Hey all, to investigate if the problem you planning to solve with your business idea it is advised to talk to potential customers/represenatives of the industry you have chosen.
How do you get these people to talk to you? Do you use some platforms which are meant for this purpose? Do you pay people for speaking to you?
There are some great answers in this thread. Ultimately, it takes some creativity and hustle.
First of all, you are correct that you need to talk to people who may experience the problem (as is reinforced by some of the other answers). But finding them and getting time with them is where the creativity comes in. It really depends on who those people are and what mechanisms they turn to for information. Facebook is effective of many people, but so are industry groups and chamber's of commerce. It was suggested that you join networking groups, but I would be more focused than that. Do your research and possibly use an LLM (ChatGPT, Claude, others) to suggest where your target audience goes for info. Then go to those places and find your people.
Be well prepared to talk with them when you find them. Have a good hypothesis of the problem they may have and how they may solve it now. Figure out all the assumptions you are making about them and how they experience the problem, then go validate those assumptions.
