Start with value. Before thinking about validating your idea / researching your market etc ask yourself "What value am I providing to the world / to the market

Start with value. Before thinking about validating your idea / researching your market etc ask yourself "What value am I providing to the world / to the market?". Value is fundamental to your business because you, as an entrepreneur, get paid for putting that value into the hands of your users / customers. Your role as an entrepreneur is to shift resources from a lower area of productivity to a higher area of productivity (example: Instead of 100g selling coffee beans for $1, you buy a cup and a coffee machine and sell a cup of coffee for $5, you successfully created value). You get paid for creating value, and you get paid for identifying market needs and delivering that value to the customers. When something goes wrong with your business, always think about value: "Am I delivering value to users" Next step, about validating, I would also advocate for a MVP (or in the case of a product a MVO: Minimum Viable Offer). The role of a MVP is to seek the shortest path to deliver value to customers. In other words, it is to validate your assumptions so that you can justify the time / financial commitments to build an actual or better product. The MVP is not about your product, it's about validating your value proposition.