r/ideavalidation

I’ve been researching a startup idea and wanted brutally honest feedback.

Right now, offline shopping is basically guesswork.

You go to a market/store hoping they’ll have what you want:

- right size

- right color

- right style

- right stock

Sometimes you visit 4–5 stores before finding it.

And even though stores are “online” through Instagram/WhatsApp, there’s still no way to actually search what nearby stores have in stock before going.

So the idea is:

A platform where you can see live inventory from nearby offline stores before visiting.

NOT delivery like Blinkit/Zepto.

The goal is:

- reducing uncertainty

- avoiding wasted trips

- making offline shopping searchable

Example:

Instead of visiting multiple footwear stores blindly, you check which nearby store actually has the sneaker/size/style you want.

What do you guys think?

I keep seeing founders (myself included) jump from “interesting idea” straight into building without a real quantitative stress test.

Curious how people here are actually validating ideas with numbers before writing code or signing leases.

Specifically:

• Do you build basic financial models (even rough ones) before committing, or do you rely mostly on qualitative signals like interviews and waitlists?
• How deep do you go on unit economics (LTV, CAC, payback, margins) at the idea stage, and what’s “good enough” for you to move forward?
• Has anyone here used structured benchmarks (industry data, city-level cost multipliers, etc.) to validate assumptions, or is it mostly your own research and gut?
• What’s your process for spotting “this idea will die because of simple math” before you spend 6–12 months building it?

I’m interested in approaches that combine:

• Market research and customer discovery
• Simple but realistic financial modeling
• Some kind of “stress test” or scenario analysis (best case / base case / worst case)

Would love to hear concrete workflows, frameworks, or examples from your own companies—especially where the numbers changed your mind about moving forward (or not).

Not trying to promote anything—just trying to learn how other founders here are building a more rigorous validation step into their process.

Two weeks ago I dropped a comment in a thread about getting early feedback on SaaS products. 208 founders so far and 60% who listed their apps on CanaryLaunch, a platform where founders review each other's apps and leave structured, specific feedback before public launch. More than 50% got reviews in first 36 hours!

Feedback is still the core. That has not changed.

But I kept noticing the same problem. A founder would get great feedback, fix the issues, and then ask: okay, now what? How do I actually get users?

So I built a Discovery module as an experiment alongside the feedback layer.

Here is the idea. We took the all the published apps on the platform and manually curated them into 20 real-world workflows. Things like "Launch a SaaS Product", "Master Personal Finance", "Scale B2B Sales". Each workflow is a sequence of steps a real user goes through to solve a specific problem, and each step is filled by an app that belongs there. Not paid placement. Not an algorithm. Hand-picked.

The goal is that a visitor does not browse a random list. They land on the workflow that matches the problem they are trying to solve right now, and they discover the right tools in the right order. Founders get feedback AND a place where users find them in context.

Both things in one platform. That is the bet.

We are still testing it. It might be wrong. While we are happy with the response our initial phase - Discovery is a completely different problem from feedback and I am not sure we can do both well. We plan to curate and add new workflows weekly!

So I am genuinely asking: if you had a SaaS and you listed it here, would a curated workflow placement actually matter to you? Or is the feedback alone the reason you would show up?

Browse the workflows here: https://canarylaunch.com/apps

Honest takes only. This community is good at those.

EarMe is an AI-powered assistant that helps you understand and manage your healthcare conversations.

Doctor visits can be overwhelming. Important details are easy to forget, medical language can be confusing, and it’s hard to know what to do next once you leave the room. EarMe solves this by turning your visit into something you can actually understand and act on.

With EarMe, you can:

• Record your doctor visit securely and effortlessly as well as upload & view medical documents 
• Receive a summary from your visit
• Ask questions to our chat model - just like talking to an expert who remembers your visit that has all the context from your past visits & medical documents
• Get personalised recommendations so you know exactly what to do after your appointment
• Note down questions for next visit

Instead of leaving appointments confused or relying on memory, EarMe gives you clarity, confidence, and control over your health.

Wondering if anyone has any feedback on this for me. And also who I should target first.

EarMe is an AI-powered assistant that helps you understand and manage your healthcare conversations.

Doctor visits can be overwhelming. Important details are easy to forget, medical language can be confusing, and it’s hard to know what to do next once you leave the room. EarMe solves this by turning your visit into something you can actually understand and act on.

With EarMe, you can:

• Record your doctor visit securely and effortlessly as well as upload & view medical documents 
• Receive a summary from your visit
• Ask questions to our chat model - just like talking to an expert who remembers your visit that has all the context from your past visits & medical documents
• Get personalised recommendations so you know exactly what to do after your appointment
• Note down questions for next visit

Instead of leaving appointments confused or relying on memory, EarMe gives you clarity, confidence, and control over your health.

Wondering if anyone has any feedback on this for me. And also who I should target first.

Hi.

I made a tool called Valmock that generates a

landing page, mockup images + email capture from your idea description

and hosts it for you — no domain needed. Takes less than

10 minutes to set up and tells you pretty quickly whether

people actually want it.

Happy to run your idea through it if you want a free test!