look, I'm going to be blunt with you because I've watched too many founders waste months, sometimes years, chasing nothing but ghosts. And honestly? I'm tired of seeing the same pattern play out.
You're validating wrong.
You're asking people "would you use this?" and counting the yeses. 50 people say yes and you think you've got something. You start building. You burn savings. You tell your family you're onto something big. But here's the problem nobody wants to admit: people are nice. Saying yes is free. It costs nothing. Your mom says yes. Your college buddy says yes. That guy at the coffee shop you cornered for 20 minutes says yes just to escape the conversation.
None of those yeses mean anything.
The Fake Yes Problem
I've seen this play out dozens of times. A founder comes into a thread excited, saying something like "We talked to customers and built exactly what they asked for!" Cool. You just built a Franken-product stitched together from scattered opinions, solving nothing deeply, pleasing no one fully.
Here's what experienced founders eventually figure out: customers aren't visionaries. It's not their job to design your product. That's your job. But there's one thing customers are absolute experts in: what sucks in their lives, what wastes their time, what feels clunky or repetitive or just plain broken. That's the gold. That's where you dig.
Real Validation Is Trying to Kill Your Idea
So stop trying to prove your idea is good. Start trying to prove it's dead.
Here's what that actually looks like. You ask "what's the worst thing about how you solve this problem now?" and if they say "nothing" or just shrug, your idea is dead. They're not in pain. People pay to make pain go away, not for "nice to have." You ask "would you pay $X right now to solve this?" and you watch their face. If they hesitate more than 3 seconds, they won't pay. That hesitation isn't them thinking through logistics. It's them being polite while their brain screams no. You ask "whose decision is this at your company?" and if they say "not mine," you're talking to the wrong person. You're collecting feedback from someone who can't actually buy.
The 3-Second Rule
The 3-second thing sounds arbitrary, I know. But here's what I'm actually measuring: not hesitation itself, but the type of hesitation.
When someone genuinely wants something, they move to "how" not "if." They ask about pricing, timelines, demos. The conversation accelerates. But when they're not interested? They go vague. They say things like "this is interesting" or "keep me posted" or "send me more info." Those are polite rejections dressed up as interest. Real interest sounds like "when can I use this?" or "how much?" or "can I see a demo now?" If you're not hearing urgency, you don't have a customer. You have a polite stranger.
Your Customers Are Lying to You (But Not on Purpose)
Here's the uncomfortable truth that took me too long to learn: asking customers what features they want is a trap. They'll tell you. They'll give you a list. And if you build that list, you'll end up with a product that solves nothing deeply because you were taking orders instead of understanding pain.
Don't ask what features they'd like. Don't ask what solution they'd pay for. Instead, ask what's something they have to do every day that frustrates the hell out of them. Ask what's a workaround they've accepted as normal but deep down wish just worked. That's where real insight lives. You're not a waiter taking orders. You're a chef creating a dish they didn't even know they were hungry for.
The "Build It And They Will Come" Graveyard
I just saw a post from a founder who spent 2 years upskilling in web development, built two sophisticated SaaS products that can "handle heavy API request loads"... and has zero paying customers. Zero. The products are technically impressive. They can scale. But who cares when there's nobody to scale for?
This is the pattern: technical founders fall in love with building. They spend months perfecting architecture, optimizing performance, adding features. Meanwhile, they've never asked a single person to pay them money.
Another founder built a legal tech product and gave it away free to "stress test" it. Unlimited use. Two legal cases. The customer loved it, because of course they did, it was free. Now they're locked into a years-long engagement with no revenue while their customer uses the product for massive cases. The founder's realization, in their own words: "I would have imagined success. What happens if this specific customer takes you up on your offer?" If you stand on a street corner trading $10 bills for $5 bills, you'll have infinite customers. That doesn't mean you have a business.
How to Actually Invalidate
So here's the practical version. Next time you're talking to a potential customer, start with the problem, not your solution. Ask open-ended questions about their pain. What's broken? What do they hate? What takes too long?
Then dig into importance. How painful is it really? Is this a 3/10 annoyance or a 9/10 emergency? Do they lose money because of it? Time? Their sanity?
Then understand their current solution. What are they doing now? How much are they paying for it? If the answer is "nothing," that's a red flag because it means the pain isn't painful enough to spend on.
Only then show your approach, and when you do, don't lead with features. Lead with the pain you're eliminating. Then ask for the sale. "Would you pay $X for this, starting next week?" Watch the reaction. A yes without hesitation is signal. Everything else is noise.
The Founder's Validation Bias Is Real
I'm watching this play out in real-time with founders I know. One beta user said "This is great! I'll definitely use it." Reality: stopped using it after 2 weeks. Another said "Interesting, but X, Y, Z don't work for me." Reality: those were exactly the problems the founder was avoiding because they assumed the core use case was strong enough.
The invalidation approach is brutal but efficient. You're not collecting fake yeses. You're hunting for real nos.
The Bitter Pill
If you can't find 3-5 people willing to pay for your solution right now, your idea probably isn't ready. Not ready for launch. Not ready for scale. Just not ready.
But here's the thing: not ready doesn't mean bad idea. It means more work before you have product-market fit. And it's way better to know that now than after you've burned a year building something nobody will pay for.
The founders who survive don't collect yeses. They collect nos until they find the real ones.
Further reading: The SaaS Validation Playbook. If you haven't read it, read it. If you've read it, read it again. Most founders who say they've read it aren't actually following it.