Stop Building MVP First
Why Founders Must Validate Problems Before Building an MVP
Recently, I spoke with a founder who outsourced customer discovery to an advisory firm. My advice? Never delegate this critical step if you’re building a startup. Many founders approach me seeking validation for their ideas or feedback on their products, hoping for affirmation from mentors, investors, or friends. When I urge them to talk directly to their customers, some feel brushed off or think I’m avoiding the “right” answer. But the truth is clear: only by engaging with customers yourself can you truly validate your idea.
Before writing a single line of code, pitching to investors, or building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), you must confirm that a real customer problem exists. Advisors, mentors, investors, and friends aren’t your customers—and their opinions, while well-meaning, can’t substitute for direct customer insights. Go straight to your potential customers and uncover their pain points. This hands-on approach ensures you’re addressing a genuine need, laying a strong foundation for your startup’s success.
It’s tempting to dive into building your solution, but pause and ask: Are we solving a real problem? Falling in love with your idea is easy, yet most startup failures stem from creating products people don’t need. Validating the problem isn’t just a step—it’s a survival strategy.
To help you get started, I’ve curated a list of essential books that provide practical guidance on customer discovery, Lean Startup principles, and building products people want. These resources—starting with The Mom Test and including Running Lean, Lean Customer Development, Testing Business Ideas, and others—offer tactical tools to validate problems and build smarter.
1. The Startup Owner’s Manual
Authors: Steve Blank & Bob Dorf
Year: 2012
Summary: A must-read reference for every founder, this comprehensive guide walks you through the Customer Discovery and Customer Validation phases with unparalleled detail. More structured than The Lean Startup, it provides a tactical, step-by-step roadmap for validating problems before building products. Designed as a practical handbook rather than a novel, its thoroughness makes it an essential resource to consult repeatedly throughout your startup journey.
2. Running Lean
Author: Ash Maurya
Year: 2012
Summary: A tactical guide on how to go from idea to validated product. Maurya adapts Lean Startup thinking into a clear, step-by-step process with Lean Canvas, problem interviews, solution interviews, and validation metrics. The book is obsessed with problem/solution fit before MVP. A founder’s manual.
3. Lean Customer Development
Author: Cindy Alvarez
Year: 2014
Summary: This book teaches you how to do customer discovery in practice: who to talk to, what to ask, how to interpret answers, and what to build. Cindy Alvarez gives repeatable techniques for validating whether the problem is worth solving before moving to the solution.
4. The Lean Startup
Author: Eric Ries
Year: 2011
Summary: The classic that popularized the Build–Measure–Learn loop. Although often read for MVP ideas, its core message is about validated learning—how to test hypotheses and reduce waste. Ries strongly advocates identifying the right problem before committing to any build.
5. Testing Business Ideas
Authors: David J. Bland & Alexander Osterwalder
Year: 2019
Summary: A visual and experiment-heavy toolkit. The book outlines 44 different validation techniques—like smoke tests, landing pages, and concierge MVPs—to test ideas before building. Perfect for designing smart experiments to validate customer problems with real-world data.
6. Value Proposition Design
Authors: Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Gregory Bernarda, Alan Smith
Year: 2014
Summary: Focused on aligning your product with real customer pain points. Helps you map customer jobs, pains, and gains before ideating solutions. It’s strategic and visual—great for founders who need to frame their problem validation process.
7. Disciplined Entrepreneurship
Author: Bill Aulet (MIT)
Year: 2013
Summary: Offers a 24-step framework for building a startup, with deep emphasis on understanding and quantifying the customer’s problem. It includes specific steps for primary market research and problem prioritization before building. Used at MIT’s entrepreneurship programs.
8. The Mom Test
Author: Rob Fitzpatrick
Year: 2013
Summary: This is the go-to book for learning how to talk to customers without bias. Rob Fitzpatrick teaches you how to ask better questions that uncover real customer problems—without getting false positives. It’s practical, concise, and founder-tested. A must-read for anyone doing customer discovery.
9. UX for Lean Startups
Author: Laura Klein
Year: 2013
Summary: This book blends UX, product thinking, and lean startup principles. Laura Klein shows how to validate user problems through observational research and rapid prototyping—without needing design teams or big budgets.
10. The Right It
Author: Alberto Savoia
Year: 2019
Summary: Former Google innovation lead introduces the concept of “Pretotyping”—testing whether people want something before building it. Offers concrete frameworks and mental models for confirming whether your problem/idea is the “right it” before investing.
11. Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success
Author: Tom Eisenmann
Year: 2021
Summary: A Harvard Business School professor’s deep dive into six patterns of startup failure, including “False Starts” (building the wrong solution) and “Speed Traps” (scaling too fast). Using case studies, Eisenmann highlights the importance of validating customer problems early to avoid common pitfalls. It’s a practical guide for founders to de-risk their ventures and build strategically.
12. Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs
Author: Uri Levine
Year: 2023
Summary: Written by the co-founder of Waze and Moovit, this book emphasizes solving real customer problems over attachment to solutions. Levine shares insights from building unicorns, covering customer discovery, product-market fit, and crisis management. It’s a tactical, story-driven guide for founders to validate problems and navigate the startup journey.
If you’re serious about building something people want, start by validating what they need. The best founders are investigators, problem-hunters, and active listeners.
Above all, The Startup Owner’s Manual by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf is a must-read guide, offering a detailed, step-by-step roadmap for customer discovery and validation.
Complement it with The Mom Test to master unbiased customer conversations, then dive into Running Lean, Lean Customer Development, Testing Business Ideas, Why Startups Fail, Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution, and The Right It for additional actionable frameworks.
These books aren’t just theory—they’re practical tools you can apply today.
Read them, use them, and build smarter.
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I am a great fan of ‘The Mom Test’ and it uncovers real issues that sometimes you haven’t even thought about in your product development journey. Thanks for sharing Burak! Love your posts :)