Last Received
l
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:12
y
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:11
nbobby
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:09
nnyordie
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:08
bby
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:07
obby
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:03
amont
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:03
3a3c
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:02
gp6
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:01
by
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:01
Newest Addresses
vosp
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 17:02
ersfd
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 15:49
aacarskit
Tue, 30 Sep 2025 18:47
provis
Tue, 30 Sep 2025 17:19
trdsfp
Mon, 29 Sep 2025 17:05
errusi
Mon, 29 Sep 2025 14:25
islagws
Sun, 28 Sep 2025 19:06
mozidisf
Sun, 28 Sep 2025 17:46
jsilqs
Sun, 28 Sep 2025 16:42
estaysi
Sun, 28 Sep 2025 15:31
Last Read
ztr
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:13
gp6
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:13
amont
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:13
obby
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:12
nbobby
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:11
pick
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:11
funnyordie
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:10
capstone
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:10
bobby
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:10
nnyordie
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:10
Most Received
ail
128131
gp6
108266
gp6dd
82877
jonbobby
82820
bobby
62735
mydailymoment
59133
cb322c5
54951
vanchina2
54163
liamont
52202
funnyordie
50426
Available Messages
The following is a list of recent messages for ztr. Select one to see the content. Messages are removed frequently. Check early. Check often.
Subject
Received
How Brex is building an AI-first operations org
Thu, 25 Sep 2025 15:48:26 GMT
=?UTF-8?q?Why_Sierra_built_a_design_partnership_program_on_=E2=80=9Chard_?= =?UTF-8?q?mode=E2=80=9D?=
Tue, 23 Sep 2025 15:45:45 GMT
=?UTF-8?q?Idea_validation_tactics_they_won=E2=80=99t_teach_you_in_busines?= =?UTF-8?q?s_school?=
Wed, 10 Sep 2025 18:56:07 GMT
=?UTF-8?q?What_your_startup_does_(and_doesn=E2=80=99t)_need_to_come_out_o?= =?UTF-8?q?f_stealth?=
Wed, 10 Sep 2025 17:57:02 GMT
Warning
Almost all the messages that arrive here are garbage! Resist the urge to click on any unexpected or questionable links.
It may happen that e-mail will claim to come from liamon.com, especially from some administrative role or process. These are certainly garbage. There are no accounts to expire. There are no passwords to leak. There aren't administrators sending messages to liamon.com addresses. These are certainly phishing attempts.
Absolutely ignore those links!
Selected Message
From: review@...
To: [email protected]
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2025 18:56:07 GMT
Subject: Idea validation tactics they won’t teach you in business school
To: [email protected]
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2025 18:56:07 GMT
Subject: Idea validation tactics they won’t teach you in business school
Plain Text
This week, we’ve combed through our interviews with founders to surface the unexpected ways they sought to answer the question, “Should I build this?”
Is Your Startup Idea Any Good? Borrow These Validation Tactics from the Founders of Linear, Mercury and More [https://review.firstround.com/r/9e543773?m=3bf082c0-d1c6-4f48-923f-fc779193d705]
https://review.firstround.com/r/a72e275e?m=3bf082c0-d1c6-4f48-923f-fc779193d705
Every founder wants to validate their startup idea before they commit to it. But it’s not always obvious how to get the strongest signal.
Many turn to potential customers in an attempt to answer the biggest go or no-go question: “Does anyone want this?” But you can talk to 100 people and if you’re not intentional, you’ll get non-committal responses and divergent feedback that can lead you back to the drawing board.
Other what ifs loom that customers alone can’t inform. Is this idea feasible? Does it have the makings of a great business? Will you enjoy working on it?
Now with AI, you could even incorporate a prototype into your validation by vibe-coding an MVP and throwing it up on Twitter. But the stakes of choosing a great idea have only gotten higher in the AI era — because the hurdle of the build has gotten so much lower.
In our conversations with founders about the beginning of their product-market fit journeys, we’ve learned that there’s no one-size-fits all method of idea validation. Some founders used unconventional tactics for finding and talking to potential customers. Others turned to entirely different audiences, like industry experts and fellow founders, to get meaningful feedback to shape their ideas.
So to help you find inspiration for this process, we’ve rounded up a list of some of the more unexpected — and sometimes contradictory — approaches that we’ve seen. Here’s a sneak peek at this validation toolkit:
* Run minimum viable tests. Repeat entrepreneur and Maven co-founder and CEO Gagan Biyani has devised a framework for pressure-testing ideas without a product: the Minimum Viable Test. “An MVT is a test of an essential hypothesis — something you must be right about, or else the company won’t stand a chance,” he says. For Maven, that meant testing whether professionals would be willing to pay 10X more for a cohort-based course than an asynchronous course by actually running a course himself.
* Go undercover at your day job. Linear’s Karri Saarinen wanted to build a better issue-tracking tool than the one he’d been using as a principal designer at Airbnb. Long before he quit to work on the idea, he did recon with coworkers to validate that folks just like him felt the same problem. “What was interesting was that a lot of people had lots to say and clearly saw a problem. But no one said, ‘I wish you could solve this.’ They hadn’t even thought about it. The incumbent in this market is like the floors in the building — you don’t think about the floors, you just walk on them,” he says.
* Don’t pitch your friends. Ryan Glasgow did the opposite when validating his idea for Sprig. He kept his outreach cold to see if prospects were truly interested — and not just doing him a solid by looking at a product mockup. “One of the key learnings I had early is to never involve people who you personally know in the customer development process. Folks often reach out to their own audience for customer development, but I think it’s often misleading,” he says.
* See if other founders have idea FOMO. To narrow down a list of ideas for his third startup, Crossbeam’s Bob Moore pitched his contenders to other founders. “With founders, I wasn’t asking, ‘Would you buy this?’ But instead, ‘Would you start this company? And what are the things that you think you might bump into?’” he says. “Rather than narrowing these ideas down into the scope of how a persona would use it, I was able to broaden my horizons of what they could become.”
Thanks, as always, for reading and sharing!
-The Review Editors
Take me to The Review [https://review.firstround.com/r/0d301189?m=3bf082c0-d1c6-4f48-923f-fc779193d705]
More like this
Less like this
Made with ✨ by First Round Capital [https://review.firstround.com/r/5dd4fe89?m=3bf082c0-d1c6-4f48-923f-fc779193d705].
First Round © 2025 – Unsubscribe [https://review.firstround.com/unsubscribe/?uuid=3bf082c0-d1c6-4f48-923f-fc779193d705&key=d216ef92a3ca135aacf554209e949d73286e1962872a70d93f9ba1d977acfb3a&newsletter=0c453062-518c-4689-a58b-3f7e2f24211c]
HTML Content
HTML Source
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<!--[if mso]><xml><o:OfficeDocumentSettings><o:PixelsPerInch>96</o:PixelsPerInch><o:AllowPNG/></o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]-->
<title>Idea validation tactics they won’t teach you in business school</title>
<style>
.post-title-link {
display: block;
margin-top: 32px;
color: #15212A;
text-align: center;
line-height: 1.1em;
}
.post-title-link-left {
text-align: left;
}
.view-online-link {
word-wrap: none;
white-space: nowrap;
color: #73818c;
text-decoration: underline !important;
}
.kg-nft-link {
display: block;
text-decoration: none !important;
color: #15212A !important;
font-family: inherit !important;
font-size: 14px;
line-height: 1.3em;
padding-top: 4px;
padding-right: 20px;
padding-left: 20px;
padding-bottom: 4px;
}
.kg-twitter-link {
display: block;
text-decoration: none !important;
color: #15212A !important;
font-family: inherit !important;
font-size: 15px;
padding: 8px;
line-height: 1.3em;
}
.kg-cta-link-accent .kg-cta-sponsor-label a {
color: #62DCAD !important;
}
.kg-cta-link-accent .kg-cta-text a {
color: #62DCAD !important;
}
.kg-audio-link {
color: #73818c !important;
}
@media only screen and (max-width: 620px) {
table.body {
width: 100%;
min-width: 100%;
}
.hide-mobile {
display: none;
}
.mobile-only {
display: initial !important;
}
.hide-desktop {
display: initial !important;
}
.desktop-only {
display: none !important;
}
table.body p,
table.body ul,
table.body ol,
table.body td {
font-size: 16px;
}
table.body .post-excerpt {
font-size: 16px !important;
}
table.body .kg-callout-card {
padding: 16px 24px !important;
}
table.body .kg-callout-text {
font-size: 16px !important;
line-height: 1.5em !important;
}
table.body pre {
white-space: pre-wrap !important;
word-break: break-word !important;
}
table.body .content {
padding: 0 !important;
}
table.body .container {
padding: 0 !important;
width: 100% !important;
}
table.body .main {
border-spacing: 10px 0 !important;
border-left-width: 0 !important;
border-radius: 0 !important;
border-right-width: 0 !important;
}
table.body .btn table {
width: 100% !important;
}
table.body .btn a {
width: 100% !important;
}
table.body .img-responsive {
height: auto !important;
max-width: 100% !important;
width: auto !important;
}
table.body .site-icon {
padding-top: 0 !important;
}
table.body .site-info {
padding-top: 24px !important;
}
table.body .post-title-link {
margin-top: 24px !important;
}
table.body .post-meta-wrapper {
padding-bottom: 24px !important;
}
table.body .site-icon img {
width: 36px !important;
height: 36px !important;
}
table.body .site-url a {
font-size: 13px !important;
padding-bottom: 16px !important;
}
table.body .post-meta,
table.body .post-meta-date {
white-space: normal !important;
font-size: 13px !important;
line-height: 1.2em;
}
table.body .post-meta,
table.body .view-online {
width: 100% !important;
}
table.body .post-meta-left,
table.body .post-meta-left.view-online {
width: 100% !important;
text-align: left !important;
}
table.body .post-meta.view-online-mobile {
display: table-row !important;
}
table.body .post-meta-left.view-online-mobile,
table.body .post-meta-left.view-online-mobile .view-online {
text-align: left !important;
}
table.body .post-meta.view-online.desktop {
display: none !important;
}
table.body .view-online {
text-decoration: underline;
}
table.body .footer p,
table.body .footer p span {
font-size: 13px !important;
}
table.body .view-online-link,
table.body .footer,
table.body .footer a {
font-size: 13px !important;
}
table.body .post-title a {
font-size: 26px !important;
line-height: 1.1em !important;
}
table.feedback-buttons {
display: table !important;
width: 100% !important;
max-width: 390px;
}
table.feedback-buttons img {
display: inherit !important;
}
table.body .feedback-button-text {
display: none!important;
}
table.body .latest-posts-header {
font-size: 12px !important;
}
table.body .latest-post-title {
padding-right: 8px !important;
}
table.body .latest-post h4,
table.body .latest-post h4 span {
padding: 4px 0 6px !important;
font-size: 15px !important;
}
table.body .latest-post-excerpt,
table.body .latest-post-excerpt a,
table.body .latest-post-excerpt span {
font-size: 13px !important;
line-height: 1.2 !important;
}
table.body .subscription-box h3 {
font-size: 14px !important;
}
table.body .subscription-box p,
table.body .subscription-box p span {
font-size: 13px !important;
}
table.body .subscription-details,
table.body .manage-subscription {
display: inline-block;
width: 100%;
text-align: left !important;
font-size: 13px !important;
}
table.body .subscription-details {
padding-bottom: 12px;
}
table.body .kg-bookmark-card {
width: 90vw;
}
table.body .kg-bookmark-thumbnail {
display: none !important;
}
table.body .kg-bookmark-metadata span {
font-size: 13px !important;
}
table.body .kg-embed-card {
max-width: 90vw !important;
}
table.body h1 {
font-size: 32px !important;
line-height: 1.3em !important;
}
table.body h2,
table.body h2 span {
font-size: 26px !important;
line-height: 1.22em !important;
}
table.body h3 {
font-size: 21px !important;
line-height: 1.25em !important;
}
table.body h4 {
font-size: 19px !important;
line-height: 1.3em !important;
}
table.body h5 {
font-size: 16px !important;
line-height: 1.4em !important;
}
table.body h6 {
font-size: 16px !important;
line-height: 1.4em !important;
}
table.body blockquote {
font-size: 16px !important;
line-height: 1.6em;
margin-bottom: 0;
}
table.body blockquote p {
margin-right: 15px !important;
margin-left: 15px !important;
}
table.body blockquote.kg-blockquote-alt {
border-left: 0 none !important;
margin: 0 !important;
font-size: 18px !important;
line-height: 1.4em !important;
}
table.body blockquote.kg-blockquote-alt p {
margin-right: 20px !important;
margin-left: 20px !important;
}
table.body hr {
margin: 2em 0 !important;
}
table.body .kg-header-card.kg-v2 span {
font-size: inherit !important;
}
table.body .kg-header-card.kg-v2 .kg-header-card-content {
padding-top: 64px !important;
padding-bottom: 64px !important;
}
table.body .kg-header-card.kg-v2 .kg-header-card-image + .kg-header-card-content {
padding-top: 52px !important;
padding-bottom: 52px !important;
}
table.body .kg-header-card.kg-v2 .kg-header-card-heading {
font-size: 2.2em !important;
line-height: 1.1 !important;
}
table.body .kg-header-card.kg-v2 .kg-header-card-subheading {
line-height: 1.3em !important;
}
.feature-image-caption {
font-size: 13px!important;
}
.kg-card-figcaption {
font-size: 13px!important;
}
.kg-card-figcaption p,
.kg-card-figcaption p span {
font-size: 13px!important;
}
table.body .kg-cta-card {
padding: 0 20px;
}
table.body .kg-cta-card.kg-cta-bg-none {
padding: 0;
}
table.body .kg-cta-sponsor-label {
padding: 10px 0;
}
table.body table.kg-cta-content-wrapper {
padding: 20px 0;
}
table.body .kg-cta-immersive.kg-cta-has-img:not(.kg-cta-bg-none):not(.kg-cta-no-label) table.kg-cta-content-wrapper {
padding-top: 0;
}
table.body .kg-cta-minimal .kg-cta-image-container {
padding-right: 20px;
}
table.body .kg-cta-immersive .kg-cta-image-container {
padding-bottom: 20px;
}
table.body .kg-cta-immersive.kg-cta-no-text .kg-cta-image-container {
padding-bottom: 0;
}
table.body .kg-cta-button-container {
padding-top: 16px;
}
table.body .kg-cta-minimal .kg-cta-image-container {
display: inline-block !important;
width: 100% !important;
padding: 0 !important;
padding-bottom: 16px !important;
padding-right: 0 !important;
}
table.body .kg-cta-minimal .kg-cta-content-inner {
display: inline-block !important;
width: 100% !important;
padding: 0 !important;
}
table.body .kg-cta-minimal img.kg-cta-image {
width: 52px !important;
height: 52px !important;
}
table.body .kg-cta-minimal a.kg-cta-button {
display: inline-block !important;
}
table.body .kg-cta-minimal table.kg-cta-button-wrapper td {
padding: 4px 16px 5px;
}
table.body .kg-cta-immersive .kg-cta-button-wrapper {
padding: 6px 18px 7px;
}
}
@media all {
.subscription-details p.hidden {
display: none !important;
}
.ExternalClass {
width: 100%;
}
.ExternalClass,
.ExternalClass p,
.ExternalClass span,
.ExternalClass font,
.ExternalClass td,
.ExternalClass div {
line-height: 100%;
}
.apple-link a {
color: inherit !important;
font-family: inherit !important;
font-size: inherit !important;
font-weight: inherit !important;
line-height: inherit !important;
text-decoration: none !important;
}
#MessageViewBody a {
color: inherit;
text-decoration: none;
font-size: inherit;
font-family: inherit;
font-weight: inherit;
line-height: inherit;
}
.btn-primary table td:hover {
background-color: #34495e !important;
}
.btn-primary a:hover {
background-color: #34495e !important;
border-color: #34495e !important;
}
}
</style>
</head>
<body style="background-color: #fff; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0; padding: 0; -ms-text-size-adjust: 100%; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; color: #15212A;">
<span class="preheader" style="color: transparent; display: none; height: 0; max-height: 0; max-width: 0; opacity: 0; overflow: hidden; mso-hide: all; visibility: hidden; width: 0;">How founders from Linear, Mercury and other startups found conviction before the build</span>
<table role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="body" width="100%" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; background-color: #fff; width: 100%;" bgcolor="#fff">
<!-- Outlook doesn't respect max-width so we need an extra centered table -->
<!--[if mso]>
<tr>
<td>
<center>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600">
<![endif]-->
<tr>
<td style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A;" valign="top"> </td>
<td class="container" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; display: block; max-width: 600px; margin: 0 auto;" valign="top">
<div class="content" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0 auto; max-width: 600px;">
<!-- START CENTERED WHITE CONTAINER -->
<table role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="main" width="100%" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; background: #ffffff; border-radius: 3px; border-spacing: 20px 0; width: 100%;">
<!-- START MAIN CONTENT AREA -->
<tr>
<td class="wrapper" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; box-sizing: border-box;" valign="top">
<table role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; width: 100%;">
<tr class="post-content-row">
<td class="post-content-sans-serif" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: top; font-size: 17px; line-height: 1.5em; color: #15212A; padding-bottom: 20px; border-bottom: 1px solid #e0e7eb; padding-top: 32px; max-width: 600px;" valign="top">
<!-- POST CONTENT START -->
<p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;"><em>This week, we’ve combed through our interviews with founders to surface the unexpected ways they sought to answer the question, “Should I build this?”</em></p><h2 id="is-your-startup-idea-any-good-borrow-these-validation-tactics-from-the-founders-of-linear-mercury-and-more" style="margin-top: 0; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 1.11em; font-weight: 700; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; margin: 1.5em 0 0.5em 0; font-size: 32px;"><a href="https://review.firstround.com/r/9e543773?m=3bf082c0-d1c6-4f48-923f-fc779193d705" rel="noreferrer" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #62DCAD; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Is Your Startup Idea Any Good? Borrow These Validation Tactics from the Founders of Linear, Mercury and More</a></h2><div class="kg-card kg-image-card" style="margin: 0 0 1.5em; padding: 0;"><a href="https://review.firstround.com/r/a72e275e?m=3bf082c0-d1c6-4f48-923f-fc779193d705" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #62DCAD; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"><img src="https://review.firstround.com/content/images/size/w1600/2025/09/2000x1333-1.jpg" class="kg-image" alt loading="lazy" width="600" height="400" style="border: none; -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; max-width: 100%; display: block; margin: 0 auto; height: auto; width: auto;"></a></div><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;">Every founder wants to validate their startup idea before they commit to it. But it’s not always obvious how to get the strongest signal.</p><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;">Many turn to potential customers in an attempt to answer the biggest go or no-go question: “Does anyone want this?” But you can talk to 100 people and if you’re not intentional, you’ll get non-committal responses and divergent feedback that can lead you back to the drawing board.</p><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;">Other what ifs loom that customers alone can’t inform. Is this idea feasible? Does it have the makings of a great business? Will you enjoy working on it?</p><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;">Now with AI, you could even incorporate a prototype into your validation by vibe-coding an MVP and throwing it up on Twitter. But the stakes of choosing a great idea have only gotten higher in the AI era — because the hurdle of the build has gotten so much lower.</p><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;">In our conversations with founders about the beginning of their product-market fit journeys, we’ve learned that there’s no one-size-fits all method of idea validation. Some founders used unconventional tactics for finding and talking to potential customers. Others turned to entirely different audiences, like industry experts and fellow founders, to get meaningful feedback to shape their ideas.</p><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;">So to help you find inspiration for this process, we’ve rounded up a list of some of the more unexpected — and sometimes contradictory — approaches that we’ve seen. Here’s a sneak peek at this validation toolkit:</p><ul style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; padding-left: 1.3em; padding-right: 1.5em; list-style: disc; max-width: 100%;"><li style="margin: 0.5em 0; padding-left: 0.3em; line-height: 1.6em;"><strong style="font-weight: 700;">Run minimum viable tests.</strong> Repeat entrepreneur and <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Maven</strong> co-founder and CEO <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Gagan Biyani</strong> has devised a framework for pressure-testing ideas without a product: the Minimum Viable Test. “An MVT is a test of an essential hypothesis — something you must be right about, or else the company won’t stand a chance,” he says. For Maven, that meant testing whether professionals would be willing to pay 10X more for a cohort-based course than an asynchronous course by actually running a course himself.</li><li style="margin: 0.5em 0; padding-left: 0.3em; line-height: 1.6em;"><strong style="font-weight: 700;">Go undercover at your day job. Linear</strong>’s <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Karri Saarinen</strong> wanted to build a better issue-tracking tool than the one he’d been using as a principal designer at Airbnb. Long before he quit to work on the idea, he did recon with coworkers to validate that folks just like him felt the same problem. “What was interesting was that a lot of people had lots to say and clearly saw a problem. But no one said, ‘I wish you could solve this.’ They hadn’t even thought about it. The incumbent in this market is like the floors in the building — you don’t think about the floors, you just walk on them,” he says.</li><li style="margin: 0.5em 0; padding-left: 0.3em; line-height: 1.6em;"><strong style="font-weight: 700;">Don’t pitch your friends. Ryan Glasgow</strong> did the opposite when validating his idea for <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Sprig</strong>. He kept his outreach cold to see if prospects were truly interested — and not just doing him a solid by looking at a product mockup. “One of the key learnings I had early is to never involve people who you personally know in the customer development process. Folks often reach out to their own audience for customer development, but I think it’s often misleading,” he says.</li><li style="margin: 0.5em 0; padding-left: 0.3em; line-height: 1.6em;"><strong style="font-weight: 700;">See if other founders have idea FOMO.</strong> To narrow down a list of ideas for his third startup, <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Crossbeam</strong>’s <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Bob Moore</strong> pitched his contenders to other founders. “With founders, I wasn’t asking, ‘Would you buy this?’ But instead, ‘Would you start this company? And what are the things that you think you might bump into?’” he says. “Rather than narrowing these ideas down into the scope of how a persona would use it, I was able to broaden my horizons of what they could become.”</li></ul><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;">Thanks, as always, for reading and sharing!<br><br><em>-The Review Editors</em></p><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;"></p><div class="btn btn-accent" style="box-sizing: border-box; width: 100%; display: table;"><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; width: auto;" width="auto"><tr><td align="center" style="font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; border-radius: 5px; text-align: center; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: #2CC58A;" valign="top" bgcolor="#2CC58A"><a href="https://review.firstround.com/r/0d301189?m=3bf082c0-d1c6-4f48-923f-fc779193d705" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; border: solid 1px #3498db; border-radius: 5px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline-block; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 12px 25px; text-decoration: none; background-color: #2CC58A; border-color: #2CC58A; color: #FFFFFF;" target="_blank">Take me to The Review</a></td></tr></table></div><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;"></p>
<!-- POST CONTENT END -->
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
<!-- END MAIN CONTENT AREA -->
<tr>
<td dir="ltr" width="100%" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; background-color: #ffffff; text-align: center; padding: 32px 0 24px; border-bottom: 1px solid #e0e7eb;" align="center" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top">
<table class="feedback-buttons" role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; margin: auto; width: 100%;" width="100%">
<tr>
<td dir="ltr" valign="top" align="center" style="font-size: 18px; color: #15212A; display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; font-family: inherit; text-align: center; padding: 0 4px 4px; cursor: pointer; width: 30%;" width="30%">
<a href="https://review.firstround.com/idea-validation-tactics-they-wont-teach-you-in-business-school/#/feedback/68bf3ec0ee2667000132bd0b/1/?uuid=3bf082c0-d1c6-4f48-923f-fc779193d705&key=d216ef92a3ca135aacf554209e949d73286e1962872a70d93f9ba1d977acfb3a" target="_blank" style="color: #62DCAD; text-decoration: none; overflow-wrap: anywhere;">
<img src="https://static.ghost.org/v5.0.0/images/more-like-this-mobile.png" border="0" width="42" height="42" alt="More like this" style="border: none; -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; max-width: 100%; display: block; margin: 0 auto; vertical-align: middle;">
<p class="feedback-button-text" style="display: inline-block; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; color: #15212A; font-weight: 500; margin: 1em 0 0 0; line-height: 1.4em; word-break: break-word; font-size: 13px;">More like this</p>
</a>
</td> <td dir="ltr" valign="top" align="center" style="font-size: 18px; color: #15212A; display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; font-family: inherit; text-align: center; padding: 0 4px 4px; cursor: pointer; width: 30%;" width="30%">
<a href="https://review.firstround.com/idea-validation-tactics-they-wont-teach-you-in-business-school/#/feedback/68bf3ec0ee2667000132bd0b/0/?uuid=3bf082c0-d1c6-4f48-923f-fc779193d705&key=d216ef92a3ca135aacf554209e949d73286e1962872a70d93f9ba1d977acfb3a" target="_blank" style="color: #62DCAD; text-decoration: none; overflow-wrap: anywhere;">
<img src="https://static.ghost.org/v5.0.0/images/less-like-this-mobile.png" border="0" width="42" height="42" alt="Less like this" style="border: none; -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; max-width: 100%; display: block; margin: 0 auto; vertical-align: middle;">
<p class="feedback-button-text" style="display: inline-block; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; color: #15212A; font-weight: 500; margin: 1em 0 0 0; line-height: 1.4em; word-break: break-word; font-size: 13px;">Less like this</p>
</a>
</td> </tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="wrapper" align="center" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; box-sizing: border-box;" valign="top">
<table role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; width: 100%; padding-top: 40px; padding-bottom: 30px;">
<tr><td class="footer" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: top; color: #73818c; margin-top: 20px; text-align: center; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-top: 10px; padding-left: 30px; padding-right: 30px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 13px;" valign="top" align="center"><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;"><span> Made with ✨ by </span><a href="https://review.firstround.com/r/5dd4fe89?m=3bf082c0-d1c6-4f48-923f-fc779193d705" target="_blank" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #73818c; text-decoration: underline; font-size: 13px;"><span>First Round Capital</span></a><span>.</span></p></td></tr>
<tr>
<td class="footer" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: top; color: #73818c; margin-top: 20px; text-align: center; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-top: 10px; padding-left: 30px; padding-right: 30px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 13px;" valign="top" align="center">First Round © 2025 – <a href="https://review.firstround.com/unsubscribe/?uuid=3bf082c0-d1c6-4f48-923f-fc779193d705&key=d216ef92a3ca135aacf554209e949d73286e1962872a70d93f9ba1d977acfb3a&newsletter=0c453062-518c-4689-a58b-3f7e2f24211c" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #73818c; text-decoration: underline; font-size: 13px;" target="_blank">Unsubscribe</a></td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- END CENTERED WHITE CONTAINER -->
</div>
</td>
<td style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A;" valign="top"> </td>
</tr>
<!--[if mso]>
</table>
</center>
</td>
</tr>
<![endif]-->
</table>
<img width="1" height="1" alt="" src="http://email2.firstround.com/o/eJwszj1uwzAMR_HTRFuCv74ocuBhJJluhNox4CgdevoCRsf3pt-irXlKztSXXFKEeDjb69juY1HijhS5mQWiAsDH0NZe3VMpcxUuKM2oUKS1Y8nZIoUuLMnc0ICQIRCfffZ4NIksWboBpTKvt4R1nO95Hp_X8ujH7k79nectYRt1P17Xmto-2_f9ErmpX8_jPf_rR8NfAAAA__9JdjeQ"></body>
</html>