You have an idea. It feels good. You can see the product in your head. The features make sense. The pitch is clear.
So you spend three weeks building it. Launch. Crickets.
The problem wasn’t execution. It was the idea itself. And you spent three weeks finding that out.
Here’s a better way: 48 hours from concept to signal.
If you can’t get 20 people to sign up for a free waitlist in two days, you don’t build it.
Simple as that.
Before we discuss validation, let’s define what you’re validating.
Is this a billion-dollar idea?
Not literally, most things aren’t. But is it something you’d bet years of your life on? Something with real scale potential? Something that could actually matter?
If yes, validate quickly, then go all-in.
If no, keep it as a side project. Nights and weekends. Don’t quit your job. Don’t convince yourself it’ll grow into something bigger.
Most founders waste time on ideas they’re not truly committed to. They half-build things that aren’t quite good enough to matter. The 48-hour rule helps you avoid that trap.
Either the idea is worth pursuing in depth, or it’s not worth building at all.
Most people default to “build first, validate later.” It feels productive. You’re making progress. The product is taking shape.
But if the core idea doesn’t resonate, the MVP won’t save it. A polished version of something nobody wants is still something nobody wants.
The alternative—talking to potential users first—sounds good in theory. In practice, it’s slow. Scheduling calls, getting honest feedback, dealing with “yeah, that sounds cool” when they really mean “no.”
A waitlist is different. It’s a micro-commitment. Low friction, but real. If someone won’t give you their email for free, they definitely won’t give you money later.
48 hours is enough to know if there’s a signal. Fast enough to kill bad ideas. Slow enough to give good ones a fair shot.
Not the product. The test.
What you need:
That’s it. No backend. No auth. No polish.
The landing page structure:
No pricing. No features list. No “our story.” Just the core value prop and a way to signal interest.
This is the hard part. You need to present your test to 100-500 relevant people.
Channels that actually work:
The posting strategy:
Timing matters. Reddit works best 8-10 (8-10 AM) or 18-20.00 (6-8 PM). LinkedIn mornings. Hacker News Tuesday-Thursday mornings.
Most communities allow “I built this” posts if you’re not selling and actually respond to comments.
By now, you have data. Time to be honest about what it means.
Decision tree:
The threshold is arbitrary. You could set it higher or lower. The point is to have a threshold at all—something that forces a decision rather than drifting into “I’ll keep working on it and see.”
1. Forces honesty fast. If people don’t sign up for a free waitlist, they won’t pay later. Better to know on Day 2 than Week 3.
2. Cheap. $0-50 budget. 1-2 days of work. No sunk cost fallacy.
3. Prevents drift. Clear success criteria. Either it works, or it doesn’t. No middle ground where you convince yourself, “it just needs more time.”
4. Filters for real commitment. If you can’t be bothered to spend a weekend validating an idea, you definitely won’t stick with it when building gets hard.
Reddit seeded early growth with fake comments. They knew content begets content, so they faked it until real users showed up.
BeReal requires daily posting; otherwise, you can’t see friends’ posts. Mandatory participation solved their cold start problem. 90%+ daily engagement rate.
Locket (the photo widget app) uses forced reciprocity: post a photo to see your friends’ photos. Aggressive, but it works.
The pattern: platforms that force early contribution grow faster than those that allow lurking.
This isn’t a magic formula. It works for products where:
It doesn’t work for:
And even then, a “failed” validation isn’t always a real failure. Sometimes it’s the wrong positioning. Sometimes it’s the wrong audience. Sometimes it’s bad timing.
But at least you know in 48 hours instead of 3 weeks.
Here’s the thing most people miss: validation isn’t just about proving people want something. It’s about proving you want to build it.
If you get 100 signups in 48 hours, that’s great. But ask yourself: is this something you’d bet on for the next 5 years?
If yes, go all in. Quit the job. Raise money. Build the team.
If no, keep it as a side project. Build it nights and weekends. Don’t pretend it’s going to become something bigger.
Most founders waste years on ideas they’re only half-committed to. They build products that are good enough to get some users but not good enough to matter. The validation proved there’s a market. But they never asked if the market was big enough to justify going all in.
48 hours tells you if there’s a signal. But you need to ask yourself if the signal is worth chasing.
Pick an idea you’ve been sitting on. Something small enough to test but interesting enough to matter.
Spend 8 hours building the test. Post it in 6 communities. Wait 48 hours.
If you get 20+ signups, you have something. If you don’t, you just saved yourself three weeks.
The tools are fast enough now. AI can help you build a landing page in an hour. Vercel deploys in seconds. Formspree handles forms for free. The bottleneck isn’t tech. It’s honesty about whether anyone actually wants what you’re building.
48 hours is enough to know.
Still no Sonnet 5 😱
Yesterday: Managing My AI Team From a Dashboard
