The 48-Hour Validation Sprint

IdeaStart

Hour 0–12

The Mom Test

Talk to potential users. Compliments are poison — they feel like validation but prove nothing.

Never mention your idea first — keep it in your pocket so they can't lie to protect your feelings.Ask about past behavior, not future intent: "When did you last hit this problem? What did you do? What did it cost?"Look for existing attempts — no action means mild discomfort, not hair-on-fire pain.Log real signals ("I tried three tools last month") and discard compliments ("that sounds cool").

AI Accelerator Ask Claude for 10 Mom Test questions tailored to your niche before you talk to anyone.

Hour 12–36

The Smoke Test

Build a real landing page that promises the solution — headline, value prop, features, and a call to action.

Generate a professional landing page with Lovable, Base44, Bolt, or Claude Code (under an hour).Drive $100–200 of targeted ads to it — use Claude to write and vary the ad copy.Track commitments only: email (soft), pre-order deposit (hard), credit card entered (real).

Benchmark

8%+ email signup = you likely have something.

Measure commitments, not page views. Email = soft. Deposit = hard.

VisitorsSignups

Conversion

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Hour 36–48

The Wizard of Oz

You don't need to build the product to test if people want it. Deliver manually while the front end looks automated.

Take real orders through a simple form — no back-end pipeline built yet.Deliver the result by hand using AI to do 90% of the work (target: ~5 min per customer).If they love the output, automate it. If they don't, you just saved weeks building the wrong thing.

0 / 10

In progress

Verdict

Where did the sprint land?

VALIDATED — BUILDITERATEKILL IT

The 48-Hour Validation Sprint

The Mom Test

The Smoke Test

The Wizard of Oz

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