The question every founder gets stuck on
“Have we validated this enough?”
Founders ask each other this constantly. So do co-founders, advisors, teammates. There’s no universal answer, which is exactly why it gets asked so often — and why the answer matters.
“Enough” isn’t a fixed amount of validation. It depends on what you’re about to do next, how reversible that next step is, and how much it would cost to be wrong. It’s personal, situational, and judgement-driven — but there are good ways to think about it.
This topic is about making that judgement more deliberate.
Match evidence to the size of the bet
The most useful framing is to match the level of validation to the size of the decision.
Small, reversible bets need very little evidence. Building a quick prototype, talking to a few user...
