Hi! Designer and researcher, here. When Steve Blank/Eric Ries say you should "validate" your idea, this is not what they mean. This is not validating an idea

Hi! Designer and researcher, here. When Steve Blank/Eric Ries say you should "validate" your idea, this is not what they mean. This is not validating an idea. This is having a solution and looking for a problem. To actually validate this idea, you need a few things. First, you need to get rid of the "I would like" that starts your second paragraph. If you are creating a product or service for other people to use, it doesn't matter what you would "like." All that matters is what they would pay for (or actively use, if you have no business model). That could be something you don't want to work on at all, but an idea you don't care for but others will pay for will always out earn an idea only you love. Second, you need to get rid of the rest of the second paragraph. That's your pre-defined solution, in search of a problem. Sorry! (Note: if all you want to do is build something for fun, then you don't need to validate anything at all! Building it for fun should be enough. Just don't expect anything more out of it, and if you decide to productize it, expect to start over from scratch.) Your actual idea is "TripAdvisor's 'Saved Trips' is inconvenient, and doesn't help me plan the best possible trips around my vacation schedule." Third, asking strangers here, in this way, isn't helpful. It's not providing true validation. This isn't any better than asking friends and family what they think of your idea. None of the data you get out of this (or asking your friends/family) is valid. It can't be used to support your business case. So, fourth, to actually validate your idea, you need to find a few different types of people: - people who have a fixed number of PTO days and who have recently (last six months) taken a trip. you'll want to specify the kind of trips you want to optimize for. day trips within driving distance? multi-day trips? national/international? people think about different kinds of trips differently. you'll want to understand how they made the choice to make that trip, what were their considerations, what was difficult in it. - people who have a fixed number of PTO days and wanted to travel, but didn't. you'll want to understand why they didn't take the trip. - people who use TripAdvisor's Saved Trips section. you'll want to understand why they use it. maybe it's inconvenient for your use case because it's meant for people who plan trips differently than you. With this information, you'll be able to understand the pain points for your imagined user, and that will let you come up with possible solutions. The one you've posited above might be in there, but, crucially, it also might not be. Once you've addressed the pain points and come up with a potential solution, then you go back to the users in the first two groups and see if they'd pay for it. That's the only true validation: will they cut you a check? That's the core part of MVP that people forget about: it's the minimum product that someone will pay for. If they would, that's validation for your idea. If they wouldn't, you need to figure out if your solution is wrong, or if there's not a market there. Good luck!